Feedback

July 18, 2013
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

In a recent article called Flickr and Instagram, Shawn Blanc compares the feedback and activity around his photos in both networks. If I understood correctly, the gist of it is that while Shawn is obviously more satisfied with his Olympus photography workflow (as opposed to his iPhone photography workflow), he is disappointed by the feedback on Flickr — where he posts his best, higher-quality and more artistic shots — as opposed to Instagram, where the everyday iPhone snapshots end up.

On Flickr I have 885 contacts following me. On Instagram I have 2,235. Yet my Instagram photos get far more than just 2.5 times the activity than my Flickr photos.

[…]

In short, my Instagram snapshots spark far more feedback, interaction, and conversation than my Flickr photos do. And I bet anyone reading this who has an Instagram and a Flickr account would say the same thing.

The conundrum, for me, at least, is that my Flickr photos — my best photos and the ones I am most proud of — are the shots I want to share with people so we can both appreciate them together. These are the ones I most want conversations to spark around, and yet these are the ones which get the least interaction.

[…]

At the end of the day, Flickr is the only place I’ve got to put my best photographic work. But it doesn’t feel like the right place. As much as I love the service, it’s just not cutting it. And I suspect I’m not alone.

My experience is a bit different. I’ve been on Flickr since October 2005, and I was on Instagram from its inception roughly until it was acquired by Facebook. I remember trying to do a similar comparison of the feedback I had been receiving on these two networks, but I soon realised it was a sort of trap. Yes, both are ‘photo sharing’ services, but in my opinion they have two very different underlying vibes. Leaving aside the most egregious exceptions in both services — pro photographers posting quality images on Instagram, and users mindlessly uploading dozens of dull everyday smartphone shots on Flickr — I always found Flickr to be the archive/gallery place to post one’s good-to-best photos at a slow, leisurely pace, and Instagram the place for, well, insta-uploading all kinds of here-and-now, impromptu snapshots, more frequently and at a more lively pace.

I’ve also found different audiences and different demographics in Flickr and Instagram. On Flickr I have interacted with more people who take photography seriously (some very seriously, some even too seriously); I have talked lenses and photographic gear in the forums; I have exchanged ‘pro tips’ every now and then. You get the idea. On Instagram everything and everyone are more casual; ‘hearts’ are given more lightly, in a more spur-of-the-moment way. Sometimes, ‘hearts’ are given for reasons that have little to do with how technically good a photo is. Rarely an exchange has gone further than “Nice shot!” – “Thanks!”

To sum up: different vibes, different people, different expectations, different kinds of feedback. 

Personally, over the years I’ve found feedback on Flickr more difficult to obtain, but generally more rewarding. When some Flickr contact or friend (and I have a few serious photographers among them) faves one of my photos or leaves a positive comment — or even a negative one if it’s constructive criticism — it often means more than the few ‘hearts’ I used to receive when I was an active Instagram user. I’ve always had the feeling that on Flickr, feedback had to be earned, in a sense. I’ve always felt the Flickr community to be a place of peers, and that you just can’t expect to upload a few photos you like and wait for the faves and the comments and the conversations to follow. 

Maybe things have changed a bit, lately, especially since the ‘rejuvenation’ of the Flickr mobile app, but I remember that the Flickr community has always demanded a little more participation from its members. When I had more time to devote to the social side of Flickr, I used to leave a lot of thoughtful feedback to many of the people I followed; I even wrote emails to newly-discovered people, telling them how I’d been perusing their photostreams and appreciating their work. This kind of participation and activity always paid, in the end. And although I haven’t received an overwhelming amount of feedback on Flickr over the years, I’ve always been satisfied with the quality of what I received, statistics be damned.

