I recently came across a problems with my MacBooks fan which caused it to stop working. I’ve just ordered a replacement, but in the meantime I’m using the MacBook passively cooled, with surprising results. Here’s what I’ve found so far, hopefully it would be useful if you’re thinking about tinkering with your cooling system or if something goes wrong.

Update: Just to let you know that this post just summarises my findings. I’d like to point that tinkering has its risks, so be prepared to take responsibility if yours doesn’t go the same way. 

Passively cooled MacBook Pro

I’ve detailed how the MacBook Pro 13 cools itself in this blog post, so if you’re interested you can read on…

Right, back to the subject of this post. A decade or so ago, taking the fan off a system was suicide. AMD CPUs would literally burn out, taking the motherboard with them, while many Intel CPUs would quickly throttle to the point of becoming unusable. Thankfully, times have changed and most CPUs (especially mobile CPUs) almost never burn out and have safety mechanisms to ensure that they don’t overheat and damage the system. Lower idle power draw also means greater thermal headroom to use the system at full performance for longer.

For this particular system, the Core 2 Duo P8600 has a maximum operation temperature of 105°C, and under normal conditions with the fan, CPU temperature barely reaches ~90°C. I’m not sure what the Nvidia 320M GPU and northbridge are rated for, but they should have a similar maximum operating temperature.

At idle, both the CPU and GPU combined have a power draw of ~2.06W (about the same as a mobile SoC under full load) so they should have no problems with temperature. Under light workload (text editing with music etc), both CPU and GPU draw ~3.5W (similar to a Nexus 10′s Exynos 5 SoC under full load) which again should be manageable. Under full load however, the combined power draw of both CPU and GPU is ~27W, possibly more, and this requires active cooling to sustain this level of performance.

Load Temperatures

With Fan in Blue and Without Fan in Green. Temperature in °C

Under full load with the fan, CPU and GPU temperatures are never high enough to cause throttling, and the system remains responsive. Fans are spinning at 5300RPM, so there is still some thermal headroom (maximum RPM is 6000RPM) to allow for higher ambient temperatures. Battery temperatures are reasonable and palm rest warms up a little, but nothing to write home about.

Without the fan, the results are quite dramatic. CPU temperature hits 96°C (very quickly) and it is around this temperature where the CPU throttles resulting in a noticeable performance decrease. Once the CPU throttles, temperatures stabilises and doesn’t increase any further. The GPU temperatures (which are generally higher than CPU due to the nature of the heat pipe on the 2010 MacBook Pro) are slightly more worrying, with a peak at 103°C, considerably higher than with the fan (90°C). Although temperatures stabilise, the system remains almost completely unresponsive due to throttling.

Early Conclusion: without a fan, don’t stress the both the CPU and CPU, as throttling would make the system unresponsive. Tasks which are quite taxing but don’t fully utilise both CPU and GPU (Image editing, light gaming etc) can be done quite comfortably, albeit with a slight decrease in performance when throttling kicks in.

Idle Temperatures

With Fan in Blue and Without Fan in Green. Temperature in °C

Idle temperatures show a similar increase in temperature as load. Interestingly, idle temperatures without pre-load (when the system has resumed from standby, then left to idle) with and without the fan are the same (not shown in graph). Placing load on the system and allowing it to idle results in differences in temperatures between the fan and fanless variables. Without a fan, residual heat “hangs around” and doesn’t seem to dissipate very quickly once the system is idle.

Battery Woes

Clearly, running the system without the fan results in higher operating temperatures resulting in a shorter lifespan of the components. The CPU and GPU both throttle to prevent immediate damage to the system which allows the MacBook to be safely used passively cooled. The component which concerns me is the battery.

Li-Ion (and Li-Poly) batteries are especially sensitive to temperature, and higher operating temperatures results in a shorter life span. An increase in 15°C (as shown in the idle temperature graph) can accelerate capacity loss by 15% over a year. The battery tends to heat up to ~35°C during load regardless of whether a fan is present or not, but it takes much longer for the battery to “cool off” when idling without a fan. I would advise that if you are passively cooling the system, don’t tax the components too much while charging.

Slight Modification

The heatsink can be thermally bound to the bottom plate of the MacBook by sandwiching a strip of metal between the two surfaces. I used thermal paste on the heatsink side to aid the binding of the surfaces, however the bottom plate has a handy plastic strip over the heatsink which seems to mould itself around the metal strip, creating a nice thermal contact. It’s not a perfect thermal solution, but it does the trick.

Thermal paste used to bind the metal strip to the heatsink. Thickness ~4mm. The fan is in there solely to help secure the metal strip.

Under load, the bottom plate now becomes much warmer, and the heat is much more noticeable around the heatsink area. Load temperatures haven’t fallen much (or noticeably so anyway), but general system performance has increased slightly…

…So I decided to measure how long it would take until the MacBook to throttle the CPU under heavy workload. I ran a few OCR tests at ambient temperature. OCR places a relatively consistent load on the system, and is limited to CPU performance so should be a reliable test. Between tests, the system  was turned off to reach ambient temperature (30 mins).

Time in Seconds

With the fan, the CPU never throttles during the OCR test and maintains peak performance throughout the test. Without the fan and it took ~70 seconds before the CPU became too hot (peak = 103°C) and started to throttle. With the mod however, peak performance was maintained for ~100 seconds before any throttling occurred. This probably indicates that the mod was a success, albeit a small one. Better thermal binding of the heatsink to the bottom plate may have yield better results.

Passive Cooling, is it worth it?

From my short time testing the fanless MacBook Pro, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the results. Problems didn’t arise as often as I expected, and as long as workloads are kept low (daily tasks such as e-mail, web browsing, videos etc), performance is virtually indistinguishable from an actively cooled system. However, demand more of the system (complex image editing, gaming, batch processing files, OCR(ing) etc) and throttling kicks in to slow everything down.

I find that removing the fan reduces the MacBooks capability to that of an iPad or tablet. If you are going this route for whatever reason, as long as you keep your usage expectations similar to that of an iPad, then it’ll work for you. Of course, occasionally, software updates or other important tasks require full utilisation of the hardware, and it is at these times when having a functional fan might be a good idea although worst comes to worst, tasks would just finish slower.

And finally, theres the case for noise. Replacing a hard drive with an SSD goes a long way to make the system quiet (most idle noise actually comes from the hard drive, not the fan). Removing the fan has a smaller effect, because at 2000RPM, the fans are almost silent anyway. Removing the fans presents a tradeoff, lower sustained performance in exchange for silent operation.

More Pictures…

Control rampant background apps with App Tamer

The purpose of App Tamer is quite simple, “pause” selected background apps to prevent them from using CPU, then instantaneously resume them when you need them. My workload involves having almost all of my frequently used applications open at once, and switching between them as I work. Of course, you probably won’t want to do this on a Windows computer, but the “Mission Control” feature in Mountain Lion makes it feasible work like this (8GB of RAM and an SSD probably help as well).

The problem is that normally, I only use 1 or 2 apps at a time, and those in the background are constantly using CPU. Idling on the desktop, CPU usage with all apps open is ~15% (with Skype contributing to ~7%). Idle CPU usage should ideally be closer to 5%.

Spinning Beach Ball

Apps which have been stopped by App Tamer will appear as “Not Responding” by the OS, and unless you switched to that particular app, it would be completely unusable. A recent update (1.3.2) allows a stopped app to resume automatically when you start scrolling, useful if you’re working on two windows side by side.

A Few Tests

Battery Life, With and Without App Tamer

Idle battery life shows a huge difference, with the CPU able to spend more time in C4 sleep state. This test was done on a Core 2 Duo MBP, newer Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge MBPs may see an even larger difference due to lower idle power consumption. 

Light workload includes web browsing, watching a few videos etc. Still a reasonable difference in battery life.

The heavy workload involves scanning a PDF using OCRKit, a task which stresses the CPU, Memory and read/writes to the SSD. Graphics is mostly idle in this test. Very little difference due to maxed out CPU, although with lower background CPU usage, the task may have fished quicker.

Idle CPU Temperatures (Room Temperature 26 degrees C)

Notebook left to idle for 15 minutes at room temperature. Fan = 2000RPM.

What to Stop

Generally, you would want to stop only windowed applications that you’ve installed, and leave background/system processes alone. Apps for media playbacks such as iTunes, QuickTime, Movist etc shouldn’t be autostopped (doing so would stop playback when the application is in background).

Safari is a good one to autostop for example, leaving a Facebook tab open while in the background causes the browser to use ~7% CPU. App Tamer is smart enough to let downloads finish before stopping Safari.

Evernote can be autostopped, though if you use services which integrate with Evernote (such as clippers etc), these would “freeze” while they wait for Evernote to respond. This is also the reason why the Finder shouldn’t be autostopped.

Twitter and Tweetdeck can be autostopped safely, though obviously you lose the ability to update tweets/mentions etc in the background. However, App Tamer can “wake” stopped background apps at specified intervals to allow them to update/free memory etc.

Skype is an interesting one. While it isn’t an app I’d recommend autostopping, idle CPU usage is so ridiculously high that I find it beneficial to autostop it, saving ~7% CPU in the process. Although receiving calls becomes impossible.

Photoshop (and to less extent, Pixelmator) also have unusually high idle CPU usage. These applications are perfect for autostopping.

Fluid App

Fluid is a OSX app which allows you to create “applications” from websites. These applications are separate from Safari, allowing more granular over autostop. As of 1.3.2, support for Fluid is quite patchy but an update to fix this is on the way.

Pricing

At ~£13.14 GBP (inc VAT), App Tamer is reasonably priced for what it does. Of course, if your workflow doesn’t involve many applications open in the background, then App Tamer would make very little difference. However, I would assume most users would benefit from App Tamer, even if you don’t have a plethora of apps open. Simply having Photoshop running in the background utilises 5% CPU, and quitting/restarting the app would be slow (and probably use more power anyway), and this is where App Tamer really makes a difference. It stops apps in the background, but keeps the process open, so that the moment you need to use the app, its ready.

Find App Tamer here!

http://www.stclairsoft.com/AppTamer/

Enter the ZTE MF60 MiFi, a device which magically turns your sim’s data plan into a portable wireless hotspot.

Appearance

Looking at the MF60 there really isn’t anything special to say. The glossy plastic construction is reasonably sturdy and OLED display gives indication to signal strength, battery status and connected devices. The right side houses an on/off button, followed by a MicroSD card slot and a WPS button for quick and easy initial setup. A glossy plastic construction would inevitably pick up scratches quite easily, but I’m guessing it’s also there to prevent antennae issues.The left is home to an antennae port should you want to boost signal strength, although for personal use the MiFi’s range is more than adequate.

The back plate of the device snaps off with a quick pry of the recessed cover, revealing a 5.6Whr batter and a slide in SIM slot. While I wouldn’t recommend it, it is possible to stick in a Micro (or even a Nano) SIM should the need arise.

Performance

The MF60 is rated for HSPA+ and depending on your network you should see peak speeds of ~2MByte/s. It’s quite disappointing that the MF60 only supports up to 802.11b/g and not N. While a 3G network would have trouble saturating even 802.11g, tasks like file transfers over the network are incredibly hindered. I see speeds of ~10MByte/s when transferring files through my home 802.11a/b/g/n router, but the MiFi tops out at 1.5MByte/s. Of course, if you’re using this as a quick and easy way of getting on the internet, 802.11g shouldn’t be a problem, but those planning on turning this into a do it all media hub should look elsewhere.

The MicroSD card slot on the device supports SDHC cards up to 32GB, and using the supplied MicroUSB connector it’s quick and easy to access data on the MicroSD card. Unfortunately thats about the only way of accessing it. There is no way of accessing the storage via WiFi which seriously hinders it’s potential.

Niggles

Data plans don’t come cheap, and certainly if you go over data limits you’ll be in for a nasty bill shock. Most Huawei MiFi devices have data monitors which let you know how much data you’ve used. The ZTE MF60 has no such thing, not even on the web interface. This means the only way of monitoring your data usage is through your network provider which usually involves logging into their website. Possibly the biggest missing feature of the MF60.

Web Interface

The MF60′s web interface (192.168.0.1) is very easy to use and allows quick setup of the device. In fact, chances are all you need to do is pop in a 3G SIM card from any major provider and APN settings would change automatically. This worked for my 3 SIM card, but for Giffgaff and smaller network providers you would need to enter APN settings manually.

The web interface allows you to quickly set-up basic functions such SSID, passcode as well as showing network status etc. A simple interface is also included for SMS which also allows you to reply.

Battery Life

The weakest point of the device. ZTE rates the device up to 4 hours of continuous use, and this is generally what I see give or take an hour or so. Depending on how you use it, chances are your laptop may outlast the MiFi device itself, and that’s not great if you plan on dumping your phones data plan for the MiFi. With continuous use, most tablets and smartphones nowadays get 5-10 hours of battery life, with newer “transformer” style tablets getting up to 16 hours so this is something to take into consideration before settling on a MiFi for your cellular data needs.

Unfortunately, the device takes quite a long time to charge, well over 3.5 hours to full capacity. This is not something you’ll be able to charge for 10 minutes at the coffee shop and expect it to last an entire evening. Expect the usage model for the MiFi to be similar to that of your phone, i.e. charge it every night.

ZTE isn’t all to blame though. Many smartphones with tethering capabilities see similar battery life when used as a WiFi hotspot, and indeed other MiFi devices I’ve tried (including the Huawei E586) also last roughly 4 hours when used continuously. Thankfully the MF60 goes into “sleep” mode after 10 minutes of inactivity so long as all devices connected to the network disconnect, which ZTE rates for up to 100 hours of sleep time.

Conclusion

On paper the idea of a MiFi is great, allowing you to share one data plan across many devices and usually this works out much cheaper than having separate data plans for each device. However in use the MF60, and in fact most other MiFi type devices fall short. Performance and battery life issues stop them from being anything more than a alternative way of getting on the internet when things go wrong. Having said that, battery life issues can easily be remedied by using external battery packs (the MF60 uses a MicroUSB port after all).

If you are looking for a mobile hotspot, an unlikely recommendation is a 3G iPad (iPad 3 and above). The iPad 3′s massive 42WHr battery rivals many notebooks, and using it as a 3G hotspot delivers well over 14 hours of battery life (with display off, the iPad 3/4 is essentially a smartphone with a gigantic battery). (Obviously, this is only a plus if you’ve already got an iPad 3/4 or considering getting one)

And then there’s pricing… At ~£55 from Amazon, the ZTE MF60 compares very well with other MiFi devices, although expect prices to fluctuate greatly. I would however, recommend the Huawei E586, or the budget screen-less E5331, purely because they their web interfaces have data monitors which allow you to see how much of the data plan you’ve eaten into, as well as 802.11n support on the E586.  Yes they do cost a bit more than the MF60, but if you’re using this for anything more than getting online now and then, it’ll be worth it.

The bulk of this review is written around OSX, and I won’t focus too much on performance, as my MacBook Pro only supports SATA 2, an interface which is slower than the maximum possible throughput of the SSD itself. If you want the full fat performance offered by a modern SSD, make sure your notebook supports the SATA 3 standard. 

A brief rant on SLC, MLC and TLC NAND

The 840 (not “Pro” version) is the first high end consumer SSD to use TLC NAND. Put simply, TLC NAND can store 3 bits per cell, MLC can store 2 and SLC only stores one. Therefore, TLC drives are able to store large amounts of data on a relatively smaller area of NAND, and because NAND is generally expensive, TLC and MLC drives tend to be cheaper than SLC counterparts.

SLC drives are however generally more desirable than TLC and MLC however, due to the fact that with only 1 bit per cell, SLC drives are less prone to failure and are usually more resilient than TLC and MLC drives. Early SSDs with SLC NAND were rated at ~1,000,000 write/erase cycles; in TLC drives this is reduced to around 1,000 cycles. This means that once every cell in the SSD has been written/erased 1,000 times, the cells have “worn out” and reliability and performance become uncertain.

This isn’t the only problem though. As NAND manufactures switch to smaller processes to make NAND, endurance also decreases. Most consumer SSDs (including the Samsung 840) use NAND manufactured to a 2xnm process, and a thinner oxide layer in each cell means that they are more prone to wearing out. The use of TLC in a high performance drive also has its own drawbacks. Because there are 8 possible voltage states per cell, the controller must ensure that the correct voltage is achieved to write to the cell, and this takes time which slows performance.

Thankfully, the SSD 840 is not a complete disaster (it wouldn’t be sold as a high end consumer SSD otherwise). Samsung has built in some smart technologies which makes full use of the inherently limited number of write/erase cycles of TLC NAND. Wear levelling algorithms shuffle data around to ensure that all the cells are used equally, while being completely transparent to the OS. Some such as TRIM need to have specific OS support (for example, OSX supports TRIM on Apples own SSDs, but not third party drives), although a simple workaround can fix this. Desktop OSes can be quite hard on SSD’s, and some modifications have to be made to ensure that the OS doesn’t write the SSD to death.

Life Expectancy of TLC NAND

Assuming the write/erase cycle limit of TLC NAND is 1,000, we can estimate the lifespan of the Samsung 840 under normal workloads. Most consumer workloads consist of ~10GB of writes to the disk per day. Write amplification however means that more data is actually being written/erased due to wear levelling (the controller shuffling things around) and we can assume that an average user writing 10GB to disk per day would actually be writing ~100GB to NAND.

For the 840 500GB model and assuming that an additional 12GB is reserved for spare area as well as 1,000 read/write cycles, around 512,000GB of data can be written to the drive before every NAND cell exhausts it’s 1,000 read/write cycles. If 100GB is being written to NAND every day, that equals to ~14 years of life from the SSD before every cell hits 1,000 write/erase cycles.

Samsung also sells a 250GB and 120GB model of the SSD 840, and we can assume that their actual NAND capacity is 256GB and 128GB (the extra space left over to replace bad blocks, and to aid in wear levelling). The life of these drives would theoretically be lower under the same workloads (7 years and 3.5 years for the 250GB and 120GB drives respectively) due to a lower number of NAND cells. We can now see why Samsung isn’t offering a 64GB model of the 840 drive. Theoretically, a TLC 64GB model under the same conditions would exhaust all of its 1,000 write/erase cycles in about a year. Not good for Samsung if they’re offering 3 year warranties on their 840 drives, and certainly not great for the user. Unless improvements in TLC NAND endurance or controller technologies are made, we may not see a TLC 64GB SSD for a while.

For those interested, the SSD 840 “Pro” versions of Samsung’s SSD lineup uses MLC NAND, which has an endurance of ~5,000 write/erase cycles. Assuming the same 10GB of writes per day (and 10x write amplification) these drives can theoretically last 70, 35 or 17.5 years for the 512, 256 and 128GB drives respectively before exhausting the NAND. That’s huge, and Samsung’s 5 year warranties for these drives seem a little short considering. But the 840 Pro is aimed at users with photography/database and movie editing in mind, and these workloads are likely to write a lot more than the 10GB per day of client workloads so in actual use these numbers may be lower.

Boot Performance

Possibly the first thing you notice after installing an SSD is the speed of boot up. My boot up routine includes booting up the OS (obviously), then loading my frequently used applications (around 16 of them, including Safari, Pixelmator, Tweetdeck, Pages, iTunes, etc). This routine can take ~7 minutes for the Mac to complete (for the system to reach a useable state) which explains why I only reboot every month or so.

Full CPU utilisation during a speedy startup, a good sign that storage is no longer the bottleneck. CPU usage would be much lower with a HDD, but startup would take much longer.

Post SSD, the the same process (boot, launch all applications) takes less than a minute to complete, and the system is still responsive even when apps are launching. In fact, I would go as far as to say the booting up from an SSD feels faster than resuming from sleep from an HDD.

Standby/Resume

After installing an SSD, I disabled safe sleep/hibernation (to prevent excessive writes to the SSD during sleep), details of how to do this can be found here. Sleep now takes 5 seconds (before it took around 30) and resuming to a useable desktop is instantaneous.

With a HDD, resuming from sleep involves waiting for ~1 minute to Wifi to connect and the system to pull updates for e-mail, Twitter etc. I assumed this was a network issue, i.e. the OS was waiting to download all the relevant information. However with an SSD, the system was useable the moment the Mac resumed from sleep. Wifi connected instantly and the system was still responsive while e-mails and Tweets downloaded. It strangely feels like an iPad in this respect. No longer do I have to wait for the system to become responsive when I want to use it.

Scrolling Performance

One area where I didn’t expect to see the SSD improve was scrolling, although tasks involving content already stored in RAM (such as scrolling down a website) haven’t improved. Scrolling through lists where the content is stored on the SSD is much faster. I have many large iPhoto albums, and scrolling through them used to be a pain as frame rates dropped below 10FPS. I always assumed this was a GPU/CPU/Memory throughput issue, however it turns out to be a thumbnail issue. The hard drive before simply couldn’t provide the random performance to load thumbnails quickly enough when scrolling through long lists, but the SSD allows the system to scroll through with ease. CPU spikes are generally more evident now, as the SSD can deliver data fast enough to generate the thumbnails in the first place.

It’s not just iPhoto though, scrolling performance in Evernote, Contact Sheet View in the Preview app, Carousel (a great Mac Instragram client) and even through the Finder has been significantly improved. Frames are still dropped occasionally (although I would put the blame now on the CPU/GPU/RAM) due to the fact that this is still an old Mac (“Penryn” Core 2 Duo P8660, Geforce 320M, 1066MHz 8GB RAM), but the experience is very much improved.

Power Consumption and Heat

Samsung SSD’s boast the lowest power consumption numbers on the market, possibly something to do with the fact that they manufacture the controller, NAND and DRAM, allowing them to optimise idle power more effectively. The 840 is no exception to this, and in testing by AnandTech, the 840 (and the “Pro” version) use only 0.31W in idle. This is amazing, and less than half of most HDD’s (and SSDs) on the market.

Read/write power consumption numbers are quite high (~4.5W) and certainly compared to some HDD’s (~3W) doesn’t seem favourable. We have to consider however that the amount of time an SSD actually spends doing anything under normal workloads is extremely low because data throughput is so high.  Therefore even with higher read/write power consumption numbers, an SSD spends much more time in idle, and therefore saves power compared to HDDs.

In my testing, my MacBook Pro with a Samsung M8 HDD gets ~7.5 hours in idle (Wifi on, display brightness low, apps in background and CPU usage ~5%). With the Samsung 840 SSD, idle battery life rises to 9.5 hours, a ~2 hour difference! Under light workload, I usually see a 1.5 hour improvement which is still very noticeable. The fact that I don’t spend much time waiting for the Mac to respond is already a plus for productivity.

It has to be noted that if you’re serious about power consumption, the 840 Pro would suit your needs better (albeit for a much higher asking price). The Pro version uses MLC NAND (as opposed to TLC NAND in the “non Pro” version) and while idle power consumption is the same for both models, the Pro version consumes considerably less during read/write due to the MLC NAND. TLC NAND requires very careful processing to be read/written correctly, which takes time and of course, energy.

