The Impeachment Debacle

The impeachment trial of Donald Trump is still in progress, but now its conclusion is officially foregone: he will be acquitted sometime next week. I thought I'd record my observations and feelings about this monumental waste of time and energy before the inevitable conclusion takes place.

And the conclusion was always foregone. The Senate was always going to try the case; the Senate is dominated (slightly) by Republicans; the Senate was always going to acquit Trump if there was any opportunity to do so.

Nevertheless, the press is kicking up a hysterical fuss about how Trump has changed the balance of power between the three branches of government. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer are saying that they won't recognize the impending acquittal, as if they have any choice in the matter--what's their alternative? Armed insurrection?

The Democrats really need to face the facts here: their team fumbled the ball almost from the kick-off. Their hatred of Trump is just too naked. Their lack of objectivity is so apparent that they might as well have "NEVER TRUMP" tattooed to their foreheads.

Now don't get me wrong. I didn't vote for Trump in the last election. I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton, either. I wrote in "Gandalf the Grey." (Gandalf the White is a bit too goody-two-shoes for my taste.) Donald Trump is the political equivalent of the troll that lives under the bridge, at least as far as decorum and modesty are concerned. It's very clear that he did in fact try to get the Ukrainian president to bow to pressure to investigate the Bidens. I don't see how anyone but a Trump fan-boy can dispute that.

In my view, the question isn't whether he did it. He clearly did. It's whether that distasteful, self-serving act rises to the level of an impeachable offense. I don't think it does. It's certainly ample justification for a vote of censure. But the Democrats made a gross tactical error by attempting to elevate it to an impeachable offense. The term "high crimes and misdemeanors" really does imply a requirement for an actual crime. Pushing for a political favor just doesn't qualify. It's business as usual for politicians of all stripes.

If Trump's push for an investigation of the Bidens is criminal, it's hard to see how Clinton's actual payment for the Steele dossier is not also criminal. Sauce for the goose, n'est-ce pas? Except in the Clinton case, it's even worse, because actual money was exchanged, however indirectly, via the good auspices of Fusion GPS. We don't even need to go over the multi-year attempt to find evidence that Trump was a "Russian stooge," in which the same organization was implicated.

The question of "obstruction of Congress" is even more clear-cut. Whether Trump explicitly or implicitly invoked executive privilege to prevent the Executive branch from supplying "Bull" Schiff and his cronies with evidence at subpoena-point is immaterial, because Schiff didn't issue those subpoenas under the force of an impeachment inquiry.

Remember, there wasn't a vote by the House to start an impeachment inquiry until AFTER Schiff completed his secretive, one-sided committee investigation. If the subpoenas had been issued after that authorization, the situation would've been very different.

Furthermore, when it became clear that the White House wasn't going to cooperate, Schiff failed to pursue the subpoenas through judicial review. If he had been seriously committed to getting the evidence he sought, he would've done so. Instead, he deliberately punted on that effort, and is now hiding behind the risible claim that Trump's defiance of the subpoenas shifts the Constitutional balance of powers.

It is to laugh. It is not Trump's fault that Schiff failed to pursue the well-known remedy of judicial intervention. When disputes arise between the Executive and Legislative branches, the courts come into play. This is not news, or shouldn't be to anyone paying the slightest attention.

Schiff's excuse for failing to pursue the subpoenas was the "urgency" of getting Trump out of office, but Nancy Pelosi's inane decision to sit on the articles of impeachment before finally referring them to the Senate for nearly a month takes the wind out of those sails.

Schiff and Shumer and Nadler and the other Democrats have shown an ample willingness to posture and bloviate, but not to actually prosecute the impeachment with real commitment. If they had really applied themselves, they could've gotten the evidence they sought during the House investigation. In the face of incontrovertible first-hand evidence, it would've been infinitely harder for the Republicans to have responded with a party-line vote against them in the Senate.

It is increasingly clear that the impeachment was never really expected to succeed, but only to provide the Democrats with more fodder for the upcoming election campaign. It was a purely political ploy. And I think, a badly mistaken one.

According to polls, independent voters were shifted in Trump's favor by the obvious bias of the House investigation.

Republicans will be bolstered by the President's acquittal and the ever-increasing evidence that Democrats will do anything to try to get Trump removed from office.

I think Democrats will be slightly demoralized by their failure to dislodge the Bridge Troll from the White House. The Mueller investigation was a bust. The Brett Kavanaugh character assassination ploy failed. The impeachment trial is going to be a bust, assuming nothing explosive happens between now and next Wednesday.

Trump will deliver a smarmy State of the Union speech in the face of the seething Democrats next Tuesday, and they won't be able to do anything without looking even more obviously like spoiled children whose toys have been taken away. And on Wednesday, if the current schedule holds, Trump will be acquitted.

The Democrats will then face a quandary. Having exhausted their attempts to get rid of Trump before the election, they face the prospect of Bernie Sanders getting the nomination, which will probably be followed by a lopsided Trump victory at the polls. Bernie may appeal to the morons who think that socialism is a great alternative to the capitalistic success we're currently enjoying, but most independents and probably quite a few moderate Democrats won't vote for him. And if somehow Joe Biden were to secure the nomination, the Burisma / Hunter Biden connection will be center stage in every Republican ad until November 3.

