Posted by Scott Laird
Sat, 21 Jan 2006 22:18:13 GMT
I’m currently somewhere over Oregon, flying from the bay area back to Seattle. This is the 6th flight that I’ve been on in the last 3 months, and the very first time that I’ve even bothered pulling my laptop out of its bag. Since the flight between SEA and SJC is only in the air for 90 minutes or so, I haven’t really seen the point–I’d rather spend the time reading, listening to my iPod, or sleeping.
In fact, the fact that it’s such a short flight factored into my shopping when I picked up a new PowerBook a couple months ago. If I’d really expected to use my computer on the plane, I probably would have picked up a 15” PowerBook, but I figured that I could cope with a few computer-free hours per month and bought the 17” model instead. I’m really happy with my choice, all things considered–the screen on the new 17 is amazing–it’s basically a 20” LCD shrunk down to 17”. My old 15” PowerBook was really most useful when it was sitting on a desk plugged into a real monitor, while I’ve never even bothered to plug my 17” into anything, even when I’ve had a spare monitor or two sitting right next to the laptop.
So, when I bought the laptop, I figured that the extra screen real estate was worth an extra couple pounds and a general inability to use the laptop while traveling. Frankly, the 15” was never very comfortable to use on planes anyway, so I doubted that I’d miss anything. If I’d really wanted to work on planes, I’d have picked up a 12” PowerBook and found a way to cope with their limitations.
Anyway, here I am, sitting on a dinky little Alaska Air MD-80 with my laptop out, and somehow, even though MD-80s are generally cramped even without an oversized laptop, somehow there’s actually more then enough room here to work. It fills up my entire tray, and it helps that my seat is reclined a bit and there’s no one in front of me (or next to me–no one in their right mind flies at 6:30 on a Saturday morning), but it’s actually pretty comfortable. I could probably get 3 or 4 hours worth of work done this way, if my plane wasn’t landing in 30 minutes.
Now back to the one remaining bug in my new Typo caching code…
Tags apple, powerbook, travel | 1 comment | 2 trackbacks
Posted by Scott Laird
Thu, 18 Aug 2005 14:07:19 GMT
There’s a rumor going around that Apple and Nokia are going to partner and produce a mobile iTunes application for the Nokia N91. Nokia is denying it, but the phone’s still months away from its launch, so there’s plenty of time for things to change.
As I see it, there are sort of three levels of iTunes integration for portable devices:
- The device syncs with iTunes and can play encrypted iTunes Music Store
.m4p files. Right now, this is pretty much just the iPod, although the long-rumored Motorola iTunes phone will join it once it’s released.
- The device syncs with iTunes and can play MP3s and maybe unencrypted AAC files. Before the iPod took off, most MP3 players fit into this category, but I don’t know if Apple has continued supporting their competition.
- The device and iTunes don’t know anything about each other, and the user is stuck looking for third-party tools.
I suspect that the N91 will fit into the second category–just plug it into your computer using a USB cable and iTunes will copy things over. It’s possible that we’ll need a bit of glue code, but that shouldn’t be too hard to write. Worst case, it should only take a few hours to write something that can read through iTune’s XML database and copy playlists to the N91.
Posted in Phones, Mac stuff | Tags apple, itunes, nokia, nokian91, rumors | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 17 Aug 2005 14:25:39 GMT
The Mac Observer has a report from an investment analyst predicting near-future Apple hardware upgrades:
- The PowerMac G5 will be upgraded with dual-core 970MP chips, giving Apple effectively a quad-processor system at the top of their line.
- The PowerBook will be upgraded to around 2 GHz, using the 7448 that I discussed last week.
- The PowerBook will get a HD screen.
- The Mac mini will get a G5.
- The iPod mini will get a color screen.
- There will be a video iPod.