Because the drive spends most of its time in idle, heat is almost never an issue. The drive itself stays within 3 degrees C of ambient temperature, and during intense read/write activity, the drive never exceeds 15 degrees of ambient temperature. The chassis of the MacBook Pro is generally quite good at dissipating heat from high performance spinning hard drives, and the 840 never faces any problems with heat in my experience.

A few crude Benchmarks

As noted at the top of the post, my personal Mac does’t have SATA 3 support (it tops out at SATA 2 which has a theoretic limit of 3Gbits/s, or 375MBytes/s) The Samsung 840 is capable of delivering sequential reads exceeding 500MBytes/s, so clearly testing peak performance is not going to be possible using a SATA 2 interface. I can give you a few tests to compare the performance between the Samsung 840 and a relatively bog standard Samsung M8 5400RPM HDD, though bear in mind that these numbers are more likely to represent SSDs vs HDDs in general due to the SATA 2 bottleneck.

Boot up and launch frequently used applications, applications include iTunes, Safari, Pixelmator, Fluid, Tweetdeck, Pages, Evernote, Mail etc.

HDD: 7mins 32s

SSD: 58s

Opening iPhoto, I quit iPhoto in Full Screen mode, so it must transition to Full Screen when re-opened

HDD: 23s

SSD: 5s

Time for Carbon Copy Cloner to consider files to backup

HDD: 9mins 45s

SSD: 2mins 15s

Time to open 46MB Pixelmator image

HDD: 8s

SSD: <1s

Time to open Muscle System Pro (Mac App by 3D4Medical), a fairly large app which causes the HDD to max out at ~50MB/s.

HDD: 34s

SSD: 7s

Time to open Tweet dialog after boot, a small delay in this part of the UI is very noticeable and distracting

HDD: 2s

SSD: Instantaneous

Time for Safari to render web thumbnails in Top Sites view after boot

HDD: 1s

SSD: Instantaneous

Appearance

If the Samsung SSD 840 was a phone, Apple would probably sue Samsung, again.

When I had a go at reviewing the Samsung M8 hard drive, the appearance of the drive was a difficult section, as the drive looked virtually identical to any other HDD. The Samsung 840 SSD however is a completely different monster. Picking up the drive reminded me of the iPhone 5, it’s slim, light and has a chamfered edge. Heck, even looking at both devices from the side, it’s quite difficult to distinguish the two. This is possibly the sexiest, and most well made piece of kit you would never see (unless you like taking apart your computer on a regular basis). I would argue that there are some high end phones on the market with build quality inferior to the Samsung 840.

Being a 7mm drive, the Samsung 840 should fit in most notebooks which take a standard 2.5″ SATA drive. Because the drive is 7mm, extra care should be taken to check whether your notebook is able to accommodate the slim form factor. On Unibody MacBook Pro’s this shouldn’t be a problem, as the mounting screws are in the same place and you just end up with a bit more free space around the drive once mounted. Some other notebooks (such as those which require a mounting bracket) may not be able to hold the 7mm drive, and may require adapters.

Conclusion

The scope of this review largely covers the differences in SSD’s vs HDDs in terms of performance, rather than the Samsung 840 itself. If you’re going to make one upgrade to your PC or Mac, an SSD is where your money would be best spent. A faster CPU will only speed up CPU bound tasks, and more memory doesn’t help when loading unique information from storage. If your computer is running slowly, or UI isn’t responding as quickly as you’d like, chances are its probably the storage causing the issue, not the CPU/Memory as I found. Yes they are expensive, and yes you do sacrifice on capacity, but it’s the closest thing to buying a new computer without actually forking out for a new one.

As for the Samsung 840, being a new drive on the market and the first of its kind to run on TLC NAND, it’s difficult to say how it stands up to the rigours of client workload, and long term reliability in the real world is hard to determine. During my short time with it so far, I haven’t run into any issues and the firmware problems which have plagued pre-release review samples have been fixed in all drives sold to consumers now. Early testing has shown it to be a fast performing drive, keeping up with and exceeding much of the MLC based competition from 2012.

Power consumption is a major plus of this drive. Many SSD’s on the market boast idle power consumption numbers close to that of spinning hard drives, and while the 840 consumes a lot under load (even compared to other SSDs), it’s extremely low idle power consumption is the key to providing longer battery life in a normal client workload. If you’re trying to find a reason for picking this over any other SSD, then power consumption is a pretty good one.

And then there’s pricing. At around £340, this SSD doesn’t come cheap, but at ~68p/GB, it’s among the lowest in the market while delivering solid performance/power consumption. The Samsung 840′s pricing also shows the cost benefits of TLC NAND, the 840 is already great value compared to the competition and its a relatively new product on the market. In 6 months time, pricing for TLC drives is likely to become even more attractive, hopefully resulting in higher capacities and greater use in the mainstream.

So you’ve got a confidential, secretive or naughty (dare I say it) file you wish to delete from your computer. You go on and right click, then press delete, after which you Empty the Recycle Bin (or “Trash” for Mac Users). The file is now gone forever and nobody would ever know you had it.

But then you would be wrong…

What ACTUALLY Happens

When you empty the Recycle Bin or Trash, your computer doesn’t actually remove the physical file on the hard drive. Instead, it takes a lazy route and deletes the reference in the file table to the file at the start of the hard disk, making it “invisible” to the Operating System. The actual file is untouched on your Hard Drive, until another file writes over the “deleted file”.

It’s a bit like removing someones name from the phone directory, you won’t be able to find it, but the person concerned still exists; and if you knock on every door, you’ll eventually find them.

Why Does it Do that?

It’s mainly to do with user experience. Ever wonder why it takes so long to copy large files onto your computer, but why deleting large files is almost instantaneous? To actually delete the entire file and remove it from the hard drive would take enormous amounts of time and energy, so emptying your recycle bin would take much, much longer than it does normally. By only removing the reference to the file, your computer can “complete” the operation much faster, idle sooner, put less wear on the hard drive and provide a more responsive user experience.

Just take this example…

Deleting 14GB of large files “normally”: 2 Seconds

Deleting 14GB of large files “securely” (properly): 14 Minutes

And it’s not just the files you delete, the operating system deletes temporary or cache files from the hard drive all the time, and the performance penalty of the OS removing these files properly would slow down the user experience drastically.

How to Delete Stuff PERMANENTLY

So you’ve got stuff you don’t wan’t anyone to see, and you want to hide the evidence? Luckily there is a way to delete files from a hard drive more safely.

On MacOS, selecting “Secure Empty Trash” from the finder menu would write zero’s over the files you wish to delete (over-writing replaces the file data with blank space). Note that while this would hide any trace of the file which would be visible to the computer (even to file “undelete” or recover software), advanced techniques (beyond the scope of this post) are available which could recover data even if it has been overwritten.

On Windows, Third Party software such as Eraser can be used to securely delete files. As before, even when securely deleting files, it may still be possible to retrieve data using advanced techniques.

And just a word of warning, re-formatting your hard drive may not remove everything. You may be familiar with “Quick Re-Format”, which essentially removes the file system table, but keeps all the data intact. Some other methods of re-formatting do the same thing To erase a hard drive, USB stick or any other storage medium securely, simply destroy it (properly, i.e. burn, crush, tear etc etc), making sure you destroy the actual media where the data is stored (i.e. the disk platter or the flash “chip”).

I know IEM reviews can be very subjective, and everyones ears and preferences in sound are different, so to give you a better idea where I’m coming from, heres some background information about my listening preferences.

I won’t call myself an avid audiophile, but uncoloured sound reproduction is a must. I don’t like heavy bass which takes over the soundstage and I find a good treble far more important. Anything under 320KBps is a no-no and most of the music I listen to is Lossless M4A/FLAC. Most of the time my music comes from an iPhone 5 when I’m on the go/at university, but for critical listening sessions at home I use a FiiO E7 amp fed from my iPhone 5. I generally listen to Lossless only during critical listening, because even 320KBps shows rough edges at times. 

The scope of this review will also focus on the high end IEM market, so if you’re looking for a sound comparison between this and your Apple Earpods, the simple answer is that these are infinitely better in every regard, and infinity is a big number. IEM’s I will compare the SE425‘s to are:

• Etymotic ER.4P; These are the crown and glory when it comes to analytical IEM’s. They produce a wonderfully flat sound, very tight bass and an extremely detailed treble and mid-range. The soundstage (how “wide” the sound appears) is very narrow and they’re definitely not “exciting”, but they set the benchmark for accuracy and uncoloured reproduction.
• Shure SE215; The lowest end IEM in Shures current line-up, using a dynamic driver they produce a “fun” sound while retaining Shure’s mid-centric characteristic. Their range is relatively low and detail is easily lost in more complicated tracks.
• Shure SE315; Based on a single vented “Micro Driver”, similar to balanced armature drivers. The SE315′s have a very convincing bass response, and can handle mid-range detail beautifully. The focus is generally towards the lower frequencies though, as they can miss details in treble.
• Shure SE535; Shure’s Flagship IEM, and expensive at that. The SE535′s produce Shure’s signature mid-focused sound, while also having an impressive range and soundstage. They so sound slightly warmer and “friendlier” than the rest of Shure’s lineup, but the high level of detail is definitely still there.
• Ultimate Ears Triple-Fi; These are the opposite of what you would call “analytical”. Very fun sounding with plenty of bass extension, but still maintaining a good mid range and bright treble. Fine details in treble can be lost fairly easily in complicated tracks however.

Build Quality

Shure hasn’t had the best reputation for cable build quality over the recent years, but the current crop of Shure IEM’s fixes that. The cable is reinforced with kevlar and is nicely covered with strain relievers at delicate joints. The 3.5mm jack is angled 90 degrees, which is great for cable durability, but does mean that the cable tends to rotate around the audio port while in the pocket, resulting in increased wear on the device and the gold plated cable contacts. I would prefer a jack which isn’t angled which would result in less wear on the port on the iPhone, and add strain to the cable instead. And anyhow, replacing a damaged Shure cable costs £50, a phone costs ~£500.

Nice chunky cable joints

Angled Gold-Plated 3.5mm Plug

From experience with the 315′s, the part of the cable which leaves the Wireform behind the ear can be damaged easily due to the sudden exposure of cable from the hard plastic coating, and I recommend using tape or a soft plastic tube to relieve the strain at this joint. 

Sound

Right, now onto the important stuff. For testing, I will use a few tracks which I currently listen to. All are in Lossless format.

• Zucchero and Dolores O’Ridian – Pure Love
• Seven Lions – Isis, Days To Come
• Snow Patrol – Weight of Love, Chasing Cars, Run
• You Me At Six – Stay With Me
• The xx – Angels, Missing
• Muse – Madness, Follow Me
• Pendulum – Watercolour, Crush
• Pink – Long Way to Happy, I’m Not Dead, Try
• Skrillex – Bangarang

Ear-Tips and Accessories

Shure includes their “fit kit” with the 425′s, and a range of noise isolating tips are included. I (and most others in fact) prefer the Shure “Olives” which come already attached to the body of the IEM. These are rolled before they are inserted into the ear, and create a very good seal as they expand into the ear canal. Soundstage and tone are extremely good with these tips, although noise isolation isn’t as good as the Triple Flanged tips.

Triple Flanged tips can be cut down at the base to fit, and provide the best noise isolation for me. Due to their small aperture, they can leave the IEM sounding a little too “in your face”, but then again for referencing this is probably an advantage. Vocals can be sibilant if an incorrect seal is made, and the sound can be slightly tinny as a result. 

Single flanged silicone tips are provided, and although they don’t change the sound too much from the Shure Olives, they provide a weaker seal and noise isolation isn’t very good. The silicone tips however are much easier to insert and don’t sit as deep as the Olives do, which can be more comfortable to wear while walking/jogging.

Finally, the yellow foam tips are my favourite for critical listening at home, improving treble detail and pushing bass a little further back in the music. Although I have friends who find them very noise isolating, they don’t work very well for me outside as sound leaks through quite easily. Maybe I just have massive ear canals?

Included is also a hard carry case (well, harder than the case supplied with the SE315 and SE215′s anyway), a cleaning tool for removing the mysterious yellow gunk that can build up in the aperture and also a 1/4 adapter. 

Pricing

The SE425′s RRP for £305, although you rarely have to pay this amount as most online retailers sell the 425′s for ~£240. Walk into a shop and you could probably expect to pay slightly more than this. For the sound quality you’re getting, the 425′s are definitely worth the money and at ~£100 more than the SE315′s, it’s almost a no brainer purchase. I personally question whether it is worth another £100 for the flagship SE535′s, as I find the 535′s very different in focus compared to the 425′s. While the 425′s lean towards analytical and mid-centric, the 535′s are much more welcoming, but my ears struggle to discern any more detail with the 535′s over the 425′s. Of course, you’re probably different, and I certainly know people (one who happens to own the SE535 which I borrowed for comparison) who would turn their noses up at the SE425′s instantly and accept nothing less than the 535′s, even in blind tests. To my ears though, the SE535′s are an improvement in terms of range and soundstage, but probably not a £100 improvement.

Conclusion

So, should you go and buy the SE425′s? I don’t know, but I certainly hope this review has helped you decide. For the price, the SE425′s deliver excellent sound bested (in my opinion) only by the SE535′s. Frankly, for sheer accuracy and treble performance, the £120 Etymotic ER-4P runs circles around the SE425′s and almost every other IEM out there, and the ~£210 UE Triple-Fi sound much more exciting while retaining detail, but Shure has hit the sweet spot for me with the SE425′s. Accurate and balanced enough for critical listening, but not too fatiguing and boring for casual use.

More Pictures

Slightly asymmetrical design with the dual balanced armature drivers visible on the left IEM, and circuitry for the passive crossover on the right unit. Don’t worry, they both produce sound.

SE315 left, SE425 right. Despite having only one driver, the SE315′s are longer due to the custom vented design.

Right IEM Unit

Right IEM Unit

The 1/4 inch adapter, just in case you need to know what it looks like…

And just before we start, I’d just like to give a bit of information about myself, as I know reviews on things like phones can be a little subjective. So here goes, I’m a University Student studying Biomedical Sciences, but also working part time managing the online section of a retail store. Like 99.9999% of the population, I use Facebook, as well as other social networks/blog sites such as Twitter, Instagram and WordPress. Therefore, much of what I use my phone for would be social media, content creation and basic tasks like e-mail/document handling.

Specifications and Storage

I won’t bore you with a list of tech specs for the iPhone 5, those can be found on Apple’s website. Storage options unsurprisingly are identical to last years iPhone 4S, with 16, 32 and 64GB options ranging from £529, £599 and £699 respectively. I personally find £700 for a 64GB phone extortionate (using MicroSD cards, you could reach the same amount of storage on other phones for less), and the difference between 32GB and 64GB is definitely not £100 in component costs (Flash “chips” used in phones cost a fraction of NAND found on high end PC SSD’s). Unfortunately, if you want a 64GB iPhone, thats the only way about it.

Build Quality and Design

Pick up the iPhone 5 and the first thing you notice is how light it is. Thickness and screen size are what you notice afterwards followed by build quality. Apple eschews the glass sandwich design of the iPhone 4S for a 3GS-like approach where the display is mounted onto a single case. Some glass remains on the back however on the top and bottom of the device, while the rest (including the sides) are formed from anodised aluminium. The level of fit and finish is excellent and there isn’t a single part of the construction which appears loose or mis-aligned. The “diamond cut” chamfered edges makes the device more comfortable to hold than the 4S, and is a design element which is almost unique to the iPhone 5.

If I had to gripe about the design (and be warned, I do this a lot), the layer of glass at the front of the device protrudes out slightly more compared to the chamfered edge of the back, lending to a front heavy appearance which lacks the  z symmetry of the iPhone 4. Its a sub millimetre difference which makes you wonder, “is this really an Apple designed product?”. In terms of everyday usability, it doesn’t do any harm (in fact, it could make it easier to distinguish the front of the device from the back in your pocket for example), but it’s a design slip up I’m surprised Apple would make.

The case materials is a step back in durability however , as while the 4 and 4S were among the most durable scratch-resistant devices around, the anodised aluminium construction of the 5 is scratch prone and scuffs very easily (think MacBooks). This is apparent more so on the Black model than the white, where the coloured oxide layer can scratch off revealing the shiny aluminium underneath. The white model scratches just as easily, but any damage is less apparent. After only 2 weeks of use, I have already found small scuff marks around the corners of the device.

Thankfully, due to the distinct lack of glass to shatter compared to the 4 and 4S, the iPhone 5 survives drops surprisingly well in recent tests carried out by other sites. The lower weight of the device probably helps with this as well. Just don’t plan on dropping it too often as the aluminium casing dents very easily.

Display

The 4 inch 1136×640 display used in the iPhone is simply the best display I’ve seen on a mobile device, ever.  In fact, I would go as far to say that this is the best consumer display on the market, and for many reasons other than sheer pixel density (which by the way is the same as the previous generation iPhone 4/4S).

While many praised the iPhone 4 and 4S for their sharp contrasty displays, their colour reproduction fell behind the competition. Even though the Retina display in these phones bested the paltry contrast, brightness and pixel density of the 3GS before it, colour saturation was almost the same. Reds weren’t as “red” as they should be and so on. The iPhone 5 fixes that, and now boasts almost 100% of the sRGB colour standard which results in vivid, but realistic colours. Displays based on OLED technologies (such as the ehem Samsung Galaxy S3) tend to boast very saturated colours, but nowhere near the colour accuracy as found on the iPhone 5. I would like to see more displays like this in future, which convey colours accurately and not over-saturating them in order to look “pretty”.

In-cell touch technology used in the iPhone 5 means that an additional glass layer from the display has been removed and thus there is less in the way between you and the LCD. Upon closer inspection, the display does look closer to the surface than the 4S, but where you do notice the difference In-cell makes is outdoor viewing. The display has very little reflectance, and outdoor readability (even in direct sunlight) is extremely good, even considering the iPhone 5 has similar brightness to the 4S. Having said that, phones which use a polarising layer such as the Nokia Lumia 900 achieve similar outdoor viewing characteristics, with a much lower brightness. Therefore, the removal of one layer from the display stack probably doesn’t solve all problems associated with outdoor viewing.

Contrast ratio as been rated by other Review sites at 1000:1, however due to the low reflectance, contrast actually appears higher than many AMOLED displays outdoors.

Camera and Sapphire Lens (cover)

Apple likes to boast about it’s Sapphire lens cover, and for the most part they describe the cover as being extremely hard, so iFixit decided to put it to the test with sandpaper and metal instruments. While the rest of the phone didn’t fare too well, the lens cover was unscathed. I only wish that all the glass surfaces on the iPhone 5 could be replaced with this sapphire crystal for this level of durability (maybe on the next iPhone? Or not).

The quality of the pictures taken on first glance is similar to the iPhone 4S. The 8MP AF camera with 5 element lens and Hybrid IR filter does well in daylight shots with plenty of detail, contrast and saturation (although it can slightly over saturate at times). The quality of the shots can easily rival dedicated compact cameras from several years ago, and are easily among the best of any smartphone to date (although the Lumia 920 looks very interesting). Low light photography (which has suddenly gained a lot of press lately, a la Lumia 920) has been vastly improved over the 4S, with less noise and more details present.

I didn’t manage to reproduce the purple halo problem some other users are reporting, where a strong purple glow would be present around bright objects in the shot. From what I can see, this problem isn’t just isolated to the iPhone 5′s camera, but rather a problem with digital photography and the way camera lenses work themselves.

Shot taken with HDR off. Notice some noise present on the building towards the left

Shot taken with HDR on. Some loss of fine detail, but noise has been reduced slightly.

Video is taken in 1080p and the quality is as you would expect from a high end smartphone. Colours are again slightly over-saturated but details and contrast are fine. Shake reduction is used during recording, but this is of the  digital variety and can only smooth out small jitters. Vloggers who love to run around recording themselves will see little benefit in this department. Another thing to note is that the camera doesn’t auto-focus during record, so to keep things focused, a tap on the relevant part of the display is needed during longer videos.

The front facing camera has also been upgraded (naturally) to 1.2MP. The quality of images captured is slightly better and low light FaceTime(ing) has also improved. The front camera doesn’t have AF however, and tapping on the display only adjusts the exposure, not the focus.

Performance

The iPhone 4S was already quite a snappy handset. With general use both iPhone 4S and 5 are notoriously difficult to bog down. No matter how quickly applications are opened or how abruptly you scroll, the phones seem to keep up and rarely drop a single frame. This is the sort of refinement which makes iOS such a pleasure to use, however with Android Jelly Bean and Windows Phone devices popping up, this stutter free experience is quickly becoming the norm.

Start a graphics intensive game or fly over maps with 3D buildings and this is where the iPhone 5 shows a clear speed advantage. The flyover feature in Apple’s Maps applications is very hardware intensive, and the iPhone 5 (with its triple PowerVR SGX535 GPU Cores) handles it like a dream while the 4S starts to drop frames. Most games appear to run at a higher FPS, and it would be interesting to see how developers can take advantage of all this graphical horsepower. Games which have been updated to take advantage of the taller display of the iPhone 5 look amazing, and FPS games which rely on thumb controls are easier to play with the narrower aspect ratio.

Opening and closing applications is also slightly faster on the 5, although I do have a suspicion that the bottleneck for many applications may be the Flash storage rather than the A6 SoC. Speaking of which, speculation has it that the A6 SoC used is not an ARM Cortex A9 or A15, but an Apple designed ARMv7 compliant core, similar to what Qualcomm would do with their Snapdragon SoC. This suggests that Apple could fine tune the cores to deliver performance where it is needed, and cut down on resources which would otherwise be unused.

iOS 6

I won’t go too in depth into iOS, as iOS reviews have a tendency to go horribly out of date after a few months when updates are released, so I’ll keep it simple. If you’re already happy in Apples ecosystem, then iOS6 and the iPhone 5 will serve you well, those who have bought into Android and like to tinker/customise their phones probably won’t find anything here to change their minds. iOS6 isn’t designed to be a revolution, it comes across more as an evolutionary step or refinement. The basic philosophy of iOS has stayed largely the same since the original iPhone in 2007, and I don’t expect to see any major change in the coming years. No widgets, no “live tiles/icons” and no split-screen viewing on the iPhone. iOS seems to have passed the point of no return in terms of UI paradigms, and to change it now would be risky. Microsoft had the same “problem” with Windows and the Start Button.

But this is not to say that the iOS6 update is completely useless. Apple has done a lot of refining throughout the interface and little niggles like inconsistent scrolling behaviour and home screen search performance have been fixed/improved. Some UI elements such as the changing status bar colours and the new music player UI can take some getting used to, and the full screen button in Safari was clearly added to alleviate the “too long and narrow” problem the iPhone 5 has in landscape mode.

The narrow aspect of the display makes landscape viewing slightly worse than the iPhone 4S before it

This problem is alleviated by the new full-screen mode available in landscape viewing

What I find surprising is that iOS6 doesn’t seem to make the most of the increased vertical real estate. Yes, you do see more content in apps, but things like multi-tasking still feel awkward, especially if you’re working between apps. The increased display height could easily be used for a larger application switcher showing more information, perhaps a screenshot of the app or even to display music/volume controls in a single so that the user doesn’t have to scroll through a single row of icons. Right now it does feel like everything has been “fixed” to work with the taller display on the iPhone 5, rather than taking full advantage of it.

