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About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Coming soon: Everything Must GoThe next edition of "Everything Must Go" will be appearing here soon. --Paul Saturday, October 25, 2003This week...I'll be in Los Angeles for seven days for Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2003, otherwise known as Longhorn's coming out party. I'm not sure how much time I'll have to update this site during that time, but I'll be blogging the event on WinInfo and supplying multimedia updates to the SuperSite for Windows while I'm gone. One factoid Apple fans might appreciate: I am bringing my iBook to the event. [ Posted at 10:02 AM | Permalink ] The problem with the G4 iBook... Is the 800 MHz processor, I'm guessing (and its 256KB of L2 cache, PB's have 512KB). The higher-end iBook G4 comes with a faster processor, but you can only get them in a 14-inch design. I want the smaller one and I want the faster processor, which isn't an option. That's bogus, and it unrealistically combines size with performance. You can get a smaller PowerBook G4 with a faster processor (and more cache). Why not with the iBook? [ Posted at 10:00 AM | Permalink ] iBook G4 12-inch disappoints One thing I did do while in the Apple Store was check out the new 800 MHz iBook G4 12-inch. If it was awesome, I would have bought it. If it was very good, I would have considered configuring one online with better specs. But man. It was lousy. The case design is identical to the previous models, but it features a more solid colored (less translucent) keyboard; that keyboard, however, is the same loosy-goosy model iBooks have always had, and not the nice, rock-steady one you see on the new G4 PowerBooks. That didn't bug me, actually, and the fact that I could reuse my old batteries is a plus. But the performance... my God. This thing doesn't perform any better than the models it replaces, and that's horrible. To test this, I loaded up PhotoShop Elements 2 (which I use almost daily) and used its excellent Batch Automate feature to resize four images. No, no, no, no..... Damn it. It's just as slow as the G3 iBook I already own. When I do this operation on a PC--any PC, including the slowest imaginable laptops--the process is speedy, and over in seconds, regardless of how many images I resize. On the G4 iBook, it was like watching it happen in slow motion. I can't buy one of these things. That just stinks. [ Posted at 9:58 AM | Permalink ] Night of the Panther So my wife and I actually went to the Apple Store at the Cambridgeside Mall in Cambridge, Massachusetts to witness the "Night of the Panther" first hand (then I made it up to her with dinner in Boston). I was really impressed with the number of people waiting in line for the event (my wife described the line as "disconcerting"), though I couldn't help but think that everyone who was there was everyone in the area who would ever actually buy Panther at retail. Anyway, after an interminable 40 minute wait to get into the store, we finally received our 10 percent discount (unused) and a Panther keychain. Yippee, right? Also, my wife had a few choice questions for the geeks waiting faithfully for the software release ("What is wrong with what you're using now?" and "Why do you have to get this right now?" were my favorites). She's just not into computers. [ Posted at 9:54 AM | Permalink ]
Friday, October 24, 2003Bare Feats: Panther no faster than JaguarBare Feats reports benchmark tests proving that Mac OS X 10.3 Panther performs no better than 10.2 Jaguar, it's predecessor. "I wasn't seeing any real world performance increase when I upgraded a Dual G5 to the 'Panther' version of OS X," the site reads. "[Except for UT 2003 and XBench], all other tests (iTunes, iMovie, Cinebench, Photoshop, Quake3, etc.) showed insignificant differences." To be honest, that's not what I've seen, but then I did do clean installs. [ Posted at 3:30 PM | Permalink ] iSync 1.3 is out This might be a first, but I don't believe anyone has discovered that iSync 1.3 is now available for Mac OS X 10.3. The Apple site still says 1.2.1, but when you download it, you get 1.3. Interesting. [ Posted at 12:26 PM | Permalink ]
