That's pretty much my point - the Slashdot market is, despite what we tent to think about ourselves, not a really significant market on the scale of what the Apples and Microsofts of the world care about. Sure, they'd like to be loved by the geek crowd, but it's just not a priority. If a few thousand alpha nerds run OS X on their Asus mainboards, it's not even a drop in the bucket to Apple.
And remember, Windows may not be supported very well, but it's designed and qualified to run on any system that meets specs set by Microsoft. And vendors design their PCs to meet Microsoft's spec. Ergo, Windows is supported on virtually every PC.
Apple, on the other hand, is going to be tying Mac OS X to Macs, by implementing a form of hardware-based DRM that we don't know the details of yet. The software license will explicitly say that you can only run it on Apple hardware. Sure, you may be able to hack it into running on the aforementioned Asus-based PC, or maybe even on your shiny brand-name Dell. But there will be zero demand for that in business, and virtually zero demand for that at home. It'll be strictly a hacker/hobbyist pursuit. And despite what we sometimes think, the home and business users outnumber hobbyists by hundreds to one.
Not to mention that most of the hobbyists aren't looking to boot every OS on the planet - some do, but most of 'em just want to pimp out Windows and play games real fast.
You know, outside of a few Slashdotters who desperately want to run OS X on their pimped-out x86 boxes, there's probably not a lot of people who give a darn about this. Apple makes Macs, and as long as they provide a reasonably complete spectrum of systems across the price band, there's going to be zero measurable demand to defeat Apple's tying and install OS X on a generic PC. Zero. The biggest reason Mac cloning worked in the market for a few years last decade was that Apple wasn't providing the systems that the Mac marketplace wanted to buy. Even then, it cost Apple a lot more money than they ever expected it to, because even with the licensing fees it didn't make up for the lost hardware margins. Apple needs a lot more base market share before they can stop worrying about cannibalization.
Sure, somebody'll figure out a way to do it - every DRM scheme devised thus far has been cracked, pretty much - but what do you get after cracking OS X? You get a unsupported OS on your PC that may or may not work right with the combination of cards, chipset, and BIOS you happen to have. Do people really think that there's going to be any enterprise demand for that? Really?
Bottom line: Macs are Macs, PCs are PCs, and despite the change in architecture the twain are not going to meet any time soon. Stick to Windows, Linux, or xBSD on your generic PC, and run OS X on your Mactel. You can probably expect Apple to give up a little bit of their price delta now that the hardware is directly comparable (and the hardware superiority image is gone), but not all of it - after all, Apple puts a lot more engineering into their boxes than the typical PC vendor does. And when you're running your Mactel, you can look forward to emulation that's finally less crappy than what Virtual PC gives you. Yippee!
I use iCal, simply because of the iSync support and the ability to publish calendars easily (I have some third parties who schedule me on occasion for their clients, and it's easier to avoid being inadvertently double-booked if I publish my schedule for them to check). I sync between three different Macs (home, office, and PowerBook), my cellphone, and my PocketPC.
I like MS Entourage a lot better than iCal, and if it had direct support for iSync I'd probably use it instead. Supposedly an update this summer will enable that feature on Tiger. Besides that, I was an avid user of Outlook 2000 at my prior company, and I've set up plenty of Windows clients on Outlook 2003 (with an Exchange Server and a good antivirus/antispam front-end, it's a nice workgroup product). If my business were more Windows-focused, I'd use Outlook 2003 without hesitation. And as nice as Entourage's Project feature is, overall Outook makes Entourage its beeyotch - provided you can get past the Windows thing.
Also on the Mac side, I've used both Now and Daylite - Now is OK but not really my cup of tea, and Daylite is nice in a workgroup plus it adds some CRM function. Both are better than iCal for multiple users.
I think ultimately Sunbird needs to be incorporated into Thunderbird in order to give Outlook a serious run. Calendaring and e-mail just have so many logical ties to one another that it's a good place for a monolithic app. As slick as the Mac built-in apps (Mail, Address Book, iCal) are, they just don't offer that nice level of integration you get out of Entourage or Outlook.
Me too - I use a T637 with Cingular and it works quite well. I sync between a PowerBook running Tiger and two iMacs (a G4 at home and a G5 at my office) on Panther, and I also sync an iPod, Palm Tungsten T, and an HP iPaq 1930 (using PocketMac), and they all go a very good job of staying in sync and avoiding conflicts. The iMac G4 uses a Bluetooth dongle, the other two have it built-in.
My wife uses a T610 with her iMac G4 and a Bluetooth dongle, and it works just fine for her as well. Both phones have a pretty good UI overall, though the joystick takes a little getting used to. Battery life is excellent, and I use the T637 with a Jabra BT250 headset which pairs automatically and switches profiles to handsfree when I power it on - also convenient (the Jabra does not handle wind noise gracefully, though...).
I've used the T637 for data, but it's pretty slow as the network is currently configured. Better than nothing, though. After about 6 months of it, I went with a Verizon card for wireless data, instead.
Even 1xRTT is "OK" for the most part - but yeah, if I were based in an area with no EV/DO support and no prospects for it in the foreseeable future I'd probably look for a Plan B.
At this point, virtually every carrier's network has a data option everywhere they serve, but high-speed/3G is pretty much rolling out on a metro by metro basis. Even here in Boston there are a few 1xRTT pockets where the local cell hasn't made the upgrade list yet.
I haven't played with MTU yet - I'm not even sure off-hand what the default is set to on Mac OS X (the card works fine with Tiger, by the way). Next time I fire it up I'll look into it - 512 is probably a good number to work with I suspect.
For most of last year, I used my Sony Ericsson T610 via a Bluetooth connection for remote Internet access. The service was a cheap add-on ($19/month for unlimited use), but real slow. The 610 didn't support the highest-speed modes that Cingular had available at the time, and I've heard it said that they're pretty slow with their high-speed rollout.
Back in November, I switched to the Verizon service with the PC5220 card. Mac OS X supports it natively with no extra software - I just had to input my phone number settings and it worked. For the first two months I settled for the slower 1xRTT service, which seemed to me to be about twice what I could get with dialup and was still better than what Cingular had been giving me. At the beginning of January, Verizon turned on EV/DO in the Boston area, which has generally been an excellent performer. Most everywhere I travel routinely for work is EV/DO enabled, and the card automatically uses it when it has a signal, otherwise it falls back to 1xRTT.
Service for the data-only cards is $80/month for unlimited use. No, you can't run servers with it, but you wouldn't want to. It's a real good option otherwise for a laptop user.
I have a client using the service with the Audiovox PocketPC phones - they love the always-on sync and the capabilities of the device, but they hate the phone itself and are switching to standalone phones for voice (they have two of the PocketPCs now).
