iTunes 10, the latest version, breaks Automator for a trivial reason: Automator checks to make sure that iTunes is new enough to be compatible. So it looks for version 4.6 or later. iTunes is at version 10. Even though the number 10 is larger than the number 4.6, some part of Automator is treating “10″ and “4.6″ as text. Since when treated as text, “10″ comes before “4.6″ for the same reason “ant” is before “bee”; the leftmost characters are compared; if they are equivalent, then the second-leftmost are compared, and so on; “1″ is before “4″, so the comparison algorithm halts there. Automator considers the latest version of iTunes too old.

Anyway, the title links to an article about how to fix the problem. It involves hacking some XML files. If you’re not comfortable with that, you should probably wait for Apple to issue a system update. And you should probably notice that this indicates how few people within Apple can be arsed to use Automator unless required to.

It’s also interesting to speculate why Adobe isn’t attempting anything like this, or why they’re so closed-lipped about it if they are.

South Koreans have solved the cold-weather iPhone problem: Buy a particular brand of mini sausage that’s approximately the same shape and conductivity of a human finger.

Clusterflock has a concise summary of the iPhone sausage finger. The Google-translated article leaves us with this thought: “Maekseubong tagitcheung and this just fits the iPhone user base, while the poisonous celebrity, Max is on the stick.”

Apple’s own documentation is sparse bordering on nonexistent. Product descriptions for their iPhone headsets only mention iPods. The most Apple has written about this is on page 25 of a PDF of the MacBook Pro user’s guide: “Audio out port: Connect external speakers, headphones (including iPhone), or digital audio equipment.“

If you haven’t got a compatible laptop, you can make an adaptor that splits into Mic In and Stereo Out plugs, or buy one.

Legal status: Continuing to be dubious

Apple’s victories in court against renegade Mac cloner Psystar are tangentially relevant and provide an object lesson in how not to go about things. Psystar is a company that openly sold white box PCs, optionally with Mac OS X pre-installed. Apple leapt quickly, lawsuit-wise, and this weekend won an unalloyed victory against Psystar on most key counts.

Groklaw has a detailed post on the news, although it’s considerably more readable if you’re already familiar with the key players and issues. Wikipedia’s entry on Psystar is a good place to start (and, perhaps tellingly, has little about the business or products and a great deal about their legal problems). One of the key points of Apple’s lawsuit is that Psystar violated Apple’s end-user license agreement (EULA) which prohibits third-party installations of Mac OS X. Psystar’s key defense was that the EULA was not binding or didn’t apply to how Psystar used it, which the court rejected. As I write this, Psystar’s site is still operating (and can be googled), but now that they’ve run out of ways to pay their bills, that may not last.

Psystar never tried to be a good actor; from the beginning they were known for shifting addresses, failing to process orders, and antagonizing the open-source community by distributing open-source software without respecting the appropriate licenses. In doing so, it lost an opportunity to earn goodwill among those inclined to cheer on anybody who’s sticking it to the man. The key component of Psystar’s business model — distributing somebody else’s software without paying for it — was too unlikely to establish precedent for a radical new understanding of copyright, and it’s difficult to imagine how Psystar expected to get away with it. As Groklaw points out, if you want your software libre, there are plenty of legitimate options and no legal or ethical support for doing what Psystar did.

Psystar’s violation of Apple’s EULA was the grounds for being shut down, but it was Psystar’s bootlegging Apple’s OS which drew Apple’s attention. A disorganized population of amateur hackintoshers, each working on their own, may constitute targets too small for Apple to go after, but hackers ought to at least stake some ethical ground by buying a copy of OS X for each computer they hack and minimize the number of EULA violations they commit. To the best of my understanding — which is not well-researched — Apple has only gone after commercial repackagers of its OS, not hobbyists building their own systems from legitimately purchased components.

