FIRST!!!
In 2008, some media outlets started publishing their "best of" lists by June. For 2009, we didn't want to come in second. So here are our predictions for the best gadgets of 2009.
Premium Netbooks
We've seen the first wave of unusable netbooks with tiny screens. Then they got an upgrade to 8.9, 10 and even 12-inch screens. Now it's time for netbooks to get WiMax and HSDPA connections as a standard. Hopefully they can still stay half-way affordable...
Wii MotionPlus
When I tested the Wii MotionPlus attachment at E3, I felt that Nintendo had fulfilled the promise of the Wii, finally offering a motion controller as accurate and responsive as we'd all hoped the Wiimote to be originally. If Nintendo can coax developers to support Wii Motion Plus, we can expect some killer Wii titles in '09 (on top of Wii Sports Resort in spring), but it might be 2010 before we see all that many compatible games.
Windows 7
Microsoft can do better than Windows Vista. And with Windows 7—expected sometime before the year is up—they will. Whether it's the new features or the less taxing system requirements, Windows 7 promises to be a vast improvement on Vista, and hopefully enough to coax most of us still clutching XP for dear life to finally upgrade.
$99 Blu-ray Player...That Does More Than Play Blu-ray
The $99 part is only slightly wishful thinking, but if LG's recent announcements are any indication, we can expect more players with expanded services like Netflix, YouTube, CinemaNow...and who knows, maybe even Amazon VOD, Hulu and Rhapsody. Let's watch as these companies compete for our digital download dollar.
A New iPhone
Whether it's the iPhone 3G Part II or the rumored iPhone nano, it's not hard to imagine Apple releasing another new iPhone this year, maintaining their trend of releasing an iPhone per year to stay competitive in the everchanging post-RAZR cellphone market. It's no secret that most of Gizmodo loves the iPhone, so we're pretty excited to see what's next. (Juicy rumors of a new Mac mini and iPod Touch XL are going strong, too.)
4G Networks
3G is alright but we're looking forward to even faster 4G wireless networks soon. Intel-backed WiMax launched in a few locales by carriers Sprint and ClearWire. The wide-area network currently promises peaks of 10 megabits per second but on paper it's capable of over 70. We will likely see slow but steady expansion of the service through 2009. Meanwhile, AT&T and Verizon (and eventually T-Mobile) are gearing up LTE technology. The Nokia-driven GSM-based "Long Term Evolution" may actually whomp WiMax with download speeds of over 300Mbps—though its presence probably won't be felt in the US before 2010.
A Decent-Sized OLED TV
The Sony XEL-1 OLED television rocked our world when it was released this year, but there was a catch. Its screen size was a measly 11 inches. And while we can't expect 50-inch Kuro killers just yet, we do anticipate a very expensive mid-sized set—27 to 32 inches—to hit the market in some form this year. (Sony actually showed off a prototype that was 27 inches at CES 2008. Stay tuned for what we see at CES this year.)
Wireless HDMI
A multitude of companies have various wireless HDMI technologies, but there's no set standard (two warring factions need to settle the fight before we can have interoperable products). The technology is there, now it's just a matter of logistics and handshaking. With luck, by next Christmas, you'll be able to add it to a sub-$2000 1080p projector for the ultimate no-mess home theater.
USB 3.0 Devices
Wireless HDMI may not be quite cooked yet, but the eSATA-crushing USB 3.0 standard is ready to roll. Look for a multitude of products announced within the next week with blazing transfer speeds of 4.8Gbps (moving a 25GB file in under a minute). They'll also benefit from USB 3.0's higher electrical power output. [Image]
A Great Android Phone
The T-Mobile G1 was the necessary first step, but with Google amping up their Android development staff and interest coming from other major phone makers like Motorola, we assume we'll see a truly great Android phone soon. Motorola promises that their own offering will be better and cheaper than the G1, but it's not hitting before next Christmas, so we assume HTC's own follow-ups will come first.
And Your Best Guesses
These picks for 2009 are pretty sure things, but what wilder guesses do you have for best of 2009 products? A new PSP? A BlackBerry with a touchscreen that isn't crap? Real light sabers? Ketchup and mustard in one container?? Dogs and cats living in harmony??? If you don't offer up some kind of prognostication in the comments, you can never tell everyone, "I told you so."
Here's a list of the very best gear we've seen this year. It's more bragger's guide than buyer's guide—if you have any of this, you can officially tell your friends to suck on it.
The year winds to an end and every product worth a damn has already hit store shelves—there's not going to be any new shiny coolness until next month's CES. We were lucky enough to have a look at most of the best gear out there, and we've passed judgment on all that we saw. Here's a complete list of great products, yanked from our first looks, reviews, and epic Battlemodos:
TV & HOME THEATER
TVs:
Panasonic 65VX100U Plasma
Pioneer Kuro Elite PRO-111FD Plasma
Sony Bravia XBR8 LCD
Panasonic PZ850 Series Plasma
Samsung 650 and 750 Series LCD
Honorable mention for value: Toshiba Regza RV535 Series LCD
Surround Bar:
Yamaha YSP-3050 Sound Bar
Blu-ray Player:
Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD
Samsung Netflix BD-P2500
Sony PlayStation 3
Blu-ray Movies (with iTunes/WMV Digital Copy):
The Dark Knight
Wall-E
CAMERAS & CAMCORDERS
DSLR Cameras:
Nikon D300 and D700
Canon EOS 5D Mark II with HD video
Nikon D90 with HD video
Canon Rebel XSi and Rebel XS
Honorable mention for value: Sony Alpha A900 and Alpha A300
Point and Shoot Camera:
Canon SD790
Crazy Hybrid Camera/Camcorder:
Casio Exilim EX-F1
Mini Camcorders:
Kodak Zi6 HD
Pure Digital Flip Ultra
COMPUTERS & ACCESSORIES
Laptops:
MacBook/MacBook Pro
Lenovo X300
MSI Wind
All-In-One PC:
Vaio LV
Routers:
Linksys WRT610N Dual N-Band Wireless Router
Router/NAS:
Apple Time Capsule
NAS:
HP MediaVault mv2120
Mouse:
Logitech MX 1100 Mouse
Keyboard:
SteelSeries 7G Pro Gaming Keyboard
iPod/iPhone USB Dock:
Griffin Simplifi iPod-iPhone Dock/Card Reader/USB Hub
PHONES & PORTABLE DEVICES
Phones:
Apple iPhone 3G @ AT&T
Sidekick 2008 @ T-Mobile
Samsung Instinct @ Sprint (after firmware update, it's officially better than Verizon's LG Dare)
LG Decoy with docking Bluetooth earpiece @ Verizon
Sony Ericsson W890i @ Europe only; unlocked may be available
Phone Stereo Headsets:
Maximo iMetal iP-HS2 Isolators
Shure Music Phone Adapter to use with your current earphones
In-Ear Headphones:
Etymotics hf5
Shure SE110
Ultimate Ears metro.fi 2
Pico Projector:
Aiptek PocketCinema V10
GPS:
Garmin Nuvi 785T with lane guidance
Garmin Nuvi 880 with speech recognition
ASSORTED CRAZY STUFF
Flashlights:
Wicked Lasers Torch Flashlight
Duracell Daylite CR123
Toy Robot:
U-Command Wall-E
Cheap Night Vision Goggles:
Jakks Pacific EyeClops
Unmanned Vehicle:
Draganfly X6 UAV
Spy Gadget Book:
Spycraft by Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton
Water Guns:
Super Soaker Sneak Attack 4-Way
—With reporting by Erica Ho
Following only two months behind iPhone 2.0 (but at a significant installed-base disadvantage), Android still has a long way to go. But there is definitely some early potential. Here are our favorite apps of the year.
I still think Android, and its openness toward developers, can do some magical things and give iPhone a run for its money. But as we stated before, a lot needs to happen first—Android devices need to be a lot more numerous in consumers' hands, numerous enough for third-party developers (along with Google's first-party talent as well) to have a major incentive to drive the platform forward. It also has some major network power-management issues to overcome; the G1's battery never makes it through the day for me, and while that may just be because it's a shitty battery, Android's always-on approach to network access and background processes surely plays a part.
The Android Market is not yet the iPhone App Store, but here is a taste of what is, hopefully, a lot more to come.
Anycut: Anycut takes advantage of one of Android's fundamental strengths—the distillation of every possible event your phone can do—send a text message, go to a specific URL in a browser, etc—into a system-wide Intent, which any app can in turn access. Anycut allows you to take any intent and create a desktop shortcut for it—say, opening all of your Gmail messages labeled with a specific tag, or sending an SMS message to your most-texted contact.
Compare Everywhere: Like a hybrid of Japan's QR codes and Google SMS's UPC price check feature, Compare Everywhere reads barcodes (of just about everything, from a Criterion Blu-ray of The Man Who Fell to Earth I just watched to the stick of Right Guard sitting on my desk) and gives you a list of best prices—from online sources as well as physical brick-and-mortar shops near your GPS coordinates. The haptic buzz indicating a successful scan is unbelievably satisfying, and saves you money.
