Weidi Xue

Are gaming notebooks worth it?

One of the most heated debates on the internet is whether spending close to double what you would spend building your own desktop is worth it. As you are reading this, a few brands may immediately pop into your head such as Alienware, MSI, Asus and perhaps even Medion. The greatest challenge for me whilst writing this is to stay objective as I myself am current typing this on my third Alienware laptop.

Alienware

I will use my accounts of owning a “gaming” notebook to help any reader make their own minds on whether owning such a machine is worth all that money spent. On Monday, UPS delivered to me my M17x R4, which was kindlly given to me by Dell to replace my M17x R3. First off and most importantly is the price – one may pay in the region of two grand for this “portable” computer and that is not counting the upgrades I will add throughout the course of the single year that I will own it before the draw of newer tech forces me to upgrade. With that money, I could have built myself a pretty beefy desktop will all the metaphorical bells and whistles and actual bells and whistles if I wanted to. The main reason is that I move around, a lot. And that makes owning a desktop out of the question. I carried my old M17x R3 back and forth in a backpack but honestly, I wish it didn’t need to. This 17 incher is about twice as thick and probably twice as heavy as the 17 inch MacBook Pro. For many, the weight and size of any gaming notebook is a definite deal breaker. The laws of physics just cannot be bent – power equals heat and a sleek slim form factor like that of the MacBook Pro just cannot contain that much heat produced by the much more powerful components inside.

MacBook Pro...seriously?

So what about performance then? By now you may be thinking, maybe I can look past the bulkiness of the laptop as long as it provides me with what I need in terms of performance. A user should be buying a gaming notebook in order to play games, otherwise they are just plain stupid. The single feature of any gaming notebook that differentiates it from the crowd should be its graphics card. At the time of purchase, my Alienware M17x R4 had a GTX 660m as its base configuration; I configured mine with a GTX 680m, the top of the line notebook GPU at this time of writing. Do not fall into the trap of the naming schemes of mobile graphics cards compared to desktop ones. A GTX 680m is a far cry from the desktop GTX 680 but instead similar to a desktop GTX 670 with lower clock speeds. Now, the GTX 680m is able to pump out decent frame rates in most of the modern games with the exception of a few. Games such as Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 all run with playable frame rates with details set to their maximum. Alienware is also not the only company offering this particular graphics card. Other gaming notebook lines such MSI and Clevo (resold by pwnpcs and PCSpecialist here in the UK) have their variants of the GTX 680m. Of course, for those that need to save a few quid, there are other configuration options such as AMD’s very respectable 7970m (comparable to a desktop 7870) and the lower GTX 660m offering mid- to low-tier graphics performance. For those looking to buy a gaming laptop, you MUST do your research as naming schemes like these are often used to catch users out with them spending lots of money and only receiving mediocre performance.

When reading this, some may have gone to the Dell website and configured a system to their own liking and noticed that the GTX 680m is much more expensive than the AMD 7970m despite being only a few percent quicker. Nvidia has generally always charged more for its flagship mobile GPUs and the rationale is that they offer more features such as PhysX and in the case of the M17x R4, 3D. That’s right, my rig has a Full HD 1080p 3D display utilising Nvidia 3D Vision 2; glasses come standard. Despite the AMD GPU being fully capable of driving a 3D display, Dell has chosen not to implement this so 3D = Nvidia. For those that have been wondering why I’m talking about Dell, Alienware is owned by Dell; all the warranty, repair and customer service is handled by them.

