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That's a shame, really, because this device seems to be way ahead of a lot of mobile phones, blackberrys, etc.
and the sales thereof should keep Apple in business for a long time, giving a nice balance to the marketplace.
I have an old Macintosh Quadra 660AV, and still appreciate some of the things that it can do. The iPhone really seems to be much more of a "must-have" than the iPod series of devices. From what I gather, the iPhone can do all iPod can and much more. Distinguished from a small mp3 player, the iPods have a decent screen where you can pick your song do other things with your playlist, rather than just play the songs one after another. Apple has sold 100 million of them, really remarkable. Here's Apple's statement on the iPod success:

CUPERTINO, California--April 9, 2007--Apple® today announced that the 100 millionth iPod® has been sold, making the iPod the fastest selling music player in history. The first iPod was sold five and a half years ago, in November 2001, and since then Apple has introduced more than 10 new iPod models, including five generations of iPod, two generations of iPod mini, two generations of iPod nano and two generations of iPod shuffle. Along with iTunes® and the iTunes online music store, the iPod has transformed how tens of millions of music lovers acquire, manage and listen to their music.

Based on that, and considering that the iPhone is higher in price, they should at least sell half as many before the next big thing comes out.

Hopefully, this "root password hack" item will not go very far. I, like many others am impressed at how dramatic this latest creation from Apple appears. I say, give credit where credit is due.
All of us that enjoy what PC's bring to us, with linux (and windows), must remember that our PC's weigh a ton, and except for the laptops (high price, no expansion), would be impossible to carry around from place to place.
My HP Pavilion 8250 and Gateway2000 EV900 monitor does weigh a ton, and is tethered to power and ethernet cables, mouse, keyboard and all. Nowhere near as portable a web surfing device as the iPhone. The fact that the IPhone has the potential for 10's of millions of sales, and is so portable compared to a web surfing, music playing PC is what is revolutionary about the iPhone.

Sorry to sound like an Apple fanboy, but that's my take on it.

- Rapidweather

Here you go, imagine away... Thanks. Virtualization has to go through a hypervisor layer for everything. That will obviously have an impact as demonstrated below. The impact varies by what you're doing of course, but as a median it appears to be around a 33% loss running parallels. http://www.everymac.com/articles/q&a/windows_on_ma c/faq/parallels-speed-compared-to-boot-camp.html Using Parallels on the Macs, the overall WorldBench test score is about two-thirds of what it is for the same machine booted natively into Windows via Boot Camp. Some portions of our testing, such as multitasking, show a big divide in performance. Other portions show only slight differences. In our Office 2002 test, for example, Parallels was only about 10 percent slower than in native mode. Overall, our results indicate that, using Parallels, you'll get about two-thirds of the speed you'll get using Boot Camp.

The last time Apple offered this sort of thing it did wonderfully! I still have some great notes about it in my eMate... I don't watch the MacTV too often anymore though because I'm too busy playing games on my Pippin!

I didn't miss the irony - "Mac OS on x86, Windows on PowerPC - The sky is falling!" is very obvious.

Running Windows on Macs is not new, though.

...and my systems have always had 1GB.

However, it wasn't until 2002 that I had a machine with 1 GB of RAM installed.

PowerBook Duo used SCSI.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_Duo
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_du o/stats/mac_powerbook_duo210.html

Face it, a monitor that supported 800x600 in 1995 did not cost $600+. In 1994, you could get an overpriced Apple 15" display that supported 1024x768 for a list price of $500.

Don't forget Office Space! The OS goes from a Mac OS 9ish UI (sans Apple menu with a Windows hour-glass cursor) to a DOS prompt on old Apple hardware (never possible, even on a LC 630. Still one of the best movies ever, though.

i have a pismo powerbook and os x 10.3.9 works fine. granted not as good as my moms shiny new macbook. but it still runs surprisingly well for a 6 year old laptop.

Yes.
Released in 1989: Macintosh Portable, 16mhz, 1mb RAM, 15.8lbs, $6500 USD

Gotta love the 9.8" non-backlit 1-bit monochrome LCD display...

> Which pretty much proves nothing other than Mac fans are cheap

Oh, so when they buy Apple, they're stupid for overpaying and when they buy clones they're "cheap"?

Some of the clones were actually faster than any available Mac, so maybe they were only after speed.