Count us in there - we bought a Discovery after the holidays (got $50 off with one of those ubiquitous discount coupons that all the home goods chains send in the mail). With both my wife and I working, and a toddler in the house, we just don't have the time for vacuuming the way we should. Roomba for us was an experiment in time savings.
After almost five months, we love it. It takes care of nearly every room in the house, except for our son's playroom (too many toys on the floor) and the dining room (heavy fringe on the rug). The most we ever do is set it in a room, press the button, and walk away. It's a lot more powerful than I figured it would be, and cleans a lot better. Not to mention our son loves watching it work as well. I'd say it's a close second to our TiVo on the list of Gadgets That Turned Out Way Better Than Expected.
Definitely a good investment on our part. Now we only have to vacuum the house every couple of weeks, and that saves us a lot of time that we can spend together as a family instead. Once Scooba is out, I'll definitely look into it and if the cost is reasonable we just might add it to the home robot collection.
Heck, maybe it and our Roomba can be friends.
Re:Apple is a 2.0 or 3.0 company most of the time.
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Apple's First Flops
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· Score: 1
Just a comment on one of those comparisons in particular - the Portable didn't really directly "lead to" the PowerBooks for the most part. The Portable was, for its time, an effort to build a no-compromises Mac you could take on the road. They used the best available everything, regardless of size or weight constraints. The processor was a 16 MHz 68000, which was double the speed of the mainstream desktop Macs at the time, and equivalent to the clock speed on the Mac II. The battery was lead-acid because that gave the best run time, and I believe the Portable was the first commercially available portable computer to use an active matrix LCD.
Unfortunately, Apple thought people wanted a full-fledged "Macintosh experience" (after all, the previous luggable computers from PC vendors had sold well, and the IBM PC Convertible, blivet that it was, was selling great), so size/weight wouldn't be as important as replicating the desktop. But while Apple was working on the details, the first wave of light, cheap, "good enough" laptops were starting to arrive - so the Portable was already dated when it finally shipped.
One thing about it, though - even from their first attempt, run time was a key Apple focus. Even the first PowerBooks had far better than typical battery life, and they still usually run longer than a comparable x86 laptop. And active matrix quickly became the dominant screen type as well. It wasn't so much that the Portable led directly to the PowerBook, it was more that the Portable was intended to be state-of-the-art, and went through a long development cycle, while the PowerBooks were built with the benefit of a couple of years' progress in technology and better market research.
The PowerBook was also one of Apple's first outsourcing experiences - IIRC, Sony manufactured the PowerBook 100 models for them.
Since Tiger wend GM at the end of March, it's been a month and a half for bug fixing, with the last two-plus weeks of that period essentially the public beta of the OS.
I've already installed it on my PowerBook, and after a few days' time I'll see if it's the update that makes it worth recommending for most of my clients to start their testing. Usually, it seems to take Apple a couple more point releases to really get the major kinks out, so I'm expecting Tiger to hit its stride around mid-summer.
For those of you unfamiliar with Apple release cycles - expect to see a point release like this every 4-6 weeks initially, followed by a cutback to every couple of months later on. Security updates are typically released on a separate basis, about once per month, and will be available for Panther as well for the foreseeable future. Even 10.2 still gets some security fixes now and then. And there will be occasional updates to the iApps and other stuff that are done separately.
There's also a few Safari bugs that snuck in late in the cycle that haven't been addressed yet - Safari is unchanged in 10.4.1.
Absolutely wrong. It's already perfectly legal to time-shift (at least until the Betamax decision is finally either overturned or legislated away). There's a big difference between downloading the songs that are played on the radio and recording/downloading the radio broadcast itself. It's kind of like the difference between downloading the broadcast of a show and downloading the raw DVD image of the show. One is a time-shift, the other is piracy. If my TiVo can make a recording of it that I can watch later, what's the difference between that and downloading a copy of the same recording using Bit Torrent?
I think that's key to the legality argument. And it applies to the radio as well. One is fair use, the other is theft. If I take an hours' worth of radio broadcast, fire up LimeWire, and download all the songs that I heard as ripped, then it's crossing over to illegality. If I record the hour on my computer, then give the resultant MP3 to a friend, it's probably on the OK side. Everything in between is where the gray area lies.
Being a subscriber-based service, satellite radio may be a different case. But that depends on the terms of use that you agreed to when you subscribed (not having satellite radio, I'm not sure). I don't agree to any conditions in order to receive broadcast TV. Same for radio. So unless a law clearly says otherwise, I should be free to record and use what I can receive - within the bounds of personal use/reuse and copyright law.
Then again, I'm not a legal whiz by any stretch of the imagination, though I do have a modicum of common sense. Which doesn't necessarily agree with the law.
First off, I have 1.5/768 DSL coming into the house from Speakeasy. It goes to a Netopia R910 router, and from there my Ethernet connection goes to a Linksys 16-port 10/100 switch in the basement (I have the DSL splitter outside the house, so it comes in on a separate run). That switch services the basement and 1st floor drops, then I have a cable going up along the vent stack, into the attic, and down to the 2nd floor geek room I use as a home office. In that room is an 8-port switch that I connect a wired run into the master bedroom (for my wife's iMac), and in my room it connects the computers and a Linksys WAP54G that's hooked up to a booster antenna.
Then, for the networked devices themselves, my wife has a work laptop (Win2K) that she keeps in the basement most of the time. My preschooler has an iMac DV (G3, 450 MHz) that he uses to play games - it's wireless. There's also a TiVo Series 2 with a Linksys wireless USB adapter. Upstairs is where most of the gear is - my iMac G4 (1.25), my wife's iMac G4, a Dell Dimension 4600 that's been upgraded and tweaked for gaming and XP MCE, and both a networked laser printer and an Epson inkjet. I've got a small collection of handhelds (Palm Tungsten T, HP iPaq 1930, Zaurus 5500, and a Newton 2100), and there's a Shuttle SFF Celeron box in the basement running ClarkConnect Office Edition as the web and e-mail server for the house. Plus I bring my PowerBook G4 home from the office a lot.
For systems currently not in service, I have a Mini-ITX fanless box that I was running the old Mitel SME Server on at one point, and a Netpliance i-Opener (an obsolete "Internet-in-a-box" machine), that has been hacked into a decent low-end PC, with a small hard drive and a faster processor (and a re-flashed BIOS). That used to be in our living room at one point. I keep a lot of miscellaneous gear in the house, both functional and non-functional - you never know when you might need something and I rent a small office in the next town for my business, so I don't have the storage space there.
About once a year, I pile all the stuff that's been untouched for a year into the van and head down for the MIT flea, hoping to sell off some of it to free up space and recover a little cash. My most entertaining sale I ever made at one of them? Andy Ihnatko bought my spare java Ring at a flea a couple of years ago. They'd sent me two when I ordered the eval kit back then. I still wear mine on occasion, and it's the geekiest thing I own, bar none.
