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Apple this week announced shipment of their new MacBook Pro range of Intel-powered portable computers. The MacBook Pro range debuted at the January MacWorld 2006 conference in San Fransisco with expected shipping times of February. This later slipped due to a processor upgrade from the initially announced 1.67GHz Intel CoreDuo processor to a new 1.83GHz processor that promises speed increases of up to 4 times that of the PowerBook G4 1.67GHz, the last in the line of the PowerPC portable machines that have single-handedly changed the face of portable computing worldwide.

The PowerBook is an old term, synonymous with Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City where in each episode, viewers were treated to glorifying shots of the ‘Pismo’ PowerBook G3’s glowing Apple shining bright from the Black duo-tone curvacious body of the fabulous late 1990’s laptop. Titanium PowerBook followed with speeds of up to 866MHz in some cases enclosed in a titanium case with black transparent keyboards and 15″ screens. This became a fashion statement instantly as the move to more refined looks became industry standard thanks to the efforts of Jonathan Ive, Apple’s head of Industrial Design.

Ive’s recent revision of the PowerPC PowerBooks created the now famous Aluminum PowerBook G4, with brushed anodised aluminum (the stuff aircraft fuselages are made of) and backlit keyboards, stereo speakers and three new form factors, 12″, 15″ and 17″ displays. At the time of introduction, the 17″ PowerBook was the world’s first 17″ notebook computer and the 12″ had it’s own claim to fame, being the first full-featured 12″ notebook computer which is still magnificently compact today.

The success however continued as the 15″ notebook outsold its siblings and was subsequently the first one to reach end-of-life status and has this week been removed from Apple’s online stores in favour of the new MacBook Pro. This will also happen to the remaining stocks of 12″ and 17″ PowerBook G4s as rumours abound of a new 17″ MacBook Pro due to be announced in May.

It’s especially relevant to diarmydotnet, as since December, I’ve been the proud owner of a PowerBook G4 1.67GHz, the now depleted stock of the former PowerBook range. I knew long before December however that newer PowerBooks were on the way, and that January or mid-Spring would reveal all. Even with that information, I decided to stay with the PowerBook decision as the PowerPC chip was stable and compatible with my arsenal of software which I’d collected from the time I owned my first Mac in 2004. 2 years on and indeed 2 months on from my PowerBook purchase, I’m still confident that I’ve made the right decision. I plan on eventually upgrading to whatever MacBook Pro is available in 2007 or 2008 but my PowerBook G4 is still a hell of a computer, even if its value has now increased due to its obsolesence.

diarmy

Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, is known the world over for its feature-rich battleground of sport, the Millennium Stadium. But this city has so much more to offer than a world class rugby pitch and a worthy adversary in any rugby tournament - Cardiff has a passionate population rich in culture and diverse in nature.

Cardiff is situated in the south of the country near to the Vale of Glamorgan. Although I passed through the Vale many years ago while on a bus trip from Pembroke to London, Cardiff was only seen from the M4 motorway by me and my fellow classmates in the year 2000. I’d never properly visited Wales or the United Kingdom since and regretted doing so for many years.

Last year I took my first visit to the city of Caerdydd as it is known in Welsh to visit a friend studying there. Flying with the omnipresent Ryanair, I returned to the city last weekend again to visit my friend. While the flight to Wales is a short one, the airport is oddly located about 30 minutes from the city by bus. However this only adds to the excitement of visiting a foreign land full of promise and diversity.

I was taken to the Cardiff Bay area of the city on Saturday where I saw many architectural commission pieces that would be the envy of any nation. While the Welsh Assembly building pales in comparison to the spectacular boldness of the Wales Millennium Centre. Cardiff Bay is Europe’s largest waterfront development which is a stark contrast to its history as the world’s largest coal exporting port. The remnants of this industrial past are still visible as the red-bricked warehouses keep watch on the port’s busy activities.

The efforts of the Labour Party in introducing the Euro to the United Kingdom may be slow in progression, and because of that, Europeans will find the UK and Wales quite expensive, with meals seemingly costing reasonable amounts of between 5 and 10 Great British Pounds, but on conversion this is quite expensive. However Wales has a certain charm about it and is a very stocked city in terms of outlets for your hard-earned. Shopping in this city - finance permitting - is excellent. The vibrance of the city also makes Saturdays a fun day to roam the pedestrianised main area of the city.