FYI, Windows 95 was not more stable than Mac OS 7.6 at the time. Yes, it had protection against user programs killing the OS, but what good is that when a bad driver or misconfigured OS can crash the machine several times a day?

> Nobody ever shipped a G3-based system as the cloning/licensing was killed before those actually
> competitive hardware platforms could be rolled out.

Just plain wrong. Motorola and PowerComputing at the very least, had 750-based (G3) systems for sale.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/motorola/index.htm l
http://www.everymac.com/systems/powercc/index.html

> Which pretty much proves nothing other than Mac fans are cheap

Oh, so when they buy Apple, they're stupid for overpaying and when they buy clones they're "cheap"?

Some of the clones were actually faster than any available Mac, so maybe they were only after speed.

FYI, Windows 95 was not more stable than Mac OS 7.6 at the time. Yes, it had protection against user programs killing the OS, but what good is that when a bad driver or misconfigured OS can crash the machine several times a day?

> Nobody ever shipped a G3-based system as the cloning/licensing was killed before those actually
> competitive hardware platforms could be rolled out.

Just plain wrong. Motorola and PowerComputing at the very least, had 750-based (G3) systems for sale.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/motorola/index.htm l
http://www.everymac.com/systems/powercc/index.html

Here's a list of companies that made Mac clones:
MacOS-Compatible System Specs (Mac Clone Specs). Clones were made from 1995-1998.

If tomorrow they made their OS X available to run on any Intel type processors they would take 50% of the computer market in one year. Prove me wrong Apple, try it.

If Apple sold OSX for any computer Apple would see a big drop in hrdware sales. Apple did allow Mac clones but they lost more in reduced hardware sales than they made in sales of MacOS, Apple isn't only a software company they are also a hardware company. Here's a list of companies that made Mac clones.

I think this might be a good candidate: http://www.rhodes.k12.il.us/

note: http://www.rhodes.k12.il.us/website/tech.html

"A Major component of our Computer lab is our Desktop Publishing Center. Included is a scanner, Quad 950, complete sound system including a woofer, 20" monitor and access to the Internet." ( stats of the major component: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_quadra/s tats/mac_quadra_950.html )

the youth of America speeding into the future with a computer discontinued 11 years ago.

The article meanders around without making much of a point, but this seems to be the gist of it:

They [Microsoft]haven't complained about what's going on, and to be honest, I think these Mac developments have been the best press that they've received in a long time. Negativity is abundant on the PC side of things because of Vista issues, but everyone seems thrilled with Microsoft's appearance on the Mac scene.

He goes on to say:

In contrast, Apple doesn't seem to be in any hurry about getting OS X to run on any other machines besides the ones that they make.

Of course Microsoft is unconcerned, because they make money by selling Windows. They are not a PC OEM. Apple has a different business model. The company makes most of its money selling hardware. The well-integrated OS and hardware are what coax consumers to buy Macs. You can't have one without the other and still call it a Mac. As us old fogies remember, Apple tried letting other companies build Macs, and it was not exactly a rousing success for Apple. Sales of clones ate into Apple's market without building overall market share.

Boot Camp and the various virtualization technologies are giving Windows users the opportunity to buy Apple hardware and compare the Mac experience with the Windows experience on the same machine, with no special technical expertise required. So far the results have been overwhelmingly positive for Apple. There's a reason Apple was confident enough to bring a x86 processor into Macintosh hardware again (it's been done before). Apple knows that if customers compare Windows to OS X head-to-head, OS X will gain users. If even a small percentage of new Mac purchasers make OS X the primary OS on their Mac, OS X will gain marketshare.

So far the strategy appears to be working. The low "green" rating for Apple is unfortunate, but it's not going to keep people from buying Macs. Dell, the company Jobs considers as Apple's biggest rival, isn't exactly kicking ass, and Microsoft's troubles with Vista are well-known.

How is it that Microsoft is beating Apple at its own game?

It is technically possible to port Mac OS X in order to be executable on general cheap Intel-Computers. But they do not want it. You know that GNUstep aimed at creating a runtime plattform for Linux, Windows and Mac. So it should not be a problem for Apple to provide software which makes OS X apps run on Windows but they just don't want it.