The next best thing about a gaming notebook is the potential upgradability. My M17x R4 is configured with the lowest Ivy Bridge i7 that Dell offers – the i7 3610QM. The CPU is no slouch with four cores and a CPU speed of up to 3.3Ghz (2.6Ghz when all four cores are on full load) but there were better CPUs which could clock up to faster speeds at a premium. The reason I went for the lower CPU was because unless you are doing CPU intensive work such as video rendering and data processing, other programs, which may seem intensive such as games, do not fully tax the CPU. Plus for paying customers, it is also the cheapest option. I also went for the least amount of RAM at the slowest speed because I knew that RAM would be easily upgradable for cheap. The CPU is upgradable and a few months down the line, I can decide to be adventurous and buy an i7 3920/3940XM CPU. The “XM” highlights that it is the extreme edition of the mobile processors and it has an unlocked multiplier. The unlocked multiplier is an enthusiast’s dream as it allows the user to define the clock speed of that they wish to run the CPU at (overclocking) provided there is sufficient supply of power and they can keep temperatures under control. I had a play with the same last generation i7 2920XM in my M17x R3 and successfully managed to increase the CPU from its default highest clock of 3.5Ghz all the way to 4.6Ghz running on all cores; stable albeit very hot under load. I had also replaced the 4GB of RAM that came with the laptop with 8GB running at a faster clock speed. This upgradability can be seen across all gaming laptop brands.

A few laptop vendors such as Alienware, MSI and Clevo allow graphics card upgrades. Mobile GPUs that are removable come in the MXM form factor and are hard to come by, and are very expensive when purchased separate. Visit the forums to find out more. Below are four of these modules for a size comparison against a 17 inch laptop.

4 MXM graphics modules.

The single greatest upgrade that a user can perform on any laptop will be changing the regular spinning HDD (Hard Disk Drive) with an SSD (Solid State Drive). SSDs use flash storage similar to those found in SD cards and memory sticks and offer far quicker performance compared to regular hard drives. My computer boots from cold to usable desktop in under 15 seconds, a feat unachievable when using an ordinary HDD. Games load quicker and the system is noticeably snappier. There will be an upcoming post focusing on the benefits of SSDs so stay tuned.

As of 2009, the laptop market finally overtook the desktop market. More people are buying laptops compared to desktops but there will still be religious system builders that will consider a gaming laptop a plain waste of money. The truth is that laptops will always perform one or two steps slower than any desktop built with even half its cost. For 2-3k, the only reason for a buyer to look at the possibility of buying a gaming notebook over a desktop is to have some performance on the move. I have heard people wanting to buy these flashy systems plainly to show off to their friends. Speaking from experience, the stares and gasps are only good the first time. After that, you are left at the back of the group desperately trying to drag your monstrosity of backpack onto your already painful shoulders and just looking like an idiot. Gaming laptops are the best for LAN parties and gaming on the move and that’s about it. They will offer far more features than any ordinary notebook or ultrabook such as dedicated graphics, quad-core overclocked processors, 3D displays and even WirelessHD but they are almost always way overpriced. The single best advice I have given anyone wanting to buy one of these is this: Never configure one online and press buy, phone up and haggle. Dell sales reps are paid by commission so they’ll be willing to budge on price and throw in an extra thing or two, and never over configure, pay for only what you know you cannot upgrade anymore, then buy the rest on eBay.

Microsoft: Back in the Game Part 2 – Windows Phone 8

So we are now into the second half of our “Back in the Game” coverage. While there has already been an article on Windows Phone 8 already, this article aims only to introduce all of the features we know of at the moment of the upcoming mobile operating system without venturing too deep into actual buying advice or other criticisms.

Microsoft first released its Windows Phone operating system (up from Windows Mobile 6.5) less than two years ago with Windows Phone 7, which received an update to “Mango” less than a year ago. While plentiful in features, Windows Phone 7 lacked one thing. This one thing is probably the first thing that people think of when when they buy a smartphone today – apps. Yes, Windows Phone has never had that massive big name app support that Apple and Google have had with iOS and Android respectively. However, Microsoft aims to put that to rest with their new Windows Phone 8 ecosystem.

The Kernel
What is this kernel you speak of? No, Microsoft have not planned to use corn to power their latest smart phones. The kernel is the core, the base, the operating system in its barest form, and what Steve Ballmer and co. have done, is to use the same Windows NT core that drives Windows 8…named the truly imaginative “Windows Core”.

