Andy's Blog

Breaking the content logjam for iTunes

In a previous post, I wrote that Apple TV, even in its latest incarnation, is still crippled by the restrictions placed upon the content that can be purchased for view. These restrictions come not from Apple, but instead from "big content" - the handful of mega-corporations that control everything that we see and hear in the mass media (movies, TV, music from major labels). I wrote that it is these restrictions (finishing a rental 24 hours after you start watching it, waiting 30 days for hit movies to show up on iTunes, missing content on iTunes, etc) that are going to continue to keep Apple TV from becoming a huge hit, like the iPod.

However, I think that Apple is in a unique position to break this content logjam, and thus ensure a media-rich future for us all. There are a couple of things going on that make this a unique time for Apple:

1. Apple has $15 billion dollars in the bank, and the pundits and analysts are wondering what Apple is going to do with that cash.
2. There are rumors going around of Apple starting a music label, with Jay-Z.
3. The writers are on strike, hoping for residuals from Internet content. While striking, some writers are realizing that they don't need the big studios, and are instead going off and forming startups, centered around producing content that can be shown in a variety of ways (web streaming, download, traditional TV broadcast, etc).

Bring these three separate ideas together and what do you get? The possibility of Apple using some of its excess cash to fund new content-producing ventures. It is almost perfect for Apple - they don't have to hire a bunch of producers, writers, directors, etc. - they can just take a fraction of their warchest and use it much like a Venture Capitalist would - they could invest in small promising startups, enabling them to go and make some content. The only restriction that Apple would place, would be that one of the places where the content has to appear is on iTunes. If the company also wanted to do add-supported streaming through flash, that would be fine.

Content in hand, Apple could then use iTunes to promote it - putting it on the front page of the iTunes store, having it show up in recommendations for their customers, etc. There has already been some research to show that being placed on the front page of the iTunes store can be a powerful sales driver.

In effect, Apple could help to bring down the 4 or 5 big media companies that have been vexing them, and not allowing them to make the products and customer experience that they want, and in so doing create a much more fertile environment for realizing the dreams of creative hollywood.

Now, all of that being said, what are the odds of this actually happening? To date, Apple has shown that it would much rather work with the big media conglomerates than against them. Thus they haven't added DVD ripping to iTunes, nor has Apple done a DVR. Making such a move into becoming their own studio, or in reality a VC fund for new independent studios, would almost certainly antagonize the conglomerates. So, I don't see this as being very likely. However, I do think that Apple could be using this as a negotiating tactic -- in effect saying to the conglomerates: "play ball with us, or we'll start funding a bunch of upstarts that will ultimately take you down". That, I find to be highly likely (and could be the source of the Jay-Z rumor).

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple TV, iTunes, Venture Capital, Startup, Jay-Z, Media Conglomerate

Why the MacBook Air is limited to an 80Gb hard disk

I'm seeing a lot of confusion on the web as to why Apple has limited the MacBook Air to only an 80Gb disk, when say a 160Gb 1.8" disk exists (and is used in the iPod classic). My guess is that the reason why Apple is sticking with 80Gb is that this is the largest 1.8" drive that you can get that fits on one platter.

For hard disks, a common trick to increase capacity is to add platters - the physical media where the data is stored. They'll be stacked, one on top of another, inside of the disk enclosure. This is all well and good, but it makes the drive physically thicker.

My guess is that every millimeter counted in the MacBook Air, so Apple needed to find a disk that was no more than 5mm tall. All of the larger 1.8" disks that I looked at today are two platter designs, that come in at around 8mm tall.

If you look at the specs for the aforementioned iPod classic, you'll see that the 80Gb and 160Gb models are the same dimensions, except for depth - where the 160Gb model is exactly 3mm ticker. Those extra millimeters can be attributed to the extra platter inside of the 160Gb disk.

After doing some digging, I think I have found the disk that Apple is using - the Samsung Spinpoint N HS081HA - it is a 1.8", 80Gb disk, that is only 5mm tall.

Update: I went back to MWSF today, and managed to take a "spy photo" of system profiler on the new MacBook Air. It looks like I was right:

You can clearly see the Samsung HS082HB drive powering the MacBook Air demo model at the Apple booth at Macworld.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MacBook Air, Hard Disk, Samsung, Spinpoint N, iPod classic

MWSF 2008: Notes about Entourage 2008

One of the big pain points for Mac users here at AK is dealing with Exchange. A lot of people are using Entourage 2004 (running in Rosetta on their Intel Macs), and while it works, it often behaves strangely or offers a "less than stellar" experience. So, one of my main missions at Macworld yesterday was to hit up the Microsoft booth, and see what I could find out about the latest version of Entourage. Here are my rough notes (captured using the "Notes" application on my iPhone):

• Exchange support:
• Can set an "out of office" message now
• Focus when building Entourage 2008 was on "the basics" - stability and performance
• Supports flagging of items, like Outlook
• No attachments in calendar - but Entourage won't auto-delete invites that have attachments
• Nothing new for going from outlook to entourage or vice versa
• Things that are in also Entourage 2004 (but might be improved in 2008):
• Can sync to address book and iCal - worked with apple to improve implementation
• Can view shared calendars via "Open other user folder" menu item
• Calendar sharing with exchange hasn't really changed - there is a "share calendar" menu option as in Entourage 2004
• The Entourage database is still stored as one ginormous file - so Microsoft recommends that you tell Time Machine to exclude it from backups, and you better be careful with it, because all of your important data is in there...
• New features:
• There is a new "My Day" window, which is actually a separate application (thus it can be made to go in all Spaces).
• Searching inside of Entourage has been completely changed - everything is now based on Spotlight. Saved searches (which can be arbitrarily complex) can be dragged to bookmarks bar ala Safari
• "View message source" command moved to the message menu

All-in-all, it was hard for me to tell if this will be a must-have upgrade or not. If Microsoft has achieved their stated goal of delivering a more stable Exchange experience - I think that alone could be well worth the price of admission. It will be hard for me to judge this, however, because I have decided to eschew Entourage in favor of Apple Mail at work (which means I have to sacrifice calendaring, and going to meetings. I'm not too broken up about it).

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Entourage 2008, Mail

MWSF 2008: Gallery

I have uploaded the pictures that I took at Macworld today. Here are a few highlights:

• Standing in line < 7:00 AM
• MacBook Air: power button
• MacBook Air: special keyboard keys
• MacBook Air: magsafe connector (it's special)
• MacBook Air: touch pad in action
• MacBook Air: iSight
• MacBook Air: The display is bright and crisp, but glossy
• Thinnovation
• Apple TV banner
• New Apple TV UI
• Whizzy effect in new iPhone Google maps application
• Time Capsule (looks almost identical to the Airport Extreme base station that it replaces)
• The Google booth
• Curved 42" NEC DLP monitor (sortof impressive, although I can't say that the image quality was all that great)
• Entourage 2008 in action
• The Panic guys
• An Axiotron employee showing off the ModBook

-Andy.

MWSF 2008: Apple TV 2.0

I got an Apple TV for Christmas, so I'm super excited about the upcoming software update that was announced today. However, while I agree that no company has yet to achieve a super-successful set-top box, I don't think that Apple TV 2.0 is going to be the success that Apple is looking for.

The Apple TV 2.0 UI in action

For me, the problems with Apple TV are that it's a bitch to get non-iTunes content onto the thing, and that the breath of available video content on iTunes doesn't cover everything that I want to watch. And what Apple announced today - being able to purchase content directly from Apple TV, isn't going to solve these problems.

One of the key drivers of the iPod's success was that it was butt simple to take all of the content that you already owned (music on CDs) and get it onto your iPod. The problem with Apple TV (and all other entrants into this market) is that it isn't easy to take your DVDs and rip them on to your set-top device. Even more damning, even if all of the DVDs that I owned were on iTunes - there is now way that I would re-buy all of that content - it would be a huge waste of money.

So Apple, like the rest of the consumer electronics industry, is going to continue to be stuck in the TV quagmire. They can continue to push the major studios to release more and more of their content on iTunes, which over time, will help. But for me, and everybody else who owns a bunch of DVDs (hint: nearly everyone that Apple would want to sell Apple TV to), having to lose that entire stockpile of discs just isn't very compelling. And while from a technological perspective, Apple could easily add DVD ripping and encoding to iTunes, they won't because it will piss off the very same studios that they are trying to court.

And so, the entire industry is stuck, and once again, the lowly consumer is screwed.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, DVD, iTunes, Apple TV

MWSF 2008: A tidbit about the new external SuperDrive

At Macworld today, I got a chance to speak with a MacBook product manager at Apple about the new external USB SuperDrive. I was wondering if it could be used with regular Macs (like my 24" iMac), but I was told that it wouldn't be compatible. While the drive is apparently a standard small form-factor DVD burner, with a standard USB 2.0 connection, it requires a special driver that only ships with the MacBook Air. While it's possible that said driver could be extracted from the MacBook Air and injected to a Leopard install on a different machine - I'm not sure that it would be worth the hacking. There are probably easier, more sanctioned ways to add a second optical drive to an iMac.

-Andy.

MWSF 2008: The MacBook Air

Straight off the top - the new MacBook Air is an amazing achievement in industrial and computer design. It is freaky how thin and light this machine is. And it definitely hits the "Apple sweet spot" of being completely and utterly lustworthy. Witness:

MacBook Air: This is one sexy machine

But, in order to achieve such a thin design, Apple had to make several trade-offs. And it is here, that I think a lot of sales are going to be lost. You should read John Gruber's initial impressions about the machine - which in general I think are pretty spot-on. What I'd like to add is that the biggest flaw of the new MacBook Air is its lack of a 3G wireless capability built-in. I'm talking about something like EVDO, HSDPA, or heck even WiMax. This machine is so easy to travel with, that it is meant to be used on the go. Unfortunately, we don't (yet) live in a world where WiFi is ubiquitous (I'm typing this on WiFi-less Caltrain, for example). And while it's true that a 3G wireless card could be added on via the USB port - my guess is that it'll be hard to make such a card fit in the MacBook Air's oddly recessed USB port, without some sort of USB extension cable.

And that whole scenario is very un-Apple - everything is supposed to be simple, built right in. I would have thought that Apple's partnership with AT&T would have come into play here - Apple could have built in the right radio to work with AT&T's 3G network. Or, if the iPhone could be used as a Bluetooth modem, that could be a viable way to get non-WiFi network access to the MacBook Air. But it can't, and so the MacBook Air is left in somewhat of an odd position - it is born to travel, but it's going to be a pain to get it on the Internet when mobile.

My guess is that this massive gap in the MacBook Air's feature set is due to two things:

1. Due to the small size of the motherboard (which Jobs showed off in the keynote), there probably just wasn't room for a 3G chipset. And due to the design requirements of the case, there probably wasn't room for the external 3G antenna, that most 3G-enbaled PC laptops come with.


2. And regarding the iPhone, it seems like in order to get AT&T to offer an unlimited data plan, Apple had to design the iPhone so that it minimized Edge data use. This means that the iPhone is aggressive in attempting to join WiFi networks, and that the ability to use the iPhone as a bluetooth modem has been disabled.

I do like some of the novel ways that Apple designed into this subnotebook solution - the new Remote Disc software seems pretty clever (it even supports net booting). When you do need an optical drive, the MacBook Air's external SuperDrive is amazingly tiny. And the new multi-touch trackpad seems to work quite well (in my limited testing today), and once you work it into your muscle memory, could be a great addition to this machine.

All-in-all, I can't say for sure that I would get one. If it was a lot cheaper, then it would be much easier to pick up as a second machine, to be used when portability is required. But at nearly $2,000, that is the budget that most companies set nowadays for a corporate laptop. Thus, going the MacBook Air route would mean that this would be my only machine. Something worth thinking about, but probably not something that I'd go for, unless I was working somewhere that was totally flush with cash.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Macintosh, MacBook, MacBook Air, Multi-Touch, 3G, EVDO, iPhone

MWSF 2008: Jacked by IDG

I saw something (don't remember where) that said attendance for this year's Macworld expo was going to be big - to the tune of 50,000 people. Well, I'm not sure how many people are here today, but I can tell you that IDG isn't doing such a good job managing the crowd. I was lined up about a block away from the door to Moscone West a little before 7 am, and I didn't make it inside until well after 9:30. By the time we got into the overflow room, I had missed a third of the keynote! I have never had to spend so much time waiting outside, and I've never been seated that late before for a keynote. I'm pretty unhappy about that - I'm going to have to go home tonight and watch the stream, for something that I paid good money to see (and spent over 2 and a half hours standing in line for).

Ug.

-Andy.

MWSF 2008: 6:57 AM

I made it to Moscone well before 7 AM - but it took a little bit of reconnoitering to not only found the right line, but then to find the end of it - I am nearly an entire city block away from the front entrance of Moscone west!

And so begins the waiting game...

Andy

Waiting for the train

I made it to caltrain in mountain view right around 5:45, and I have never seen this station so deserted. Normally it is a pain to find parking - but not today. :)

Andy

Going to MWSF again this year

For the fifth time (yes, I couldn't believe it either), I'm going to wake up exceedingly early to head down to San Francisco tomorrow for the Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld '08. I went to my first keynote in 2004 (which is right around the time I started blogging, so I don't have any notes), as well as 2005, 2006, 2007, and now, 2008. Normally, I blog a bit about what I think is going to happen, but I've decided that this year, I'll be happy if Apple simply devotes some time to the Macintosh, which was entirely left out last year due to the (admittedly awesome) iPhone.

Anyway, I'm excited to be heading off to another keynote, but for now, I need to get to bed so that I'm ready to tackle the day tomorrow.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MacWorld

Configuring a Samsung ML-1710 in Mac OS X 10.5

I decided that I wanted to print something today, and the last time that I did that I was at my old apartment, and my iMac was running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. So, my first task was to find the printer and the appropriate cables, and get it hooked up to my new Airport Extreme base station. That done, my next task was to get the printer setup in Mac OS X Leopard.

Neither Tiger nor Leopard included drivers for the ML-1710 natively. Samsung does produce some drivers, but from what I was able to gather online they are a bit old, and I'm not sure if they are Intel-native or Leopard certified. I found that there is an open source driver called SpliX which works with the ML-1710. In order to get this driver working on Leopard, I had to:

1. Download and install the CUPS Driver Development Kit (DDK) 1.2.3. I just grabbed the .dmg file and installed it.
2. Download the SpliX driver source code (I got version 1.0.2).
3. Unpack the code, change to the directory, and type "make" (this assumes that you have the developer tools installed):

   intension-en1:~/src/splix-1.0.2$ make
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o spl2.o spl2.cpp
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o printer.o printer.cpp
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o band.o band.cpp
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o compress.o compress.cpp
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o bandanalyser.o bandanalyser.cpp
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o rastertospl2.o rastertospl2.cpp
   g++ -O2 `cups-config --cflags`  -I../include -Wall -g -O0   -c -o raster.o raster.cpp
   g++ `cups-config --ldflags` -lcups -lcupsimage -o rastertospl2 spl2.o printer.o band.o compress.o bandanalyser.o rastertospl2.o raster.o
   make[1]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
   

4. Assuming that this built without error, install the driver:

   intension-en1:~/src/splix-1.0.2$ sudo make install
   Password:
   install -m 755 -s rastertospl2 `cups-config --serverbin`/filter
   install -d -m 755 `cups-config --datadir`/model/samsung
   for filename in ml1510 ml1520 ml1610 ml1710 ml1740 ml1750 ml2010 ml2150 ml2250 ml2550 clp300 clp500 clp510 clp600 xerox-phaser6100; do \
   		install -m 644 $filename.ppd `cups-config --datadir`/model/samsung;\
   		for lang in fr it de; do \
   			install -m 644 $filename$lang.ppd `cups-config --datadir`/model/samsung;\
   		done; \
   	done \
   
   
                --- Everything is done! Have fun ---
   

At this point, I simply selected the ML-1710 printer on the list of Bonjour printers, and it was ready to go. Leopard appears to have an algorithm that matches printer drivers to found printers. Leopard was unable to find a driver for the ML-1710 when I tried to print to it at first, but after installing the driver, everything "just worked".