I think the Democrats are well and truly screwed for the next election cycle. Unless Trump does something spectacularly stupid, he's going to be reelected.

September 2018 Update

A very quick update today.

Valerie and I are healthy and happy. Enjoying Valerie's completion of her masters degree in education! And I am getting ready to start a series of video blogs under the domain geezernerd.com.

I've also started my next book: "The Spiral Starway." I'm 17,000 words in, and adding a few thousand per week. This time I'm aiming for a first draft target of about 70,000 words. More details when I'm ready to share them. I'll hopefully be ready to start revising and prettying up the language in January or February.

Valerie and I will be traveling to Santa Fe and Fresno in the coming months, and closing the year out in Paris, along with my pal Archie and his family, most of whom will be visiting France for the first time.

And next week is the next Apple event. I don't have any predictions this time. Sorry!

A Spoilerific Review of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"

Yarrr! Thar be spoilers here! Avast if ye have no seen the movie yet! Avast, aye! Arrr!

Not sure why I thought pirate speech was a good idea, but what the heck.

The Good:

• It looks great. I saw is in magical 2D and was very happy.
• It sounds great. Unlike my recent trips to IMAX theaters to see "Blade Runner 2049" and "Dunkirk," I did not leave the theater with ringing ears.
• There are some riveting scenes, especially the one where the Dreadnought and a hefty chunk of the First Order fleet is destroyed by the suicide run of Admiral Laura Dern. That was friggin' awesome, but it raises a question that catapults this event into the Very Bad category (see below).
• I enjoyed Benicio del Toro's evil turn, even if his sudden replacement of the one guy in the whole galaxy who was supposedly capable of picking the locks on the Dreadnought was one coincidence too many.
• Rey. Still turned in a terrific (if excessively tearful) performance.
• BB-8. The little droid who kicked ass, even if it's not entirely clear how he managed to climb a ladder into a mini ATAT to mow down the storm troopers with blaster fire. (And this event, like the lightspeed suicide run, raises another question which makes it veer into the Very Bad category (see below)).
• Luke's disillusionment. I loved seeing him nonchalantly toss Rey's proffered light saber over his shoulder. He really screwed the pooch with Kylo-Ben.
• Luke's survival of Kylo-Ben's order to blast the smithereens out of him with every gun available. Also Hux's only funny comment in the movie: "Do you think you got him?" And Luke's expression when he emerges from the cloud of smoke and windborne salt. That's the Luke we came to see. And yet, this whole scene is massively undercut by yet another inconsistency that undermines everything we thought we knew about the undead Jedi like Yoda and Ben Kenobi (see below).
• I enjoyed seeing Snoke get snookered by Kylo-Ben. I also enjoyed the battle with the Red Guards, who in the other movies just seemed to stand around and look ominous. Now Kylo-Ben is the Big Bad. Fine. Some people have problems with this. Me, not so much. I thought it was a nice surprise.
• I laughed at Poe Dameron's phone-tag stalling tactics with General Hux. "Can he hear me?" It's too much of an allusion to 21st century Earthly technical problems, really, but it's amusing.

The Bad:

• It's very long. Way too long. Maybe an hour too long.
• The relationship between Rose and Finn is ridiculous.
• The side trip to the Las Vegas planet was thoroughly unnecessary and struck me as another sop to little kids in the audience. "See the space horsies go, mama! See them go!" Uck. Avoid this drivel and leave the rugrats at home if they don't like it.
• Dhomnail Gleeson's scene-chewing turn as bad guy General Hux. They might as well have glued Snidely Whiplash mustachios on him.
• Poe Dameron gets away with massive insubordination. I'd have slapped his ass in irons and thrown him into the brig forthwith.
• Have I mentioned how long it is? Hire an editor, Disney.

The Very Bad:

• As soon as you leave the theater and your mind kicks back in, the plot holes gape wide enough to drive a Death Star through. Or even a Starkiller Base.
• Who in God's name would build a bomber that's so lumbering and slow? And why have a bomber in space, anyway? There's no gravity in space! There's no force to cause the bombs to drop out onto an enemy ship! Missiles, idiots! USE MISSILES!
• The horsies on the Las Vegas planet. They're bad enough that I felt compelled to bring them up again.
• If they can wreck a Dreadnought with the lightspeed suicide run of a relatively tiny vessel, why don't they just build a fleet of suicide ships to take out the First Order instead of ineffectually firing blasters at them? The cost/benefit ratio is INSANE! Clearly shields are of no use.
• Following up on the above, if BB-8 can drive a mini-ATAT and shoot stormtroopers with blasters, why can't they just leave a droid (preferably C-3PO) on the rebel flagship instead of sacrificing Laura Dern, who was built up as this great strategic asset to the cause? This was super-super dumb.
• Luke's battle with Kylo-Ben was done through astral projection. I assume the effort to perform this task cost Luke his life, but who knows. It wasn't made clear. In any case, the drama of the confrontation is sabotaged by the fact that Luke was just an avatar of himself.
• Yoda sets fire to the Jedi Tree with a blast of lightning. And Yoda wasn't even alive. If dead Jedi can interact with the physical world, to such great effect, why don't they just kill themselves and beat the First Order from a position of invulnerability? They're already dead, right? Or moved on to whatever plane of existence they're on? Also, where the hell are Ben Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker these days? Why not helping out with the resistance?
• I could go on, but I think those criticisms are enough.

