Posts Tagged ‘week’
Laptop Week Review: The 13-Inch MacBook Pro With Retina Display
Author: Charity Woods
Features:
- Ships with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
- 2560 x 1600 13.3-inch at 227 PPI
- 128GB SSD
- 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 Processor
- MSRP: $ 1,499
Pros:
- Portability combined with high-quality display
- Super speedy sleep and resume
- Good battery life
Cons:
- Just two USB ports
- Non-upgradeable RAM
If I could only have one MacBook (which is usually the case for your average laptop-buyer), this is the one I’d pick without hesitation. Fewer issues than its 15-inch cousin, which pioneered the Retina line, combined with a much lighter design with a smaller desktop footprint for a display that can still give you crazy amounts of screen real estate all add up to a sure-fire winner.
The Most Flexible Mac
I’ve owned a lot of Macs. To find myself so ready to claim any single one a clear “winner” seems crazy, but the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display is it. The smaller Retina notebook has proven itself through trial by fire and continues to be the Mac I pick for nearly every situation.
For example it’s my constant companion at every travel event I ever go to. The 15-inch is just a hair too heavy and unwieldy, but the 13-inch Retina hits the sweet spot. It slides easily into any bag, takes up an amount of desk space that’s better for your peripherals and for those seated around you, and yet can stil provide you with one of the best screens in the business.
True Retina-quality graphics isn’t the reason to own this notebook. Apple’s “Best for Retina display” radial button in the Displays settings menu is something you can go ahead and forget about right now; instead, select “scaled” and crank that sucker up to the “More Space” maximum. But if that’s not enough, go grab DisplayMode from the Mac App Store and enjoy up to 2560 x 1280 resolution, which is beyond that supported by Apple’s official settings. My eyes suffer after 2048 x 1280, so that’s where I keep it, but even there you get so much screen real estate it feels positively sinful. If you’re used to a Cinema display or two at home, there’s nothing else that compares.
The hardware is up to Apple expectations, and while I’ve experienced case creak on the 15-inch version (a widely reported issue), I’ve never had a problem with the 13 inch’s fit and finish. It feels as sturdy as a laptop can (with the possible exception of Google’s leaden Chromebook Pixel) and it withstands rough treatment with gusto, as a busy blogger can attest.
In terms of Geekbench, the base Core i5 13-inch, which is the version I’m reviewing here, consistently scores between 6,000 and 7,000. That’s not a chart-topping number, but the machine hardly stutters, even under fairly demanding conditions. I thought I’d miss the dedicated graphics card or upgraded RAM from my 15-inch model, but I don’t, at least not for anything short of using Final Cut Pro X.
Another nice win for the 13-inch is battery life. The Pro can stretch itself to around seven and a half hours if I need it to, but even with my incredibly sloppy, multi-app setup with tons of things going on in the background and about a thousand Chrome tabs open, it seems to average around five.
Who is it for?
Designers
Yes. The one complaint that designers might have with the Retina MacBook Pro is that its screen is still glossy and that the color rendering and contrast are a little exaggerated to make photos pop. But if you need a device for running Photoshop or Illustrator, the Retina scratches that itch, even with the minimum specs at the $ 1,499 level.
Plus, you can always power up to three external displays via Thunderbolt and HDMI out, but I’d only recommend doing this if you’re very cold and also enjoy the sound of a fan operating at maximum power. Still, in a pinch the Retina Pro becomes a solid companion for a 27-inch Cinema Display, giving designers even more flexibility.
Founders
Yes. John pointed out that entrepreneurs love MacBook Airs in his review of the Dell XPS Developer’s Edition, but that’s actually outmoded. If you’re a modern entrepreneur, and keeping a close watch on your company’s design and suitability for the future of HiDPI devices and displays, you’ll want the 13-inch Retina. It’s still light enough to carry with you everywhere, plus you can pile on the open applications thanks to the screen real estate benefits I mentioned above.
The 13-inch Retina is pretty much exactly like the successful entrepreneur: flexible where it needs to be, rigid when it doesn’t; equally comfortable doing their thing in the boardroom or working out of the small local coffee shop; equipped with enough endurance to keep producing through the day.