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac OS X, Open Source, Samsung, ML-1710, Leopard

"Seriously? A glossy display? Ug."

While I've been far to busy to blog (I have a half-written post about Japan that I really need to tend to), I am going to miss some sleep to post about Apple, which I also haven't done for awhile. Just because I haven't been writing in my blog about Apple, doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about them incessantly.

I have been in the mood to upgrade my primary Mac, an iMac G5 2.1Ghz (the last PowerPC iMac released) for awhile now. The new Intel-based Macs are just stupid fast, and I'm only human.

However, while I am pretty satisfied with the form factor of my current iMac, I've been in more of a desktop mood lately. So, I was kindof hoping that Apple would have some more significant hardware announcements today - like a really beefed up Mac mini, or a much cheaper Mac Pro. Instead, we got this:

The new iMac, glossy glare and all.

Generally speaking, the upgraded specs and lower price of the new iMacs are quite tempting to me. So while I was in San Francisco tonight, I hopped over to the Apple store gave the new iMac a once-over. First off, I must admit that the aluminum finish looks much better in person than it does photographed. And the new iMac does appear to be a lot smaller than the model that it replaces. But that glossy display -- it is really turning me off. When you look dead on at it, it's pretty reasonable. But as you can see from the photo I posted above (taken by my iPhone, btw), viewing this display from the side shows all sorts of glare. I also found the viewing angle of the LCD to be a bit worse than my current iMac -- when looking at it from above, the colors were really washed out (Update: confirmation that the LCD isn't as good in the new 20" iMac from Macintouch).

As for the new keyboard, it certainly looks neat:

The new iMac keyboard - it certainly is thin.

But in the limited amount of typing that I did on it, the new keyboard didn't feel very comfortable. It's a moot point for me (I'm a diehard Kinesis man now), but I think that the new iMac keyboard is yet another example of Apple placing form over function.

In general, I'm not really happy with Apple's current Mac lineup. I think Apple's portables are actually pretty fantastic - and they are the main reason why Apple has been selling more Macs than ever the past few quarters (the MacBook, in particular, is killer). However, if you're not in the market for a portable, your choices on the Mac side are pretty thin. The Mac mini is under-powered for the price (integrated graphics, 5400 rpm disk), and the Mac Pro is way overpowered (with a corresponding price).

I think that Apple is making a pretty big mistake in not being more aggressive with the Mac - they're on a roll, and they should be doing everything in their power to attract as many people as they can to the platform. If Apple's management isn't worried about cannibalizing iPod sales with the new iPhone, why are they worried about cannibalizing iMac or Mac Pro sales with a super-duper Mac mini? Even though the Mac community has been talking about this for years, I really think that it's time for the xMac - the only question, at this point, is if Apple has the stones to make one.

It looks like I shouldn't hold my breath on this one - my guess is that Apple is going to stay on their current course of form over function, and "not shipping junk" - thus ultimately limiting how much they can grow the market-share of the Mac. And since everything that Apple does (the iPod, the iPhone, Apple TV, etc) ultimately grows out of the Mac - I think not investing in the Mac is a pretty huge mistake for Apple. If I were a shareholder, I'd be pretty unhappy about this. Yet as long as Apple keeps posting fabulous profits, I don't expect that the shareholders or analysts are going to pay any attention to the deficiencies in the Mac lineup.

Quite a shame.

-Andy.

Update: I was going to write an additional post about the need for an xMac, but I found today that Don MacAskill (who is super-cool btw, I met him at Foo Camp) has summed things up better than I ever could.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Macintosh, iMac, xMac, keyboard, Kinesis

Carl was right!

In my last post about Apple, I put forth the idea that Apple's strategy of putting their advanced OS X operating system in all of their devices was going to enable them to surpass their competitors in a number of fields. In my post, I mainly talked about the advantages that Apple gained by adapting OS X to run on everything from the Apple TV to the iPhone. What I didn't talk about, were the disadvantages of this strategy.

Fortunately, shortly after I made my post, my friend Carl chimed in via the comments section, with one big negative that this strategy could possibly incur for Apple:

"I think Windows fell apart partly because of the number of combinations of devices it had to be able to support as it grew. Apple has limited this by controlling the core hardware, but I'm not sure they can limit it forever. Either way, the more platforms they have to keep going simultaneously with OS X, the harder it will be to get full test coverage."

While I had planned to respond to Carl's comment, my planned response has certainly changed, as of yesterday. Because it was yesterday that Apple announced that Mac OS X Leopard is going to ship 4 months late -- because Apple has been focusing on getting the iPhone out the door by "late June".

So, score one for Carl -- he identified a very real pain point that Apple is experiencing with their new OS X strategy. And while I think that Apple might need to beef up it's OS engineering in the mid to short term in order to deal with the new reality of OS X, yet like Carl, I don't think that's going to be enough. Unlike Carl though, I do think that there is a way for Apple to have OS X run on many different devices, yet still avoid Microsoft's fate.

How is Apple going to achieve this feat you ask, gentle reader? Why, with a trick, of course. Let me point you to an Ars Technica article from February, that didn't make many waves in the Mac blogosphere: "Intel's coming embedded play". The basic thrust of this article is that in the wake of Intel's sale of their XScale division, instead of exiting the embedded market, Intel might be coming at it from a different direction - namely building embedded chips that can execute the x86 ISA. For why this matters to Apple (especially in light of it's current predicament), I'll leave it to Jon "Hannibal" Stokes to explain:

"To put it another way, do you really think that Apple wants to pay programmers to work on an ARM port of Darwin? Me neither. But right now, ARM is what will fit in the iPhone. The minute that x86 fits in the iPhone, then the software cost equation changes for Apple in ways that may make x86 more attractive."

If this new CPU really does come to pass (and I think that it will -- the argument for it is certainly compelling), then Apple will find itself in a situation where they can write code for one ISA, and have it run everywhere. Because there will be x86-compatible chips in Apple's future phones, iPods, TV set top boxes, and Macintoshes. This will limit the amount of devices that the OS X team has to support, helping Apple get their economy-of-scale groove back on.

And now, do we see why Steve Jobs got Apple in bed with Intel, and not AMD?

:)

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Macintosh, Steve Jobs, Intel, Analysis, Ars Technica, iPhone, Apple TV, Mac OS X, x86, Instruction Set Architecture

The future of Apple: OS X

Yesterday, I wrote in support of the theory that Microsoft is no longer relevant in driving the computer industry forward. One of the points that I used to buffet my argument was "that in the age of web-based applications, the OS that you run is largely irrelevant". To put it another way, the idea of selling a computer operating system in a box for some sort of profit is an idea that is on it's way out.

I think that Apple has figured this out, and rather than trying to rest on their laurels and wring the maximum amount of profit out of their old business model, I believe that they are innovating instead.

As evidence, let's examine a not-related-to-Mac-OS-X bit of news that happened earlier this week. On Monday, Apple announced that they have sold over 100 Million iPods. While in and of itself, this announcement has many implications for the future of music and media (and of course the Zune, which is looking more and more screwed by the minute), I want to focus on something else that I noticed in the press release.

At the end of every Apple press release, they have some standard boilerplate text, which is meant toot Apple's horn about all of their great accomplishments. It is normally the same thing every time, and usually looks something like this:

"Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning desktop and notebook computers, OS X operating system, and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital music revolution with its iPod portable music players and iTunes online music store." (emphasis mine, from "Apple Unveils New iMac with Intel Core Duo Processor")

In the 100 Million iPod press release, however, this boilerplate text was changed slightly, and now looks like this:

"Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and will enter the mobile phone market this year with its revolutionary iPhone." (emphasis mine)

The main change between these two passages that I wish to highlight isn't the iPhone, but rather the fact that in the newer passage, Apple has de-emphasized the Macintosh. It is a small change, but important nonetheless. I also want to highlight the fact that in all of Apple's press releases since July of 2004, they call their operating system "OS X", and not "Mac OS X". This change has been noted before (most recently during the iPhone announcement), but I find it interesting that Apple has been using the "OS X" moniker publicly since 2004.

What I think that these changes signify is that Apple is dealing with the commoditization of the operating system in a fairly novel way. Instead of divesting themselves from their OS, by either open sourcing it or selling it to a 3rd party, Apple is instead moving OS X into the core of the company. Even after the iPod became a huge success, the core of Apple was the Macintosh - that was at the core of the "digital hub". Yet, now we are seeing the Macintosh being de-emphasized, in favor of OS X.

I believe that Apple has had a very key insight into the future of digital devices. In the "old days", the way you made any digital device more capable than a stop watch was to start off with an embedded operating system. Something that was built from the start to be small and efficient, both in terms of memory utilization and CPU requirements. This is what Microsoft has done with Windows CE - which isn't really Windows at all - it has a totally separate kernel from the Windows NT line. However, when you start with a small OS that has limited features, so that it can run in a limited space - it is very hard to build a "next generation" digital device. I'm talking about a device that can play back media files (audio, video), multitask, and provide robust networking requirements.

Instead of playing the same game that Microsoft and others are playing (starting with a small OS, that you make bigger with newer functionality), they did the reverse -- they stared big, and got small. They "shrunk" OS X down to the point where it could run efficiently on an embedded device (which, if you know software engineering at all, then you know that this was a fairly amazing accomplishment). This means that Apple is going to be able to make digital devices that accomplish amazing things, all by leveraging their investment in OS X.

Going forward, Apple's product mix is going to look like this:

OS X at the center of Apple's world (also in PDF, OmniGraffle)

On the left-hand side of my diagram, we have the devices Apple is (or will be, come June) shipping that are powered by OS X. On the right-hand side, are all of the things that Apple could build, now that they have a sufficiently powerful embedded operating system.

What's in it for Apple? Not only do they get to continue to leverage their investment in OS X, but they will also be able to run circles around their competitors (Nokia, Motorola, Palm, RIM, Microsoft) - none of whom have such an advanced OS. In addition, as the market for personal computers levels off, Apple has found several new revenue streams for their OS division. Finally, by virtue of making OS X, as well as several of its premier applications (think iLife and their professional apps), Apple is sitting on the premier Cocoa development houses in the entire world. Going forward, they will be able to leverage that incredible engineering talent to make new and amazing applications for their embedded OS, extending the innovative hot streak that they have been on for the last decade.

Wow. Now, more than ever, I can't wait to see what the future holds for Apple.

-Andy.

The Month of Apple Bugs

One of the things that the mac web has been buzzing about this month (other than the Jesus Phone, that is), has been the so-called "Month of Apple Bugs". The Month of Apple Bugs project has declared that they are going to announce a new security vulnerability in the Mac ecosystem every day. The unfortunate thing that I have witnessed about this, however, has been the reaction from some parts of the Mac community.

The worst offender is David Chartier, who writes on "The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)". In a post from January 3rd, he writes:

"Let me be clear: if these guys have actually found enough problems with software (be it Apple's or otherwise) to fill a whole month of releases, I honestly and sincerely thank them - they can help whoever makes that software to make it better. What is so horrendously wrong with this 'project' is that they're stirring up hype and making news headlines with these exploits, instead of sticking with the traditional and ethical practices of reporting and discussing these bugs with the relevant parties."

His whole post is filled with digs at this project, David is missing the overall point. Mac OS X, like every other operating system, has security flaws. The more of these flaws that we find (and get fixed), the better off that we all are.

As an example, I read about one of their more recent finds, in Software Update. I was able to reproduce it on my iMac G5, by executing these commands:

Last login: Wed Jan 24 23:18:05 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
[currents:~] andyr% touch %x.%x.%x.ThisIsEmbarrassing%x.%x.%x.%x.swutmp
[currents:~] andyr% open %x.%x.%x.ThisIsEmbarrassing%x.%x.%x.%x.swutmp

With the following result:

The error message from Software Update (which in this case, didn't crash).
Notice that all of the %x characters that I typed into my filename are now filled
in with internal data from Software Update.

This shows, rather conclusively, that there is something wrong with Software Update, that Apple should take a look at. While arguments can be made for and against different disclosure policies for security vulnerabilities, those of us who comprise the Mac community need to keep our heads, and realize that we're not on Mac OS 9 anymore. Security problems in OS X are going to be a fact of life, and we need to understand that they aren't the end of the world, and support people that find them, and also those that fix them.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Macintosh, TUAW, David Chartier, Month of Apple Bugs, MOAB, Software Update

Daring Fireball @ MWSF 2007

Right before seeing Kevin Smith today at MacWorld, it came to my attention that John Gruber was going to be giving a talk. So, I re-jiggered my plans, and attended:

Cabel Sasser and John Gruber @ MWSF 2007

The talk was basically John and his friend Cabel (whom he has only met in person "one other time") talking about today's Stevenote, Apple, and Panic Inc. I took some rough notes for the portion where they were talking about Apple's announcements from today:

[about the iPhone:] OS on the phone is being called "OS X", they dropped the "Mac".

CS: Are they trying to differentiate between full Mac OS X that runs on macs and the slimmed down version on the phone?

JG: dropped mac so as to not scare windows users away from phone.

CS: side note about phone - can we write 3rd party apps for the phone? Apple isn't saying.

JG: Price?
CS: if you look at what it does, and capabilities, price is pretty good. If you think about it, the first iPod was pretty expensive. It's gotta start high.

JG: It wasn't too long ago that Apple was selling $499 iPods (highest capacity model, probably didn't have highest sales).

JG: What do you think about touch + gestures?
CS: Crazy to think about - something we're never thought about before. Would be amazing to see this go to the powerbook line. Going back to GUI interface design, been watching the iPhone videos over and over, and looking at the amazing things that Apple is doing, pushing the envelope.

JG: "the pinch" really seems natural, something I would have never thought of. Double tapping looks interesting as well.

JG: Only other product announced today is apple tv, what do you thing?
CS: I bought a Tivo series 3, which is way too expensive ($800), but since I have all og this content over the air already
JG: wink wink, nudge nudge at pirated content? who is buying all this content [off of iTunes]? not going to get rid of cable tv, all these shows are already coming in.
CS: specs indicate that it [Apple TV] requires hd tv

I probably could have done better with the notes, but the sleep deprivation was hitting me pretty hard at this point. Overall, I'm glad that I went -- the discussion was insightful, and is probably going to drive some blog posts out of me (in fact, the one about iPhone applications came as a direct result from attending this talk).

-Andy.

Will the iPhone support 3rd party applications?

One of the recurring themes regarding the iPhone at the Daring Fireball talk was the open question as to wether-or-not the iPhone will support 3rd party applications. Obviously, nobody outside of Apple knows the answer to this question yet (and my guess is that Apple itself hasn't decided yet), but I do feel the need to speculate.

The first thing that I noticed when I saw the "Home" screen on the iPhone was how it looked crazy-similar to Dashboard in Mac OS X Tiger (10.4). The "Home" UI looks like a modified version of the widget picker in Dashboard. And later on in the talk, when Jobs showed the Weather and Stock widgets, it became glaringly obvious that the iPhone can run Dashboard widgets, probably unmodified.

And that makes perfect sense, if you think about it. What exactly is a Dashboard widget? Well, it is a bundle of HTML, CSS, images, and Javascript, that is all rendered using Safari. And during the keynote, Steve made sure to mention explicitly that the iPhone runs Safari. So, it's not much of a stretch to think that the iPhone can run Dashboard widgets. So, I think that it's pretty likely that developers we'll be able to install 3rd party Dashboard widgets on our iPhones, when we get them in June.

And of course, it almost goes without saying (but I'm sure people will forget if I don't say it), that the iPhone will be able to run web applications. Those web applications that work in Safari today will probably work on the iPhone as well. But if the iPhone becomes a success (and I think that it certainly will), then we might start seeing a whole new breed of web applications that are written with the iPhone in mind.

But developers are going want close ties into the system, to write applications that cannot be expressed using JavaScript. And since the iPhone runs a slimmed down version of "OS X" (as Apple is referring to the operating system running on the iPhone), then all Mac developers should already have the tools that they need in order to write native applications for the iPhone. Wether-or-not Apple is going to allow this, however, is hard to predict.