The sound you hear is lawyers in Cupertino slapping their foreheads

Incidentally, while Apple’s six-thousand-word-long Software License Agreement for Mac OS X (PDF file) makes it clear that while the OS may only be installed on Apple-branded computers, it doesn’t say Apple-manufactured or Apple-packaged computers. So if Apple sues you, try covering the Dell badge on the lid of your netbook with an Apple sticker of conveniently the right size (such as, say, the ones packaged with each new Mac, iPhone and iPod) and claim that you found a loophole. Preferably while chortling smugly to yourself. Let me know how it works out.

Technical status: At the mercy of somebody who, if they acknowledged you exist, would try to hurt you

As noted now by everybody who cares, the OS X 10.6.2 updater fair and squarely disables itself on the Atom processor common to netbooks. The rumors had were flying even while the updater was in beta, so when the change remained in the final release the news was significant. And within a day of the beta going live, there were command-line hacks to get the updater running, and inside of a week the NetbookInstaller app had been patched to do the same thing with a one-button click. In the end, there was a great deal of hand wringing about an apparently simple workaround.

Apple seems institutionally aware of the diminishing profit inherent in over-aggressively locking down its flagship OS. Apple can also, somewhat, afford a measure of slackness regarding the distribution of Mac OS X since it profits by selling the computer hardware, whereas Microsoft can’t. The consumer version of Mac OS X has minimal built-in enforcement of its EULA, in contrast to Microsoft’s many-pronged technique to control how and where its OSes go. (For that matter, Apple secures OS X Server and most of its application software; clearly it’ll use registration mechanisms when it wishes.) It’s possible that hackintoshing has be accommodated in the breach if Apple has decided losses due to misuse are minor compared to the repeat sales advantage in a user experience unimpeded by serial numbers, hardware keying and “For your protection” nagboxes. It may also be that the number of hackintoshers who could be potential customers are too small a population to be worth reaching out to.

Netbook hackintosh users represent a mix of agendas. Some are current Apple customers who already have enough Apple-built hardware to meet their needs, some are people who want an ultra-portable and are building their own in lieu of Apple providing one. There are also those into it for the hacking challenge or curiosity. Some are unlikely to buy Apple hardware for any number of reasons but who want to try Mac OS, possibly in part of routinely trying a variety of OSes. And there are probably people who start with Mac OS X on a PC and later buy their first Apple product, but that’s unlikely to represent a majority of of hackintoshers regardless of what they may say when asked.

It remains to be seen whether this is now a cat-and-mouse game. 10.6.3 and subsequent issues may attempt to circumvent previous patches, or they may not. Hackintosh users have always been obligated to keep an ear to the ground in this regard, not knowing whether any change to the OS risks bricking their computer, and recent news drives that point home. Apple has means other than the courts to control the distribution and use of their software, and this is one of them. Hackers are at a natural disadvantage by open-sourcing their work, allowing Apple’s engineers the same access to the workarounds as everybody else does, making their own job of counter-hacking easier. A measure of wariness, if not paranoia, is the rule every time a new OS update is pending.

Further impressions: Not all that bad, really

As of this writing, the latest version of NetbookInstaller appears to have improved the trackpad driver; using the trackpad on this Dell Mini 10v is no longer tooth-grindingly awful. Pointing and clicking work great. Two-finger tapping (for a right click) and two-finger scrolling now behave as designed, and while sensitivity and movement are not up to the standards of Apple product they’re good enough for free. This was one significant problem I harped on at length in the original Mac netbook writeup, and this is a change significant enough to rescind that earlier complaint. It also means those configuring new Mac netbooks may have less work to do, since fixing and patching the trackpad up to marginal usefulness consumed a big chunk of my time.

I’ve mostly gotten used to the keyboard, with caveats. Fatfingering keys hadn’t been much of a problem from day one, and most gotchas involved how my motor memory dealt with key placement. For example, function-delete has been the standard keystroke for forward-delete on my Mac laptops for as long as I’ve owned any, but it’s nonexistent on the Dell. Instead, I have to use the dedicated forward-delete key. I love having a forward-delete key, in fact, but reaching for it is not an action I’ve been able to memorize yet. Weird, that one. The swapped positions of the function and control keys continue to be a minor irritation, as I don’t depend on those keys for most tasks I do on the netbook, but your mileage may vary.