Flyover feature provides little practical benefit, but is fun to use

The new Weather app takes advantage of the increased real-estate by showing hourly forecasts.

Landscape keyboard has just been stretched out, small area of wasted space on either side.

Now Playing screen shows progress bar by default, and full view of album art.

Nano SIM

The iPhone 5 is the first to use the new nano sim standard, and at least in the UK, availability of nano sims from major networks is quite good. Unfortunately, cutting a nano sim from a standard or even micro sim can be a bit daunting, as you have to snip into the metal contacts. This is usually fine though, as the actual “chip” itself much smaller and usually further in the middle, and so long as you don’t cut into this “chip”, the sim should still work.

Oh, how times have changed…

The nano sim is also ~20% slimmer than a normal sim, however I have found that no sanding is usually necessary to get a standard sim to slide into the iPhone 5, although there is a slight squeeze.

Vibrator

If there is one thing I would praise the 4S for, it’s the oscillating vibrator. Not only are these smaller, but they’re also quieter and still easily felt. Having your phone ring on silent actually means the phone is silent. Unfortunately, Apple has gone back to using rotational vibrators in the iPhone 5, and the effects can be easily heard. Even when ringing in silent mode, the phone can be heard clearly in a quiet room. I really hope Apple goes back (or forwards) to using the oscillating vibrator in the 4S which would be silent mode truly silent.

Lightning

This is one feature which is likely to infuriate people. The Lightning connector replaces Apples 10 year old 30 pin dock connector, and for some, 10 years is a long time to be accumulating iPod/iPhone accessories which use the 30 pin connector. Although Apple does sell an adapter, due to the physical constraints of most docks and accessories, an adapter just won’t do. Speaker docks/Car mounts which hold the iPhone snugly in place will likely not work with the adapter, and accessories which use the analog “iPod Out” will also not work with this new connector. This is the price we pay for progress, and nobody does this “better” than Apple.

The lightning connector fits snugly

So, compatibility woes aside, the Lightning connector is a vast improvement over the older 30 pin connector. Thankfully, the cable can be inserted either way into the port (i.e. there is no up or down) which is a boon for those who like to plug in their iPhones in complete darkness. The lightning side of the cable plugs into the phone with a reassuring click and feels considerably more durable than the older 30 pin connector, though we’ll see whether this is the case in the longer term. Some users have been experiencing trouble with the USB side of the cable, where the ridges on the side are too deep, resulting in the cables being stuck inside the USB port. I didn’t experience this issue personally, but it’s one to look out for.

Audio Output

One area where iPhones tend to excel in is sound output. Through the 3.5mm headphone jack (which is now located at the bottom, a welcome change if you ask me), the iPhone produces a clean signal which is great for sensitive earphones such as the Shure SE series and Etymotic HF3/5′s. The same can’t be said for other phones such as the HTC HD7 which produces huge amounts of signal noise during music playback. Thankfully, there doesn’t appear to be any bias towards bass or treble; the whole thing just sounds vanilla, as it should. Listen carefully enough and just after music has been stopped, it is possible to hear a slight crackle as the audio circuitry switches off to save power, but you have to be listening very, very carefully.

EarPods

Apple has quite a reputation for bundling crappy earphones with their products, but the new “earpods” as Apple calls them is a welcome departure from that. Like the Apple earphones which came before it, these boast a single dynamic/moving coil driver in each earpiece. The difference with the newer earpods is that they now have bass ports, strategically located to provide air equalisation whilst also retaining high frequency performance. Compared to the previous rubbish Apple bundled with their iPhones, the earpods perform extremely well with a wide soundstage and plenty of detail in the mid and higher frequencies. Bass, while present in copious amounts is nice and tight although due to the lack of isolation, bass performance can vary greatly depending on how well they fit.

Sound isolation is still very poor due to their on-ear design, but the fit has been improved dramatically (for me at least). Those who exercise with earphones should probably invest in an IEM which should provide a better fit. Sound leakage has also improved and is now on par with most other dynamic earphones.

Value is the main strength of these Earpods. At £25 (or bundled with the new iPhone), they do perform very well for their price, easily nipping at the heels of more expensive IEM’s such as the Sennheiser CX-300′s. However, before we get too excited, bear in mind we are discussing within the budget category of IEM’s and earphones. Even though these earpods are much improved compared to previous efforts, they don’t offer the sheer clarity and accuracy of higher end IEM’s.

Call Quality

The iPhone 5 has 3 microphones, one for voice calls, one for noise cancellation and another for the video camera. I am unsure whether all 3 are used for noise cancellation in voice calls, but sound quality is fairly standard in my testing. The phone did manage to cancel out ambient “crowd” noises although anything louder and sound quality on the other end began to suffer.

Should you get one?

iPhone 4S and 4 users may still want to keep their phones a little longer (at least until the next generation 5(S?) but users of the now “S for Slow” 3GS, it’s a good time to upgrade now. Those thinking of jumping onto the iPhone bandwagon now would probably want to get the iPhone 5, as the 4S seems even more obsolete now that Apple is pushing for iPhones with 4 inch displays going forward. Purchase an iPhone 4 or 4S now and you may find it loses its value a bit quicker than previously.

Factor in the price however, and things start to get pear shaped. £529 for the 16GB model, and £599 for the 32GB are decent, but the £699 for 64GB model is very pricey. If you absolutely need 64GB on a phone, go with an Android offering such as the Samsung Galaxy S3 which offers greater flexibility with storage (and better price).

I’ve had my 2010 13″ MacBook Pro for 2 and have written one review. Now I think it’s time for the second review, this time with a bit more info on how it holds up to everyday life, and it’s future as a viable workhorse notebook.

Display

Even after 2 years of it’s release, the 2010 MacBook Pro has among the best displays on the market. The likes of AnandTech have constantly campaigned for high quality displays on notebooks, and the consumer notebook market has not changed much in this respect. The TN Display in the MacBook Pro, while not as accurate or contrasty as the new “Retina” MacBook Pro, is still good for a TN display. It does suffer from the traditional TN shortcomings such as limited viewing angles, low contrast and colour gamut, but you probably won’t notice these in every day use and is still miles better than most TN laptop displays.

Newer MacBook Pro’s (the 2011 and 2012 models) displays are largely the same in terms of contrast, viewing angles and colour gamut, but newer models are slightly brighter than the 2010 model. Black levels have also gone up slightly, possibly indicating a brighter backlight in newer Pro’s instead of a better panel.

It has to be noted, that while the MacBook Pro 13 has the second lowest Pixel density of the MacBook lineup, the quality of the panel itself compared to the MacBook Air is considerably higher, therefore I would still recommend the MacBook Pro’s display over the Air’s for colour sensitive work.

Chassis Durability

The rest of the world has come a long way since Apple introduced the “Unibody” notebook chassis. As Apple describes it, the chassis of the notebook is machined out of a solid block of extruded aluminium (or “aluminum” depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on). The result is a chassis which is structurally rigid and almost devoid of flex.

During my 2 years with the MacBook Pro, I found this claim to be true. The MacBook Pro is among one of the most rigid notebooks I have used, with no flex anywhere in the chassis. Granted, if you push hard enough on the bottom plate, you’ll hear a slight creak but with tolerances this tight, it doesn’t appear to be of any concern. The hinge still holds it’s torque very well with no sign of wobble (my 4 year old HP DV2000 now wobbles 1.5cm when open!) closes with the same “thump” action as the first day.

A minor collision with a pen while opening the lid.

While the aluminium chassis structurally stood up well with the rigours of daily routine (bag, lap, table, bed, bag etc…), the surface of the anodised aluminium is easily scuffed and is prone to knocks and bumps. It’s surprisingly difficult to scratch the aluminium surface (I’ve had a few close encounters), but accidentally scraping a corner into other seemingly benign objects (a wooden table shelf) is enough to scratch away at the anodised aluminium surface. Now aluminium can react with oxygen in the air with violent consequences, but thankfully this doesn’t happen in normal conditions and the scratched area should develop a thin layer of aluminium oxide which prevents further corrosion. Still, it’s visually perceptible as a darker patch compared to the rest of the notebook, so you don’t want to be doing this too often.

The bottom plate hasn’t fared so well.

I’ve also found that the rubber feet of the notebook doesn’t prop up the chassis enough on some uneven surfaces, so the MacBook ends up sitting on the surface with it’s bare aluminium underside. Move the notebook around while it’s in this position and you’ll scratch the bottom plate.

The trackpad has held up quite well with the glass surface not wearing away at all despite heavy usage (those multi finger lion gestures ensure constant usage). The texture still appears even throughout the surface and a wipe with a damp cloth is enough to restore it to it’s former glory.

The keyboard is a completely different story. It’s almost as if you can tell how old a MacBook is by looking at it’s keyboard. New MacBooks have a distinctly matte finish which is quickly worn away with frequent use. I personally didn’t invest in a keyboard cover, as even the thinnest covers affect typing speed somewhat, and the consequences are definitely showing. A quick wipe over does alleviate things a little, but the underlying wear cannot be wiped away and shows as a shiny patch on frequently used keys.

My advice to new MacBook owners, invest in a keyboard cover if you want your Mac looking brand new for longer. Or you could just buy another set of keys when they become unbearable to look at (the key caps pop off sometimes with frantic typing, but are easily snapped on again).

MagSafe Power Adapter

On paper, the MagSafe Power Adapter seems like one killer feature which sets the MacBook apart from other notebooks (of course, not taking into account the Apple has a Patent for this thing). I was expecting it to be much more durable than any other power adapter I have ever used, and granted, it has saved my Mac from tumbling to the floor once or twice over it’s life.

The problem is however that in practice, the MagSafe power adapter is no more reliable than any other normal notebook power supply. The adapter head especially is prone to snagging off and once damaged (which is easily done), the connection is intermittent. Apple has never been any good with cables and joints, and this is no exception. Once twisted, the join can break into two and that’s when you’re stuffed. We have 5 laptops in the house, some over 5 years old, and this is the first time I have ever seen a power adapter break in this way, if at all.

The L-Style adapter on the 2010 MacBook Pro is great as it trails the cable in a natural direction and prevents excess flex on the join. Removing and connecting the MagSafe Power Adapter is a bit of a pain, but it seems much more durable than the old T style connector which constantly snags. It seems strange to me then, that Apple has gone back to the older T style connector in it’s MagSafe 2 port. Perhaps they need more revenue from their Power Adapter replacement division? At £50 a pop for a 65W MagSafe Power Adapter, they’re not cheap especially considering adapters for other laptops often cost half as much (and in my experience, last much longer).

Dust

Dust builds up on the inside of the MacBook, and this is true with pretty much all other notebooks. Over time this dust cakes the heatsink and air intakes reducing air flow and causing components such as the CPU to overheat. Once this happens the notebook shuts itself off or throttles (slows down considerably) and left untreated the BGA fitting on the CPU could expand and contract enough for connections to be broken, resulting in a notebook which doesn’t turn on at all (the HP TM2000 Tablets famously suffered from this issue).

Now this is where I can brag about having a 2010 MacBook Pro specifically, and this is because the 2010 13″ MacBook Pro has more thermal headroom than it’s successors (i.e. it runs cooler). The Core 2 Duo CPU was built from a very mature 45nm process, and is therefore very efficient. In fact, the 2010 13″ Pro is among the coolest running unibody MacBook Pro’s since they were first introduced in 2008. The Nvidia 320M chipset and graphics 40nm process probably also had something to do with this.

But rambling aside, a larger thermal headroom gives you more time for dust to build up before things start to go wrong. Brand new, the 2010 13″ Pro’s CPU ran at a relatively cool 78oC under full load, compared to the 89oC of the following 2011 13″ Pro.

And you can do something about dust quite easily. The MacBook Pro’s (excluding the new “Retina” model) can be serviced with simple phillips screwdrivers and none of that pentalobe bull*!@t. All it takes is to remove the bottom cover, blast the inside with some compressed air then pop the cover back on. Did I mention upgrades are easier as well? (We’ll get to that in a minute). The new MacBook Airs and Retina MacBook Pro’s rely on pentalobe screws, and pentalobe screwdrivers are very few and far between.

Optical Drive

SuperDrive. Remember those?

I’m quite glad the Retina MacBook Pro didn’t include an optical drive as they waste so much internal space. Since I bought my MacBook Pro 13″, I have only used the disc drive twice, once to rip music for a friend, and another to restore Mac OS Snow Leopard. And that gets me onto a good point. Restore.

New Macs deal with things going wrong quite elegantly, simple hold the Option (alt) key while the system is booting and you’re greeted with a Lion recovery drive. Unfortunately, that won’t help you at all if your hard drive (or SSD) has gone kaput (the Lion Recovery Drive is after all physically located on the same drive as the rest of the OS). Therefore you’re pretty much stuffed unless you have access to a bootable clone of your OS, or an Apple Store.

While I know you could simple make a bootable Lion USB stick, having optical media always seems to do the job better when things really go wrong. At the end of the day, when things go wrong, it’s better to have a wide choice of devices to boot from rather than limiting your options.

OSX

Thankfully the 2010 MacBook Pro’s will be eligible for the Mountain Lion upgrade coming July 2012. Apple tends to cut off upgrading Mac OS 3-5 years after the Mac has been released, but theres a worrying trend that this is getting shorter. I will not be surprised if the 2010 Pro’s will be cut off from upgrading to the next version of OSX in 2013.

The justification Apple makes for cutting off devices so blatantly is for the sake of progress. Leopard demanded support for Firewire, Snow Leopard didn’t like PowerPC, Lion wanted 64bit CPU’s, and Mountain Lion wants everything (including drivers) 64bit. This is why we are seeing Intel HD graphics Macs being cut off, their chipset drivers are 32bit even though their CPU’s may be 64bit capable.

The next cut off move for Apple is a tricky one to predict, but if we assume that the 13″ 2010 MacBook Pro is excluded, then it is possible that the next OS demands HyperThreading support (quite unlikely), or compulsory Thunderbolt (which would cleanly exclude any 2010 Mac from upgrading). As for demanding OpenCL support, this might not happen next year as the 2011 MacBook Pro 13″ doesn’t support it, and it would be quite early to deny the 2011 Pro at that stage.

RAM and Hard Drive

One of the draws of the standard MacBook Pro’s design is upgradability. Sure, CPU and CPU are soldered onto the motherboard, but RAM and HDD are both easily accessible and in many ways these are the components which if upgraded can provide a better perceived performance boost than a CPU or GPU upgrade.

Maxing the 2010 13″ Pro’s RAM to 8GB provides a healthy bump in multitasking performance (editing multiple layered images while running lots of applications is a nightmare with “just” 4GB) and a 1TB 5400RPM hard drive gives me personally enough storage for the next 3 years at least (at the expense of speed). Of course, if a massive bump in system speed is needed, an upgrade to a standard 2.5″ SSD is the single most effective upgrade you could make and with SSD prices falling all the time, being able to upgrade later on is a cost effective way of giving your Mac a new lease of life.

The new MacBook Airs and Retina MacBook Pro only leave the possibility of the SSD to be upgraded later on, and with their proprietary connectors, upgrades would be nowhere near as cost effective as a standard 2.5″ SSD. RAM is of course soldered onto the motherboard and if you do a lot of macro content creation (video/image editing etc), then 8GB should be the bare minimum to purchase from the start. Of course, as discussed in this blog post, Apple has a nasty habit of charging far more for upgrades than what they’re worth, so sticking with a “standard” MacBook Pro this year (2012) may be more cost effective over the useable life of the machine.

Core 2 Duo CPU

The 2010 13″ Pro was released at an awkward time where dedicated graphics were too large, and Intel’s offerings were too slow. As discussed in this blog post, the 13″ 2010 Pro is full of compromise, and the best way around it was to put a 4 year old (at the time) CPU architecture with the best integrated GPU and Chipset available at the time. The result was that CPU performance remained largely unchanged from it’s predecessor, and trailed behind the larger 2010 MacBook Pro’s with their 1st Generation Nehalem i5/i7 CPU’s.

In everyday use, the 13″ 2010 Pro is plenty fast, and in fact many older Core 2 laptops are perfectly usable for basic tasks like web browsing, light gaming and non-accelerated HD video. With it’s 2.4GHz Penryn architecture, complex image editing and light video editing runs smoothly, however it’s multi-tasking where Penryn shows it’s age. Watching an SD iPlayer stream while editing images in Pixelmator (granted, Photoshop is slightly more efficient with resources at time of writing) causes the system to chug along while a 13″ Sandy Brige Core i5 MacBook Pro handles the task with ease (note that both systems were using standard hard drives instead of SSD’s, so IO shouldn’t be the bottleneck). Admittedly, watching iPlayer isn’t critical to my image editing workflow, but it shows that the processing grunt to handle several complex applications at once isn’t quite there.

Nvidia GeForce 320M

Graphics performance is what makes up for lacklustre CPU performance in the 2010 13″ Pro. The integrated GeForce 320M used in the MacBook Pro (not to be confused with the dedicated GT 320M) was the fastest integrated GPU of it’s time and based on the fairly capable GT216 architecture. Most 3D games (excluding newer ones, obviously) ran at playable FPS at a native resolution and medium details settings, something previously unheard of in the realm of integrated graphics. So fast was the 320M that even the Intel HD3000 GPU found in the 2010 13″ Pro’s successor was slower in many tests. I would have suggested, that if gaming or graphics performance is your priority, then stick with the 2010 MacBook Pro over the 2011 model (though you’ll be at risk from being cut-off from OSX upgrades earlier).

What I found surprising was that the 2011 MacBook Pro 13″ used a GPU not capable of OpenCL support, or almost any GPGPU support whatsoever. Before this, many assumed that Apple was making a move towards GPGPU computing which would have resulted in some exciting applications, but the appearance of a Mac notebook lacking these features killed this dream somewhat. Thankfully the integrated GPU on the newer 2012 Ivy Bridge Macs do provide better support for GPGPU features, but by the time OSX demands support for them, the 2010 MacBook Pro 13″ may well be cut off from the upgrade. Sad times.

Battery Life

Apple originally advertised the 13″ Pro’s battery life as 10 hours, and in later models reduced it to 7 hours due to differences in the way Apple tests their battery life claims. In the early days of life with my 2010 MacBook Pro, 10 hours plus was quite easy to hit provided my workload was low enough (mainly word processing or very light web browsing) and brightness set quite low. 5-6 hours was what I typically got in normal usage and heavy multitasking workloads would bring that figure down to 2-3 hours.

But then OSX Lion happened, and all hell broke loose. There must have been some sort of pixie dust in Snow Leopard missing from Lion because the battery life I get with Lion is noticeably lower. Even while idle (no work whatsoever), battery life no longer breaks 10 hours (it barely reaches 9) and normal usage yields <5 hours. Heavy multitasking workloads are typically the same as Snow Leopard. It’s not as if I can blame this on battery calibration or a “dirty” upgrade, the Lion install was clean and battery life comparison was done within days of each other.

The drop in battery life could be a result of un-optimised drivers causing components to spend less time in idle, or simply more features in Lion keeping the CPU busy. If the latter is true, then things can only get considerably worse with the Mountain Lion upgrade.

As for Battery wear, I’ve gone through almost 300 full charge/discharge cycles in 2 years and the battery shows ~83% remaining capacity (or 17% reduction in design capacity). Apple claims that the battery should retain at least 80% of it’s charge after 1000 charge/discharge cycles, and my own usage seems to reflect this somewhat. 83% remaining capacity after 300 cycles might seem bad, but the truth is that the wear level has levelled off at the 80-85% mark since the ~100th charge/discharge cycle. Who knows, I may reach 1000 cycles before the capacity drops below 80%, but something tells me not to expect this.

The Future…

So what does the future hold for the 2010 MacBook Pro 13? After the Mountain Lion upgrade; an uncertain one. Whether or not Apple cuts upgrades to the the beloved 2010 Pro remains to be seen, but OS aside, the 13″ 2010 Pro should serve well for years to come with basic workloads. Integrated graphics performance is no longer ground-breaking, what with AMD Trinity and Intel Ivy Bridge boasting much improved on-die graphics, but that isn’t to say that the 13 incher can’t be put to use. Fairly common games such as RealRacing2 and GalaxyOnFire2 (and not forgetting Angry Birds) run very smoothly and applications which utilise OpenCL (such as Adobe Photoshop CS5) see a nice performance boost.

And once the notebook becomes too slow to use, simply swap in an SSD (obviously make sure the cause of sluggishness isn’t software) and you’ve got an extra few years of an acceptably fast computing experience left for your ageing notebook. Didn’t get 8GB RAM at the time of purchase? Simply swap out the paltry 4GB and enjoy 8GB of paging-free freedom (though do this soon as DDR3 SODIMM 1066MHz RAM is currently the cheapest it may ever be). Simply put, although the 2010 13″ MacBook Pro wouldn’t hold up to ever increasing workloads any longer than todays MacBook’s, we can be sure that with it’s upgradeability and flexibility, it would enjoy a much longer life overall than some of the overly-integrated MacBook’s sold today.

Savour the upgradeability, as it’s a dying trend making way for appliance-like computing.

The Bezel

One thing I admired about the “old” MacBook Pro’s design was the even Bezel all the way around the display. This provided a distraction free environment to work in and an overall balanced design. The New MacBook Pro has a slightly redesigned hinge where the display is mounted slightly upwards, possibly to allow for a slimmer chassis design. This means that the glass bezel is no longer uniform, makes the display slightly more distracting than other models.

It’s a small niggle, I know. But for a company which seems to care about the small details, it’s a big slip up to make.

Adhesive

When designing a slim device, the last thing you want are screws taking up valuable vertical space. Apple’s solution is to use adhesive to glue components to the chassis. The iPad 2 did this, and the Retina MacBook Pro does the same. However, the touchpad ribbon cable (a very delicate, and important component by the way) is wedged between the battery and the chassis, meaning that prying the battery out of the chassis carries a risk that your trackpad would stop working. Great. No surprise that iFixit gave the Retina MacBook Pro a repairability of 1/10.

Recyclability

When iFixit tore down the iPad 2, they didn’t like the battery which was glued to the chassis. Although Apple touts that the MacBook Pro is made out of highly recyclable Aluminium and Glass, it’s notoriously difficult to recycle bits of aluminium if they have hazardous batteries glued to them. And to add insult to injury, prying the batteries out carries a risk of puncturing them, breaking the electrolyte barrier and  potentially causing an explosion.

The glass layer of the display is also fused to the LCD panel (like it is on the iPad 2/3). While this reduces glare and display thickness, it also makes recycling more difficult. While removing the glass on previous generation Pro’s meant prying a single piece of glass, on the new MacBook Pro, the panel comes out with it. Oh, this also makes repair costs a lot higher, should you be unlucky enough to shatter your display.