Bottom Line:

Thumbs marginally up.

You Keep Using That Word. I Don't Think It Means What You Think It Means.

treason |ˈtrēzən|

noun (also high treason)

the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government: they were convicted of treason.

• the action of betraying someone or something: doubt is the ultimate treason against faith.

• (petty treason) historical the crime of murdering someone to whom the murderer owed allegiance, such as a master or husband.

usage: Formerly, there were two types of crime to which the term treason was applied: petty treason (the crime of murdering one's master) and high treason (the crime of betraying one's country). As a classification of offense, the crime of petty treason was abolished in 1828. In modern use, the term high treason is now often simply called treason.

---

collusion |kəˈlo͞oZHən|

noun

secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others: the armed forces were working in collusion with drug traffickers | collusion between media owners and political leaders.

• Law: illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially between ostensible opponents in a lawsuit.

---

I just thought I'd get those definitions on the record. If they're faulty or incomplete, you can blame the New Oxford Dictionary of American English.

That being said, I am no fan of the boor currently in the White House. I didn't vote for him. I voted for Gandalf the Gray. (Gandalf the White was too much of a goody-two-shoes for my taste.) I don't carry water for Trump or any member of his family.

Nonetheless, I am getting mighty tired of the current media frenzy over the Trump campaign's ostensible conspiracy with the Russians to torpedo Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. I say "ostensible" because at this point, no proof of any such conspiracy has been presented in public. (Who knows what Robert Mueller and his crack team of Democrat lawyers will turn up?)

A couple of days ago, Donald Trump, Jr. admitted to having taken a meeting with a Russian lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya, whom he believed to be associated with the Russian government. Veselnitskaya offered evidence of damaging information about Hillary Clinton's campaign. According to Trump, the "evidence" she presented was vague and contradictory, and Veselnitskaya quickly steered the conversation onto the topic of the conflict between the US and Russia over foreign adoptions, which had been stopped by a series of tit-fot-tat sanctions applied by the US and Russia, respectively.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that Trump's disclosures about this meeting are accurate and reasonably complete. Let's stipulate that the Russian government supported Trump in opposition to Hillary and wanted to give him information they'd obtained, through whatever means, legally or illegally.

Based on the conversation as related by Trump Jr., no such information was transmitted in this meeting. It remains to be seen whether others privy to this meeting contradict that notion, but at least as of July 13, 2017, that's all we know about the conversation.

Does this meeting constitute "collusion?" No. For one thing, collusion is synonymous with conspiracy, wherein an illegal act is planned and/or executed by willing participants. If Russia illegally obtained whatever information Veselnitskaya claimed to have without Trump's knowledge, it was not collusion. If he knowingly planned to obtain such information, or requested that the Russians obtain it illegally, then it would in fact be collusion.

Receipt of information from a domestic or foreign source, even if obtained illegally, is not itself illegal. If it were, news outlets who received Wikileaks or the Pentagon Papers or any number of leaks of classified information from inside the administration would be as guilty as those who released that information. This is a protection enshrined by the First Amendment to the Constitution. It would only be illegal if Trump & Co. actively and knowingly suborned the security breach. To my knowledge, at this point there is no evidence to that effect.

So much for collusion.

As for the treason charge, why, it is not treasonous to welcome information discrediting your political opponents, even if it does come from the bad old Russians. Refer to that definition of treason above. We're not at war with Russia.

Even if we were, being opposed to Hillary Clinton is not treasonous. Benefiting from the release of discrediting, spear-phished emails from John Podesta about DNC activities is not illegal, either. I'm sure the Trumps were ecstatic when those revelations surfaced. The only way they're guilty of a crime is if they conspired with the Russians to obtain them.

And that's where proof is (at least for now) utterly lacking.

I'm sure the Russians worked hard to inject chaos into our election. They've likely been doing so for decades. The KGB (excuse me, they now call themselves the FSB) are extremely skilled at this sort of activity. It's entirely likely that they would have done the same thing regardless of the identity of Clinton's opponent.

Remember, there was no love lost between Vladimir Putin and the Obama/Clinton foreign policy. Russia's client state, Libya, was dismembered after Obama reneged on a promise to do nothing more than establish a no-fly zone over Libya by actively oousting Muammar Gaddafi--after Hillary convinced him to do so. Since then, relations with the West have deteriorated to the point where we are a fingernail's width from actively fighting each other.

Injecting chaos into the US election is a bold, useful strategic move for the Russians. If Clinton had won in spite of the revelatory email leak, her credibility would have been undermined. If Trump won, against all odds, it would be child's play to wreak havoc on his administration by drumming up hysteria over the way in which he was elected. The media focus entirely on how horrible Trump is, making it difficult for him to enact his business-friendly agenda.

It's a win-win for Russia. Lose-lose for the US.

