2011 MacBook Pro – 13 inch

MacBook Pro 13 inch Laptop Complements Other Modern Macs

The MacBook Pro with the 2.3 ghz Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5 processor is a fast little notebook that greatly compliments my slightly older, 2009 MacBook Pro which I love using. Essentially the 15 inch MacBook Pro is my stay at home desktop model (I find it too cumbersome to take around all the time) – while my new 13 inch MacBook Pro is my travel nearly everywhere laptop.

The computer has all the ports and connections you’d expect from a MacBook Pro and runs all of the software I use on my 15 inch MacBook Pro with that familiar “ease of use” that goes with every Apple product.

The 13 inch MacBook Pro is a great compliment to my older MacBook Pro. Document exchange is seamless through my wired network, wifi or the cloud. Just like my 15 inch MacBook Pro, this one excels at all the tasks I throw at it including desktop publishing, photo editing, website building and maintenance, audio and video editing, word processing, research, entertainment and more. It currently runs Apple’s OSX Snow Leopard (10.6.8) operating system and is ready for Lion (Mac OSX 10.7.x).

This Mac is used for nearly everything that I use my 15 inch MacBook Pro for. Web content management, desktop publishing projects, word processing, music management, photo and movie editing plus more. Often this Mac is used at places other than my primary home based work location. It’s a great take anywhere computer with all the bells and whistles of bigger Macs.

This MacBook Pro 13 inch has the Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5 processor clocked at 2.3 ghz, 4GB of ram and a L2 / L3 cache. Ports include Thunderbolt, Ethernet 10/100/gigabit, Firewire 800 port, 2 USB ports, 1 SD card slot and an audio in/out port. It runs Mac OSX 10.6.6 and higher and has built-in Wireless WiFi and Bluetooth.

At the time of purchase I considered the current 11 inch MacBook Air and this 13 inch MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is larger and heavier than the MacBook Air. I chose this because of the ports, the processor, DVD R/W drive, the amount of RAM built in and the speed. The MacBook Air does not have an ethernet port or an optical drive. I still need those things.

The MacBook Pro has all the ports + a DVD R/W optical drive. You don’t get as much with the MacBook Air.

You can’t go wrong with the 13 inch MacBook Pro as either your primary computer or a compliment to any other modern Mac that you already own.

On the road with my MacBook Pro.

MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard 10.6.7. It has been upgraded to 10.6.8. I may update to Lion 10.7.x at a later date.

Low End Mac: MacBook Pro (Early 2011)
Every Mac : MacBook Pro (2011)
Apple: MacBook Pro User Manual

Steve Jobs: 1955 – 2011

Forever Steve, Forever Apple. Thank You.

Apple Store Ala Moana. The light is off. Photo by Ryan Ozawa.

http://www.apple.com

Apple iPod Touch 4th Generation

The 4th generation Apple iPod Touch is a wonderful computer, internet communications device, camera, music player and more. I bought the iPod Touch last October shortly after it came out.

This is the 4th in a series of iPod Touch devices that Apple has released. They are expected to release a new one sometime this month (September 2011).

Vintage iPods Still Rock

My collection of vintage iPods stand currently at 5. From left to right is the 4th generation white 40GB iPod Photo model, the pink 4GB iPod Mini, the green 4GB iPod Nano (2nd generation) and first generation, gum stick sized iPod Shuffle(512 MB model). I have 2 of the same iPod Shuffles.

So far all of these iPods are still supported by Apple’s iTunes software that runs on my 2 Intel Macs as well as earlier versions (going back to iTunes 4.7) on my Power PC Macs. Both the iPod Photo and iPod Mini support Firewire and USB 2 file synchronization. The iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle can only be synched with USB 2.

Here is a quick breakdown of each vintage iPod.

2009 MacBook Pro 15 inch Laptop

The mid 2009 MacBook Pro, 15 inch laptop is one of two MacBook Pro’s that I own. This one was bought in December 2009 and is currently running Mac OSX 10.6.7 (Snow Leopard). It’s a great computer that is used to run Adobe InDesign, Apple’s Pages and Numbers, the Apple iWork suite, a number of web browsers including Safari, Firefox, Camino, Google Chrome, Omni Web and Opera. This Mac runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo processor at 2.8 ghz. It has a 500 GB internal hard drive, 4 GB of memory, Firewire 800 port, 2 USB 2 ports, audio in and out ports, SD card slot, eithernet port, airport wifi wireless, bluetooth, built in iSight camera, and more. Complete specs can be found at this website:

EveryMac.com – MacBook Pro (mid 2009)

Mac OSX Snow Leopard version 10.6.3

I’ve also run this MacBook Pro off an external firewire hard drive with another copy of OSX “Snow Leopard” that also runs Ubundu Linux within the Sun Microsystems’ Virtual Box environment. Pretty neat stuff.