Air Vents

One of the things I admired about the previous generation MacBook Pro was the simple design. Looking at the chassis from a distance, it’s easy to forget how it works. Extraneous openings found on many other notebooks such as air vents are not visible on the MacBook Pro, and this adds to the simple and elegant design. It is not to say that the Pro doesn’t have a heatsink and exhaust, it does; but it is hidden behind the hinge away from sight.

So where does the previous MacBook Pro take air in from? Well that’s covered in this blog post. But put simply, most air is drawn through the ports on the left side. Ports are a necessity on a notebook (not even Apple can do without them completely), and using them as openings for air intake was an elegant solution.

The fact that the new Retina MacBook Pro has clearly visible air vents surprises me. Although I have little doubt that their prescence serves an important practical function, they also signify the powerful hardware inside the notebook, much in the same way that a powerful car has large exhausts or extraneous openings. This may please some people, but it spoils the pristine and simple image that Apple has created for it’s products over the recent years. It almost screams “The MacBook Pro’s design can no longer accommodate such hardware without making sacrifices to a simplistic design”.

Apple does justify the vents in their promotion video, claiming that they add structural rigidity to the device itself, I for one  can confirm that anecdotally, the non-vented MacBook Pro’s are among the most rigid notebook chassis you can find on the market.

If I had it my way, I would fully advocate the asymmetrical fan design, but find a way to move the air intake to the ports. The Retina MacBook Pro has ports on both sides of the machine, and coupled with the dual fans makes this potentially a great cooling solution. Because the new Pro is designed in a similar way to the MacBook Air’s,  most of the heat generating components are located towards the back of the machine, and if a cooling system like this could work on the Air, it should in theory scale up quite well in the new Pro.

Microphone Jack (or lack thereof)

The 13 inch MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air line doesn’t have a dedicated microphone port, and for the most part people don’t tend to complain of this missing feature reserved for the 15/17 inch MacBook Pro’s. It’s a shame however, that in a chassis which can physically accommodate a microphone port doesn’t have one. It’s a bit like the Lenovo Thinkpad U300, the chassis doesn’t taper, but it’s missing an SD card slot. This machine is likely to be used by people who need a dedicated microphone port, or whose workloads would be easier with one.

Soldered RAM

On the MacBook Air, soldered RAM (where the RAM “chips” are soldered permanently onto the motherboard instead of a removable module) made sense. The mechanism for holding/releasing RAM modules takes up vertical space and makes it a thickness constraint in a thin notebook, so it made sense on the Air. Plus, Apple thought that users of the MacBook Air would not need to upgrade RAM anyway, but on the Pro where users may decide to increase RAM due to the applications they are running, soldered RAM doesn’t make sense. For users who need more RAM than the standard 8GB, they need to make a pricey upgrade at the time or purchase, and those who didn’t upgrade will have to hope that their workload doesn’t require more RAM in future.

The older MacBook Pro’s gave users the option to add more RAM, and still maintained a sleek chassis. However, the old MacBook Pro design also uses stacked RAM modules which take up more vertical space. If Apple designed the motherboard to accommodate RAM side by side, this could save more vertical space allowing for a thinner chassis.

Proprietary (and Pricey) SSD

Thankfully, the SSD can be replaced by the end user. Compared to RAM and CPU’s, SSD’s are very unreliable and only have a finite number of read/write cycles before they become unstable, even with techniques such as garbage collection and wear levelling. Unfortunately though, Apple chose to use a non-standard connector for it’s MacBook Pro SSD, and while the connector is electronically SATA, the physical shape is not. Therefore finding upgrades or replacements could be more difficult and costly than replacing a standard hard drive. This is probably a way for Apple to ensure that this faster SSD is not swapped out by users and placed into last generation Macs, or vice versa, but in future I would like to see Apple stick to one standard of SSD connector, or perhaps even adopt an industry standard, making it easier for users to upgrade.

What it means for users today though, is that they have to commit to a pricey technology still in it’s infancy. SSD’s have a long way to go before they become anywhere as cost effective per GB as hard drives, and I would personally advise anyone thinking of an SSD upgrade to wait as long as possible, as prices are dropping all the time. The “older” MacBook Pro’s allowed users to upgrade to an SSD later on when prices fall/capacity increases. With the new MacBook Pro, users may never be able to have more than 768GB of storage on their MacBook Pro, while users of “older” Pro’s would be able to swap in >1TB SSDs in a few years time.

So there we have it…

The Retina MacBook Pro is possibly the most technologically advanced notebook of it’s time. It’s display resolution bests almost anything else on the market, it packs the fastest available mobile CPU, a high end Nvidia Kepler GPU and one of the fastest SSD’s you can find. In the process however, Apple has made some serious design/simplicity sacrifices, and this simply takes away from the “magic” of using an Apple device. The Retina MacBook Pro strikes an uneasy balance between the Pro and Air line of Mac Notebooks, too heavy and expensive to be an Air, but far too “soldered in” to be a Pro. The MacBook Pro line of notebooks have been renowned for their upgradeability and connectivity since the Unibody design came along. This new notebook doesn’t have that, but shares more of it’s DNA with the MacBook Air or iPad.

Personally, I hope this isn’t the direction Apple is taking. Integration makes vey impressive designs possible (the iPad probably wouldn’t be so thin and light if it had removable RAM and SSD for example), but there comes a time when too much is too much. Users only have to decide between different storage options for the iPad, but a MacBook is much more complicated as far as component selection is concerned. You choose the RAM, Storage, CPU and GPU. Integrating everything simply doesn’t make sense for the end user in a product as complex as this.

Images from iFixit and Apple’s Website.

Weight and Thickness

You may have noticed that the iPad 3 is slightly thicker and heavier than the iPad 2. This is to accommodate the larger 42.5W/h battery (up from 25W/h from last years model). Although the battery is almost twice as big, the case stays mostly the same. This is because Apple has arranged the components more efficiently compared to the iPad 2 which wasted a lot of internal space. The logic board has been reduced to a thin slither to one side of the device, leaving the rest of the space for that monstrous battery, and it really is BIG. To put this into perspective, the 11 inch MacBook Air 2011 (an x86 device by the way) has a 35W/h battery and the 13 inch MacBook Air has a slightly larger 45W/h battery.

“A5X” SoC

With it’s “Quad Core Graphics”, one would think that the A5X SoC is what requires a bigger battery. I don’t believe this is true. The A5X uses a dual A9 arrangement for the CPU, and early reports suggest that it is clocked the same 1GHz as the previous A5. Even with a much larger die (163mm2 vs 131mm3 of the iPad 2), the A5X shouldn’t consume much more power in normal tasks. This is because even with more resources, parts of the CPU and GPU could be power gated if not required, meaning that power consumption should remain unchanged. Load power consumption should go up naturally, but the extra SGX543MP2 graphics should be good for 4W under load.

Application Performance

A display with 4 times the number of pixels requires UI elements which are also 4 times the size. Thankfully under first impressions, the A5X SoC is well designed for this with a potent graphics solution and added memory bandwidth. NAND performance (the main storage of the device) however remains unchanged from the iPad 2. This would suggest that to load higher resolution UI images would take longer, and I would not be surprised to see application load times remaining the same or even slightly longer than the iPad 2. In fact, early benchmarks of application performance comparing the iPad 2 with the iPad 3 shows very little difference, even in applications updated to support the new iPad 3 features. It seems that the upgrade in SoC was there to make up for a data hungry display, not to increase general performance.

Retina Display’s Power Consumption and Average Brightness

Stuffing more pixels onto an LCD display normally means blocking much more backlight. To add insult to injury, the iPad 3 uses an IPS panel which uses 2 transistors per sub-pixel instead of 1 in TN displays. More transistors means more light is blocked from the backlight. Apple claims that the iPad 3 uses twice the number of LED’s to light the display compared to it’s predecessor, but don’t be fooled; these extra LED’s are there primarily to make up for lost brightness caused by the new panel, not to create a brighter display. The result is a panel which boasts slightly higher contrast compared to the iPad 2 (due to lower black levels), but the same brightness (according to tests carried out by AnandTech). Combine that with the reflective glass coating and sunlight readability is drastically reduced.

Having said that, the iPad 3′s display is possibly the first display on a consumer tablet able to reproduce over 90% of the sRGB space. For comparison, the iPad 2 and Asus Transformer Prime reproduces ~60% sRGB. With a bit of calibration, the iPad 3′s panel could be used in high end video editing.

This one is off, and removed from the device, but it still looks beautiful.

Power Consumption

The power consumed by the iPad 3 is extremely high for a mobile device at 12W under load (7W of which can be attributed to the LCD at full brightness). The iPad 2 consumed 9W (2.7W for LCD at full brightness), which is already quite high. This is possibly where we start to see consumer ARM and x86 devices converging, especially on the power front. Even with twice the battery capacity of the iPad 2, the iPad 3 manages the same runtime as the iPad 2. Idle battery life (low brightness, no load) is slightly better than the iPad 2 due to the larger battery, but load battery life drops below 5 hours, heading into the realm of x86 notebooks.

Heat

Where the iPad 3 starts to resemble x86 notebooks is heat. This is the first time Apple has had to add a metal plate heat spreader to their ARM SoC’s (The well known shot of the A5X SoC shown on Apple’s website is actually the heat spreader itself. The SoC chip is a slightly less attractive square underneath).

The heat spreader looks cooler than the SoC itself (no pun intended)

Early reports show that iPad 3 runs 10 degrees F higher than the iPad 2 under load,  with much of that heat coming from the left section of the device where the logic board and SoC sits. While this wouldn’t burn you, on a hot summers day, a gaming session on the new iPad would probably cause some sweaty palm issues. Unless Apple moves the A5X or future architectures to lower power 32/28 or 22nm manufacturing processes or somehow reduces load power consumption, I won’t be surprised if the next version of Apples A(Something) SoC would require a full blown finned copper heatsink. That being said, 28nm processes are still in their infancy, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable for Apple to stick with older (but more mature) technology to keep up with high demand.

Update: I was lucky enough to get my hands on an iPad 3, and the heat was very noticeable. With an iPad 2 for reference, both ran RealRacing 2 HD for 20 minutes and the iPad 3 was much warmer than the iPad 2. Subjectively, it was about as warm as the bottom of a MacBook Pro 13 under light load, not bad for a laptop but higher than I would have liked in something handheld.

No 5 Minute Charge

That extra battery capacity still needs to be charged, and while owners of iPhones and iPad 2′s can enjoy a noticeable boost in battery life after a lunch break charging session, the iPad 3 isn’t the case. Time to fully charge isn’t twice as bad as the iPad 2, but is still very long; and charging while the device is in use is painfully slow (Notebookcheck.de reported 7% increase charge in 1h15m during use).

Recycle (…more like Disposal)

I haven’t got a chance to tear down an iPad 3 yet, but iFixit have done what they do best the day it was released. iPads (and other iOS devices) are notoriously difficult to disassemble, and the iPad 3 takes this to a whole new level. One of the most important factors in recycling electronics is removing hazardous materials and components; in the iPad’s case, the battery. Even the “built in” batteries of MacBooks Pros, Airs and iPhones are secured by simple screws and can be removed very easily. The iPad 3′s battery is secured to the back case by adhesive. Yes, adhesive. This means prying out the battery and a much greater risk of puncture during the process.

Adhesive is preferred due to the fact that screws require more vertical space (something to be avoided in a thin device). However, disassembly is difficult, making recycling near impossible. It would be interesting to see what recycling companies make of the new iPad.

So there you have it

Sorry to sound negative about the new iPad, because while it is possibly the best consumer tablet you could buy especially with a stunning display and great battery life, it has certainly lost it’s “magic” compared to the first iPad. The first iPad and arguably the iPad 2 showed few technical limitations in use, i.e. charging times were low, temperatures were not a problem and power consumption compared to x86 laptops was very impressive. The new iPad 3 shows noticeable temperature increases, high power consumption and extremely long charging times, marring the “magic” factor and bringing it closer to the realm ordinary laptops.

So while less “magic” won’t affect what you could actually do on a device like this, it makes me wonder whether the new iPad was rushed to market with technology still not mature enough for it’s requirements. Only time will tell whether the next iPad would address these issues.

Yep, that is indeed a Hard Drive.

If it looks like a duck…

Aesthetically, the Spinpoint looks very much like any other hard drive on the market, with standard SATA connectors and also a separate bundle of extra pins which I assume are used during production. The Spinpoint M8 is a two platter hard disk (allowing a 9.5mm thickness) and due to a lower number of platters than 12.5mm MT2, the M8 draws less power than its predecessor and the use of AF, faster SOC Controller and higher aerial density means higher performance than a typical 5400 RPM drive. At this point in time, 1TB 2.5″ Hard drives are only available in the slower (but mainstream) 5400RPM spindle speed. 7200RPM 2.5″ drives top out at 750GB.

Performance

Performance of the M8 is comparable to that of most modern 5400RPM drives, with sequential performance being slightly higher due to higher aerial density. In fact, this drive performs similarly to older 7200 RPM notebook drives with sequential reads peaking at 90MB/s. In everyday use however, other system factors such as caching and processing speed tend to mask any slight performance increases from the hard drive. The lower capacity <500GB versions of the M8 perform slightly faster (according to TomsHardware) and the competing WD10JPVT performs faster still (albeit for a £20 higher asking price).

Power Consumption

Surprisingly, power consumption from the M8 is very low, even approaching SSD territory when idle (disk heads parked). At 0.58W, this is among the lowest of most modern 5400RPM hard drives (most nowadays tend to idle at 0.7W). Under load, power usage increases to 2.6W which is normal for most 5400RPM drives. Just to put this into perspective, the 7200RPM Hybrid Momentus XT (First Generation) idles at 0.7 and peaks at 3.3W under load, while the Corsair Force Series 3 120GB idles at 0.52W and peaks at 2.2W under heavy load.

Noise

Noise is becoming a particularly important issue in notebook hard drives, and the M8 performs reasonably well in this area. While idle/spindle noise is slightly louder than what I’m used to with the stock MacBook Pro 13 drive (by Hitachi), seek noise levels are quite low. Emergency head parking (when the drive suddenly loses power or when a laptops motion sensor is tripped) sounds less clunky than other 2.5″ hard drives I’ve used, and spin up noise is also very low.

Go on… Treat Yourself

Pricing is the most attractive feature of the Spinpoint M8. At £99.98 from many retail stores (even a few weeks after launch), it gives one of the best £/GB ratio of any drive on the market at 9.5p/GB. If you’re in the market for a faster storage solution (7200RPM, Hybrid or SSD), then at 5400RPM you should obviously look elsewhere, but if sheer capacity, compatibility (9.5mm height) and value is what you’re after, the Samsung Spinpoint M8 1TB is very easy to recommend.

Cooling is possibly the most important factor in x86 mobile devices. Cramming ~35 watt components into a chassis less than an inch thick is likely to result in some serious heat issues if not done properly, and we’ve some examples of that from other notebook manufacturers, and the infamous first generation MacBook Air which was plagued by overheating problems.

Dust Trails

Looking at the design of a laptop, it is often quite difficult to determine how air flows inside the laptop to cool the components down, but luckily I got my hands on a MacBook Pro 13 which has been in a dusty environment and it shows air flow inside the chassis beautifully.

We can see that most of the cooling air enters through the left side of the large vent under the notebooks hinge. What’s interesting is that the air doesn’t take a direct path to the fan, but instead travels around the motherboard before entering fan cage. On the lower side, this would be where the RAM is located, and this is possibly how the RAM modules (often overlooked in notebook cooling) are cooled.

One place which I did not expect air flow to occur are the ports on the left side. From the dust trails left behind, there appears to be almost the same amount of air flowing through the ports as the main vent. The path which this air takes is very important, as it would travel over the top side of the motherboard and many of the components such as the sound card and various other controllers. Air would also travel over the copper plates which draw heat from the Core 2 Duo CPU and Nvidia 320M chipset. It would be interesting to see the effect of blocking these ports on the temperature of the system.

Moving cooling air over the chassis and heat plates themselves as well as the heatsink fins is an effective method for maintaining cool chassis temperatures, as seen in the Acer Timeline 3810T where cooling air is redirected over the chassis and the CPU heat plate before cooling the heatsink fins. Many notebooks before the Acer 3810T tend only to cool the heatsink fins and leave the heat plate air stagnant, resulting in hotspots.

Laminar Wall Jet

How the air rows around the chassis is important. The dust trails left behind indicate a smooth air flow with little turbulence which is extremely important in cooling. Jet engines use a similar technique (known as the Laminar Wall Jet) to blast non turbulent air over the combustion chamber walls, keeping the outer skin cool and preventing heat transmission to the wing fuel tanks. A smooth air flow is important, as turbulent flow would result in a build up of hotspots where hot air is not expelled effectively. The old practice of adding lots of air vents onto the laptop chassis was never an effective method of cooling, as air intake would be turbulent and not expelled properly.

A laminar flow quickly tuns into a turbulent mess

http://catchrandom.blogspot.com/2010/08/beautiful-coloured-smoke-pictures.html

The MacBook Pro and Acer Timeline 3810T manage to cool themselves so effectively without a myriad of extraneous air vents because air has a relatively direct and clean route from intake to exhaust. Adding air vents to the bottom of the chassis would probably cause the components to run hotter as turbulent air flow prevents hot air from escaping.

Cooling the Hard Drive

Interestingly, the hard drive doesn’t appear to be air cooled. There is no opening at the front of the notebook to allow air to circulate, and there doesn’t appear to be many dust trails around the hard disk area. I assume that the hard drive is cooled almost entirely by conduction through the side mounted support screws or simple convection to the metal chassis.

This appears to be very effective; the hard disk drive on the MacBook Pro 13 never reaches over 40 degrees, even on continuous load (the same hard drive will reach 60 degrees on my old HP DV2000). High performance 7200RPM drives should be fine in the MBP.

No Air-Flow through the Keyboard

Rummaging through the innards of the MacBook Pro, I also came across something else. Some reviews on other sites suggest that the MBP draws air in through the keyboard much like the Lenovo IdeaPad U300 or Sony Vaio Z (2011). I can confirm that this is indeed utter rubbish; there is no gap through the keyboard in which air can enter. It is also characterised by the fact that it is possible to run the notebook under full load with the lid closed and the components to run no hotter than if the lid was open. Having the keyboard as an air intake would probably require more air movement as seen in the 2011 Vaio Z with its dual fans.

Cooling in the 2010 vs 2011 models

The 2010 and 2011 MacBook Pro’s essentially have the same cooling design, however due to some architectural differences in the chipset, CPU and GPU, the heatsink in both models differ.

The 2010 13″ MacBook Pro Heatsink. Image from iFixit.

The 2010 MacBook Pro has a 2 chip solution with a 25W Core 2 Duo CPU and a Nvidia 320M chipset which communes another ~12W under load. The heatsink must therefore be in contact with both chips to cool them down sufficiently, especially under load.

The 2011 13″ MacBook Pro’s main heatsink and Platform Controller Heatsink towards the left. Image from iFixit.

The 2011 MacBook Pro’s cooling is slightly more interesting. The Core i5/7 CPU integrates many chipset functions and also the GPU into a 35W component. The main heatsink is in contact with this die and not the second platform controller chip (which presumably uses little power). The Platform controller however has its own simple heatsink/heat spreader which also draws heat from the Thunderbolt controller. Heat is then lost through conduction and air flow inside the chassis. Joining the Platform Controller heatsink to the main CPU heatsink (as it is on the 2010 model) will cause the CPU’s heat output to be conducted to the Platform controller, resulting in higher operating temperatures.

Build Quality and Design

The first thing you would think when you pick up the Ace is how light it is. The plastic construction and thin back cover weigh much less than the equivalent metal counterpart. Design wise the Galaxy Ace is one of the best looking budget Android phones out there. The front of the device is covered by a flush clean glass interrupted by only the speaker grille and the single home button while the top and bottom bezel are the same size, lending it an iPhone like appearance. The back of the device is also very well done with a matte textured finish which feels nice to the touch and provides ample grip while the shiny trim provides a feeling of rigidity to the device. Unfortunately, like the Galaxy S 2, the back cover of the Galaxy Ace is worryingly flimsy and provides almost no strength to the phone whatsoever.

It’s just about as flimsy as it looks

Display

It’s a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, but don’t be mistaken; no SAMOLED+ display to be found here. To bring costs down, the Samsung Galaxy Ace uses a bog standard TN LCD panel with mediocre colour saturation and average contrast ratios. Resolution is also a weak point of the Galaxy Ace’s display with individual pixels easily discernible, but then again it’s hard to complain for a budget smartphone. It’s no iPhone 4, but thankfully it’s not as bad as the original HTC Wildfire. Resolution and display aspect ratio should be fully compatible with most Market Apps.

There’s no fooling your retina here…

Technically, the Galaxy Ace handles colours well although Samsung have tweaked its colour reproduction to appear more AMOLED. Colour gradients show clear signs of over saturation and preference for blue colours. Fortunately greyscale gradients are clean showing no signs of banding or unsightly colour tints. I couldn’t run the black level tests to try and discern dark shades of black. It appears that Android or Samsung tweaks the colours slightly to prefer colour vibrancy over faithful reproduction. This is all fine on a phone anyway; I assume most people would prefer vivid colours over “duller” accurate colour reproduction.

Reasonable colour reproduction

Very high black levels (even on low brightness)

The TN display handles greyscale nicely without any unwanted hues

The Galaxy Ace’s use of a TN LCD is especially obvious when it comes to reproducing black. Black levels are very high (almost as high as the iPhone 3GS) and combined with the limited viewing angle creates an unfavourable night time viewing experience. In bright daylight though, the relatively high black level should be drowned out by the displays reflectance anyway. Not that you would want to view the display in bright daylight however; at peak brightness it managed well under indoor lighting but even on cloudy days the display is difficult to read.

Camera

What do you expect. A £120 phone with a 5MP camera and LED flash. Pictures are adequate with nice accurate colours. Even at the highest settings, compression artefacts are clearly visible and in bright conditions the images tend to appear washed out with details in bright areas blown out. It’s not circa 2001 phone camera, but don’t expect it to replace your point and shoot.

Video performance is also quite poor. The Galaxy Ace struggles to maintain a steady frame rate, even when recording at 640×480 (the highest resolution available).

Unlike the Galaxy S 2, the Galaxy Ace does not have a front facing camera as you might think. The two round things you see to the right of the speaker grille are the proximity and light sensor.

Android and Performance

Being a budget smartphone, we can forgive the Samsung Galaxy Ace’s use of a first generation Snapdragon SoC. All would be fine if Samsung had clocked this at 1GHz (like the original Nexus One) which produces reasonable performance. The MSM7227 chipset Sammy uses in the Galaxy Ace is clocked only at 800MHz to add insult to a already slow first generation processor architecture. The UI occasionally struggles to produce decent frame rates while scrolling and running several applications at the same time results in a very sluggish experience. I blame this on the slow SoC, but also the lack of Android’s utilisation of the GPU for the UI. The almost decent Adreno 200 GPU in this phone stays mostly dormant while the already underpowered CPU struggles with relatively basic UI tasks. It’s not ideal, but it’s the same situation for most Android devices.