A "computer", in the traditional sense of the word, is expected to be able to run any sort of 3rd party software. However the iPhone, as billed by Apple, is not a computer. So, I can see Apple take the closed approach with this thing. In general, this would jive with how games have worked on the iPod (totally closed), and how companies like Cingular like to run their CPE devices (you get applications and things for your device from Cingular, not from the Internet).

On the other hand, Apple is competing with devices that run Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian OS - all of which support 3rd party applications.

So, in the end, this one is really a toss up. My bet is that Apple will try to make the iPhone a closed platform. But since the iPhone appears to be such a kick-ass platform, I also predict that it won't be long before the hacking community is running homebrew application on their iPhones. :)

-Andy.

Update: Looks like TUAW has some quasi-confirmation that the iPhone won't run 3rd party applications.

Update 2: More reasoning from Steve Jobs as to why the iPhone won't support 3rd party applications.

"We need to talk"

Yet another great Apple banner, this one is from the booth on the expo floor:

-Andy.

Games on the iPhone?

I just read a rumor on Kotaku about Apple beefing up their games support for the iPhone. This comes just after a post about games on the Zune in 2008. While The Steve didn't say anything at all about games today, I think that Apple would be insane to not be looking into doing some games on the iPhone. Currently, the DS is lighting up the gaming space with its dual screens and innovative touch screen. Well, the iPhone has a kick-ass screen, and an even more innovative touch screen. I think there are a lot of possibilities for new and innovative mini games using the dual-touch display.

So, I would say that if you think about it, this rumor clearly has some meat to it.

-Andy.

Apple TV

Apple is devoting a surprising amount of booth space to their new Apple TV product this year. One whole side of the booth is occupied by Sony Bravia LCD TVs and Apple TV units. And unlike the iPhone, the unwashed masses are allowed to touch and play:

It's super-thin (I wonder if it uses an iPod-sized HD in there?)

An obligatory butt shot.

Overall, I am not as enthused by Apple TV. When I finally decided to leave the stone ages and acquire a HD-capable TV, I'm sure that I'll end up getting one of these thingies. But for now, it is just a curiosity.

One thing that I learned from an Apple person is that while the Apple TV wants to output HD at 720p, it will apparently upconvert for TVs that require this (probably similar to what the Xbox is doing).

The key realization that I had about the Apple TV during the keynote is that the Apple TV is basically a headless iPod. When SJ covered how you can sync your content from iTunes to the Apple TV, it struck me how similar this is to syncing to the iPod. I think that is a really brilliant move on Apple's part. The other hot feature of this thing is that it allows you to stream content from ad hoc machines (i.e. laptops) quite easily. That will prove to be a killer feature, as laptops continue their current upwards sales trends.

-Andy.

A collection of iPhone images

So, the iPhone has finally been announced. Unfortunately, not only do we have to wait for June before it becomes available, but we can't even touch the few display models that are on the show floor. I think there are only two prototype units available, and they are sitting under glass, spinning.

But of course, I couldn't resist, and joined the throng of on-lookers taking pictures of the shiny new device:

It's shiny (and the on-screen keyboard looks neat).

It's thin!

Mobile Google == Nirvana

It really looks great. But sheesh, after that impressive demo that I saw this morning, I sure would like to play with one of these things...

-Andy.

Wow.

While I haven't had much time to blog lately, that is going to be changing this week. I just stepped out of the Apple keynote for MacWorld 2007. And just let me say, WOW!. My mouth was literally agape for over an hour during the keynote, mostly during Steve's demonstration of the new iPhone.

Let me be succinct here - Apple has blown everyone away with the iPhone. Motorola, gone. Nokia? Buried. Microsoft? Those guys have got to be scared of this thing.

Speaking as someone who has a laptop, cell phone, iPod, and an Internet Tablet, the user experience the the iPhone is going to provide is just a giant leap ahead of anything that is on the market today. Or that will be on the market for the next several years. The iPhone provides the things that I am already doing today (mobile web browsing, messaging, mapping, etc.), but in a far more elegant package.

2007 is off to a very good start for Apple, and they haven't fully fleshed out Leopard or any new macs yet.

Wow.

-Andy.

I said I wasn't going to do it, but I lied

After last year's MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, I swore that never again would I pay out of pocket in order to get to Moscone crazy early (but not crazy early enough) to watch Steve Jobs on TV. Well, as it turns out, what that really meant was that I was simply going to be on the fence. And what with all of the recent announcments of iTVs and rumors of iPhones, I've really been getting tempted. Then late last week, I saw that Kevin Smith is going to be giving a talk, and I cracked.

So, I will once gain be going to MWSF, in early January of 2007. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to go all out and get to Moscone super-early on the day of the Keynote. My guess is that once again, I will be watching Steve Jobs on TV. :)

-Andy.

Apple: Looking backwards in order to look forwards

Last night, I got side-tracked from my normal web surfing and blogging habits, when I came across the infamous Steve Jobs keynote at MacWorld Boston in 1997. This speech was apparently delivered at a time when Apple's outlook was at its lowest ebb, and just weeks after Steve returned to Apple. What is amazing about this speech is how Steve Jobs lays out how he is going to turn around Apple, in very simple terms. And then, over the course of the next 9 years, he and his team at Apple did everything that he said that they were going to do (and more), and now Apple is positively resurgent.

There are a couple of amazing things about this speech. The first is the amount of vision displayed by Steve Jobs. Apple isn't the only computer company to be faced with the challenge of changing market dynamics that threatened their relevance. The computing industry is littered with the husks of failed companies that went to the market with the wrong strategy. SGI, for example, had the same sort of crisis that Apple did. They decided to go from selling MIPS-based workstations running their own proprietary from of UNIX (called IRIX) to selling Intel-based workstations running Windows NT. While the analysts of the time applauded the move, it was clearly the wrong strategy - as now SGI is a shadow of its former self.

Steve Jobs, on the other hand, correctly determined that one of Apple's core assets was its proprietary operating system, MacOS. During the speech, he stated that Apple was going to invest tremendously in the MacOS, a move which seemed to defy "conventional" wisdom^[1]. Yet, once again, what separates Steve Jobs from a lot of other CEOs is that he posses a combination of technological and business understanding. Thus, he made the right decision.

A decision, by the way, which stands to this day. I was really impressed with the amount of work that I saw going into Mac OS X at WWDC. Apple is continuing to make Mac OS X better by leaps and bounds. Most of the "good stuff" that we have seen so far in Leopard are things that are more "behind the scenes" - new APIs and hooks for developers writing third party applications. Things that make the platform richer for developers, and therefore for their end users.

The other amazing thing about the speech is that it is one of the few times that I have seen Steve Jobs get flat-out booed by the Apple faithful. It happened a few times, most impressively when he announced Apple's partnership with Microsoft ("the enemy"). This shows another important characteristic of what has made Steve Jobs so instrumental in Apple's revival -- he's not afraid to step on people's toes. In this case, he knew that the right course for Apple was to work together with Microsoft. But he also knew, that the Apple faithful (who had really been supporting Apple during the "dark days") weren't going to like it. Yet, her persevered, and the rest is history.

Interestingly, Microsoft must have really made out on that deal. The $150 million that they invested was in Apple in the form of stock, which they had to hold for three years. In August of 1997, Apple's stock was worth around $18 per share. Three years later, the stock was at nearly $50 per share, after a 2-for-1 split! So, if Microsoft sold the stock in 2000, it means that they made over $450 million of pure profit. And they continued selling Office for the Mac at a profit. And lastly, they have been essentially using Apple as outside R&D - as the latest version of Windows, Vista, appears to be heavily influenced by Mac OS X.

So, while the popular theory is that convincing Microsoft to invest in Apple was a coup for Steve Jobs, I think it was really a coup for both companies. It continually amazes me, when I think about this, how what's important for a company isn't simply vision, but what matters is having the right vision. I think that far too often, this sort of vision is lacking at most major companies (and possibly also governments). That is what makes following Apple so interesting. And it is also why if you are in business school, you positively owe it to yourself to study this case example. It's amazing.

-Andy.

---

1. The Wired article that I referenced, "101 Ways to Save Apple", is also fairly interesting in its own right. It is amazing how many of the 101 things are flat-out wrong, and that the Apple-under-Steve-Jobs thankfully ignored. This article is one of my classic examples of how the pundits and analysts are almost always wrong. ↩

Technorati Tags: Apple, Macintosh, Steve Jobs, WWDC, MacWorld, SGI

WWDC06: Integrated graphics on the Intel XServe

Over in the IT lab, they have one of the new Intel-based XServes on display. I managed to snap a few photos, including one of the back of the server. It seems like there is now a graphics controller integrated with the motherboard, as evidenced by the mini-DVI port on the back:

Even though this machine had a PCI-E graphics card installed, you don't need to do this if you just want something simple for administering the machine.

-Andy.

WWDC06: More signage

This banner is hanging up on the first floor of Moscone:

Apple's marketing really knows how to thumb their nose at Microsoft, while simultaneously stoking the Mac faithful.

-Andy.

WWDC06: Day One Wrapup

A combination of little sleep and getting "blasted with the information firehose" means that I am extremely tired right now. Tired, but satisfied. Will and I managed to get pretty close to the stage for the keynote - we were slightly right of center, and less than 15 rows away. And while the format of this year's keynote was a little odd (lots of speakers divvied up the work), I am pleased with what Apple announced. With the new Mac Pro, Apple has not only fixed a number of classic gripes with the old G5-based Power Mac, but they also appear to be providing some decent value to boot. While the comparison with Dell that Phil Schiller made in the keynote wasn't totally above board (the Dell was configured with a super-expensive graphics card -- shame on you Apple), it seems like Apple's new Mac Pro is going to be cheaper than a similarly priced Dell. And that is pretty amazing, when you think about it.

I am running the Leopard Developer Preview on my PowerBook right now, and at this stage, the amount of change over Tiger is fairly subtle. As Steve Jobs said in the keynote - Apple is doing things a bit differently this year, and keeping some of the upcoming features of Leopard close to their chest. So, I suspect that when we do finally get the final build of Leopard, things are going to be quite a bit different than the Developer Preview.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, WWDC, WWDC06, Leopard, Mac OS X

WWDC06: VMWare running on Mac OS X

After lunch yesterday, Will and I wandered into S.F. to find the hotel suite where VMWare was demonstrating their upcoming Mac OS X release:

In the above photo, you can see VMWare running Windows XP inside of a VM running on a Mac mini. The VMWare demo that we saw appeared to have pretty amazing USB support - in the screenshot you can see iTunes connected to an attached iPod, and a logitec USB camera displaying a live video feed. In addition, the VMWare VM can expose the two cores of a Core Duo chip into the virutalized operating system - so Windows XP actually saw two processors.

It didn't look like much has been done in the way of UI work -- they weren't able to show me any UIs for configuring VMs or building new ones. The VMWare representatives did say that they were going to do everything in Cocoa, fortunately.

All-in-all, an impressive demo, but the jury is still out in terms of when this is going to come out (not until 2007, it seems), and how much its going to cost (currently, VMWare workstation goes for $200).

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, WWDC, WWDC06, Mac OS X, VMWare

WWDC06: The one really bad thing

Apple has these signs posted all around the conference hall:

Of course, while I see Apple's point, and I'm going to do my best to respect their wishes, I think that this policy is extremely stupid. Apple needs to get the word out about their platform, and how great it is. And any little thing that can be done to help -- posting information on blogs, discussion forums, mailing lists, etc. can only help Apple in their quest to keep the Mac OS X platform relevant.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, WWDC06, WWDC, NDA

WWDC06: Steve Jobs, at the beginning of the big keynote

As you can see, I had a pretty darn good seat for this morning's keynote:

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, WWDC06, WWDC

WWDC06: That's one big Apple logo

I shot this on my way to Moscone West this morning:

Wow.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, WWDC06, WWDC

At WWDC06 this week

I was going to blog about this awhile ago, but I'm going to be at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco all this week. I have been wanting to go forever, so this year I finally decided to send myself, rather than waiting until I was employed somewhere more Mac-friendly. I'm hoping for a lot of cool announcements today, and to learn a lot about how to code for the Mac.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, WWDC06, WWDC

Games: the iPod's next great leap forward?

Ever since Apple came out with the one-two punch of the iPod Nano and Video iPod last year, I have been wondering where they are going to go next. One of the reasons for the rapid growth of the iPod has been Apple's relentless innovation with the device itself, not just from the growth of the music store.

Of course, I consume all of the Apple rumors and speculation that I can, but I have noticed a confluence of events recently that have really got me thinking about the iPod. And I think that Apple could be on to something "really big" with the iPod.

Going back as far as February, there have been rumors that the next iPod will feature a 3.5" or 4" screen that occupies the entire face of the device, and that control will come via a touch screen. Here is a mockup image of such an iPod that I found via MacRumors:

Mockup of an iPod where the entire face is taken up by a display, and control is via a touch screen.
Image source: MacRumors

According to the rumors of the time, Apple had perfected some new sort of touch screen technology that allows the screen to register multiple simultaneous presses. With current touch screens, if you press one finger on the screen, everything will work fine. However, if you press two (or more) fingers on the screen simultaneously, then the touch screen will no longer report accurate results. Such a touch screen would provide for a pretty amazing model for user interaction, which I realized when I viewed this demonstration by Jeff Han.

So, while an iPod with a large display and a wicked touch screen all crammed into a package much smaller than those clunky Windows Portable Media Players is great and all, I don't think that this is the end-game for Apple. The one hallmark of Apple's latest resurgence has been for them to not rest on their laurels and reap fat profits until the well is try, but rather to continue to push themselves, and continually out-innovate their competitors.

This is what makes the recent spate of rumors about Apple ditching long-time iPod CPU supplier PortalPlayer for a new vendor so interesting. If these rumors are to be believed, there is more going on with the next iPod than just the display and control technology. Apple is also radically changing the guts of the iPod. But why? The reasons could simply by to reduce size and weight, or to increase battery life, but I think that Apple is onto something greater.

And I think this, because it is now rumored that Apple has selected nVidia to provide the graphics chip for the new video iPod. And why would Apple go with nVidia - well, it seems pretty obvious it would be to get a chip that is capable of doing 3D graphics, but on a power budget (a chip which nVidia definitely has).

Up until now, I have mostly disregarded rumors of Apple bringing games to the iPod. My reason for dismissing these rumors have been due to Apple's near religious focus on keeping the iPod simple, and due to the fact that the click wheel, while great for navigating a huge music library, absolutely sucks for gaming.

But a touch screen (especially an advanced one), on the other hand, doesn't suck for gaming. To believe this, all we have to do is examine what Nintendo has been doing with the DS.

The Nintendo DS is Nintendo's latest portable game console. When it first came out last year, it was largely panned by the press and the pundits, for it's gimmicky nature. The DS features two screens, a microphone, WiFi, and a touch screen (including a stylus). However, Nintendo is having the last laugh, as DS sales have been through the roof (especially in Japan, where the DS is absolutely destroying the Sony Playstation Portable). The reason why the DS is doing so well, however, has to do the with the first rule of video game consoles: "it's all about the software, stupid". Basically, Nintendo and its 3rd parties have been releasing a steady stream of great games, that have taken advantage of the unique hardware in the DS in innovative ways.

In particular, Nintendo has been trying to make portable gaming appeal to a wider audience - including women and older gamers. Nintendo has hit these markets, first with the Nintendogs games, and now with games like Brain Training. More importantly, these games have been selling, which proves that there is a market for games that aren't designed for boys age 16 - 22 in mind.

But, what does all of this talk about Nintendo have to do with the iPod? Well, Nintendo has shown that using a touch screen for gaming works great. And again, Nintendo has shown that there is a huge untapped market of people who will pay to play video games. Now, let's examine our proposed iPod again. Touch screen? Check. Graphics chip capable of producing 3D graphics? Check. Market share that covers a wide range of demographics (including women and people over the age of 30)? Check again. Based upon this line of logic, the iPod is an absolutely killer gaming platform that is just waiting to be born.