Shazam: Shazam's same great song identification skills—able to snatch notes from the barroom's speakers and pick the song in seconds—here on Android, co-existing with its identical iPhone version and similar ones for dumbphones. It's an amazing trick, regardless of the platform, and good to see one of the bigger hits on the iPhone quickly and smoothly ported over.
TuneWiki: Still jailbreak-only for the iPhone since apps can't access your iPod music, TuneWiki can show its full potential on Android, grabbing lyrics (that scroll karaoke style) and videos for all of your music as it plays.
Video Player: Video player plays H.264 MPEG4 clips, making up for a glaring hole left open in Android's first release: no video player. It gets the job done, and is a prime candidate for something to get sucked back up into the core Android distribution, as is an open source project's frequent wont.
Power Manager: Another necessity that's both a blessing and a curse, Power Manager lets you take limited control over the things that influence how long your battery will live—turning on/off all the radios, GPS, adjusting screen brightness, etc according to your current power level. It shouldn't be a necessary app for G1 owners, but it is; on the other hand, it shows how easy it is for a developer to fill a need and access hardware directly without having to ask permission. System-level functions like this, in large part, are not available to iPhone developers, and that's notable.
WikiTude: One of the apps we were most excited about at launch, WikiTude could still use some polishing, but it shows just how cool augmented reality apps can be. Overlaying link to geo-tagged Wikipedia articles on your camera's live view image utilizing the G1's built-in compass and accelerometer, it's an amazing thing to fire up on my roof in Brooklyn. Not so useful in the living room, but it's a great proof of William Gibson's classic notion—overlaying data from the web onto our live view of the world.
PhoneFusion Visual Voicemail: Solid visual voicemail support for Android. Another example of something other platform/carrier combos make you pay for (ahem, Verizon) or don't let you access at all.
Chomp SMS: Well, what do we have here. This looks familiar. Chomp is a replacement SMS app that mimics the iPhone's iChat-inspired text interface, and also happens to include a great soft keyboard looking exactly like the iPhone's, but adding haptic feedback—something coming to future Android distros. It also ties into Android's system-wide notification services, so if you want to drop the default SMS app altogether, you can.
Locale: In early versions, Locale was cool: it changed your ringtone or a few other phone settings based on your GPS location. Then, the features started coming, like the ability to send Tweets or use several other of Android's Intents, and it became clear exactly what Locale is—a framework (like Applescript, essentially) for triggering anything on your phone according to your location. When I'm at the office, set Facebook status to frowny face. When I get home and it's before 4PM, tweet "meet me at the bar" and start playing "O Happy Day."
Only five months since Apple launched the App Store, and there are now over ten thousand apps. Don't worry, we did the hard part, trying them out and picking the year's best:
We already selected our 20 essential iPhone apps not too long ago—November 14, to be exact. That's recent enough to still be fresh, but to those 20, we're adding 10 more, several of which have debuted between then and now. As a package, they're 30 apps every iPhone owner should take a close look at. They're what we use every day, and many of them are free.
The complete selection of our previous 20 essentials plus the 10 new apps can be viewed in our special Bestmodo Phone App directory. If you'd like, you can peruse all of our first 20 here on one page, and also, see the new additions to the list separately here:
EasyWriter: It seems simple—you can type URLs in landscape mode with its larger, more luxuriously spaced keyboard. Why not emails? EasyWriter solved it. Free; $2.99 for Pro edition
Facebook: For Facebookers (um, everyone, right?) it's essential—a beautifully designed, uber-functional implementation that's always with you. Free
EverNote: Already a popular web service and found on other devices, Evernote does something that every location-aware cameraphone should be able to do: quickly take and store geotagged photos so you can remember stuff. Free
Google Mobile: Google Mobile was a solid app (but not particularly essential)—and then came voice search. Free
RjDj: A totally unique music application that processes sound from your environment and replays it according to a set program, creating a trippy, always-evolving soundscape. Free to try; $2.99 expanded version
VLC Remote: One of the first apps we loved was the iTunes Remote—now, the Swiss army knife of media players VLC has one of its very own. Free ad-supported simple version; $1.99 for more controls and no ads
Wikipedia Mobile: Finally, the definitive Wikipedia reader for the iPhone. $2.99
Night Camera: Thanks to its accelerometer, your iPhone knows when it's being jiggled. Night Camera, simply and ingeniously, uses this data to make your low-light picture clearer. $0.99
Tweetie: Twitter apps: there are a lot of 'em. Tweetie, though, is the closest you'll get to the Twitter desktop experience, and therefore our best of. $2.99
Recorder: While not the sexiest apps, a good solid voice recorder can be incredibly handy—especially if you are a handsome FBI investigator in the town of Twin Peaks. $0.99
Be sure to check out our 10 best iPhone games of 2008—if you haven't already.
I've spent more than a month working with Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection. I'm impressed. It pushes the envelope again with new tools and enhancements that will save a lot of time.
Apart from using a text editor, I spend most of my work time in Facebook Illustrator and Photoshop, which I've been using since I was in college back in 1748 or 1994—I can't remember. Until a month ago, I was happy with both programs in their Creative Suite 3 incarnation. Sure, they aren't perfect, but they are fast in my 24-inch iMac, and they have all the features I wanted. Or so I thought. I didn't find myself wanting anything more than a few fixes here and there, maybe just enhancements to this or that other tool, like transparent gradients in Illustrator.
I thought that CS3 was pretty much unbeatable for most of the bread-and-butter stuff that I or any other illustrator or photographer can do. As it turns out, CS4 adds enough feature punch to make the upgrade worth it.
The damn tabs
Let's get this one out of the way now. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with any of the programs in CS4 except for one thing: The new absolutely horrible tabbed user interface, an idea full of good intentions but poorly executed, to the point of being bad for your workflow.
How Adobe engineers thought this was going to be useful to anyone, I don't know. Every person I've seen working in Photoshop has different windows open, at different sizes, in different places and even spawned across multiple monitors. This is needed to move things around from one document to another, to clone, or just compare images. Sometimes I end up having ten or twenty different documents open because I keep working with several projects at the same time. If you look at my workspace, it may seem anarchic to you, but it's not for me. Mentally, I organize things how I like them to be, optimized for my workflow. And then, I surf through all of this windows melee at lightning speed using Exposé on the Mac.
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
The new tabbed interface—which is similar to the tabs in programs like Firefox or Safari—screws all this. Sure, they try to provide tools to emulate the anarchy described above. You can even drag and drop objects using spring-loaded tabs. But when you have a lot of documents open and you run out of tab space, the thing stops working well, giving you a useless chevron pop-up to the left of the tabs (like it does in web browsers). It does a bad job with tiling too—although I don't use tiling—since it will split the image in whichever way it wants, leaving some images grouped with others if the number of tiles is shorter than the number of documents.
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
And then, on top of it being a mess in both Windows and Mac OS X, there's an extra problem for Mac users: Photoshop doesn't respect Exposé, which allows me to change work documents in a fraction of a second in the clearest and most instinctive way possible. So why try to fix what didn't need to be fixed? Simply put, you can't organize images in the same way that you organize linear web pages. The fact is that the tabbed interface doesn't work well and, in the Macintosh, it doesn't solve any problem that wasn't already solved with the Mac OS X interface.
Fortunately, this complaint has an easy solution: You can turn the tab feature off. In Illustrator CS4 too, which suffers from exactly the same problem. I exclaimed "So long, sucker!" after twenty minutes of using it and, quite frankly, I don't know why the hell it comes turned on by default—specially for people with previous versions of the Creative Suite.
Deep changes
I love Photoshop. I know that newbies get pale at the sheer enormity of this program, but it has grown with me during more than a decade and using it is like breathing—even while there are aspects of it I never touch. The new Photoshop CS4 tries to make things a little bit simpler by reorganizing the menus a bit, cleaning house and making them neater. It also provides new palettes, like the masks and adjustments palette. All the little changes will make sense to the experts and make it a little bit easier to those who are not so experienced.
But the changes in Photoshop CS4 go deeper than this. To start with, the Windows version has full 64-bit support. For many users this won't provide any big performance advantage (although any second saved counts when it comes to image editing). But for anyone using really big images for print, the 64-bit support will bring a clear performance advantage because of the larger memory space CS4 provides on Windows. If you just work with images out of professional DSLR cameras, however, don't worry much about this. All the benchmarks I've seen only show a performance advantage with extremely large images.
The other deep change, one that will be noticed by everyone, is the OpenGL support in Photoshop. Everyone with any decent video card, that is. I don't mean a 1GB monster GPU. The humble 256MB ATI Radeon HD2600 included in my 24-inch iMac does an amazing job at keeping things smooth as hot butter. The bigger and more badass your graphic card is, however, the more documents you will be able to keep accelerated in OpenGL. In my iMac, the limit is seven images.