Some of this seems pretty obvious–the color iPod mini has been rumored for almost a year, and it’s a pretty obvious direction for Apple. I don’t think anyone doubts that it’ll happen, it’s just a question of when. Similarly, the dual-core PowerMac G5 is Apple’s only available upgrade path for the G5 systems–if they’re going to upgrade them at all before they get dropped for Intel systems, then Apple’s going to use the 970MP.
The PowerBook upgrades are a bit more of a mystery to me. I can see a simple upgrade that swaps the current 7447 CPU for a 7448–they’re basically pin-compatible. The 7448 has a slightly faster FSB, which will help since the G4 suffers from a painfully slow bus, but it’s basically just a continuation of the current G4 line. The problem is that several rumors say that the PB G4 is moving to DDR2 memory, and that confuses me. It suggests that Apple’s building a new north bridge, which seems kind of expensive for a product that will only be on the market for 9-12 months.
The DDR2 change would make perfect sense if Apple was really swapping the current 7447 for a MPC8641 and using the MPC8641’s on-chip DDR2 controller, but as far as I can tell, the MPC8641 isn’t supposed to ship in quantity until early next year.
Engadget hinted last week that the DDR2 move was really a power-saving move, not a performance move. Since moving to DDR2 wouldn’t help performance a whole lot when even PC2100 RAM is faster then the 7448’s FSB, power savings make as much sense as anything. I don’t know enough about laptop power budgets to know if dropping 5W on the CPU and a few more Watts on the memory is enough to really extend the laptop’s battery life by a significant margin, but it suggests that Apple may be aiming for 6-7 hours, rather then the current 4-5 hours that most PowerBooks currently get.
Back to the rumored Mac mini G5–I can’t see this happening at all:
- Cost. The G5 is supposed to cost more. The Mac mini is Apple’s most price-sensitive Mac. Even a $50 price bump would probably be unacceptable.
- Cooling. The dinky little Mac mini case has many of the same cooling problems that G5-based laptops would face. Battery life isn’t an issue, but getting rid of 30W of waste heat is.
- Lineup. If Apple speeds up the mini, then it’ll have to either drop the eMac or upgrade it too. It could also cannibalize iMac and iBook sales. Those wouldn’t be a big deal if Apple could upgrade either model and get more performance, but they’re basically stuck with both of them. I guess they could build a dual-core iMac G5, but they have cooling problems with the iMac, and adding a hotter CPU probably wouldn’t help with that.
I don’t know about the video iPod–I can see a 5th generation iPod that’s capable of playing videos on the 2” display while still being optimized for audio playback, but I have a harder time seeing Apple producing an iPod with a huge display. I don’t feel really strongly either way, I guess.
Finally, on the x86 upgrade question–I’ve been wondering which Apple model will be the first to be switched, and when it’ll happen. Apple said that consumer systems would be first, and that’ll happen sometime in 2006. My personal guess would be the iMac in March or so–it’s Apple’s most distinctive system, and it would appeal to users even as a stylish Windows box. It’s not really going to be fast or cheap enough to kill PowerMac G5 sales, so that’s a safe move for Apple. The Mac mini and iBook are the two other consumer options, but I can’t see either one being part of the first wave of upgrades–they’d kill sales of the PowerMac and PowerBook. So I expect that we’ll see systems upgraded in roughly this order: iMac, PowerMac, PowerBook, Mac mini, iBook.
Posted in Mac stuff | Tags apple, dualcore, powerbook, predictions, rumors | 2 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Fri, 12 Aug 2005 18:25:23 GMT
Heh. Apparently eBay knows something about the mythical PowerBook G5 that the rest of us don’t. Take a look at this ad that Google Ads attached to Engadget’s RSS feed:
Update: The Inquirer has a few more details on the PowerBook G4 update front. They’re pointing fingers at the Freescale MPC8641, the single-core version of Freescale (formerly Motorola’s chip division)’s dual-core G4. The chip includes a RapidIO FSB, on-chip network and PCI-E controllers, an on-chip dual-channel DDR2 controller. Other reports have suggested that Apple’s going to use Freescale’s 7448, which seems to be the same basic chip, only without the on-board memory controller, PCI-E, networking, or RapidIO, and with a 200 MHz FSB instead.
