Yesterday, I blogged about traveling light and paring down my computer bag down to a MacBook Air in a simple sleeve. Today I want to ween myself off wired network connections.

For some, going 100 percent wireless borders on blasphemy (with its inherent security issues, lack of hot spots, usurious fees, etc.) but for this journalist pure wireless is the way to go.

The absolute icing on the cake was last week’s announcement that Starbucks was switching to AT&T for WiFi Internet access in all of their 7,000 U.S. stores. Glen Fleishman thinks that the switch could be a harbinger of a larger deal between Starbucks and Apple to woo iPhone customers:

I think… that we’ll see the 3G iPhone rolled out as part of a larger play that involves downloading movies in Starbucks over AT&T’s new network.

But his piece contained a bigger bombshell that could be earth shattering for wireless road warriors.

The deal yesterday brings Wi-Fi at 7,000 U.S. company-owned Starbucks stores at no additional cost to 7 million AT&T DSL subscribers.

Come again? This means that if I subscribe to AT&T DSL at home, I get free WiFi access at every Starbucks in the U.S.? Jackpot!

AT&T’s DSL rates are roughly the same as Verizon’s so it’s like getting a $30-40 per month hot spot subscription for free!

But wait, there’s more.

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I finally did it. After almost 20 days of using the MacBook Air I’m now carrying just the MBA sans accessories.

Like Linus with his blanket, I started by carrying the MBA in a padded sleeve case inside my regular bag for the first two weeks. This almost eliminated the the two pound (give or take) advantage of carrying the 3 pound MBA over its larger cousins.

Any bag I carry ends up being a virtual tub for whatever I think that I may need with me. It’s a catchall for every accessory, magazine, peripheral and other pointless item that I pick up in my travels. And the larger the bag, the more junk it attracts. All these extra items really add up and my bag ends up weighing the same (or more) than it did with a MacBook or MacBook Pro in it.

The tipping point came Friday when I gutted my bag and realized that there were a bunch of items in it that I hadn’t needed or used all week. After filing away all of the paperwork and putting away the accessories, recycling all the magazines and newspapers I vowed to go sleeve only from now on.

It’s a total lifestyle change and you have to force yourself to do it, but 90 percent of the time I only need my MacBook Air. What’s the point of carrying a bunch of printed material that I already have on the MBA? Why carry paper notebooks and notepads when the MBA can do that too? Magazines? Newspapers? Bah. That’s what RSS is for baby!

Granted, going on a business trip or vacation requires a larger bag with more accessories, but my daily commute requires next to nothing. I leave an AC power and video adapter at my office and I keep a JIC (Just In Case) accessory bag in my car that has an AC adapter, Ethernet dongle, USB hub and my USB hard drive. (I didn’t need anything from the JIC bag all week.)

While it won’t suit everyone, if your daily commute consists of going from home to office or school five days a week and you don’t need an optical drive or massive hard drive then the MacBook Air in a simple sleeve case is a game changer. For me, the MBA is the ultimate blogging machine.

I suspect that many notebook computer users could function with a thin and light notebook computer and can’t help but think that we’ve been brainwashed by the computer manufacturers into thinking that we need a bunch of extra stuff with us all the time.

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Search titan Google and mobile phone carrier AT&T have been stunned by iPhone users usage patterns according to reports in recent days.

AppleInsider reports that Google has seen 50 times more search requests coming from Apple iPhones than any other mobile handset. They were so shocked, in fact, that they suspected that they had made an error tabulating their data.

According to the Financial Times Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations, said that if other handset manufacturers follow in Apple’s footsteps and make Web access easier on their handsets the number of mobile searches could outpace fixed internet search “within the next several years.”

I know that my Google searches from my iPhone are high because Apple makes it so damned easy. The Google search bar pops up right below (and as large as) the URL field. Why guess at a URL when Google is right there? I know lots of people that don’t even try URLs any more, they just Google everything – even domain names!

Is the address bar doomed?

In related news René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG, says iPhone is driving up average wireless data usage as much as 30 times higher than on other phones. The average Internet usage for an iPhone customer is more than 100 MBytes. Which is 30 times the use for their average contract-based consumer.

AT&T’s announcement of new business and international roaming plans and their replacement of T-Mobile as the Wifi provider at 7,000 U.S. company-owned Starbucks stores nationwide should only accelerate data usage in the months to come.

A quick peek at my last two months iPhone data usage shows that I used 110MB in February and 169MB in January. You’ve gotta love those domestic unlimited data plans!

What is your Google and data plan usage on your iPhone?

A report about a panel session on mobile user experience at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress shows that only Apple “gets it.” And if the industry’s experience with the iPod is anything to go by, this situation will only get worse for the competition.

According to an EE Times story by David Benjamin from Barcelona, the innovations in the mobile telcom space is coming from Apple. One panelist said that 77 percent of iPhone users rated their experience as “very satisfied.”