New pixel magic
The GPU acceleration results in some nice tricks. When you zoom deep in an image you now get a pixel overlay—which oddly reminds me of the old school programs like the old PC Paintbrush. The panning is animated, so when you use the hand to move the image, accelerating and lifting your finger from the mouse, the image will sightly hover with the inertia until it stops. But the coolest thing is rotating the image for painting. If you have used Painter, you know that the canvas can be rotated to adjust the image to your drawing angle, much like you do with a piece of paper.
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The rotating is not a real rotate command. You just do it as you need it, on screen. When you invoke it, a compass appears on the screen. Since OpenGL treats the image as a texture on a 2D plane, the rotation is non-destructive and the image quality is amazingly good, as nice as a real rotate. I wish this rotate view feature was also available in Illustrator.
Both Photoshop CS4 and Illustrator CS4 offer new ways to access old things in a more streamlined way.
In Photoshop, new tool palettes give access to adjustment layers and masks functionality. The new "save to web" is good too, with a refreshed, more condensed interface. There are also new options for old tools that would be very useful in day-to-day operations, like the localized cluster option when you make a color range selection. This allows you to select areas in an image not only by hue similarity but also taking into account the distance from the place in which you click to sample the color. Or the quick and dirty Vibrance tool, which will allow Dick Tracy-lovers like me to boost the punch of every single image without having to go through a playing with levels, saturation fiddling in selected areas and color curves.
However, perhaps the most spectacular of the new Photoshop tools is the content-aware scale, which will be a great timesaver, especially when you have to modify images to fit a particular layout and you don't have a lot of room to play at cropping. This tool is simple: Make a selection you want to protect, select the image, scale in any direction you want (vertical, horizontal, or both axis) and watch as the image scales leaving the protected area (almost) intact. Here's an example:
Original image, 763 x 463 pixels
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Scaled image, 1026 x 463 pixels.
As you can see, the furniture is left untouched, while the rest of the image scales horizontally. Everything is smoothed out and looks good. At least, good enough to only require a few retouches and, certainly, good enough to fit into your layout. Previously, you had to make a selection, scale the background as good as you can, carefully fill in the blanks with the clone stamp tool, fix the artifact with more cloning, and lose some hair in the process. With the content scaling, you'll be able to save a lot of time, only requiring a bit of retouching to make things look great.
3D painting
This part is completely new to Photoshop. 3D painting is nice. In fact, it's fun. While it's not as sophisticated as other tools I remember (it has been a long time since my Maya and Bodypaint days), it's easy and straightforward. The 3D rendering engine, on the other side, is bad. Very bad. Horrible. There's no way anyone can use this to include 3D graphics in your 2D work. So if you are looking to render anything in 3D with Photoshop CS4, look elsewhere.
New vector voodoo
In Illustrator CS4, the changes are also many and worth the upgrade, at least for me. There are small ones—like the clean-up program's interface has been cleaned up. Things that bothered me before, like the filter menus with duplicated personality, are gone, all merged into one neat Effect menu—to the big ones, like the new Blob tool (a godsend for anyone who likes to draw, rather than pull and push vector lines), the transparent gradients (oh yes!), and the long-awaited (but old Freehand trick) multiple artboards (YES! YES! YES!).
All these are extremely useful and will save a lot of time to any Illustrator user. Actually, the transparent gradients are a fundamental element to create more complex artwork more easily. They basically allow you to treat vector gradients as you treat them in Photoshop, including transparency. In fact, they are better than Photoshop because the interface allows you to change them on the art itself, without having to use a panel.
The Blob tool is great too. It's basically a brush that unifies all strokes as one single object. Previously, using the normal brush, if you tried to draw freehand you will end with a huge spaghetti monster. This was almost impossible to manage, requiring you to either make groups or outline strokes and then merge them—which obviously is a pain in the ass. With the Blob brush, however, Illustrator CS4 will automagically outline and join all brush strokes into a single, easy to manipulate object.
I would buy this upgrade for the gradients and the blob tool alone. But the final touch that makes this worth it to me is the support for multiple artboards, perhaps the most awaited Illustrator feature of all time. I still remember Freehand fans telling me how they hated Illustrator because it didn't support multiple pages like Freehand did. I wouldn't go as far as "hating" but I felt the pain every time I had to do a multiple-page layout, having to jump to Quark (argh) or PageMaker (the horror). This is not needed with the new artboards feature. You can create up to one hundred pages, which is more than enough to manage any brochure or multiple-page art you can imagine.
The icing on the cake is the new smart guides and alignment, which basically allows you to precisely set the position of objects in relation to other objects and any of their elements, without having to set guides manually. Paraphrasing Alice, the new guides are intelligenter and intelligenter than the previous ones.
Verdict
I can't try the rest of the applications in the Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection with the depth I can use both Photoshop and Illustrator, but if these two—and Bridge CS4—are any sign of what to expect from the other ten apps in the package—and from what I've been able to read in reviews of After Effects, Premiere, InDesign, or Flash, it seems they are as good—the collection is completely worth the $2,500 it costs. And definitely worth the $900 of the upgrade. If you are a Photoshop and Illustrator maverick, go for the Design Collection upgrade. If you use these programs professionally, the investment will returned very quickly on saved time alone.
I don't claim to think that I can in any way influence your purchase of The Dark Knight on Blu-ray ($24) or DVD ($15/$21). In fact, I don't really want to. I couldn't care less if you buy it, rent it or stomp any loose copies you spot at the store.
But to me, the 3-disc Blu-ray set (2 discs of content and an extra disc for the digital copy) has brought an unparalleled experience to my home theater. And I'm going to fanboy out a bit for 30,000 or so words.
The Movie
In one respect, a 1080p display could never hope to capture the multi-story IMAX experience. And it doesn't. But seeing the first shot of the movie, that of a less recognizable Chicago skyline, rekindled what it was like to sit in the theater and see film as I'd never quite seen it before. It was also the prettiest high definition moment I've experienced yet.
Just as in its theatrical release, the IMAX footage plays at a different resolution. It fills an HDTV in 1.78:1 aspect while the rest of the movie plays back with black bars in 2.4:1. And just as in its theatrical release, the transition is barely noticeable.
But despite all of this video glory, I've never felt so torn over a DVD release. On one hand, The Dark Knight is a technical masterpiece—sharp, colorful, vivid and pretty much any other advertisement-inspired words you could imagine. On the other, its inability to be contained on a 40-inch LCD reminds me of why we will always need theaters. A big movie simply cannot be captured on the small screen scale, even though it's a lot of fun to watch The Dark Knight try.
The Extras
As for the extras, I was shocked to find no commentary by director Christopher Nolan. It's rare that I actually watch those things, as much as they've successfully tipped the scales on me making many a DVD purchases. But I wanted to hear Nolan's unscripted reminiscences of filming in Chicago, flipping trucks and blowing up cars on the streets of my hometown.
What we get instead is about an hour of featurettes that can be called up during relevant parts of the movie or just played from the main menu. While I was initially pretty bummed about the unworthy substitution, I will say that these short documentaries were lovingly assembled, providing incredibly detailed accounts of pulling off a chase sequence on shady Lower Whacker Drive with only ambient lighting, and loading an IMAX camera onto a steadicam rig...only to snap the metal suspension bar under the camera's weight.
I hadn't realized that the film used minatures for some of the great Batmobile sequence, which was entertaining in the most childish-fulfilling way. But maybe even more impressive was when the crew submitted to the impossibility of shooting Batman's base jumping scene over Hong Kong. They used a stunt double on a green screen instead—a stunt double that still dropped 120 real feet in a studio.
There are countless little bits of trivia like these along with lots of behind the scenes footage (all shot with decent HD cameras, btw). From the Batpod to all of Batman's tiny gadgets, we get access to it all in this fantastic hour of features.
That's disc one.
Disc two contains is technically the one containing all the extras, but honestly, it's the first disc that's more impressive. There are two History Channelesque documentaries (one on Batman's gadgets and the other on Batman's psyche). Both are extremely professionally assembled, and they tend to explore the Batman from comic books as much as the Batman from recent films. I enjoyed watching the CIA discuss Batman's utility belt from 1960s comics and getting a look at how we build bulletproof ceramics in real life.
But the rest of the features disc is filled with about an hour's worth of faux newsreels known as Gotham Tonight. It's bad internet content that's filling up room on the back of The Dark Knight box. And it's just awkward to watch b-list talk about Batman sightings and Gotham politics, frankly.
There's also a notable series of slideshows, but the pictures should really go full screen.
The BD Live
As for BD-Live content, you've got to remember that this is Warner Bros' first BD Live enabled disc, and it actually offers something really, really promising with the platform. You can record your own commentary track. The only catch is that you actually do the recording through Warner Bros' site while you watch the film streamed (before you later download it to your Blu-ray player). But it's a neat idea for BD Live and it will be interesting to see what the fan base does with it. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the website working yet.
