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Apple iWalk: Mac OS-X based PDA?
Per Wigren noted that SpyMac claims to have pictures of the iWalk, the mysterious secret project scheduled to be announced any time now. It is apparently something between a subnotebook and a PDA running a scaled down OSX. Supposedly it can be a portable MP3 player, and it has apple's airport stuff built in. CT Nope. They announced the iPod instead, a lame MP3 player.
It's about 15 grand for a webserver license... so maybe we could get 15 thousand slashdot users to sign up for a dollar a year (that's about all I'd pay) so Rob could afford a database that's a little more robust than a flat text file...
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The MacNN forums (www.macnn.com ahem the most reliable) have debunked this as a doctored up Harmon Kardon amplifier and a Microsoft remote control.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
I have a Dual G4 800MHz with 1.152 GB of RAM and an iBook 500MHz G3 with 320 MB of RAM.
It's *really* fast. On both machines.
The things that were slow were window resizing, etc. And that's mostly fixed now (though resizing Internet Explorer or Mozilla still seems to drag a big when it's doing a complex web page, but that's to be expected).
As far as a scale-down... I think they could do it. The biggest resource-eaters would be Aqua & Quartz, two of the underlying graphics technologies. If those were eliminated or replaced with something faster, I'm sure one would get decent performance with a scaled down OS X.
As far as Apple throwing resources at it... we don't really know what "it" is... yet. 17 minutes to go. But really, if it is a small PDA-like device, I think it will be a big hit. People *loved* the Newton and have been dying for something like it for a long time. So yes, it would be worthwhile for Apple to do so.
--
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Quick tidbits:
This product has had the mac world biting their nails for the past week or so.
Two of the most popular mac news sources, MacSlash and MacOS Rumors, are currently down, and MacNN has been slowed to a crawl.
The official announcement from apple is expected to happen at 10:00AM PST.
MacNN/MacSlash/MOSR are down, but we still have MacMinute.
"MacMinute is in attendance at the media event and will bring the news as we learn of it."
And it looks like in the time it took me to type this post, the action has already started:
Apple CEO Steve Jobs is currently recapping Apple's digital hub products, including iTunes, iMovie 2, iDVD, and Mac OS X's Image Capture application. [October 23 - 13:10-13:20]
Hell yeah! It was just announced! (from MacMinute):
Apple introduces iPod, a digital audio player (MP3, MP2) with a 5GB hard drive (1000 songs). 20 minute skip protection. [13:25]
Just released: .78 in.)
. php
The size of a deck of cards (2.4 x 4 x
* 5gB HDD
* 10 hour bttery life
* 20 min skip protection
* COOL ASS intigration with iTunes2
* crossfader: automatically fades between songs. new equalizer button next to burn and eject buttons, with presets, 10 sliders plus a preamp slider
* built-in. fast -- entire CD download in under 10 seconds
* If you add songs or re-arrange playlists, iPod automatically updates
see: http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0110/23.event
see: http://www.macnn.com/news.php?id=10182
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