Unlike it’s higher end brother; the Galaxy S 2, the Ace doesn’t support flash most likely due to it’s sub par processor and as a result we miss out on Neave’s mind-blowing flash visuals. Not that you would want to run flash anyway; browsing without Flash is already choppy and while I have no complaints on the speed at which web pages load (over decent WiFi and 3G), navigating can be a real pain after prolonged usage.

Ow.

Possibly the biggest advantage of Android compared to iOS or WP7 is removable storage. The Galaxy Ace offers you the choice of having over 32GB on your phone, or less depending on your budget. Transferring music and videos from your computer is simply a drag and drop affair without any syncing complications frequently seen with iTunes or Zune.

Technically, the Ace should be upgradeable to Android 2.3, but of course this is dependant on carrier optimisations. My review sample came with Android 2.2 Froyo.

Battery Life

Samsung crams a surprisingly large 5Whr battery in this phone which easily gets through a days worth of heavy use. Like almost every other smartphone on the market though, you should ideally charge it every night to guarantee a full days use.

Satisfyingly large battery which delivers satisfying battery life

Conclusion

Being a naturally critical person, I can’t help but fault the Galaxy Ace for all it’s shortcomings, but this is me comparing it to the latest and greatest; something which the Galaxy Ace isn’t trying to achieve. No it doesn’t have NFC, a front facing camera or high end display tech but for the £120 asking price; you get a device which can make calls, browse the internet, listen to music, watch videos and download third party apps. Just to think that it was only a few years ago when such a device would have costed considerably more. While it is unlikely that you’ll enjoy using the Galaxy Ace as much as something like the iPhone or Galaxy S 2, functionally you won’t be losing out on much thanks to the flexible Android OS it runs. For it’s £120 asking price, there are plenty of alternative ways you could go wrong with a budget Android phone.

More Pictures…



While this works almost flawlessly in iOS devices due to their flash storage and small application sizes, in Macs, this could lead to system slow-downs and increased power consumption.

So what causes the problem?

Let’s say you have 4GB of system memory, and your open applications use up 3.5GB leaving 0.5GB left for whatever you want to do next. Now let’s say that we load a Photoshop file into the memory which uses 1GB. With only 0.5GB of memory left, the OS must find a way of freeing up an extra 0.5GB of memory for the Photoshop file. It does this by paging.

Any item in the memory which is not being used is moved from the memory onto the “virtual memory” on the hard drive. This frees up enough space for the 1GB photoshop file we want to open.

The problem with paging is that it is incredibly slow. The hard drive is the slowest component in the system, and relying on this for paging would result in slowdowns as the hard drive must a) load the file into the memory and b) write data into the virtual memory.

Why aren’t the MacBook Airs affected so much?

The 2010/2011 MacBook Airs use SSD storage (Solid State Drive). SSD’s have no moving parts and are much faster than hard drives found in most MacBook Pros; therefore paging into an SSD would be much faster than paging onto a hard drive. This is partly the reason for why the base 11 inch MacBook Air (2011) with only 2GB of RAM still performs at an acceptable level, because paging onto an SSD is fast and results in slightly less slowdown. RAM is still faster than an SSD though, so the 4GB Air would still perform faster than its 2GB counterpart.

So how much is enough?

In the days of Snow Leopard, I would have said that 4GB would be ample RAM for any Mac under a basic workload. Lion however emphasises multitasking and takes control over closing applications and memory management, and 4GB may not be enough. If you own a Mac with an SSD, then you can easily get by with 4GB, but for a Mac running on a hard drive, paging may drastically reduce system performance if you’re opening a large application or file. Therefore, if you’re likely to be doing heavy multitasking or working with large files, 6 or 8GB of RAM is the way to go.

Dual Channel or not to Dual Channel…

Apple’s Macbook Pro range (and indeed many Windows based notebooks) have 2 RAM slots, and both are usually occupied with two identical modules. For example, a Macbook Pro could have 2x2GB modules making 4GB. The advantage of pairing up identical RAM is that the system can take advantage of something called Dual channel, in simple terms, allowing the system to access both modules in one instance instead of one at a time (i.e. single channel).

Having RAM in dual channel can increase performance slightly (especially in graphics intensive tasks using integrated graphics), but most of the time this is costly as both RAM modules must be replaced at the same time.

The truth is though, while RAM running in dual channel offers performance benefits, they tend to be negligible. Under normal workloads, you will not be able to perceive the difference between a system running dual channel and one which is not. What you would perceive however, is the effects any extra RAM put into the system; so for example, a system not running dual channel memory with 6GB of RAM should feel faster than one running dual channel but with only 4GB of RAM. Of course, a system with 6GB of dual channel RAM (assuming such a thing were possible) would run even faster.

Here are a few of my crude benchmarks

Time to boot up and launch all frequently used applications

4GB: 5min43s

8GB: 3min21S

Time to launch iPhoto with frequently used applications running

4GB: 12s

8GB: 5s

Time to launch iPhoto Slideshow

4GB: 9s

8GB: 4s

Time to create new Safari window with iPlayer running

4GB: 6s

8GB: 3s

BioShock FPS

4GB: 33FPS

8GB: 32FPS

Does RAM solve everything?

Unfortunately not; adding more RAM essentially reduces the need for the system to use the major bottleneck component (hard drive). While it makes the system run more efficiently, it does not make it run “faster”. Tasks which heavily  rely on things other than IO such as streaming HD video, playing graphics intensive games or rendering complex images would not benefit much from more RAM. This can be seen in the BioShock FPS benchmark where the frame rate stayed the same, but it has to be noted that opening and exiting to finder is much faster with more RAM.

Why Doesn’t it work?

Ever wonder why OSX Lion is such a small download compared to previous versions? Mac OS versions tend to be around 7GB in size, Lion is only 3.45GB. The secret here is that Lion only contains critical features and applications, anything else such as Flash and printer drivers would be installed from the internet as and when they are required.

Extra space is saved by dropping PowerPC support. During the transition between the PowerPC architecture and Intel, Apple included a background piece of software in the OS called Rosetta which allows PowerPC applications to run on Intel Macs. With Lion, Rosetta and PowerPC support has been dropped completely and applications written for PowerPC no longer work at all. This is a problem for applications written for PowerPC, such as Adobe Photoshop CS2 and SimCity 4.

I want to play SimCity 4! (On Lion)

There are two ways of doing this, you could set up a Virtual Windows machine and find a Windows copy of SimCity 4. However, after installing possibly one of the most elegant desktop OSes (Lion), I assume you would want a more elagant solution to go with it…

Aspyr is responsible for providing SimCity 4 support for Intel based Macs. This Patch was released in 2007 and installing this would allow SimCity 4 to work on Lion. The SimCity 4 application icon will now also be added to the Launchpad for your enjoyment once the patch has been installed. Performance is still slow (bearing in mind that SimCity 4 for Mac is not written to take advantage of Intel CPU’s) and closing/saving cities seems to take forever, but it works. So give it a try!

Original Source for Post

Rawr :)

Once method of increasing tank water volume without actually increasing the size of the tank is by using a “Sump”. Sump tanks are mostly used in marine aquariums where water is siphoned from the main tank into another tank below. The water in this tank can be mechanically filtered by medium or biologically filtered by using aquatic plants before being pumped back up to the bank tank using a powerhead. As well as being a excellent filtration method, sump tanks also increase the overall volume of water, which offers some of the benefits of a larger tank such as more stocking/buffering capacity and easier maintenance.

This diagram provides a simple overview of how a sump tank works. In reality however, it is slightly more complex than this, with valves, bell siphons and slits to prevent flooding should the pump stop working or the siphon is air-locked.

A typical Sump tank

For owners of smaller aquariums or those who don’t want the complexities involved with a sump tank, there is another simpler option.

The Passive Sump tank.

Essentially, a passive sump requires little/no power to operate and there is no risk of flooding associated with a typical sump tank. It could also be used to decorative effect or even to grow food! (More on this later)

This diagram shows how a passive sump works, and unlike the sump system above, this system is actually that simple! The two way siphon joins the two bodies of water together and allows dissolved minerals etc to diffuse from one tank into another. For example, ammonia diffuses from the main tank into the sump tank where ammonia concentration is lower due to the plants. Of course, simple diffusion is a slow process so the sump tank should be used in conjunction with an active filter system and not treated as a replacement for true filtration. One situation where passive sump would be useful is in Natural Planted Tanks (NPT) where the number of powerheads etc are kept to a minimum and fast growing plants such as Elodea densa or Hornwort (which are not regarded as particularly attractive) can be grown to curb algae growth.

Passive Sump tank

Passive sump systems should not be used as an alternative for true filtration in most cases, however, one of the benefits of a sump tank in marine systems is that filters and powerheads can be hidden from the main tank. This is whee the active sump tank comes in.

Active Sump

This diagram shows how an active sump system works.

Active Sump Tank

Very similar to a marine sump (first diagram), however the sump tank itself is placed besides the main tank like the passive sump system. Water is pumped out of a sump tank into the main tank using a powerhead, which causes the water level in the main tank to rise. The difference in water level causes water to be siphoned from the main tank bank into the sump tank to restore the difference. Because the water level of the sump and the main tank are similar, the is less risk of flooding should something go wrong (if the pump stops working, the siphon simply stops moving water) and therefore fewer valves/bell siphons etc required.

Aquaponics

Remember how I wrote that food can be grown using this system? Aquaponics (a fancy way of saying “growing plants using water alone”) essentially relies on a sump system to deliver minerals excreted from fish to plants.

The diagram below shows the gist of it.

Aquaponics System

I have grown herbs such as Rocket this way with success and many vegetables seem to grow better in water/nutrient solution alone rather than soil. The grow bed does not contain any soil, only gravel and clay rocks which act as a support for the plant roots. The gravel is large enough for water to freely permeate and deliver minerals to the plants root system.

My Sump system (will Update!)

Currently a passive sump system so far. I used it to overcome the limitations of my non-glass tank. Because the tank is opaque, the plants inside only receive natural light from above unlike glass tanks which receive light from all sides. This means that the plants (which I rely on for biological filtration and nitrate removal) aren’t as efficient as they could be. The sump tank (or two 1 litre glass bottles in this case) are used to grow Elodea quickly to remove nitrates faster, and the Elodea in the bottles grow considerably quicker than those in the dimmer main tank and much faster than if they were isolated from the main tank (presumably because of the higher mineral content in the main tank water).

The water is kept circulated between the main tank and the sump by raising the sump periodically, causing water to siphon from the sump to the tank. Once 1/4 of the water has been removed from the sump, it is placed back down to normal level and water begins to fill the sump to normal level again. It’s not an ideal system, but so far without access to the powerhead outlet, it works.

I am planning to convert this sump system to active by using some of the output from the powerhead to grow the Elodea faster, but the powerhead is currently underneath thick growths of plants and roots which I don’t want to disturb, so we’ll see how it goes :)

I might try to grow a few edible plants by making another shallower sump container and filling it with gravel and other goodies such as worms.

…and now we wait…

Filed under: All Categories, General/Everyday, Pets, Plants Tagged: Aquaponic, Aquarium, Elodea, Fish, Freshwater, Hornwort, Hydroponic, Powerhead, Siphon, Sump ]]> http://splurgebook.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/making-a-freshwater-aquarium-sump/feed/ 1 DSC06451.JPG andytran93 Sump Tank.jpg Passive Sump.jpg Active Sump.jpg Aquaponics.jpg DSC06451.JPG DSC06463.JPG DSC06458.JPG http://splurgebook.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/geo-art/ http://splurgebook.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/geo-art/#comments Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:13:15 +0000 Andy https://splurgebook.wordpress.com/?p=1007 ]]> It’s Splurgebook’s 100th post, so I thought I might as well make it something different.

Enjoy!

It doesn’t work though. Here’s the proof;

Now do you believe me? Please don’t say it’s a coincidence.

Good riddance to annoying Facebook Apps.

But iOS 4 takes this a step further and records your location data locally, and then syncs it to your iTunes during backup. If your iPhone backup is not encrypted, anyone could potentially steal your location data.

The folks at http://petewarden.github.com/ have created an application which allows you to dig into your iPhone backup files and show in graphic details your location whereabouts including timestamps. It is very disheartening, and my advice is if you don’t want your ex finding our where you’ve been, I suggest you encrypt your iPhone backup in iTunes.

It appears that no-one has been aware of this “feature” until a few weeks ago, so it’ll be interesting to hear what Apple has to say about this one. Speculation has already started that Apple is simply collecting research data in preperation for cloud networking services, although it does raise the question, should they be doing this without the end users consent?

Either way, there is currently no way of disabling this “feature”, so why not just download* the iPhone tracking app to your Mac and look at where you’ve been. You might even find a few surprises.

*The application is Mac only unfortunately, but the website still has info on how to access location data, if not in a more laborious form.

What does it do?

SuperDuper! is a free tool which allows you to make a exact bootable replica of your Mac’s hard disk on an external hard drive. The advantage it has over TimeMachine is that you can use your backup drive as a boot drive powering on your Mac with it connected and entering the boot menu. Restoring your Mac’s hard drive is as simple as booting into your OSX install disk and restoring through the disk utility.

Friendly interface

Backing up isn’t the only thing you could use SuperDuper for though. Upgrading your Mac’s hard drive used to involve hours of time reinstalling the OS and all your applications and files. SuperDuper! allows you to move everything from your Mac onto a new hard drive, after which all you have to do is swap the old hard drive out and replace it with the new one. If you’re upgrading to a larger hard drive, all the free space would be available to use straight away.

How good is it?

Backing up the entire contents of your Mac’s hard drive can take a long time (2 hours on my 250GB HDD). You can easily reduce the time taken to back up your drive by excluding certain files which you don’t need in the backup such as your Downloads folder or Cache files. The scripting interface which allows you to do this may not be as easy to use as the excluding interface on TimeMachine, and it does seem daunting at first, but it takes only 2 minutes to figure out. It is worth noting that scripting to exclude files requires the paid version.

Excluding files is a doddle

What you also get in the paid version is SmartCopy. This essentially means that instead of erasing your entire backup drive and copying everything again when you want to do another backup, SuperDuper! simply erases and copies data which has changed since the backup by comparing the two. This typically takes 1/5 the time needed for a full backup depending on how much has changed since the last backup.

Scheduling is useful for those who can’t be bothered to manually back up their drive. You could also set SuperDuper! to back up when the drive is connected to your computer, although arguably, you would probably want to do this on a desktop Mac rather than a MacBook as you’ll probably have your hard drive connected most of the time.

Scheduling a backup

It can’t be all good right?

The problem I’ve had with scheduling on SuperDuper! for it to backup my Mac when the drive is connected is that it is very easy just to remove the drive and forget SuperDuper! is running. Removing the hard drive while SuperDuper! is backing up to it would cause it to stop at an “unknown state”. I must admit though, I have removed my external hard drive a few times when a backup is running, and just used SmartCopy afterwards and it seemed to carry on fine.

The main drawback of SuperDuper is that it doesn’t support file history like TimeMachine does. For example, if you accidentally save and close a document and your Mac is backed up with TimeMachine, you would be able to go back and restore the previous version. SuperDuper! doesn’t store incremental backups of your files, which could be a blessing or curse. The main gripe I had with TimeMachine are the size of the backups; because versions of the same file are saved, your backup eventually becomes bigger. SuperDuper! allows you to have full control over the size your backup becomes.

Unexpected benefits?

MacOS uses the HFS+ filesystem. The advantage this has over NTFS or FAT is that it automatically defragments certain small files and moves frequently used files to a “hot zone” on the drive (the outside of the disk where it spins “faster”). It also avoids writing large files into fragmented space where files have been previously deleted from. The problem is that MacOS doesn’t actually defragment free space, or large files for that matter meaning that if you deal with large files (iMovie imports, videos or large applications etc), your drive would become fragmented and write operations would become slow.

The advantage of SuperDuper! is that it can be used to defragment your drive, and relatively quickly. Just do a full backup of your Mac’s hard drive, test the backup by booting into it and erase your Mac’s hard drive and restore the contents of it onto your Mac. Because SuperDuper! copies individual files and not blocks of raw data, the contents of your “new” Mac hard drive would be defragmented and free space would be contiguous. SuperDuper! however wouldn’t move frequently used data onto the “Hot zone” however. Thats the job of another great application (iDefrag)*.

Full version worth $27.95?

I have to admit, $27.95 is quite pricey for an application which shares a feature set similar to TimeMachine which comes free on all Macs. Having said this, the features you get with the full version can justify the price if you factor in the usefulness of scheduling and SmartCopy which drastically reduces incremental backup times and sandboxing which allows you to test applications without harming your Mac.

Of course, you don’t have to purchase the full version if you don’t want to. The free version does all the things the full version does (albeit slightly slower without SmartCopy and file exclusion) and you still end up with a bootable copy of your Mac’s hard drive. It’s a great app though, and the developers deserve a bit of support.

*I shall be purchasing a license of iDefrag soon and will post up a review :)

Divisible by 1, 2, 3, 6, 9 and 18

3 or the divisors add up to 18 (3+6+9) making it a semiperfect number

Add the digits of 18 together and double the answer. You get 18.

18 is the atomic number of Argon. Atomic number refers to the number of protons in an atom.

An identical eclipse (Saros Cycle) occurs just under every 18 years

18 is the age of majority in most countries, i.e coming of age and age of adulthood

In Chinese Mythos, Hell has 18 levels

As of today (6th March 2010) typing “18” into Google Images shows this first;

Followed by this;

In Roman symbols, 18 is represented as XVIII

In 2018, it is predicted that processors will have 100 million cores and operate at 1,000 petaflops

18 seen as a number of good luck in China, thus the 18 floor on buildings are generally expensive

18:00 corresponds to 6pm on the 24 hour clock

And finally, as of today; I have survived 18 orbits around the sun :)

“A5″ Dual Core SoC (Precise specs unknown)

8.8mm Thickness (as opposed to 13.8mm of the iPad)

Magnetic Cover available in Polyurethane or Leather (5 colours available)

HDMI Out with full 1080p support and display mirroring

Gyroscope

“HD” rear camera and front facing camera

The same battery life with 25Whr LiPoly battery and the same H-IPS LED Backlit 1024×768 LCD Display

Available to purchase from March 11th 2011 in the UK

Apple also announced a host of other things including…

iOS 4.3 with updated JavaScript support coming on March 11th 2011

iMovie for iPad

GarageBand for iPad with virtual amp support and up to (only) 8 tracks

FaceTime for iPad

PhotoBooth for iPad

Press Shots

Here are the main differences between the two 2010 and 2011 MacBook Pro 13′s.

MacBook Pro 13 2010

nVidia GeForce 320M integrated graphics with 256MB shared memory. 48 Shader cores.

MacBook Pro 13 2011

Intel HD 3000 on-die graphics with 384MB shared memory and access to on-die L3 cache using ring architecture. 12 “EU’s”.

The 2011 MacBook Pro immediately strikes as the superior configuration, with the chipset itself integrated on the same die as the processor cores. As well as being able to allocate more memory (1.5x as much as the 320M), it also has access to the fast L3 cache on the processor die. The integrated GPU on the Core i5/i7 CPU is also able to “TurboBoost” under thermal constraints under tasks which demand more GPU power than CPU power (including most games).

Notebookcheck.com tested both the nVidia GeForce 320M and the Sandy Bridge GPU and found that the Sandy Bridge GPU performed consistently faster in both synthetic and FPS benchmarks than the nVidia 320M. The difference can only be described as incremental, but provides a clear difference between the performance of the two GPU’s.

It is worth noting that notebookcheck.com did not test the GPU’s independantly of the CPU. Core i5 in the 2011 MacBook Pro performs much faster than the Core 2 Duo on the 2010 MacBook Pro, and this could be a major factor in the performance difference seen in the benchmarks. For example, it could be that the faster CPU is responsible for the performance increase, and not the GPU.

It is also worth noting that nVidia Drivers are better supported in most games than Intel drivers, and it is likely that current Intel drivers are not fully optimised on this front yet.

So, should graphics be the reason to upgrade to the 2011 MacBook Pro 13? Well, yes and no. If you are upgrading exclusively for the Intel GPU, then I suggest you don’t do it. The nVidia 320M on the previous generation MacBook Pro performs just as well in most cases, and the real world performance is negligible.

The CPU however, is definitely a big reason to upgrade. Compared to the other MacBook Pro models, the 13 inch MacBook Pro has jumped 2 generations of CPU (from Penryn to Sandy Bridge) as opposed to the single generation jump of the 15 and 17 inch models (Arrandale to Sandy Bridge). Therefore you should see an even bigger jump in performance due to hyper-threading support, 32nm architectures and TurboBoost. Not to mention the new Thunderbolt Port, SDXC and FaceTime HD support and you’ve got a compelling reason to upgrade.

The truth is though, while the new MacBook Pro certainly improves upon the feature set of the current MacBook Pro 13, it adds very little to the table in terms of real world usability. There are no peripherals as of yet which support thunderbolt and for most consumers, the speed which Firewire or even USB 2.0 provides are more than adequate. Users of the 2009 MacBook Pro may see more reason to upgrade, but for those with a 2010 MacBook Pro 13, your money would be better spent on an SSD (TRIM support is on the way for Lion) or the next generation MacBook Pro (i.e. the one after the 2011 model).

13 inch MacBook Pro

2.3 or 2.7GHz Core i5 or i7 Sandy Bridge Processor

On-die Intel Sandy Bridge Integrated Graphics 3000 with 384MB shared memory

320GB Standard Hard Drive

“Thunderbolt” Port

Facetime HD camera

SDXC Support

63.5Whr Battery with “7 hours wireless web”

15 and 17 inch MacBook Pro’s

2.0 or 2.2GHz Core i7 Quad Core Sandy Bridge Processor

On-die Intel Sandy Bridge Integrated Graphics 3000 with 384MB shared memory

AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory

77.5Whr (15 inch) and 95Whr (17 inch) Battery with “7 hours wireless web”

“Thunderbolt” Port

Thunderbolt Port

This is a collaboration with intel based around their “light-peak” technology. It takes on the same connector as the MiniDisplay port currently found on last generation MacBook’s and is able to output video to HDMI, DVI and VGA at resolutions of up to 2560×1600 pixels. Thunderbolt supports data transfers of up to 10GBps compared to USB 2.0 480MBps.

Integrated Graphics on 13 inch MacBook Pro

Previous generation 13 inch MacBook Pro’s had an Intel Core 2 processor with a third party nVidia Chipset with integrated graphics. The previous generation MacBook had an nVidia 320M integrated graphics card with 48 shader cores and was the most powerful integrated graphics solution available at the time. Intel’s HD 3000 integrated graphics with 12 “EU’s” is located on the same processor die as the CPU itself and shares the CPU’s L3 cache via a ring bus architecture. In early tests, the integrated graphics solutions on Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPU’s performed slightly faster than the nVidia 320M while using less power.

The new 13 inch MacBook Pro however no longer supports features such as CUDA, DirectCompute or OpenCL that the older nVidia 320M had due to Intel’s CPU/Fixed Function design philosophy. This may pose a problem for newer games which offload tasks such as AI onto the GPU to free up CPU time.