Now, this won’t amaze most readers out there, and those with good memories may remember that during the keynote for the first iPhone, Scott Forstall said that iOS, or what was named iPhone OS back then, was also a version of OS X, their Macintosh operating system. Doesn’t that mean that Redmond is simple copying Cupertino? No, iOS was implemented in a way that OS X provided the simple and most basic operating system to install apps and run like it should. App developers were still required to learn how to use the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK). WP8 running on the same Windows Core enables those currently developing Windows 8 apps to immediately start developing WP8 apps using their current SDK because of this new ecosystem. WP8 will have the same file system, encryption etc as Windows 8. This does not mean that Windows 8 programs will be able to run on WP8, but it means that there will be no time wasted when it comes to rolling out apps. Those developers who have been reluctant to learn the iPhone SDK or any other mobile SDK no longer need to and can get to work immediately. This radical change has not affected current apps though as the 100,000 apps present in the Windows Phone Store at the moment will still run fine on any new WP8 handsets.

So what does using the Windows Core bring to the table for app developers then? The Windows Core will bring features such as Multi-Core Processor support, HD resolution and SD card support. Windows Phone 8 can theoretically support up to 64 cores. The shared codebase allows developers to use existing libraries such as C++ and SQLite, which will run natively on the mobile OS. Probably the best news for games developers is DirectX support. Games developers can be building the Windows and Windows Phone game at the same time. With series classics such as GTA 3 and Max Payne being ported to iOS and Android, in a few years time as mobile graphics power improves, we may see more PC games of now and yesteryear being easily ported to the Windows Phones. Crysis anyone?

Carrying a wallet was so last year
WP8 phones will also have built in NFC support. Near Field Communication is a feature that Google built into its Android operating system allowing contactless payments…and that’s about it. Remember Apple’s Passbook app that saves our tickets, and other e-paperwork? Well what do you get when NFC + Passbook have a love child? I present WP8’s Wallet hub. A place where credit cards, membership cards and other pieces of valuable plastic can be stored and then USED from the phone in participating stores. I can just imagine Orange taking advantage of this with the Orange Wednesdays deals – get your code, reserve seats, save into Wallet hub, go to cinema, hover phone on top of NFC device, claim free seat and purchase ticket using the credit card information already saved in the Wallet hub. Simples.

Where's wallet?

It is now safe to remove your…
I am sure that many of you iPhone users have been frustrated over the fact that your iTunes library on your iPhone cannot be altered through interfacing with the phone itself. I personally have been. It needs a connection to the computer wired or wireless. Well because Windows Phone 8 uses the same Windows Core as Windows 8, users can find a friend with the another WP8 phone with a song that they like, load it onto an SD card, plug it into their own phone and then either save it to their own or play it through the Media Centre thanks to WP8’s ability to simply register the SD card as removable storage and easy interacting with files and folders on it. I can’t for the life of me get the SD card to register on my iPhone, wait…

Windows Phone Start Screen
What about the interface? Any phone’s UI is the thing that people will interact with most and arguably is a make or break for any phone. Can’t really have a phone that does amazing things but people actually hate using it. The Windows Phone interface has always been a love or hate affair. Windows Phone 7 introduced a new meaning to the word “Tiles”. No they aren’t icons, they are tiles, just like widget and gadgets are different, right Microsoft? Anyways, Windows Phone 7 offered a thing called Live Tiles where the icons representing their respective apps are animated showing relevant information from how many emails or missed calls there are to the latest trending photos on flickr. They simply provided additional bits of information. The main page was also rather unbalanced as there would be a small arrow to the top left of the screen which led to the list of all the apps.

I love a photo of me putting on makeup on my homescreen.

Windows Phone 8 introduced Windows Phone Start Screen. Gone is the arrow and gone is list of apps. Now, all your apps seem to appear on your main screen but I’m sure that we will get some kind of a launcher or something in the final release. Now, users can customise the size of their live tiles allowing them to easily view what they are interested in and reduce the size of the lesser viewed tiles. I can just imagine that I’ll be spending hours getting the perfect tessellation of different sized apps with little to do with use, purely aesthetics. A game of tile tetris maybe?

Skype
Windows Phone 8 has Skype integration to the max (or to the deep…deep integra- oh you get the picture). Skype will be an app available for download and upon installation will integrate with the People Hub, Phone Dialer and probably the Wallet hub too. Microsoft has done the simple task of not bothering to create its own single platform communicator such as BBM or FaceTime and instead use an already existing, good communicator that is Skype.

Where are we again?
Nokia has always been well known for its ability to deliver a good and reliable Maps experience and since last year, after announcing the partnership with the Finnish mobile company, Microsoft’s Bing service has been slowly aligning with Nokia Maps. Nokia Maps will bring offline support and much better global coverage, something Bing Maps and even Google Maps have been lacking in. The Nokia NAVTEQ data will now also be available to developers that can take advantage of the Maps system that will be present on the phone and use it within their own applications. This potentially means that if an enterprising third party wished to develop a Navigation app for Windows Phone 8, the final product could actually be just a front-end that is utilising the existing Maps data present on the phone.

Business and Enterprise
Finally, Windows Phone 7 lost a huge chunk of market share to the leading business mobile brand RIM due to its lack of many features useful to the business user. With this new move to Windows Core, the same Enterprise encryptions that are used in the Windows Desktop environment have been made accessible on the mobile platform, opening up all kinds of business and enterprising applications. I would not be surprised to see some kind of seamless native synchronising between Windows Phone 8 and Windows Home Server.

What about current Windows Phone users?
There is good news for those on previously released handsets as Microsoft will be rolling out Windows Phone 7.8, which adds many but not all of the features of WP8 to existing handsets. Although Microsoft has not disclosed what particular features will or will not be available for upgrade, the new Windows Phone Start Screen will be.

So as we see, Microsoft has opened the door to the great possibilities of Windows Phone 8 – but remember that the summit was for developers, and new consumer features will be announced nearer to the launch date. I look forward to seeing a future where at the swipe of a phone, I can redeem my vouchers, pay for and save my flight tickets in one go, play on a game that was written by experienced PC game developers whilst chatting to a friend on Skype and copying over some files from an SD card I borrowed from my brother. I can currently only do one of those things with my iPhone. I believe Microsoft is truly back in the game with an amazing concept that if executed well, should be able to dominate the mobile market. DeThroning the fruit and the robot is certainly going to be hard but when the final product comes out, I have a feeling we are going to see some game changing.

Microsoft: Back in the Game Part 1 – Surface

So Microsoft has been pretty busy this week. It has held two live events almost back to back showcasing some new software and hardware. That’s right, H-A-R-D-W-A-R-E. We’ll talk about that first, shall we? What is this new piece of hardware? Well, for many moons leading up to the announcement, several rumours had SURFACED as to what Microsoft potentially had up their sleeves and on June 18th, not one, but two tablets were announced.

Eurgh, fingerprints.

Both tablets are Microsoft branded as opposed to being manufactured by HP or Dell and running Windows like computers we see today. Both tablets are 10.6 inches and both are named Surface but it is the suffixes and size that separate them. The first tablet is “Surface for Windows RT”. As the name suggests, it is designed only to run Windows RT. Windows RT is the slimmest of all Windows 8 releases as it only allows Metro apps to be installed and run making it the perfect OS for a tablet. Surface for Windows RT has the usual WiFi capabilities and USB connections and is driven by a Nvidia Tegra processor all in a slim 9.3mm form factor weighing 1.5lbs.