Overall I am hugely impressed by the Welsh capital. The echoes of a bygone era are still evident in the masses of terraced housing, many in need of repair. But the efforts of the City’s people to bring a standard of service to rival any capital must be commended. While the sheer cost of enjoying the British mainland in terms of monetary value is high, it’s well worth the visit and Cardiff offers a magnificent quality of holiday and I’m sure that if my global business exploits ever take off, Cardiff will feature one of my many storefronts!

By the way, the title simply reads “Welcome to Cardiff” in Welsh.

diarmy

I’m setting off for the wonderful city of Cardiff in South Glamorgan in Wales today. As if to prove my earlier point about Ryanair, I probably wouldn’t be taking this route if it weren’t for the low fares airline. Booking the trip just 3 weeks ago netted me a return flight to the Welsh capital for a meagre €75.00 - a pittance when compared with the cost of the flight today!

Having hit the financial equivalent of being buried in wet concrete this week, with financial statements flowing my direction like the rain drenching Galway this past week, I opted to take the public-y transport to the Dublin version of an airport. Being a loather of the CIE business model, Citylink is the only real alternative for land-based travel to our nation’s largest nightmare - sorry ‘city’.

Boarding the 14:00 service in Galway I was treated to the spectacle of two open buses, and yet I was made to wait in the lovely rain until a diligent low paid worker arrived with the latest in bus fares technology to charge us the correct amount. Having been an advocate of this company for some 3 years, I was shocked to be asked for €28.00 to cover the cost of a return ticket to the Dublin terminal. Having only €20.00 in my wallet, carefully placed beside the horrid sterling notes I purchased earlier thanks to the pride of the British Empire, I was forced to opt for the cheaper €17.00 return ticket to the city of the Pale. Which means that because of the severe lack of an integrated network of virtual payment in Ireland and the sparse locations of working ATMs, I must take another coach to the airport when I alight at the aptly named Bachelor’s Walk later this evening.

Bearing in mind that the journey is supposed to take 4 hours by road (in real terms accounting for traffic) I now see no point in travelling by bus anymore. A small Irish company by the name of Aer Arann would have delivered me to the destination in Swords for a mere €55.00 at the time of blogging this. When you consider that time-saving infrastructural benefits from the Celtic Tiger era such as bypass roads are a luxury enjoyed by the motor car owner, buses still travel to the small backward towns that engineers spent years planning to avoid.

I will most likely end up taking the return ticket back to the City of the Tribes when I return on Monday, however given the choice I’d rather pay 3 times the price of the bus ticket to be in my destination in a third of the time any day.

So I leave you with the words I’ve bastardised from Iarnrod Eireann, “It’s time to take the plane!”, as I travel through Ballinasloe a mere 1.5 hours after I left Galway. Jesus!

diarmy

Valentine’s Day is for many what Christmas is to the Holidays - another feature on a calendar that allows for all manner of foolish doings and giggles. Marked as an international day of love and romance, so many of us are being carried into this demesne as fawns of the commercialisation of the world thanks to the innovation of the US that touches all our lives.

Love is something many writers and poets all endeavour to comprehend and to literally pin down in the words and meanings they try to convey. But to many, Valentine’s Day seems to embody the spirit of love - whatever it may be to you or I.

I have a rather more unfortunate celebration to remember each Valentine’s Day, and it brings with it the abstract realism that so many are devoid of on this day of who can buy the biggest and best for their nearest and dearest. It gets more and more competitive each year. In the beginning the competition was among the traders who peddle their wares on the unsuspecting punter desperate to make some attempt at sweetening the partner for once. Now however the competitive streak is among friends who all queue for the title of king or queen of the gift-bearers. Who got the better present seems to be the more important topic - thoughts simply do not count on this day.

Walking through the old city in Galway yesterday, I felt alone in the celebration of a saint we know so little about. Most simply don’t even realise that the relics of this saint lie in a church not 300 kilometres from Galway - Dublin! Restaurants of course were packed with the willing, decorated in their Sunday best, making sure not to drink too much wine for fear of turning up at work with a worse-for-wear look on their rugged faces. Tacky heart-shaped cardboard was visible everywhere, be it in high-class marketed form, or simple make-do form cut by hand with a blunt scissors by some idle hand that morning. Ladies wore pink, men looked the same as they always do. Many were probably engaged by midnight, certainly more were lashed at the hip shortly after the bell tolled.

But underneath the loving exterior lies the cynic in everyone. Partnership and relationships are built on understandings, trust, remembrance and above all friendship. So why must we prostrate ourselves in front of the world of commerce and race to the finish line with the biggest Valentine’s card? Why do partners expect gratuities in material form? Why do restaurants all of a sudden have a more expensive wine list on the February 14th calendar date?

