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Shadoe Huard Reviews a 7-Year-Old 12-Inch PowerBook G4  →

Shadoe Huard, who spends around 3 hours commuting each day, needed a cheap, portable Mac for writing during those commutes. He picked up a 12-inch PowerBook for $200, and his review of this 7-year-old piece of Macintosh history is fantastic:

Using the 12-inch PowerBook for almost a month now, the most striking aspect of its physicality is how reminiscent it is of using a 13-inch MacBook Pro. Like the Pro, it’s an ideal combination of portability and functionality that, while not enough for some, will be particularly pleasing to a lot of people. Aesthetically, the PowerBook is a machine that holds its own today. Perhaps no longer the pinnacle of design and engineering it once was, there is still a lot to appreciate and enjoy. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the 12 inch form factor is still an excellent compromise between physical dimensions and screen resolution that hasn’t yet been recaptured by a Mac notebook. This machine is a pleasure to carry around and type on, setting the stage for a potentially great writing tool.

Shadoe Huard Reviews a 7-Year-Old 12-Inch PowerBook G4

Billings Pro 1.5 with Marketcircle Cloud  →

My thanks to Marketcircle for sponsoring the RSS feed this week to promote Billings Pro and their new cloud sync.

Billings Pro is a Mac app for anyone and everyone in need of tracking tracking and sending invoices — especially those who work on a team. This app is meant to be used by multiple users. It has a timer for tracking billable hours; you can also keep track of expenses, milage, and more. Moreover, Billings Pro comes with some professionally designed invoice templates.

What puts the icing on the cake is Marketcircle’s new cloud sync for Billings Pro. Basically it means you and your entire team can use the Mac apps and the iPhone apps to keep everyone’s billable hours and expenses logged and accounted for. And for those on your team who may not have a Mac or an iPhone, there is a Web interface.

Billings Pro is professional grade. It’s an attractive app that has won several awards and is still being improved upon. If you work with a team that could use an upgrade in how you manage your time, then you should look into Billings Pro with Marketcirlce Cloud.

It’s free to try for a month (you don’t even need a credit card). And if you’re not sure if Billings Pro is right for you, I suggest you check out some of the testimonials and case studies to see how others are using it.

Billings Pro 1.5 with Marketcircle Cloud

Revisiting the 101 Ways to Save Apple  →

In June 1997, James Daly wrote a feature for Wired titled: “101 Ways to Save Apple“. Jobs became CEO in September 1997 — three months after Daly’s article — and now that Apple is the most valuable company in the world Rafe Colburn has revisited all 101 of Daly’s suggestions.

Hindsight is always 20/20. There was some good advice, some bad advice, and some sarcastic advice. I like number 91:

Start a new special projects group led by either Jobs or another passionate and creative designer to create the next “insanely great” technology. Good advice. Apple basically just turned the whole company into this special projects group.

(Via Kottke.)

Revisiting the 101 Ways to Save Apple

If Text Editors Were Places in The Lord of the Rings  →

Then TextMate would be Minas Tirith:

A once-great but now decaying city. Only the King has the power to renew it, but he is a long absent, indeed half-legendary figure—though there are persistent rumors that he is alive still in some distant land. In his stead, the city slowly falls in upon itself, kept in some sort of working order by its melancholy people. They can repair but not truly rebuild it, and they pray daily for the Return of the King.

(Via J. Eddie Smith, IV.)

If Text Editors Were Places in The Lord of the Rings

MacBook Air SSD Benchmarks: 2010 vs 2011 vs Lion Encryption  →

Benchmarks like these are coming in from all over the place, proving that Lion’s FileVault does not cause a significant bottleneck to your system’s performance. In fact, it’s likely you won’t even notice that it’s on. The truth is, the benefits of Lion’s disk encryption far outweigh the nearly insignificant drawbacks, especially if you’re talking about a new laptop with an SSD in it.

MacBook Air SSD Benchmarks: 2010 vs 2011 vs Lion Encryption

Elliot Jay Stocks’ New Setup  →

Several years ago, if you one who needed a portable the conventional wisdom was to buy the best possible desktop you could afford and the cheapest laptop you could get by with. Then, as laptops became more powerful, the general consensus changed to: buy the best possible laptop you can afford and hook it up to an external monitor. And now it seems the pendulum is swinging back to the dual-machine setup — people who were once MacBook Pro-only are going to MacBook Airs plus iMacs.

Elliot Jay Stocks’ New Setup