The display is a mix of annoyances and virtues. Image quality isn’t up to Apple standards, and there’s no way around it; colors don’t look quite right, available viewing angles are narrower, and most critically the image is slightly distorted – everything’s a wee bit fatter. Having a small display with only a few lines of text visible while writing is fantastic when I’m pounding out first drafts, whether of blog entries or pseudocode, but becomes constraining when I’ve slowed down, begun editing, and am forced to scroll up and down a more than I’m used to.

Flipping between windows frequently, somewhat necessary while blogging when I’m fact checking and collecting links, feels more onerous on the netbook and I can’t quite put my finger on why. Possibly because with a large display my working windows do not have to take up the full screen so I have visual prompts of what else is open, or because with two-monitor displays I can keep multiple windows unobstructed while working. The netbook’s ultra-constrained display is, to some extent, a necessary evil, but  if Dell offered the same optional high-res display for the 10v that is available for the 10, I would have gone for it.

The battery does not fit tightly in its bracket, so the computer sometimes clunks when moved. As previously noted this is the awkward, oversized six-cell battery, so moving the computer at all is sure to shift the battery and contribute to the computer’s flimsy, plasticky feel.

A fitted case is a must when carrying a netbook around as it’s going to get jostled too much even in conventional computer bags, and the six-cell version of the Mini can only fit in a neoprene sleeve as it’s too awkwardly shaped for a non-stretchy padded case. I got a CaseLogic neoprene sleeve that comfortably fits the Mini with its outsized battery plus power adaptor in an extra zippered pocket, and the handles are a boon. The whole kit fits in an army surplus musette bag with enough room left for half a gallon of milk, some bread and dinner fixings.

The Mini 10v is Dell’s design for a tiny low-cost computer, something I don’t picture Apple willing to make. For the most part, Dell made reasonable compromises; some slow me down as a user, some are aesthetically displeasing, but none of the downsides keep me from using it. I’ve worked on this post on both the Dell Mini and a MacBook Pro. The MBP, by its size, inhibits a certain degree of portability. Since it’s also my desktop machine I’ve got to unplug a half-dozen cables before it can move at all, and the sturdy heft that makes it feel like a Real Computer also makes it feel like extra work to fold it up and haul it into a carrying bag. By my working arrangements the Mini is mobile-er, a second computer that’s never tethered to anything but its power cord, its size facilitating the convenience of pick-up-and-go ease. Apple understands portability with regard to its iPod and iTunes lines; subtle-seeming changes in dimensions and weight can amount to significant changes in use; a couple millimeters shaved here and there means the device can fit into pockets it might not otherwise fit, be handheld in slightly more hands, and simply feel and look like something that’s easier to carry. The MacBook Pro is a desktop computer that fits in a bag, portable but not meant for fleetness.

The Mini 10v, in contrast to the MacBook Pro, is not subtly small. It’s freaking tiny for something meant to set on your lap and be typed on. I don’t really contemplate packing the MBP for quick trips any more when I can sweep up the Mini and go. The MBP has more weight and feels weightier; the Mini is smaller and lighter, but above all it simply feels more portable. This may be where its cheapness is its virtue, not because it’s disposable but because feeling light and plasticky dilutes its impression of heft.

A hackintosh would serve badly as a primary computer for reasons I’ve spent thousands of words on. As a secondary computer it may be better in some ways than Genuine Apple Product, at least until the next OS update.

In a nutshell, Apple’s latest update to Mac OS X (10.6.2) disables support for the Atom CPU common in most netbooks, including the Dell Mini 10v used in my review. Whether it was a side effect in fixing an unrelated issue or because Apple is now actively trying to inhibit hackintoshing, the result is the same as far as the Mac hacking community is concerned: From here on out, every Apple OS update is going to have to be reviewed and possibly modified by the hackintosh community before it can be safe for installation on non-Apple hardware. For my thoughts on the matter, see the late addition to the long Mac netbook post.