Of course Apple doesn't want Mas OS to run on just any hardware. Maybe you're like most people and don't know Apple is as much a hardware company as a software one. At one tyme, from '95 to '98 Apple did license Mac OS to third party computer manufacturers. Here's a list of companies that had clones, MacOS-Compatible System Specs (Mac Clone Specs). This was when Jobs was gone, but when he was brought back he stopped it. Apple was loosing more from the loss of hardware sales than they were making from licensing Mac OS.

EveryMac

And when they put out toilet-looking boxes, their sales went beige.

Is it just me, or does this laptop remind anyone else of the short-lived Apple eMate? In fact it seems to me that the concept of the computer was lifted from Apple. Gaudy colors, slimmed down OS and functionality, built rugged for students. Obviously the tech in the machine is a decade newer and as such likely significantly more powerful, but the same principles apply, low power footprint, small screen, readable outdoors.

Outside of some modernization of the concept and technologies can someone show me what this device does that the eMate didn't? The eMate even lasted up to 28 hours on a single charge. I don't want to discount what MIT Media Labs has accomplished, but it looks to me like another rip-off of Apple technology.

Here is a link to a picture and the specs of an Apple eMate 300.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/messagepad/s tats/emate_300.html

Oh yeah like one of these? http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook/st ats/mac_portable.html

For the office-ready desktop alternative why not try the Macintosh XT? http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/ stats/mac_xl.html

;)

Oh yeah like one of these? http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook/st ats/mac_portable.html

For the office-ready desktop alternative why not try the Macintosh XT? http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/ stats/mac_xl.html

;)

That would be the DynaMac. :)

It's been widely noted that the basic hardware in the MacBook pro is nearly identical to that in the Acer model mentioned in TFA; see http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/ faq/technical_performance_2.html for a rundown. So it's no wonder the run-time is the same.

The appropriate conclusion here is "Macbook Pro runs XP as fast as the fastest PC with the same CPU and chipset", to which I would say, duh!

Also a lot of the "less than useful components" in macs are more useful at selling time than at purchase time - iBooks started including 802.11b slots in 1999. I was able to sell my Powermac g4 for about 1/2 of what I paid for it (not including upgrades like RAM and additional disk drives), after 2 1/2 years of use.

The sentiment " Just get another PC. They're cheap these days" is true. It also means there is little incentive to try and sell a used PC. I agree with you wholeheartedly that some accessories are overpriced - thats why I use an IBM multi button mouse instead of a mighty mouse.

In the beginning there was PReP - PowerPC Reference Platform

A year or two later this was revised to CHRP - Common Hardware Reference Platform

Parent is correct. CHRP was a successor of PReP. PReP was quite flawed from Apple's perspective, and while CHRP was better, probably only few boxes actually complied with it. Some of those that did were Motorola's StarMax Pro 6000s, running 233 or 266 MHz G3s.

Those systems were announced at mid-1997, but they never shipped, as Apple decided to kill the clones. Some are still using those few that were made, though.

In the beginning there was PReP - PowerPC Reference Platform

A year or two later this was revised to CHRP - Common Hardware Reference Platform

Parent is correct. CHRP was a successor of PReP. PReP was quite flawed from Apple's perspective, and while CHRP was better, probably only few boxes actually complied with it. Some of those that did were Motorola's StarMax Pro 6000s, running 233 or 266 MHz G3s.

Those systems were announced at mid-1997, but they never shipped, as Apple decided to kill the clones. Some are still using those few that were made, though.

1. Business purchasers are consumers. Deal with it. IBM has millions of TPM systems deployed with software that actually makes use of the TPM module. Using your definition, educational institutions and the publishing industry are also not "mainstream consumers." Frankly, you're also ignoring the large numbers of individuals that buy IBM laptops because they're high quality and nigh indestructible.

That's not what the "consumer market" means. "Consumer market" doesn't mean all people who are "consumers" in general. The mainstream consumer marketplace is home and individual buyers, period. It is not institutional purchasers. It is not educational institutions. It is not business. It is not enterprise. It is not professional markets. That's what people mean when they say "consumer marketplace". And it's hard to take new technologies into the consumer marketplace because it's so diverse. It's much easier to introduce them in rigidly controlled and centrally funded and managed enterprise IT environments.