Think about it -- Apple already has a perfect distribution mechanism in the form of iTunes. Want to buy a game for your video iPod? Simply purchase it in iTunes, and it will get synced to your iPod automatically. Want to play a game? You can find it easily with the on-screen scroll wheel, and it boots nearly instantly, thanks to the fast hard drive (or flash).

The only piece of the puzzle that Apple is missing is the platform. In order for the gaming iPod to succeed, it is going to need to have some killer games (remember the first rule of video game consoles?). But, launching a new platform in the world means that over-tax game developers would have a new, non-standard, platform to support. Normally, there is a huge chicken-and-egg problem when a new platform is launched. Apple can sidestep this beautifully, however, because they will be able to sell millions of these things without it being able to play a single game. Once a large market presence has been established, game developers will come running.

But it would be better if the gaming iPod supported an existing platform. One idea would be if the gaming iPod ran a slimmed-down version of Mac OS X. In that way, games written for Mac OS X could run on the gaming iPod. I don't think that this idea is very feasible, because any modern game written for Mac OS X has insane hardware requirements, which the gaming iPod won't be able to match. Worse still, games written for Mac OS X won't be written with a touch screen in mind, which you would need to do when targeting the gaming iPod.

So, what about supporting a platform like BREW? Supposedly, Microsoft's upcoming iPod "killer", the Zune player, is going to support games written to the BREW standard. I don't find this idea to have a lot of weight, because it would be hard for BREW games to take advantage of the iPod's unique controls, and the BREW standard seems to really be optimized for use on mobile phones (which have external network connectivity).

And now, of course, we should cue the crazy rumors of Apple buying Nintendo. While such a move would certainly solidify Apple's move into gaming (and get them several platforms to boot), I don't think it's going to happen. The two companies are far too different. Some sort of partnership, however, does have potential.

Well, while I may not have the gaming platform puzzle sorted out, I definitely think that the gaming iPod is going to happen. While the rest of Apple's competition struggles to come up with a player that bests the current generation of iPod, Apple is going to leapfrog everyone (again!) and move into the realm of gaming. Such a move would definitely put the hurt on the PSP, and it wouldn't be so hot for Nintendo, either. But at this point, the tea leaves are saying that this is going to happen.

2007 should be quite an interesting year. :)

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Sony, Nintendo, iTunes, iPod, Analysis, Rumor

Sayonara MWSF 2006

I have completed my MWSF 2006 experience. Even though the show is going to continue for one more day, I'm not going back. This is a fitting image to mark "the end":

I have posted some more pictures to the gallery.

Overall, I am satisfied with my MWSF experience. I think that 2006 is going to be a year of transition for Apple and it's users. Transition to a new processor architecture. Transition to Apple being in the lead. Transition to the idea that Apple is once-again a dominant force in the industry. That thought can take awhile to sink-in, sometimes.

As for me, this year marks the 2nd, and probably last time that I'll see the Steve Jobs keynote live. I'm not crazy enough to do what it will take to get into the main hall, so next year, I'll just attend the exhibit hall, and watch the webcast. It's somewhat disappointing, but that's just how it goes.

I'm still pretty tired from Tuesday's day-long MWSF extravaganza, and I'm off to Tahoe this weekend. So, I might not be able to achieve a state of "rested" for awhile...

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Macintosh

Keynote 3

I stopped by the Apple booth today, and got the pitch about what's new in Keynote 3. It looks like it is mostly just whiz-bang effects, like new transitions, themes, and 3D charts (you can apparently change the angle of the light source and the texture). You can also put drop-shadows on pictures. Overall, it didn't seem like a really compelling upgrade.

They have also touched up the exporting features -- you can export to iDVD now, to make a DVD of your presentation. I also got an extensive demo of the Quicktime exporter, which seems to work fairly well (although it was a little slow rendering the cube-rotate transition).

Overall, my beefs with Keynote remain. The presentations that I tend to make are rather text heavy, and light on the media. The Apple guy showed me how you can type an outline of your presentation in Pages, and then paste that into Keynote (which will automatically create slides and bullet points). But this functionality is not even close to what you can do with Word and PowerPoint over in Office 2004.

So, if you need to give a presentation that has a lot of images, charts, and videos, to an audience that is entirely local (like Steve Jobs does), then you should check out Keynote. If you're like me, and your presentations are rather text-heavy, and the audience is partially in the room and partially remote, it looks like PowerPoint is still the better bet.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, iWork, Keynote

Back at MWSF, rambling around the Expo hall

I went to MWSF again today, to try and get some more mileage out of my Users's pass. I visited some of the booths that I didn't get a chance to on Tuesday, and re-visited some that I did. Highlights from my walk around the show floor included:

• BrakBone - Enterprise-grade backup software that seems to work with everything. They support Mac, Linux, Solaris (including Solaris/x86), etc., etc. Too pricey to be used for my home backup solution, but it sound quite applicable to the heterogeneous environment that I have been crafting at work.
• Etymotic Earphones - In-ear headphones. I tried both the Etymotic headphones and the in-ear headphones from Shure, and I think I might like Etymotic better. The show special that that they were offering was pretty insane (over $100 off the ER-4), but I maintained my resolve.
• Prosoft Data Backup 3 - This looks like a pretty decent backup solution, that may well solve my backup needs. It can do full, incremental, and versioned backups of any volume to any other volume, even if it is a network mount. They have a free 30 day trial that I need to check out.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Etymotic, BrakBone

A note to all of those bitching about the lack of modem on the new MacBook Pro

I'm seeing quite a few complaints on the 'net (there, and elsewhere) about the fact that the new MacBook Pro doesn't have a modem. I disagree with the complaints, and I think that Apple has done a smart thing once again.

It's called progress, folks. Telephone connections (POTS for us bell-heads) are on their way out. I don't think I have ever used the modem in my PowerBook, and it is over 2 years old now.

Remember when Apple released the original iMac, and Steve Jobs axed the floppy drive? There were howls of protest then too. But now, not so much.

That's called progress. The industry has moved on, thanks in part to Apple's lead. The same thing is going to happen with the Modem. Just watch.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Steve Jobs, MacBook Pro

Post-Keynote Impressions

I have seen this sentiment also on the internerd, but I think that I am also feeling a little bit of post-Keynote blues. Granted, part of that is because I didn't make it into the main hall for the speech, but that isn't the only reason. On the whole, Steve's Keynote was very well done, and Apple did make a lot of significant announcements for the company. However, for your average Mac user, the announcements were less significant.

I say this because there were basically three new things announced:

1. new iLife
2. new iWork
3. mew Intel-based Macs

While Apple wanted the Intel-based Macs to be the big blowout annoucement of the show, for current Mac users, it is really sortof a non-starter. I mean, the new iMac and PowerBook are just macs. They look like Macs on the outside. When you use them, you are using a Mac. Aside from MagLock on the new MacBook Pro, they don't really have any new features. So, the only difference is the supposed massive performance gains.

But here is the deal with that -- for the first year of so, the performance of these new machines is going to kindof suck. Because Apple brought them to market early, there is still quite a bit of software that hasn't been made native. So, all of that software has to run in emulation (and based upon my impressions on the show floor -- it is slow. Not slow like VirtualPC, but not exactly zippy).

For the software that is native to Intel, I'm guessing that the vast majority was simply ported to Intel, not optimized for Intel. At the compiler level, the switch to Intel from PowerPC is a fairly dramatic one. And Apple has spent the last 5 years or so, optimizing the heck out of Mac OS X for the PowerPC. So, it is going to take a little bit of a while for Apple's tools (especially the compiler and libraries), become as optimal on the x86 architecture as they were on PowerPC.

So, given all of that, the biggest announcement of the show is really iLife, which I think is going to have a significant impact on how mere mortals share their lives online. And while that is good and all, I guess I was just hoping for something more. A little more earth-shaking, ground-breaking, "we're Apple, and we're moving the industry in a new direction".

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Macintosh, iLife, Steve Jobs, Intel

You can't photocast a smart album in iPhoto 6

In retelling the events of my day to Kevin, I remembered something that I need to blog about. One of my more ingenious questions that I asked today was if you can photocast a smart album in iPhoto 6. When I asked the Apple representative this question, he had no idea if iPhoto 6 supported this feature or not.

This was actually a recurring theme today. Because most of the Apple employees working the booth learned about all of Apple's new products at the same time that I did -- during the keynote. So, they were basically learning as they went along.

So, I convinced the Apple guy to try it. We made a smart album that contained a subset of all of the photos on the demo machine, and sure enough, the photocast button was greyed-out.

We both agreed, however, that this would be a cool feature. Since photocasting already has seamless support for adding and removing photos from an album, coupling this with a smart album would be a no brainer. This would allow you to make an album of say, dog pictures, and photocast it. Then, whenever you bring new photos into iPhoto and tag them with the "dog" attribute (a process that still sucks in iPhoto 6, btw. Maybe they'll get robust tagging ala Flickr in 2007), it will automatically be shared in the photocast.

Look for Apple to tout this feature as one of the great new "innovations" in iPhoto 7, right around this time next year.

You heard it here first.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, iPhoto, iLife, photocasting

webstractor

One of the cooler Mac apps that I ran across is something called webstractor, by a company called Softchaos. It is basically a web browser, that maintains a copy of whatever page you visit on disk. I can see how having this trail of breadcrumbs can be pretty useful when I am in full-on "Internet research mode" -- You can surf a bunch of sites, and everytime you find one related to whatever it is you are researching, you can tuck it into a folder. Webstractor also includes features for automatically updating the pages that you have saved, based upon any differences that it finds.

There is also integration with Safari and NetNewsWire (which I was evangelizing to anyone who would listen today. Man, that app rocks!) -- in that you can right-click on any link in either of those browsers, and send it over to webstractor.

Overall, it seemed like a cool app, but priced at $80, it was out of the impulse-buy range. I don't know of anything else that does what webstractor does, though, so it's possible that I could crack and buy it someday (especially if I'm ever using a Mac full time at the day job).

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, webstractor

Jambo

Jambo is a new startup trying to do location-based social networking. You run Jambo's application, and it tells you about people who are near you (physically) that have the same preferences as you (logically). They have partnered with MacWorld to "Jambo-ize" the conference, so I downloaded the thing before hitting the show. But I forgot to play with it today during my afternoon blogging session, so I can't really speak to how well it works.

I did find the Jambo booth on the floor today, and I grilled one of the co-founders about how this thing works. It appears to ascertain location based upon the MAC address of the wireless base station. In the MacWorld case, the Jambo guys have sniffed all of the MACs for all of the WAPs in the convention center, hotels, and popular SF locations, and entered them into their database. Whenever you associate with a wireless network, the Jambo client sends the MAC address of the WAP to the server, and then they know "approximately" where you are.

So, this makes sense, and fits with their business model. They make money from conferences like MacWorld hiring them to "Jambo-ize" things, to foster social networking in a unique way. They also mentioned bringing their application to Universities, and I think that, if it worked as advertised, Jambo could be a boon in that sort of environment.

Things get a bit stickier, however, in the usage model where Jambo hasn't already cased the joint. If you are sitting on a WAP that Jambo doesn't know about, then it tries to determine your proximity by "hops". Basically, the Jambo client will send not only the MAC address of the WAP that you are connected to, but all of the MAC address from every WAP that your machine can see. Then, they search their database looking for matches.

So, if Bob and Alice are on opposite sides of Sunnyvale, connected to the Internet, they probably won't be able to see any wireless networks in common. But it could be that Bob can see a network that a third user, Joe can also see. And as it turns out, Alice can also see that same network. So now, Jambo knows that Alice is "two hops" away from Bob.

If this all sounds sketchy to you, then you're not alone -- because it sounded damn sketchy to me. I told them that they should do it Web 2.0/Wikipedia style, and have the users enter in location information to the database. There would be some privacy and accuracy issues with this, but it would dramatically simplify the architecture, by harnessing the collective intellect of its users. The co-founder dude didn't seem to be too keen on my idea, however.

Oh well.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, WiFi, Jambo

iWeb

iWeb looks pretty cool. I spent about 10 minutes or so chatting with the guy who designed the interface, peppering him with all sorts of technical questions. The biggest thing about iWeb is that it does work without .Mac. Basically, you can save whatever you create to your local disk. From there, you can copy it over to your webserver by whatever means suits you. The Apple guy said that some minor things won't work if the pages aren't hosted from .Mac (like their hit-counter), but it didn't sound like there would be any major roadblocks. Granted, this isn't as easy as using .Mac, but I definitely think that there are people out there who are going to use this feature.

I spent some time talking about the blogging features, and they seem to be pretty basic. The blogging functionality of iWeb doesn't support comments or trackbacks, and I forgot to ask if it does automatic archiving of posts in a calendar-based format (but it probably does do that). The Apple guy described it as more of journal -- for people that are used to keeping a diary or writing e-mails to their family, they can now bang out simple blog posts in iWeb without much learning curve.

And that, in a nutshell, seems to be what iWeb is all about. Get the content that you have (journals, photos, movies, etc.) onto the web with a minimal amount of hassle. The advantage of this is that it will get people who normally wouldn't publish on the Internet, publish on the Internet. It will get more people blogging. And that is just fantastic. This is one of Apple's core strengths -- taking something that is difficult for the average user, and making it so easy that they are not intimidated by it.

Of course, this also means that I probably won't get too much use out of iWeb.

Drat.

:)

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, iLife, iWeb

iPhoto 6

I liked what I saw of iPhoto 6. I thought that iPhoto 5 was a rather "blasé" upgrade, and only acquired a copy when I bought my new iMac. What has kept me using iPhoto are the free plugins that I have found, for integrating iPhoto with my blog and gallery.

But now, with iPhoto 6, it looks like I actually have several reasons to upgrade to the new version. Which is good for Apple, because iPhoto is the only iApp that I use.

While the performance did seem to be pretty good running on the new Intel-based Apple hardware, I'm reserving judgement on that front until I see it running on one of my boxes. The big killer feature for me is the full-screen editing. You have to see this in action to really understand its power, but it looks like they have extracted some of the bits from their new pro application Aperture, and brought them down to the iPhoto level. It is super-easy to display multiple pictures (for comparisons) -- you can arrange them in any order, and size them to any size (that can fit on your screen). All of the editing tools (including the new ones added in iPhoto 6) are available by moving the mouse to the top or bottom of the screen, or via contextual menu.

In the short demo that I was given, I was very impressed with what I saw. I think that this is going to solve a lot of the pain that I have currently with using iPhoto to manage my pictures.

The other big new feature, photocasting, looks cool. I'm not going to use it because I don't have .Mac, but I like that it is built upon the RSS standard -- so that any RSS-capable client can interact with the photo stream. It sounds like they are just doing JPEG enclosures in RSS, which should mean that the images will just pop up in your RSS reader. I'll have to find a photocast somewhere and try it out in NetNewsWire. One interesting thing that the Apple guy demo'd is that if you try to open any URL that is for an Apple photocast, iPhoto will automatically get it. It looks like the Mac OS X URL handler is doing a regex match on the hostname for the photocasts, and redirects the appropriate URLs to iPhoto.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, iLife, iPhoto

More on the MacBook Pro

After the crowds thinned, I went back through the Apple booth and touched all of the things that I'm interested in. In particular, I spent some time with the "big" new hardware announcement, the MacBook Pro. While I noted previously that it is slightly thinner than my PowerBook, I didn't realize that the new machine is a bit wider as well (15.2" screen vs. 15.4" on the new 'book). I don't think it is enough of a difference to make the new machine incompatible with laptop bags and such.

The quality if the integrated iSight looks pretty good -- which is amazing, because the display isn't any thicker.

I noticed that the display model got quite warm when the processor was run at maximum performance. It felt even warmer than my PowerBook gets when it is cooking, which is a bad thing (because my PowerBook is too hot to hold when it is running at full steam).