It goes without saying that I’d love to see the dual-channel MPC8641D in a PowerBook, but that’s probably asking way too much from Apple.
Posted in Mac stuff | Tags apple, ebay, funny, powerbookg5 | 4 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Thu, 04 Aug 2005 21:46:28 GMT
According to Mac OS X Hints, Tiger has NTFS support, so it can finally read hard drives formatted for modern versions of Windows. I’ve wished that I had this several times over the past three years; it’s nice to know that it’s now there when I need it.
Posted in Mac stuff | Tags apple, filesystem, macosx, ntfs, osx, tiger | 2 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 02 Aug 2005 14:42:26 GMT
I can’t believe it: Apple has a new mouse, and it has more then one button. Actually, if I read this right, it’s really a four-button mouse with a 2-d scrollwheel/trackball. Plus two of the buttons are force sensitive. It looks cool, but I don’t really ever use a mouse anymore–I bought a nice Logitech optical mouse when I first bought my PowerBook, but I found that I’d rather use the touchpad.
Posted in Mac stuff | Tags apple, mightymouse, mouse | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Thu, 28 Jul 2005 22:18:05 GMT
ThinkSecret says that Apple is getting ready to upgrade OS X Server with some sort of improved mail and calendar solution, probably Hula. That’s nice and all, but I REALLY want them to upgrade iCal to support some publicly-available calendar server. The ability to publish read-only calendars was nice in 2002 when it was first added, but it’s been three years, and I’m still waiting for the ability to share read/write calendars with other family members. I’m aware that I could probably do this with .Mac, but I’m not willing to pay $100/year just so I can edit events on my wife’s calendar a couple times per week.
Having said that, Hula looks pretty nice. Even without iCal syncing support, I’ll probably consider it when it’s time to upgrade my mail server software again; fortunately that’s probably at least a year away still. If iCal gets CalDAV support before then, then I might have to be a bit more aggressive with the timeframe. Either that or look for other CalDAV servers.
Posted in Mac stuff, Computer System Administration | Tags apple, caldav, hula, ical, imap, mail, pop | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 06 Jul 2005 04:22:55 GMT
The AC adapter for my PowerBook died this morning. It was weird–it was working fine at home this morning, but it completely failed to work at the office. I changed power plugs and wiggled all of the connectors, all without success.
Fortunately, my office is only 20 minutes from one of the local Apple stores, so I was able to dash out and get a replacement. After 40 months, I guess I’m not really surprised when pieces die on my laptop anymore.
Posted in Mac stuff | Tags apple, applestore, broken, powerbook | 2 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 08 Jun 2005 17:05:00 GMT
So, with Apple’s new “Universal” binary format, where Xcode creates programs that will run natively on both PPC and x86 chips, is there actually a single Mach-O file that contains code sections for both processor types, or are there two different executable files hiding inside of an application bundle?
Apple’s documentation kind of implies that the two architectures are stuffed into a single binary:
You can force a command line tool to run translated by entering the following in Terminal:
ditto -arch ppc tool /tmp/<toolname>
/tmp/<toolname>
There only other statement that I see in the documentation that gives any details is this little gem:
Note: Xcode has per-architecure SDK support. For example, you can target Mac OS X v10.3 for PowerPC while also targeting Mac OS X v10.4.1 for Intel.
Between the two statements, it seems pretty likely that the PPC and x86 binaries are crammed into the same file, but probably don’t share static strings or any of the other parts of the executable file. They’re really just two distinct program files combined into a single physical file.
Are any other details on the universal binary process public yet?
Posted in Mac stuff | Tags apple, applex86, macosx, universal | 2 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 08 Jun 2005 16:34:00 GMT
I was just wondering–what will Apple call their professional computing line once they switch to Intel? The “Power” in PowerMac and PowerBook originally referred to the PowerPC chip inside. Will they keep the “Power” and define it to mean “powerful,” or will they spit out a new prefix?
The iBook/iMac/iPod/iSight/iWhatever product lineup doesn’t have this problem, of course.
Posted in Mac stuff | Tags apple, applex86, intel, powerbook, powermac | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 07 Jun 2005 01:00:51 GMT
After reading the transcripts of this morning’s WWDC keynote, I’m now feeling pretty good about Apple’s path. They’re going to have sales problems in mid 2006, but for now, there’s no reason for Mac users to avoid buying new systems. I’m still planning on going PowerBook shopping in a few months, and I suspect that most existing Mac users won’t see a problem with buying PPC-based Macs, at least until the x86 ones start appearing on the horizon. I can see waiting 2-3 months for new systems, but waiting for 18 months because something better is coming is just dumb.
The big question on a lot of minds (mine and my co-workers, at least) is whether Apple will sell OS X for non-Apple x86 systems. After today’s announcements, it’s clear that they’ll be technically able to do it in mid 2006. The only real difference between OS X for x86 Macs and OS X for x86 PCs is driver support (er, and bootloader, BIOS, installer, ACPI, and disk partitioning), and I’d bet any amount of money that Apple has people in-house expanding their driver support to allow them to run on generic PCs.
But, just because they can sell OS X for PCs doesn’t mean that they will. Sometime in early 2006, Apple will have to make a decision–are they going to try to take on Microsoft on their home turf, or are they going to stick to their usual niche and try to sell more Mac hardware. With most companies, it’d be a purely financial decision, but with Apple it’ll probably be more of a “where does Steve want to go today” sort of thing. And there’s only one person who can answer that.
Even if Apple decides against selling OS X for generic PCs, though, it isn’t going to stop people from doing it themselves. Unless Apple goes to great lengths, we’re going to see people taking bits of Darwin and grafting them onto the OS X for x86 install DVD and building their own OS X for PC systems. It’ll be just like XPostFacto all over again. It’ll be uglier then OS X on x86 Macs, and the bootloader will be downright strange, but it’ll happen. Or, alternately, someone could graft most of the bootloader and some of the hardware emulation into something like Xen; when running on a PC with either of the new virtualization technologies, that’d be a great way to get both OS X and Linux running on the same physical hardware.
It’s going to happen. Personally, I think it’ll take about two months after production x86 Macs start shipping before you see packaged instructions and tools for building a OS X PC. One of my co-workers thinks that the clock is going to start running as soon as Apple’s P4 development systems start shipping, but I doubt that we’ll see leaks this early–Apple sued people who leaked early Tiger images, and it’d be foolhardy to assume that Apple will ship complete x86 development systems without embedding serial numbers and identifying information all over the place.
Either way, though, there will be small numbers of non-Apple OS X PCs by late 2006. I wonder how Apple will respond.
Update: The rumors start.
Posted in Mac stuff | Tags apple, applex86, intel, macosx | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Sun, 05 Jun 2005 15:02:32 GMT
So, I was convinced that CNet was being played on the Apple moving to Intel CPUs rumor. Then I read Scoble’s take on the topic, and I’m not so sure anymore. He claims that he’s personally confirmed it with people he knows, and that Apple’s going to announce a big move to x86 on Monday. John Gruber seems to be in a similar boat–it doesn’t make any sense, but both the WSJ and CNet are reporting it as fact, not as rumor, and it’s really unlikely that they’re both wrong.
But really, given the information that we have, it just doesn’t make sense. Apple may not be happy with IBM’s ability to speed up the G5 and build a laptop model, but dumping the PPC and moving to x86 seems like gross overkill.
Gruber speculates that Apple and Intel may be working on their own PPC chip, but I can’t really believe that–even if Apple does have the legal right to do that, I can’t see Intel going down that road. It’s too much work for too little profit.
