Interchange Project

My new computer setup

This is my new computer setup now that I’ve ditched the Mac Mini and dual 22-inch monitor setup. New setup is a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, 22-inch monitor, iPad 3, Magic Mouse and a nice 22-year-old Apple Extended Keyboard.

This setup is a bit different than I predicted a few months ago, because of the Retina MacBook Pro. I had predicted that a Macbook Air would be at the heart of my new setup. Once I saw and used the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, I was hooked. Yes, it’s a bit heavier, but the screen is gorgeous and the speed has really come in handy.

I have also not gotten a 27-inch Thunderbolt Display, and I’m still on the fence about it. I’m not sure if I want to drop $1000 a monitor that has a much lower pixel density than my laptop monitor. If I had purchased a MacBook Air, the Thunderbolt display would have been a no-brainer, but all of this thinking was in a pre-Retina Display world. My 22-inch monitor is several years old and not particularly good (it’s not an IPS display), but it works fine as a second monitor to drop stuff on when I need it.

Apple will eventually release Retina Thuderbolt Displays. I don’t believe my laptop will have enough GPU power to power a display with as many pixels as a 27-inch Thunderbolt Display. Perhaps Apple will come out with a smaller Thuderbolt Display that has less pixels. I am interested in the idea of a high resolution external display that has a dock on the back of that. My setup would certainly benefit from that.

Apple could put a GPU in the display itself, allowing for more machines to power a hypothetical 27-inch Thunderbolt Display. This idea, however, has not been done in the consumer space, and I’m not sure how the latency would work out. This idea does give us the ability for small and light machines to be able to work with really high resolution large monitors.

I’m not that high on the Magic Mouse, because it frequently does things that I don’t want it to do. It’s hard to get used to a mouse that has a touch surface, and after a few years of use, I still make inadvertent touch gestures. I may pick up a Magic Trackpad and use the Magic Mouse without touch mode for those times that a mouse would really come in handy.

My computer setup is always in flux, but I’m pretty happy with this one. I really like the Macbook Pro. I’m not sure why I decided to go without a personal laptop before. That’s just not a wise decision in 2012.

Episode 27: ESPN, The Sports Cliche Factory

We start off by discussing Linsanity and racism and how a racist slur has been used several times by ESPN employees while discussing Jeremy Lin.

We then discuss how the iPad 3′s Retina Display resolution will require all apps to be  redone for it with higher resolution assets. The iPad 3 screen will look substantially better and much closer to a printed page when it comes to text, but news orgs will need to update their apps or their images, videos and other assets won’t look good.

And the apps that use images for text? Well they’ll be really screwed. Until apps that use images for text (which is a lot of iPad news apps) are updated, text will look worse on this new display. And when these apps are updated, because text is rendered with space consuming images, these apps will ballon in size.

So, render text with text, not images.

Listen to this week’s show:

Download the MP3

Show notes: 

• Really ESPN? “Chink in the Armor?”
• ESPN statement on offensive Jeremy Lin comments
• Jeremy Lin slur was ‘honest mistake’
• iPad 3 rumor roundup