On workflows and automatisation

July 17, 2013
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

First things first: this piece is not intended to be prescriptive. Nor does it subtly criticise other people who love their workflows and automate as many things as possible as frequently as possible by using the appropriate technological tools. But in recent times there has been a lot of talk about ‘workflows’ and software solutions that help you automatise processes in the quest for the holy grail of frictionless-ness. And I’ve tried to jump on this bandwagon in an attempt to achieve more efficiency and productivity, but generally speaking my experience so far has turned out to be a waste of time.

The fault doesn’t really lie in the tools themselves; perhaps it’s the way I work, or my needs, or certain habits I’ve developed over time that simply make me largely ‘incompatible’ with automatisation. By watching how other tech-savvy people work, or by reading about their workflows when they discuss them on their blogs, I’ve deduced that the simpler and the more stable one’s device setup is, the easier is to come up with smooth workflows and automated solutions. When you only (!) have one computer, one smartphone and maybe also a tablet, configuring and perfecting workflows (especially across devices) still takes some work, but it’s certainly easier than working on a bunch of different computers and devices. This is a perfect example of how minimalism really helps on the road to Frictionless Land.

My setup is the opposite of minimalism. My setup is… baroque, for lack of a better word. In my Home Office, I use the most recent and most powerful machine I own, a 15-inch (non-Retina) MacBook Pro with the latest version of Mac OS X installed. At its side, the faithful Power Mac G4 Cube, which I use as a sort of extended desktop to monitor RSS feeds and other information, thanks to its huge 22-inch Cinema Display. When I’m out and about, I may carry with me one of many different vintage Mac PowerPC laptops, from a clamshell iBook G3/466 with Mac OS X Tiger, to a 17-inch PowerBook G4 with Mac OS X Leopard. (You can have a look at my different ‘mobile office’ configurations on my VSCO Grid, to have an idea.) In short, I use two different architectures, three different OS X versions (not to mention Mac OS 9 and earlier, when I fire up some of my pre-OS X vintage Macs, like the Power Mac 9500), and an array of tools which may be available on just one of these Macs, either because they’re architecture-specific (Intel-only or PPC-only), or because their most updated version only runs under Tiger or under Leopard. To use a popular expression, my setup tends to show signs of fragmentation.

And if this weren’t enough, consider that the Macs I use have also different keyboard layouts (US, Italian and Spanish), so even common keyboard shortcuts have to be carefully planned if I don’t want to perform the wrong action on the wrong Mac.

I’m pretty sure that a setup like this would drive a few nerds crazy. I’m sure some of my readers are wondering why I don’t simplify my setup, and why I keep using so many different (and old) machines, especially since my activities are limited to document and text management, image editing, photo retouching/management, a bit of graphic and type design, and a touch of audio editing. 

I keep using a bunch of different Macs because I like to keep things spatially arranged. If my work and my files are a city, each Mac represents a sector, a district of that city. When I need to unearth and examine old Word files created/received during the 1990s and the early 2000s, I work with the iBook G3 because I can use Office 98 in the Classic Environment to open those files without losing the original formatting, and, if need be, I can re-save them in a more modern format that can be picked up by more modern software. When I need to work with PDFs in deeper ways than just opening and reading them, I still use an older version of Acrobat Professional (which cost me an interesting amount of money when I purchased it, and I have no need or money to upgrade to an Intel version of the same software), and since I usually need a generous screen estate, I either use the Cube or the 17-inch PowerBook G4. When I need Photoshop, I still rely on version 7.0 on the Titanium PowerBook G4, or the CS1 version on the 12-inch PowerBook G4.

These are just very simple examples. Without leaving the city metaphor just yet, what are the ‘roads’ connecting all those different ‘districts’? Two synchronisation tools which luckily still work under Mac OS X Tiger and the PowerPC architecture: Dropbox and Notational Velocity. They represent the only bit of automatisation in my baroque setup.

