Tuyen’s Blog

Someone asked me the other day about upgrading to a new laptop.  Specifically they wanted to grab a new MacBook Pro (non-retina) to upgrade from their 2011 MacBook Pro which seemed to be getting slower for them.  Applications loaded slower, startup seemed to take forever, etc.  As I am a current user of a 2011 MacBook Pro, I was a little confused as to what they meant by slower since my machine is still very snappy for a 2 year old machine.  When I showed them what I meant by cold booting my machine from off to login screen in less than 15 seconds, they were floored.  Even when their machine was brand new, it never booted that quickly.  Opening up applications was even faster.  The difference between our machines?  I have an SSD and they have the stock 5400RPM hard drive.  My recommendation to them was to keep their still pristine looking laptop and simply swap out the hard drive for an SSD.  The one I run in my MacBook is a Crucial M4 512GB.  They're relatively cheap - Amazon has this particular model for less than $400 - and it truly is like upgrading to a brand new MacBook.  It's no wonder Apple is starting to move all of their products over to SSD. 

The great thing about the non-retina MacBooks is that it's still relatively easy to do upgrades yourself.  Check out the tutorial from the iFixIt guys.  Remember to back up all of your data before doing any hard drive swap out.  To me, CPU and RAM upgrades haven't provided nearly the same punch as going from a standard hard drive to SSD.  Once you've experienced it, you'll never go back and you can keep that old trusty laptop even longer before needing to upgrade.

Just saw the below demo and immediately downloaded the app.  The really stupid part is that I believe Apple pulls its data from Yahoo! Weather.  Just another example of Apple really dropping the ball as it relates to the default (UNDELETE-ABLE) apps they have on the iPhone.

Been absent for a while but now I'm back.  Been very busy lately but hopefully will be able to post more.

Warriors!
Beat the Lakers last night.  Strong performance from Curry and Lee.  After a slump last month, they seem to be rolling.  Still need more production from Bogut.  He's definitely an upgrade from Biedrins or Ezeli but for $14M a year, he should be doing more.  Question is will he get healthy/better next year?

T-Mobile iPhone ... FINALLY!
News hit today that T-Mobile will finally be getting the iPhone.  I have to admit a certain fondness for T-Mobile.  I joined when the original Sidekick came out and never had an issue with the service.  The only reason I switched to AT&T was the iPhone.  If their LTE footprint were a bit wider, I might be convinced to join up again.  They seem to be much more reasonable with their subscriptions and this new "un-subsidy" is a good idea.  It's also reported that the T-Mobile version of the iPhone 5 actually is a newer version than the one with AT&T, Sprint or Verizon.  It makes use of the HD Voice calling feature talked about during the iPhone 5 launch and has access to more radio bands across the world.  Overall, glad to see more competition in the wireless marketplace.  Could only mean good things for consumers.

Co-working Spaces
I recently moved out of the large office space my company has occupied for over 2 years.  Just didn't need the space and needed to be more economical.  We found some co-working space nearby in Jack London Square.  So far so good.  From a financial standpoint it makes a lot of sense.  Month to month rentals, shared resources, etc.  The one benefit I haven't quite seen yet is the creativity/buzz when people from multiple businesses hang out in one space.  Maybe it's the quality of the tenants as most of the folks seem to be lawyers, contractors, etc.  Would be great if there were more start-ups in the co-working space but that will take time.

Received my iPhone 5 bright and early today. After a few SIM related glitches, I was able to get online and test out the new LTE connection. First, a comparison with standard WIFI. Below is my speed test of my home network (Comcast Performance - 20MB down and 5MB up per their specs).

Pretty respectable. I sometimes can get 10MB-15MB down but 5MB+ is the usual norm. Now check out the speed when I turned WIFI off...

Holy... freakin'... shnookies...

I have a feeling that I'm about to be throttled by AT&T quite frequently...

Can't believe it's been two months since I last posted.  Things got busy, I got lazy, etc.  But lots of things coming up so felt it was a good time to get back on the saddle...

My hard drive died about a week ago and I've been in limbo. For all that the iPad can do, it is NOT a laptop replacement. It can do about 80% of the things a laptop can do but that other 20% is pretty darn important.