Programmers
Yes. Programmers love Macs, and this is a Mac that’s easy to fall in love with. You want to run Xcode next to the iOS Simulator and still have room to keep a team chat window open? You can do that with the 13-inch Retina Pro, so long as you’re okay with squinting. You can build websites and watch them output and tweak on the fly without squishing anything inordinately. If there’s a development flaw on the Pro, it’s not an apparent one.
Bottom Line
MG said this laptop was near perfect back when he reviewed it at launch, and it’s pretty hard to disagree. There are support threads filled with growing pains and other issues experienced by the inaugural 15-inch Retina Pro, but Apple seems to have worked out any kinks with this one, and the added portability is a big benefit besides. It’s still a pricey beast, but the use value to cost ratio is through the roof regardless.
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Welcome To Laptop Week
Author: Alexander McQueen
Laptops are the new desktops. While you can buy a solid tower PC for about $ 500, this price represents how little manufacturers care about the desktop world. Barring a few huge gaming rigs, laptops are where it’s at.
We have been arguably remiss in avoiding formal laptop reviews and so we’re trying to remedy that with a series we’re calling Laptop Week. This week we will focus on some of the best laptops available today alongside a few gems that popped up over the past year or so. We will run the gamut from Chromebooks to Windows 8 and take a few detours on the way.
You can read all of our Laptop Week coverage here and feel free to contact me if you’d like to see us look at anything in particular on the market or in the laptops we’re testing. Look for a few Laptop Week posts per day, starting with an amazing Ubuntu laptop that I think could easily replace a MacBook Air for those in the right frame of mind.
We’ve created a quick and easy rating method for each laptop we address and take into consideration the needs of designers, entrepreneurs, and programmers. Because you mostly don’t care about speeds and feeds, these will be high-level assessments of each laptop from a practical perspective.
Welcome to Laptop Week. We hope you enjoy your stay.
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Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Sky City One, sub-zero cafe and the world’s longest Lego train track
Author: James Cliff
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.
Eyes in the design world turned to New York City this week as New York Design Week officially launched. We hit the floors of International Contemporary Furniture Fair today to bring you the best new green designs from one of the largest contemporary design shows in the US — including Blackbody’s gorgeous OLED light trees and Tat Chao’s ethereal LED lamps made from recycled wine glasses. We also checked out the locally focused BKLYN Designs show, where design duo Bower unveiled an awesome magnetic LED lamp, made from discarded pieces of scrap wood. Lighting designer Adam Frank unveiled three inspiring new designs at BKLYN Designs: the LED Lumen lamp, which casts tree-shaped shadows from a little candle holder; the incredible Reveal Projector, which projects an image of outdoor foliage and sky through a window on a blank wall (good for tiny NYC apartment dwellers); and the 3D Hologram-ish LUCID Mirror, which displays a 3D image of illuminated clouds over your head!
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Mobile Miscellany: week of May 13th, 2013
Author: Margo Tipton
If you didn’t get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we’ve opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought a new handset from Sony to the US and UK, updates to Nokia Creative Suite and three new (and very inexpensive) smartphones from Blu Products. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore all that’s happening in the mobile world for this week of May 13th, 2013.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Sony
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#35 APPS Roundup – Best 11 Android Apps of The Week – Smart Pops Mixer
Author: Buck Howard
App List 1. My Beach Free 0:30 http://market.android.com/details?id=com.dualboot.apps.beachfree 2. Pops 1:09 https://market.android.com/details?id=com.pops.a…
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Formlabs ships first Form 1 3D printer, Kickstarter backers should see theirs next week
Author: Melissa Shroeder
Some might say it’s been a long, long while since October — with “some” referring to the swath of Kickstarter backers who’ve been waiting oh-so-patiently for a Form 1 to call their own. Formlabs has just confirmed via a company blog post that the very first Form 1 3D printer shipped out today, as the Collector’s Edition Form 1 and half of the Initial Formation tier of pledges hopped on a variety of delivery trucks. The rest of you backers can expect to begin printing “by the end of next week.” For those keeping count, the Form 1 is actually a few months behind schedule, but in all honesty, that’s pretty good considering the up-and-down nature of crowdfunded projects that manage to find the limelight.