I don’t mean to say that I like to manually take care of boring tasks my Macs should perform and are quite able to do so. That would be silly. If I have to batch-convert 300 JPEG files into PNG files, I certainly won’t do that by hand, one file at a time. A simple and tedious task like that is what computers do best, and I’m happy to leave it to them. But I’m not a fan of complex scripts which, after being invoked by a certain keyboard shortcut, start opening files in one application, import them into another, do another dozen actions, to finally send something in a pre-packaged email as a ZIP attachment. Just pressing the key combination by mistake could lead to potential disaster. When I tried to rely on such scripts or services, I ended up wasting more time afterwards because I couldn’t refrain from checking whether the automated workflow did everything correctly.

As I said, some may find this extended and elaborate setup maddening, and even limiting — like working with mutually incompatible tools. Some may object that I don’t rely on fixed workflows and automated processes simply because I can’t. Again, maybe I’m just accustomed to working like this, so I end up being efficient and productive in spite of all the added friction. The truth is: I feel less dependent on specific tools, processes and workflows. This, in turn, makes it easier for me to adjust to new tools, to adapt when a particular configuration, operating system or setup changes. Friction makes me stop and think about what I’m doing, inspires me to look for alternative ways to achieve something, keeps my mind alert and not asleep while the vehicle is on autopilot, so to speak.

The dearth of native Twitter clients for PowerPC Macs

June 26, 2013
by Riccardo Mori
Software

The latest round of “Kill the third-party client,” which Twitter officially calls updating the API, has practically neutralised all native Twitter clients for the PowerPC platform. Up until a few weeks ago, if you still used a PowerPC Mac (even as a very secondary machine), you could hunt the Web for the last working PPC version of Twitter clients such as Echofon, YoruFukurou, Itsy, and you would have been able to use such clients without any problem. I was a fan of Itsy, in particular, because of its small footprint. Using it on my 12-inch PowerBook G4 was really a pleasure.

However, the last update to the Twitter API (1.1) simply requires too much work for a developer to even consider releasing an update for the PowerPC platform. Even Hahlo, a Web-based client, has stopped working, and in a great farewell post, the developer of Hahlo writes:

When [Twitter] originally announced the plans for the v1.0 API retirement I investigated ‘upgrading’ Hahlo to use v1.1 of the API, but the changeover would have required much more than a simple find ‘1.0’ replace with ‘1.1’. An extensive reworking of the code was something I just simply didn’t have time for…

What now?

As far as I know, the only two third-party clients still working on PowerPC Macs are the text-based command-line TTYtter[1] and the Web-based Dabr. Then, of course, one could use Twitter’s own website, or their recently acquired and overhauled TweetDeck (at least the Web-based version, since the native client requires at least Mac OS X 10.6 to run), but it’s impractical to be using Twitter in a browser tab, and on older G3 and G4 machines, even loading Twitter’s site is a daunting task, and the general performance (of the site, of the browser, and of the Mac itself) suffers noticeably.

I understand it’s naïve and quaint to complain that things don’t work anymore on a platform that has seen little to no development since Apple completed the transition to Intel processors and architecture. At the same time I find quite ridiculous that someone with a machine such as the quad-core 2.5 GHz Power Mac G5, which is still rather powerful, can’t use a third-party native Twitter client just because Twitter has become increasingly capricious in pursuit of their own interests.

What I ended up doing

I still use three PowerPC Macs on a frequent basis: a Power Mac G4 Cube with Mac OS X 10.4.11, a 12-inch 1 GHz PowerBook G4, and a 17-inch 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4, both with Mac OS X 10.5.8. Before Twitter updated their API to 1.1, on the Cube I had concocted a lightweight solution using a combination of Hahlo and Steven Frank’s WebDesktop app (a sort of simplified browser to layer a webpage over the Mac desktop — see its page on Google Project Hosting), and you can see the result on this old article I wrote in 2010 (scroll to the end of the article). On the other, more powerful Macs running Leopard, as I said, I was a very happy Itsy user.

For my PowerBook G4s, I ended up ‘creating’ a TweetDeck app by mixing Fluid with the Web-based TweetDeck application. 