This "MacBook Nano", for example. By Mickphoto

Apple hasn’t. So motivated hackers have been busily wedging Mac OS X into other company’s laptops as well as they could. This is not as easy as it might sound; options are limited to those computers with technical specifications closest to what Apple supports in its own products, patching the system to accommodate, compensate for, or ignore the remaining differences.

Enough progress has been made that even people who have no clue how to diagnose BIOS or edit kext files can do a passable job of putting Mac OS X on computers not made by Apple. Some do it purely out of being able to, some do it under the illusion that this will be an easy way to have a Macintosh for a fraction of the price of a real one. (Edit, Nov 4: An addendum about how the Apple taketh away and the Apple giveth back at the end of this post.) (Edit, Nov 17: There is now a second post with more news about Apple vs. hackintoshing, updates, and further impressions.)

Well? How desperate?

Thanks to increasing uniformity among the major computer vendors, hackintoshing isn’t a monumental challenge. No computer models are exactly alike (except when one company is simply putting their badge on somebody else’s work), so most hacked PCs get pretty close to working like Macs but rarely exactly like Macs. Depending on what’s lacking or different compared to Apple’s computer hardware, a hackintosh can be passable or a failure. For a while BoingBoing maintained a table of Mac-hackable netbooks, and on it you can see that, for example, the Sony Vaio P is a great choice as long as you never try to go online.

The recent Hackintosh Netbooks thread on Ask Metafilter renewed my interest in this. To summarize the question: ” I want a netbook running Mac OS X. I’m not afraid of the risks, I’m technically competent, but I don’t want to throw my money away and I don’t want upkeep to be a time-consuming hobby. So what should I get and what should I do?” The answers are surprisingly direct and positive.

What grabbed me was this line in rokusan’s response: “I like it because if I drop it or break it or it dies in six months, who cares. Cheap, disposable Mac for less than the cost of an OLPC.” I can’t consider myself a cheapskate, what with the cost of my work equipment (Apple hardware, Microsoft and Adobe software, and so on), but rokusan captured the motivation. This is the only way to get an incredibly portable computer on which I can run the operating system I’m most comfortable using. I may screw up and turn the thing into three pounds of sizzling plastic bacon, leaving me wishing I’d never bothered, but I won’t be out a lot. The odds of success are high and as computers go the stakes are low.

Dell Mini 10v display vs. my usual work environment. (Image enhanced for clarity)

As long as the constraints on using a netbook aren’t too limiting, it’s awfully appealing. My household can use a netbook. Collectively we’ll logging a fair amount of air travel in the coming year, and a new computer with half the size and weight of our current laptops will make it easier to work in transit.

Dell Mini 10v: The choice of the desperate

Voices in the Ask Metafilter thread were mostly in unison regarding the Dell Mini 10v. It’s not the smallest, but it’s small. It’s not the cheapest, but it’s cheap. The keyboard is better than those on most netbooks. It’s the younger, bigger brother of the thoroughly hackintosh-compatible Mini 9. It’s not the most readily moddable, but it’s one of the platforms for which other people have bundled all the required hacks into a single application. When prepared as directed, the considerable effort of patching and modding the OS is done on your behalf.

With the patch application, installing Mac OS X on the Mini 10v is sufficiently easy that even Gizmodo editors can do it. And now there’s a clearly written, well-illustrated step-by-step tutorial that’s far better than the hackers themselves have written. If you want to read how I did it, read that.

My Mini 10v came from Dell’s Outlet Store, shaving $25 off the cost. It also meant I got an older version of the 10v, one that doesn’t require a BIOS downgrade, which is yet another slim-but-possible opportunity to brick the machine. After about an hour at night spent preparing the tools for the installation and an hour the next morning doing the installing, I ended up with a working copy of OS X on a Dell laptop. Weird.

The installation process was without trauma. I unboxed the computer, configured it, and ran some programs. It became a hackintosh. After more configuring I took it to a cafe and typed to some friends, “I’m on a hackintosh.” Because that’s the way I roll.

Is it worth doing?

