Comparing my M6400 to the new MacBook Pro

5 speakers!

Funny how Apple doesn't advertise them; the specs only mention "built-in stereo speakers". I'd wager most MBP owners don't even know that their notebook has 5 speakers.

I wonder why Apple went that route. I mean, it's not like the MBP's sound is head and shoulders above most 17 inchers.

 

Apple adds nice extras where no one notices them. And then they cut where people do. But in general, Apple speakers are very nice. Even the 13" models have 2 speakers and a subwoofer, which is more than I can say about my Dell 14".

 

Well, if an iPhone is a computer, I guess you're right
I use my iPhone over VNC with an ad-hoc network when I need to. It also works quite well with the iTunes remote app.

I think the problem I had was that I just had crappy software. Hopefully, when BT 3.0 comes out, all will be well.

As for the password. What if I told you it was a BIOS password, and there's no way you're going to boot into my computer, bootable CD or not, without it? I'd say I'm pretty safe. And I crack passwords all the time too. Fingerprint readers are also an option, but I didn't think it was worth the extra $25. Facial recognition software, though, is crap. I'm pretty paranoid and careful. Perhaps a retina scanner would be cool. I think it would be pretty easy just to get a fingerprint from the keyboard and run it over the scanner. I don't think they can tell the difference.

As for your extras:
RGBLED - They have to keep things to upgrade, no? They've used the SD slot trick now, so let's take a guess what's coming next (USB 3.0???? WOW!!!).
Optical Drive - Sorry, Steve Jobs doesn't like BluRay
Radios - Mac users are too cool for mobile broadband. Plus, that would take up too much room.
Fingerprint Reader - It would be a gimmick. Steve doesn't like buttons. He took the button off the TRACKPAD. Next thing you know, the power button will be touch (not a physical button) and the keyboard will be a nice, big, touch screen. YAY FOR NO BUTTONS.

 

ahhhh, I guess that works. I'd still take a controller over a remote control session, tho.

I'd say you still have a problem with shoulder-surfers...and if your laptop was stolen, your HDD could simply be removed and then run ophcrack or any other LMHash-cracking util on it from another computer. When it comes to my situation (and of many others), it isn't just about my computers (on which I can get away with using dual authentication), it is about my user's computers. I know you aren't going to tell me you force a bunch of luddites to use a bios password followed by a windows password, right?
I assume you are joking about using a BIOS password (since you said "What if I told you" making it sound hypothetical). If you are really looking for boot protection, you should just use full drive encryption via TrueCrypt or a similar package. much more useful than the old BIOS password.

If that was true, then you wouldn't have said "as long as your password isn't 'password' or your name, it should be pretty secure."

Really? What are you lifting this fingerprint with? Magic fingerprint paper? Seriously, tell me when you've successfully done this. I've looked into it and it is far from easy.
Now you are saying they are an "option." ... this whole argument started because you said they are a "gimmick." Which is it?

steve jobs vs. bluray is exactly my point...bunch of crap.

a WWAN mini-pci card is tiny, gimme a break.

a fingerprint reader would actually ALLOW no buttons because you don't need to type in a password

 

Sorry this came to mind as soon as I seen the above:

MacBook Wheel

 

Apple SUCKS plain and simple.

 

Careful guys, at this point, we're still at "constructive criticism", but taking a turn toward flame war. Let's keep it civil and the thread open.

Actually, I'm not. Both of my OSes do have passwords, but they are disabled on startup. Instead, I use a BIOS level HDD password. I don't really keep FBI level information on this computer, so I'd say I'm (reasonably) safe.

I don't crack people's computers, rather, I can find passwords to wifi networks, though. If you don't know how WPA cracking works, essentially, the computer checks packets against a dictionary of words. Obviously, it is impossible to have a dictionary with every concievable character in it to check against. The amount of entries, approximately, would need to be 200 (rough estimate of possible characters, including foreign keyboards), but 200^25 (most people's passwords are not larger than 25 characters). That's clearly a mind boggling number of possibilities, and a rather large text file. I use one with about 50 million entries. Ones like "password" and "12345" are at the top. Words like "tree" and "blackberry" are on there. However, L2a*Z~7 would clearly not be on my dictionary, and therefore, when protected by WPA, not possible to crack.

Oh, and my magic fingerprint paper is available pretty easily. Police use similar stuff all the time: http://www.crime-scene.com/store/fingerprint_kits.shtml

Maybe it would just be too expensive to add, and they want to keep the computers at their current pricepoint. I don't know, honestly. They definitely have a good reason, though.

And while your isolated example of the fingerprint reader is true, the simpler the computer, the more Steve likes it. Check out this video with Jony Ive (head designer at Apple), and go to 6:58, and listen to the end. You will hear his reasoning for the design.

 

I'd still argue that a TrueCrypt-encrypted partition would do a better job (and be easier to use) than both of those things put together.

Yes, I know how rainbow tables work. As I mentioned, I am a regular attendee of DefCon and other security cons. Actually, if you look around on the webpage I initially linked to, you'll see that PSKL is a security group. We've actually spoken once at DefCon and multiple times at Shmoocon. We also won the DefCon wardriving contest 3 years in a row. We know wireless.
We weren't talking about hacking WPA, tho, we were talking about hacking a computer's password. ...and, for what it's worth, a more accurate statement (for either wireless OR your computer password) would have been "as long as your password isn't a dictionary word or something obvious, you should be pretty safe."

once again, let me know when you've pulled a fingerprint from a laptop and successfully used it on that laptop's fingerprint scanner. I know fingerprint kits exist, I just don't know anybody who has one...and I know some strange people. I brought up ophcrack because I have experience using it successfully. I'm also not sure you'd find a clean thumbprint on my laptop. I can't think of a single time i press that surface of my thumb against it. I think that process sounds good in theory but not so much in practice.

expensive? that's why it would be an "option" ...and they aren't very expensive.
I don't choose to just accept "they def have a reason" as being good enough. They made a choice to not include it, it's that simple. I'm not saying they are wrong or that they don't have a reason... I'm saying that I initially wrote that blog post because I disagree with their choices. This is one of those choices.

Reasoning for making the choices that I disagree with. You don't have to agree with me, I'm just stating some facts (such as system specs) and my opinions regarding those facts. Obviously, there are plenty of people who disagree with my opinions... but there are also plenty of those who agree. That blog post was written for the "agree" crowd. I never intended to convince anybody to change their mind and say "wow, you're right, MBPs really do suck! I've wasted half my life!"
Hopefully, however, it can be used by SOMEone SOMEday to successfully suck the wind from the sails of a Mac evangelist preaching about how much better their hardware is.
I'm pretty sure that on MOST of these points, we actually agree... we're just caught up in arguing about semantics.

 

man i love your blog on crappy apple.

 

Well, unfortunately that's a really sore point with the M6400. I agree, a fingerprint reader could be nice, if only Dell hadn't implemented it in such a way (by attaching it to that USH) that no, but absolutely no software out there can work with the reader other than that crappy Wave suite Dell ships the machine with. So, Win7 comes with built-in fingerprint reader support, but guess what it sees in a Dell M6400? Nothing, zipp, nada...

So, the way Dell implemented that reader it's as close to useless as it gets.