The company from Cupertino, CA
Once again John Gruber has done his latest roundup of the doings at MacWorld Expo 2006. He always says things that make sense. I particular like how he notes that iWork had no major improvements. Great. I just bought it. For the 3D graphs.
Stopped by the brick and mortar Apple Store at the local mall to get Tiger and the latest version of iWork. Since I am a grad student I decided to use my student discount. I was denied. It seems that Apple has a new policy to not offer student discounts at their brick and mortar store.
That’s plain stupid of them.
You are already in the store. Why make it harder for your customer to get the deal? It’s good that they already offer a student discount, but to go through the website to be able to receive it is a hassle.
Anyway, I got my software at their website. Now I have to wait until some time next week to get it. Apple. Fix this.
The new MacIntel hardware was shown off yesterday and surprises of surprises, a new laptop that is not a updated iBook was revealed. Sadly, it was saddled with the lamest of lame names: MacBook Pro. That makes such a sexy piece of equipment sound like a dorky financial application.
I cried when I saw it though. It makes it all the more harder to get the dual PPC G5 desktop I so crave. Hmm. Can I have more Macs in my house than need?
For all you Mac heads, programming nerds, and code monkeys read this article about porting BBEdit from PPC to x86 for the big, unfortunate Apple switch to Intel. Interesting stuff. The most being that it took them 24 hours to make their app cross-platform! Guh!
And that is why BBEdit rulez! As well as programming for the Mac. I need to get on the bandwagon.
Okay. If the Nano was not enough to give you gadget drool, then this, the v-iPod (it should have vi), should. Nice.
Except some people are unhappy with all the press that Apple has been garnering lately. Is it really deserved?
I take it with a grain of salt. I am an Apple fanatic. Most importantly, a Mac fan. I think OS X is the shiznit. Yet, I am not so enthused about the iPod. But whatever keeps Apple afloat to churn out more Macs, I am in favor for.
So, go ahead and complain about the hype surrounding an Apple product launch. Don’t forget to mention that there have been failed Apple products. Don’t forget to mention that Apple has a small percent of the computing market share. Don’t forget that Apple is always on the verge of disappearing.
But don’t forget that she’s still around. And she’s beating the bigger guys in the market of ideas and innovation.
For vacation last month, I bought an iPod shuffle. The 1 gig model. It works fine for what it does. Yet, I don’t like it. It is uncomfortable to me because I ususally like listening to a tune right this moment. I want to hear a song, now, but the shuffle doesn’t allow me to get to it right away. You must truly like to hear songs randomly to appreciate it.
Ars Technica continues their reporting on what the switch to Intel chips mean for Apple and it’s future. Very insightful as it lays out a strategy for Apple’s transitioning of its computers.
The article also discusses the PPC mythology inherent in Macs today. I don’t have to tell you that I bought into that myth also. I think it is true that I am geeky enough to recognize the elegance in the PPC architecture. It, like a Mac, is well thought out.
It also touches upon Apple’s future. One that I am worried about. I have always wanted to write Mac programs. If there is no Macintosh left in the future what would I do when I retire? Apple is changing as a company. The personal computer industry is changing. Switching to Intel is just the start of it. In the upcoming years, I think Apple will no longer be the computer company it is now. It is the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning.
On monday, Steve Jobs turned my world upside down. He announced that Apple is intending to switch to using intel processors. So long PowerPC. Hello x86.
It has been rumored for a long time now that Apple always had a build of OS X which compiled on x86 chips. Monday saw confirmation of that rumor and a bold new direction for Apple.
It has taken me days to figure out how I want to blog about this. I am an Apple loyalist. My family has owned an Apple since the early 80s. I know where my Apple ][e is. I had an original Powerbook 140. It became the ultimate Civ machine for my brother. I bought the last of the Powerbook 190s. Imagine a world of 8 bit graphics. Nothing but shades of grey when the world was going color. I write this on my 1GHz TiBook, the one before the Aluminum ones. I love Apple. Always rooted for them.
It was more than Apple being not Microsoft. It was also about not being Intel. Remember Wintel is an insult in Mac circles. Now Apple has embraced the dark side. As if the megahertz war would not been won “not by a PPC chip.”
As software engineer and comp sci student, I have been exposed to x86 instruction set. It sucks compared to PPC. It is halfass backwards and inelegant. It also has to support a lot of older instructions from the 80s. The PPC chip was RISC. Gorgeous and nice instruction set.
I am mourning the loss of the chip more than I can imagine. Strange. Being an Apple loyalist means that you understand that Apple is more than just the computer, the OS, the box, the chip, but is a lifestyle brand. But to me the PPC chip is also part of the brand. Can I support Apple? Is Apple still Apple with Intel Inside?
Ars Technica sums up my feelings of the loss of the PowerPC chip. John Gruber is a good read to understand what needs to happen for Apple.
Decided today to buy a Apple AirPort Express. I wanted it in order to achieve two goals. First, to hook into the stereo in my den to stream music with iTunes. Second, to solve the perplexing problem I have been having with my wireless network. Actually, I think the second goal the more important of the two. Ever since I got DSL and set up a wireless network, I have been having trouble using it. I believe it is the layout and construction of my condominium which makes it troublesome.
Here’s how it goes. My desktop computer (Win95-233 MHz PII!), dsl modem, and wireless router reside in my office, a back room on the upper floor of the condo. The furnace sits to its front and side, basically centered on the second floor, acting as a big metal sink soaking up the wireless signal. Another aspect of the building is that it uses the cement board in floor to dampen sound, but it also dampens the wireless signal to the bottom floor. I am limited to 50% signal strength outside of my office. Not much of a signal coming downstairs, and a washed out signal in my bedroom at the front of the second floor.
I bought the AirPort Express to alleviate some of these problems. I wanted to set it up to increase the range of my signal. So I placed it in my den/music room to take advantage of line of site to my bedroom and to have some signal spill down the stairs. It took me 2 hours to get it set up correctly. At first, I set it up as a client to the wireless network. That was not what I wanted. I searched the internet and found this which helped, but was confusing. When I was setting the AirPort Express up to use WDS, I was searching using my wireless network which caused me to continually fail the configuration updating. One tip: if you try to do this, when updating the configuration of the AirPort Express select it as the network you are updating. Once I got that correct and it was extending my range, I had problem connecting to the internet. This had to do with using a bad MAC address. I am still confused about what the right MAC address is. I saw on my router configuration 2 different MAC addresses. I don’t know why the one I am using works, because it isn’t one of the two. Has it worked?
Achieving my goals has not happened. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I haven’t tested it enough, but I still receive sucky signal strength in my bedroom and down stairs. Rats!
The other day I posted about my jonesing for a Mac mini. When I sobered up a bit, I realised that it does have some limitations. The one glaring drawback is that it comes with a base 256 meg of memory. To run OS X and the iLife suite of applications, the minimum RAM should start at 1 GB. Hooking the Mac Mini up with this amount puts it up around $800 bucks. Better to get an iMac. If you need further information, then this article from Macworld is a good start to understanding the Mac mini.