The basement where my server lives is also the home of my workshop - I do occasional electronics stuff down there and bicycle repair work - I own two bikes (a road bike and a mountain bike) and ride a few times a week. That, golf, and my family are the token non-geek things in my world.
So all this is really is a cheaper Napster. Whoopee. It's still separate per-track pricing if you want to buy burnable music, and it still only works with WMA-supporting devices. The one thing Yahoo brings to the table here seems to be the fairly easy plugin extensibility, but it's not for supporting other formats, it's more for "cool stuff".
So, in balance, it's a "nothing to see here, move along", but with the Yahoo brand name associated with it. No one WMA music store has been able to make a big splash so far, because of two things: the iPod rules the market at every price point, and thus far the market really is not terribly interested in subscription-based music - despite the endless efforts of the WMA-based companies and the music industry to convince us otherwise.
In the unlikely event that subscriptions start taking off, Apple'll just add it to iTMS, anyways. Short of a sudden overnight shift in consumer tastes, this Yahoo store will just be fighting for their piece of the 20% of the market that simply refuses to associate with anything Apple.
To be ever so slightly serious, Windows Mobile as a smartphone platform isn't really too bad, wspecially when you're already in a Windows shop. I just deployed some of the Verizon/Audiovox 6600 phones for a client of mine that runs MS SBS 2003 as their server platform (a small accounting firm), and they absolutely love them. The phones are a little bulky, but phone performance is good, data performance and mobile sync work very well, and it only took me a little while to set them up with the server. And they work pretty simply, with decent battery life as phones.
I wouldn't replace my Sony Ericsson T637 with anything in the current generation (particularly because I use iSync), but when you want your PDA and your cellphone to be in the same device Microsoft is doing a decent job of it.
Even though it pains me to say that about them - but once in a while Microsoft pretty much Gets It Right with a product. The PocketPC OS is pretty good, Mac Office is very nice (except for the monolithic database file Entourage uses), and SBS 2003 is pretty good for the smaller company with limited Internet exposure.
And odds are that the new PocketPC/Windows Mobile 2005 won't suck.
This has been Apple's pattern ever since 10.0 - I think it's partly because their beta program is so closely controlled. Despite all the testing they do, it's still a tiny fraction of the number of users who install it in the first few days after release.
The other thing is that once Apple freezes a release as "GM", then you've got a gap of around a month before the public release. So in the meantime, they've got a head start on fixing issues, plus the ones that come up in the first week or two of public release. That makes for a first bugfix release within a month of launch (which has always been Apple's pattern in the X world), followed by further point releases every couple of months afterwards until the next major rev.
And that's in addition to the (now) monthly security updates and any other updates to components that come along.
I've got a whole fleet of Macs (iMac G5, PowerBook 667, PowerBook 15" 1.5 and mini at the office, iMac G3 and a pair of iMac G4s at home), and the way I handle a major update is to try it on one system at launch, because some of my customers will jump immediately. In this case, I threw it on my newer PowerBook G4 (I put my copy of Server on the mini). After the 10.4.1 update, I'll probably start deploying it on a couple of the other Macs, but keep 10.3 around for a while so I can support my 10.3 customers.
A handful of my customers still use 10.2, but it's not enough to bother keeping a 10.2 system around.
The disadvantage of Apple's approach is that the new release usually has a lot more little minor bugs and compatibility issues than a new Windows rev, because the new MacOS version is in the hands of relatively few people for a shorter development cycle. On the other hand, the fixes are rapid, and within a couple of months all the straggling 3rd party developers have usually caught up. Apple releases entire new versions of the OS in the time it takes Microsoft to release a service pack.
As much as I'd just as soon see folks running something other than Windows in the first place, the people buying counterfeit copies of Windows are often not aware that their software's not legit - while the reseller is. So Microsoft'll give me a legit copy in exchange for the goods on the crook who sold me the fake. Sounds like a fair swap.
The vendors who get nailed by this program deserve it.
Additionally, Verizon, Sprint, and Cingular still support AMPS on their networks (I know for sure about Verizon and Cingular - I believe Sprint also does), and Cingular/AT&T both still support older TDMA phones (which they both used before switching to GSM).
I think a lot of the value in the Nextel deal is for the spectrum that's getting swapped around. Since, as you said, the phone networks themselves are not interoperable. But as part of the deal that gives back spectrum in the lower bands that Nextel uses today, they got some good, high-value property back. And Sprint can use it.
Only carriers with similar technology can do that. AT&T and Sprint are a bad example - AT&T uses TDMA/GSM (or at least they did, until Cingular bought them), while Sprint uses CDMA.
As much as I'm a fan of rail, most people who bash the US for the "car-centric" culture here lose sight of those numbers you're citing.
The US has approximately the same total land area as Canada and China (9,158,960.00 square km, according to the CIA world factbook) - less once you factor in Alaska's isolation. That's the fourth-largest nation in the world (behind Russia, China, and Canada). But in population density, we're only ranked #192.
In other words, other than in the densely populated Eastern Seaboard of the US there's just generally not enough people to facilitate high-speed rail. In fact, the US passenger rail system loses enormous amounts of money, and is only self-sustaining in a few metro areas' commuter systems and in the Northeast Corridor.
Places like Japan, Great Britain, and continental Europe are much better-suited to that sort of thing. It's not so much brainwashing as it is practicality. Because space is not at a premium in the US, most areas sprawl far more than they do in other parts of the world. It's kind of a self-sustaining cycle - development moves away from cities because of the open space and the fact that everybody already has a car - and people own cars because it's the only practical way to get around all the open space.
And then since we have the cars already, we use them even for shorter trips that otherwise might be by public transport or on foot. The lifestyle in this country evolved to fit the ubiquitousness of cars and vice-versa.
Another thing that has an impact, of course, is that gasoline is far cheaper here than it is in most of the world. Were we to start taxing gasoline at European levels (and putting the resultant revenue into our public transport), we'd probably see more usage - but the essential damage is already done. Americans (collectively) live too far apart and too far away from jobs and services to suddenly adapt to that radical a change. Expensive gas would drive the adoption of more efficient cars (current gas prices are already sparking a big decline in SUV sales), but probably not make any other major change in American lifestyles.
Windows NT 3.1 - Version 1 (the number was picked to be in sync with the 16-bit Windows) Windows NT 3.5 - First real update - added Alpha support Windows NT 3.51 - Minor service pack, added PowerPC support Windows NT 4 - moved GUI and device drivers into kernel mode for speed, added Win95 GUI. Major upgrade. Then came 6 service packs... Windows NT 5 - AKA Windows 2000. Not a huge upgrade overall, but added Active Directory. Windows NT 5.1 - AKA Windows XP. Other minor improvements, more consumer-oriented features, prettier GUI.