Again, I want to emphasize that I am no fan of Trump. I agree with some of his positions. I do think we need to shore up the military, and I am happy to see our position as an energy-exporting country making it harder on OPEC and Russia. I'd be happy to see a smaller corporate tax and see our economy rebound as a result. I see nothing wrong with enforcing our immigration laws.

Otherwise, Trump is pretty much the last person who I'd like to see in the White House. He's an atrocious boor. He's crude, poorly spoken, even more thin-skinned than Obama, which I didn't think possible. He lies or misstates facts constantly. It's embarassing that he represents the United States to the rest of the world.

At the same time, I am just not convinced that anything we've seen to date points to collusion, treason, or any impeachable offense. You can't impeach a President just because he's repugnant, opposes your political philosophies, or has orange skin.

'Twas the night before WWDC

“Twas the night before WWDC
And all through the house
Not a peripheral was stirring
Not even a two-button mouse.”

2017 has been a hard year for Apple, if the pundits are to be believed. The MacBook Pro was roundly denounced. I've already gone on record with my observations on that machine. Hardly perfect, but really good.

I like mine, though I agree that the keyboard could be better. I am getting awfully tired of the bitching about the USB ports, though. It's annoying to have to buy USB-C cables and dongles, sure, but it's not multiple months of incessant griping a la Andy Ihnatko on MacBreak Weekly. Stuff a sock in it, nerd boy. Switch to Windows already. It's getting old.

The big question before this year's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference will be whether Apple is abandoning its users, the Mac platform, and common sense, or if it will see the light and start producing machines its devoted fan base actually want to use.

I have a few speculations to offer before the keynote. I'll rank them in what I think is the order of probability.

ALMOST CERTAIN

New MacBooks and MacBook Pros with the Kabylake chip. Hopefully a 32 GB model which will shut the "why doesn't my MacBook have more than sixteen gigs of RAM" whiners up. While we're at it, why not a 48 GB and 64 GB model? I don't expect any major architectural changes to the machines themselves. Same four Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C ports, same or better battery life, same options for the Touch Bar. There should be a model for people who use MacBook Pros as desktop replacements, but I would be astonished to see such a thing tomorrow.

Given that Amazon recently announced the Amazon Prime video app will be making its way to Apple TV, I expect a new, faster model with 4K compatibility. Maybe a better way to control other devices in the home entertainment center, too? We can only hope. My 32-bit Logitech Harmony Link app is getting pretty long in the tooth.

New iPads? Check. The 10.5" iPad Pro seems inevitable. An upgraded 12.9" iPad Pro... maybe not so much. I think the 10.5" with slimmer bezels will replace the 12.9" machine. Hopefully it will have an OLED screen, a dark mode (which will increase the power efficiency significantly) and an improved keyboard with an ESC key. But probably not. 

A new iOS and macOS are inevitable. I don't expect anything revolutionary this time. Maybe I'm getting blasé. A welcome addition to macOS would be a Home Kit enabled Siri that could actually understand what I say and act on it more than once out of every three tries. And support for multiple user profiles on iOS would be huge.

Speaking of Siri: there's much buzz about Apple releasing a standalone Siri speaker. It makes sense that they'd want to step into this market; the Amazon Echo and Google Home gadgets are very popular. But the Siri rewrite becomes 100% imperative if this rumor turns into reality. Holy crap, I can't think of any reason I'd want one if it did as poor a job at recognizing the meaning behind speech as Siri does now. Maybe Apple just wants to record a bunch of people screaming curses at Siri.

However, there are a lot of rumors that Apple will be going all in on Augmented Reality. If so, they'll need to get the developers revved up on it sooner rather than later. I expect to see a bunch of new frameworks for integrating AR into the Mac and iOS experiences.

If AR is for real, they'll need something to visualize it as well... and not some hokey "clip your iPhone to these goggles" solution a la Samsung's GearVR. They'll need glasses. Apple Glasses. If AR shows up at all, I expect to see Apple's solution, and hopefully it will be both elegant and light-weight. Jony Ive wouldn't stand for something as dorky as Google Glass.

MAYBE

A new Apple Watch? Hmm. My guess is that they're working on new models with medical sensor technology. We might see a demo of that with a prototype, but I think they'll probably hold off until the fall. Gotta have something cool to buy for the holidays. Anyway, Apple Watch intros have historically been in September.

In the interim, I expect there to be up-revved iMacs to bridge the gap. Since announcing existing models with new chips is a pretty low-impact thing to do, I do expect to see these unveiled tomorrow. But I won't be surprised if I don't.

A new Apple Pencil? Maybe one with an eraser? And a better way to clip it to the iPad? We can only hope.

With any luck, we'll also see standalone keyboards with Touch Bar. Based on the schedule I've seen for the conference sessions, Apple believes in the Touch Bar, and I expect to see it on desktops as an option. Hopefully they'll have an extended keyboard with a Touch Bar, too. I haven't found it hugely useful yet, but maybe that will change.

NO WAY

The iPhone 8. No. Stay tuned till September. In fact I expect no phone hardware to be announced at all.