The first two hours, outlined above, don’t demand your attention; computers are grinding away, doing their thing, and you can go do your thing, which may involve pizza, a movie, or a relaxing bath. Some time later, after you get to witness the jarring transition from the Dell logo on bootload to the grey Apple screen, your work begins.

Quality of experience under Mac OS X on the Dell Mini 10v is… not Apple-like.

The trackpad is close to useless without further hacking, after which it’s marginal at best. Tracking works passably well, but two-finger clicking and scrolling are evanescent experiences — they rarely occur, never when expected, and are impossible to repeat reliably. If you’re not already in the habit of plugging in a mouse or optimizing keyboard use, this will beat those habits into you.

The keyboard is cramped (90% of standard keyboard size) and the control key’s to the left of the function key (reversing their positions on Apple’s laptops), contributing to the cascades of minor irritations. If you can’t touch type, the alt and Windows keys will be endlessly frustrating. As a lifelong touch typist with large-ish hands, I didn’t find the scale of the keyboard to be a problem and haven’t fatfingered yet.

You should appreciate the irony in this screenshot

Some windows are too tall for the screen, so you have to use one hack or another to rescale windows to fit the display.

The colors on the display are off. The netbook hack app includes a few color profiles that improve things, but none are spot on.

So after the couple hours of installation, plan on a couple additional hours to patch the trackpad driver, learn how scaling hacks work, download applications, see which apps fail and read MyDellMini to see if anybody else has worked around them, and learn how little you can do on a laptop with only 1 GB of RAM and a display half the size of Apple’s standard product. This is the time to acclimate yourself to the computer and adjust the computer to you.

And then, as demonstrated, take it to a cafe with wifi and grab some bragging rights.

Hackintoshes are for desperadoes and the indifferent

This hack violates both Apple’s and Dell’s warranties, might have broken some intellectual property laws, risked wasting my money and time, and put my computer in the hands of people I don’t know who wrote applications that have access to data I store and transmit. The less you know about what you’re doing, the less you should take this lightly, even if you have money to burn.

Every change to the software or hardware is unsupported by everybody. Dell won’t help you. Apple can’t help you. Using hardware and software in unauthorized ways exposes you to risks you don’t otherwise face. A new Mac OS X update might brick your computer; you have to wait until it’s been vetted by people who know what’s going on under the hood. You’re at the mercy of volunteers now so hope they don’t get tired of this and start doing something else for a hobby. When you don’t know what’s going on, you have to check in with others, judge their credibility, and act accordingly.

This is an open-source project without legitimacy and you’ll be participating as a comparatively clueless peer. Let’s drive this point home with a mallet: If something you install ruins your computer, it’s your fault.

This is the state of the art in putting Apple’s computer operating system where it wasn’t meant to be. Due to laws, and to major corporations’ attitudes regarding how their products are used, it’s unlikely to improve further. Keep that in mind, too.

You have to be pretty desperate for a Mac to do this out of need. You’re probably an idiot to depend on one as your primary computer. Treat this as a productive hobby and avoid getting too attached to the results. Keep your computer’s recovery disks and a copy of Ubuntu handy in case you get tired of the grey area you’re operating in. And don’t use a hackintosh if you won’t make one yourself.

How un-Apple-like can a Mac-alike get?

First, living in an all Mac household and as the web developer in an all Mac workplace, I don’t deal with PC hardware often. (Courtesy of VMWare Fusion, I continue to deal with Windows regularly). Apple’s design, construction, and finish in their products are the norm to me; the sharp corners near the trackpad on the current MacBook Pro is about the most blatant design flaw that comes to mind at the moment. Apple’s modern laptops aren’t massive, but they have satisfying heft. Even the MacBook Air, surprisingly light for its size, is solid and sturdy. Design decisions matter even when the result is meant to be unnoticed; for example, the heaviest components in a laptop (battery and hard drive) are farthest from the display hinge so that the case can be opened by lifting the lid with one hand. The body is as seamless as modern mass production allows. The result of all this detailed work in design and build is a device that does what I want it to do without my having to think hard about how it’s done; a characteristic shared by many good tools.