I think that they moved the AirPort antenna to underneath the display (instead of on the side). You can tell that they are using a different type of material there (based on the picture that I took), which is quite similar to the sides of my display where the AirPort antenna is. The Apple person that I was grilling wasn't aware of this change, or if it affects wireless reception.

The new MacBook Pro doesn't have an S-Video connector, and the Apple guy didn't know if there was a way to go from DVI to S-Video.

There is no tether for the remote -- it doesn't stick to the case, nor can it be stored internally in the unit.

There is still no word on battery life, but Jade over at ArsTechnica has a wild-assed-guess (WAG) about what it might be.

The new MagSafe power connector does have a light on it, that turns amber when charging and green when fully charged. It isn't as nice as the "ring of power" on the current Apple PowerBooks, however.

The one really surprising thing that I learned is that Apple is still selling all of the PowerBook G4's (including the 15" one). While the MacBook is supposed to replace the PowerBook line, the replacement won't be immediate. This is probably because all of the applications that professionals use aren't native to Intel yet. And the new MacBook's can't run OS 9 classic apps.

Finally, contrary to what I have read elsewhere, the latch for the display has not been re-designed on the MacBook Pro. Instead, it has been duplicated. There are two latches, with the exact same design as on my PowerBook, one on each side of the iSight. This is probably a hack, because they need for the latch to be center-mounted, but the iSight was in the way. So, they hit right and left of center instead. You can see one of the latches on the left-hand side of this picture.

When I was at the iMac booth, I tried to grill the technical Apple guy about if they are using EFI or some sort of crazy port of OpenFirmware to Intel, but the dude couldn't say (note, not wouldn't, but couldn't). I also made a pest of myself asking if there would be a motherboard swap upgrade, for those of us who a month and a half ago bought a fast machine, which has now been replaced with something that is 2-3X faster. I was basically told that such an upgrade program isn't likely to happen.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Macintosh, Intel, iMac, MacBook Pro, MagSafe

MacBook Pro tidbits

I quizzed the Apple rep who was showing off the new MacBook Pro, but he himself hadn't been briefed on it yet. So, there appears to be no word on what the battery life is going to be (Apple may still be testing and tweaking it, was the claim). I did learn that the new 'book has 2 USB ports, one FireWire 400 (gone is the FireWire 800 port), and that is about it. There is no built-in modem, instead you are supposed to use the $50 USB modem that Apple released alongside the new iMac.

That is really fine for me - it has been a long time since I have used a modem.

The size is basically the same as the PowerBook that I have now. It is slightly slimmer, but not by a whole lot. What is amazing is that the integrated iSight doesn't appear to have made the display any thicker. there is some extra space at the top of the display (the border is thicker at the top), which looks a little odd, but that's all. Apple did some amazing engineering in order to shoe-horn that camera in there.

I plan on going by there again to poke on the MacBook in depth, once the crowds dissipate some.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Macintosh, MacBook Pro,

Steve Jobs and Paul Otellini

When I went to check out the MacBook, I found myself in a total crush. I was at the end of the row of MacBooks, and started trying to move down the line, to find some more free space. But I got stuck giving a recap of all of the new announcements for some folks who weren't able to attend the Keynote. While I was doing that, the crowd continued to grow and press in, and I heard someone murmur something about Steve Jobs.

So I looked around, and sure enough, there he was with the CEO of Intel, Paul Otellini, giving a demo of the new MacBook Pro for the press:

If I hadn't moved from my original position, I would have been right in Steve's face, asking him if Apple was going to have any upgrade plan for poor saps like me who just bought a 20" iMac mere weeks before it got updated with the new Intel Yonah processor.

Oh well.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Macintosh, Steve Jobs, MacBook Pro, Paul Otellini

The MagSafe connector on the new MacBook Pro

I managed to get up close to a new Intel-based PowerBook right after the Keynote today, and snapped a few pictures. Here is a pretty decent shot of the new power connector, which Apple calls MagSafe:

It's pretty cool. It takes a surprising amount of force in order to pull the connector out, so I don't think there should be any worries of the power cord falling out at inopportune times.

I put all of the pictures that I have so far in gallery. I'll add to this as the day goes on.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Macintosh, Intel, MacBook Pro, MagSafe

One more thing...

Apple tried really, really hard to shoe-horn a G5 into a PowerBook, but couldn't do it. According to Steve, the low-power G5 actually had less performance than the G4, when compared on a power/watt basis.

Announcing new notebook computer, called the MacBook Pro. Replaces PowerMac. Has Intel CoreDuo chip (same as iMac). Every MacBook pro will be dual-processors. 4-5X faster than PowerBook G4! 4.5X faster integer, 5X faster FP.

Fastest and thinnest Mac notebook ever. 15.4" widescreen. As bright as cinema display. Built-in iSight camera! Wow! Also have IR sensor and Apple Remote. Includes Front Row.

Another cool feature - MagSafe. Snap-out power cord, if you trip over the cord, it yanks. Held in magnetically, so if you trip over the cord, it pulls right out. No pins to break! Sweet!

1 inch thin, 5.6 lbs. Retains backlit keyboard, scrolling trackpad, sudden motion sensor, DVI out (can drive 30" display), Digital optical+analog in/out.

$2k model with 1.67GHz core duo, radeon X1600, 80Gb, 512Mb, new ExpressCard slot (next gen PCMCIA?). And $2500 model which has faster processor, bigger HD, etc.

Shipping in February. Taking orders today.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Macintosh, Intel, iMac

New Macs!

Selling more macs every quarter. Steve showing new Intel logo. Steve produced an Intel moon man, Paul Otellini, from a smoke screen. Started a partnership with Intel less than a year ago, and Apple is ready to go. Relationship with Intel is going very well. Over 1,000 people at Intel working on this project.

Rolling out first Mac with an Intel processor ("a little ahead of schedule"). First of a new generation of macs.

First one is the iMac! Same sizes, same design, same features (built-in iSight, Front Row, remote, etc.), same price. 2-3X faster than iMac G5. Using Intel's latest, CoreDuo chip (dual core!). 2Mb L2 cache. Each processor is faster than the G5, but there is 2 of them inside. Processor is clocked at 2.0 Ghz.

Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.4 is Intel native. Including all bundled applications. New iLife and iWork are universal (one CD). Steve has been using a new Intel-based iMac all morning (that might be why it was so fast). :(

Pro apps will be universal in March. Crossgrade is $49 (trade in ppc disk for intel disk).

Quark announced that next version of Express will be universal. Beta program today, and that is universal.

Microsoft is committing to Office for mac for minimum of 5 years. Wow!

New iMacs have faster graphics too. Radeon x1600. Shipping today!

Going to transition entire product line this calendar year. Whoa!

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Macintosh, Intel, iMac

.Mac & iWork

Over a million subscribers to .Mac. A lot more integration with iLife, which is the big new feature for .Mac.

The new iWork has some new graphical pretties, and tables with calculations (spreadsheet-lite). Doesn't have time to talk about it in Keynote. Also $79, available today. 30 day free trial on all new Macs.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: .Mac, Apple, MWSF, iWork

iLife '06

iPhoto:

• Paid a lot of attention to performance -- Steve says it is much faster.
• Up to 250,000 photos
• full screen editing (looks very nice). Can do compares, editing tools hide/show
• One-click effects (like Photo Booth)
• New cards, calendars, and dramatically better books (higher quality printing). Can make own calendars. And cards (including postcards).
• Photocasting - podcasting for photos. !??!?! Publish/subscribe for photo albums over the Internet? Done through .Mac -- when you photocast an album, it will automatically be uploaded to .Mac in the background. Any changes will automatically be sync'd to .Mac. When you subscribe to photocast, you get a special album in your source list. This source is automatically updated. "Just like magic". Looks pretty cool, but only for all-Mac people. whoa! They use RSS to subscribe -- it is the industry standard. So you only need mac + iPhoto + .Mac to publish, but anyone can subscribe.
• Steve is doing the demo now -- it looks nice and snappy, on what appears to be a 20" iMac.
• iPhoto 6 looks a lot like the new iTunes -- no borders on sides, brushed metal borders on top/bottom.
• Calendar facility has integration with iCal -- so you can make a calendar that already has your events on it.

iMovie:

• Adding animated themes - themes with a designated area to drop photos or movies. Looks like distilled version of motion?
• more than one open project at once
• export to iPod with one command
• create video podcasts

iDVD:

• Widescreen menus (for widescreen TVs)
• magic iDVD - for doing it fast, when you don't have time to play with it. Can pick a theme, and drop in movies, photos, or whole photo albums, create project, burn DVD. Looks pretty good.
• Vastly improved slideshows
• enhanced map view
• support 3rd party burners

GarageBand:

• added podcast studio - best tool in world to create podcasts
• royalty free sound effects and jingles
• automatic ducking - soundtrack lowers when you talk, and volume comes back up when you stop
• speech enhancer to fix sound quality of on-computer mic
• can grab iChat audio sessions, for interviews conducted over iChat, to automatically become a podcast (hot).
• new Jam Pack - World Music

iWeb:

• for sharing music, podcasts, blogs, movies, photos with people over the Internet, by making a web page
• super-easy to use, lets you build beautiful websites
• Apple-designed templates
• access to all iLife media
• photo albums
• blogs and podcasts
• one-click publishing to .Mac
• Photo viewer has some AJAX technology (works in IE, Safari, and Firefox). The AJAX UI is sick. It looks really amazing.
• Automatically-generate RSS for blogs and podcasts
• Looks kindof like Pages, but for the web
• Drop an iTunes playlist in there, and it will automatically make links to all of the songs on iTMS.

I'm super-happy that Apple is embracing blogging, with a tool that can enable people to publish. Anything that makes it easier to blog, or brings more people in to blogging, is a very good thing. They should have had iWeb back when they launched .Mac -- this is what .Mac was built for.

So, how much does it cost? Same price: $79. Available today! $99 family pack. Free on all new macs.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, iLife

Mac OS X 10.4.4 is coming out today!

Includes some new Apple-created widgets (some of which look pretty cool). Plus it is the first official version to work on Intel.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Macintosh

Overflow room again

I got here an hour earlier than last year, and I still wasn't even close. What's worse, is that they keynote started before I even got into the overflow room!

Grr...

Steve is showing off new keynote features on his iTMS slide (3D pie charts?).

The good news is that they sold 14 million iPods in 4Q 2005. :)

They have also sold over 850 million songs, and 8 million videos. iTMS marketshare is at 83%.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Macintosh, iPod

There's a 5AM now?

So, I'm up way too early, to make a 6:13 AM bay bullet Caltrain out of Sunnyvale (which is a new service that they started back in October of 2005), in order to get to San Francisco a little after 7:00 AM, so that I can wait in line for Steve Job's keynote, which starts at 9:00 AM.

So, yeah, I'm nuts. And I'm even nuttier given the fact that when I got my MWSF badge yesterday, the woman said that I should be in line at 5:30 AM.

And of course, if you factor in the cost, comparing Steve Jobs' 90 minute keynote to a 90 minute movie, makes this one expensive movie. But hopefully I'll get lucky and make it into the main hall.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Caltrain, Steve Jobs

Apple isn't going to do a DVR

While I have already weighed-in on what I think Apple is going to announce at this year's MacWorld Expo, there is "one more thing" that I've been thinking about that I want to weigh in on.

It seems like the rumors leading up to Tuesday's big MWSF Keynote are going completely wild. I think there are several things contributing to this year's wild rumor season. The first is the switch to Intel, and all of Intel's announcements at CES this week. The second major contributor is the amazing year that Apple had in 2005. Apple is in such a strong position now, that everybody is paying attention and focusing on what they are doing. The third appears to be last year's announcement of Front Row, which is making people think that Apple is going to have a "living room strategy" in 2006.

And these days, when most people think living room, they think Digital Video Recorder (DVR - like Tivo). But based upon all of the news reports that I have been reading, and my intuition for what Apple is thinking, I don't think that Apple is going to release a DVR in 2006. I don't think that Apple is ever going to make a DVR, in fact.

There are a lot of problems with DVRs. A lot of the technologies and ideas involved in a modern DVR are patent-encumbered, by Tivo and others. There are also technologogical problems, when doing HD, removing commercials, and encoding content so that it can go to portable devices. Next, the whole DVR thing is basically a giant hack -- attempting to brdige an analog mdedium (TV) into the digital world. Things like channel guides and automatic commercial detection can never be made perfect, due to how the analog and digital worlds interact. Finally, there is the fact that the TV networks and advertisers don't like DVRs, because it totally screws with their model.

Which is why Apple's new video downloads through iTunes look so good. Having consumers directly pay for content represents a new model, and it represents a much cleaner solution technically than DVRs. All Apple has to do is make a device (the Mac mini, perhaps), that can automatically download episodes of TV from iTunes (like a podcast), and provide a friendly interface for the users to view the content on their TV (Front Row).

The only challenges that Apple is going to have to overcome is bandwidth (providing TV-quality or even HD-quality downloads is going to suck a lot of juice) and cost. I say cost, because the currently $2/episode cost is way too expensive, when I compare with what I am paying per month for all-you-can-eat cable. Doing some napkin math, there are around 24 episodes of a show in a particular season. Downloading all of those through iTunes, that would cost $48. That's about what my cable bill is every month. So, for light-to-moderate TV viewers, iTunes is a huge win -- if you watch less than 12 shows, you are going to save money. If you are a heavy TV viewer, however, cable is (unfortunately) going to be cheaper. I just did the math, it it looks like I'm watching around 11 shows, plus news and sports. So, I'm right on the border line.

But I think that this is solvable -- Apple can simply offer a discount if you sign up for an entire season (like the difference between buying individual songs and an entire album on iTMS).

But don't take my word for it -- Ken Fisher over at Ars Technica has said pretty much the same thing. For further evidence, I am going to cite a Wall Street Journal article that I read the other day: "'Media Center' Puts Microsoft Ahead of Rivals". The article is heavily biased towards the Microsoft Media Center, but it has this great quote:

"At Microsoft, Front Row is already causing ripples: Mr. Gates in an email to Mr. Belfiore asked why Apple's remote control had just six buttons. The standard Media Center remote from Microsoft has 39 buttons. (Mr. Belfiore's explanation: Front Row computers don't have TV or digital video recorder functions and thus don't need as many buttons.)"

Of course Apple doesn't have DVR functionality -- they don't need it! And as a result, they don't need all of those buttons either. I think that Apple will stay with the iMac remote for their new media center, especially since Steve Jobs made such a point of comparing the simplicity of the Apple remote to the complexity of the Microsoft remote.

I can't wait until Tuesday.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MWSF, Macintosh, DVR, iTunes, Front Row

Preparing for MWSF 2006

Due to earlier events, I haven't had a chance to blog about this until now, but I bought a pass for MacWorld San Francisco in January of 2006, so I will be attending the keynote and the show floor. I plan to blog the conference again (like I did last year), so all of my non-nerd friends will want to tune this blog out on January 10th.

My primary motivations for going are:

1. because I can,
2. because I didn't get into the live keynote area last year, and I want to try harder to do so this year,
3. and, I need to take advantage of the "benefits" of living in California -- including living close to the Moscone center. I probably won't always live in Cali, so I have to get my mac nerdery on while I can.

And now, for my pre-show predictions. The rumor-mill has been running rampant with speculation, and while I have been reading every rumor that I can, I don't think that all of them are true. Here is the list of things that I think are "a lock" to see at MWSF 2006:

1. BIG numbers from Apple's sales over the Christmas season. Lots and lots of Macs, iPods, songs, and videos sold. There will be much rejoicing among the faithful.
2. New iPod Shuffles - The iPod Shuffle hasn't been updated in a year, and it is due. While there is an outside chance that Apple could simply phase-out the Shuffle in favor of a 1Gb Nano, I don't think that they will. Instead, I think that they will improve upon the shuffle. This isn't going to be easy -- because they can't fall into their usual pattern of making it "hold more storage and/or be smaller". I think that the Shuffle is already as small as it is going to get (barring some huge advance in battery technology), and if they give it more storage it will start to intrude on the Nano. Plus, having to shuffle through more that 1Gb is somewhat insane.

