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It's no secret that Apple rumor sites receive a large spike in traffic during events such as the WWDC. I found it interesting that this year, one rumor site is attempting a new approach to reduce their bandwidth consumption Mac Rumors (http://macrumors.com/) has teamed up with Equiknox to deliver update via Javascript and XML (recently coined AJAX http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/ar chives/000385.php). They believe that this technique, combined with a lightweight http server, will allow them to serve 3300 hits/sec over three servers and to withstand the any severe spike.

If you want, you can read more about this on their technology reviw or on my blog.

Read my not so thorough, but more subjective review here if you are interested in another user's perspective before you upgrade.

Also, Dashboard is great!

One bottleneck that is on the verge of being taken on with the advent of various dual core processors is that of concurrency. Due to the nature of Virtual Reality programming, parallel processing demands are very high (just think of how many things run in parallel in the real world).

Languages such as The SHADOW System that are designed for programming Virtual Reality Environments are highly threaded and designed to take advantage of these systems. However, the concepts were ahead of their time in the case because the computing power simply did (does) not exist. In fact, the degree of parallel processing required is so high, that it will not be sufficed by the initial wave of dual core CPUs, but they will go a long way in terms of improvement of Virtual Reality systems.

Read the permananent version of this post here and more on the topic here

One bottleneck that is on the verge of being taken on with the advent of various dual core processors is that of concurrency. Due to the nature of Virtual Reality programming, parallel processing demands are very high (just think of how many things run in parallel in the real world).

Languages such as The SHADOW System that are designed for programming Virtual Reality Environments are highly threaded and designed to take advantage of these systems. However, the concepts were ahead of their time in the case because the computing power simply did (does) not exist. In fact, the degree of parallel processing required is so high, that it will not be sufficed by the initial wave of dual core CPUs, but they will go a long way in terms of improvement of Virtual Reality systems.

Read the permananent version of this post here and more on the topic here

You can read the permanent version of this response here.

I know only a little about this field, but I do know that current available computing power can only scratch the surface of what is possible with Virtual Reality. I took a class on the subject a couple years ago, in which we were introduced to some currently available technologies. Most of these I found fairly impressive, though not the fully submersive environment that I had envisioned as a child.

As is most technology innovation these days, the impetus behind many of these devices was largely for military purposes. One such device that sticks out in my mind was a set of goggles that performed a matching algorithm on a subjects face to determine if they were anyone that the soldier should remember. The example the guest speaker used was to suppose a soldier got a glimpse of Saddam Hussein. The goggles projected a small screen in the top corner of the lense that could be used for a variety of things including a conformation of a suspect and another example they gave of an MPEG video display. The screen was pretty tiny, but near the eye it had a pretty neat effect.

Another device introduced was the Phantom from MIT's touch lab. This haptic feedback device provides touch feedback to simulate real world situations. The example in the article I linked to cites the feel of Tiger Woods' grip as and example.

There was some talk of submersive three dimensional environments ala star trek, but we didn't go into much depth. There are all sorts of complications regarding various projection systems and with the helmets there are still serious simulator sickness problems in many subjects.

These aren't the only limits however. Others include a lack of computing power to create a realistic 3D environment that can really fool the brain and problems creating haptic and other sensory feedback. After all of this, perhaps a bigger problem is an overall lack of interest. Outside special circumstances such as military training (flight simulators etc), there is no great need. There is also no great want. The public is largely satisfied (read saturated) with smaller, "low" cost devices such as iPods, PDAs, cameras, cellphones, gaming systems camera phones and laptops. All of these barriers will have to be overcome before we see Virtual Reality anywhere near the forefront of technology.

I often times find myself annoyed by software that comes attached to operatings systems (read my review of Mac OS X 10.4 to see why Safari 2.0 is really raising my ire). The most recent culprit is Quicktime 7.

I happen to be one of many people who shelled out the necessary bones for the Pro version of Quicktime 6. So what does apple do to us loyal customers when we upgrade our operating system? Poof, no more Quicktime Pro.

But wait a sec, what if I was satisfied with Quicktime 6? What if the features of having the Pro version outweight the features of upgrading to 7 (which they certainly do for my purposes)? It would seem that Apple is not concerned with any of this.

At some point, I'll probably shell out again for Quicktime 7 Pro, but I would really prefer to make this choice myself.

You can read the permanent version of this post here.

I often times find myself annoyed by software that comes attached to operatings systems (read my review of Mac OS X 10.4 to see why Safari 2.0 is really raising my ire). The most recent culprit is Quicktime 7.

I happen to be one of many people who shelled out the necessary bones for the Pro version of Quicktime 6. So what does apple do to us loyal customers when we upgrade our operating system? Poof, no more Quicktime Pro.

But wait a sec, what if I was satisfied with Quicktime 6? What if the features of having the Pro version outweight the features of upgrading to 7 (which they certainly do for my purposes)? It would seem that Apple is not concerned with any of this.

At some point, I'll probably shell out again for Quicktime 7 Pro, but I would really prefer to make this choice myself.

You can read the permanent version of this post here.

If you wish, you can read my short article on the future of podcasting. I got to thinking about podcasting and was comparing it to some other internet distribution models. I could be way off, but I fear for the financial stability of this grassroots based format. No one has a good answer for this sort of model yet...

I decided I should write this stuff down and then reflect more on it later. Your feedback is very welcome; I am very interested at this topic right now.

My biggest concerns voiced in my tiger review were in reference to the new extensible architectures provided in tiger. In summary, if developers don't develop with extensions like Automator in mind, then Automator, for example, becomes more or less useless outside of the iLife suite. I installed Tiger last night and went to the website to check out the third party plugins. The dashboard section seemed fine, but I was alarmed by the disorganization of the Automator Plugins. For instance, while looking for plugins for photoshop, I found numerous. But some were individuals and others were suites of plugins; no doubt that some of these overlap. I think that Automator plugins should be packaged with software and made by the developers. This is the ultimate level of acceptance. If the developers themselves don't provide them, then it is likely to stay in a disorganized state.

Read my Tiger Review here. My mac is now about three years old, and last night I was quite pleased to find that Apple is by no means building out its older computers. I can't remember the last version of Windows that ran as fast as the previous.

Also provided is some additional feedback on the core new features (automator, safari RSS, spotlight, Dashboard etc...) which you may or may not find interesting.

I hope you enjoy...