So, like Gruber, I have to conclude that we’re only seeing part of the picture. He doesn’t seem to have a good theory on what’s happening, but here’s mine: Apple has decided that:
- Tiger is basically as good now as Longhorn will be in late 2006.
- 10.5 will be better then Tiger.
- Windows is more vulnerable now then ever before–the burden of viruses and spyware is a crushing load for small companies.
- Migrating to Longhorn will be a fairly traumatic event for smaller companies.
- Most users only really need a limited amount of software: email, web browser, Office.
- A lot of users have a very positive impression of Apple, thanks to the iPod.
- Most users would really like to have a less-complex, easier to maintain, more reliable alternative to Windows.
Given that, what if Apple has decided that it’s time to bet the house on killing Windows’s monopoly on the PC desktop? Through some combination of Apple-branded X86 hardware, OS X-for-x86 (probably just x86-64), and maybe a Windows emulation environment. With Intel’s soon-to-be-shipping virtualization technology, it wouldn’t be that hard for Apple to get Windows to run underneath “OS X86”.
So, basically Apple will present Windows users with an option–run our software, and you’ll get our wonderful OS, no viruses, no spyware, and the ability to still run Windows if you really need to and you’re willing to pay for the extra license.
If this is the plan, then I wouldn’t even be stunned by Apple selling OS X for non-Apple-branded hardware. There’d be fairly limited hardware support (probably just brand-new x86-64 chips and video cards that Apple already supports, at least for now), but that probably won’t matter all that much, because you’ll be able to get a decent PC with the right specs for under $1k, and the same hardware will be usable under Windows as well.
Apple-branded X86 hardware would then be marketed as better-integrated, better-designed, better-built, and better-supported. They’d remain the BMW of computers. Plus, it’d come with an OS X license, which would make it somewhat price-competitive with buying a Dell (with Windows) plus OS X. A similar strategy seems to work for Sony, and their systems are legendary for dying after a year or so; Apple could probably make it work. Their profit margins would be lower, but they’d save a lot of hardware R&D money–they could probably get out of the ASIC business, for instance. That would let them concentrate more resources on the software side of things. If they could capture 20+% of the market, their revenue and profits would be substantially better then they are now.
So, is all this really going to happen? I have no clue. It’s an interesting theory, and it makes at least as much sense as anything else that I’ve read so far. It’s hugely out of line with what Apple has spent the last decade doing, but it’s agressive, and the timing is right.
Frankly, I’d probably be more inclined to believe it if we hadn’t seem similar rumors for years. So what’s different now? Why is it a good idea now when it wasn’t before? Two reasons: the iPod and spyware. Users have seen what Apple can do, and they’re buying iPods in droves, and at the same time they’re cursing their Windows systems and their amazing ability to collect crap off the net and install it behind the user’s back. Both of these are relatively new occurances, and they both play in Apple’s favor.
So, we’ll see tomorrow.
Update: Om Malik seems to believe something similar.
Posted in Mac stuff | Tags apple, applex86, intel | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Sat, 04 Jun 2005 14:08:12 GMT
CNet is claiming, again, that Apple is about to dump IBM’s PowerPC chips and move to using Intel’s chips across their entire product lineup. They claim that Steve is going to announce this on Monday during the WWDC keynote.
The same basic rumor pops up every couple years. It usually seems to start with some stock analyst who believes that Apple is dying and the only way they can compete is to become just another PC company, but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense this time around–it’s hard to claim that Apple is dying while surrounded by a sea of people in white headphones.
Gruber wrote about this a couple weeks ago, when the WSJ printed a rumor that Apple was going to start using Intel’s chips. It’s hard to argue with his basic point: even if Apple wanted to dump PPC chips and switch, it would take at least 18 months to get enough ISV support to allow them to launch products. And, during that 18-month window, no one would buy PPC-based Macs. Apple would be committing marketing suicide.