Fortunately I still had around an old version of Fluid (0.9.6) that works on PowerPC Macs, so, after signing up for a TweetDeck account (which is handy, since you can manage multiple Twitter accounts if you have them), I fired up Fluid and in the Create a Site Specific Browser window that appears I filled the fields as follows:

Fluid window

Once Fluid created the app based on the TweetDeck website, I logged into my account and everything appeared just fine. Then I needed to find a proper icon for the app. I browsed Google Images a bit, then found this one, which I downloaded. In Fluid (or rather, in the newly created TweetDeck app), I entered the General pane in the Preferences and pressed the Change button near ‘Application icon’:

Fluid general prefs

I selected the previously downloaded icon file, and now on my PowerBooks running Leopard I basically have a working TweetDeck ‘app’ with a decent icon. It’s quite responsive, all things considered, and it’s a good-enough solution. The good thing is that, since TweetDeck is owned by Twitter, it’ll probably survive future API changes and whatnot. The bad thing is that it’s not a third-party solution. 

TweetDeck PPC

I have tried to do something similar for my Power Mac Cube with Mac OS X Tiger, using WebDesktop instead of Fluid (which doesn’t work under Tiger), but for some reason the TweetDeck Web interface didn’t load, so at the moment I’m using Dabr in a browser window.

 

 

  • 1. However, Cameron Kaiser (developer of TTYtter), after expressing his disapproval of Twitter’s recent practices, told me via App.net: “Keep in mind I probably won’t do much more with TTYtter. It’s sort of on life support until I decide to pull the plug finally.” ↩

 

WWDC 2013 — L’hardware

June 19, 2013
by Riccardo Mori
Mele e appunti

Il nuovo MacBook Air

La pagina delle prestazioni sul sito Apple fornisce tutti i dettagli sulle nuove componenti e tecnologie all’interno del MacBook Air. Nulla è cambiato all’esterno: alcuni si aspettavano nuovi Air con schermo Retina, ma è prematuro. Inoltre, a mio avviso, a meno che Apple non riesca a trovare un modo per produrre un MacBook Air con schermo Retina che offra queste prestazioni in termini di risparmio energetico e di autonomia, mi sa che non vedremo un simile aggiornamento tanto presto. Magari Apple potrebbe persino decidere di riservare lo schermo Retina come opzione ‘pro’, e lasciare che sia l’incredibile durata della batteria a caratterizzare la linea di portatili più sottile e leggera della famiglia.

Come si diceva, la novità più importante del nuovo MacBook Air è la maggiore autonomia del computer. Il modello da 11 pollici adesso dura quattro ore in più rispetto a prima (9 invece di 5), e il modello da 13 pollici passa da 7 a 12 ore di autonomia. Sono valori impressionanti, specialmente se si tiene presente che sono conservativi. Nella sua recensione del nuovo MacBook Air 13″, PC Magazine scrive (enfasi mia):

Il nuovo processore Intel Core i5-4250U da 1,3 GHz con processore grafico integrato Intel HD Graphics 5000 è nominalmente più lento di 400 MHz rispetto al processore i5-3427U da 1,7 GHz del precedente MacBook Air, ma entrambi possono arrivare a 2,6 GHz con la funzione turbo, se necessario. La più lenta velocità di base contribuisce senz’altro ad allungare la vita della batteria. Il risultato dei nostri test di consumo energetico è stato impressionante: il nuovo MacBook Air da 13 pollici ha dimostrato un’autonomia di 15 ore e 33 minuti.

Nella sua recensione, Nilay Patel di The Verge scrive (enfasi sua):

13 ore e 29 minuti. Questo è tutto quel che dovete veramente sapere — questo è quanto è durato il nuovo MacBook Air con Safari sempre attivo durante il Test della batteria di The Verge, che obbliga il computer a caricare ciclicamente una serie di siti Web e immagini con la luminosità dello schermo al 65%. Lo stesso test con Chrome ha prodotto una durata più breve, 11 ore e 29 minuti, ma sono entrambi risultati assurdamente strabilianti. Anzi, rappresentano il record assoluto nel nostro test: nessun portatile ha dimostrato una tale durata senza l’ausilio di una batteria esterna.