The advantage of not having a separate graphics chip may be that the new MacBook Pro 13 may use less power than its previous generation counterpart. Sandy Bridge consumes more power than a Core 2 Duo (processor only) under load, but consumes very little when idle due to core gating and the 32nm process. With the integrated on-die graphics, the 13 inch MacBook Pro essentially has a one chip solution (aside from the platform controller which manages I/O such as SATA) and the cooling efficiency is maintained.

AMD Radeon HD 6490M on the 15 and 17 inch MacBook Pro’s

AMD graphics cards are currently not supported in Flash 10.2 video acceleration, thus H.264 decoding cannot be offloaded onto the GPU, instead it must be decoded on the CPU which is inefficient. The Mac Pro also has an AMD Radeon discrete graphics card and video acceleration is also not supported. The AMD 6490M itself is built around a 40nm process with 120 stream processors, Shader 5.0 support, OpenCL, OpenGL 4.1 and Direct Compute 11.

SuperDrive is no longer “Super”. Hasn’t been for the last 3 years

Apple still doesn’t support Blu-Ray on any of it’s Mac’s. It has been widely speculated that Apple will drop support for an optical disk drive much like it did with the Floppy disk. It is likely that Apple will drop support for an optical drive in the next generation MacBook Pro. This move, while abrupt would be similar to that made when the Floppy drive was removed from Mac’s, long before it was dropped by other PC vendors.

The truth is, with DSL and high speed broadband connections available, data can be transferred more efficiently via the internet and with consumers demanding thinner and lighter portable devices, an optical drive which consumes as much as 1/4 the internal space of a MacBook Pro and is used very rarely would not make sense. The space occupied by an optical disk drive could be used as another battery for example, potentially doubling the battery life of current notebooks. In fact, one of the thickness constraints of the current generation of MacBook Pro’s is the optical drive (and not the battery as li-poly batteries can be moulded to thinner shapes as in the MacBook Air).

Still a TN LCD display

I have said it before and I’ll say it again. MacBook Pro’s are marketed as a designers best friend, so why are they still using TN LCD displays? TN LCD’s cannot produce full 24bit colour, have poor contrast ratios (though it is worth noting that MacBook Pro’s have pretty good displays, considering they’re TN) and sub-par viewing angles. For design work such as photography, having a display that dithers colours to produce the correct shade makes it a very ineffective.

Design is looking a tad dated

The new MacBook Air’s represent the pinnacle of what a MacBook should be, thin, stylish and practical. The new MacBook Pro’s have kept the same design for over 3 years now, and while it is still a class leading design, there are many aspects which can be improved. Thickness for example is beginning to be an issue; the MacBook Pro is the same thickness throughout the chassis and does not taper, which makes it more difficult to type on than the tapered chassis of the new MacBook Air. Newer notebooks such as the Sony Vaio S are quickly approaching the level of thickness currently occupied by the 13 inch MacBook Pro, whilst squeezing in a dedicated graphics card. It is still important to note that while a MacBook Pro is good value considering its software and operating system, in terms of hardware it still somewhat lags behind the competition for sheer raw performance and value.

In-Ear-Monitors (IEM’s) differ from Earbuds by the fact that they seal the ear canal completely as opposed to earbuds which simply sit outside the ear canal. By doing this, they are able to achieve better noise isolation and in most cases, more accurate sound due to the more efficient transfer of sonic energy into the ear canal. Better noise isolation also means the user would be less inclined to turn the output volume to dangerous levels to drown out external noises, however this also poses a health risk, as the user must rely almost entirely on sight in high risk areas (traffic for example).

Among the first IEM’s to come to market were the Etymotic ER-4 series of canalphones. Most consumer in-ear-headphones were earbuds or over-ear-headphones which offered lower levels of noise isolation and a relatively low accuracy. The Etymotic ER-4S series strived for balanced, accurate and clear sound and were so successful that they are still being sold in much the same form today. Unfortunately, for many consumers, the “balanced” and “accurate” sound the ER-4 series produced translated as flat and treble heavy, which lead Etymotic to produce the ER-4P which had a slightly elevated bass response consumers are used to.

The Etymotic ER-4P. Legendary,

Noise Isolation

Most IEM’s require a good seal for them to deliver the full ranges of sound they are capable of.

Foam Tips provide the best seal as they expand into the ear canal. Comply tips are usually preferred however Shure’s Olive tips are also a favourite amongst most audiophiles. Foam tips tend to accentuate bass harmonics and are usually preferred for slightly treble heavy IEM’s such as the Etymotic HF3 and Shure SE535. Due to their porous nature, foam tips have a very limited life-span with those from the likes of Comply lasting only around a month whilst Shure Olives up to a year.

Silicone Flange tips are a common consumer favourite for sheer convenience. They are quick and easy to insert into the ear canal and provide a reasonable seal. They are also extremely durable, offering a life often exceeding that of the IEM itself. Unlike foam tips however, they don’t provide the accentuated bass and noise isolation isn’t as good.

Triple-Flanged Silicone Tips were made popular by Etymotic and are supposed to provide superior noise isolation compared to traditional single-flanged tips. While they do offer very good noise isolation, many say that they accentuate treble frequencies and cause sibilance (high frequency hiss) in balanced armature IEM’s.

Driver Technologies

Balanced Armature



Balanced armature drivers are common in most high end IEM’s. Although more expensive than dynamic drivers, due to their design they are able to reproduce sound more accurately, especially in the treble region. A typical balanced armature driver consists of an armature suspended between two permanent magnets. A current is then passed through a coil spun around the armature which causes it to become attracted to either one of the magnets. The armature is connected to a shaft which joins onto the diaphragm. It is this movement happens thousands of times per second to reproduce the sound that we hear.

Pros

1. Superior Treble performance compared to dynamic drivers
2. Lower drive power
3. Can be tuned for accurate reproduction
4. Multi-driver set-up can have a range far greater than dynamic drivers
5. Much smaller than dynamic drivers

Cons

1. Relatively fixed design means the driver moves less air than a dynamic driver
2. More expensive
3. Requires good seal to deliver low frequencies effectively
4. A single balanced armature driver has a lower frequency range than a single dynamic driver

Balanced Armature Drivers include:

1. Shure SE315/SE425/SE535
2. Westone IEM’s
3. Etymotic ER Series and HF3/HF5
4. Apple In-Ear Headphones

Dynamic


Dynamic drivers in IEM’s work in a similar way to the drivers found in over-ear headphones and larger speakers. The diaphragm is mounted on a voice coil to which a current is applied. The entire section is then either attracted or repelled from a permanent magnet which moves the diaphragm and produces sound. Dynamic drivers are relatively uncommon in IEM’s (although are the staple driver type in ear-buds). Because they are able to move more air, bass reproduction is better than balanced armature drivers, however they cannot move as fast, meaning intricate details (including those within the bass range) may be lost.

Pros

1. Cheaper to produce
2. “Warmer” sound
3. Better bass response
4. Wider range per driver

Cons

1. Tuning for accuracy is difficult
2. Treble roll-off is prevalent in many dynamic IEM’s
3. Larger drivers perform better, but take up considerably more space than BA drivers

Dynamic IEM’s include:

1. Sennheiser CX-200/CX-300
2. Sony MDR Series

Moving Armature

The Grado GR8 is an example of a Moving Armature IEM

Moving armatures are relatively new technology which aims to bring the benefits of fast moving balanced armature drivers with dynamic drivers. Moving armature drivers work in a similar principle to balanced armature drivers, but contain a relatively large diaphragm. A single moving armature driver is able to reproduce audio to the same level of quality found in multiple balanced armature IEM’s. Notable examples include the Grado GR8/GR10’s and the Japanese made Ortofon e-Q5.

Frequency Characteristics

Most consumer IEM’s can be divided into categories by their frequency response. It is worth noting that while an important factor, frequency response is only one factor affecting the quality of IEM’s, and response alone cannot guarantee the quality of reproduction. However it provides a useful method of dismissing IEM’s whose frequency response is modelled towards an undesirable characteristic.

Flat-Response

This is the standard for uncoloured reproduction. With this type of response, no frequency is favoured over another and the sound will appear as intended by mastering. High-end audio equipment will try to achieve this, however no speaker or IEM has actually reproduced a perfectly flat response. Having said this, IEM’s such as the Etymotic ER-4S come very close.

It is worth noting that while a flat response “on paper” for a room speaker should appear flat, IEM’s must favour some frequencies over others to achieve “perceived flat response”. This is because mastering assumes that the sound will be played over room speakers. Room speakers have a noticeable characteristic of somewhat lacking treble, even if they are producing a “balanced sound”. This is because treble frequencies are the first to be absorbed by the air, and by the time the sound reaches our ears, much of the high frequency energy would have been absorbed. Mastering takes this into account and “boosts” high frequencies to overcome this.

IEM’s however do not have this issue and very little treble is absorbed by the small distance in the ear canal. This is why most reference IEM’s tend to lower treble frequencies and boost bass to appear to sound flat.

U Response

Also known as the “Smile” response or “consumer sound”. This is what many modern consumers look for and most consumer earbuds and IEM’s reproduce a sound similar to this. The effect is very noticeable in car stereos and especially consumer IEM’s from the likes of Sennheiser and Beats by Dr.Dre where a “beefy” bass response is coupled with a bright treble. Midrange is usually “towards the back” although it may have several spikes to boost vocal reproduction. This response is also known as the ‘boom & tizz’ response.

N Response

IEM’s which produce this response are said to be mid-heavy. Notable examples include the Etymotic MC5 which places much of the focus on mid-range and sees a noticeable treble roll of and lowered bass response. This type of response is not popular in the consumer market.

Bass Slope

IEM’s with this response are well suited to genres of music which benefit from a bass kick, drum and bass, dubstep and house for example. This response is also very popular amongst the general public and many consumers will happily judge the performance of a pair of IEM’s based solely on its bass response alone.

Treble Slope

The treble slope is generally seen in high end IEM’s geared towards mastering and critical listening. Having an elevated treble allows for greater perceived detail. The treble slope is also favoured by musicians who require these to achieve a perceived flat response. This is because musicians tend to lose their high frequency hearing first due to repeated exposure to loud sounds.

Soundstage

Soundstage refers to the 3D space the IEM creates. Generally, the further away the speakers from the ears, the larger the soundstage is going to be. IEM’s all have an inherent problem of being very close to the ear drum. This means that the sound produced by the driver is not “shaped” by the ear and ear canal before it hits the eardrum as we are used to, which can cause the sound to appear as if it was coming from the centre of the head.

Manufacturers have counteracted this problem by modifying the response of the IEM’s and various software enhancements can also create the illusion of a larger soundstage by leaking the left and right channels into each other or amplifying differences in stereo sounds.

Decay Times

Imagine an IEM reproducing a loud “pop!”. The sound should appear, then stop immediately after the it has ceased from the original recording. If the IEM continues to resonate even after the sound has stopped, it will “colour” the sound with elements not present in the original recording. This is not a desirable trait in IEM’s and should be kept to a minimum. Balanced armature drivers are not affected by this as much as dynamic drivers however, and the problem is much more pronounced in room speakers than on IEM’s.

A typical decay time graph showing the time taken for resonances to stop

Bass Port/Reflex

If a driver is placed in a sealed enclosure, it will have an inherent tendency to move back to its original position after it has moved to equalise the air pressure inside the enclosure. While this can be favourable for producing sounds more accurately and reducing unnecessary resonances (thus avoiding colouring the sound), it increases the power required to move the driver (and to overcome the difference in air pressure) and limits the drivers bass response.

One way for manufacturers to overcome this problem is to put “bass ports” onto the enclosure. Bass ports essentially allow the equalisation of air inside and outside the enclosure and allowing the driver to be more “floppy”. This increases bass response and also lowers the power needed for the driver to produce sound. Adding vents onto the enclosure design however reduces the accuracy of the driver as it is now more “floppy”, although this problem can be overcome by “tuning” the bass ports.

Tuning a bass port essentially means placing the vent in a strategic position on the enclosure to ensure that air is only equalised when it should be (i.e. When the driver is reproducing low frequencies) and to behave like a sealed enclosure when the driver is reproducing higher frequencies. In effect, tuning the bass port allows the driver and enclosure to get the best of both worlds.

Myths

Frequency Range

Which IEM is better?

1. 15hz – 24KHz
2. 22Hz – 16Khz

If you answered (A), then you’re wrong. If you answered (B) however, you are also wrong. Many mis-informed consumers judge the quality of a pair of IEM’s on frequency response alone, and often, frequency response is the only specification on the packaging (aside from sensitivity and impedance) which gives any indication of the performance of a pair of IEM’s. So what’s going on here?

Frequency range only provides one piece of information; the range of frequencies an IEM can cover. It gives no indication to whether the IEM will reproduce all frequencies equally or whether the IEM will distort certain “difficult” frequencies. In fact, most IEM’s whose frequency response covers the <100Hz range will distort these frequencies or ignore them altogether. The same can be said with treble frequencies >6KHz where many IEM’s (especially those which are dynamic based) will distort.

Frequencies below 30Hz and over 16Khz

The human ear can hear sounds at the limits of 20Hz -20KHz. Therefore we can assume that a pair of IEM’s which cover the 20Hz to 20KHz range will suffice, or not. The truth is, most people can only hear a range from 100Hz to 16KHz range, and even then, treble frequencies close to 16KHz would only be heard as “high” with very little actual perceived detail. This can explain why the Etymotic ER-4S has an upper limit of 16KHz, but still reproduces more perceived treble detail than cheaper IEM’s which claim to reproduce frequencies of up to 22KHz.

How Splurgebook tests IEM’s

IEM’s are put through two tests to determine overall sound quality and other factors such as comfort etc.

General Use

IEM is plugged directly into an iPhone 3GS and Samsung YP-P2. No equalisation is used and all sound “enhancements” are turned off. Only FLAC/ALAC and 320Kbp/s MP3 (LAME 3.98) are used as source audio.

Critical Listening

IEM is plugged into a FiiO E7 (WM8740) portable amp which is line-fed from an iPhone 3GS (Airplane Mode). All enhancements turned off. Only ALAC is used.

Noise Isolation

Tested in a quiet room with noise at 35-37db SPL
Tested in an outside environment with noise at 45-60db SPL

1 (Over)Saturation

Only todays highest end IPS LCD displays are only just capable of displaying 98% of the Adobe RGB colour gamut. Most consumer LCD displays fall into the 30-70% range. OLED technologies have always been able to saturate the Adobe RGB colour gamut, and most are able to exceed this by a fair amount; but this is where the problem lies.

The saturated colours found on most OLED displays is impressive at first, but too unnatural to be of any true professional use. Consumer OLED displays such as those found in smartphones are simply too saturated, and once manufacturers have finished showing off their unnaturally vivid displays and actually calibrate them properly, we just have to put up with their eye burning shades of neon colours.

We’ve all “wowed” at this display before…

2 Power Efficiency

OLED’s have entered the market claiming to be power efficient, and theoretically they should be. LCD’s work by shining a backlight behind a TFT panel, and with the exception of dynamic contrast, this backlight draws the same amount of power no matter what is being displayed on the screen. OLED sub-pixels shut off completely if they are displaying true black, so a display can save power if it shows a black background for example. In theory, of course.

The problem here is that so far, AMOLED displays haven’t shown to be very effective with actually saving power. The iPhone 4 for example uses on average 0.42 watts of power at full brightness no matter what is being displayed on the screen. The Samsung Galaxy S uses 0 watts when displaying black, but a circuit burning 1.13 watts when displaying white (DisplayMate). Considering most web-pages and applications are based upon a white background, this is a lot of power to be drawing. We should also consider the fact that the iPhone 4 uses an IPS display technology which itself uses up to 40% more power than the comparable TN panel.

3 Colour Reproduction

Sub-Pixel arrangement also has a big impact on the quality of a display. Most LCD displays are based upon an RGB arrangement; that is each pixel is composed of 3 sub-pixels of Red, Green and Blue. These are mixed to produce the millions of colours we see on our displays. The standard for display technology is 24 bit colour which IPS displays such as the iPhone 4’s are able to produce. TN displays like that found on most notebooks and the iPhone 3GS are only capable of 18 bit colour, and use dithering to simulate 24 bit colour. Many OLED displays are only capable of producing 16 bit colour.

AMOLED displays don’t use the RGB arrangement. Instead, they use the PenTile RG-GB arrangement where each pixel consists of only 2 sub-pixels. While this arrangement may be beneficial for image viewing (many camcorder displays are based on this), it makes it difficult to read text. Because the display requires 2 pixels to reproduce most colours instead of just one, colour gradients are not as smooth and text not as sharp as traditional RGB technologies. Using the PenTile arrangement on an LCD would result in terrible image quality, but at a low cost; which is what you find on fridge displays and cheap portable TV’s.

Yes it’s AMOLED! But no, it’s PenTile.

4 Sunlight Readability

This is where OLED displays have it difficult. Unlike LCD’s which are somewhat transreflective in bright sunlight, OLED displays are not “coloured”. This means they cannot simply use the bright light to “backlight” the display, instead only being able to “compete” with ambient lighting by using maximum brightness. “Super AMOLED” displays try to increase the efficiency of their displays by removing layers on the display which block the displays attenuation. Having a separate glass layer in front of a display can decrease attenuation by 4% (AnandTech), and when fighting against bright sunlight, every percent counts.

The problem where is that OLED displays still have to “compete” with bright light, and so far no consumer smartphone OLED display has been able to exceed the 350nits brightness level. While 300nits will just about be readable in the shade on a sunny day, 400nits or above are what is needed to compete with any form of direct sunlight. According to reviews by (AnandTech), so far; only displays from the likes of the BlackBerry Torch and iPhone 4 are able to produce anything over 400nits, and what d’you know? They both use LCD’s.

Did anyone mention “Sunlight Readability?”

From Andy and Mike :)

Shure is definitely up there if you’re shopping around for high performance in-ear-monitors (IEM’s). Aside from the consumer oriented SE115’s, pretty much all of the new SE range caters for clear, true-to-studio and balanced audio fit for even the pickiest of audiophiles, but with the slightest bit of sparkle and low end goodness of the modern audio preference that consumers crave. The SE315’s are no exception. In the grand scheme of Shure’s SE range, the SE315’s sit toward the lower end with a price of £189.99 and is the lowest priced of Shure’s Balanced Armature IEM lineup. On paper, the SE315’s look a little anaemic compared to its more expensive siblings, the SE425 and SE535’s with only one driver to speak of. A “Tuned BassPort” is incorporated however which should redeem it from the traditionally tinny sound that balanced armature drivers tend to produce (though balanced armatures don’t move a lot of air, so I’m not entirely how this “BassPort” works).

Packaging

Ok, so this isn’t important in the grande scheme of things, but this is an “in-depth” review, so why not? The Shure SE315’s packaging definitely makes what at first seems like a very insignificant product look like a masterpiece. On the practical side of things though, taking the actual IEM’s out requires nothing more than a sturdy pair of hands. There is no dodgy vacuum wrapped plastic or seals to deal with like we find on so many other items of packaging. In fact, I managed to get these out of the box and in my ears in less than 5 minutes. Result!

Design

Those familiar to Shure’s IEM’s would feel right at home with these, however, those coming from IEM’s which hang straight down from the ear may find these a little alien. Shure IEM’s are designed to be worn with the cable running up and over the ear. While it was possible to wear the previous models with the cable running straight down, the new SE315’s simply cannot be worn like this. Not that you would want to anyway; cable microphonics (a fancy way of saying “cable thump”) is greatly reduced when the cable is worn up and over the ear. Cable noise is still present though, and really, the only way to avoid this issue is to wear it under an item of clothing or with a clip etc (a clip is not included in the box).

Cabling isn’t usually a very exciting factor with IEM’s, though with the SE315 (and the rest of the SE line apart from the SE115’s), the cable can be detached from the driver units. Using a special connection which clicks into place and rotates, you can simply replace the cable instead of the entire set should something go wrong. Not that you would want to do such a thing very often; replacement cables cost anywhere from £45, a price which many would probably spend on a new pair of IEM’s. To Shure’s credit however, the cable is extremely well made with a meshy kevlar material covering it and satisfyingly chunky cable protectors at the joints. The cable is also angled at the 3.5mm jack which should prevent it from splitting.

That’s what you would be paying £45 to replace.

Comparing these directly to the SE535’s, the SE315’s seem to fit in the outer ear more easily. The fit isn’t as snug though like it is on the SE535’s, as the driver tapers in slightly towards the tip. Compared to other IEM’s on the market such as the Etymotic HF3’s or Apple In-Ears, the 315’s are much larger and weightier, although their outer-ear design makes them comfortable to wear. Apart from the cable over your ear, it is easy to forget you’re even wearing them.

Shure includes a “Fit-Kit” which includes tips of different materials to give the best fit. For sheer convenience, silicone or rubber tips are great, however they provide a very weak seal. Foam tips (of either the black variety or the yellow ones) provide a much better seal, however they also make putting the IEM’s on a lengthy process. Triple Flange tips are also included, and while they provide a good seal once inserted, they are hit and miss at times.

Quite a decent selection of tips. Cleaning tool is also included to remove that gooey stuff that builds up on your IEM’s after they’ve been in your ears.

The one gripe I have always had with Shure IEM’s was the fact that it takes a while to put them on. If you’re using foam tips, you have to pre-squish them after which you have a 10 second window to stick the things in your ear. The cable would then run over your ear and even after this, it takes about 20 seconds for the foam to expand and a proper seal to be created. It’s an ordeal which can become very annoying in the morning or after you take them out to talk to someone.

That fit took 3 minutes at the very least.

“Wire-form” is included in the first few inches of the cable to aid shaping around the ear.

Sound Quality

Right, so we have established that they take ages to put on; was it worth it? Short answer is definitely! Burning in isn’t generally required for balanced armature drivers so you could start enjoying your music right out of the box.

Shure’s signature sound has always been balanced and accurate, and the SE315’s deliver. Bass was tight and controlled without any of that distorted thumpy mess you find on lower end sets, and mids were delivered in a clean manner. Tracks with a lot going on in the mid-range still sounded especially clear for a pair of single drivers. Acoustic material are where these IEM’s perform at their best, with the single balanced armature driver texturing individual notes in such a precise way, making you feel as if you were in the studio where it was recorded. It is not to say that these IEM’s don’t perform with other music genres, as they provide just enough low end oomph to drive a drum and bass track smoothly along. Colouring is not an issue here, as you will hear everything in the way it was mastered to sound by the studio, as well as compression imperfections in the encoding process.

Just for fun, I played a 128Kbps track on these earphones and the difference between this and Lossless tracks I normally test IEM’s with was astounding. I would go as far as to say that the SE315’s manage to reproduce clearly the compression artefacts that comes with dodgy encodes and the effect was very pronounced. While these aren’t the IEM’s which would benefit much from a dedicated portable amp, they should still be fed Lossless, or 320Kbps from a decent source at the very least. They may be £189.99, but they don’t work miracles.