Touch screen Macs. These won't happen until iOS and macOS are blended together completely. In the interim, expect touch solutions to remain wedded to the iPad.

I don't think we'll see a new Mac Pro model. Apple recently had a small press event where they admitted they'd gotten the "Trash Can" model wrong, and that they were rethinking the Mac Pro from the ground up. I expect to see this next year, not this one.

Well, that pretty much wraps up my speculation. I'm looking forward to finding out how wrong I am tomorrow.

Apple... I hope you will surprise me with something really cool and new.

The 2016 MacBook Teapot Tempest

I have never seen such unremitting negativity about an Apple product release as I'm seeing now. You'd have thought Apple had released a MacBook Pro composed entirely of cow dung from the reactions of the soi-disant pundits in the computer press.

Some of this can probably be attributed to Apple's unparalleled record of corporate success since Steve Jobs rescued it from near-certain doom. Some of the complaints about the machine are legitimate, but I think many are hideously overblown.

Attracted by the new screen and the gadgety-wonder of the Touch Bar, I recently bought one of the new 15" MacBook Pros. While it's not perfect, it's a far cry from the unpolished turd the press make it out to be.

THE NOT SO GOOD STUFF

The higher price is not awesome. All of the models carry a significant cost differential over their predecessors. (They're also far more powerful than their predecessors, based on some real-world comparisons like this one.) This guy actually compared a 2016 model to a 2015 model. Whaaaat? He didn't just slavishly parrot the specifications?

Many people are not fond of the keyboard. I had one of the second-generation MacBooks with the newer flat keyboard, and I have to say, I wasn't too keen on it. The newer model is a huge improvement. It still takes me a while to adapt when I switch from my desktop iMac keyboard to the laptop, but it's not nearly as problematic as I'd feared it might be.

The absence of an SD card slot is a minor issue for me. I'm using my iPhone 7 Plus much more frequently than my big Canon 5DS or 5D Mk III. Those cameras have both Compact Flash and SD slots, so I need a CF reader to be able to take advantage of them. I've never been able to get away from using dongles for this purpose, so losing the SD card slot is a no-op for me. I can see how a lot of people whose only camera uses SD cards would be irritated by this, though.

Battery life hasn't been great so far, either, but at least some of this is because my machine has been spending an awful lot of time doing metadata indexing for Spotlight. I transferred 800 GB of data from my old MacBook Pro 13" model, and it takes a very long time to index all of that information. I've encountered this particular problem many times, and every time, it solves itself by completing the indexing.

The only real bug I've encountered is a crashing problem when running Time Machine backups. This is reported to be fixed in an upcoming update to macOS Sierra. I'm really looking forward to THAT. Given that it's a new model and a new OS, it would be more surprising to me if there weren't a few bugs like this. It always takes a while to iron them out.

Conveniently, not long after I wrote the previous paragraph, Apple released macOS 10.12.2, which fixed my Time Machine backup problem.

THE GOOD STUFF

What I really like about the new machine: it's really fast. The SSD is insanely fast. Even though it maxes out at 16 GB of RAM, I've never been able to get it close to the point where it starts paging to disk, but if it does, it has in the neighborhood of 3000 MB/sec of bandwidth to play with.

The screen is gorgeous. I have a 5K iMac with the expanded P3 color gamut, and you get used to it. Computers with the old sRGB color space seem dingy and pale by comparison. My MacBook screen now looks as good as my iMac screen. And with SwitchResX, I can use every possible screen mode, up to and including its native 2880 x 1800 pixel resolution. Everything's insanely small, but it's usable. I'd have to put a pair of jeweler's loupes in my eye sockets to be able to read the screen at that resolution. The high-DPI 1920 x 1200 mode is very useable, however, when I need more screen real estate on the go. And of course, I can always plug in my iPad Pro and use Duet Display for a two-monitor portable setup.

The gigantic trackpad is a pleasure to use. I made the switch to the Magic Trackpad some time ago, primarily because I was tired of the uneven response of the older trackpad when clicking in spots that were too close or too far away from the fulcrum. The solid-state Magic Trackpad doesn't have that issue, and it's huge. I really appreciate my MacBook having a trackpad about the same size as the one on my desk. It's smooth, easy to control, and the haptic feedback really fools you into thinking you clicked it even though it has no moving parts whatsoever. The palm rejection has been flawless for me, and I have gigantic palms. The super trackpad is a big win.

The Touch Bar hasn't proven to be very useful to me yet, but it's still early days as far as software support goes. I'll have much more to say about the wisdom of going with a keyboard-based touch strip as opposed to a full touch screen later in the post.

I thought I would miss the hardware ESC key more than I do. As it turns out, even though the illuminated area of the ESC key on the Touch Bar is small, you can still tap all the way to the edge of the Touch Bar and still hit it. The positioning and size of the ESC key is clearly meant to provide visual symmetry with the space occupied by the Touch ID / power button on the other side.

It is awesome to be able to use Touch ID to unlock the screen saver and to use Apple Pay. Really awesome. Huge win for usability.