One direction, advocated by Lucia Predolin, international marketing and communications director for Buongirono S.p.A. of Milan, Italy, is to manipulate users by identifying their “need states” — including such compulsions as “killing time,” and “making the most of it” — and fulfilling them subliminally.

Adobe’s Murarka proposed a more technological approach to improving the user experience, satisfying the mobile phone subscriber through better interface design. Sarah Lipman, co-founder and R&D director for Power2B, suggested an almost mystical solution, somehow tapping into users’ “neural networks” to navigate a mobile phone interface “using touch and pre-touch input.”

This all reminds me of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. The men run their hands over small parts of the elephant but describe the whole animal based on that touch.

From the floor at the Barcelona conference, it appears that the iPhone’s competitors are looking at the mobile user experience from a narrow perspective. Each design team hopes that a particular innovation will make up for missing pieces up or down the mobile service food chain. This comes nowhere near the integrated approach that Apple delivers on.

There must have been a stampede to the local wine bars after the session.

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A big concern for anyone using a notebook computer for any length of time is the heat it generates. It actually came to a head a few years ago when the lawyers at most notebook computer manufacturers replaced the term “laptop” with “notebook” for fear of litigation.

Apple recommends that their notebook computers only be used on a flat, stable surface – not on your lap. They go so far as saying the following on their MacBook care Web site and in the user guide:

When you’re using your MacBook or charging the battery, it’s normal for the bottom of the case to get warm. For prolonged use, place your MacBook on a flat, stable surface. Do not place your MacBook on your lap or other body surface for extended periods of time. Prolonged body contact can cause discomfort and potentially a burn. The bottom of the MacBook case functions as a cooling surface that transfers heat from inside the computer to the cooler air outside. The bottom of the case is raised slightly to allow airflow, which keeps the unit within normal operating temperatures. In addition, warm air is vented from the slots in the back of the case.

(emphasis mine)

To measure the heat generated by the MacBook Air I created 12 temperature zones on the bottom plate. I flipped over the MBA and mapped locations in three rows and four columns. Zones 1 to 4 are across the top from left to right. Zones 5 to 8 are in the middle row and 9 to 12 are the bottom row.

I measured the temperatures (in degree Fahrenheit) on the bottom of an MBA (1.6GHz HDD) and MBP (2.4GHz Santa Rosa) after approximately three and five hours of use using a Mastercool 52224 infrared thermometer. Both machines were attached to AC power and sitting on a cloth upholstered ottoman.

Take the jump to compare the MBA to the MBP temperatures after three and five hours of use.

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For those of us unable to attend the recent Macworld Expo in San Francisco and attend the many fine sessions, IDG World Expos on Tuesday made available online a number of videos from the program. The “Macworld Encore” videos include some from the MacIT and PowerTools conferences.

The presentations offered online are broken down into six tabs: Mac OS X, applications, digital photography, design, iPod and “technology.” Selecting each one of these brought a similar set of subdivisions.

For example, I found a batch of interesting presentations under Mac OS X/Administration, including a case study of Google’s deployment of MacBooks using the open-source Puppet system administration tools, hints on setting up Leopard Server’s collaboration services, and best practices for user accounts in Mac OS X.

Many of the directory services sessions are also online under the Server tab. All of these videos look useful.

For an overview on why some companies and even IT staff are switching from PCs to Mac, check out the switcher session video in Technology/Wizardry. It was the kickoff panel for the MacIT conference.

The current meme about the Kindle is that Amazon’s e-book reader is a monster success and is heralding the end of the hardcopy paper book. If that notion wasn’t strange enough, some industry observers point to Amazon’s purchase of Audible as another boost for its content platform. The fly in the ointment is Apple and the iPod.

The bewildering comments have come from onlookers conflating Amazon’s moves in the e-book and audio book markets. This is all about Amazon’s recent purchase of Audible and the Kindle player — two completely different markets in my book.

For example, here’s a slice from the American Public Media’s radio show called MarketPlace. On Monday, host Kai Ryssdal talked with Kevin Periera of G4 about green gadgets. That discussion included the Kindle (Ryssdal called the Kindle “ugly”).

RYSSDAL: Let me get you to the marketplace of this thing for a second. Amazon just bought Audible, Audible.com.

PEREIRA: Right.

RYSSDAL: Is that combination, when you wrap it up in the Kindle, sort of the death of the paperback, maybe not today but in five years?

PEREIRA: Yeah, certainly not today, but yes five to 10 years from now. This is absolutely the future of that, and plus that little device that you’re holding in your hand does play MP3s and has a headphone jack, so the perfect combination of Amazon’s digital book downloads and the Audible you know podcasts, audiocasts, books on tape.