If I had to gripe about these IEM’s, then treble would be where I find a problem. While tracks were still bright, they seemed to lack some of the high end goodness you would find in the Etymotic HF3’s. This was mainly a problem in acoustic material where the sharp higher frequencies from the album “Take Off Your Colours” by YouMeAtSix were somewhat hard to come by. While this isn’t a “problem” for a pair of consumer earphones, it is definitely something to take into consideration when shopping around for a high end pair of IEM’s. If you’re a fan of bright treble, then the SE425’s or HF3’s would be a better choice.

On a serious health note, Shure IEM’s require very little current to drive them. With a good seal and volume at about half on an iPhone, these IEM’s kicked out a lot of sound and on a MacBook Pro, the volume only needed to be on four bars before things got a bit deafening. This isn’t where the problem lies though; while Shure claims that it’s IEM’s perform better at low volumes, many say that bass response seems better at higher volumes, and it is very easy to turn these up dangerously high to get the low end goodness going, damaging your hearing in the process. A volume limit is definitely something to actually use here, and as with any pair of balanced armature IEM’s, a good seal is essential. As a rule of thumb, try a different tip before turning up the volume if you find bass lacking.

Sound Isolation (Update)

Shure claims “up to 37db” of sound isolation with these IEM’s. Using the olive foam tips, I managed to get a very impressive level of isolation with no music playing. 37db is essentially what you get in a quiet room, so obviously wearing these with no music playing near heavy traffic isn’t going to result in complete silence. Having said this, once music does start playing even at low volumes, ambient noises (up to 45-60db or so) would be very difficult to hear through the isolation. Because of this stellar noise isolation, extra caution should be taken around traffic or high risk areas (I nearly got run over the other day).

While the black olives are my personal favourite choice of tips, yellow foams also work very well. The single flanged silicone tips block less noise, although it does make putting the IEM’s on a little easier. The triple flanged tips provide excellent noise isolation, although they take a while to fit properly and getting a good fit with these can be very difficult. Triple flanged tips also tend to accentuate high frequencies of >10k, which provide music with a high end “sparkle”, although it may become fatiguing after long periods. Everyone’s ear canals are different however, so don’t just take my word for it. With the range of tips Shure provides in the box, you should be able to find a pair that fits you.

Awkward Pricing

With a MSRP of £189.99, the Shure SE315 represents an awkward proposition. This price point is much higher than even the highest of price ranges for casual listeners, but far lower than what an audiophile would pay for decent audio (most tend to go for the higher end SE425’s). It therefore becomes very difficult to recommend these earphones to a particular target group.

Some online retailers price these at £140 which brings it back to the foreseeable price territory of the causal listener, although at £130, the Etymotic HF3 provides somewhat better value with iPhone compatibility and sheer high end clarity. You could add a iPhone remote cable to provide this capability, though this involves forking out an additional £50, putting this way ahead of the HF3’s pricing.

Aside from the retailers profits, the bulk of your hard earned £189.99 is put into this piece of plastic and metal.

Verdict

There is no doubt that Shure is the first name that comes to mind when high end audio comes to mind, with the SE535’s being the best IEM money can (somewhat reasonably) buy. Most people however (including audiophiles) do not have some £470 lying around for a new pair of earphones, and even at £299, the SE425’s are quite steep. The SE315’s at £189.99 fall almost into the consumer end of the price range, but still deliver balanced, uncoloured and clear audio for the discerning listener. On top of this, if you’re simply going to plug these into an iPhone/Decent PMP, then the SE315’s should be as far as you go in terms of high performance/price IEM’s. Plug a pair of SE535’s or even the SE425’s directly into a source like an iPhone and you honestly won’t be making the most of them.

More Pictures (Sorry about the quality)

That’s the colour of my thumb after removing the tough foam tips

One with the driver, one without. Just in case you like that kinda thing.

Driver unit stripped of it’s dignity.

Official shot, obviously of better quality than my own.

There is no doubt that Apple knows what they’re doing when it comes to design. These in-ear headphones blend in very well with any Apple branded product, and users of the crummy in-the-box earphones should have no trouble migrating to this pair. Unlike the bundled earphones, these feel very sturdy with the joints reinforced with a generous layer of thick rubber. It may important to note that the 3.5mm jack sticks straight out, so people who bend their cable at the plug should beware. Apple earphones tend to face the split cable issue here, and these are no exception.

Apple have been very generous with what comes in the box. As well as the usual manual, they’ve also included a triangular carrying case, 2 extra sets of silicone tips and a pair of mesh replacement caps. Ok, if you ask me, they should have provided a pair of triple-flanged tips or foam tips as well, but after all, this is Apple and we should be grateful.

Sound Quality

Before we begin, it is important to note that in-ear canalphones require a very good seal to sound at their best, balanced armature drivers especially. Without a good seal, balanced armature driver earphones sound very tinny and this is a mis-informed complaint I frequently see with the Apple In-Ears. Shove them deeper into your ear or wear the larger ear-tips and 9 times out of 10, problem solved.

So they don’t deliver the in-your-face bass driven sound that the AtomicFloyd HiDefDrums are capable of, but there is still enough there to prevent things from sounding too clinical. Acoustic material could be driven along without a problem, although bass heavy genres such as drum and bass may sound a little anaemic. It has to be noted though, that bass distortion is much lower than the bundled iPod/iPhone earphones and the low end while a little restrained is fairly accurate.

Balanced sound is the key here, and Apple have certainly done a decent job with this. Highs and mids are delivered in just the right doses and although there seems to be a slight dip in response somewhere in the treble region, this is hardly noticeable in everyday use. We’re only nit-picking here though, as in terms of balance and frequency response, we’re starting to approach Etymotic HF3 territory (although the HF3’s cost around £60 more).

Being dual drivers, one could expect these earphones to sound very detailed and crisp. The truth is that while their specifications look good on paper, their dual driver design lends little to be inspired when it comes to sheer clarity. The single driver found on the likes of the Shure SE115 (dynamic) or more so the Etymotic HF3 (balanced armature) provide a much cleaner sound with noticeably more “attack”. Complicated arrangements such as Pendulum’s The Fountain sounded slightly muffled as soon as the various instruments and synths start building up and listening to Muse’s The Resistance album was akin to watching a DVD; the storyline is there, but the cinematic experience isn’t.

Verdict

Ok, so some may fault me for saying that these are simply rubbish with respect to clarity, but the truth is that compared to the competition, I would expect a lot better from these in-ear headphones. If these were available for £40, then I could accept the lack of clarity for value, but at £65, it’s going against very decent sounding competition from the likes of Shure, Sennheiser and countless others. If you’re looking for iPhone compatibility as well as balanced, uncoloured sound, then the slightly ageing Etymotic HF2 would be a much better alternative and can be had for a £10 premium over these earphones, though if you must hop on the Apple bandwagon, then these still provide a huge leap up from the bundled iPod earphones.

Oh, just to make the point a little clearer;

Enjoy :)

The first thing you notice about these earphone’s even before you set your eyes on them is the box. It could be said that the box is more visually pleasing than many an earphone costing a lot more. Square in shape and with a smattering of brands and slogans all over the place, it oozes presence and show off the earphones very well. In many ways, one could simply keep the earphones boxed up on a shelf and even that would pass as a decent living room centrepiece.

Ok, so maybe I’ve exaggerated slightly on the box, but the earphones themselves are very attractive visually and to the touch. Apparently, these earphones are carved out of some sort of steel, then placed in an extremely hot oven to strengthen them up. AtomicFloyd claim that by making the earpiece housing extremely thin, they could deliver superior sound quality. More on that later.

Sound Quality

These earphones use a very unconventional design in that each earpiece has a dynamic driver with a “bass port” facing towards the user which is 13.5mm in diameter and is driven by a neodymium magnet. This is the driver that reproduces low frequencies and ‘reproduces low frequencies’ it does, very well in fact. Bass is very sharp, though only when it needs to be and once these earphones are inserted properly are able to deliver almost floor thumping bass which certainly show their presence.

Being extremely ‘bassy’ doesn’t mean that high end is sacrificed though. Atomic Floyd keeps things nice and crisp and does a nice job with reproducing detail. Magnet by the Bombay Bicycle Club has a tendency of going a little muddy on other earphones, though the Atomic Floyd’s reproduced it with a very cold, almost clinical sharpness; same goes for Crystallised by The xx where the individual strums of the bass guitar can be heard with extremely intricate detail.

These earphones definitely shine with bass-heavy genres such as Pop and Drum and Bass. Pumping Pendulum’s Watercolour through these earphones results in pure audio bliss with bass heavy chorus’s and the occasional hissy high end being reproduced as if it were coming from a much higher end set of earphones. With a complex ‘layered’ chorus arrangement, many earphones tend to skip on fine details in Watercolour and while the Atomic Floyd’s aren’t going to rival something like the Etymotic HF3 for sheer clarity, they cope with complex musical arrangements very well. Classical music is definitely a possibility here, although it is clear that these earphones are tailored more to the likes of more modern music genres.

A slight criticism is noise isolation with the bundled rubber caps. Before I start rambling on, I have to stress that these aren’t actually ‘canalphones’ in the sense that they don’t burrow deep inside your ear like the Etymotic HF3 or Apple In Ears, but they don’t hang as loose as something like the bundled earphones that come with iPods. Noise isolation, while adequate, it not as good as I hoped for. For proper noise attenuation, I’d say go for rubber caps slightly larger than what you would normally use which would ensure a good seal for all that low end goodness to come through. Even with the largest caps on, it was possible to hear conversations from several metres away on a train (this is with music playing at a low volume). Turning the music up (to a safe level, obviously) masks this leakage very well.

Niggles

The Atomic Floyd’s come with an issue which can’t be ignored. Because of their bass-port design which allows air equalisation with the dynamic driver, these earphones leak immense amounts of sound. I would say they are as bad as the bundled Apple headphones, if not worse in some cases. I have disturbed nearby individuals on more than one occasion and thats with the volume on moderate, higher volumes and the sound leakage from these earphones just become too loud to be of any use as earphones. Granted, the bass port design was necessary to allow these earphones to reproduce that wonderful low end, but it comes with a major tradeoff.

A smaller issue is the sheer weight of these earphones. You’ve essentially got blocks of metal hanging off our ears and they certainly show their presence. I’d say you won’t be able to have them in your ears for more than a few hours without having to take them out and having them on while at the gym is definitely out of the question. They also feel very warm after you’ve worn them for a while, this isn’t the problem though. The problem arises when you’ve taken them out of a bag on a cold day. Cold metal against your ear isn’t the nicest of sensations, although this is only me nit-picking.

Verdict

If great clarity, bass reproduction and attractive design are top of your list, then go for it! £70 is generally the quality-price sweet spot for earphones, so you may need to think carefully about these earphones in this regard. But having said this, at £120, you won’t find another set of earphones which perform this well both aesthetically and sonically. It’s worth mentioning that audiophiles craving for uncoloured sound may want to steer clear of these earphones, as their sound reproduction isn’t as flat or accurate as say, the Etymotic HF3 which cost around £130, but for the casual listener of modern pop and drum and bass, these make the perfect companions.

It happened before…

Think about it, it’s not only “Windows Phone 7 vs iOS”; its “Apple vs Microsoft”. Take MacOS for example, this humble operating system once had the majority market share, now look who’s king of the desktop OS world. MacOS has now fallen to a mere 5% market share, and although growing, still wouldn’t reach dominance in the near future.

Apple’s iPhone is the same. The hype is over, everyone has been there and it’s time for something fresh. Android has had its problems from the start (platform fragmentation being one of them) and Windows Phone 7 could just be a likely candidate.

Developers, Developers, Developers…

The very fundamental basis of every smarphone on the market are “Apps”. Apps allow extra functionality on your phone for very little cost, and keep the company (not to mention developers) making money. Apple has shown how this could be done, and has a very wide base of developers coding for the 150,000+ apps on its iOS App Store.

So what gives Microsoft any chance? It all comes down to Microsoft’s market share; almost 95% of the worlds PC’s run Windows, and the number of developers coding for Microsoft is staggeringly huge. Microsoft’s development platforms include Blend 4, Expression and Vision Studio 2010, and all are based around Silverlight. Essentially, if you can code for any of these, making “Apps” for Windows Phone 7 should be a doddle. The range of templates available also makes it incredibly easy to code for, something which can’t be said for Windows Mobile 6.5 which was a “pain to code for”

Put simply, “if you give enough pissed off .net developers something simple and easy to develop on, you’re guaranteed market success”. Christmas is coming up, and we can expect a massive number of applications by then.

Integration…

Even with all these developers under its belt, Microsoft isn’t making Windows Phone 7 “App centric” like iOS or Android. The “App” experience is old school, and integration is all the rage in this day and age. Why do I have to go to the Facebook App to look at my Facebook photos? Why can’t I just go to my native photos App and find them there?

In fact, Microsoft isn’t concentrating on the “App” experience but instead, focusing on “Hubs”, or places where similar functionalities are gathered all in one place. For example, the “People” hub gathers all your friends, contacts, status updates and tweets, all in one place. Thus, keeping up to date with friends takes one tap and a few swipes, unlike other OS’s which require you to move in and out between applications.

It’s looked like that for years!

Arranging applications into an icon matrix has been around since the dawn of GUI, and we’re still using it today. It is not to say that it isn’t functional, just that we could do a lot better. Android has tried to solve this problem by hiding it away in a menu and instead displaying “widgets” on the homescreen to provide live information. iOS has simply rocked the icon matrix homescreen in all of its out-of-date glory, though Windows Phone 7 takes the two, mashes them together and gave birth to something beautiful, and functional.

Instead of just icons or widgets, the “Live Tiles” on Windows Phone 7 are essentially widgets which act as application icons, displaying live information such as weather and people updates all on the homescreen. Accessing the rest of your applications does take a turn backwards to an icon-list, but the fundamental changes are there.

Anyone mention compatibility?

Look at us making such a big deal when Microsoft announced that its phones will sync with Mac OS, when we’re forgetting that iOS doesn’t natively support the worlds most used document format, a Microsoft Office File. Instead, we are left to fend for ourselves and download some third party “App” to do this. Windows Phone 7 comes with Office support out of the box, providing a near seamless experience.

Corporate customers shouldn’t look away either. Windows Phone 7 may have prettied up since previous versions, but it still retains its strong corporate abilities such as native Exchange support (something which took Apple years) and support for SharePoint (something which Apple doesn’t have to this day). This is what makes Windows Phone 7 such a strong contender (or arguably the only contender) in the medium/large business world.

It’s no iOS, but at least it isn’t an Android…

iOS is based entirely on locking in. Getting on the Apple bandwagon involves using the same hardware (ehem, attenuation) whether you like it or not. Android is the complete opposite, you have such a wide range of hardware options that OS fragmentation means you can’t even update your phone straight away; you’ve got to wait for your carrier to make sure it won’t destroy your phones software first.

Windows Phone 7 strikes the balance. All WP7 devices run exactly the same software (and basic internal hardware, for now), but are available from a whole range of different manufacturers in different form factors. When an update becomes available, you can be sure that every WP7 device supports it.

Take that, carriers!

Carriers love to hate their customers, which is why they modify phones to include all sorts of crap on them. Orange is notoriously bad, for example, turning “Internet” into “Orange World” and adding their branding and customisations to every part of the foreseeable UI. Carriers will not be able to do this with the WP7 UI, instead they are only allowed to add their own Hub or application (which the user can simply delete if they wish).

iPhoto ’09 itself was already a brilliant photo management application simply for its ease of use, tight integration with Mac OS and some very advanced features such as face detection and support for geo-tagged images. iPhoto takes this a step further, adding features and enhancing usability on the way.

Let’s start with installation…

Assuming you already have iLife ’09 installed on your Mac, iLife ’11 will automatically overwrite this version during installation. After ripping the CD to DMG, installation was relatively quick and painless. I highly recommend you rip all your Mac installation CDs/DVDs to DMG for backup purposes (CD’s are easier to lose than hard drives).

“Thank goodness it worked”

This is what you’re first greeted with. Having a backed up copy of your iPhoto library is a must. For a modest library of several thousand images with Face tags and the like, it took roughly 10 minutes to process.

Once you “convert” your iPhoto library, there’s no going back

This is what you are greeted with.

The main window remains very much unchanged from previous versions of iPhoto, with the biggest differences being the slightly more “contrasty” icons, scroll bar, and the bottom toolbar resembling something out of an iPad interface.

The main gripe some had with iPhoto ’09 was the lack of smooth scrolling once you’ve passed the events view. Well guess what guys! There’s absolutely no smooth scrolling whatsoever, anywhere in the main interface! Apple say they’ve learnt a lot from the iPad and iPhone, well it would be nice if they could put smooth scrolling into action here. It’s not just an aesthetic reasoning, usability suffers as well.

You can now enjoy the entire non-smoothly-scrolled iPhoto experience in full screen mode! Switching between windowed and full screen was generally snappy. It is worth noting that in Snow Leopard (10.6), activating Expose when iPhoto is in full screen mode will take it back into windowed mode.

Faces generally remains unchanged from iPhoto ’09. There are a few interface tweaks here and there, but all in all, nothing major.

Blurring is in the interest of privacy, it isn’t a new feature in iPhoto ’11 :P

Full screen view of Faces

The Places feature allows you to see where you’ve taken pictures on your GPS enabled device. It’s not only for iPhone users though, you can enter location details in manually.

One very big gripe I’ve had with Places is the very finicky multi-touch experience. Normally, two fingers in a pinching motion will zoom, whereas two fingers moving together will scroll. Often, moving two fingers together to scroll would result in zooming, and often taking you to remote and exotic places you’ve never heard of. Sometimes, it just takes you to the middle of nowhere, see below…

A new filter option allows you to choose your location manually, thus avoiding the twitchy multi-touch navigation.

Full screen view of Places. Well, what else can I say?

Albums view is a new feature taking design cues from the iPad. There is no fancy animated stacks of photos here, just static thumbnails. Facebook albums also appear here, more on that later.

Somewhat reminiscent of the iBooks “shelf” is the Projects view which allows you to see the range of real life stuff you’re making with your photos. Not something that I would use personally, but at least the interface looks nice. Some might question the relatively strong UI choice here, but it seems to follow the HIG, and we’ll get used to it eventually.

Empty Bookshelves…

One of the big features of iPhoto ’11 is the tighter Facebook integration. Instead of simply keeping track of photo’s you’ve uploaded onto Facebook through the iPhoto Uploader, it pulls down all your albums from Facebook regardless of how they were uploaded. This is much more useful than the approach they had before which simply assumed that you uploaded all your pictures from iPhoto. The only small issue is that your tagged photos from friends albums will not show up in iPhoto.

Tags, Contact syncing and comments are also supported from Facebook and Flickr. Other photo sharing services aren’t supported though.

Facebook images are limited in resolution, though a future update will allow you to upload much higher resolution images, hopefully alleviating the massive border issue seen above.

Another big feature of iPhoto ’11 are the new slideshows, which apart from distracting you from your actual photos is actually quite nice. Pictures don’t do it justice, but you get an idea of what it’s about.

So, is it worth the upgrade? Well, at £45, it doesn’t beat Microsoft’s Live Essentials (which is free), although the iLife suite comes with iMovie which for the equivalent Windows software would cost a fortune. I wouldn’t call it an absolutely essential upgrade if you’re primarily using iLife for iPhoto, but for £45, you can’t go wrong.

No optical or hard disk drive, Fan is only moving part

Both models feature full sized keyboards (non backlit) and multi-touch trackpads

Claims

5 Hour Battery Life (7 Hours on 13.3”)
30 Days of Standby Time
“Instant-On” Capability

Pricing

Starts at $999 for 1.4GHz, 64GB, 11.6” model
Peak at $1599 for 1.86GHz, 256GB, 13.3” model

Apple MacBook Air site

Take a look :)

The first thing you notice is the somewhat refined look from Ubuntu 10.04. The taskbar looks considerably slicker than before and context menus have a light gradient to them making the whole experience more rounded. We’re not talking MacOS levels of consistency here, but it certainly gives Windows something to worry about. There are a few rough edges here and there; it’s not pixel perfect by any means, but much better than before.

Of course, you can change to a different theme if the default theme doesn’t take your fancy. Like Ubuntu 10.04, the default menubar and window border are the same colour making it look slightly cliche when windows are maximised.

Firefox is the included web-browser and aside from the numerous add-ons available is quite yawn-worthy. No longer is it the speediest of browsers and with Firefox 4.0 around the corner, it is quickly losing its appeal. It is however still useable and alternatives are a plenty in the Software Centre. Flash is finally supported on 64bit versions of Ubuntu (previously getting Flash onto 64bit Ubuntu was hit and miss) and this can be found on Adobe’s website.

The “Software Centre” is much like the App Store or Marketplace for iOS and Android devices. Installing applications is all done inside the store interface and you won’t have to encounter the terminal or wizard interface for most basic applications.

The Software Centre will now support paid-for applications, though most useful ones such as GIMP, InkScape and OpenOffice are still available for free. It certainly doesn’t make Ubuntu a completely free OS now though; one of the things which makes it such a great OS.

Social Networking integration is the same as 10.04, which means great features like updating your Facebook, Twitter from the menubar is simple. Gwibber is the social networking client, and while you can use your own, you won’t get the slick menubar integration.

The default music player Rhythmbox remains the same, with the addition of a more integrated music store. The menubar integration is much better with the volume control also doubling as music controls when music is playing.

Totem handles video playback in Ubuntu and does a fine job. Downloading Codecs is relatively easy; feed the player something it can’t play and it will prompt you to download a codec, all of this is done right in Totem itself.



OpenOffice is included as default, and does an adequate job of handling documents. It definitely isn’t competing with Office 2010 here, but it gets the job done. Rendering complex .doc documents is very good and features like exporting to .pdf are very handy.



F-Spot was an adequate photo management tool for Ubuntu. Shotell offers all the features of F-Spot, plus a few extras. The interface is much slicker and runs a lot faster with fewer hiccups as well. The only downside is like so many applications included with Ubuntu (and arguably Ubuntu itself), it resembles the Mac interface.

Ubuntu One is much like Dropbox and offers file syncing. It is very much integrated with Ubuntu and also allows you to migrate settings, bookmarks and contacts as well. There will also be a paid-for service which would allow you to stream music from your Ubuntu PC to your smartphone.

SMART features go overlooked in Windows PC’s, but Ubuntu has this covered. The hard disk is the most unreliable component of any PC, so why take any chances. Ubuntu gives you a disk utility with very advanced SMART and benchmarking features

Compiz is the default window manager in Ubuntu and it works a charm with special effects. You can install the Compiz Effects Manager from the Software and play with special effects galore. These include a “CoverFlow” like window switcher and a wobbly window effect. All of these effects generally work lag free even on 3 year old integrated graphics, so most modern PC’s should run them perfectly.

Compared to a Windows PC, Ubuntu uses very few resources and clearly would run happily on a system with only 1GB of RAM. Memory usage rises a lot once you get intensive applications running, but the OS itself uses very few resources. While Windows now requires a DVD to install, Ubuntu will happily run from a LiveCD.