   Instead, I think that the Shuffle might receive minor physical tweaks (improved rear switch), color choices, and possibly some sort of display. I'm thinking something like the OLED displays that Sony is using on some of their MP3 players.

3. New iLife and iWork - iWork was introduced at MWSF last year, and iLife seems to be on an every January upgrade cycle. I'm not sure what sorts of specific upgrades these application suites will receive. The only application out of the whole bunch that I really use is iPhoto, so I can only speak to that. What I would like to see:
   • Robust tagging support - like what Flickr has. Also, it should be super fast to apply tags and ratings to pictures -- all keyboard driven, as fast as I can see a picture, recognize it, and type.
   • Apple-supplied integration with other web sharing services like Ofoto, Flickr, Gallery, etc.
   • Sorting based on arbitrary image properties in the EXIF data. Also based on image size.
   • Integrate with iSync to automatically suck pictures from my camera phone into iPhoto.
   • Automatic facial recognition, like what Riya is doing.
4. Upgrades to .Mac - I really like the idea behind .Mac, especially back from when it was announced. But it has really stagnated -- I think that there is a lot of room to innovate here, but Apple hasn't been doing it. Instead, .Mac is rapidly being overtaken by Web 2.0 services (Gmail, Flickr, etc.). Apple needs to move fast if they want to save .Mac. I think that there is still some room to do something great -- the current state of browser technology is crappy enough, that having real client software, integrated into the OS, to drive different web services will be way better than what anybody else can offer.

   So, get to it Apple! Bring on the blogs, wikis, automatic RSS notifications for website changes, robust picture tagging and sharing, collaboration, etc. Make it Web 2.5.

5. A sneak-peak at Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard - This is pretty iffy, but I think that Jobs might shed some more light on the next release of Mac OS X. It will probably be a teaser, with the technical "meat" being saved for WWDC '06.

Now, regarding the possibility of seeing new Mac hardware (i.e. Intel-based macs), I think the odds of that are kindof low. While it would be a nice surprise, I'm not banking on it. I don't doubt that Apple is working on Intel-based macs even as I type, but whether or not they will be ready in time for MWSF is anybody's guess. Especially since they won't be ready until Steve says they are ready, and he can make that decision right up until the last minute.

But still, even without Intel-based Macs, I expect that this keynote is going to be a lot of fun. :)

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: .Mac, Apple, MWSF, Riya, Flickr, Macintosh, iPod Shuffle, iLife, iWork

Review of my new iMac G5

I have been using my new iMac G5 for a few weeks now, and it is going pretty well. I am quite smitten with this machine. The display is large and bright (much brighter than my PowerBook). The 16:9 aspect ratio was a little jarring at first, because I don't have any other monitors that are that "widescreen". The unit itself has some surprising heft to it (I believe the iMac is listed at 22 lbs.), yet the motion of the display on the stand is nice and smooth.

The fit and finish of this machine also stands out, as with all of Apple's machines these days. The machine feels solid as I carry it back and forth between my bedroom and the dining room (for Urban Terror sessions with Kevin). I installed a 1Gb DIMM in it, which demonstrated the lengths that Apple will go to in order to achieve their design. The one free RAM slot is in such a position that Apple had to invent two ring-tabs, so that you can eject the memory once it is in the slot. Also, the included ambient light sensor works as advertised -- the glowing sleep light doesn't bother me a bit when I am sleeping.

Some other random notes about this computer:

• Built-in Speakers - The built-in speakers sound great! I was quite surprised by the quality of the sound that was being generated from this machine. Without a doubt, this is the best built-in sound of any computer that I have ever used. Even though I have my Bose 301's in a position where I can drive them from the iMac, I find myself still using the built-in speakers on occasion.
• IR Remote / Front Row - The IR remote is great. It is easy to hold, and simple to use. This is the one "big new feature" that I use all the time. My ergonomic keyboard doesn't have any volume controls, nor play/pause controls (and I am too lazy to find some hotkey software to expose those sorts of things with control key combinations). But now, I can just lay my hands on the remote, and pause iTunes or change the volume at will. This is super-handy, and really well-implemented on Apple's part.

  Front Row is nice, but I haven't used it that much. The integrated movie trailer stuff works very well, and is quite slick. I can see myself using the iTunes part when I want to use the iMac as a stereo, which I want to do when I'm cleaning my room. Unfortunately, I almost never clean my room, so I'm not sure how often I am going to use this part of Front Row. :)

• Noise - Unfortunately, I can hear the fan in the iMac. And I'm not sure if it is the 10.4.3 update or some piece of software that I am running, but the fan is almost always on now. That is not to say that this is an end-of-the-world thing. By far, this machine is the quietest that I own (right up there with the PowerBook). It is just that I would like the fan to only run when I am doing intensive things.
• Performance - Boy, it sure is nice to have a G5 and a desktop hard drive again. The slow HD in my PowerBook was really beginning to wear on me. The G5, coupled with the fancy ATI graphics card, has no trouble running the Quake III engine at full speed, or scrolling lots of images in Mac OS X. So far, I have managed to make each Mac purchase double the speed of the machine it was replacing (from 600Mhz G3 iBook to 1.25Ghz G4 PowerBook, and now from the PowerBook to the 2.1Ghz G5 iMac). I can definitely feel the speed difference over my PowerBook.

  Do I wish that I had a dual-core G5 CPU in this baby? Hell yes! It is one of the biggest letdowns for me. But apparently the dual-core G5's just dissipate too much heat for the thin iMac design.

• Mighty Mouse - I am glad that Apple is including the Mighty Mouse now, as it gives me a chance to play with it without spending $50. Overall, I would say that the Mighty Mouse is just okay. For desktop use, the built-in scrolly-trackpointy thing is amazing. It is really easy to scroll left to right and side to side, and the button is easy to push as well. But electrostatic left/right buttons sometimes get confused, so my left click gets interpreted as a right click. Even worse, the side buttons are nearly impossible to hit, rendering them useless. Oh, and forget about using this mouse for gaming. If you are holding down the "right" button, and then want to click left (to fire your gun, say), that second click won't be registered.

I would say that all-in-all, I am satisfied with my purchase. The only disappointments are the fan noise, and the fact that the new iMac as a whole is less servicable than the model that it replaced. Not only can't the parts be easily serviced by end-users anymore, but the stand doesn't come off, rendering VESA mounts (and nifty travel cases) out of the question. But I can live with those small complaints, while I enjoy all of the other great benefits of this machine.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Macintosh, iMac, G5, Front Row

Finally!

For at least the last two weeks, I have been calling all of the Apple stores in my immediate area, looking for a new 20" iMac G5. Well, my ship has finally come in, as the Apple Store in Palo Alto finally had some in stock today:

Because I was out so late last night, I wasn't ready to go to work until 11:00 AM today. But, since Apple had the iMac in stock, instead of driving to work I first drove to Palo Alto to buy my new toy. On the way back, I decided that I should go to work, but I brought the iMac upstairs, in order to torment my co-workers (and also myself).

But thankfully, Shreyas made me crack, and I decided to open up the box, and play instead of doing actual, factual work. I have posted the out-of-box pictures in a gallery.

Unfortunately, both Mark and Rushabh are in town this weekend, so I don't expect to really put the new machine through its paces any time soon. In fact, Monday is starting to look like it's going to be a pretty fun day, actually...

-Andy.

Apple's big new thing: TV downloads

As I'm sure you are well aware, Apple had another Media Event today. If you don't have time to watch the 50 minute (ish) presentation, there is plenty of coverage around the web. There was a new iMac, including new software (Photo Booth and Front Row). A new version of iTunes. And oh yeah, some sort of new video-capable iPod thingy.

But the really big announcement, was the fact that you can now buy episodes of TV shows on iTunes, for only $1.99 a pop.

This is huge, people. And a lot of the commentary on that I'm seeing on the Internet is getting this wrong. John Gruber, for example, says:

"$1.99 for each TV show, in only 320x240 resolution, doesn’t seem like a good deal to me. I already get these shows with my cable TV; paying for them again in a crummy low-res format strikes me as a bad deal — like paying for songs I already own on CD. Of course, I think ringtones sound like a bad deal, too, but people buy billions of them."

There are several ways in which this is in fact a fantastic deal. The first is that this is the only legal way to download TV over the Internet. And if you are into a serial series, like "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives", this will matter to you. Because if you miss an episode, you are going to want to see it. Or if you didn't know to watch the episode, but all of your co-workers tell you it was great while standing around the water cooler, you are going to want to see it.

And for the last several years, Bittorrent and other P2P networks have given viewers who are dedicated enough and technical enough the ability to download shows that they missed. But now Apple is giving this ability to everyone with iTunes (hint: that is a lot of people), at a reasonable price. I have seen some grousing about the quality of the video, but I don't think that's going to be a big issue. After years of downloading super crappy renditions of my favorite shows from the P2P networks, 320x240 h.264 video sounds like a dream.

But all of those reasons are just the tip of the iceberg. Just like Apple did with digital music when it opened the iTunes Music Store, they are now creating a new legal download market for TV. For years I have been reading pundits saying that the Internet is going to change the way we watch TV. Well, now it is finally happening.

But you don't have to take my word for the fact that this was Apple's most important announcement today. Take Steve Jobs' word for it -- This was his "One More Thing". And he even had Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, out on stage to drive the point home. The fact that Apple was able to negotiate this deal is huge. And even though it seem under-whelming now, because there are only 5 shows to choose from -- think about the future. When there are hundreds of shows. Thousands. The idea is staggering.

Oh, and my "one more thing"? I will be buying one of those new 20" iMacs soon. They look sweet. :)

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: macintosh, ipod, iTunes, Apple

A teensy bug in iPod nano

After my first full day of using my new iPod, I seem to have stumbled upon some sort of display bug:

As you can see, the iPod is a big confused, and is displaying two overlapping versions of the song/album/artist text, one slightly aside of the other. I am not sure what I did to produce this bug, but I suspect it has to do with the iPod nano's ability to display album art for songs. Turning the iPod on and off didn't fix the issue, nor did syncing with my PowerBook. It persisted all day today, so I decided to try loading some album art into the new Fall Out Boy album, and then loading those songs onto my nano. Sure enough, when I tried to play the new FOB album on my iPod, the display was fixed, even for non-FOB tracks.

My guess is that this started when I played a Denali bootleg, which had some album art in it. That art may be corrupt or something. I will try reproducing this bug again tomorrow.

Finally, in other nano news, I have posted a gallery of pictures of my iPod nano.

-Andy.

And the display is clear to boot...

The reviews I've read of the nano said that the display was nice and sharp. They weren't kidding:

I have a bunch more pictures that I have taken of the out-of-box-experience, that I will try and get into a gallery soon.

-Andy.

Oh boy! My new iPod nano came today

After thousands upon thousands of minutes spent waiting, my iPod nano finally arrived today. My first impression: this thing is small.

I mean, really freakin' small.

When I opened the grigrundous shipping box that the iPod came in, I was astonished by the diminutive size of the iPod box itself. I don't have my iPod shuffle box anymore, but the box for the nano cannot be much bigger.

As for the nano itself, it is small:

I haven't had too much time to play with it as of yet, but so far, I really, really, really, really like it.

-Andy.

Some better news: the iPod nano

So, I bought an iPod nano today. After looking at it for all of like, 2 minutes on Apple's website. I have long been thinking about buying an iPod Mini, but I kindof wanted a color screen. Whelp, the nano has that, and a whole lot less -- less in terms of size, that is.

I didn't realize how small it is, however, until I watched Steve Job's speech after work. To show the world the nano for the first time, herr Jobs pulled the nano from the pocket of his ever-present blue jeans. Not impressed? He didn't pull it from a regular front pocket, but from that little itty-bitty-totall-useless front pocket above the normal pocket, that all jeans have, but no one ever uses.

Woah!

Go ahead and fast-foward to like minute 42 of the stream to see it for your yourself. It's great.

It is amazing how Apple keeps getting better with the iPod. It seems like each new iteration literally blows the old version away. It is amazing how they keep topping themselves, and understandable that the competition cannot keep up. I hope that the nano lives up to the iPod tradition, but it is an iPod, so I'm sure that it will. :)

Expect more here when I get mine.

-Andy.

More details of "The Transition"

I just stumbled across Apple's Universal Binary Programming Guidelines document. It looks like there is quite a bit of detailed technical information in this document, including some information on Rosetta. Some bad news: Rosetta cannot run Classic (MacOS 8/9 apps), and Rosetta only emulates a G3. That means that any software that requires a G4 or G5 is out. In addition, Rosetta cannot be used to emulate kernel extensions, so an x86-based mac is going to need new drivers for all of your old hardware. Is this going to be a new form of "driver hell"?

-Andy.

Shocked and Awed

So, Apple did it. They announced that they are switching the Mac platform to Intel processors capable of running the x86 instruction set. Apple knows how to do these sorts of transitions, and as such, I really cannot fault their plan for making this transition. As of today, they already have a build of Tiger running on x86 where "almost everything works". In addition, they have a new version of Xcode, which supports building applications that can run on Tiger/x86. This means that pretty-much as of now, developers can start porting their code over to the new platform.

In addition, Apple will provide emulation of PPC binaries in Tiger/x86, to ensure a smooth transition. This is really important, because people aren't going to run out and upgrade all of their applications right away. In addition, it is important to ensure that using Tiger/x86 is still a "mac-like" experience. If users need to contemplate as to wether or not they need to download the "PPC" or "x86" version of an application -- then Apple will have lost. But with Rosetta and universal (or "fat") binaries, even grandma will be able to survive this transition.

But there are still a lot of details that Apple hasn't covered. They didn't say if they were going to use an Intel chipset or not (but hinted that it would be so). They also didn't cover if Tiger/x86 would be 64-bit (using the x86-64 instruction set), but it probably will be 64 bit. They also didn't talk about their dual-processor strategy. My guess is that they will follow Intel's lead. Intel is pumping dual core CPU's for the mass market, and keeping SMP in the server space (with the Xeon). While we could see a Xeon-based PowerMac, I'm not so sure that is likely (Xeon's are quite expensive). And of course, they didn't talk at all about how they would keep people from running MacOS X on non-Apple hardware.

Phil Schiller did say "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac". Note that he didn't say that Apple wouldn't support this. His wording is that Apple would prevent running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware. So, it could be that Apple will leverage some sort of Intel DRM after all, as I wrote about on Saturday. But at this point, it is all speculation as to Apple's exact plans.

All-in-all, I'm not so sure that this is a good move for Apple. I think it is somewhat prescient that there is no mention of this switch on the main page of Apple.com - I had to dig in order to find the press release, in fact. I think that Apple is going to have a very hard time selling x86-based macs, purely from a psychological perspective. I mean, picture it -- you'll be able to go to your favorite computer store, and make an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison between an Apple box and a Wintel box. These two hypothetical machines will have the same CPU, RAM, Graphics Card, HD, etc. And they will also have two very different prices. So it will be evident, to all consumers, just how much the "Apple tax" is. And I don't think that people are going to go for it. Hell, I think that I am going to have a hard time going for it. In the laptop space, Apple still has a strong chance -- design matters quite a bit more in laptops than it does in desktops.

So, is this "the end" for Apple? Probably not, but it could spell doom for their hardware business. It is too early to tell. What I do know is that I have pretty mixed feelings about this switch, and that Steve Jobs has huge balls.

-Andy.

As seen at WWDC...

On my way home from Sleater-Kinney last night, I just happened to accidently drive by Moscone on my way home. As I drove by, I noticed that they already had all of the big banners up for WWDC. There were a series of banners all hyping Spotlight. Each banner featured the Spotlight search box, with the slogan "You can find it in Tiger". So, there was one where the phrase "your killer app" was typed into the search box.

But the one that made me laugh (as I was driving home), was the one that said "Longhorn - You can find it in Tiger". Man, Apple's PR really shouldn't be tweaking the sleeping giant, but it sure is awful fun.

-Andy.

Apple switching to x86?