The equivalent in Mac-land:
Mac OS (through version 9.2): Older cooperative-multitasking-based systems. 9.2 is still supported under OS X as "Classic", but for more than a year you haven't been able to buy a Mac that would boot 9.x by itself. Mac OS X 10.0 - "Cheetah". The first cut at the new version. It was updated with minor service packs a few times, then in fall 2001 it was replaced with: Mac OS X 10.1 - "Puma". Really just the equivalent of a Windows service pack, despite the numbering. It was handed out by Apple as a free update CD. They added the DVD player, fixed a lot of bugs, and such. Mac OS X 10.2 - "Jaguar". Jaguar was the first version to actually get the "big cat" name made an official part of the product name (the previous names were code names only). Jaguar got updates through 10.2.8, and still is supported with the occasional security update. The biggest change from a GUI perspective was the move to the "brushed metal" look. Mac OS X 10.3 = "Panther". Panther was released in October 2003, about a year after Jaguar. As it's been around for a year and a half, it's gotten point updates up to 10.3.9.
Basically, there's no direct analogue between the two, but the closest thing in Mac land to a Windows-style service pack was the 10.0 to 10.1 update. It was a free CD at the Apple Stores and from resellers (you could buy it for $20 as a shrinkwrapped update kit IIRC). They didn't make it available for download, though.
Typically, Apple point releases are simply bugfixes and occasional minor feature upgrades (10.3.9 just gave us the new Safari 1.3, which shares most of its guts with Tiger's Safari RSS 2.0), new drivers, etc. But they release them every 2-3 months or so, whereas Microsoft tends to roll a lot more stuff into a service pack, and they release them far less frequently - like every year or two. XP came out in 2001, and they're only on SP2 for it. But Microsoft releases bugfixes and security updates regularly in between service packs - Apple does some of that as well but mostly relies on point releases.
But to Apple overall, they think of what looks like a "minor" update by the version numbers as a major one, and it usually is in terms of features added and the like. Check out the analysis on Ars to see what all the new goodies really entail.
I didn't go through the full list of options in excruciating detail, but by "slightly less" I meant that I noticed some minor changes in BTO configs.
Apple doesn't change their major pricepoints often, particularly in the Pro line - they don't have to. In the consumer lines, there's been a slow, steady lowering of price levels over the last few years as Apple's nosed their way down-market. But the major thing here is that (right or wrong) Apple has a market that craves their high-end gear, even if it doesn't provide the same raw horsepower as a nicely tweaked PC can. It just doesn't matter to them at all, and they've shown it consistently.
Mac users don't buy them (generally) for the raw performance, they buy them because they fill a need better - real or perceived. Sure, they market image in a way Dell and the like can only dream of, there's more to it. Apple doesn't really want the Slashdot crowd as their customers (and they don't have them) - the Apple market is still the graphics person, the end users who are sick of dealing with Windows, the science community, and the alpha geeks (just count the PowerBooks at a Unix conference).
They aren't pure enough for the Free Software diehards, but they provide a slick, functional Unix that adheres to most standards that matter, can do all the day-to-day tasks that most users would ever want, interoperate well with other systems, and are immune to pretty much all the woes that plague the Windows world. They don't build a slick bare-bones box that you can buy cheaply and tweak to your hearts' desire, but they do have complete systems that are clearly differentiated across the full spectrum of top-tier pricepoints.
For your purposes, a PowerMac would be great, but you don't need all that expansion to develop Java apps. If a mini doesn't float your boat, try an iMac G5, for instance - maybe it's still above your target price but you can get a nice one for under $1500, and then you get G5 goodness for your Java wants. Heck, I'd like a PowerMac too, but since I didn't win the lotto this week I'll just stick with my iMac G5 for now.
- Same pricepoints or slightly less, for bigger standard drives, dual-layer DVD support, support for the dual DVI needed for the 30" display, and a little bit more processor speed.
The minuses:
- Nothing to really make them stand out, and the rumored dual-core chips didn't make this cycle. Given Apple's usual patterns, that means we're probably looking at no earlier than late summer for dual-core G5 chips.
My verdict (FWIW):
No big deal - if you were thinking of buying the earlier model, then these are nice, but just a routine improvement. If/when Apple starts using the dual-core G5 in a dual processor config (dually dually, I guess), that'll be a much more compelling product.
Now, what I'm wondering is what'll happen with the rumored iMac and eMac speedbumps (and the minor change to the Mac mini). Maybe those'll be announced tomorrow so that come Friday, all current shipping systems will have 512MB for Tiger standard.
Installed it tonight on my 15" PowerBook (1.5 GHz), and all is fine. PithHelmet is disabled by the long-awaited Safari 1.3 update, for those of you who count on it, but the developer's site says he's already finishing up a fix for it. It's nice to finally see 1.3, even if it's only a couple more weeks until Tiger and 2.0.
I haven't really noticed any other changes so far - my mileage hasn't magically improved, it's not Snappier (tm), and I haven't gotten a whiter, brighter smile from it. But it's good to see that they've gotten Panther into a fairly solid state, since this will probably be the final release other than security patches from here on in with this codebase.
Number 2 is easier - just download jhymn and tell it the correct atoms to strip. The files will remain compatible with everything that way, and the iPod/iTunes combo will still work fine. Read the jhymn docs for more info, but if you do that you don't need to do #4 with the loss of audio fidelity you get by doing that, and you can keep buying iTunes songs if you are so motivated.
That would be most cool if they started shipping the dual-core 970, (if they also came with two processors, would they be called dually duallys?). But based on what's going on at Intel and AMD also, I'd say the days of having enormous speed increases over the course of a year are petering out. The top-end Intel P4 chip is specced at 3.8 GHz - and I think that's only.4 GHz faster than this time last year.
The improvements I'd expect in processors over the next few years will probably be focused on faster RAM access, streamlining the internals of the processor for better performance at the same clock, and faster bus speeds. And better multiprocessor support (along with dual-core).
Even if Apple only bumps up the PowerMac G5 to 2.7 GHz, it's still a.4 GHz overall improvement with a dually system (yes, I know that's not an exact number), and if they combine dual-core chips with that it'll be even nicer. Especially if the price stays the same or drops a little, as they've tended to do lately.
Slashdot Mirror
That's pretty much my point - the Slashdot market is, despite what we tent to think about ourselves, not a really significant market on the scale of what the Apples and Microsofts of the world care about. Sure, they'd like to be loved by the geek crowd, but it's just not a priority. If a few thousand alpha nerds run OS X on their Asus mainboards, it's not even a drop in the bucket to Apple.