I plan to upgrade this Mac to OSX 10.7 “Lion”. There will be more on this when the time comes.

Power Macintosh G4 700 “Quicksilver”

The Power Macintosh G4 700 “Quicksilver” tower is the last desktop Mac that I bought. This one was acquired brand new with an inkjet printer back in August 2001 for $1699. Today the computer is worth about $250 with its monitor, keyboard and internal components. I still do some work on this computer, usually when I want to go into the Mac OS9 environment through the Mac OSX emulator. It boots into Mac OS 9.2.1, Mac OSX 10.3.9 and Mac OSX 10.4.11.

Here are more details on this Mac as originally published on Mel’s Macintosh Universe at headgap.com:

Power Macintosh G4

I bought a Power Macintosh G4 733 Quicksilver in October 2001. After Apple killed off Power Computing in 1997, I had vowed not to buy a new Apple ever.

Times have changed, and I decided to buy this Mac in order to get the best of both worlds. This means owning a Mac that can dual boot into OSX as well as OS 9. This Power Mac definitely fit my requirements.

Apple has long ago replaced this Mac with generations of more powerful G4 models that were also succeeded by the Power Mac G5 and now the newer Intel based Macintoshes. While the race for bigger, faster and better continues, my Quicksilver is fast enough to adequately do all the work I throw at it on a daily basis.

The Power Macintosh G4 733 Quicksilver is a G4 based desktop mini tower computer. The first G4s were introduced in 1999. The Quicksilver models were the 3rd generation in a long line of G4 towers.

Power Macintosh iBook 700

Apple Macintosh iBook 700 G3 laptop

Up until late this year, the Apple Power Macintosh iBook 700 G3 was and to a lesser degree still is my “road warrior” on-the-go laptop. It is being replaced later this year (2010) or early next year with a possible purchase of an 11 inch MacBook Air. I’ve been actively using this old iBook 700 since at least 2005… so that is about 5 years. If I am not mistaken this computer was introduced by Apple in mid 2002, making it 8 years old today.

The iBook is a capable G3 based, 700 mhz computer. It is good for doing all of the basic stuff I did with the Powerbook 3400 and more. The iBook is used to run word processing programs in Word and AppleWorks. It is dual booting, with both OSX 10.4.11 as well as OS 9.2.1.

Being a big Adobe Pagemaker fan, I occasionally use it to run Pagemaker on its 9.2 partition. Pagemaker is about the only time I use the iBook in OS 9.2 mode or through emulation within OSX’s “Classic Mode”.

All other programs I run in OSX. These include the following:

iTunes: Good for listening to my 500 or so songs that I keep on the iBook. I used to download the free Apple track of the week with iTunes until it was no longer supported on old versions of the program. While iTunes 7.6 is not supported by the Apple iTunes store, you can still use it on this computer to listen to music, slowly synch songs with an iPod (USB 1.0 or Firewire), listen to podcasts or streaming radio. You can do some video on this old G3 laptop, but I would not recommend it.

iPhoto and Image Capture: Use these 2 programs for image storage and editing whenever I am on the road (which is not too often). These came in very handy while I was recently on the Big Island of Hawaii. Synchs with the 3 digital cameras that I own. iPhoto is pretty good for making slideshows and photo album webpages.

I am not the biggest Microsoft Word fan around. However the iBook can handle Word which is part of the Office 2004 series. This comes in handy when I have to exchange files with the PCs I have to use at work. Word 2004 can only save and open with the staandard, old .doc format and not .docx.

One of the best things about this iBook is that it has a built in Airport wireless card. This means I can access the internet wherever there may be a wi-fi access point or “hotspot”. Comes in handy when I am on the road. The iBook is also connected to my ethernet network at home where I now have broadband access. I have used it in the past for dial-up access when neither broadband or wifi was available.

There is more I could write about the iBook, but this gives you a brief idea of what you can do with this elderly old Macintosh.

Current Use (as of October 2011)

The iBook is now being used as a radio streaming device – mainly streaming radio stations from iTunes. Works just fine with my broadband connection. The iBook is also used for faxing and logging into an old Telefinder BBS system (Headgap.com) with Mac OS9.2.1 in “classic mode”. I can also still do word processing with MS Word (in OSX) or Write-Now (in OS9.2.1). I also use this on occasion to login to my Unix account (SDF.org) with the terminal program.

Quick Specs:

Model: iBook
CPU Type: Power PC 750 (G3)
CPU Speed: 700 mhz
L2 Cache: 512 KB
Memory: 640 MB
Bus Speed: 100 mhz
Bus: ATA-4
Hard Drive: Toshiba MK4019
Hard Drive Size: 40 GB
Optical Drive: Sony CD RW / DVD
System Software: Mac OS X 10.4.11
System Software: Mac OS 9.2.1
Dual Booting System
Network: Built-in Ethernet, Airport, Internal Modem