Thursday, October 23, 2003Panther up close, part four: Bundled appsLike its predecessors, Panther includes a number of bundled applications, but Apple has been busy distancing itself from Microsoft (and apparently virtually every other third party Mac developer) this year, so this release is the most application-heavy the company has ever released. However, no major new applications debut in Panther; instead, Panther includes the same or slightly newer versions of the apps Mac OS X users have seen included on their systems before or downloaded via the Web. Mail.app sees a minor upgrade with nice colorful graphical touches and a long-overdue threading feature. The performance is allegedly better, as is the spam filtering, but I get very little email on my .mac account, so I can't see a difference, but I do like Mail.app quite a bit. I don't see any major (or minor) changes in Address Book, which is a decent app. Apple's iChat AV is allegedly "new" in OS X 10.3, but this software debuted in beta form months ago and the version included here isn't any different than the one you've used. Safari--my favorite Web browser on any platform--is updated to version 1.1, but I don't see any difference over 1.0; it's an excellent application either way. Preview has undergone dramatic performance improvements, though it's very similar, visually, to its predecessor. Previously, I had preferred Acrobat over Preview, but this release is quick enough that I'll probably keep using it. Apple iSync wasn't updated, but there's a Web refresh for one and all. Most conspicuously, in my mind: None of the so-called iApps--iMovie, iTunes, iDVD, and iPhoto--were updated at all (however, all Mac OS X users can grab a Web-based iTunes 4.1.x update of course). The DVD player app has been updated with a much nicer interface. And ... that's about it. It really is astonishing how little is going on with Apple's bundled applications, yet another indication that Panther is a minor, not major, update. On the other hand, there are a few new interesting utilities and services, and I'll get to those in the next update... [ Posted at 6:11 PM | Permalink ] Surprise story of the decade: Pogue just LOVES Panther! Predictably, Apple salesman, er ah, "journalist" David Pogue, a long time Apple fanatic, gives Panther high marks in a horribly one-sided and error-filled review. Pogue not only sees no exaggeration in Apple's bogus claim of 150 new features, but instead wonders why such a dramatic upgrade doesn't come with more than a ".1" rise in version number. What's really sad about this review, other than the obvious, is that he spends a few paragraphs in the beginning bemoaning all the security problems in Windows, and then uses that as a springboard to tout new features in Panther--like File Vault encryption--that have been in Windows for years and are, in fact, more powerful on the Windows side. "FileVault uses an encoding scheme so thorough, Apple says, that a password-guessing computer would need 149 trillion years to break it!!!" the review gushes, without any critical or technical analysis of that claim. (OK, I added the "!!!" part, but you know that's how he emphasizes it when he says it to the faithful). And I love this claim: "Exposé (a new anti-window-clutter feature) is the biggest graphical breakthrough that operating systems have achieved in years!!!" (Again, I added the "!!!" But Exposé exists solely because Apple has done exactly ZERO to improve desktop GUIs in twenty years: OS X, just like the first version of the Mac OS, uses a very simple desktop model. Contrast this to XP, which numerous improvements over this paradigm, including task-based and iterative UIs, and yes, anti-window clutter tech. It's no wonder OS X needs some kind of anti-clutter tool: why would a GUI based on 700K floppies and no multitasking work well today?) Also humorous: Pogue finally admits that Apple rips off Windows several times in Panther, but does so paragraphs after touting several Panther features that, yes, originated first in Windows; one gets the feeling he doesn't even realize the depths of this copying. Describing the ripped-off Fast User Switching feature (Apple even had the gall to steal the name from Windows), Pogue writes: "A stunning animation livens up the switching moment: your world appears to rotate out of view as the new account swings onto the screen." Yeah, that's true if you're running a high-end modern Mac system like Pogue does. On my 500 MHz iBook, however, there is no such animation: Most OS X will be left in the dust by this visual finery, unfortunately. Finally, I do agree with Pogue on exactly one comment: "Now the big [bad news]," he writes. "Apple wants $130 for Panther. That's a fine how-de-do for everyone who dutifully paid $130 last year for version 10.2 and $130 a year before that for version 10.1. Microsoft, at least, has the decency to wait a few years between upgrades." Stupidly, he then says that Exposé justifies the price all by itself, because you know, Mac users LOVE features that require using function keys, right? Riiiighht. Anyway, I'm not linking to the review. Pogue is in bed with Apple, and people like that shouldn't be writing for major publications, they should be writing for amateur Mac enthusiast Web sites like The Mac Observer. It's sickening to me that normal people will read that review and actually believe it. [ Posted at 8:47 AM | Permalink ]