The audio quality is a big step up from previous MacBooks. Some are griping that the tear-downs show that the "speaker holes" on either side of the keyboard are not sitting above great big speakers. They claim that the sound comes out of the spacious vent slots on the bottom of the machine. I'm not going to argue with this, but the results don't lie. Perhaps the speakers are smaller and fire downward. Sound still bounces around inside there and comes out of those holes. It is far better now.

THE DONGLE DONNYBROOK

Oh, my God. Have you ever heard such caterwauling about the lack of USB Type A ports on a computer? Probably not, because every other laptop out there undoubtedly has at least one.

Apple signaled with the 2015 MacBook that it was going to transition to the reversible USB-C style connector, and it did so in a big way with the new MBP models. USB-A is gone forever. In its place are two or four combo Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 ports, depending on the model you buy.

If you have USB-A mice, keyboards, or other peripherals, you'll either have to use a dongle or a USB-C cable with a connector on the other end that matches your device.

Apple responded to the bitter griping about the cost of its adapters by cutting their price in half until the end of the year. But Apple isn't the only source of dongles or cables. USB-C is a standard. Some other computers and tablets support it now. More will follow now that Apple has committed to this connector.

In the meantime, yes, there are some annoyances as the new standard gains traction. There's no question that replacement mice, keyboards and other devices with dedicated type A connectors will ship soon. So how can you avoid having to fill your bags with dongles in the meantime?

One commonsense approach is to get a multiport USB-C to USB-A hub. Like this one. Oh, look! Four USB-3 ports on a single USB-C connection! And it's small! Or you could get a Type-C card reader with a USB port. Or if you just want to permanently equip a mouse or other USB peripheral with its own adapter, you can do that, too. None of these dongles have Apple logos on them, you'll notice. The need for USB-C adapters is not unique to Apple.

A rather pathetic question I've encountered any number of times is "how can I connect my iPhone to my MacBook Pro now?" This is always accompanied by much sniveling. Well, dumb-ass, do you connect your iPhone directly to a USB-A port on your old MacBook Pro, or do you use a cable? You use a cable! How can you connect your iPhone to your new MacBook Pro? WITH A DIFFERENT CABLE! How hard is this to understand? Or if you're intent on using a hub or a dongle, use it with your old cable. Dork.

The dongle issue is self-limiting. Eventually people will wonder what the fuss was all about, and laugh at computers with ancient USB-A ports the same way we laugh at computers with parallel printer ports.

In the meantime, consider the new things you can do with these USB-C style ports that you could never do before.

For one thing, they're not just USB. They're Thunderbolt 3. Which means 40 Gbps bandwidth direct to the PCI bus. Which not only means you can hook up to insanely fast storage devices, but even equip your MacBook Pro with an expansion chassis. MAXexpansion.com does nothing but create expansion peripherals for Thunderbolt.

And there are others, like AKiTiO, who are working to make their products work with the new MacBooks. Eventually there should be any number of vendors who support macOS for their PCI expansion chassis, which will make using a high-powered graphics card a reality. No longer will you be wedded to the built-in GPU.

In the meantime, even if you don't use Thunderbolt at all, you can now charge your MacBook Pro from either side, since any of the USB-C ports will accept DC in, and you can even power it from a portable battery charger or charge it in your car. You couldn't do that with the older MacBooks without an AC inverter. Stick that in your dongle bag and smoke it.

And if you ordered the bigger RAM version of the graphics card for your MacBook Pro, you can drive two 5K monitors, or up to four smaller monitors. That's pretty amazing for a laptop. Up til now, you had to go through some crazy hoops to drive more than two monitors from a MacBook Pro.

THE UTILITY OF THE TOUCH BAR

Now we turn to the Touch Bar, which has generated the most and least enthusiasm of all of the new MacBook's innovations.

When I first saw it, I was enthusiastic. I'm a geek and a fanboy, of course, and any new input device is always worth trying. My only real qualm was the absence of the physical ESC key, which I've already mentioned, and in practice it isn't an issue.

I can bring up the F keys by holding down the Fn button. I guess I'm a bit unusual in the way I use them; I have never memorized function key locations, and always have to look down at the keyboard to check which one I'm pressing, so having to look at the Touch Bar to select F keys is no hardship.

The one element of the Touch Bar that's univerally admired is the inclusion of Touch ID. Being able to unlock the Mac with it, and using it for Apple Pay or password authentication (in apps that support it) is a real benefit, and it's been a long time coming.

The default collection of system controls displayed on the Touch Bar is very useful. I particularly like the ability to hold my finger down on a volume or brightness button, which displays the slider, and then adjust the value without having to lift my finger from the Touch Bar. This is much more precise and fluid than tapping the hardware buttons and incrementally adjusting the volume or brightness.

There aren't many Touch Bar optimized apps yet. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the Adobe apps support it, as well as Logic Pro X. Evidently that's coming next year. The idea of having modulation and pitch bend sliders on the Touch Bar is terrific. It would make the MacBook Pro far more useful as a music production device. It will even be useful in the Microsoft Office suite.

Now that Xcode support for the Touch Bar has officially shipped, I'm sure more Touch Bar applications will be forthcoming. I'll opine again when I've had more experience with them. At the moment, though, the jury is still out. At least the Touch Bar hasn't negatively affected me in any substantial way.