The Heroic Ending
Like I said, it's more than a bit futile to review The Dark Knight on Blu-ray. It's almost a sure thing to outsell its predecessors. The most popular movie of the decade will certainly be the best selling BD of the last handful of lackluster years.
But I do think that Warner Bros. did the material justice, even if the discs have a bit of worthless filler. The film is, of course, excellent. And the extras that are worthwhile really are worthwhile, representing the upper echelon of behind the scenes film content.
If I had one complaint, it's that Nolan and Bale clearly didn't have contracts that were binding enough to force them to sit in the same room for two and a half hours, making awkward, human small talk over a film that's grown so legendary in its reputation and lore.
One thing we meant to mention: The BD and premium DVD versions of the film also include a free VOD copy of the movie along with the digital version if purchased from Amazon.
Update: Best Buy is now selling the ZP80 for $200—while supplies last. I love Sonos, the super synced-up wireless music home system, but have always been a little freaked out by the price, about $750 to start, including the increasingly old-school-looking $400 scroll-wheel Controller. When I saw the Sonos iPhone Wi-Fi app—free if you've got an iPhone or iPod touch—I realized that the Controller was finally a thing of the past. Couple the app with a clearance-priced ZP80 ZonePlayer, and you can start your own Sonos rig for $300. After playing around with the latest hardware and software, I can safely say that's a hell of a deal.
I say "you can start" your rig because one of the Sonos' main selling points is its ability to wirelessly coordinate ZonePlayers all throughout the house for flawlessly synced music playback. The idea is that you spend $300 on the ZP80 (or $350 on a ZP90 if you miss out on the clearance inventory) and then later on, when times aren't so tough, you can add more ZonePlayers as you go. 
What's great about the one ZonePlayer is that you immediately get the AirPort Express-like ability to grab music from your Mac or PC, plus the iTunes Remote app's ability to control it from a little handheld, but that's just the beginning. The ZonePlayer comes with the ability to serve up web radio, Rhapsody, Napster, Pandora, Last.fm and Best Buy Music, all without a computer.
In my house, it all plays out rather well:
When my laptop is awake and on the network, the ZonePlayer I have connected directly to my router (via Ethernet) and a stereo system can access all of my non-DRM tracks. I can sort through all those tracks via the Sonos Desktop Controller, which works on both Macs and PCs and whose setup was ridiculously easy. 
But I can walk away from the laptop (leaving it on) and instead pick up an iTouch lying on the coffee table, which lets me view the same exact tracks, and just as fast.
Say I close or power down my laptop, or my wife wants to get on the Sonos while I am away, laptop in tow. There are so many sources of music available via the Sonos Controller app, she may not actually even notice that my vast library is gone. (I could, obviously, load the Sonos control on her laptop so that it would serve her music, too, but based on what I'm telling you, that has so far proven irrelevant.)
My wife loves Fresh Air with Terry Gross. By searching for the show in the Radio section, she can not only find out when it's on next, but can listen to recent shows in full, at a much better sound quality than those damn Audible downloads, for zero money. She can also search for different radio stations and add them to favorites—we have both our favorite NYC and Seattle radio side by side. You can't yet bookmark actual radio shows, a la Fresh Air, in Favorites, but I'm hoping that's something that will be worked out soon.
You probably now that Sonos offers free 30-day no-credit-card-required trials of Rhapsody, Napster and Sirius—the key, I think, is to try all three in a row, giving you basically 60 days of free on-demand music sampling, and a month of decent satellite radio, before you choose one, if any.
Controlling the system over Wi-Fi is easy, too. You kinda have to get used to the queue concept that goes back to desktop music jukeboxes of olde—once you add songs to the queue, they're there until you clear them, even after they've played. But you can add many songs and radio shows of differing sources to the same queue, making for a highly programmable audio experience: I can listen to the new-ish Coldplay, followed by Terry Gross's interview with Seth Meyers, followed by a classic mix playlist I devised in iTunes (automatically recognized by Sonos), all queued up in just a few minutes. The volume control is funny—on the iTouch, you have to tap to the left or right of the slider to make it go up or down, but once I figured that out, it was smooth sailing.
After the super-syncability and the multiple sources of music, the third best thing about Sonos is the fact that it is constantly being upgraded. So even though there are some technical advantages to the newer hardware (wireless-N is the big one), the basic functionality is the same, meaning buying at clearance shouldn't be a problem.
What don't I like? I feel like this new setup has answered my biggest historical gripes with the system; though it would be nice for it to play iTunes DRM tracks, and it would be convenient for the first ZonePlayer to connect wirelessly and not via hard Ethernet (it does this so that it can create its own super-stable Wi-Fi network), the thing is getting better and cheaper at the same time—$300 for clearance ZP80s, potentially even less on eBay. If that isn't good news in these troubled times, I don't know what is. [Sonos]
Related: Gizmodo's Essential Iphone Apps
The Product: Wall-E (Three-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy and BD Live). It features the movie, obviously, along with enough extra content to keep Wall-E stacking little featurette cubes for years.
The Price: $40 retail, though it's $25 at places like Amazon
The Verdict: Our own Adam Frucci already reviewed Wall-E, calling it "one of the best sci-fi movies in years, disguised as a cartoon." And if that's true for the film (which I believe it is), then I'd have to call the Blu-ray version of the film "one of the best art classes in years, disguised as a movie."
I especially enjoyed the featurette on animation sound design. It's about 20 minutes long, and if you have no experience in sound design, then it's an absolute must watch. You get to not only watch famed sound designer Ben Burtt work his magic (Star Wars, Indiana Jones), but see the top secret Disney gadgets dating back to 1937 used to make specific sounds for the film.
My favorite moment was when Burtt say discovers a new way to produce the sound of a storm, and then it cuts to him dragging a punching bag down what's surely a random carpeted hallway of Pixar.
It's one of the few artsy-technical extras that's neither dumbed down nor too insider for the audience to understand. Quite simply, you'll appreciate Wall-E and all sound design more because of it.
But that's such a small part of the extras. Over the course of the 40 minutes or so of well edited technical featurettes alone:
You'll learn that the humans of the film were originally aliens...with a violent streak...who were studied in real world 3D gelatin mode to understand their movement.
You get a glimpse of the manpower that goes in to building a scene, from the guy who animated a D-cup bra sitting on Wall-E's eyes, to the gal who stuck a singular lamp post in the background.
You get to see how the robots were designed, modularly, just like LEGO to increase variety with minimal effort.
If you think I've spoiled it for you, realize that these featurettes have a backdrop of worthwhile interviews and a slew of original concept animation. They're truly an unexpected pleasure to watch and you can also find those above on the DVD version of Wall-E.
And once you're done with the technical stuff, you'll still have a variety of commentaries, annotated deleted scenes, amazing 3D set fly-throughs (one of the great BD-exclusive features pictured here), a clever interactive storybook, a digital copy, the BURN-E short, various other extras and, of course, the film Wall-E itself. I'll honestly say that I've probably seen only half of the set's content and it's still seemed like an excellent media value.
Sure, Wall-E was probably my favorite film of 2008, so it's little surprise that the Blu-ray would be my favorite disc of the year. But it's rare that the public gets such a well edited, worthwhile set of extras to look through. Because, I mean, let's face it. The movie would have been enough.
The Tesla dealership is quiet as a cage of sleeping panthers. A pack of the electric roadsters, in varying degrees of grey, are strewn across the show floor looking 120mph standing still. I imagine most of them are awaiting for a venture capitalist to pick them up and take them from meeting to meeting for the rest of their uneventful lives. But outside is a bright blue roadster ready for the 10 minutes Telsa and God have handed me. This is my long awaited drive in the Tesla roadster.
[Photos by Monica Laipple and Giz, drive via Tim Ferriss]
Studying her lines it is clear to me this car has Lotus DNA, even though the car is much cleaner and classically beautiful looking than any bug eyed Elise or Exige, and more technologically advanced than the submarine Lotus James Bond drove in The Spy Who Loved Me (Thanks Ray). The British car maker helped to design the aluminum chassis, which weighs less than 200 pounds, and they handle early stage manufacturing. Tesla stresses that the Roadster is not just an electric Lotus, and it shares no more than 10% of the parts. Much more thought went into this car to simply dismiss it as such. But Tesla's engineers did choose to work with Lotus for a reason, the same reason why most auto journalists consider the Elise one of the last pure sports cars around and a great deal. The low power, light weight cars are simply one of the best handling and thrilling drives out there, described as some as a street legal go kart, and I'd agree that its one of the best driving experiences I've ever had. With shared genetics, this is perhaps the best way to judge the limits of electric performance as compared to their gas counterparts.