Wednesday, October 22, 2003Intel CEO discusses/disses AppleWhen asked recently about OS X on the x86, Intel CEO Craig Barrett had had a few interesting (and, sadly, accurate things to say. "We keep trying, but frankly it gets less and less interesting each year. When they were 10 percent of the market it was a more interesting issue. But at 2 percent of the market ... our sales can blip 2 percent quarter on quarter, so we can shrink or grow by a couple of Apples. There are lots of interesting aspects in there. Steve [Jobs] is trying to appeal more to the Intel base. You might ask why he doesn't take his OS and try to compete in the other 98 percent of the market. But he doesn't choose to do that. The OS X kernel runs just fine on Intel. Just a matter of the app stack to stick on top of that. But you'll have to talk to Steve about that. We just try to get design wins with these guys." [ Posted at 8:56 PM | Permalink ] iBook G4 12-inch vs. PowerBook G4 12-inch The iBook costs about $500 less than the PB. So what's the difference? One obvious difference I missed initially is that the iBooks can't be equipped with a SuperDrive; for that feature, you'll need the pro-oriented PB-12 or better. The iBook features 10/100 Ethernet, not 1 Gb. An apparently, the iBooks feature what's referred to as the "old" G4 processor, not the "new" one used in the latest iMac and PBs. What's the difference? The new G4 features a large L3 cache, but no L2 cache (which is apparently superior to the old style); the old G4 has L2 cache but no L3 cache. What all this adds up to is simple: The iBook looks decent, but Apple is clearly holding it back so it won't canibalize PB G4 sales. That's a shame. At the very least, I wish I could get the fastest iBook processor in the 12-inch model. [ Posted at 8:07 PM | Permalink ] Apple launches new iBook G4 systems ... What's the catch? I've been using a 500 MHz iBook G3 for over two years now (I bought it in August 2001), and have been thinking about replacing it all year. Originally I figured I'd get the 15-inch PowerBook G4, but portability is more important to me these days, so I turned my attention to the 12-inch model, which was recently upgraded to a 1 GHz processor. But now ... we have new iBooks and, like many potential customers, I bet, I'm confused. The new iBooks feature a G4 processor (finally), but the 12-inch version runs at just 800 MHz, and there's no upgrade option (on the plus side, it's just $1099). To get a speedier 933 MHz G4, you have to get the 14-inch version, which blows: I really like the 12-inch's form factor (which is virtually identical on the 12-inch PB). So what's the catch? Starting at just $1099, the iBook does seem like a good deal. There's just one problem: The PowerBook G4 systems include a whopping 512K of L2 cache, while the iBooks include just 256K of L2 cache. The video subsystem isn't awesome either: An ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 with 32MB of DDR SDRAM, compared to the PB-12's NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 with 32MB of DDR SDRAM (higher end PB's include an even better ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 with 64MB of DDR SDRAM). So... hmm. Is the iBook artificially hampered in an effort to keep the consumer device lest costly and less of a competitor to the high-priced PBs? Or is this still a good deal? [ Posted at 6:51 PM | Permalink ] Buggy iTunes for Windows already patched Apple's iTunes for Windows application, out less than a week, has already been patched in order to fix widely reported bugs. The "best Windows application ever written" (which is in fact a good application overall, but a horrible Windows application) hs been upgraded to version 4.1.1, and fixes an "incompatibility with Windows 2000 and older third-party CD burning software, as well as problems caused by corrupt MP3 files on some users' PCs," according to Apple. You can download the full 4.1.1 version from Apple now, or wait until tomorrow and get it from the software's update feature. [ Posted at 6:43 PM | Permalink ]
Tuesday, October 21, 2003John Sculley finds humor in Pepsi/Apple dealEx-Apple CEO John Sculley apparently has some fun at the expense of Steve "do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?" Jobs and his new deal with Pepsi, Sculley's employer before he joined Apple. Good stuff. [ Posted at 12:55 PM | Permalink ]
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