Personally, it’s unclear to me exactly why Apple would want to switch in the first place. The usual story is that Apple is unhappy with IBM’s progress on ramping the 970’s speed. Steve famously announced that the G5 would hit 3 GHz by this time last year, yet it’s still stuck at 2.7 GHz. That’s annoying and embarrassing, but it matches what the rest of the industry has seen. In the same two-year window, Intel has ramped the P4 from 3.06 GHz to 3.8 GHz (a 24% increase), while AMD’s top clock speed has went from the XP 3000+ (at 2.167 MHz) to their current top speed of 2.6 GHz (a 20% speed boost). So, IBM’s jump from 2.0 GHz to 2.7 GHz, while less then promised, is still better then the rest of the industry. As yesterday’s Mac article from Anandtech shows, the G5 isn’t exactly out of the performance game–it’s a bit slower then AMD’s fastest Opteron, but it’s competitive with a 3.8 GHz Xeon. It’s certainly not the laughingstock that the G4 was before the G5’s introduction.
Which, unfortunately, brings us to the one place where the G4 is still used: laptops. It’s been two years since the G5’s introduction, and people have been clamoring for G5 PowerBooks the whole time. Yesterday’s Gizmodo rumor aside, no one really expects a PowerBook G5 this year, and that really has to be bothering Apple. But, they can’t really change CPU families just to get faster laptops, can they?
The thing that bugs me is that CNet seems *so* sure of this–they have dates, they have names, they have a timeline for the switch. They clearly have what they believe to be a solid source. Apple is famous for their corporate secrecy. Is there any chance that they “leaked” a few Intel stories internally, just to see which ones ended up in the press?
I guess we’ll know on Monday.
Update:
Ars Technica has a nice bit on this rumor, including a good quote from Nathan Brookwood of Insight 64:
“If they actually do that, I will be surprised, amazed and concerned. I don’t know that Apple’s market share can survive another architecture shift. Every time they do this, they lose more customers” and more software partners, he said.
Ars Technica also pointed out an entry from Pavel Machek (a long-time Linux hacker)’s blog, where he claims that Apple offered him a job writing BIOS and ACPI code. ACPI is Intel’s power management spec, and there’s no* reason for Apple to use it when they control the entire hardware and software stack–it’s way too complex to bother with, *unless you need to integrate tons of generic hardware. Of course, this could just be an attempt to keep Darwin current on PC hardware. Or, I guess there’s a slim chance that Apple will start selling OS X for PCs without dumping their own hardware lineup. It seems a wee bit unlikely, though.
Update 2: I’ve changed my mind.
Posted in Mac stuff | Tags apple, applex86, intel | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 27 Apr 2005 18:22:27 GMT
It looks like the Seattle Fry’s store will be selling Tiger for $99 this weekend. I suspect that other Fry’s locations will have similar prices, but it’s not at all uncommon for Fry’s to run different promotions in different regions. Take a look at frys-electronics-ads.com; they’ll probably have details within a day or two.
Posted in Seattle, Mac stuff | Tags apple, frys, macosx, tiger | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 12 Apr 2005 14:23:13 GMT
Apple finally announced a ship date for Tiger: April 29th. They’ve kept the same pricing that they’ve used for earlier releases, $129 per copy or $199 for a 5-system “family pack.” Apparently they’ve added a Tiger/iLife/iWork bundle at $249 as well.
Think Secret is also reporting that new PowerMac G5 systems will show up at the NAB conference this weekend. They’re unsure if Apple will use IBM’s dual-core CPUs yet, or just stick with faster single-core processors. There’s some evidence that Apple is getting ready to release 4-processor sysetms, so systems with 2 dual-core CPUs wouldn’t be surprising.
On the PowerBook G5 front, ThinkSecret says that they don’t expect to see them any time in 2005. It’s unclear what Apple will do with their PowerBook lineup if the G5 is still most of a year away. Their current CPU is bus-starved, and cranking up the clock rate (or even using Freestyle’s dual-core G4) probably won’t give them a lot of extra performance.
Posted in Mac stuff | Tags apple, macosx, powerbook, powermac, tiger | 1 comment