Insomma, i nuovi MacBook Air sono decisamente all’insegna del risparmio energetico: gli ingredienti fondamentali per ottenere prestazioni di tale livello sono anzitutto una batteria più grande e più potente (da 54 wattora contro i precedenti 50 wattora, nel modello da 13 pollici), e poi la nuova architettura Intel Core. I processori i5 e i7 di quarta generazione sono potenti quanto i processori che vanno a sostituire, ma utilizzano meno energia.

Altre piccole novità molto gradite: doppio microfono stereo invece che mono (Apple sostiene che il doppio microfono aiuta ad attenuare il rumore durante le chat audio/video e serve a una migliore ricezione della voce mentre si utilizza la funzione Dettatura); maggiore spazio di archiviazione flash per il modello entry-level di MacBook Air 11″ (128 GB invece di 64), sempre allo stesso prezzo di prima; una tecnologia flash più veloce, che da un lato garantisce tempi di risposta più rapidi quando si accende o si risveglia il Mac, ma anche una maggiore velocità di accesso a file e applicazioni, e questo contribuirà senza dubbio a una sensazione di maggiore reattività in generale. E non dimentichiamo poi il nuovo e più veloce protocollo Wi-Fi 802.11ac, che secondo Apple è ‘tre volte più veloce’ del protocollo n dei precedenti MacBook Air.

Con tutta questa serie di migliorie, c’è poco da commentare e poco da aggiungere. Il sottotitolo della recensione di The Verge è Apple produce il computer definitivo da caffetteria, ottimo insomma per prolungate sessioni seduti in qualche Starbucks, ma è una definizione che non rende giustizia al nuovo MacBook Air, che io invece definirei più come il computer definitivo da viaggio. È un po’ come avere con sé un ‘iPad Pro’, un dispositivo che si mette sotto carica durante la notte e poi uno se lo porta appresso per tutta la giornata senza doversi preoccupare di cercare una presa di corrente. E dato che mi capita di frequente di lavorare fuori sede con il mio MacBook Pro o con uno dei miei PowerBook, per me una lunga durata della batteria in un portatile è senz’altro una caratteristica più importante rispetto all’avere o meno uno schermo Retina. Se me lo potessi permettere, passerei a un nuovo MacBook Air da 13 pollici senza pensarci un istante.

Il nuovo Mac Pro

Se la memoria non mi inganna, l’ultimo computer desktop a essere presentato con tale pompa magna è stato il Power Mac G5 (vi ricordate questo spot? E date anche un’occhiata al video promozionale). Beh, l’introduzione da colossal cinematografico riservata all’imminente Mac Pro durante il keynote è stata più che giustificata, tenendo presente la considerevole quantità di potenza, funzioni e tecnologie al suo interno, per non parlare del gran lavoro di riprogettazione dell’esteriore. È stata una sorpresa fantastica, e confesso di non essere rimasto così a bocca aperta per un nuovo prodotto Apple dall’introduzione di iPhone nel 2007.

Ancora una volta, c’è poco da commentare e poco da aggiungere. Non faccio parte dell’utenza a cui il Mac Pro è rivolto, ma considerando le mere specifiche tecniche, le possibilità di espansione, la meraviglia di ingegneria e di design di questo computer interamente nuovo e rivoluzionato, non vedo proprio come possa deludere. (Anche se sono certo che da qualche parte ci saranno dei professionisti della vecchia scuola che avrebbero preferito il vecchio design ‘tower’, che si poteva espandere internamente senza dover ammucchiare pile di periferiche e dispositivi esterni sulla scrivania, eccetera eccetera). Pur non essendo il computer per me (non ho tali esigenze di potenza), sono comunque molto curioso di vedere quale sarà il prezzo finale e in quali configurazioni verrà venduto il Mac Pro. Se Apple dovesse mantenere le stesse fasce di prezzo della linea Mac Pro attuale, sarebbe un bell’affare vista la potenza e le prestazioni che offre.