I ask simply because in a more and more commercialised world, we are becoming complacent about what really matters. Contrived emotive expressions of love and appreciation are made all the more meaningless with material possessions in the absence of feeling and romance. Gestures of extraordinary wealth ought to be fallible in the face of a chance eye-lock. Chocolates are an aphrodisiac, but surely the feeling of uplifting that begins with butterfly-tummy should be more important. Love is an expression of the physical heart through touch, smell, taste, sound and sight. The fundamental natural senses are all that need stimulation - and if this cannot be done without a trip to a tacky restaurant then relationships truly are built on a foundation of sand and not stone.

diarmy

Channel 4 tonight aired the documentary that has caught Ryanair off guard. Titled Caught Napping, it suggests through video and audio documentary footage taken on-site by undercover reporters that in the pursuit of lower fares and high profits, Ryanair has become complacent with regard to issues of safety of aircraft and passengers, cabin crew fatigue and flight deck rostering.

Ryanair hadn’t seen this documentary prior to tonight’s airing, but have published the correspondences between the film’s production company and the airline on their website at www.ryanair.com. From reading the initial response that Michael O’Leary sent the production company, I can see that as is the norm with media productions, the sensationalism element is evident as many items are taken out of context. This especially applies to the suggestions that the flight crew training for Ryanair is lacking in substantiality.

However, the documentary takes these correspondences into account, and to its credit, does a good job of factoring them in. Where Ryanair fail to impress in my opinion on this film, is in the area of security - that of passengers, crew and aircraft. The piece about boarding procedures at Stansted and other airports where Ryanair staff are encouraged to just ‘rip’ the boarding cards of passengers embarking onboard aircraft at the final departures gate in order to speed up the boarding times and remain within the specified 25 minute turnaround time is I feel warranted and contrary to Ryanair’s response, does happen.

While I have only flown with the company 4 times, flying within and outside the Republic of Ireland and United Kingdom so-called “Common Travel Area”, I have noticed a severe lack of checks of passports with boarding cards and passengers when boarding through the gates at Dublin, Stansted, Cardiff and Santiago airports. This doesn’t really worry me, however I feel that in the aftermath of the now infamous 9/11 attacks and the subsequent exaggerated security procedures we as passengers in the EU must now endure (including the humiliation of removing belts and shoes at Dublin airport) I feel that the extra effort should be made on the part of the airlines to ensure that the correct passengers board the correct flights.

The documentary’s focus on aircraft hygiene to me is trivial in the sense that most of the Ryanair airplanes I’ve been on were acceptably clean. Ryanair’s target customer base is the lower middle class in society - those who can’t really afford the marginal cost differential of flying with competing carriers. To be honest, if Ryanair weren’t operating the routes they do, I firmly believe that people simply wouldn’t travel in the volumes they do to these destinations. By creating this niche market for the travelling multitude, some obviously have difficulty containing themselves, and I’ve seen first-hand on short 40 minute flights people becoming loud and vociferous on board due to alcohol or camaraderie. This inevitably leads to general untidiness and to be quite honest - the vast majority of on-ward passengers don’t really mind.

One area of the Ryanair experience that I am concerned about as a passenger is safety. Boeing aircraft populate the entire fleet at Ryanair - with the fleet now operating a single aircraft type, the 737-800 series. While these are popular and Ryanair has a remarkable 20 year safety record, I am concerned with safety of the general aircraft each time I board. While it bears no fruit to worry about surviving a crash (as I just take it as it comes really), I do worry about the markings of wear on the outside of Ryanair aircraft. Ryanair do get the maximum use out of their aircraft, and I was shocked to see that the pressure gauge on a new aircraft’s door slide was passed off without notice on the film. I would regard such things as emergency slides more importantly than oxygen masks in some respects and was genuinely worried at that particular highlight.

Overall the film will in my opinion make little or no difference to Ryanair’s target of flying over 40 million people this year. It may make people in the 40 - 60 year old age group think twice about Ryanair as their flight partner, however the key market base of lower-middle class 18 - 30 year olds will not be damaged or swayed by the documentary. Reading the correspondence from Ryanair to the film’s production company restores some of the confidence, however I do hope Ryanair takes some notice from this film. Ryanair are pushing the boundaries with what people will put up with on their flights, but in a market so volatile, in an industry that has seen the demise of many major airlines in the past such as TWA and Pan-Am, Ryanair should put in place stricter controls to ensure complacency doesn’t become synonymous with the Irish carrier’s efforts to bring air travel to the masses.

diarmy