2. The number of Windows based systems with installed TPM modules dwarfs anything that Apple has shipped in the last few months, even if you exclude IBM. Dell sells them. Fujitsu sells them (E8000, S7000, P1500, ST50XX. B6000, T4000). (Here's a whole list of manufacturers that have shipped TPM modules in Windows based machines.

No. This is the managed business marketplace. Places with centralized purchasing and requirements. Again, see above.

3. Really, knock off the drugs. Intel invented USB. Intel pushed USB. Intel rammed USB down every whitebox manufacturer's throat well before Apple introduced its USB keyboards and mouse with those candy colored iMacs in January 2002. I have Microsoft USB keyboards that are older than that. Roundup of USB optical mice from August 2000.

Wow, guess you must have missed a few years, there. Apple most certainly didn't first ship USB in 2002. It was May 1998. Four years earlier than you allege. Four *years*. Therefore, your link from 2000 is meaningless. In fact, *all* Apple computers have had USB keyboards and mice exclusively since January 1999. And one of many anecdotal examples:

Did You Know...
USB was introduced in 1997 but the technology didn't catch on until the introduction of the Apple iMac in 1998 --ironic because USB was developed by several PC-focused companies, including Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel and Microsoft.

The *reason* this happened is because Apple was the first company - and still, in 2006, one of few - to be willing to completely ditch legacy technologies to move the industry forward.

Now that I've addressed the specific points therein, I'd appreciate external references to things that give sales numbers, introduction dates, and other points that prove that Apple got either of those technologies on the market before Windows PC suppliers. Otherwise, have a nice day, and seek counseling.

Well, your first two points are addressed because of your continuing misunderstanding of what the consumer market it. This isn't just what I call it; that's what the industry calls it.

And you were off by only 4 years on USB.

As to 802.11, for example, Apple delivered AirPort in mid-1999. NO end-user consumer machines had 802.11, and it was something that you had to get a minimum $300 PC Card and a $1000 (Lucent RG-1000) access point to use. I.e., totally out of the reach of home/individual users, not to mention was not easy to set up and would have been horrid on PCs (and still was, until really XP SP1, several years later). Yet Apple's access point was easy to set up and use for an end user, and was under $300. The wireless card for the client was under $100. Dell didn't even ship integrated wireless for a full *two years* after Apple announced it.

Apple shippe

The Mac 128K was the first Macintosh ever released, and it was indeed released and available for purchase on January 24, 1984. There was no Macintosh computer with 64K of RAM.

See:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/ stats/mac_128k.html

I remember not being able to play System Shock, because I wasn't on the PPC arch (which I think means I was on a m68k), but I do remember having a desktop enviroment.

That kind of leaves a big area open for suggestions. Like, every product Apple made from the Apple IIgs on until the introduction of the PPC processor (the PM6100/60, I think). I'm guessing it was a Macintosh, and not a late-model Apple (the IIgs did have a desktop environment, actually quite a nice one).

If you look here, you can browse all Mac systems by processor:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/by_processor/index .html

I remember being in a boat similar to yours with my Quadra 605, which used a 68LC040 processor. The thing that finally forced me to upgrade was the proliferation of "PPC only" applications (I really wanted to play Descent, actually was the thing that did it). That and it just started getting unacceptably slow with each new version of Netscape or IE that came out.

1) Apple really was incorporated on April 1st (people don't seem to know that) and it will be the actual 30th birthday to the day.... though Steve Jobs was not at Apple for the 20th anniversary, there was a special Mac released.

2) the current iPod is referred to as "iPod with video" and not "video iPod" on Apple.com. that specific wording is why people think Apple is reserving "video iPod" for something new. i guess technically the iPod with Video is considered a modified version of the latest iPod, and not a flat out video playback device. it also may explain those patents that surfaced recently about a touchscreen-like thing that made the rumor site go bananas thinking an Apple tablet was coming. (here is one example). add the reoccurring "Apple to buy Palm" rumor and you could write a book full of speculation wrapping up all these rumors into one crazy device if you want.

anyway, that's the background on those two bits.....

Supposedly that was already done ten years ago for some Macs, when there was a PPC port of Windows NT.