The outfit is reminding folks that Form 1 units are shipped as they’re produced, fulfilling Kickstarter rewards and preorders by priority. Specifics on group deliveries won’t come for a few more weeks, but those in the Bay Area can swing by Maker Faire (or ICFF if you’re in the Big Apple) to catch an early glimpse. Oh, and if you’re just now hearing of this thing? You can place a $ 3,299 order right now, but you probably won’t get it until July. Them’s the breaks, kids!
Filed under: Peripherals
Source: Formlabs
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This Week On The TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast: All Google I/O, All The Time
Author: Melissa Shroeder
Google’s major developer conference, Google I/O, went down this week. Was it a bit of a letdown? Probably. Did cool stuff still come out of the event? Eh? Maybe? We discuss these topics and more this week on the TC Gadgets podcast. In fact, we even had Frederic Lardinois join as a guest, along with John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook (that’s me!), Romain Dillet, and Darrell Etherington as Bob McKenzie.
Enjoy!
We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific.
Click here to download an MP3 of this show.
You can subscribe to the show via RSS.
Subscribe in iTunes
Intro Music by Rick Barr.
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Galaxy S4 Will Pass 10M Shipments Next Week Less Than A Month After Launch, Says Samsung
Author: Laura Clark
Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4, is poised to pass 10 million shipments next week less than a month after the device launched, says co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun, according to the Korea Times. The S4′s international release took place on April 27, after the phone launched in Samsung’s home market on April 26.
“We are confident that we will pass more than 10 million sales of the S4 next week. It is selling much faster than the previous model S3,” Jong-kyun told reporters at an industry forum in Seoul yesterday the paper reports. “Samsung spent 50 days to pass the 10 million sales mark for the S3. The S4 will be Samsung’s first ’10 million seller’ device less than a month after its official debut.”
Earlier this week Samsung confirmed shipments of the S4 had passed 6 million, describing it as the fastest ever sell rate for a Galaxy S smartphone, or any other Samsung smartphone. Company officials pointed to increased marketing spending as a key accelerator, according to the Korea Times. Samsung’s smartphone marketing budget dwarfs the other Android OEMs. According to research from Kantar media, reported in the WSJ, the company spent $ 401m in 2012 advertising its phones in the U.S. alone vs Apple’s $ 333 million.
It’s worth flagging that shipments are not actual sales. Samsung does not report the latter, however channel shipments at least give an indication of how popular retailers believe a device is going to be.
Apple does report device sales but does not break this out for individual iPhone models, so it’s not possible to compare the like-for-like sales of the iPhone 5 with the Galaxy S4 shipments but reporting its last earnings in April Apple said it sold a total of 37.4 million iPhones in the quarter.
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Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Darth Vader lamp, 3D-printed inchworm and a cheap invisibility cloak
Author:
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.
As scientists and renewable-energy developers continue to make advances in solar and wind technology, it’s becoming more apparent than ever that clean energy doesn’t just represent the future — it’s also the present. Spain proved that this week, when the Mediterranean country announced that it produced an impressive 54 percent of its total energy in April from renewable sources. Researchers at Yale University discovered a way to boost the efficiency of solar cells by 38 percent simply by coating them with a fluorescent dye. In another promising development, scientists at the University of Georgia developed a way to harness the photosynthetic process to generate clean energy from plants. And at a conference in California, NRG unveiled a mini prefabricated solar canopy that could soak up rays in any garden or commercial lot.
Filed under: Misc
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Tags: 3Dprinted, Cheap, cloak, darth, Green, inchworm, Inhabitat's, invisibility, lamp, vader, week | 
No Comments »Mobile Miscellany: week of May 6th, 2013
Author: Angela Stephens
If you didn’t get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we’ve opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought hints of changes to the Droid RAZR lineup, a peek at Sense with Android 4.2 and the arrival of the Lumia 520 to Canada. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore all that’s happening in the mobile world for this week of May 6th, 2013.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile