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I generally wait at least 72 hours before installing any operating system updates from Apple but yesterday’s announcement of 10.5.2 made me throw caution to the wind. I figured that I had a solid backup (as Apple recommends) and I wanted to see if the new update from Cupertino would play nice with the MacBook Air.

The Mac OS 10.5.2 Update weighs in at a hefty 341MB and is available via Software Update. A 10.5.2 Combo update (343MB) is available as a standalone download that will update both 10.5.0 and 10.5.1 and is convenient for IT folk and people that may be updating multiple Macs. (I don’t have any HP printers so I skipped the 84MB driver update.)
I highly recommend running Disk Utility > Repair Disk Permissions on your hard drive before installing the 10.5.2 Update. If the repair find lots of bad permissions on the first go around, run it again. Apple has posted several important tips in knowledge base Article 307109 that should be heeded before installing 10.5.2:

• It is recommended that you back up your system prior to installing any updates.
• The installation process should not be interrupted, even if the progress bar remains unchanged for several minutes. If a power outage or other interruption occurs during installation, use the standalone installer (see below) from Apple Support Downloads to update.
• You may experience unexpected results if you have third-party system software modifications installed, or if you’ve modified the operating system through other means. (This does not apply to normal application software installation.)
• If issues occur during installation–for example, if Software Update quits unexpectedly–please see this article.

The software update downloaded fairly quickly over a standard cable connection but takes a decent amount of time to complete. You have to “restart and install” and your Mac will restart between one and two more times before the process completes.

Be patient. The 10.5.2 update took the better part of an hour to install on my MacBook Air. Keep the AC adapter plugged in and don’t panic if there are long periods of time where nothing seems to be happening. Don’t interrupt the procedure for any reason (for example by force quitting or powering down) as doing so can render your drive useless and lead to data loss.

Installing the 10.5.2 update on my MBA was fairly painless – other than the multiple reboots and long waits which will make any Mac user bite their nails after a while. Clicking on the software version number in the “About This Mac” dialog box reveals a build number of 9C31, which is the build that was seeded to developers on 06 February 2008. Clicking on it again displays your motherboard serial number.

Advice for the impatient: After you’ve clicked Ok and Agree buttons the requisite amount of times, go grab a coffee, walk the dog or use one of your other Macs for a while. Nothing is worse than watching grass grow.

After successfully installing the 10.5.2 update on my MBA I ran Software Update again (just an old habit) and to my surprise, there was an almost 50MB “Leopard Graphics Update” waiting to be installed. Little is mentioned in the knowledge base article about the Leopard Graphics Update other than: “Leopard Graphics Update is recommended for all users and improves the stability and compatibility of your Mac. This update requires Mac OS X 10.5.2.”

Ok, guess I’d better install that one too…

No noticeable changes after installing the LGA, but hey, what the heck.

After the jump, some 10.5.2 fixes and a poll…

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Microsoft said Monday that they’re acquiring Palo Alto, CA-based Danger Inc., maker of the T-Mobile Sidekick QWERTY smartphone.

Sidekicks feature a novel flip-up screen that reveals a full-size keyboard making easy work of texting and email. It could even be argued that the Sidekick (which the company brands “Hiptop“) was one of the pioneers of the QWERTY smartphones. Wikipedia has a good history of the device.

So what’s Microsoft’s interest in Danger, Inc.? Their Windows Mobile platform conflicts with Danger’s proprietary OS. According to Danger’s developer Web site:

Danger has written its own operating system and JVM for the hiptop. The Operating system has preemptive multitasking and a soft real-time scheduler, and it has been tuned specifically for running our JVM. All end-user applications are written in Java, as is the overwhelming majority of the high-level operating system. Arguably, Danger has the premiere “Java Operating System” on the market today.

Microsoft said the acquisition will align Danger’s expertise in the mobile-consumer space with Microsoft’s focus on expanding its mobile offerings.

“The addition of Danger serves as a perfect complement to our existing software and services, and also strengthens our dedication to improving mobile experiences centered around individuals and what they like,” said Robbie Bach, Microsoft’s president of entertainment and devices.

Full coverage of Robbie Bach’s keynote address at Mobile World Congress 2008 in Spain is on MSN Money Central.

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Apple late Monday released its Mac OS X 10.5.2 update, which addresses many annoying bugs as well as tackling a number of interface issues that bugged longtime users.

According to the technote on the release, users should backup before installing the update (this is really important). And Apple suggested that customers be patient with the updater software.

The installation process should not be interrupted, even if the progress bar remains unchanged for several minutes. If a power outage or other interruption occurs during installation, use the standalone installer from Apple Support Downloads to update.

Here are a few interesting fixes in the update:

Addresses legibility issues with the menu bar with an option to turn off transparency in Desktop & Screen Saver preferences.
Adjusts menus to be slightly-less translucent overall.

As I mentioned in previous posts, Leopard brought back translucency with a vengeance. Now, we can make it less so. A good thing.

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