And remember, Windows may not be supported very well, but it's designed and qualified to run on any system that meets specs set by Microsoft. And vendors design their PCs to meet Microsoft's spec. Ergo, Windows is supported on virtually every PC.
Apple, on the other hand, is going to be tying Mac OS X to Macs, by implementing a form of hardware-based DRM that we don't know the details of yet. The software license will explicitly say that you can only run it on Apple hardware. Sure, you may be able to hack it into running on the aforementioned Asus-based PC, or maybe even on your shiny brand-name Dell. But there will be zero demand for that in business, and virtually zero demand for that at home. It'll be strictly a hacker/hobbyist pursuit. And despite what we sometimes think, the home and business users outnumber hobbyists by hundreds to one.
Not to mention that most of the hobbyists aren't looking to boot every OS on the planet - some do, but most of 'em just want to pimp out Windows and play games real fast.
You know, outside of a few Slashdotters who desperately want to run OS X on their pimped-out x86 boxes, there's probably not a lot of people who give a darn about this. Apple makes Macs, and as long as they provide a reasonably complete spectrum of systems across the price band, there's going to be zero measurable demand to defeat Apple's tying and install OS X on a generic PC. Zero. The biggest reason Mac cloning worked in the market for a few years last decade was that Apple wasn't providing the systems that the Mac marketplace wanted to buy. Even then, it cost Apple a lot more money than they ever expected it to, because even with the licensing fees it didn't make up for the lost hardware margins. Apple needs a lot more base market share before they can stop worrying about cannibalization.
Sure, somebody'll figure out a way to do it - every DRM scheme devised thus far has been cracked, pretty much - but what do you get after cracking OS X? You get a unsupported OS on your PC that may or may not work right with the combination of cards, chipset, and BIOS you happen to have. Do people really think that there's going to be any enterprise demand for that? Really?
Bottom line: Macs are Macs, PCs are PCs, and despite the change in architecture the twain are not going to meet any time soon. Stick to Windows, Linux, or xBSD on your generic PC, and run OS X on your Mactel. You can probably expect Apple to give up a little bit of their price delta now that the hardware is directly comparable (and the hardware superiority image is gone), but not all of it - after all, Apple puts a lot more engineering into their boxes than the typical PC vendor does. And when you're running your Mactel, you can look forward to emulation that's finally less crappy than what Virtual PC gives you. Yippee!
I use iCal, simply because of the iSync support and the ability to publish calendars easily (I have some third parties who schedule me on occasion for their clients, and it's easier to avoid being inadvertently double-booked if I publish my schedule for them to check). I sync between three different Macs (home, office, and PowerBook), my cellphone, and my PocketPC.
I like MS Entourage a lot better than iCal, and if it had direct support for iSync I'd probably use it instead. Supposedly an update this summer will enable that feature on Tiger. Besides that, I was an avid user of Outlook 2000 at my prior company, and I've set up plenty of Windows clients on Outlook 2003 (with an Exchange Server and a good antivirus/antispam front-end, it's a nice workgroup product). If my business were more Windows-focused, I'd use Outlook 2003 without hesitation. And as nice as Entourage's Project feature is, overall Outook makes Entourage its beeyotch - provided you can get past the Windows thing.
Also on the Mac side, I've used both Now and Daylite - Now is OK but not really my cup of tea, and Daylite is nice in a workgroup plus it adds some CRM function. Both are better than iCal for multiple users.
I think ultimately Sunbird needs to be incorporated into Thunderbird in order to give Outlook a serious run. Calendaring and e-mail just have so many logical ties to one another that it's a good place for a monolithic app. As slick as the Mac built-in apps (Mail, Address Book, iCal) are, they just don't offer that nice level of integration you get out of Entourage or Outlook.
Me too - I use a T637 with Cingular and it works quite well. I sync between a PowerBook running Tiger and two iMacs (a G4 at home and a G5 at my office) on Panther, and I also sync an iPod, Palm Tungsten T, and an HP iPaq 1930 (using PocketMac), and they all go a very good job of staying in sync and avoiding conflicts. The iMac G4 uses a Bluetooth dongle, the other two have it built-in.
My wife uses a T610 with her iMac G4 and a Bluetooth dongle, and it works just fine for her as well. Both phones have a pretty good UI overall, though the joystick takes a little getting used to. Battery life is excellent, and I use the T637 with a Jabra BT250 headset which pairs automatically and switches profiles to handsfree when I power it on - also convenient (the Jabra does not handle wind noise gracefully, though...).
I've used the T637 for data, but it's pretty slow as the network is currently configured. Better than nothing, though. After about 6 months of it, I went with a Verizon card for wireless data, instead.
Even 1xRTT is "OK" for the most part - but yeah, if I were based in an area with no EV/DO support and no prospects for it in the foreseeable future I'd probably look for a Plan B.
At this point, virtually every carrier's network has a data option everywhere they serve, but high-speed/3G is pretty much rolling out on a metro by metro basis. Even here in Boston there are a few 1xRTT pockets where the local cell hasn't made the upgrade list yet.
I haven't played with MTU yet - I'm not even sure off-hand what the default is set to on Mac OS X (the card works fine with Tiger, by the way). Next time I fire it up I'll look into it - 512 is probably a good number to work with I suspect.
For most of last year, I used my Sony Ericsson T610 via a Bluetooth connection for remote Internet access. The service was a cheap add-on ($19/month for unlimited use), but real slow. The 610 didn't support the highest-speed modes that Cingular had available at the time, and I've heard it said that they're pretty slow with their high-speed rollout.
Back in November, I switched to the Verizon service with the PC5220 card. Mac OS X supports it natively with no extra software - I just had to input my phone number settings and it worked. For the first two months I settled for the slower 1xRTT service, which seemed to me to be about twice what I could get with dialup and was still better than what Cingular had been giving me. At the beginning of January, Verizon turned on EV/DO in the Boston area, which has generally been an excellent performer. Most everywhere I travel routinely for work is EV/DO enabled, and the card automatically uses it when it has a signal, otherwise it falls back to 1xRTT.
Service for the data-only cards is $80/month for unlimited use. No, you can't run servers with it, but you wouldn't want to. It's a real good option otherwise for a laptop user.
I have a client using the service with the Audiovox PocketPC phones - they love the always-on sync and the capabilities of the device, but they hate the phone itself and are switching to standalone phones for voice (they have two of the PocketPCs now).
Gee, the site just seems like a pretty useful reference, kind of like a less cluttered, Torrent-oriented linuxiso.org.
Of course, thanks to good old PithHelmet I wouldn't have seen any banners anyhow...