So if you're counting, this is the 2nd hard drive failure I've had in the last 3 months. Each time I was visited by the infamous click of death (hear below). I decided that the aggravation and loss of productivity was not worth the price-to-storage ratio of the standard platter hard drive. I vowed to never again hear the dreaded clicking of my hard drive failing so I upgraded to an solid state drive. Though these things aren't cheap ($400 versus $100 for 500GB of storage), I figured that it was worth it for a more reliable and faster storage solution. Well I can't speak to the reliability since I've only had the drive running for a few hours but the speed is unbelievable. From pressing the power button to being on the desktop took less than 10 seconds. Mac OS X opens all the previous programs I had open before shut down, so that means I'll have anywhere from 6-9 separate programs that need to open before I can really start working. This process usually took about 3 minutes but with this new drive, I'm ready to go in under 30 seconds. Opening Excel or Word would take 20-30 seconds each but now take less than 5 seconds. There is no way I can ever go back and would actually trade off CPU or RAM upgrades in place of an SSD.

So next time you think your computer is slow, the best thing you can do to speed things up is just get an SSD. The performance improvement is dramatic.

Now that the WWDC Keynote has come and gone, the question I have to ask myself is whether to get the new MacBook Pro 15" with Retina Display. I was hoping that they would release a 13" version but alas, no. Judging by how the internals of the device are a big departure from the "regular" MacBook Pro, I'm thinking a smaller version won't be out any time soon. Plus, Apple is probably trying to differentiate their product lines to basically three classes of laptops - ultra portable, consumer and professional. Looking at the price/specs, there is virtually no reason anyone would buy the non-Retina Display 15" MacBook Pro. For $400 more, you're getting double the memory (+$100), SSD (+$500) and that before mentioned gorgeous Retina Display (besides the fact that it is thinner and lighter, plus has those "hidden" design improvements - quieter fan, stronger construction, etc). But hey, you do get a nice DVD drive on the old MBP that you'll use a handful of times a year.

The bigger question is whether I should upgrade from a 13" to a 15" MacBook Pro, at all. I like the portability of the 13" model but the new MBP is actually slightly less heavy even though it's 15". I'd have to probably get a new bag because the Brenthaven one I have is specifically designed for 13" laptops. Still, $2,199 is more money than I've ever spent on a laptop and I'm having a hard time justifying the cost. If it were $200-$300 less, it would be a no brainer but that psychological $2K number just makes me cringe. Perhaps I should go demo it at the Apple Store first.....................

I'm currently working on a new iPhone app and starting to understand how difficult it is to build something that is both good looking and also simple to understand/use.  There are so many small nuances to consider since there isn't a lot of real estate with which to get your point across.  One of the most maddening things to get right are icons.  People don't realize how difficult it is to build great looking icons from scratch.  There are only a handful of apps that I consider beautiful and even among those, I have issues with the icons.  After revision after revision of icons from my designer, I started to scour the web for examples of good icons.  To my chagrin, the answer was staring me right in the face - Glyphish.  Here was an extensive set of beautifully designed icons that are so simple and yet so clear in what the icon is supposed to represent.  How good are these icons?  They're used by little known companies like Google, Twitter, and a small phone manufacturer called Apple.  The best part of it?  $25 for a full pro license that doesn't require attribution and can be used in an unlimited number of projects (free version requires attribution, doesn't include Retina Display version of icons).  I've seen icon sets costing four times as much that are no where near as clean and well designed.  Kudos to Joseph Wain for creating these and providing them at a ridiculously cheap price.

Apple released its annual Supplier Responsibility Report which discusses the status of its manufacturing partners (mainly in China) on issues of worker rights, factory conditions, etc.  Not so coincidentally, last week's This American Life episode centered around Mike Daisey and his one man show about what he saw while on a visit to Shenzen where many of the big manufacturing companies are located.

Though the first act of the episode was meant to illicit an emotional response in favor of the poor downtrodden workers, the second act painted a much more balanced and realstic view of the plight of workers in these plants.  The fact of the matter is that places like Foxconn have improved the lives of many of these people.  Are conditions as good as they are in first world countries?  Of course not, but that's a very first world opinion.  Ask anyone who used to make $50 a month in the country side doing back breaking labor if they would trade it for a $250 a month job doing a different kind of hard labor in Shenzen.  It's a no brainer.  As consumers in developed nations, we should absolutely push for better working conditions for the people who make our goods.  But progress takes time and why should we expect developing countries to suddenly leapfrog steps in their industrialization when countries like the US did not.

The one hopeful thing I took from the episode was that cold hard economics and not journalists or people like Mike Daisey will ultimately effect greater change.  As workers become more skilled, they also have more options to work at places that have better working conditions.  If places like Foxconn wish to retain these skilled employees that they've spent time and money training, they'll need to improve the environment these people do business in.  That, more than a sensationalistic one man show, will be how China and other developing countries move forward.