The Mini 10v feels flimsy and light. The battery is at the screen hinge, making it off-balance and tippy, so when it’s on my lap I occasionally need to keep one hand on the palm rest. The plastic of the lid top can be flexed. You can see the display hinge’s shaft, metal shielding between the keyboard and case, and other gaps. The housing has more seams and the edge of the lid feels like it’s got mold flashing. The underside is perforated with grates, an access panel that doesn’t open, and large screw heads. There are, of course, ubiquitous Intel and Microsoft branding stickers plus a REFURB sticker (optional), a Windows product key sticker, a sticker with a ton of certification badges and the logo of the manufacturer Dell outsourced this to. An Apple product is uniformly and unambiguously a product of Apple (“Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China”), regardless of who was hired to manufacture it. Dell gets top billing but when among other marques, it becomes a front man, not an authority. There’s an implicit preemptive passing of the buck: “Does the case hinge wobble? That’s Anatel’s fault, not mine. The system crashed? Hey, don’t look at me, man.”

While the bezel around the Mini 10v’s display is only 2mm wider than a MacBook Pro’s, it overwhelms the small display within. The user may be forgiven for imagining Dell could have fit a larger LCD in the case when it looks like fifty percent of the monitor surface is housing. The all-black case is garnished with superfluous design details like a grey wrist rest and trackpad (whereas Apple simply ships an all-black case). The design is restrained by PC industry standards; there’s no contrasting trim, creases and embossings, patterns and labels, excess status lights and buttons for disk access, network access, audio settings, or turbo.

Some design details are questionable. On such a small keyboard, the redundant Home and End keys are annoying. Even Apple’s minimalist laptops have Caps Lock lights; the Mini 10v doesn’t. There’s a bulky old-fashioned VGA display jack rather than a tinier, more efficient miniDV.

The Mini 10v is meant to be inexpensive. Nothing I’ve mentioned are deal killers, and many of them make sense in context. Design compromises that lower manufacturing expense without jeopardizing the computer’s integrety are called for. Housing plastic that’s fractionally thinner, a hinge design that works to spec with greater assembly tolerances, and a commodity keyboard picked from an EOM catalog all help meet the $300-350 pricepoint common to netbooks. The aggregated effect of all these lacking details and cost cutting results in a computer that feels considerably cheaper and flimsier than Apple product, whether or not it is.

The Mini 10v has some nice amenities that Apple doesn’t provide. It has an ethernet jack and the MacBook Air doesn’t. Neener. There are dedicated delete and backspace keys. The VGA port means one less rat-tail to pack when it’s got to drive a meeting room projector.

There is one non-small problem: A 3-cell battery that fits flush with the case is standard, but a 6-cell battery is needed to get more than three hours of runtime. It’s shaped like a stack of C-cell batteries permanently affixed under the hinge. It’s a fine, functional prop while working (aside from elevating the keyboard to the hands when it’s on a table, it also helps air circulate under the machine), but it renders the Mini 10v as something other than a rectangular box-shaped computer: It is now T-shaped when open, L-shaped when closed. The outboard battery housing will be a continual obstacle every time the computer is picked up. Good luck finding a padded computer bag that fits. The battery is an egregious design failure. In fact I couldn’t find a representative picture of it anywhere on Dell’s site other than in the support and accessories area; in the product customizer when you’re designing your new computer, the photo is taken from above so that you can’t see how bulky it is. (Between the first draft and now, Dell stopped offering the 6-cell battery as a substitute for the standard 3-cell in the build-to-order store. Now the 10v is only sold with the 3-cell battery preinstalled, and the 6-cell as an additional battery. So this rant is unlikely to apply to new system buyers but it’s still worth pointing out because oh man is that thing awkward.)

If you hate it so much, why don’t you divorce it?

I’ve been whipping my impressions into this post as I use the Mini 10v; about half of it has been typed from the hackintosh itself. It is useful. It’s going to travel in airplane carryon bags. It’s going to be my secondary development machine, because sometimes I work best when pounding out first drafts on a small screen in a library while wearing headphones; a lavish desktop system with two monitors accommodates too many distractions. The 10v may also serve as a portable presentation machine, thanks to the built-in VGA jack. And I like low-impact hacking toys.