Count us in there - we bought a Discovery after the holidays (got $50 off with one of those ubiquitous discount coupons that all the home goods chains send in the mail). With both my wife and I working, and a toddler in the house, we just don't have the time for vacuuming the way we should. Roomba for us was an experiment in time savings.
After almost five months, we love it. It takes care of nearly every room in the house, except for our son's playroom (too many toys on the floor) and the dining room (heavy fringe on the rug). The most we ever do is set it in a room, press the button, and walk away. It's a lot more powerful than I figured it would be, and cleans a lot better. Not to mention our son loves watching it work as well. I'd say it's a close second to our TiVo on the list of Gadgets That Turned Out Way Better Than Expected.
Definitely a good investment on our part. Now we only have to vacuum the house every couple of weeks, and that saves us a lot of time that we can spend together as a family instead. Once Scooba is out, I'll definitely look into it and if the cost is reasonable we just might add it to the home robot collection.
Heck, maybe it and our Roomba can be friends.
Just a comment on one of those comparisons in particular - the Portable didn't really directly "lead to" the PowerBooks for the most part. The Portable was, for its time, an effort to build a no-compromises Mac you could take on the road. They used the best available everything, regardless of size or weight constraints. The processor was a 16 MHz 68000, which was double the speed of the mainstream desktop Macs at the time, and equivalent to the clock speed on the Mac II. The battery was lead-acid because that gave the best run time, and I believe the Portable was the first commercially available portable computer to use an active matrix LCD.
Unfortunately, Apple thought people wanted a full-fledged "Macintosh experience" (after all, the previous luggable computers from PC vendors had sold well, and the IBM PC Convertible, blivet that it was, was selling great), so size/weight wouldn't be as important as replicating the desktop. But while Apple was working on the details, the first wave of light, cheap, "good enough" laptops were starting to arrive - so the Portable was already dated when it finally shipped.
One thing about it, though - even from their first attempt, run time was a key Apple focus. Even the first PowerBooks had far better than typical battery life, and they still usually run longer than a comparable x86 laptop. And active matrix quickly became the dominant screen type as well. It wasn't so much that the Portable led directly to the PowerBook, it was more that the Portable was intended to be state-of-the-art, and went through a long development cycle, while the PowerBooks were built with the benefit of a couple of years' progress in technology and better market research.
The PowerBook was also one of Apple's first outsourcing experiences - IIRC, Sony manufactured the PowerBook 100 models for them.
Since Tiger wend GM at the end of March, it's been a month and a half for bug fixing, with the last two-plus weeks of that period essentially the public beta of the OS.
I've already installed it on my PowerBook, and after a few days' time I'll see if it's the update that makes it worth recommending for most of my clients to start their testing. Usually, it seems to take Apple a couple more point releases to really get the major kinks out, so I'm expecting Tiger to hit its stride around mid-summer.
For those of you unfamiliar with Apple release cycles - expect to see a point release like this every 4-6 weeks initially, followed by a cutback to every couple of months later on. Security updates are typically released on a separate basis, about once per month, and will be available for Panther as well for the foreseeable future. Even 10.2 still gets some security fixes now and then. And there will be occasional updates to the iApps and other stuff that are done separately.
There's also a few Safari bugs that snuck in late in the cycle that haven't been addressed yet - Safari is unchanged in 10.4.1.
Absolutely wrong. It's already perfectly legal to time-shift (at least until the Betamax decision is finally either overturned or legislated away). There's a big difference between downloading the songs that are played on the radio and recording/downloading the radio broadcast itself. It's kind of like the difference between downloading the broadcast of a show and downloading the raw DVD image of the show. One is a time-shift, the other is piracy. If my TiVo can make a recording of it that I can watch later, what's the difference between that and downloading a copy of the same recording using Bit Torrent?
I think that's key to the legality argument. And it applies to the radio as well. One is fair use, the other is theft. If I take an hours' worth of radio broadcast, fire up LimeWire, and download all the songs that I heard as ripped, then it's crossing over to illegality. If I record the hour on my computer, then give the resultant MP3 to a friend, it's probably on the OK side. Everything in between is where the gray area lies.
Being a subscriber-based service, satellite radio may be a different case. But that depends on the terms of use that you agreed to when you subscribed (not having satellite radio, I'm not sure). I don't agree to any conditions in order to receive broadcast TV. Same for radio. So unless a law clearly says otherwise, I should be free to record and use what I can receive - within the bounds of personal use/reuse and copyright law.
Then again, I'm not a legal whiz by any stretch of the imagination, though I do have a modicum of common sense. Which doesn't necessarily agree with the law.
First off, I have 1.5/768 DSL coming into the house from Speakeasy. It goes to a Netopia R910 router, and from there my Ethernet connection goes to a Linksys 16-port 10/100 switch in the basement (I have the DSL splitter outside the house, so it comes in on a separate run). That switch services the basement and 1st floor drops, then I have a cable going up along the vent stack, into the attic, and down to the 2nd floor geek room I use as a home office. In that room is an 8-port switch that I connect a wired run into the master bedroom (for my wife's iMac), and in my room it connects the computers and a Linksys WAP54G that's hooked up to a booster antenna.
Then, for the networked devices themselves, my wife has a work laptop (Win2K) that she keeps in the basement most of the time. My preschooler has an iMac DV (G3, 450 MHz) that he uses to play games - it's wireless. There's also a TiVo Series 2 with a Linksys wireless USB adapter. Upstairs is where most of the gear is - my iMac G4 (1.25), my wife's iMac G4, a Dell Dimension 4600 that's been upgraded and tweaked for gaming and XP MCE, and both a networked laser printer and an Epson inkjet. I've got a small collection of handhelds (Palm Tungsten T, HP iPaq 1930, Zaurus 5500, and a Newton 2100), and there's a Shuttle SFF Celeron box in the basement running ClarkConnect Office Edition as the web and e-mail server for the house. Plus I bring my PowerBook G4 home from the office a lot.
For systems currently not in service, I have a Mini-ITX fanless box that I was running the old Mitel SME Server on at one point, and a Netpliance i-Opener (an obsolete "Internet-in-a-box" machine), that has been hacked into a decent low-end PC, with a small hard drive and a faster processor (and a re-flashed BIOS). That used to be in our living room at one point. I keep a lot of miscellaneous gear in the house, both functional and non-functional - you never know when you might need something and I rent a small office in the next town for my business, so I don't have the storage space there.
About once a year, I pile all the stuff that's been untouched for a year into the van and head down for the MIT flea, hoping to sell off some of it to free up space and recover a little cash. My most entertaining sale I ever made at one of them? Andy Ihnatko bought my spare java Ring at a flea a couple of years ago. They'd sent me two when I ordered the eval kit back then. I still wear mine on occasion, and it's the geekiest thing I own, bar none.