It's rare that Tesla lets people drive the car without a company copilot, so we'd be tailed by a Lexus chase car since I'm sitting copilot to Tim Ferriss, the guy who set up this ride, for the first shift. Starting the car is silent, and we kept trying to turn it over because we're idiots. If you don't step on the gas accelerator, there is no idle, so the car does not move forward even when your feet are not on the brakes. When Tim takes off from the lot, before I hear road noise and wind, I hear the odd purring of gears, which can almost be described as turbine like. With one gear and no engine noise, its surprisingly hard to gauge speed except by the pressure applied to the headrest by the back of your skull, the churning in your stomach or the unintended roller coaster face of your passenger. (Me.) Looking at the speedometer would be idiotic at these rates, in local traffic, but somehow we make it to about 60 for brief bursts on our way to the highway.
The rates to 60 are rated at 3.9 seconds by virtue of the electric motor's 248 HP and 280 Torque. By comparison, it bests the fastest road legal Lotus by a 10th of a second, but the power to weigh ratio is on par with the standard Elise because the battery pack brings it to 2700 pounds (over 700 pounds heavier than the Elise). The key here is that the car doesn't have to take the time to switch gears and electric motors deliver 100% of their torque at start. That power curve caused some problems earlier in two previous transmissions, which were being destroyed after a few thousand miles. To overcome that problem with the latest, more durable single gear tranny, Telsa wisely used a motor with a 14000 RPM redline that could keep rotating faster in a low gear to achieve a top speed of 125MPH, while improving on the 2008's single gear transmission time to sixty miles per hour down from 5.7 seconds to 3.9 seconds.
Behind the wheel, I found that the entire system works together to deliver power like thick gobs of thick yogurt, with no drive lash on throttle or lift, but not too buzzy either. I have to admit it's the perfect amount of torque for a car this weight, somewhere in between detroit muscle and a peaky four banger in a rice rocket. With traction control off, something I was prohibited from doing, I hear you can do doughnuts in the car, something not too easy in many roadsters. That's what I heard, anyhow. In some ways, it feels automatic, without the third pedal, but when you lift off the throttle, the car's regenerative systems seize power through engine braking. It feels like you're lifting off after revving high in second or third gear in a manual transmission sports car. Tim often didn't have to use the brakes, preferring to wind down to almost nothing by engine braking alone. I'd test the brakes later. We'd entered the highway, and the car's acceleration to 80 was great, but power tapered off closer to 110 as aerodynamics of a open top car caught up to it and torque fell. Hypothetically.
I knew the acceleration was appropriate for a car of the future, besting many gas vehicles out there. But one thing I'd never heard about was what all the battery weight (again, 2700 pounds vs sub 2000 pounds) was doing to the car's handling; the Tesla would not likely turn and brake like a space age wonder considering similar chassis, brakes, wheels and suspension There's no escaping the laws of physics. Even magical electric cars want to stay in motion, when in motion.
I snaked the car through a set of S turns, but behind other cars, so I was not able to find much data other than the car's does not oversteer easily. Through a banked onramp to highway 280, the ghetto skidpad, I wasn't light on the gas accelerator, and on the smooth, 270 degree banked circle, I could feel the car's rack and pinion wanting to push a bit. I wasn't sure of my speed, so its impossible to say when confidence was starting to fade. The chase car driver later implied they had to slow down 60 on the ramp, but I doubt I was going much faster than that. I'll conclusively say that the car handles less confidently than an Elise, but will destroy many road going sedans and coupes.
Back off the highway, with the chase car still catching up, I got a chance to try the brakes quickly rounding a corner and heading towards traffic. With a second lane opening up, I slammed them. Warm tires and chattered across the rough, slightly downhill road and I was forced to take the other lane or eat SUV. I felt the weight, and expected the car to stop shorter.
But here's something to chew on. I have no conclusive data of how fast we were going, given the singlegear, quiet propulsion of the vehicle. I could have been going 35, I could have been going 60, so it's not fair to judge the car's handling or braking. And Tesla and the internet have no skidpad, slalom or braking distance test results for the car. Conspiracy? I can't say. None of this really matters, because the Tesla Roadster is unique as a performance oriented electric car and deserves heaps of praise for what it is and how it feels to drive despite its efficiency from battery to wheels of 80-90%. Most gas engines sit at about 20%. Provided your public utility has some measure of efficiency to their electric production, you can do a lot of good in this car.
I wouldn't be describing this car properly without describing the interior. The Roadster's insides look similar but have been improved over its sister cars from the UK. Door sills have been lowered to make entrance easy (although still requiring some level of acrobatics) the leather seats are more comfortable and heated, the premium stereo is a single DIN JVC KD-NX5000, which features DivX and DVD playback, as well as navigation and a 40GB HDD and iPod dock. The position of the stereo is sort of low on the dashboard. The stereo's imaging is superb and there's a sub somewhere in the tiny cockpit thumping away. There's an electric touch LCD on the left managing battery charge, tire pressure monitors, etc. Your ass is dragging probably 8 inches from the ground.
I can't afford this car. If I wanted something similar to this in shape, feel and performance, I'd probably buy a used Elise for $30k if I could get over the bug eyes. But I can assure you that a Tesla is still a hell of a a car, by electric or gas terms, even if its just a bit more portly and more expensive than a comparable Lotus. I mean, its fast. It's electric. It's efficient. It's sexy. And you can actually buy it if you're rich. And while Tesla as a company may have had some problems in manufacturing at first, they didn't wait for old industry to get off its ass and build something revolutionary. Like Android, I hope it catalyzes the fossil fuel makers traditional makers into a game of catch up with cars that are just as fast and efficient, and hopefully a lot cheaper. And if that doesn't leave you somewhat impressed, then you belong with the dinosaurs.
Note: Impressions from a 10 minute drive are going to be impressions from a 10 minute drive, nothing more.
[Special Thanks to Tim Ferriss for facilitating this drive and donating half of his drive time to me, and for photographer Monica Laipple for the better shots above. Some more videos over at Tim's site. ]
I've used Wii Fit exactly 6 months. Since the review, I didn't use it every day, or even every week, but since the very first time the game told me I was fat, it never really left my mind. Every meal, every time I passed on exercise to eat a little more ice cream, every time I exercised but stopped a little early, I heard those words resonating through the bit of side blubber on my sleight frame: "You're Overweight!"
I hate Wii fit so much. Sure, it indirectly helped me lose 10 pounds, but I f'ing hate it.
Bear with me on this long post with minimal mention of the game or hardware — the game is not what will make you fit.
Over a few sessions of playing the game, I started what would eventually be, more or less, the kind of body obsession assumed normal for performance athletes and underwear models, coupled with the kind of inferiority complex that one gets when you can't beat a video game, coupled with the resentment one builds towards machines that don't do your meatbot bidding. I mean, I could have dismissed the measurement tell me I was fat — BMI (Body Mass Index) is a crude stat based on height and weight that can't tell a fat person from a really really muscular medium husky guy. The problem is, Wii fit doesn't give a crap about your excuses or perceptions either. It assumed I really wasn't that muscular short guy, it assumed I was a medium husky with a little belly. And it was right.
I did all the exercises, focusing on the harder ones like the pushup and plank exercises, jackknives, the shadow boxing and running in place for sessions, usually for over 45 minutes. But then I got bored of EVERYTHING IN the game and couldn't stand to do more than one or two at a time. And I was not losing weight. I was exercising, it seemed, just enough to stimulate my appetite and give me justification for eating more, and so I was actually gaining weight. The in game scale told me as much.
When you're stuck on a level in a video game, some people look at strategy guides or cheats. The Wii Fit equivalent of this, knowing I was not getting the weaponry to obliterate my chub in the game, was to cheat by resorting to outside exercises like hitting the weights, and bicycling, running and hitting the rowing machine, my favorite for quick nearly full body exercises. This helped, and Wii fit's seemingly lame exercises were great setup in developing the necessary support muscles from head to toe to support rudimentary training — it was like physical therapy for computer nerds about to enter real sporting tasks.
Summer ended. Snowboarding season was approaching, and I knew I wanted to be lighter on my feet this year. It was great to have a goal outside of the game's mere quest for proper height to weight ratio.
But I was still not losing weight and eventually hit 170 pounds. Anyone who runs on a treadmill with a kcalorie calculator realizes that you can burn only a quarter of a cheeseburger's worth of energy in a 15 minute run, enough to go about 2 miles. Most nerds do not run this much in a day. Wii fit's charts, again, reflected the truth. Even though I was exercising, I was exercising semi regularly, but it was not denting my calorie intake. Without those charts, I would have been satisfied, but instead, Wii fit asked me "why do you think you're gaining weight?" and gave me a set of multiple choices. I choose overeating.