Another four millimetres thicker and we move onto “Surface for Windows 8 Pro”. Weighing in at just under 2lbs, this model comes with the Pro version of Windows 8 meaning that you get the full Windows 8 experience with Metro as well as the generic Windows desktop we all love. With the heavier operating system, the hardware is also more substantial compared to Surface for ‘RT. Surface for ‘Pro steps things up a gear with an Ivy Bridge CPU, USB 3.0 and a larger battery.

Looks like there a reflection of a window in the...oh no, it's actually the logo.

Both tablets feature a pop out kick stand. The Surface for ‘Pro will come in 64GB and 128GB flavours whereas the RT version will come in 32GB and 64GB. Users may also choose between two addons, a Touch or Type keyboard.

Lets hope there are more colours to choose from...

This was a highlight for me personally. Adding only an additional 3mm to whichever Surface model you are using, the Surface Touch Cover looks like a a regular tablet cover similar to the Apple Smart Cover but if Apple’s one was smart, then this would be genius. The cover features a multitouch keyboard as well as a trackpad. The keys are slightly raised so users can actually feel the keys plus they are pressure sensitive so fingers can be rested on the keys before typing without firing off any letters, unlike on regular touch screen keyboards. Microsoft is also catering for those not into the whole touch thing with a Type Cover which has tactive keys instead of the pressure sensitive ones. Both act as a cover, although personally I would go with the Touch Cover for two reasons – one, it is pretty cool; and two, the surface of the keyboard is covered in a sort of soft felt finish that will not scratch the display, the Type Cover, wierdly, doesn’t have this even though it could be easily implemented.

So that that wraps up Part 1 in our coverage of honestly, a huge step for Microsoft. I most definitely will be getting myself a Surface. I have not decided which version yet but watch this space as a review may just appear. Stay tuned for Part II where we will look at Microsoft’s new mobile OS which does not disappoint. At all.

The Sins of Proprietary: Retina Display MacBook Pro totally upgrade proof.

Thinking of buying that shiny new 15 inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display? Are you slightly short of cash at the moment so planning on going for the lower spec with smaller RAM and HDD and then upgrading those down the line? If you answered yes to both then proceed to my third question, for which the answer will be the same as the last two: Are you going to be kicking yourself when you realise that Apple’s new flagship portable device is the least upgradable notebook of any in kind?

The kind folk over at ifixit performed their extensive teardowns they do with most electronics that have come to the market. Their findings are pretty disturbing. There is basically no way that the average consumer can upgrade this laptop in any way or shape. At all.

So what can’t be upgraded that could have been in the previous versions? Well the MacBook Pros have always been pretty open giving consumers the ability to add more RAM and hard drive space and more seasoned computer “fiddlers” may have also replaced their optical drive with another hard drive. None of this can be done now, especially the changing of the optical drive as, well, there isn’t one to replace.

As you can see above, two rows of memory chips, plus an additional two rows which are on the reverse, are all soldered onto the motherboard. Planning on getting 8GB and upgrading to 16GB yourself when you need it? No happening. This also spans to the storage space. SSD as standard is great but what happens when you start running out of the 256GB of space on it? With the previous MacBook Pros you just get a bigger SSD, stick it in, and clone from your Time Machine backup and you are up and and running again. Not here.

From what we can see in the photos, that thin strip of chips that is being lifted is the SSD. Some good news is that it is not soldered which means that it can be swapped. Bad news: swapped with what? What looks like an mSATA connection is actually a proprietary slot that only exists in the Retina MacBook Pro so your upgrade options are only viable if you own another Retina MacBook Pro and you want to swap drives with that or have a friend with one who wants a smaller drive. Possible? Sure. Likely? Probably not. And then we come to the battery. The 2009-2010 edition MacBook Pros had removable batteries. The later models had them locked inside of the chassis but they were still replaceable. The batteries on the Retina MBP? Glued.