Yes, I've got one of those boxes in my office (the one on the far left, next to my 128K Mac and NeXT Cube). And indeed, it could run Windows NT for PowerPC. It was a Motorola Viper, a prototype of one of the Mac "clones", and was to be the first shipping Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) machine. In theory, it could run Mac OS, Linux, AIX, Solaris, NetWare, and Windows NT. For various reasons, Solaris and NetWare on PowerPC were killed, as was Windows, eventually. Apple killed cloning (for Motorola's part, Apple bought back their Mac OS license for $100M), and the CHRP machines - or the first clone with the G3, the Motorola StarMax 6000 - never shipped.

Will the "Macintel" systems be able to run Windows?

Officially, no. However, on June 6, 2005, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller stated that Apple will not "preclude someone from running [Windows] on a Mac. They probably will." Apple Director of Software Product Marketing, Brian Croll affirmed that "Apple doesn't plan to sell or support Windows, but we're not planning anything on the hardware side that would preclude it from running."
Source
Also Linux has run on macs for ages.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook/st ats/mac_powerbook100.html PowerBook 100 almost 3.5 years before PowerPC chips in Macs

No the first use power for macs came with the first PPC systems. I still have my lowly Power mac 7100/66 with a killer 2meg video card and hold on, 32megs or ram.

This isn't the first "Duo" Apple has released in notebook form. The original PowerBook Duo was a very cool machine for its time.

I thought Ives first design was the eMate?

Still a wicked design, IMHO.

The single greatest failure of Gil Amelio was approving the 20th Anniversary Macintosh, codename Spartacus. The design was inspired when compared to the standard "pizza boxes" of the time, but the machine was completely overpriced at around $7500 and completely underpowered when compared with the other Macintosh machines which were available at the time. The "TAM" ran at 250MHz while Apple had PowerMac 9600s available earlier that same year running dual processors at 200MHz.

If you expect people to pay premium prices for a "special" machine then it sure as hell better have the fastest processor and the latest hardware available at the time.

...back in 1997. It was called the eMate, it was based off the Newton, and was designed for the education market. And like the Newton, it was unfortunatly canceled when Jobs came back. So I think the project leaders are a little foolish to dismiss Apple out of hand.

Considering Apple already made a system like this , you are speaking out of your ass.

The (Newton) Message Pad 2x00 processor was a 162MHz StrongARM 110 but the older ones were only 20MHz ARM6. Incidentally, the MP120(2.0) and the MP130 ran the newer OS (same as the 2x00) that was very capable of decent handwriting recognition unlike the original lineup. Having extensively used both a MP120(2.0) and a MP2100 I can attest to this. The 2100's only advantage was speed.

The DS has a 66MHz ARM9 and a 33MHz ARM7. Logically, unless the ARM7 is needed for some specific DS tasks you could have it doing as good of HWR as the MP120 and still have the ARM9 free for whatever other task you required.

Links to more info about ARM Archetecture and Newton hardware.

And the Macintosh II was released on March 2, 1987.

From that point of view it makes more sense to compare the CPU of the first 386 Deskpro with the 68020 of the Mac II as opposed to the 68000 of the original Mac, as they are closer in time.

There was a Mac SE FDHD, but that wasn't until 1989. The Macintosh Plus, released in 1986, was the first Mac with a SCSI port, and Apple sold a matching hard drive. That was the first Mac with a supported hard drive. There had been previous third-party attempts to add a hard drive, but they either required internal mods or worked, slowly, through the printer port.

Multifinder originally was an add-on for System 4. It came standard with system 6 but wasn't installed by default. Not until System 7 was it standard. Many early apps wouldn't run under MultiFinder, and the transition generally required application upgrades. Internally, it was a horror, since it began as an external add-on above a single-thread OS, not as a scheduler installed in the core system. Developers used to refer to the Mess Inside.

There was a Mac SE FDHD, but that wasn't until 1989. The Macintosh Plus, released in 1986, was the first Mac with a SCSI port, and Apple sold a matching hard drive. That was the first Mac with a supported hard drive. There had been previous third-party attempts to add a hard drive, but they either required internal mods or worked, slowly, through the printer port.

Multifinder originally was an add-on for System 4. It came standard with system 6 but wasn't installed by default. Not until System 7 was it standard. Many early apps wouldn't run under MultiFinder, and the transition generally required application upgrades. Internally, it was a horror, since it began as an external add-on above a single-thread OS, not as a scheduler installed in the core system. Developers used to refer to the Mess Inside.