Per quanto riguarda il design, questa è l’immagine che più mi ha colpito durante l’introduzione:

Mac Pro vecchio e nuovo

È incredibile quanto piccolo il nuovo Mac Pro sia rispetto al vecchio modello. Ha un diametro di 16,7 centimetri ed è alto poco più di 25 centimetri. Ciò significa che può essere tranquillamente piazzato sulla scrivania, invece che lasciato mezzo nascosto sotto di essa, ma anche che può essere trasportato con facilità nel caso sia necessario lavorare fuori sede. Credo che i musicisti professionisti, in particolare, apprezzeranno questo aspetto.

La nuova base AirPort Extreme

Permettetemi la massima franchezza: vi sarà pure un concentrato di innovazione dentro questo aggeggio, ma il design è proprio orribile. Appena ho visto un’immagine della nuova base AirPort, giuro che ho creduto fosse il prodotto di qualche burlone che aveva ritoccato alla buona la foto di un Mac mini. Capisco che la nuova base deve avere un fattore di forma ‘a torretta’ a causa del nuovo design delle antenne che devono creare l’effetto ‘beamforming’, ma mai come ora mi manca il buon vecchio design a forma di UFO delle prime basi AirPort. Un’altra cosa che odio di questa nuova estetica è il progressivo rimpicciolirsi delle spie luminose. Che male c’è nell’avere delle spie più grandi e più leggibili? Ho letto tutta la documentazione sul sito Apple, comprendo le scelte alla base del nuovo design, così come i vantaggi che offre. Semplicemente, non mi piace affatto il prodotto finale.

(E già che stiamo parlando di basi AirPort, anche se è stata introdotta ormai da un anno, vorrei ribadire quanto sia per me un passo indietro anche il design della nuova base AirPort Express, soprattutto dal punto di vista funzionale. Come dissi nel mio articolo in inglese Briefly, on the new AirPort Express:

Ora AirPort Express deve essere collocata per forza su una qualche superficie orizzontale, perché Apple ha cambiato il modo in cui la base si collega alla rete elettrica. Forse a molti il cambiamento non importerà granché, ma ho sempre pensato che una delle caratteristiche più azzeccate del design della vecchia base AirPort Express era la comodità di poterla inserire in qualsiasi presa a muro, senza cavi penzolanti, senza doversi preoccupare di cercare superfici orizzontali su cui appoggiarla, come una mensola o un tavolino. Era una soluzione ottima per disporre una base Express in spazi ristretti o corridoi, dove poteva essere utilizzata per estendere facilmente una rete wireless. […] A mio parere, se viene meno questa capacità di poter inserire liberamente tutta la base in qualsiasi presa di corrente, senza preoccuparsi di cavi e superfici, viene meno in parte anche la caratteristica di ‘portatilità’ e praticità che ha sempre contraddistinto la base Express.

Ma d’accordo, sto divagando).