That’s right, ifixit found that all six cells are glued to the system and any tampering will likely void your warranty.

And finally, we come to that beautiful screen. Surely if there was a dead pixel or some kind of error with the display, all Apple would have to do is remove the lid, open up the display swap out the panel right? Right…? Wrong. The panel is sealed shut inside the display assembly. But that’s not too bad, I hear you say…this also means that if something goes wrong with your iSight camera, WiFi or Bluetooth, then you’d have to replace the whole display assembly as well. Ah. Why? Because the antennas and the camera module are all sealed inside that display assembly. Imagine you just ran out of warranty, and then your iSight camera packs it in or your WiFi stopped responding. On the old MacBook Pros, you’d take it in and they’d charge you for a new camera or some antenna cables. Now, they’ll probably charge you for a whole Retina Display assembly. Ouch.

To conclude, what does all this mean for the consumer and the rest of the world? Well first of all, if you are planning to buy one of these then you need to be thinking far, far ahead and wondering if you would ever need more than what you are configuring your system with now. Oh and did I mention if you didn’t need the quicker processor and opting for the 2.3Ghz one, you then don’t have the choice of the bigger SSD, you are stuck with the 256GB on? This forces you to dish out all the dosh for the higher end model with more configuration options which you don’t need just because you want the larger storage space. This is a classic marketing ploy; giving customers what looks like choice but actually, if they want one small upgrade, they have to take the lot and pay for it.

The new MBPs are also worse for the environment now. With the introduction of the unibody design, the 2009-2011 MacBook Pros were crafted in highly recyclable aluminium and glass. Good. Now that aluminium is glued to the glass, it creates all kinds of difficulties for the recycling industry.

So. The new Retina Display MacBook Pro. A step forward in technology. A step forward in profit. And a big step forward in greed.

Vizio ventures into the PC market with new “Thin and Lights” and “All-in-ones”

Vizio, known for its HDTVs and LCD displays, has decided to manufacture some computers. And from the looks of it, it does not take a seasoned computer brand to make a beautiful machine.

The company had the chance to tease us at CES this year with a look at some of its creations and true to their word, they are going on sale. In America at least. Up for grabs are two “Thin and Lights” 14 and 15 inch versions packed with Ivy Bridge, USB 3.0 probably a lot of battery life.

Brings back memories of the old Vaios

The company do have a 15″ “regular” laptop too. It is packing some sort of nvidia Kepler graphics, although it is unknown which particular one but one can make a guess and say it is likely going to be the same GT 650m seen in the new MacBook Pros.

Vizio is also releasing some all-in-one PCs and the design is truly one to behold.

Clean...so clean.

With sleek metallic finishes and what looks like edge-to-edge glass displays, I think we have just witnessed just how much thought America’s #1 LCD HDTV Company has put into these products. The question remains, how soon can folk this side of the Atlantic expect to even just admire one in person let alone own one? Oh, and how much will any of them cost?

Another Year and Another WWDC

Every year at the beginning of the summer, Apple shows off to the world what it has been working on. This year has been no different with hardware refreshes, software updates and product launches.

iOS 6

WWDC kicked off with an introduction to an update to the iOS mobile operating system. iOS 6 promises a host of new features for iDevice users such as Guided Access. Like Parental Control, Guided Access allows the users to lock down some of the UI elements on their devices such as Mail or Contacts to prevent accidental deletion in the hands of children, babies or cats (maybe). A new feature that improves organisation is “Passbook”. We are in the second decade of the 21^st century and all tickets, cards and passes have gone digital, it is hard to keep track of all of them and this is where Passbook comes to play. It is essentially your all-in-one breast pocket; an app where you can store and retrieve digital e-tickets for movies, football games and also reminds you of your flight time. It seems an incredibly simple solution and it is amazing that no one thought of it earlier. However, like Newsstand, it is targeted towards a specific group of people and for those that won’t use such features, it is just another useless icon.