WILL MACS EVER GET TOUCH SCREENS?

I had a long discussion with my buddy Archie about this. He (and to be fair, most people) are convinced that eventually Apple will release a touch-screen enabled MacBook / tablet device.

I am skeptical.

For one thing, macOS is not really suited to use with a touch interface. iOS and macOS seem to be bleeding feature sets into each other, but I doubt that they will ever merge completely. General purpose computers have different needs, requirements, and capabilities that require a dedicated OS. Windows 10 does an okay job of merging these into a single unifed environment, but I emphasize the word "okay." I doubt that this kind of UI will ever exceed "okay." It imposes too many compromises for my comfort.

For one thing, Apple executives have gone on record saying that they've tried laptop touch screens and rejected them for a variety of reasons.

My opinion of current touch screens is that they're little more than novelties that require a great deal of design and ergonic compromise. I don't want to have to lift my hand up to a screen to move the pointer or click an icon. The Magic Trackpad has gesture recognition and is far more capable than a mouse at macOS UI interaction. I can left-click or right click, drag items around, invoke Mission Control to choose other virtual desktops, and even clear the screens of all windows so I can see the Desktop. I've even become pretty good at drawing with the Trackpad over the years, though I do have a mouse connected for use with Adobe Illustrator.

And as much as I appreciate the ability to use a pressure sensitive stylus (I love my iPad Pro and Pencil), I have no interest whatsoever in using one on a laptop screen. I am a big, big man, and I have heavy arms and exert a lot of pressure when using a pen or pencil. I am uninterested in the extra fatigue on my aging joints, not to mention having to pull the laptop screen back every time I nudge it away from me with a finger or a stylus. No, sir, no thank you.

The only touch-screen device I've seen that I am even slightly interested in is the Microsoft Surface Studio. It's designed like a drafting table. Smart. You can lay it flat on your table and use a stylus or a weird puck-shaped selector wheel thing. Although my first attempt to use it was a disappointment (the stylus is kind of sticky, and doesn't seem even close to the smooth sensitivity of a Wacom stylus or Apple Pencil at low pressures) I am sure this kind of device will be a success—in the studio.

Touch sensitive tablets make all kinds of sense to me. Studio-level touch sensitivity also makes sense, at least if the ergonomic concerns of long-term use can be addressed. Touch sensitive laptops? Not so much.

I think the Mac and the iOS devices will continue to be separate devices for the foreseeable future. It wouldn't surprise me too much if iOS inherited more of the features of macOS that are meaningful to laptop users: a user-visible file system with a browser like the Finder, for example, or a windowing system that supports a pointing device like a mouse or trackpad. Even that would represent a significant investment in time and energy. While Apple's still making big bucks on these devices, I don't think Apple will bother.

I am particularly dubious of the idea that Apple will follow Microsoft and other vendors down the road of a convertible MacBook / iPad hybrid. Given the emphasis Apple's industrial designers have put on making the MacBook more and more like a single solid-state object,

I would be shocked if Apple built a MacBook with a detachable display, especially with LCD screens. The weight of the batteries, the display and the glass would make for a very top-heavy design, not to mention a hinge capable of sustaining that weight that also includes a fairly sizeable (and potentially vulnerable) connector to dock it to the electronics of the base unit. This just doesn't strike me as anything Jony Ive would sign his name to. The Touch Bar, for better or worse, appears to be their nod to touch inputs.

However, given the relentless negativity of the press, perhaps Apple's future isn't so rosy. Maybe the ship will run out of steam. Maybe they'll have to compromise their design choices to make more money. Who knows? At the moment, Apple is still raking in the money. It will be interesting to know whether the critics were right, and that Apple didn't sell enough of these new MacBooks to justify the compromises they had to make.

I expect the new MacBook Pros will sell very well, though. I'll come back to this topic after the quarterly results are reported. In the meantime, I'm enjoying my new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar every single day.

WHY ONLY SIXTEEN GIGS OF MEMORY?

Because the power budget doesn't allow for more than sixteen gigs with the current chip technology. It's as simple as that. Go to 32, and you slash the battery life. That's an unacceptable compromise.

http://www.imore.com/why-doesnt-new-macbook-pro-have-32-gb-ram

In any case, with a 3 GB/sec bandwidth to the SSD, if you do manage to get the machine to start swapping, which is really hard, given the memory compression technology in macOS now, it will be swapping to a device that is super fast.

WRAP UP

And that's all I have to say about that. I'll revisit the Touch Bar and battery life issues as I get more experience with the new machine. In the meantime, I am absolutely not sorry I bought it. I am also happy I was able to sell four older MacBooks to pay for most of it. :-)

“The Prometheus Option” is done!

I finished The Prometheus Option a couple of weeks ago and have been scrambling to fix the few remaining typos and omissions in the meantime.

I'm happy to say that the book is now final (assuming someone else doesn't find an egregious typo) and is available on the Amazon Kindle store: https://www.amazon.com/Prometheus-Option-Jeff-Kirk-ebook/dp/B01FPOZ5QE

If you're a member of Kindle Unlimited, you can read the book for free!