Conclusione

Come ho già avuto modo di dire, è stato un gran keynote. Il video di apertura, l’hardware e il software che sono stati introdotti o anticipati, l’atteggiamento degli stessi dirigenti che si sono avvicendati sul palco, tutto ha contribuito a consolidare un messaggio forte: Ecco, noi lavoriamo così: seguiamo i nostri ritmi e le nostre tabelle di marcia per poter offrire prodotti sempre migliori. Se vi sta bene, perfetto. Se non vi sta bene, non potrebbe fregarcene di meno. E francamente sono stupito che questo atteggiamento sorprenda ancora qualcuno, visto che è l’atteggiamento che Apple ha sempre avuto sotto la direzione di Steve Jobs. Mi ha fatto sorridere il Guardian, che due giorni dopo il keynote pubblica un articolo intitolato WWDC wrapup: iOS 7, iTunes Radio’s value, and a newly confident Apple, ossia Riassumendo la WWDC: iOS 7, il valore di iTunes Radio, e una Apple nuovamente sicura di sé. È quel nuovamente sicura di sé che mi fa ridere. Apple non ha mai perso fiducia in se stessa, solo nelle fantasie della stampa tecnologica internazionale durante il lungo periodo di silenzio dei mesi scorsi. Come fa notare sagacemente John Gruber, [Durante questi nove mesi di silenzio] Nessun nuovo prodotto, nessun nuovo design. E i media del settore tecnologico ed economico sono letteralmente usciti di testa per questo, dichiarando solennemente che la vena innovativa di Apple era arrivata alla fine.

Mi pare non ci sia altro da aggiungere.

WWDC 2013: the hardware

June 18, 2013
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

The new MacBook Air

The MacBook Air page on Apple’s website gives you all the details on the new hardware inside the latest iteration of the MacBook Air. Nothing has changed on the outside: some were expecting new Airs with Retina Display, but that is premature. Also, in my opinion, unless Apple finds a way to offer a very power-efficient Retina Display MacBook Air, my guess is we won’t see such an upgrade so soon. Apple may very well decide to keep Retina as a pro option, and the very long battery life as a prerogative of the lightest, thinnest laptops in the family.

The big feature of the refreshed MacBook Air is the increased autonomy on a single charge. The 11″ model now lasts four more hours than before (9 instead of 5), and the 13″ model goes from 7 to 12. This is impressive, especially when you consider that these values are conservative. In its review of the 13″ MacBook Air, PC Magazine writes (emphasis mine):

The system’s new 1.3GHz Intel Core i5-4250U processor with integrated Intel HD Graphics 5000 is nominally clocked 400Mhz slower than the 1.7GHz i5-3427U processor in the last MacBook Air, but both will turbo up to 2.6GHz if needed. The lower base clock speed no doubt helps the system stretch out battery life. The new MacBook Air 13-inch lasted a staggering 15 hours 33 minutes on our battery rundown test.

In his review, Nilay Patel of The Verge writes (emphasis his):

13 hours and 29 minutes. That’s all you really need to know — that’s how long the new MacBook Air running Safari lasted running The Verge Battery Test, which cycles through a series of websites and images at 65 percent brightness. Run time in Chrome was shorter, at 11 hours and 29 minutes, but both are still ridiculously impressive. In fact, it’s the record for a laptop running our test without an external battery.

So, the new MacBook Air is all for power-efficiency: the fundamental ingredients to achieve such astounding a performance are a larger, more powerful battery (54 WHr on the 13″ model, versus the 50 WHr of the previous generation model) and the new Intel Core architecture. The 4th-generation i5 and i7 processors are as powerful as the ones they replace but use less power.

Other things to like: dual stereo microphones instead of mono; more flash storage for the entry-level 11″ model (128 GB instead of 64), which retains the same $999 price tag; faster flash storage, which guarantees a faster response time when you wake the computer, but also faster access to files and applications, and that will undoubtedly contribute to the general ‘feel’ of improved performance. And then of course the faster 802.11ac Wi-Fi protocol, which Apple claims to be ‘3x faster’ than the Wi-Fi technology in the previous Air models.

With these improvements, there isn’t much left to comment on. What’s not to like? The subtitle of The Verge’s review says Apple builds the ultimate coffee shop computer, but it doesn’t do justice to the new MacBook Air, which I’d characterise more as to be the ultimate travel computer. It’s like having some sort of ‘iPad pro’, a device you charge overnight and then you bring it with you throughout the day without having to worry about finding a place to recharge it. As someone who frequently carries his MacBook Pro or PowerBooks to work out of office, a long-lasting battery is much more important to me than a Retina display. If I could afford one, there’s no doubt that I’d purchase a new 13″ MacBook Air right away.