Let me tell you something about eating in my family. It was always my job, as directed by all grandparents, to finish not only everything on my plate, but everything on the entire table. One day, staring at a place of creamy French food, full after the first 3 bites, and thinking about what Wii fit was telling me, and how far my goals were, I realized that I had to change. I felt a bit guilty, but I knew that where my family would disapprove, Wii Fit would make up for it. And sure enough, the charts showed my weight was dropping. First I was below 170, then 165, and then 161. Miraculously, this happened without the pain of extreme exercise and without the pain of extreme dieting. I lost about 2 pounds a week, more or less. I never realized this is all it would take.
Checking the calendar, I had one day left til my 6th month of Wii Fit would end. And my BMI had dropped from 26.5 to a low of 25.01. If I lost another pound, the game would crown me fit.
Then, work got stressful, with this economy. I eat when I'm stressed. So, I ate some greasy Chinese food. And the next day at lunch, I had a cheeseburger. I just couldn't resist and I didn't know if I had blown my chances or not at finding acceptance from this stupid game. I thought that I could keep from overeating, something I'd been practicing for 31 years, forever, but the binge made me realize it would never be easy.
The next day, I got on the balance board and took a test. I have to admit, I took my shorts off for the competitive advantage, but I didn't expect to make it: I scored a 24.91, low enough at 158 pounds for Wii Fit to declare me normal even with my shorts on. I learned a new lesson, a few days of binging cannot overcome weeks of discipline.
And then, satisfied, I put the game away, ate some ice cream and booted up Fable II. As long as I never start Wii Fit again, I'll always and only remember the last kind word the game said to me, "You're Normal."
The game's core value isn't the exercises, which don't burn many calories unless you play them way beyond the point which a normal person will become bored by them. It's the fact that through charts and graphs and the in game coach, the game makes you think about your fitness and weight enough that you eventually realize you have no real excuse for being out of shape. And that you have no real choice but to go outside the game and figure out the answers for yourself in the real world.
Before:
After:
Hmmm...I kind of look the same.
Before Tuesday, there was no way a MacBook and a MacBook Pro could appear in a single review. Too much separated the two systems, from outer appearance (build materials and backlit keyboard) to inner nitty gritty (graphics processors, etc.). To group the two classes together would have been like simultaneously reviewing a Ford Focus and a Ford Mustang. But the new MacBook and MacBook Pro are far more similar than they are different. From the glass-bezel screen to the front side bus, these computers finally deserve to share the name MacBook. They're brothers, one a pro, the other a vastly accomplished amateur. Here's our verdict, after two days of thorough nonstop testing.
Build
Stylistically, distinguishing the new MacBook from the MacBook Pro is nearly impossible. They are both cut from a single piece of aluminum in what looks to be an identical manner, save for the MB obviously being smaller.
This new "unibody construction" process does make for a more solid laptop, too. The chassis is one piece, made stronger by its lack of connecting corners—and less prone to manufacturing flaws, according to Apple.
The case is indeed more rigid, flexing less while carrying the notebook one-handed and supporting our wrists better during typing. (The old MBP supported wrists just fine as well, but only because the weight was distributed from the case to the hard drive and optical drive. Carrying it would cause it to give a bit.)
Side beveling distinguishes the laptops as part of the MacBook Air generation, ditching the clean box design of yesteryear. But unibody construction has updated the design in subtle ways, recessing the keyboard through a formerly impossible non-welded aluminum curve—and a similar rounded chunk has been cut from the front of the system to make for easy opening.
When you open the new MacBooks, be careful not to smudge your iSight lens. It's positioned right where your fingers go—and ours is now covered with grease. In fact, the entire black gloss surrounding the screen is in pretty poor shape. Closing the computers is vastly improved, however. Instead of the bang of plastic and click of the hook lock, it's a gentle impact, soft like felt, held closed by invisible magnets. Setting down the laptop is more pleasant as well, as both the MB and MBP feature the Air's larger rubber pads.
Unfortunately, the new aluminum build still interferes with Wi-Fi signals. Historically aluminum laptops have had shorter ranges than their plastic counterparts and the new MacBooks are no exception. Stretching the limits of the new MacBook, the old MacBook (above left) located hotspots where the new MacBook (above right) did not. That's not to say the metal laptops are particularly bad and there's no indication that they're worse than current MacBook Pros.
The MB is half a pound lighter than its predecessor, and that's a weight difference you'll notice. It's significantly thinner, too, shaving off 0.13 inches, while retaining the same footprint. The MBP, however, is 0.2 inches wider and longer than its predecessor, while only losing a minor 0.05 inches of thickness. It is also 0.1 pounds heavier. (You can read more about these differences in our Sizemodo.) These adjustments help unify the design: Both new MacBooks share a thickness of 0.95 inches, which appears all the thinner due to the design's narrowed edges.
To many MacBook users, the greatest change will be the updated, clickable Multi-Touch trackpad. It's said to be made of glass, but it doesn't look or feel like glass, so don't expect the iPhone's screen to be transplanted below the keyboard. It feels almost the same as the old MBP trackpad, and the finish offers a perfect level of resistance, allowing the finger to slide around easily but not in a skating-on-ice kind of way. As for the clicking, it's the source of mixed feelings for us.
The base of this controversy is that the entire pad doesn't click. Instead, the surface sort of pivots like a springboard from the top edge. In turn, users will find the bottom part of the pad to have the most give when clicking, so much so that it almost feels like the old trackpad button is still there. Unfortunately, the springboard design also causes a dead zone in the middle where clicking takes a good deal of effort.
From a design perspective, the clicking allows the trackpad to be sleeker. The joke is that Jobs, long a proponent of single-button mice when most people favor two, has finally gone to zero buttons. From a usage perspective, not much changes. You can drag and drop with one finger by firmly pressing as you move, but there's a better chance you'll still use two fingers like you did with the old trackpad.
The new four-finger gestures, like sliding down for Exposé or sliding right to swap programs, are a win, but it can be awkward to make that four-finger claw while typing. We'd argue that Exposé is such a useful function that we'd like to reassign it to a less awkward three-finger slide, perhaps. Unfortunately, remapping gestures is not an option—boy, would it make a great firmware update.
On the laptops' underside you'll notice a big difference. The removable battery has been tucked under a panel next to an easily removable hard drive. Apple is offering a lot of expensive drive upsells, including a 128GB SSD for the Pro, but who cares? Replacing a MacBook hard drive with your own Newegg purchase no longer requires the complicated dissection of one's laptop. Held in by just a few screws, it's easier to replace than some tower hard drives. Of course, this elegant solution is like a gateway drug. Why not have another hatch for replacing the memory?
To the chagrin of at least a few long-time MBP users, the keyboards of both the MB and MB Pro have also been influenced by the Air as they're black, separated and intensely backlit. There's a ton of side light spill, which looks neat until it gets distracting. (Note: the entry-level silver MB does not have a backlit keyboard.) The function keys have been rearranged a bit as well.
But while the keyboards look indistinguishable from one another, they feel different. The MacBook's is softer and similar to the former MacBook. The Pro's is clickier and similar to the former Pro's. See a pattern? Not visible with the naked eye, you can feel the lineage of these systems, evidence that Apple has not forgotten its history or the taste of its various demographics.
The screens, too, are deceptively different between the MB and MBP. Both share LED backlighting and the shiny screen coating that can be quite a distraction—a user will find himself staring at his reflection with any decent amount of ambient light. But it's important to note that, beyond the spec-sheet distinction of the 13-inch screen's 1280x800 pixels and the 15-incher's 1440x900, these are not identical LCD technologies in different sizes.
The difference is clear when demoing an MPEG4 of Batman Begins. The MBP screen is warmer than the MB's to the discerning eye, but any dunce will catch the massive differences in contrast and viewing angle. Our shots in the dark exacerbate the MB's less impressive black levels, but this photo really is close to what we saw. As for the unwatchable distortions in image quality when five feet out or standing at a not-so-unthinkable viewing angle, those are just as bad to the naked eye as they are to camera. Notice the MBP screen remains unblemished from any angle/distance.
One design element of note: Both screens now tilt back another 10 to 15 degrees over previous generations. If you've ever sat there watching a Windows person pushing your MacBook display past its rotation point, you'll recognize just how important this update will be.
Connecting to an old external screen, however, could be problematic. The DVI port has been replaced by a mini DisplayPort in both new laptops. As for your old monitor, no biggie, if it's 24-inches or smaller just use a mini-DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter ($30). But if you're driving a 30-inch monitor, you'll need a mini-DisplayPort-to-dual-DVI adapter, which isn't bundled with either laptop and runs $100 on its own. Ouch. We're hoping for an aftermarket solution.
In terms of other ports, the MB offers gigabit Ethernet, two USBs, mini DisplayPort, mic and headphone jack. Note the one major omission: FireWire. Even the $1000 plastic MacBook has FireWire, though in truth there isn't a lot of FW support these days beyond professional applications—even new iPhones and iPods have ditched it completely. Upgrading to the MBP gives you all the ports in the MB but adds FireWire 800 and an ExpressCard slot. (FW400 devices need to track down a FW400-to-FW800 cable.) Plus, both new MacBooks have the snazzy battery-life indicator on the side next to the ports.