If you're not, you can purchase it for Kindle for $5.99. Pretty good bargain for this massive, 220,000 word opus. Don't let the size throw you: it's a compelling, fast read.

Some people still like regular old books! I do, too, except when I look at the sagging bookcases in my garage and think about what fun it's going to be when we move again.

The print version is still under review but will be available on Amazon soon as a 6" x 9" x 1.5" trade paperback, 632 pages, matte-finish cover, for $24.95.

Magic Trackpad 2 Review

The other day I picked up the new Magic Trackpad 2.

I wasn't tempted by the new wireless keyboard, primarily because it lacks a numeric keypad. I still use an Extended Keyboard, but the old version of the standalone trackpad was a source of constant irritation to me, in spite of the fact that I've fully adopted the gestures in preference to using mouse buttons. These days I can barely operate a mouse.

For whatever demented reason, the old model of the trackpad was impossible to click just anywhere on its surface. It had to do with the trackpad's shape. The "clicker", for lack of a better work, was in the leading edge of the trackpad, closest to the position of your hand. It used the cylindrical battery compartment at the rear edge as a fulcrum. The closer you tried to click toward the top, the harder it was to actually get it to click.

Worse, if you rest the old model of the trackpad on a soft surface, like I do—I use a cloth-covered neoprene pad as a wrist rest—if you ever want to engage the mechanical clicking mechanism, fuggeddaboutit. It ain't happenin'.

Apple put in a clever software workaround: a "tap to click" function that took advantage of the trackpad's multi-touch capability. With this option enabled, a feather-light tap, quickly withdrawn, was enough to trigger it. And the "two-finger" click, or "right-click" as my wizened brain persists in calling it, was a terrific option, too.

The new Magic Trackpad 2 is better in pretty much every way. Its angle is shallower, but it's substantially wider and smoother. It still supports all the old options of the original model, and it has Force Touch—the ability to press harder, and harder still, and engage two different actions without having to do any other selection operation.

I have yet to test this feature extensively. In editing this page, I find that the hard force-click on a word causes it to open a little definition pop-up window. Of course, I'm using a web browser, but I expect other interesting applications of force touch will eventually make it as indispensible as it apparently now is on the new models of iPhones. We'll see. At this point, it's just a nicer, wider trackpad. And I can use it perfectly well, even with the mechanical clicking action, with it resting atop a neoprene mouse pad.

80,000 and Counting

I'm making great progress on The Prometheus Option. Unfortunately it's going to be a monster, just like The Storm Winds Rise.

I just got back from PyCon 2015 in Montreal. My Python programming skills are only about seven months old, but I'm good enough that the introductory sessions were way too elementary, the intermediate sessions were on familiar topics, and the advanced sessions were either too advanced or not advanced enough. I didn't get much out of it. I doubt I'll go again.

Then I got a nasty stomach / intestinal bug last Sunday that kept me either in bed or in the bathroom for three days. This prevented me from doing the thing I really wanted to do at the conference: interact with the programmers and contribute to some open source projects. Dammit.

I did get a lot of writing done in the evenings and on the two last days of my stay, when I really should have been exulting in my restored intestinal fortitude and exploring the city. I did take a seven mile walk through the city on Thursday. I walked up and down the Mont Royal itself. From there I got a good view of the leafless trees and chilly, hilly countryside around the city.

On the whole, though, the only part of the trip that I can consider successful was the writing. It was just about the only thing I really wanted to do. Tourism isn't exciting when you're on a business trip by yourself.

The New Hotness

I was a big fan of the MacBook Air (both 11" and 13" models), and had both of them. The little one was for trips, because it was... little. The bigger one was for everyday use. Then I went to work for Google, and I had no reason to use the 13" model anymore, because they gave me a newer one. I still use it every day, but only for work.

I wanted a powerhouse laptop for my own tasks. I do a lot of creative work and I need a lot of storage, RAM and CPU power. And occasionally, just occasionally, I like to play games. The MBA just isn't up to gaming. I've owned the 15" MacBook Pro before, but it's just a bit too hefty for convenient carrying-around purposes.

Rather than just let my old MacBook Airs (MacBooks Air?) languish in disuse, I decided to sell 'em and get a new 13" MacBook Pro Retina. And boy am I glad I did. The new machine packs 16 GB of RAM, a 1 TB PCIe SSD drive, and has a flatly gorgeous display. I packed everything from my old MacBooks onto it and a whole lot more, including every single one of my Steam video games, and I haven't quite used half of the storage.

I did a speed test of the disk. It reads and writes data at just under a terabyte per second. HOLY CROW! That is some crazy speed. And yet the machine is still small enough that I can carry it around with my work laptop in my backpack without discomfort.

Did I mention how gorgeous the screen is? Its native resolution is 2560 x 1600 pixels, but in everyday mode it displays the UI in 1280 x 800 mode. The pixel-doubling effect makes text ultra-sharp and much easier on my aging eyes. And when I need more real screen estate for whatever reason, I can set the display to native mode. I used VNC to connect to my 27" iMac the other day and it can display all of the pixels on that much larger display with room to spare.

I can't say enough nice things about the 13" MacBook Pro Retina. It may be the best laptop ever made. Until the next one, of course.

The Book

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