No wider than an entry-level ThinkPad but much thicker and heftier, the $4,500 GoBook MAX is a waterproof, vaporproof, shockproof piece of field equipment.

Read your own fucking article... ;) :P

$4,500 isn't too bad for something that durable.

That said, something like this is more like what you're looking for... No LoJack, though...

I am calling bullshit. How about some real numbers not your fantasy. In 1988 you would pay around $2500 for a laser printer. So your comparing a top of the line Mac with a laser printer verses a screw driver shop PC with an Epson FX-80.

Here is your $3000 bullshit computer. Go to the middle of the page and there is a picture of a Tandy ad for 1989 selling a 386 no monitor no mouse for $8499. Tandy's prices were comparable to other companies at the time. So please explain how you were able to buy computers with laser printers for 1/3 of a normal PC.

Here is from 1988 Computer Shopper scroll near the bottom of the page. A cheap laser printer was $2263. A Compaq 286 was $4855.

Here is the price of the top of the line Mac in 1988 and it is $9300.

The basic problem with comparing Apples vs PC years ago was the difference in the hardware Apple used and feature sets. Apple used SCSI the PC MFM drives. How about the Sony floppies that could eject a disk? How about the ability to run multiple monitors? Does that even work 100% in XP almost 20 years later? How about built in networking. You may not like AppleTalk but it worked fine for small work groups. How about file sharing?

Today it is much easier to compare the hardware because Apple uses standard hardware. Besides the totally bogus numbers you had to pull out of some dark crevice when it came to PC prices you were close to what Apple's prices were except you forgot a laser priner, SCSI drives, networking, and the ability to run multiple monitors to the PC's price.

No, A/UX was Unix to be run on a specific few 68k machines, and was *very* hardware dependent.

The Apple Network Servers used AIX. I know a few people who have them, and apparently they're great machines.

I saw that Tulip E-Go and thought "wow. I smell the distinctive scent of a lawsuit."

Compare:
Tulip E-Go
iBook G3

Hello Kitty purse, anyone?

I'm sure that there are people running 10.4 on 500MHz or lower G4 machines.

As a Mac developer, I can tell you now that I'm developing using Tiger on a 533MHz PowerMac G4, and that other (testing & personal) machines in the office are running Tiger on 450MHz PowerMacs. I've got a 450MHz Cube that's been running anything I throw at it since I bought the thing in September 2000 (although the GPU died recently). Oh, and the testing machine on my desk is a 350MHz G3 iMac, which also runs Tiger happily.

Granted, they don't show all the funky graphical CoreImage/CoreVideo stuff in Tiger, but they're five year old machines, or more importantly, they're using five-year-old graphics cards. I could update the GPUs to get that stuff working.

Macs keep going quite a long time. And while there are certain features of new Mac OS X versions which benefit from newer, faster hardware, the majority of the new features are just software, which will pretty much run everywhere. Being able to type a function name into Spotlight and have it give me a list of all headers, source files, PDF & HTML documentation files relating to that function within ten seconds is marvellous, especially since it'll rank the results by relevance. New hardware doe sthe same thing in under a second, but that's just added convenience. Getting the list at all is the important bit, regardless of the amount of time.

-Q

I'm sure that there are people running 10.4 on 500MHz or lower G4 machines.

As a Mac developer, I can tell you now that I'm developing using Tiger on a 533MHz PowerMac G4, and that other (testing & personal) machines in the office are running Tiger on 450MHz PowerMacs. I've got a 450MHz Cube that's been running anything I throw at it since I bought the thing in September 2000 (although the GPU died recently). Oh, and the testing machine on my desk is a 350MHz G3 iMac, which also runs Tiger happily.

Granted, they don't show all the funky graphical CoreImage/CoreVideo stuff in Tiger, but they're five year old machines, or more importantly, they're using five-year-old graphics cards. I could update the GPUs to get that stuff working.

Macs keep going quite a long time. And while there are certain features of new Mac OS X versions which benefit from newer, faster hardware, the majority of the new features are just software, which will pretty much run everywhere. Being able to type a function name into Spotlight and have it give me a list of all headers, source files, PDF & HTML documentation files relating to that function within ten seconds is marvellous, especially since it'll rank the results by relevance. New hardware doe sthe same thing in under a second, but that's just added convenience. Getting the list at all is the important bit, regardless of the amount of time.

-Q