The Dell Mini 10v: Half the size of a real keyboard

For some perspective, the Mini 10v could be hidden underneath the keyboard I’m currently typing on.

I’m going to keep it. So far I like it. It’s tiny and looks nice. Aside from its scary technical status and dubious legal status, it seems useful enough to justify the extra effort needed to keep it running. I might pick off all the stickers and cover the Dell logos with the white Apple stickers that are pretty easy to find around our house, but haven’t succumbed to that temptation yet.

What can we assume about Apple’s attitude towards netbooks if this is all we have to go on?

That OS X 10.6 runs on the Mini 10v at all says more about how much the computer contract manufacturing industry has shrunk than it does about Apple’s plans.

Apple already has a MacBook Air. It weighs half a pound more than the Mini 10v, has half again the battery life of a stock Mini 10v, and its base price is five times as much. The benefits for that price are obvious: Much larger display, full-sized keyboard, build quality, and legitimacy.

If Apple had a netbook-like Macintosh in the pipeline, it would feature the following:

• The same keyboard Apple installs in every other Macintosh, which isn’t possible in current 9″ and 10″ netbook form factors. This is an ergonomics issue, not a marketing matter, and if any computer company understands this Apple does.
• A display that is at least 768 pixels tall, to meet minimum standard display height for windows. The Dell Mini 10 (but not the 10v) is available with a 1366×768  screen, so this is possible in current netbook form factors, but since the keyboard will be bigger and the display covers the keyboard, the display may as well have larger dimensions too.
• A trackpad at least as large as a current MacBook’s, to provide the room necessary for Mac OS’s current suite of two, three, and four finger gesture controls; Apple eliminated the trackpad button in part to provide more sensor space, and they’re not going to cut that back.
• A better processor and capacity for more RAM, rather than the comparatively underpowered Intel Atom and 2 GB memory limit.
• The larger monitor and higher-spec CPU will mean higher energy needs, mandating a larger battery.
• The larger battery, keyboard, touchpad, display and CPU require a larger case.

Practically speaking, this brings us around again to a Macbook Air.

Isamu Sanada designs beautiful imaginary Apple products

In the farther-flung future, the terms may change. Ultra-low-power high-quality displays are coming. Smaller, more efficient CPUs are in the pipeline. Solid-state drives are going to become cheaper, more efficient, and physically smaller. There will always be practical minimums to case size — the keyboard must be large enough to type on, the display large enough to be useful. Those of us who remember the 12″ iBook or 12″ PowerBook know that Apple can create a laptop case as wide as the keyboard in it, but the 11.25″ x 9.25″ iBook is still considerably larger than the 10.25″ x 7.25″ Mini 10 — and in the world of portables, minor differences in size and weight can have exaggerated effects on the impression they give of being small and light.

So I suspect Apple isn’t going to rush into the netbook market. Apple does not ship a product until it satisfies a certain baseline of utility, pleasure, and ease of use, and subsequent products improve on it. This is one reason why Apple has effectively only one iPhone model, varying in storage capacity and what services can be successfully supported by improvements in technology. Apple’s current economy-grade iPhone is simply last year’s model. There aren’t multiple iPhones with differing subsets of features, targeted towards different demographics or markets. And a low-end iPhone with features disabled would be easy to make, but the diminished quality of it would, in turn, diminish Apple’s reputation for creating pleasing, functional systems.

So if you want a Mac netbook you’ll have to make one yourself.

Addendum, November 4: The Apple taketh away, the Apple giveth back

Over the five days needed to write this ridiculously long blog post (over 3,200 words), news began flying that in the latest development version of Mac OS X 10.6.2 Apple had disabled compatibility with the Atom processor, the wee little low-power unit that most netbooks are built on. If true it might have been Apple cutting off support for a CPU that isn’t in any of their products, or it may have been a deliberate attempt to cut off netbook hacking. In the context of Apple’s current war with Palm over the Pre smartphone syncing through iTunes, the hypothesis that it was intentional is certainly believable.