The basement where my server lives is also the home of my workshop - I do occasional electronics stuff down there and bicycle repair work - I own two bikes (a road bike and a mountain bike) and ride a few times a week. That, golf, and my family are the token non-geek things in my world.
So all this is really is a cheaper Napster. Whoopee. It's still separate per-track pricing if you want to buy burnable music, and it still only works with WMA-supporting devices. The one thing Yahoo brings to the table here seems to be the fairly easy plugin extensibility, but it's not for supporting other formats, it's more for "cool stuff".
So, in balance, it's a "nothing to see here, move along", but with the Yahoo brand name associated with it. No one WMA music store has been able to make a big splash so far, because of two things: the iPod rules the market at every price point, and thus far the market really is not terribly interested in subscription-based music - despite the endless efforts of the WMA-based companies and the music industry to convince us otherwise.
In the unlikely event that subscriptions start taking off, Apple'll just add it to iTMS, anyways. Short of a sudden overnight shift in consumer tastes, this Yahoo store will just be fighting for their piece of the 20% of the market that simply refuses to associate with anything Apple.
Are we now going to see Sobig.Mobile?
To be ever so slightly serious, Windows Mobile as a smartphone platform isn't really too bad, wspecially when you're already in a Windows shop. I just deployed some of the Verizon/Audiovox 6600 phones for a client of mine that runs MS SBS 2003 as their server platform (a small accounting firm), and they absolutely love them. The phones are a little bulky, but phone performance is good, data performance and mobile sync work very well, and it only took me a little while to set them up with the server. And they work pretty simply, with decent battery life as phones.
I wouldn't replace my Sony Ericsson T637 with anything in the current generation (particularly because I use iSync), but when you want your PDA and your cellphone to be in the same device Microsoft is doing a decent job of it.
Even though it pains me to say that about them - but once in a while Microsoft pretty much Gets It Right with a product. The PocketPC OS is pretty good, Mac Office is very nice (except for the monolithic database file Entourage uses), and SBS 2003 is pretty good for the smaller company with limited Internet exposure.
And odds are that the new PocketPC/Windows Mobile 2005 won't suck.
This has been Apple's pattern ever since 10.0 - I think it's partly because their beta program is so closely controlled. Despite all the testing they do, it's still a tiny fraction of the number of users who install it in the first few days after release.
The other thing is that once Apple freezes a release as "GM", then you've got a gap of around a month before the public release. So in the meantime, they've got a head start on fixing issues, plus the ones that come up in the first week or two of public release. That makes for a first bugfix release within a month of launch (which has always been Apple's pattern in the X world), followed by further point releases every couple of months afterwards until the next major rev.
And that's in addition to the (now) monthly security updates and any other updates to components that come along.
I've got a whole fleet of Macs (iMac G5, PowerBook 667, PowerBook 15" 1.5 and mini at the office, iMac G3 and a pair of iMac G4s at home), and the way I handle a major update is to try it on one system at launch, because some of my customers will jump immediately. In this case, I threw it on my newer PowerBook G4 (I put my copy of Server on the mini). After the 10.4.1 update, I'll probably start deploying it on a couple of the other Macs, but keep 10.3 around for a while so I can support my 10.3 customers.
A handful of my customers still use 10.2, but it's not enough to bother keeping a 10.2 system around.
The disadvantage of Apple's approach is that the new release usually has a lot more little minor bugs and compatibility issues than a new Windows rev, because the new MacOS version is in the hands of relatively few people for a shorter development cycle. On the other hand, the fixes are rapid, and within a couple of months all the straggling 3rd party developers have usually caught up. Apple releases entire new versions of the OS in the time it takes Microsoft to release a service pack.
As much as I'd just as soon see folks running something other than Windows in the first place, the people buying counterfeit copies of Windows are often not aware that their software's not legit - while the reseller is. So Microsoft'll give me a legit copy in exchange for the goods on the crook who sold me the fake. Sounds like a fair swap.
The vendors who get nailed by this program deserve it.
I knew that (whoops) - What I was trying to say there wasn't that AT&T's GSM was no more, but rather that AT&T was itself no more.
For the benefit of the handful of people bothering to read this exchange, here's what the Big Five (soon to be four) use for base technologies:
Verizon - CDMA
Sprint - CDMA
Cingular (plus AT&T's network) - GSM
T-Mobile - GSM
Nextel - iDEN
Additionally, Verizon, Sprint, and Cingular still support AMPS on their networks (I know for sure about Verizon and Cingular - I believe Sprint also does), and Cingular/AT&T both still support older TDMA phones (which they both used before switching to GSM).
I think a lot of the value in the Nextel deal is for the spectrum that's getting swapped around. Since, as you said, the phone networks themselves are not interoperable. But as part of the deal that gives back spectrum in the lower bands that Nextel uses today, they got some good, high-value property back. And Sprint can use it.
Only carriers with similar technology can do that. AT&T and Sprint are a bad example - AT&T uses TDMA/GSM (or at least they did, until Cingular bought them), while Sprint uses CDMA.
As much as I'm a fan of rail, most people who bash the US for the "car-centric" culture here lose sight of those numbers you're citing.
The US has approximately the same total land area as Canada and China (9,158,960.00 square km, according to the CIA world factbook) - less once you factor in Alaska's isolation. That's the fourth-largest nation in the world (behind Russia, China, and Canada). But in population density, we're only ranked #192.
In other words, other than in the densely populated Eastern Seaboard of the US there's just generally not enough people to facilitate high-speed rail. In fact, the US passenger rail system loses enormous amounts of money, and is only self-sustaining in a few metro areas' commuter systems and in the Northeast Corridor.
Places like Japan, Great Britain, and continental Europe are much better-suited to that sort of thing. It's not so much brainwashing as it is practicality. Because space is not at a premium in the US, most areas sprawl far more than they do in other parts of the world. It's kind of a self-sustaining cycle - development moves away from cities because of the open space and the fact that everybody already has a car - and people own cars because it's the only practical way to get around all the open space.
And then since we have the cars already, we use them even for shorter trips that otherwise might be by public transport or on foot. The lifestyle in this country evolved to fit the ubiquitousness of cars and vice-versa.
Another thing that has an impact, of course, is that gasoline is far cheaper here than it is in most of the world. Were we to start taxing gasoline at European levels (and putting the resultant revenue into our public transport), we'd probably see more usage - but the essential damage is already done. Americans (collectively) live too far apart and too far away from jobs and services to suddenly adapt to that radical a change. Expensive gas would drive the adoption of more efficient cars (current gas prices are already sparking a big decline in SUV sales), but probably not make any other major change in American lifestyles.