In terms of the cloud and social networking, iOS 6 allows users to utilise the iCloud service and synchronise their photos across all their Apple devices. Photos Streams can be shared with friends and also be commented on. Beyond that, one of the most common reasons why iPhone users would “jailbreak” their devices was to install a third party plugin allowing FaceTime over 3G and not be limited to WiFi; with iOS 6, FaceTime is now fully supported over 3G. iOS 5 brought Twitter integration and iOS 6 brings…you guessed it, Facebook integration. This time Apple has gone all out with extremely deep integration linking Facebook to all aspects of your iPhone from the simple Notification Centre to Maps, Photos and even the App Store. Users and Friends now can see, share and “like” apps with each other.

Siri has now also been updated to support new languages as well as being pushed to the third generation iPad (the retina one). Apple has stated that it will be getting other features such as sports updates in the coming months. With the included Facebook integration, Siri now also has support for Facebook allowing voice commands for status updates etc.

Finally, probably the biggest iOS news this year is Apple’s decision to drop Google Maps in favour of its own Maps APIs. Apple claims its new Maps app is its own creation however some of the data is provided by third party sources. Apple recently acquired C3, the company behind Nokia’s 3D maps and it is likely that they help provide Flyover mode – which allows users to view buildings and landscapes in 3D similar to what we saw when Google demonstrated its own 3D maps just prior to WWDC. Over 100 million business listings are already included should a user wish to search for one. The most prominent feature of Apple Maps is turn-by-turn navigation with traffic and accident updates also present. This data is being supplied by partnering with TomTom. Naturally, the app will intelligently calculate the best route depending on traffic. And of course there is Siri integration including the ability to ask Siri “Are we there yet?” to which it will reply with a fairly witty comment plus an estimate of how long your journey will take. Google recently also released similar services on its own mobile operating system however it pales in comparison to Nokia Maps which offered the first turn-by-turn navigation of any kind on a phone and also has offline support, something that Google Maps is severely lacking. How will Apple Maps stack up against the competition? Time will tell.

The removal of Google Maps means that the only Google features left in Cupertino’s mobile operating systems are the YouTube app and Google Search in Safari; the latter can also be changed to something like Bing, not that anyone would, would they? However bold the move is, the question still remains whether it was the right decision to make. Is the new iOS that innovative or is it wrapping other company’s ideas into its own shell? Several features of Windows Phone 7 are mirrored in iOS such as lock screen camera and Facebook integration. Apple Maps is in its infancy and how will it compare to Nokia Maps with features such as offline use and fairly robust turn-by-turn navigation? It can be argued that the smartphone market is headed in the same direction hence innovations are converging and the only way to stand out is to take the same idea and execute it your own way. Will Apple’s new Maps app be able to rival Google’s? Maybe. Will the turn-by-turn navigation cause untold misery? Probably not, but it is still too early to tell.

The MacBooks

Apple presented some refreshes to its MacBook line the same evening. With Intel’s third generation Ivy Bridge CPUs having been released a month ago, it makes sense that Apple would refresh its line-up with these. The MacBook Air range can now be configured with i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge processors. The new models now come with USB 3.0, up from 2.0 (and still backwards compatible), a better FaceTime camera capable of HD 720p, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of flash storage. The MacBook Pro models have also been refreshed with Intel’s newest silicon. Apple has also decided to move back to Nvidia to provide its notebook graphics. The graphics have been changed to Nvidia’s GT 650m Kepler GPU. Despite being Kepler, this GPU is a mid-range performer and cannot rival some of the other notebook graphics cards on the market. More capable GPUs such as the GTX 660m come as standard on machines from Alienware and MSI, both of which are cheaper than a similarly configured MacBook Pro. One consideration though, is that the laptops from the aforementioned companies are also much thicker and bulkier than any current notebook from Apple.