In the last several days, several rumors have cropped up saying that Apple is going to switch the Mac platform from PowerPC processors made by IBM and Motorola to X86-64 processors made by Intel. Of course, this is not the first time that the rumormongers or pundits have predicted such a switch. And every time, it hasn't happened (for reasons that I mostly agree with).

Most of the discussion that I have seen has revolved around how "hard" the switch would be, in terms of all of the applications that would need to be re-compiled for a totally different CPU instruction set. And while I grant that would be a challenge, it is not an insurmountable one, and certainly, it isn't what has kept Apple from making the x86-switch.

What I haven't seen discussed, is the "real" reason why Apple hasn't switched to x86. In my mind, Apple hasn't switched to x86 because, if they did so, they would ultimately be killing their hardware business. The reason why is quite simple: if Apple were to release a build of MacOS X that was compiled for the x86 instruction set, people would take that build, and run it on non-Apple hardware.

Now, I'm assuming that an Intel-based Mac would contain some Apple-proprietary hardware, that MacOS X for Intel would require to run. However, any protection that Apple could come up with would be easy to defeat. Heck, the OS that forms the foundation of MacOS X, Darwin, is already open source. So, Apple would have to embed their security into the GUI layer. But still, that would be easy for the hackers to defeat. This sort of cracking has been around for as long as there has been copy protection, and it would be broken in a matter of weeks, if not days.

So, up until now, I haven't seen a whole switch to x86 as being "in the cards" for the Mac platform. I knew that if Apple did it, then people would start running MacOS X on non-Apple hardware, then less Macs would be sold, until Apple was either ruined or exited the hardware business altogether. Apple is run by some smart people (some of whom hate clones), so I know that they would never allow this to happen. Yet, I think that such a switch may be imminent. What do I know that I don't see anybody else talking about on the web?

Last week, Intel announced their newest "Pentium D" processors, along with a new chipset, the 945g. In the announcement, Intel made an oblique reference to the fact that these new chips have the latest iteration of their DRM technology built-in. All of the press coverage that I have seen of the DRM has focused on "protecting digital media" from thieves. While I'm sure that is what Intel is aiming at, I think that Apple could have a different purpose in mind for this DRM hardware.

Consider if all of the non-open source bits of MacOS X for Intel were shipped from Apple in an encrypted format. The DRM technology in the Intel CPU and chipset is able to decrypt the OS into memory, in such a way that there isn't much of a performance penalty. Furthermore, the MacOS itself leverages the DRM hardware, to prevent hackers from reading the OS that has been unencrypted in memory. Now, the only piece that is missing is the special key, that the CPU uses to un-encrypt the OS. This is where Apple's hardware engineers step in, crafting a special chip that holds the key, and is soldered onto the Apple motherboard.

From a very high level, it seems like such a scheme might be difficult enough for the hackers to crack, that it will keep widespread adoption of MacOS X on non-Apple hardware at bay. I think that this is why all of the rumors have been saying that Apple is switching to "Intel" and not "x86". If they just wanted to switch to x86, why wouldn't they consider AMD? I think that Apple would really like to go to AMD, because they are really kicking ass right now, but they won't, because AMD doesn't have the DRM technology that Intel has.

So, while I'm not saying that I want Apple to switch to x86, what I am saying is that for the first time, I see how such a move could happen. Monday could be an interesting day.

-Andy.

[UPDATE]: MacOSRumors has a nice roundup of the Mac-on-x86 rumors that have occurred over the past several years. And John Gruber has a great analysis of the whole situation as well.

[UPDATE2]: The New York Times is corroborating the switch to Intel story. The interesting part of this article is the discussion around the financial relationship between Apple and IBM. According to the NYT, less than 2% of the production capacity of IBM's Fishkill, NY plant goes to Apple processors. And the NYT says that IBM is probably barely breaking even making processors for Apple.

[UPDATE3]: Daring Fireball has some more odds 'n ends, his bet is Intel PowerPC's. And Leander Kahney mentioned the Intel DRM, but thinks that Apple wants it in order to woo Hollywood with some sort of oft-rumoured iTunes-for-movies.

Of course, one monkey wrench in all of this speculation is that Intel is now retracting their recent statements concerning DRM in the new Pentium D.

Apple World Travel Adapter

Yesterday, I wanted to know all of the countries supported by Apple's World Travel Adapter kit, without having to get off of my butt and go and find the manual. Well, Google let me down (even the images section), so in the interest of never having to get off of my butt again, I have scanned the relevant page of the manual, and am now posting it here for all:

-Andy.

Finally!

My copy of Tiger finally arrived today (iWork came yesterday). My initial analysis: Tiger fixes iSync not working with my crappy Nokia 6600 cell phone, so that is worth the price of admission right there.

-Andy.

Still No Tiger For Me (Yet)

When I got home from work today, I was once again greeted by a lack of MacOS X 10.4 "Tiger". I called Apple (that will make the third time now), and after about a half hour wait, I was able to speak to someone. Without me really having to make my case, she realized that there is indeed something messed up with my order. After some more waiting, she was able to bang up my order to my satisfaction. The new deal is that Apple is going to overnight me another copy of Tiger tomorrow. The assumption is that the first copy that they tried to send me is "lost". To compensate me for all of my "pain and suffering" (heh), they are also sending me a free copy of iWork. Not too bad, but I would have rather had Tiger 4 days ago. :(

-Andy.

Damn, I forgot!

Last night, as Mike and I were about to enter the Apple store in Palo Alto, I saw Phil Schiller leaving the store with his purchase. Wow! I was like being in the presence of Apple royalty...

-Andy.

No Tiger For Me (Yet)

Apple appears to have bolloxed my Tiger order, as a result, I didn't get my copy today as I expected to. I received the shipping notice from Apple on Wedesday, with a FedEx tracking number. However, no matter how many times I hit up the FedEx website, no status of my package was produced.

So, I called FedEx today, and they said that this meant that while Apple had submitted the details of the shipment to FedEx, Apple hadn't actually turned over the package to them yet.

Puzzled, I called Apple. The Apple representative assured me that Apple had in fact submitted my package to FedEx, but due the the heavy volume of Tiger shipments, FedEx's system was overloaded. She told me that it was most likely "on the truck", and that I would have it by six o'clock on Friday afternoon.

Well, I checked high and low, and I received no such package.

The Apple person told me that if by some quirk of fate, that I did not receive Tiger on Friday, to call back on Saturday. So, you had better believe that I will be doing that.

It sounded "too good to be true", when I saw that Apple was offering to ship Tiger and have it arrive on the day of release. And I guess that in my case, it was too good to be true.

In other Apple news, I did hit up the Apple store in Palo Alto to see what the launch event was like. I arrived pretty late, after 8:00 PM pacific, but there was still a line outside of the building to get in. The wait was <10 minutes, however. Once inside, Mike and I were handed scratch-off prizes, which could be for free Apple gear, discounts, or free songs from iTunes. Mike got 3 free iTunes downloads, and I got 2 free downloads and a 10% off anything in the store coupon. Of course, there were several caveats to the coupon, the primary ones being that it was one-day-only, and it wasn't good for purchasing Tiger (defeating my plan to buy a copy there, and return the one that I bought online when I got it).

So, since I'm not ready to spend any more money on computers this month, I gave my 10% coupon away, so that someone else could benefit from it.

-Andy.

I ordered Tiger today

I was gladdened this morning to read that Apple has finally announced the release date for MacOS X 10.4, code-named "Tiger". I was planning on just going to the Apple store on release day in order to get my copy, but I saw that Apple.com is offering free shipping, with the OS arriving on release day. Since all I wanted was to have it as soon as possible, ordering online seemed like a decent way to go. Plus, I can get a corporate discount via EDS (which is odd, considering EDS despises anything that isn't Windows), so I ordered it for $107.10. Not a huge savings, but every little bit helps. Especially since I owed the government $120 on for my 2004 taxes.

Now all I have to do is wait for April 29th. It's going to be tough.

-Andy.

Finally!

I finally managed to track down an iPod Shuffle today, at Target in Sunnyvale:

It is tiny and well designed and entirely awesome. But it appears to have given my mac some indigestion for some reason -- I suspect the new 1.1 firmware update. I have reverted back to 1.0, and it appears to be working just fine. I will have to investigate further. It was something of a kick in the pants that Mike was able to get it to work much easier on his Windows XP box than I was on my Mac.

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: Pages

While waiting to get my Keynote 2 question answered, I got a demo of Pages, Apple's new word processor. I had a rather dim view of it after seeing the keynote. Well, let me say this - I came away from the in-person demo much more impressed. During Steve's demo, he emphasized how you could use Apple's templates to make slick looking documents. That's great and all, but templates are usually constraining with their boilerplateness. So, I asked the Apple employee who demo'd Pages to me a series of questions about modifying styles, creating templates, and modifying templates.

And I'm happy to report that it appears to be super-easy to do all of the above. And from what I saw, you shouldn't be fooled by what some in the press are saying -- namely that Microsoft word has nothing to fear from Pages. I would say that MS has a lot to fear. There are some really high-end things that I'm sure that Word does better than Pages. But based upon the kick-ass demo that I saw, Pages may be the first word processor to give Word some competition. Well, other than Word itself, of course. :)

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: Keynote 2

Over the course of the last 6 months, I have been doing a fair amount of PowerPoint at work. I've got the latest and greatest version, PowerPoint 2004 for my mac. So, it is from this perspective that I have taken a renewed interest in Keynote. Well, that, and Apple lowered the price of the new version. So, I asked one of the Apple guys who was demo'ing iWork my all important question: how does the new presenters mode of Keynote 2 facilitate giving demos? By that, I mean what happens when you are giving a presentation, and you want to command-tab over to some other application, in order to show your audience some other bit of information?

In PowerPoint 2004, this is really, really slick. I mean, Microsoft really nailed this feature. When you start a presentation in PowerPoint, it determines if you have two displays. And if you do, it automatically puts you into presenter mode -- where the primary display shows information to the presenter (current slide, next slide, current time, etc.), and the secondary display shows a full-size version of the current slide. But what's even better, is that when you hit command-tab to go to a different application, PowerPoint automatically switches the displays to mirrored display mode. This allows you to see the same thing on the screen that the presenter looks at as the screen that the audience looks at. It makes interacting with other applications a snap for the presenter. Then, when you are done, you command-tab back to PowerPoint, and it automatically un-mirrors the displays, and you can continue with your presentation.

The whole thing works so naturally, that it took me a little bit to realize what PowerPoint was actually doing. I mean, PowerPoint was doing the right thing, automatically, without me having to go in and configure a bunch of options, or fight with some bizarre keystrokes. In short, it was being mac-like.

Anyways, I described all of this to the first Apple employee that I talked to, and he didn't know what Keynote 2 would do in this situation. And he couldn't find out, because his G5 only had one display. The gentleman next to him, however, had a PowerBook with a secondary display. So, I waited in line (quite a while) for him to be free. I'll paraphrase our conversation:

Me: So, when using the new presentation mode of Keynote 2, what happens when you command-tab to some other application?

Apple Guy 2: Why would you want to do that?

Me: You know, for giving demos and stuff. Say I'm giving a presentation about how some application works, and I want to flip back and forth between my slides and the application.

Apple Guy 2: I'm not sure, let's try it.

[At this point, he starts a presentation in Keynote 2, and hits command-tab. Nothing happens]

Apple Guy 2: You can't.

Me (incredulous): What do you mean you can't?

Apple Guy 2: Once you are in presentation mode, the only way out of it is to stop the presentation.

[He notices the dumbfounded expression on my face]

.... Well, maybe this isn't the best way for Keynote to behave....

No kidding! I know it's dumb of me to reject a product simply because it doesn't have one feature or another, but this is a total deal breaker for me. At least, for the presentations that I have been giving, and am likely to be giving in the near future.

Dang.

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: Tiger (Spotlight and Dashboard)

I didn't spend too much time bugging the guy who was doing Tiger demos. I did learn that for photos, Spotlight indexes the metatdata that you see when you do "get info" on an image (like the comments box for example). It looks like Tiger has expanded this, because I noticed a "keywords" box in the get info dialog. I'm not sure if this data is passed around in EXIF, but I suspect that it is. So, because of this, I think that some of the Dashboard demo that Steve did was "smoke and mirrors". Most normal people aren't going to have awesome metadata associated with their pictures and movies, so those things won't show up in Spotlight searches. I grilled the guy, but it doesn't appear as if Apple is providing any awesome way for entering in metadata. At least, the guy that I talked to could only offer up some lame Applescript excuse...

Dashboard appears to be everything that was demoed, however. I think the only problem I'm going to have with it is going to be the with the function key that I bind it too. My powerbook only has two function keys that I don't need to hit Fn for first (F11 and F12). I'm currently using both of those for expose, so I'm going to have to come up with something hip for Dashboard. I quizzed the Apple guy about adding new widgets. He said that since widgets are powerful, that Apple is only going to make it easy to install ones that they have certified. But, it is possible to install non-certified widgets - you just have to drop them into the correct directory, and they'll work. Oh, and the eye candy around this feature is mind blowing. I saw some of it in the keynote, but there is even more that I saw when I was getting the in-depth look today.

They still haven't fixed my biggest beef with Mail. I like to use nicknames for people (like 'dad' for example), and there isn't a clean way to do this in Mail. Also, when you do type the first few letters of someone's name, there is an intolerable lag before it fills in the e-mail address. This still remains in Tiger (although it is much harder to out-type it on a 2.5Ghz G5).

The last thing that I found out is that the upgraded iChat AV in Tiger is backwards-compatible with that in Panther. So, my dad and I won't have to upgrade in lockstep in order to still chat. :)

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: iPhoto 5

I spent my afternoon at Macworld today on the show floor, covering the bits that I didn't see yesterday, and spending a lot of time in the Apple booth. This allowed me to get a more in-depth look at some of the new stuff that Apple announced, including iPhoto 5. In a nutshell, iPhoto 5 seems to offer a couple of nice improvements over iPhoto 4, but all of the major things that suck about iPhoto 4 still suck in iPhoto 5. I was giving the poor Apple employee who was talking to me the business about it, and I got him to admit that some of the things that bugged me about iPhoto 4 bugged him too, and they still weren't fixed.

The "smart albums" still aren't very smart. I somehow got a bunch of low-res thumbnails in my iPhoto, and there was no way to create a smart album based on the resolution of the pictures. And there is still no way to do that in iPhoto 5. In addition, there is still no good way to add metadata to photos. Even worse, it appears as if there is no integration between Spotlight and iPhoto -- so even if you could add metadata easily in iPhoto, Spotlight wouldn't see it. The issues with file names on pictures remain -- when you export photos, you can assign them a filename based on the title. But that will only be relevant if you enter that in first (which, as I have discussed, is a pain in iPhoto).

On the upside, iPhoto 5 can download movies off of the camera. I convinced the guy to try it with my camera (I had my USB cable with me), since he has a similar Sony. During the Keynote, Steve Jobs said that iPhoto 5 supported MPEG 4. But it appears that he meant to say that it supports any movie format that Quicktime does. Because my camera generates MPEG1 movies with MPEG2 layer 3 audio, and iPhoto handled those just fine. You can also eject the removable media right from iPhoto now, although it doesn't eject automatically after export. Sorting the photo library by roll has been improved, in that you can name the rolls now.

So, all-in-all, a disappointment. If I had a camera that could generate RAW images, or if I was into making photo books, I'd be all over this thing. But, that's not where I'm at right now. So, it looks like $80 is going to be a tough sell for me. I think that Apple is going about this iLife pricing thing all wrong. It is right to build the applications so that they work together -- Apple is making clear gains there. But I don't think it is necessary to bundle them together. Since it is $80 for four applications now (iTunes doesn't count because it is free), Apple should just make it $20 per application. In that way, people who only do photos but not video (like me) will be satisfied. And people who do movies but not music will be satisfied, etc. And if you want them all, it's the same price as if Apple bundled them together.

Probably not ever going to happen, but it is worth a thought anyway.

-Andy.

The Mac mini power adapter

The Mac mini has an external power brick, unlike the iMac G5:

Still, not that big of a deal, considering how small the Mac mini is. It would be great if it used the same power supply as the PowerBook/iBook, but oh well.