Here's some equivalents from NT history:
Windows NT 3.1 - Version 1 (the number was picked to be in sync with the 16-bit Windows)
Windows NT 3.5 - First real update - added Alpha support
Windows NT 3.51 - Minor service pack, added PowerPC support
Windows NT 4 - moved GUI and device drivers into kernel mode for speed, added Win95 GUI. Major upgrade.
Then came 6 service packs...
Windows NT 5 - AKA Windows 2000. Not a huge upgrade overall, but added Active Directory.
Windows NT 5.1 - AKA Windows XP. Other minor improvements, more consumer-oriented features, prettier GUI.
The equivalent in Mac-land:
Mac OS (through version 9.2): Older cooperative-multitasking-based systems. 9.2 is still supported under OS X as "Classic", but for more than a year you haven't been able to buy a Mac that would boot 9.x by itself.
Mac OS X 10.0 - "Cheetah". The first cut at the new version. It was updated with minor service packs a few times, then in fall 2001 it was replaced with:
Mac OS X 10.1 - "Puma". Really just the equivalent of a Windows service pack, despite the numbering. It was handed out by Apple as a free update CD. They added the DVD player, fixed a lot of bugs, and such.
Mac OS X 10.2 - "Jaguar". Jaguar was the first version to actually get the "big cat" name made an official part of the product name (the previous names were code names only). Jaguar got updates through 10.2.8, and still is supported with the occasional security update. The biggest change from a GUI perspective was the move to the "brushed metal" look.
Mac OS X 10.3 = "Panther". Panther was released in October 2003, about a year after Jaguar. As it's been around for a year and a half, it's gotten point updates up to 10.3.9.
Basically, there's no direct analogue between the two, but the closest thing in Mac land to a Windows-style service pack was the 10.0 to 10.1 update. It was a free CD at the Apple Stores and from resellers (you could buy it for $20 as a shrinkwrapped update kit IIRC). They didn't make it available for download, though.
Typically, Apple point releases are simply bugfixes and occasional minor feature upgrades (10.3.9 just gave us the new Safari 1.3, which shares most of its guts with Tiger's Safari RSS 2.0), new drivers, etc. But they release them every 2-3 months or so, whereas Microsoft tends to roll a lot more stuff into a service pack, and they release them far less frequently - like every year or two. XP came out in 2001, and they're only on SP2 for it. But Microsoft releases bugfixes and security updates regularly in between service packs - Apple does some of that as well but mostly relies on point releases.
But to Apple overall, they think of what looks like a "minor" update by the version numbers as a major one, and it usually is in terms of features added and the like. Check out the analysis on Ars to see what all the new goodies really entail.
I didn't go through the full list of options in excruciating detail, but by "slightly less" I meant that I noticed some minor changes in BTO configs.
Apple doesn't change their major pricepoints often, particularly in the Pro line - they don't have to. In the consumer lines, there's been a slow, steady lowering of price levels over the last few years as Apple's nosed their way down-market. But the major thing here is that (right or wrong) Apple has a market that craves their high-end gear, even if it doesn't provide the same raw horsepower as a nicely tweaked PC can. It just doesn't matter to them at all, and they've shown it consistently.
Mac users don't buy them (generally) for the raw performance, they buy them because they fill a need better - real or perceived. Sure, they market image in a way Dell and the like can only dream of, there's more to it. Apple doesn't really want the Slashdot crowd as their customers (and they don't have them) - the Apple market is still the graphics person, the end users who are sick of dealing with Windows, the science community, and the alpha geeks (just count the PowerBooks at a Unix conference).
They aren't pure enough for the Free Software diehards, but they provide a slick, functional Unix that adheres to most standards that matter, can do all the day-to-day tasks that most users would ever want, interoperate well with other systems, and are immune to pretty much all the woes that plague the Windows world. They don't build a slick bare-bones box that you can buy cheaply and tweak to your hearts' desire, but they do have complete systems that are clearly differentiated across the full spectrum of top-tier pricepoints.
For your purposes, a PowerMac would be great, but you don't need all that expansion to develop Java apps. If a mini doesn't float your boat, try an iMac G5, for instance - maybe it's still above your target price but you can get a nice one for under $1500, and then you get G5 goodness for your Java wants. Heck, I'd like a PowerMac too, but since I didn't win the lotto this week I'll just stick with my iMac G5 for now.
The pluses to the new machines:
- Same pricepoints or slightly less, for bigger standard drives, dual-layer DVD support, support for the dual DVI needed for the 30" display, and a little bit more processor speed.
The minuses:
- Nothing to really make them stand out, and the rumored dual-core chips didn't make this cycle. Given Apple's usual patterns, that means we're probably looking at no earlier than late summer for dual-core G5 chips.
My verdict (FWIW):
No big deal - if you were thinking of buying the earlier model, then these are nice, but just a routine improvement. If/when Apple starts using the dual-core G5 in a dual processor config (dually dually, I guess), that'll be a much more compelling product.
Now, what I'm wondering is what'll happen with the rumored iMac and eMac speedbumps (and the minor change to the Mac mini). Maybe those'll be announced tomorrow so that come Friday, all current shipping systems will have 512MB for Tiger standard.
Installed it tonight on my 15" PowerBook (1.5 GHz), and all is fine. PithHelmet is disabled by the long-awaited Safari 1.3 update, for those of you who count on it, but the developer's site says he's already finishing up a fix for it. It's nice to finally see 1.3, even if it's only a couple more weeks until Tiger and 2.0.
I haven't really noticed any other changes so far - my mileage hasn't magically improved, it's not Snappier (tm), and I haven't gotten a whiter, brighter smile from it. But it's good to see that they've gotten Panther into a fairly solid state, since this will probably be the final release other than security patches from here on in with this codebase.
Number 2 is easier - just download jhymn and tell it the correct atoms to strip. The files will remain compatible with everything that way, and the iPod/iTunes combo will still work fine. Read the jhymn docs for more info, but if you do that you don't need to do #4 with the loss of audio fidelity you get by doing that, and you can keep buying iTunes songs if you are so motivated.
That would be most cool if they started shipping the dual-core 970, (if they also came with two processors, would they be called dually duallys?). But based on what's going on at Intel and AMD also, I'd say the days of having enormous speed increases over the course of a year are petering out. The top-end Intel P4 chip is specced at 3.8 GHz - and I think that's only .4 GHz faster than this time last year.
.4 GHz overall improvement with a dually system (yes, I know that's not an exact number), and if they combine dual-core chips with that it'll be even nicer. Especially if the price stays the same or drops a little, as they've tended to do lately.
The improvements I'd expect in processors over the next few years will probably be focused on faster RAM access, streamlining the internals of the processor for better performance at the same clock, and faster bus speeds. And better multiprocessor support (along with dual-core).
Even if Apple only bumps up the PowerMac G5 to 2.7 GHz, it's still a