The start of a trend?

From MacWorld:

Huge newspaper makes Mac switch move - Mac - Macworld UK:

One of Europe's largest newspaper publishers, Axel Springer AG, has announced plans to migrate its 10,000 employees and 150 newspapers in 30 countries to the Mac

Speaking in a video message that's now available through YouTube, company CEO Mathias Döpfner notes the following four reasons for the shift:

• 'Most of the company’s layout work was already being done on Macs
• 'Macs are more user friendly than other computers
• 'Apple creates the most elegant computers
• 'Macs are cheaper to buy and easier to maintain than they were in the past.'

Could this be the start of a trend? I'm not expecting an avalanche of such announcements in the near future, but the world is changing. Microsoft seem to be suffering from horrendous PR problems at the moment, with people (regardless of the reality of the situation) starting to view them as dazed and confused. I saw a magazine cover the other day which posed (if I remember correctly) the question: "The end for Microsoft?".

The $64000 question for me is "are Apple really any better than Microsoft?" I think the jury is still out on that one...

Battery Woes & Coconuts

Why is it that all laptop batteries eventually die?

Whenever I charge my MacBook Pro completely, the battery meter stops at 98%, and the battery says it's charged. I'd like to think this just means that I get 2% less charge than I used to, but the reality is far less appealing. When I unplug the juice, my laptop informs me I've got 1:33 to live. I used to get at least 2:30.

I know it's a reality that laptop batteries behave like this, and I'm aware that nothing short of a breakthrough in chemistry is likely to change this, but what I would like to see is some kind of transparency about the state of the battery - an advanced battery meter if you like. Something that shows the theoretical battery capacity, the charge attained last time it was full and it's current level. The meter could also show the number of 'charge' cycles the battery has been through to provide a view of the likely useful life of the battery.

I guess it would look a little like this:

Thankfully, someone's gone to the trouble of doing exactly that. CoconutBattery provides all of the above information at a glance, allowing you to understand exactly the position you're in. Which in my case is that I'm the proud owner of one of the oldest MacBook Pro's on the market (29 months? Has it really been that long?), and its battery is getting a bit weary. Perhaps it's time to buy a new one...

TimeMachine with AirPort Disk: Finally

Apple yesterday released updates to their AirPort Extreme and TimeCapsule base stations and Time Machine which allows Time Machine to use an AirPort disk for backup (I have an extreme with about 1.5TB hanging off it). Finally. For those of you with a laptop like me, this means you can have a safe and secure Mac without living life in a bird's nest of cables and disks.

I configured it with a new disk yesterday, and it works great - just connect to the drive (by clicking on it in the left bar in Finder), and it appears in the Time Machine window and can be selected as the target for backups. The good news is that it seems very stable and happy - putting the laptop to sleep and waking it up again during a backup seems to have no impact, which is great. The bad news is that I started my first backup more than 24 hours ago, and it's still running. Whoops. Learn from my mistake: do your first full backup with the drive physically connected, otherwise you'll spend the next three weeks watching paint dry.

All in all though, it's great news that those of us that invested in AirPort Extreme base stations are being given the same privileges as those investing in brand new Time Capsules.