Along with the hardware refreshes on existing notebooks, Apple was proud to present its flagship MacBook – the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. This new model, although having only a 15 inch screen, will replace the 17 inch MacBook Pro of yester-gen and sit on Apple’s notebook throne. The laptop is much slimmer than the other MacBook Pros, being only a few millimetres thicker than the thickest end of the MacBook Air. The 15 inch display is made up of 2880 x 1800 pixels – more than in Apple’s 27 inch Cinema Display and 27 inch iMac, both of which have 2560 x 1440 displays. The highest HDTV resolution is “only” 1920 x 1080. The internals of the MacBook Pro with Retina Display are similar to the other MacBook Pros such as Ivy Bridge CPUs and the same GT 650m Kepler graphics. On the outside, things are very different – like the Airs and iPads, most of this new MacBook Pro is made up of battery and to achieve this, Apple has done away with the optical drive. That’s right, no DVD or Blu-Ray on this machine, all data now comes from external drives or plucked from the sky. There are now two thunderbolt connections, USB 3.0 on either side, HDMI out, SD card reader, headphone jack and a redesigned MagSafe jack (because the older one was too thick to fit). The main question is whether there is enough horsepower under the hood to be able to drive that super high definition screen (disclaimer: super high definition is not an official term) especially in games where many high-end desktop graphics cards struggle to cope with similar resolutions. One thing is for sure: there is no other laptop out there like it at the moment, but can users looking for a larger screen as opposed to higher resolution forgive Apple for axing the 17 incher?

OS X Mountain Lion

The folks at Cupertino have also been extremely busy with their newest operating system. Now at version 10.8, Mountain Lion follows the same trend of Apple naming every operating system iteration after a very large feline. Recently, it seemed that Apple has decided that when the name is a change in feline species, it highlights a very large operating system overhaul; this was seen in the move from “Tiger” to “Leopard” and “Snow Leopard” to “Lion”. However, if there is no change in species but more of a change in habitat such as “Leopard” to “Snow Leopard” and, as of WWDC, “Lion” has now become “Mountain Lion”, it means more subtle changes and more optimisations. This new version of OS X contains some updated features such as iCloud integration and a brand new Safari which is not only faster but also has some interesting features such as iCloud Tabs, allowing users to synchronise their web usage across all their iDevices, and Tab View, which allows the exact same tabs a user was browsing through on their laptops, to be transferred to their iPad so they can carry on immediately, smells a bit like Sync for Firefox, oh wait this is Apple so it is innovative and original. The address bar is now also the search bar similar to the Chrome browser. Like Windows 8 with Xbox Live integration, Apple has also taken its Game Centre system found in iOS and stuck it into the new OS in an attempt to promote cross platform game development as users can now compete across a range of iDevices. Seeing a trend here?

One of the new features in Mountain Lion is “Power Nap” – it is essentially a background scheduler that fetches email, performs software updates, iCloud syncing and Time Machine backups when you aren’t using the computer. And finally, Siri comes to the Mac in the form of Dictation where users can have their speech transcribed to text in almost any app. Although not on the same “personal assistant” level as Siri is in iOS, it is definitely a start. There are some interesting new features added to Apple’s operating system but perhaps not enough to warrant a change in feline species hence “Mountain Lion”. The whole world is wondering what Apple will chose for its last “X” operating system (10.9) with the last big cats Lynx and Ocelot having been used for other tech products. Favourite at the moment seems to be Sabertooth Tiger, although it is extinct. Maybe if Apple decides to stop Mac OS completely, it could name its very final version that as an allegory.

Wrap-up

There have been some new and exciting things on show at WWDC with some new concepts and some things that seem to have been copied but executed by Apple, which according to Apple means they came up with it. Some updates did not make it to the stage such as Apple’s new AirPort Express now with dual-band WiFi and a new form factor as well as some new processors for the Mac Pro. There has been no news on any iMac refresh and of course anyone’s guess on anything to do with the new iPhone is as good as mine.