Operation and Performance
Examine the MB and MBP under the hood, and it quickly becomes apparent that the similarities are more than skin deep. For instance, while the MB starts at 2.0GHz, its processor reaches 2.4GHz in the $1600 configuration. This processor is the exact same one that you'll find in the lower-tier $2000 MBP—including the same 3MB L2 cache and 1066MHz front side bus. In fact, the only MBP to reach a 6MB L2 cache starts at $2,500. In other words, there's not much CPU benefit in that $700 gap between the baseline aluminum MB and the entry-level MBP. Oh, and no matter what you're willing to spend, both the MB and MBP hold a maximum of 4GB of memory.
So where's the power difference? Aside from the optional 2.53 and 2.8GHz CPUs, it's mainly in the video processing. The MB features a GeForce 9400M integrated graphics card that promises to be 5X faster than similar offerings from Intel. The MBP features that same integrated graphics card, but then adds a 256MB or 512MB GeForce 9600M GT alongside of it. Just make sure to note that the MBP doesn't run its dual graphics cards simultaneously. Only one runs at a time—the low-power one when the MBP is in "Better Battery Life" mode, and the amped one when in "Better Performance" mode—and you need to log out of the system in order to switch from one card to the other. Some notebook makers such as Alienware allow a computer to do this on the fly, and even use both video cards at once for full-throttle performance. (For more on this, check out Giz Explains.)
Next-gen GPUs used to be of consequence for only gamers, but the next generation of OS X, Snow Leopard, promises to use the GPU for lots of subtasks, especially anything math intensive like encoding video. We're already seeing individual apps like those in Adobe's new CS4 making use of the GPU for non-gaming tasks. A faster GPU with the new OS just over the horizon won't just do 3D faster—it'll make your whole computer faster. (More here, here and here.)
To test out the CPU and GPUs, we put the new MacBook, last generation MacBook Pro, the new MacBook Pro with power savings and the new MacBook Pro running at full speed through XBench and Geekbench performance tests.
From a CPU standpoint, the metal MB really is just a tiny MBP (our tested processors have nearly identical clock speeds). So unsurprisingly, performance gains between our MB and MBP test systems were negligible. GeekBench confirmed that basic and floating point processing were pretty much the same across the board.
In XBench especially, you'll notice that the old MacBook Pro has an edge. Most of this performance gap can be explained by its slightly faster 2.6GHz processor. However, in real world application, when dealing with big chunks of data the newer MB's 1066 MHz front side bus will offer benefits not seen in this graph. Notice the small performance spike in the memory task in current gen laptops. That's because the new memory is clocked at a faster speed.
Still, benefits from the previous generation to this one, or from the MB to MBP are slim, often falling below 5 and 10% even in the limited GPU benchmark tests. The differences are there, sure, but the performance gains between the $1600 MacBook and $2400 MacBook Pro are not astounding.
But benchmark programs can be deceiving with simple tasks that don't take into account how the whole system fits together, especially when we're talking about graphics. So we tested the systems in a real world application that could most accurately judge its GPU power, 3D gaming. We loaded Spore.
Admittedly, Spore may not be the best graphics benchmark as its animations are a bit rough to begin with. Still, the MB has noticeably more pop-ins and seems to be struggling loading complete textures. Then toward the end of the MacBook clip as the ship zooms back to land, the MacBook's integrated graphics, even while rendering the scene at a far lower resolution, can't compete with with the MacBook Pro and its discrete graphics. Unplayable choppiness ensues.
We'll be testing the GPU more in the future, but where the benchmarks came up short our eyes cannot be fooled. That integrated graphics card just doesn't compete.
According to Nvidia, those using Boot Camp should note that whatever power/graphics setting was last used in OSX will be applied to Windows. UPDATE: According to Apple, Boot Camp can only utilize the more powerful discrete graphics on the MBP.
But no matter how quickly these laptops are crunching numbers, the great news is, they're doing it with less lap heat. Both the new MB and MBP operate with cooler bottoms than before. Heat seems less likely to pool in the rear of the system now, and that's probably because of the unibody construction: Without rivets, screws or seams, it makes a great half-pound heatsink. This thermal update is critical, since Apple recently recalled a great number of their last-gen notebooks for heat-related video-card failures.
As for battery life, we tested the laptops under identical operation settings playing back an H.264 movie and then a DVD movie. (Screens were set to medium brightness, Wi-Fi on and keyboard backlighting on low.)
As you see, be it a digital download or an optical disc, it's tough to make it through any movie on the MBP. The DVD playback was worse even than older versions of the MBP. However, disabling discrete graphics in Power Saver mode buys over 40 minutes of DVD playback. So the good news is you'll make it through a movie. The bad news is that you'll have to neuter your MBP to get there.
So Who Needs The MacBook Pro over the Macbook?
In one word, pros. (Suiting, we know.) Video professionals will need the MBP because the MB no longer has FireWire, still a big deal for video guys. USB is fast, but its speeds aren't sustained. Those who use FireWire require predictable transfer rates, a connection that won't drop during realtime video playback from an external hard drive or capture from a video deck.
Anyone who requires an ExpressCard, too, will need to spend the extra cash on a MBP. Many 3G peripherals use this slot—and some correct Apple's willful memory-card ignorance by filling it with an SD/MS reader—but there are just as many USB peripherals, so its omission in the MB probably isn't as damning as FireWire's.
And then, of course, there's the group that requires the MacBook Pro's discrete graphics card with a half-gig of dedicated RAM. Large textures and massive Photoshop files require a level of performance that the basic MacBook's integrated graphics, even Nvidia's most boastworthy—just can't replace.
In this regard, we see the line drawn in the sand between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. Similar processors, different graphics and FireWire and ExpressCard only if you pay up.
Through the course of this review, we've focused on what makes the new MacBook different from the new MacBook Pro. We've sifted every detail we could find in what we're sure looks like a lot of nitpicking. So let us make it clear: The new MacBook is our favorite MacBook to date, and the same can be said about the new MacBook Pro. If you respected Apple build quality before, know that the latest unibody construction takes that quality to the next level with systems that are both durable and extremely comfortable to use.
But better still, the people who in the past might have been suckered into paying extra for the MacBook Pro's superior design now have the chance to buy a standard-priced MacBook and still glow with pride. It's not the huge price drop some were hoping for, but it's certainly savings for some.
The class boundary remains, but it's blurrier than ever. [All the New MacBook Details]
The Gadget: The Kodak Zi6, a cheap pocket camcorder that records 720p HD video, vying for title of best camcorder under $200.
The Price: $180
The Verdict: When I got my first look at the Zi6, I had an inkling it could be the best "cheap" pocket camcorder yet, and I was right. I've been using it for a while both indoors and outdoors, and found the video quality to be stellar no matter the situation. To make things simple, here's how the Zi6 would've fared if it had been out in time for my Ultimate Cheap Camcorder Battlemodo:
As you can see, this is a pretty badass pocket cam. The macro feature, a first on cheap camcorders like this, is a welcome way to film text and gadget screens up close. The camera's thick size actually makes it feel like a real piece of hardware and not something that could get lost in your bag. The HD recording is also great for giving users a bigger size for recording.
Despite all the good stuff, there are a few shortcomings with the Zi6. Most importantly, when switching between infinite and macro focus, or from low-light to full-light, the camera takes a while to refocus. Quick panning was similarly out of focus, and looked jagged at times. While HD was good for size, the Zi6 isn't recording at Blu-ray, or ever broadcast TV HD caliber. Truth is, the VGA should be sufficient for most videos. Finally, the USB connector popped open easily and often, a minor annoyance.
That said, the Zi6 may finally usher in the death of DV cams for most practical tasks. It takes clear video that can be imported to your PC immediately without fuss, and the AA battery slots ensure that you won't be stuck without power should the included rechargeables run dry. The Zi6 is truly best in its class, though that class is still "cheap pocket camcorders." [Kodak]
Examples of the Zi6 at work up close and at a distance in a variety of lighting situations:
The Week in iPhone Apps Spore Origins Hands-On Edition
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Steven Seagal and Richard Dean Anderson at Best Buy Geek Squad Black Tie Event
Steven Seagal and MacGyver from B Geezy on Vimeo.
The Gadget: The Torch flashlight from Wicked Lasers is currently being reviewed by Guinness as the world's most powerful flashlight. At 4100 lumens, the Torch can easily start fires and even fry eggs.
The Price: $300
The Verdict: Simply put, the Torch flashlight is like carrying around a floodlight in your hand. It is easily the most powerful and semi-frightening flashlight I have ever seen. However, let's not kid ourselves into thinking that this a practical device. The only reason anyone should ever buy the Torch is to impress other nerds.
Last month I reviewed the 160 lumens Duracell Daylite and found it to be a good choice for anyone looking for a powerful, practical flashlight. It's not a fair comparison by any means, but analyzing the results from that test against the Torch gives you a good idea of how bright this thing really is.