As I write this, word is out that a new development version of 10.6.2 restores compatibility with Atom, so the alarm is temporarily over.

But the lesson to take from this episode is: Apple is not beholden to support things it doesn’t make. And whether it discontinues support for the hardware underlying most netbooks out an internal efficiencies decision — supporting any unique device costs Apple money — or as an attempt to stem hacker activity, the result is going to be similar to most netbook owners. Caveat hacker.

Apple can routinely, in 80 minutes, tout its sales figures, announce three revolutionary consumer products, demo them, preview yet another devastatingly witty TV commercial starring an affable PC and bemused Mac, and have a surprise musical guest run through a number or two. Even Microsoft’s execs can put on a reasonably tight show when announcing new products. So how does Google’s new product announcement compare? It’s thorough and boring. It’s unrehearsed, heavily padded by presentation failures, presenter fumbles, and an excruciatingly long introduction by one of Google’s research unit executives.

The Wave video is a fine tech conference presentation. But it’s a lousy public product demonstration, and it’s the entirety of Google’s sales pitch. Sales pitches, product sheets, whitepapers, short demonstrations of single features are all missing from Wave’s PR. In their place is a long video of people fumbling with their demo equipment. I watched it in 20 minute chunks, because if this is The Future, The Future is awkward.

Wave is new, it’s exciting, it will replace email, instant messaging, wikis, and be the new unified front-end for everything from blogs to bug trackers, and Google seems to say that if you sit through this unedited speech you are worthy of it. (Those slick demos? Read on.) In a way, this preemptively blames the user for Not Getting It if they’re disinclined to watch. Google’s previous Big Idea product at least got a comic book.

What’s in the video? In the first twenty minutes, the front-end demo — what the average user will care about — is largely complete. Edit out the two presentation failures, presenter fumfuhs, and the executive’s appearance and there would be maybe ten minutes of raw video to make a proper demo out of. The remaining hour has some impressive demos, tech talk, and promising peeks into what’s to come, but the high points all come early.

It’s all great and good to know the full arsenal of capabilities. But maybe not all at once. Especially since the cues for what anyone can get out of it for themselves aren’t the purpose of the presentation. Google’s answer to end user questions amounts to, “When you use it, it will become useful,” which may be true but lacks any empathy for those who need a rationale besides curiosity to spend time on it. So to fill in the breach, the best what’s-in-it-for-me pieces are coming from elsewhere.

Judging Wave — and Google’s attitude toward the public — by this is a little unfair. But only a little: Wave’s homepage has a sign-in form, a tagline, a very cluttered screenshot, and the teaser, “Watch our looooong video”. The video page spares a hundred words to describe the product and links to two more videos, where you can watch short whiteboard talks about Wave’s concurrency control and natural language processing (shot outdoors, interrupted by boat horns). Shorter, yes, but not a great outreach to users.

The secret videos

What Google doesn’t mention until after you’ve gotten keys to the kingdom is that the quick demos were available all along. There’s an eight-minute video conducted by Wave’s project managers, not slick but considerably easier to digest, and even illustrates features not mentioned in the big announcement.

There are also extremely short walkthroughs of discrete tasks: Reading a wave, starting a new wave, adding contacts, playing back waves, replying, moving panels, making a folder… GoogleVideo’s channel has a ton of these. Why they aren’t being used for Wave’s promotion is a mystery.

I have a Wave account of my own and will post impressions after experimenting further with friends and coworkers. So far, it takes little poking around or demo-watching to see how useful this is going to be. In the meanwhile, here’s a rapid-fire Wave video (some offensive language is used) which is meant as a joke but doubles as a respectable demo in its own right.

Ultimately, the result is not a proof of any platform’s superiority, but that there’s sufficient functional overlap of the low and high end CMSes to make specifying a platform a considerably less nervewracking experience than it was a couple years ago.

Incidentally, Tom just announced Context at SXSW today, a brand new CMS based on the Symfony framework.