The new Mac Pro

If memory serves, the last desktop computer to be introduced by Apple with such fanfare was the PowerMac G5 (remember this ad? And look at the Promo video too). Well, the highly cinematic ‘sneak peek’ introduction of the new Mac Pro at the keynote was absolutely justified, given the sheer amount of power, features and technologies inside of it, not to mention the whole design rethinking. It was a great surprise, and I hadn’t felt so stunned by the unveiling of a new Apple product since the iPhone back in 2007.

Again, what’s not to like? I’m not part of the audience the Mac Pro targets, but considering the mere technical specifications, considering the expansibility, considering the feat of engineering and design this entirely new machine is, I don’t see how it can disappoint. (Although I’m sure there are a few old-school pros out there who would have preferred the old tower design with internal expansion, because they don’t want a pile of external devices amassed on their desks.) Even though I’m not interested in purchasing one when it’s available, I’m still curious about its final pricing and configurations. If Apple were to price it in a similar price range as the current Mac Pro family, it would almost be a bargain given the kind of performance it delivers.

As regards to the design, what really struck me during the introduction was this image:

Mac Pro old and new

The new Mac Pro is ridiculously small compared to the old workhorse. It has a diameter of 6.6 inches (16.7 cm) and it’s 9.9 inches tall (little more than 25 cm). This means it can be easily placed on your desk, and not half-hidden under it, but also that it’s definitely more portable in case you need to work off-site. Professional musicians will be happy, I imagine.

The new AirPort Extreme Base Station

Let me be absolutely frank: there may be innovation inside this thing, but the design is just horrible. When I first saw it, I swear I thought it was the image of a badly photoshopped Mac mini. I understand it had to have a tall, tower-like form factor because of the new ‘beamforming’ antenna design, but now I really do miss the original UFO-shaped base stations. Another thing I dislike of this new æsthetic is that the status light keeps getting smaller. What’s wrong in having bigger, more readable lights? I have read all the relevant information on Apple’s website, and I do understand the design choices and the advantages this new base station offers. I just don’t like the result of the process.

(While we’re talking about AirPort stations, even though it has already been introduced — exactly a year ago, by the way — let me reiterate how the new design of the AirPort Express base station is, in my opinion, worse than the previous AirPort Express also from a functional standpoint. As I said in Briefly, on the new AirPort Express:

Now the AirPort Express must be placed somewhere on a horizontal surface, because they changed the way the base plugs to get power. Perhaps some people won’t be bothered by the change, but I’ve always thought that one of the best features of the old AirPort Express was that you could just plug it in a wall plug: no cables dangling around, no need to look for horizontal surfaces like a shelf, a small table, etc. This was excellent for cramped spaces or corridors, where you could place a second AirPort Express to extend the Wi-Fi network. […] I think that losing the ability to just plug the base anywhere without worrying about cables and surfaces, partially defeats the purpose of this ‘portable’ base station.

But, yes, I’m digressing).

Conclusion

As I already said, it was a great keynote. The opening video, the hardware and software that has been introduced or anticipated, the attitude of the various executives on stage, everything contributed to deliver a strong message: This is how we work: we work at our own pace to deliver great products. If you like it, cool. If you don’t, we couldn’t care less. And frankly, I’m surprised that this attitude comes as a surprise for some. Because this has always been the company’s way to be under Steve Jobs. I was amused when, two days after the keynote, The Guardian published an article titled WWDC wrapup: iOS 7, iTunes Radio’s value, and a newly confident Apple. The newly confident bit was what amused me. Apple has never lost its confidence, only in the fantasies of the international tech press during Apple’s extended silence. As John Gruber aptly remarks: [During these nine months of silence] No new products, no new designs. And the business and tech media lost their shit over this, declaring an end to Apple’s ability to innovate.

And that is all, I think.