Ubuntu 10.10 isn’t an LTS release, so it would be of less use in large corporate situations. To an average use like me and you though, Ubuntu 10.10 is adequate and support should last you through a good year or so before you need to upgrade. Ubuntu releases on a 6 month cycle however, and most Windows users reformat their entire PC’s every year or so anyway.

So there you have it... Like the versions before it, Ubuntu 10.10 offers a brilliant alternative to Windows. In terms of ease of use and cost, it beasts Windows in almost every way. Being linux however, it presents many compatibility issues and this is the only thing holding it back.

Give Ubuntu a try!

http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

Download the ISO and use an application like 7-Zip or ISOBUSTER to extract it. Then run wubi.exe and follow the instructions to dual boot your machine. This way you can simply “uninstall” Ubuntu at any time.

You could also install Ubuntu as your primary OS. Just follow the instructions on Ubuntu’s website.

Oh, and the Vaio X also manages to fit in a VGA, LAN and several USB ports as well.

It’s October!

October has been a famous month for Apple Mac refreshes, just in time for the holiday season.

Stocks are low

Shop around for the MacBook Air and you’ll see almost all suppliers including Amazon running very low on stock. Low stock has historically indicated a product refresh.

I need a SuperDrive!

Apple has recently shut down it’s online store, not to add a new product, but to remove one instead. The external SuperDrive for the MacBook Air is no longer available from the Apple online store.

Not very “super” anymore. Anyone care to inform it to Blu-Ray?

So what does this all mean?

All this clearly suggests another Mac in the works. While rumours hint at an 11.6 inch MacBook, this seems somewhat unlikely as 11.6 inches eats very closely into iPad territory, and the last thing Apple wants to do is cannibalise sales of its own products. Added to this the fact that the standard MacBook keyboard layout has never been changed and simply will not fit into a 11.6 inch chassis and you’ve got an unlikely equation. Only time will tell though.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the slimmest of them all?

Installation

Installing Office 2011 isn’t as simple as dragging a file into the Applications folder like many a Mac user are used to. Microsoft continues to irritate by offering a wizard based installer. This has been present in older versions of Office for Mac, and it isn’t as brain-aching as it could be. Thankfully, installation only has to be done once, and shortcuts to Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook (Yes! Outlook) as well as a host of other utilities are automatically placed on the dock.

Features

There isn’t much to comment here, as most of the features available for the Windows version are there for the Mac user. This means a better Ribbon interface and snazzy features like “sparklines” in Excel. Mac users can also finally enjoy the benefits of Outlook instead of Entorage as a mail client and support for Microsoft Exchange accounts is present for those corporate type users.

Messenger 8 and a host of other small utilities such as the Flip4Mac WMV codec for Quicktime has also been bundled with Office 2011, cheeky.

Interface

In Word and Excel, a template chooser is presented when you start the application, much like in iWork. You can choose from a wide range of templates both stored locally and also online. Scrolling through the templates is very slow however. It seems like the application has to load thumbnails of those templates not currently in view after you scrolled to them. This is OK for Windows, but Mac users used to instant interaction may be disrupted by this slight inconsistency in workflow. This problem also extends to the previews on the ribbon interface.

The ribbon interface itself has been changed ever so slightly from previous versions of Office to look more native to Mac OS. These screenshots show the ribbon under the “graphite” theme which can be changed in the preferences pane. You can see how much Office 2011 can integrate with the Mac OS experience. Animations such as those found when opening the “inspector” and the media browser makes you think you’re using a native Mac application. It’s a massive step above and beyond the level of integration 2008 could achieve.

Ribbon interface in word (with graphite theme)

The inspector and media browser panes. Generally follows Apple’s HIG.

Outlook retains the vertical column interface found in the Windows version, compared to Mail for Mac is a very efficient way of layout. Much like the Windows version, the ribbon is present which should make mundane tasks like replying and forwarding much easier and less accident prone.

Outlook with a clean vertical column interface. (Graphite theme has been disabled for the ribbon)

Performance

Ever since Office 2008, Microsoft’s Office suite for Mac was built on Mac OS code (cocoa I believe) and doesn’t require the compatibility layer of older versions. While performance with large documents is certainly a step above that of Office 2008, general “snappyness” is still nowhere near that of iWork. Scrolling does feel choppy at the best of times and transitions (into full screen mode in Word for example) can be quite choppy. Office 2011 is still “young” though, and we should see an improvement in the near future.

Wrap-Up

Office 2011 is almost certainly recommended for those looking for ultimate compatibility and sheer number of features. It adds plenty more to the table compared to Office 2008, and offers improved performance with larger documents. Shopping around online, you’ll find the Home and Student version available for less than £100, placing it somewhat in iWork territory. iWork ’11 is apparently coming around the corner, and it would be interesting to see how Office 2011 stacks up to this. Office 2011 has set the bar very high and is certainly recommended once it becomes available.

More eye-candy?

PowerPoint’s familiar interface

Excel defaults to full-screen view. Ribbon interface seems to take up a freakishly large amount of vertical space.

Messenger 8 for Mac. I’d say get Adium; slicker interface, performs well and supports a plethora of social networks and IM’s

The preferences pane; clearly more options to fiddle around with than iWork. Also looks a lot more like a Mac preferences window than Office 2008.

The UKCAT (“test”) itself consists of 4 discrete sections;

Verbal Reasoning

Basically, a passage is given for you to have a quick read and several comprehension style questions are given with a choice of 3 answers; True, False or Can’t Tell. This section can be slightly abstract at times, and tests the ability of even the most ardent of fluent English speakers. Quick reading skills and the ability of pick out important information is a must. Oh, and if you are planning to answer every question in the section, you’ve got about half a minute to do so.

Quantitive Reasoning

Pretty much the same style as the verbal reasoning section, but maths. This section requires maths at up to GCSE level, though for the mathematically challenged; the depth of the questions may confuse. The difficulty of questions can vary in different exams, and also from the practice questions given on the UKCAT website. Again, this section is filled with multiple choice style questions so if you don’t know the answer, let the gods of chance guide you (or make an “intelligent” guess).

Abstract Analysis

If you’ve ever done an IQ test or played “Brain Training” on the Nintendo DS, this would be quite familiar. You are given a two sets of shapes and are asked which set would match the shape given to you. A word of warning; they’re not lying when they say “Abstract”. The first half of the questions might just about be do-able, but many will require a very detailed analysis, which takes time; time which isn’t on your side.

Rule of thumb; if you don’t know the answer, and think you might still have time at the end of the section, mark it as flagged. If you don’t think you’ll have enough time, give it a guess. Time left over from one section will not be carried on into another, and once you complete and end a section, there’s no going back.

Non-Cognitive Analysis

This section is a bit more laid back than the last 3 in terms of sheer brain power needed, but strangely still has a time limit. Essentially, the questions in this section test your personality, morals and the like. Surprisingly, they seem to make it difficult where they can in places, presumably trying to catch out anyone who tries to lie their way through the section, and you do wish that you could just write down what you really feel instead of just selecting “True” or “False”, but hey, that’s UKCAT for you :)

So, Any Tips?

Many say you can’t revise for UKCAT, and that seems to make many assume you could just leave it to last minute, then panic about it then. UKCAT is like a sport; you can’t just “cram” everything in the last minute. You won’t play a big football match with only 20 minutes of practice before the game would you? UKCAT is the same. Do plenty of practice using the resources on the UKCAT website and the hundreds available on the interwebs. You might not get better at the individual questions (though this I doubt), but being familiar with the format makes a very, very big difference.

Careful with the caffeine! Yes Red Bull does make you more alert, but the caffeine it contains is also a diuretic; essentially it makes you want to pee. While this may be of annoyance during the exam itself (you can’t pause it), it has another effect which may not be as noticeable. Like alcohol, caffeine dehydrates you, and just a 2% loss of water could spell disaster for your cognitive abilities.

If you have any more tips, feel free to post them on the comments section!

And if you’re doing your UKCAT soon; Good Luck!

Retina Display

While it is correct that the iPod Touch’s display has the same 326 PPI (Pixels Per Inch) density as the iPhone 4, other aspects of the display are very different. Viewing angles for example, are nowhere near as good as those on the iPhone 4’s IPS LCD display which leads us to believe that the display in the iPod Touch is a TN LCD.

This is until we see that the display is apparently capable of “24 bit colour” at the Apple Event. TN LCD displays are not capable of true 24 bit colour unless dithering is used which rapidly changes the shade of certain pixels to create the illusion of a smoother 24 bit colour gradient. So either Apple have stuck a really poor quality IPS LCD in the iPod Touch, or they’re not being completely honest about their 24 bit colour claims. Naughty Apple.

Lowly Camera

Apple’s spec sheet claims that the iPod Touch camera can shoot 720p videos at 30FPS, and indeed it can. Look closely however and you’ll see that it can only shoot stills at VGA resolution (something my web-cam can do). This is because the sensor hardware only has 720 vertical pixels compared to the thousand or so in the 5 megapixel iPhone 4. So videos may turn out stunning, but pictures will be wanting something more.

Focus!

While the 3GS and iPhone 4 feature “tap to focus”, the iPod Touch has a fixed lens, and so “tapping to focus” will only adjust the exposure. While this may not be much of a problem in landscape shots, macro and portrait shots will come out looking a little more hazy than they would on an iPhone 4.

Where am I?

“An iPhone without the Phone?” It’s also an iPhone without GPS and a Compass, so no Google mapping here. There is assisted GPS in the form of WiFi which the geo-tagging works off, but unless you happen to be in a busy area with plenty of coffee shops around, this wouldn’t be of much use.

Possibly the biggest difference between the older Nehalem and the new Sandy Bridge architecture is the Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP). In Core 2 Duo systems, Intel’s integrated graphics were located off the CPU and on a separate chip on the motherboard. The Nehalem and Westmere processors had the IGP located on the same package as the CPU, but on a different die and manufactured to a 45nm process (as opposed to the 32nm process of the CPU). Sandy Bridge will incorporate the IGP directly on the CPU die, all manufactured to a 32nm process. As well as this, the IGP will share the CPU’s L3 cache, theoretically resulting in higher performance and lower power consumption.

IGP’s and GPU’s are essentially massively parallel processors, and can feature hundreds of cores all working together to complete a complex instruction. The latest GPU’s from nVidia and AMD can feature 350 cores or more, whereas most high end IGP’s have around 40-50 cores. Manufacturers give all sorts of names to these cores, nVidia calls them CUDA cores and AMD calls them Stream Processors, and Intel will only confuse things further by calling their IGP cores “EU’s”. The new Sandy Bridge CPU/GPU will either have a single or dual core IGP, with each core having 6 EU’s. It is likely that notebooks will feature a dual core version of the IGP which would act as the primary graphics card whereas most desktops would have a single core version and a discrete graphics card (with something like nVidia Optimus switching between the two)

While it may not be up to the hundreds of cores found in discrete graphics cards or even the 40 or so found in other IGP’s, Intel promises 2x the performance of the earlier Westmere IGP’s, and early benchmark results certainly show this with frame rates besting most IGP’s from the likes of nVidia and AMD. It’s performance should even rival the fast nVidia 320M IGP found in the 2010 MacBook Pro’s, giving nVidia something to worry about.

Intel’s Turbo Boost has been implemented on this processor with the IGP also receiving the “Turbo Treatment”. Turbo Boost improves performance of applications using only one core by turning off or slowing all other cores. The extra heat and power saved by doing this allows the remaining core to overclock within the TDP limit and process single core operations more quickly. Because the IGP and CPU are on the same die, Intel have implemented Turbo Boost for the IGP as well, allowing the IGP to overclock while playing games which require more IGP resources than CPU.

Enough talk on the IGP though, the CPU core has changed as well. Intel claims it has increased its Instructions Per Clock (IPC) by around 20%, which is a nice evolutionary improvement over the previous generation, and the one before that. Clock speeds of these new processors have also been upped as well as Intel’s monstrous cache sizes. It also has extra support for AVX instructions which should increase performance of media and processor intensive applications.

It’s not all rosy though. Sandy Bridge will not fit into current Westmere sockets, which means you will need an entirely new motherboard for these hot chips. Speaking of hot chips, overclocking will not be possible on these processors due to the lack of FSB and the presence of Turbo Boost in the works. Overclockers and enthusiasts will have to look for the K series processors which will feature an unlocked multiplier of up to 57x. On top of this, AMD has announced the release of its new CPU/GPU architecture called Bulldozer which implements a much more efficient way of handling 2 threads per core as well as integrated graphics built in. Added to this the support for AMD and nVdia GPUS’s in the gaming industry is much higher, this would give Sandy Bridge something to worry about.

iOS 4.2

iPad Wireless Printing Support

AirPlay allows streaming over WiFi

New iPod Shuffle brings back buttons and keeps playlists

New iPod Nano has multi-touch. Touch based and possibly requires 2 hands to use. 24 hour audio playback

New iPod Touch, has 2 cameras, FaceTime over WiFi, “retina display” capable of 24bit colour, slimmer design, game centre with iOS 4.1, Apple A4 SOC

iTunes 10, new logo, elegant UI, Slick List management

Ping in iTunes, basically LastFM. Available for PC and iPod/Phone

New Apple TV significantly smaller than previous (1.4), Built In power supply, HDMI, Ethernet, 802.11N WiFi, No internal storage, Not based on x86 Architecture (possible ARM based SOC or A4)

99 cents to rent HD shows on iTV, NETFLIX, Youtube, Flickr and MobileMe integration. Streaming via Wireless N from iPad, iPhone or Mac/PC

Chris Martin performed at the end of event, Yellow by Coldplay.

The answer is quite simple, but the explanation may be a little lengthy, so bear with me. Intel’s latest Core i series processors come with an integrated northbridge which means that memory and graphics are controlled on the same package as the processor itself. This is one of the appeals of the Core i series processors which should mean lower power consumption and smaller motherboard designs. There is a problem however; Apple wants all MacBook Pro’s to have better graphics capabilities than their older generation counterparts, and the integrated GMA 4500MHD found in the Core i series cannot keep up with the dedicated nVidia 9400M card found in last years MacBook Pro. This is why they have added a dedicated nVidia GeForce GT 330 to the mix, and allowed an “Optimus”-like graphics switching technique to switch dynamically between the two.

The relatively large MacBook Pro 15 motherboard showing the “3 chip solution”; Core i CPU, nVidia GeForce GT 320M and Intel’s Platform Controller

This is OK for the 15 and 17 inch MacBook Pro’s, as their motherboard designs have always been a “3 chip solution” since the first unibody models. One is the Core i5/i7 CPU, one is the dedicated nVidia GeForce GT330M and the other is a chip which comes with the Core i processor package, and deals with the graphics switching.

The tiny MacBook Pro 13 motherboard with the Penryn Core 2 Duo CPU and integrated GPU/Chipset

The 13 MacBook Pro however has a problem. The only way onto the Core i series bandwagon is to go with the 3 chip solution, but the 13 inch MacBook Pro’s motherboard (not to mention cooling solution) was designed to accommodate only a 2 chip solution (with integrated graphics), one for the CPU and the other for the combined chipset and integrated graphics card. Unfortunately, Intel doesn’t allow other manufacturers to use integrated chipsets for their latest processors because they are already built in. This means that going with the Core i series processor would mean adding a dedicated graphics card (something which the current cooling solution may not cope with, and at the expense of battery life) or scrapping the nVidia Graphics altogether which would mean that this years generation would have worse GPU performance than last years (also a no-no). This leaves us with the only solution which is to bung a 3 year old 45nm Penryn Core 2 Duo processor with an exclusive nVidia 320M graphics card and chipset. Exciting stuff.

So will the 13 inch MacBook ever get a Core i series processor? Well, maybe. Other manufacturers like Sony have shown that it can be done, but at the expense of larger motherboards and smaller batteries (thus lower battery life). The only way for Apple to fit a Core i series processor into its 13 inch MacBook Pro with integrated nVidia Graphics is if Intel lifts the restriction which doesn’t allow the use of chipsets other than its own, and considering Intel’s and nVidia’s relationship status is “it’s complicated”, that doesn’t look like it’ll happen anytime soon.

Update; So how about Intel’s new “Sandy Bridge” CPU/GPU coming out later this year. Well, it’s unlikely that Apple would take these on; even though their integrated graphics are comparable to nVidia’s current 320M solution, they don’t support features like CUDA, DirectCompute and OpenCL, making it tough for Apple to justify. Also, by then, we could safely say that nVidia would have released a faster card, or industry standards would have moved on a bit.

Images sourced from ifixit

Stay tuned for an interesting post brewing in the works…

:)

Here’s an explanation for why this may be;

A faster processor uses up more power, but at the same time is able to do more work. This means that the processor can complete operations faster, and go into sleep mode more often and saving power. Faster data processing also means that the other components in a computer don’t have to stay active for longer periods waiting for data from the processor thus can shut off and save more power.

Operations which require full CPU utilisation such as software video encoding may also show lower system-wide power consumption on a faster processor as the operation will be able to finish more quickly and the system to idle sooner. Whether this 32 minute battery life boost is worth the additional £260, well that’s your decision.

*Test systems included 2.4GHz and 2.66GHz MacBook Pro 13 (2010) running clean installs of Snow Leopard. “32 minutes longer” runtime was gathered by repeating 720p trailers on 50% brightness.

…Yeah right. Let the comebacks commence;

Think about it, would you rather buy a £30 adapter to connect your computer to any display, or would you buy a whole new computer upon finding that it doesn’t have a HDMI, VGA, or DVI port?

Of course things don’t work the same way on a Mac, they’re completely different operating systems! The mouse works differently because it’s better; think about it, what Windows based PC utilises Multi-Touch to the level of Macs? None. Exactly.

Simpler to do? Windows? I don’t think so. Aero Snap is also a feature found in Ubuntu long before Windows 7, so don’t try it. Oh, by the way, does Windows 7 have native support for multiple virtual desktops? Uh nah.

“Many PC’s”? Not really, and most of them which don’t have custom interfaces built on top of Windows are a complete disaster. Take the Archos 9 for example, total failure in terms of usability. Having touch on your PC might be fun during the first few weeks, but I can guarantee that after a month you’ll be searching for the mouse and keyboard.

Sorry what? So unless I get Windows 7 Ultimate, I can’t encrypt my hard drive AT ALL? Sod it.

Yes, but PC’s definitely don’t like Mac stuff.

Choose? Like when you have to “choose” between 4 different versions of the same operating system (or 7 different versions if you’re looking at 32 vs 64 bit)? Or is that choose the various download for your dreaded unsupported drivers? Or maybe they’re referring to choosing registry cleaners, or perhaps they’r…

… you get the picture…

Compared to their previous albums, Immersion conveys a lot of emotion to the listener, and many of the songs certainly have a resemblance to the single “Hold Your Colour” where soft emotional lyrics are backed by the presence of a strong bass-line which attack your ears, it’s quite an achievement.

What I like about Pendulum is the sheer complexity of most of their tracks; you could listen to them over and over again and pick out bits that you’ve never heard before. One of the tracks from Immersion called “Crush” certainly has this, as the sheer number of Vocals overlaid over each other makes it difficult to sing along to, but sounds very satisfying at the same time. It must be heard on a decent pair of headphones or speakers to be appreciated.

Listening to the album in its entirety is now much like “Hold Your Colour”, with an intro called Genesis easing you into the atmosphere. Fortunately, most of the songs aren’t incredibly long like Hold Your Colour, so those with shorter attention spans will not be disappointed. Songs like “The Island” have two parts which integrate into each other in harmony, and while the second part (Dusk) may startle you after the relatively smooth first half (Dawn), it somehow integrates extremely well.

The startling uptake of dub-step has left it’s mark on this album with tracks like ‘Set Me On Fire’ showing the fine punchy details normally associated with this genre. It is nice to see Pendulum branching out a bit though, and keep their characteristic style at the same time.

It’s not all dandy in the world of Immersion though; some parts of the album are just simply fast-foreword inducing. The mash-up with In Flames in the track ‘Self vs Self’ sounds much like the usual In Flames song with Rob Swire’s heavily synthetic voice garnishing the chorus. To be brutally honest, it simply resembles an amateur mash up you could probably make in GarageBand.

But it’s not all bad news though…

Should you buy it? Depends on your taste in music. Obviously, there isn’t a one size fits all answer here, but if you like Pendulum’s music, then this album wouldn’t disappoint, but if you’re not too into them; then the similarities to their previous albums might put you off every so slightly.

www.pendulum.com/

A rough representation of the differences between a low contrast ratio (left) and a high contrast ratio (right)

For example, the MacBook Pro 13 (2010) is able to go as low as 0.44 cd/m2 when showing black, and as high as 308 cd/m2 when showing white. This gives a Contrast Ratio of 700:1, which is very good for a notebook, but compared to regular TV’s seems dismally small. TV’s are advertised to have anything from 3,000:1 or even 30,000:1 contrast ratios nowadays, so do these readings hold true?

In some ways they do, however many LCD TV’s nowadays have a feature regularly called “Dynamic Backlighting” which allows the TV’s backlight to dim in darker scenes and brighten in lighter scenes to try and produce a higher contrast. Some TV’s even feature “Local Dimming” to dim certain parts of the display, allowing even higher Contrast Ratios. The Contrast Ratio for these types of TV’s is called the Dynamic Contrast Ratio which is measured by the darkest shade possible when the backlight is dimmed and the brightest possible shade when the backlight is lit fully.

There is a problem with Dynamic Contrast Ratios however; while you can achieve a 30,000:1 contrast ratio in the lab by showing either a black or white on the display, in real world use, there are many colours and shades being displayed on the screen at the same time. This means real world Contrast Ratios will never be this high unless you like to watch either a completely black or white display.

Static Contrast Ratio is the measurement taken when the display is at a constant brightness, and represents real world use as most of what we watch on our TV’s is a mixture of dark and light shades where Dynamic Backlighting would be of little use.

So should you trust what manufacturers say about contrast ratios? Well, the short answer is no. In much the same way that you can’t judge a book by the first few pages you can’t judge the quality of a display by its contrast ratio alone. There is no single standard for judging contrast ratio, and a display would have a myriad of other characteristics such as colour accuracy and reflectance which would determine its overall quality. The best thing to do is to either judge the displays quality yourself, or go in-store with a colorimeter; its the only way to be sure.

Browsing the web in Safari is hardly a mammoth task to throw at a notebook, but add flash to the equation and CPU usage rises to scary levels. This is quite startling considering web browsing should be a basic everyday activity and battery life suffers due to this.

ClickToFlash is a Safari plugin for Mac which blocks all flash content whilst you’re browsing the web. This includes Flash ad banners, flash video and little things which you may not even notice. Should you need the blocked flash object, just click on it and the full Flash object will load.

Just click on the Flash object to load it!

Sites like YouTube are particularly interesting, as ClickToFlash allows you to play YouTube in H.264 or QuickTime format which leverages hardware acceleration and consumes a lot less power. This also means that YouTube HD content won’t send your CPU temperatures skyrocketing.

Watch YouTube videos in all their H.264 glory…

http://clicktoflash.com/

…and it’s absolutely free! Just donate if you wish…