In order to illustrate its power, Wicked Lasers has released several videos showing the Torch burning paper, lighting matches and frying eggs. These claims are true—as you can see from my own test illustrated in the video above. But the heat this thing gives off is not all fun and games for pyromaniacs. It also severely limits the usability of the flashlight. After a few minutes of use, the Torch becomes too hot to hold in your hand. According to the user's manual, it should only be used in 3 minute intervals with at least 2 minutes of "rest" in between.
As you might have guessed, the battery life for the Torch is almost nil. I'm not sure what the exact figures are, but I doubt that you could get more than 10 minutes of continuous use out of a full-power 30-minute charge. And, to be quite honest, the scary charging unit above is fairly unreliable. I found myself frequently resetting the magnets because it registered a full charge prematurely.
Obviously, I can't recommend something this expensive, impractical and, quite frankly, dangerous—but if you are willing to drop $300 on a gadget that will impress your friends for a minute or two, the Torch will definitely get the job done. [Wicked Lasers]
When we first heard about EFiX—a simple USB dongle that'll let you magically install Leopard on your PC—it sounded too fantastic to be true. Well, I used it to turn my gaming PC into a Mac Pro over the weekend, and I'm somewhat amazed to say this, but it works perfectly.
I grabbed all the updates straight from Apple—including 10.5.5 last night, so you don't have to wait for a hacked patch like you would running a typical Hackintosh—installed a whole bunch of software and have been using it for several days. It runs beautifully, just like a real Mac Pro.
The Process
There are, of course, rules you have to adhere to, as there tends to be when using black magic. The major one with EFiX, and its only real "catch," is that you have to use the supported hardware, not a very long list indeed. But outside of the Gigabyte motherboard requirement (reportedly some Asus boards using a P45 chipset also work), it's actually fairly generic. I just happened to have everything on the list.
If you've got the hardware, the whole process is simple, so that even if you've never cracked your desktop before, you could still get this done with a quick search online for the requisite know-how. I plugged the EFiX dongle into a USB header on my motherboard—not, as you might have assumed, to a USB port on the outside. That's really it for getting your hands dirty, though. I restarted my computer, selected EFiX as the boot device—it was listed under hard drives, actually—and was greeted with a drive selector. After selecting the Leopard disc, it started installing without a hitch.
Okay, there was a slight hitch. My video card, an Nvidia 8800GT, isn't supported by the firmware EFiX ships with. EFiX already has the update on the site, but its updater is only coded for 32-bit Windows. If, like me, you run Vista 64-bit, you will have to install Vista 32-bit on the drive you intend to put Leopard on, just to update the stupid firmware.
After I did that, everything was peachy. The only slight inconsistency is that my 8800GT shows up as a 256MB card, when it's actually a 512MB card, and my 1066MHz RAM is only running at 800MHz apparently. But that's sorta trivial.
The Numbers
Here are some benchmarks compared to some numbers Adam over at Lifehacker ran for his Hacktinosh vs. a MacBook Pro and Mac Pro. Obviously, my hardware is newer—a 3GHz E8400 Wolfdale Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM (running at the slower 800MHz, rather than 1066MHz) and an Nvidia 8800 GT (with the OS only recognizing half of the memory). The total guts of my computer cost just under $800 when I put it together in May, hard drive included. (Mac Pros start at $2,300.)
Day to Day
One thing to keep in mind is that EFiX has to interlope every time you want to boot to Leopard, so a cold boot takes at least two minutes, between booting to EFiX, picking Leopard, then loading it up. And when you go into Windows, EFiX will show up as an attached USB drive. These aren't dealbreakers—once you're up, performance is great. Overall, the experience is really incredible for how smooth and seamless it is. Updates, installing software, everything is just like a real Mac. The best way to put it is this: I've got a Mac Pro now.
I occasionally feel like Windows is running just a smidge more slowly, but benchmarks compared to before I installed EFiX don't support that creeping feeling, so I chalk it up to paranoia.
Is the dongle worth $170 $155 (EFiX USA originally quoted me $170)? That's a personal question. Do you wanna go through the usually more complicated—but free—Hackintosh process? Perhaps the best way to look at it is this: If you've already got the supported hardware, it's like buying a Mac for $155, since you can still have your trusty PC just a restart away on the same machine. Also, even as simplified as it is, you still need to know what you're doing. There's no official tech support, though there is a very active forum that provides helpful answers to queries.
Updated: EFiX USA is handing all of the distribution in the US for E-FiX.com, who actually doesn't do any of that. They were selling units on eBay but their main site looks like it's up now. So far in our dealings with the company (who sent us EFiX to review) we haven't had any reason to think they're scamming anyone, but it's understandable if you wanna approach this with caution. [EFiX, EFiX USA]
The Gadget: Nikon's D300 is a 12.3MP camera with 200-6400 (hi mode) ISO, a 3-inch LCD, 51 autofocus points and a prosumer magnesium body on the fence, but teetering more towards pro than consumer. Inside is a DX-sensor, not quite the FX sensor found in the better D3 and D700 cams. It's not directly competitive with either the cheaper 50D or the more expensive 5D from Canon.
The Price: $1799 with no lens.
The Verdict:
Having been a Canon fan for quite some time, the D300 blew me away in 4 basic aspects. Shooting gadgets and liveblogs over a few months, it was clear that the Nikon D300, shooting to small JPGs from the hip, had a lot better time resolving white balance and the colors were more saturated (like old Fuji film) without being grotesque. Low light performance was the best I've seen yet; even less grainy in the most recent Apple liveblog than when I used the EOS 1D Mark III, with noticeably cleaner blacks. The 18-200mm kit glass was as good as they say it is for a consumer lens. The 51-point AF system is better than the 40D's, which often couldn't lock on darker objects. The LCD was easily viewable in daylight. And by far, Nikon's menu scheme is modern, whereas many competing cameras are not even close to being this easy to navigate.
I've used the D300 to shoot the most recent liveblog, as I said, and the camera did well but I think it could do better with a faster piece of glass at the 200mm mark (the VR lens I used sits at F5.6 at this focal length). Still, it performed admirably, and is my favorite DSLR to date. (Although I am playing with a D700 right now.)
I also used it to shoot the iPhone 3G in our review:
And some sailing.
Come on, let's be real, this camera deserves a real review:
I'll not claim to have plunged to the depths of what this camera can do, using in in a very specific and spontaneous way during live events and fast reviews. I've also shot at low res, and have uploaded shots with even more compression. This is not a scientific test by any means. If you're really considering this camera, I recommend reviews by DPreview, DCResource and DigitalCameraInfo (But watch out for the annoying inter-page ads on that last link.)
[D300]
Just yesterday we got our first taste of Panasonic's new TH-65VX100U plasma technology, which features specs that meet or exceed Pioneer's Kuro. Our initial impressions were extremely positive, but Gary at HD Guru managed to get his hands on an early production sample for a closer look, and he too was impressed. In fact, he called it the "new king of flat panels."
During the review he broke down some of the technology behind the eye popping specs, as well as taking note of a feature set that is high on performance and low on ordinary TV functions. Being a monitor, the 65VX100U does not feature a built-in HDTV or analog tuner and standard definition source imputs like composite and S-video. However, it does include 4 HDMI jacks, one component video, one PC input (VGA), and a RS-232 jack.
As far as performance is concerned, Gary compared it side by side with the 50-inch Kuro and found that Pioneer won on ultimate black level and in the effectiveness of its anti-reflective screen, but the latter results in an purple-reddish tint that can be clearly seen when compared side by side with the 65VX100U. The Kuro also requires a higher level signal to come out of black, which obscured details that the Panasonic did not. All in all, it seems that if you have $10,000 to plunk down on a 65-inch flat panel, the 65VX100U should be at the top of your list. [HD Guru]
Tonight in Denver, Panasonic revealed its newest plasma technology, the 65" custom-install-only VX100 monitor, whose specs meet or beat Pioneer's hallowed Kuro. That means 60,000:1 contrast ratio with 7,160 shades of gradation for visible detail in the darker shadows. At 65 inches, you will pay $10,000 a panel, but not to worry: Panasonic will roll out a 50 incher soon, which is sure to be (a teeny tiny tad) cheaper. We sat in a dark room and got to compare the VX100 with its predecessor, the 65PF. Though the results in the room were startlingly vivid, you can get a sense of what's going on here in our still shots:If you're really crazy about TV technology, jump for a second gallery of slides from the presentation—but, as they say on MythBusters, there's some "science content" ahead, so put the drink down and focus...
Though the first buyers will likely be rich dudes, the movie business is also going to be interested in it as a monitor, since it can handle 120% of the HDTV color gamut, enough to maybe get a good looking movie on a TV for one damn time. And let's not forget that Pioneer has shut down its own panel production lines and plans to go with Panasonic's. I aske