-Andy.

The Mac mini

The Mac mini, underneath

I flipped one of the Mac mini's that Apple had display over, and got a picture that I haven't seen anywhere else yet:

The bottom appeared to be a solid chunk of metal, with the Apple logo etched into it. Sweet.

-Andy.

The wall of iPod shuffles

Apple has a wall that runs along the side of their booth, devoted to the iPod shuffle:

Me touching an iPod shuffle

Apple has really nailed this product. Again.

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: The Highs

All-in-all, this was a pretty awesome keynote. Even though the rumor sites pretty much spoiled things in terms of the general ideas of what Apple would announce, what Apple delivered was uniformly better then what the rumor sites were predicting. Without further ado, here is my list:

• Spotlight - Desktop search done right. The integration into applications (especially the Finder with Smart Folders [which look super rad]) is what really makes spotlight great.
• Improved Mail.app in Tiger - being able to search all of my mail folders via spotlight is going to save me crazy amounts of time. I could *really* use this at work, however. Maybe I should buy a Mac mini and use it at EDS?
• iChat AV and H.264 - I really want the better codec. I don't see myself doing multiparty video conferences, unless some of my team at EDS gets macs (hint, hint).
• Mac mini - Stupendous. It is smaller (but taller) than what I envisioned. And Apple actually got to the $499 price point. I haven't looked at all of the specs yet, but it looks like it's essentially my laptop in a smaller package. If it had a PCI slot and TV-output, I could use it as my Tivo. And it would look way better than that Shuttle that I just bought.
• iPod shuffle - I was surprised that Apple actually did a flash-based iPod. Basically, because up until now, all flash players have sucked, and I didn't see a way for Apple to make them un-suck. Well, I am quite happy to be proven wrong. Apple has been able to deliver a lot of memory for a cheap price. And, even more importantly, they have licked the UI issues. I played with one on the expo floor, and it is amazing. You hit play, and it immediately starts playing a song. Don't like it? Hit next -- you immediately get a new song. It is really fast. And the audio quality is amazing. Even on the noisy show floor, I could tell that this thing sounds great. And it is so compact. The form factor is also really amazing. I want one. As I have typed this, my want for this product has increased. How does Apple keep doing it? They are taking all other CE vendors to school right now. Creative? Rio? iRiver? Sony? None of them can even touch this. It doesn't make any sense.
• Apple sells 4.5 million iPods in Q4 2004. Quite simply, this was the biggest, most stunning announcement that Steve Jobs made today. With the 1-2 iPod / iTunes music store punch, Apple has blown the roof off of digital music. The numbers that Jobs presented during the keynote are simply astounding.
• More iPod integration with cars - I checked out the Mercedes CLS 500 on the show floor. That looks like a really impressive ride. Is $70k too much to spend on a car?
• iWork only costs $79 - Quite a price savings, since Keynote alone used to cost $100. I don't think that I'm going to buy it (since I have Office 2004, which is pretty sweet). But if I have to deliver a lot more presentations for work, I may start sniffing around Keynote 2.
• Sheet music generation in Garage Band 2 - I don't know what this feature is really called, but watching John Mayer play the piano and having the notes pop on the screen in Garage Band was jaw-droppingly cool.
• Dashboard - the way the widgets flip in and out must be seen to be believed. A really killer feature in Tiger -- I can definitely see myself using this a whole bunch. Apple has addressed a real need in using the computer (getting little sides bits of info fast), and solved it in a beautiful, innovative way.
• New features in iPhoto - while I have already panned the price, it looks like a lot of the improvements in iPhoto 5 are going to be welcome. I didn't get a chance to play with it today (the Apple booth was positively mobbed), but I'll try and get some time with it tomorrow.

All-in-all, a dazzling keynote. I'm really glad that I went. I will try and post some pictures and blog more about some of the other things that I saw at the show later this evening (after I put in a few hours at work).

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: The Lows

Because I'm a pessimist, I'll present my disappointments with the Steve Jobs keynote first:

• Price of iLife '05 raised to $79 - The only app that I want out of there is iPhoto. Paying $50 for it last year was ok, because I wanted to play with Garage Band. But $80? That's a little tougher to swallow.
• No eMac update - Now that we have the Mac mini (which looks awesome), what is the point of the eMac?
• No PowerBook update - Just because the G5 isn't ready for the PowerBook yet, doesn't mean that there is no way for Apple to innovate with the PowerBook line. Here is a list of things that I just brainstormed: biometric security, higher-resolution displays, better audio-out quality, higher capacity batteries, improved Bluetooth, bringing the 12" up to parity with the rest of the PowerBook line, and doing a subnotebook again.
• Still no firm ship date for Tiger - What's up with that?
• iPhoto doesn't appear to have better "tagging" support - Jobs spent a lot of time showing off Spotlight, and how it scan index and search through the metadata attached to photos. Well, currently, adding metadata to photo in iPhoto sucks. And it doesn't appear to be any better in iPhoto 5.
• No .Mac updates - I'm still waiting for the "killer feature" makes me give Apple more money. Blogging is an obvious one to go after -- how can Microsoft be all over it while it isn't even on Apple's radar?
• No 5Gb iPod mini

Most of these are minor quibbles -- the good far outweighed the bad at this year's keynote. And I'll discuss the good in the next post.

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: Skunked

So, I woke up at 5:30 this morning, in order to be sure that I didn't miss a 6:58 AM Caltrain, which put me into S.F. at 7:47 AM, which got me to Moscone before 8. By the time I got my pass, went to the bathroom, and got to the end of the (considerable) keynote line, it was 8:03 AM. The keynote was supposed to start at 9, but it didn't get under way until 9:20ish. So, I was in line over an hour early.

But alas, it was not early enough. It looks like about 1/3 of the people who were waiting were able to make it into the main hall in order to see Steve Jobs deliver the keynote live. The rest of us got to go to the overfill room, to see the keynote on TV. While it was still better then watching a webcast, it isn't what I had hoped for (and I wasn't alone on that front).

If I go again next year, I'll have to up the ante with my approach to the keynote.

-Andy.

MacWorld San Francisco 2005

So, I just bought my pass for MWSF 2005. I'm going to be going to the Steve Jobs keynote on Tuesday morning, and maybe to some user sessions on the 12th or 13th.

I am such an Apple nerd.

-Andy.

More about Delicious Library

So, after my last post about Delicious Library there are a few clarifications that I'd like to make. So, when I talk about posting the content that I add in Library to my blog, I'm not just talking about modifying the XML template that Movable Type uses to render my main blog page. Rather, I'm talking about spinning up a separate blog (a "stuff" blog), and having Delicious Library post directly to that. Then, insofar as I understand, there are ways in which you can integrate multiple blogs into one main page.

Looking at the Delicious Library XML data file, it seems like the main challenges will be harvesting out only the entries that are "new" since the last time the integration was run, and triggering the integration in an automated fashion. I think that the integration is either going to need to keep some local state (date/time of last successful run), or possibly it might be able to examine the state of the blog that it is posting to, in order to figure out which items in Library are new.

In terms of automation, it would be idea if Library had some sort of plugin API. I haven't looked too deeply at it yet, but it doesn't seem like there is one. :(

I am intrigued by Justin's idea -- of making library P2P-aware. There is definitely some fertile development ground there. But right now, I am feeling selfish, and want to work on getting Library integrated with my blog. :)

I read a kick-ass review of Library last night on Ars Technica (John Siracusa is totally awesome). Initially, I was thinking about only buying Library if I could get it integrated with my blog, but now after reading that, I think I'm just going to buy it regardless.

-Andy.

Delicious Library

So, Delicious Monster finally released their first application, "Library", today. I have been reading some hype about this application on the web for a few months now, so I was eager for a chance to check it out. Basically, it is a really slick way of tracking all of the movies, games, CDs, and books that you own in the physical world. The key thing about it is that you can use your iSight (or any other video camera) as a barcode reader, which simplifies that task of getting information about your stuff into the Delicious Library

So, playing around with the demo, I found that while the iSight barcode scanning does work, it is a little finnicky. Reading the FAQ, it seems like once you get the hang of it, scanning barcodes gets much easier. However, in my testing, I could have gone faster just by typing in the UPC #'s. But other than that, it works as advertised.

The only reason that I can see myself paying $40 for this thing is if I can somehow integrate it with my Blog. I have been fascinated with the idea of automating parts of my blog recently. My idea is that, as the physical objects drift into my life, I'll make some digital record of them, which will be tracked in my blog. In that way, other people can see what I'm buying. This could lead to better recommendations of other things that I should check out. And of course, lots of flames about my poor taste in music (Chris and Steve would vote for "Sleater-Kinney", for example). Also, it'll be easier for me to go in and do reviews of things (which I like to do from time-to-time). The ultimate extension of this idea would be if I were to imprint things that I was only thinking about buying. Then my peer group could comment before I commit, and potentially steer me either towards or away from the potential purchase.

As it stands right now, Delicious Library stores all of its data in an XML file. So, I would have to write some code that parses the file, and posts the interesting bits to my blog. The hard part would be in triggering my little machination -- it doesn't look like there is a way to have Delicious Library fire off external commands whenever you add a new item, for example. Maybe the Automator coming in MacOS X 10.4 could help me out here?

-Andy.

Ready for Tiger

I finally took the plunge last week, and bought more RAM for my PowerBook:

And the performance gain that I have gotten from it has been tremendous! I really knew that my computer was swapping a lot when I started playing with Netbeans, but I didn't know how bad until I boosted the ram. Now I have realized that many common operations, like starting a new app after I have been running for awhile, firing up a new Terminal, or even spawning a new tab in Safari were all causing my computer to swap. Things were being so snappy and great, that I was having trouble remembering why I hadn't put a crowbar in the wallet and upgraded earlier.

And then, of course, my beloved mac crashed hard. The mouse pointer froze in place, the clock stopped updating, and the thing wasn't pingable from my FreeBSD machine. Dead.

Many rounds of the Apple Hardware Tester later, I am not able to pinpoint the problem. I am, of course, able to pinpoint why I didn't upgrade my memory earlier -- because I didn't want my main machine to become at all unstable. But now it is, and as loath as I am to admit it, my newfound instability must be due to this new RAM (which I love so much!). Luckily, I spent a few extra bucks and bought the memory from a company that appears to be on the up-and-up, OWC. So, I think I will be calling them soon, to see if there is any way that I can have my cake and eat it too.

-Andy.

The New iMac G5

I went to brunch in Palo Alto this morning with Rushabh & co. Of course, since I was all the way over in Palo Alto, I had to walk over to the Apple store and drool over a new iMac G5. And let's get one thing straight -- this machine is quite drool-worthy. I mean, it is amazing how Apple has been able to cram so much computer in such a tiny space. Well, I guess next to a laptop it isn't so amazing -- but they are using a desktop processor, desktop RAM, and a desktop HD (3.5") for pete's sake. The action on the screen pivot is quite smooth, and the 20" model is much heavier than I expected. I ran several apps, and tried to flex the CPU. The machine was generating some heat out of the vent in the back, but it didn't seem to be too bad.

One odd thing is that I could also feel heat coming out the front of the machine, through the display. My gut tells me that one of the assumptions made in the design of this machine is that the CPU isn't going to be running at 100% for extended periods of time. I wonder would happen if someone were to run SETI@home on an iMac G5 for an extended period of time. It could shorten the life of the machine, and like that whole IBM 75GXP HD fiasco, it might not be covered by the warranty because the consumer is "using the product in a way for which it wasn't designed". Or, maybe not. I'm just speculating here.

One real that did disappoint me, however, is that the demo iMac that Apple had setup in the store had 512Mb of RAM. Apple only ships the iMac with 256Mb of RAM, which is a little low for MacOS X. I think that one of the reasons why the iMac was so snappy was because of the extra RAM. I haven't use 10.3 on a machine with less than 512Mb, but I bet the performance is pretty terrible, especially in something like Photoshop. I think it is quite misleading of Apple to feature more memory in the demo machines than what they ship -- it makes it much harder to evaluate the true performance of what a customer is actually going to take home. And without going into the "About this Mac" screen (or System Profiler), there is no way to know how much RAM the machine has in it. The cards next to the computer talked about the stock configurations that it ships with, not how it is actually configured in the store.

Shame on you, Apple.

(But of course, I still really want one...)

-Andy.

NetNewsWire 2.0: Finally!

So, I am glad that Ranchero Software finally released NetNewsWire 2.0, even if it is only a beta. I bought 1.0.8 about a month after I started blogging, and I was starting to get a little unhappy with it, because the software appeared to be stagnating. But I bought a copy so that I could encourage further development! But, my purchase has paid off, because 2.0 is awesome. It finally supports Atom feeds, which means that I can finally have Chris' blog polled from NetNewsWire. It has a new swanky tabbed interface for viewing HTML articles right in NetNewsWire (which is vastly superior to popping open new Safari windows). Plus, it seems like it is faster at going out and polling for new articles, which is quite welcome.

Those are the new features that have immediately jumped out at me. Well, there is one more thing -- I had numerous beefs with the built in blog editor, but I used it for posting to my blog anyway. In NetNewsWire 2.0, Ranchero has gone ahead and put this feature out of its misery, and removed it from the product. But am I mad?!? Heck no, because they have gone ahead and rolled out a dedicated blogging client, MarsEdit. I've been using it for the last several days, and so far I am pretty happy with it. It is already won me over with how easy it is to paste URLs (much faster than in the old client).

If you have a mac, I definitely recommend checking these two applications out.

-Andy.

PowerBook G4 owners: take note

Apple has a new tech note out, "PowerBook G4: Faint White Spots in Display", the crux of which is that if your PowerBook's serial number falls within a certain range, it qualifies for a free LCD replacement. This is of course, assuming that your PowerBook is exhibiting the "faint white spots" phenomenon. So, I called AppleCare this morning, and the gentleman on the other end of the phone told me that my PowerBook did fall in the affected serial number range, and that my options were to send it to Apple, and they would repair it if they felt that the display was defective, or I could take it to an Apple authorized repair center, which could presumably make the judgment about the display and go from there.

Reading more about this issue on the web, I don't think that my display suffers from the "white spots" problem. I think that the lower-right quadrant of the display is a little dim, but that is all. Basically, I don't think that I'm getting uniform brightness from my display, which sounds like a different (and probably not covered) issue from the white spots. Of course, it could all be in my head....

-Andy.

Airport Express

Finally! After having a fairly lousy time at work, I managed to complete "the trifecta" after I left. First I swung by the comic shop, and picked up "Astonishing X-Men #3" (I'll try and review it once I've had time to read it). Then I swung by Fry's, where I was astonished (no pun intended) to see that they actually had Apple's Airport Express in stock!

So, since I have been wanting one of these, for like ever, I immediately snapped one up. Being able to hold one of these little marvels in my hand really made my day. The level of design and engineering that Apple put into this thing is incredible. And what's even more incredible, I can't think of another company that can even compete with Apple in this space. I just saw a competing product on Gizmodo, from SMC. Not only is the thing ugly, but I'll bet that it's nowhere near as simple to setup. The hardest part of setting up my Airport Express was hooking up the audio cable (because I had to get in behind my receiver -- ug). But once that was accomplished, I literally plugged the thing in, and it appeared in iTunes. I then told iTunes to output to the Airport Express, and hit "play" -- iTunes continued playing the song that I had been listening to with my headphones the night before, only this time, it was coming out of my stereo.

Granted, I do have some more configuration left to do (I want the Airport Express to be client to my pre-existing wireless network, which from what I have read, should be possible).

I was also happy to find that the hybrid audio output jack is standard -- I was able to use a Toslink cable that I bought years ago for my MiniDisc player in order to get digital optical output from my Airport Express to my Yamaha receiver. Too cool.

But I didn't stop there. When I was in Portland last week, Chris and I were talking about Airport Express. He said that he'd be sold on it, if you could do a "double stream". Chris has all of his music on his PowerMac G5, which is upstairs in his office. His stereo, however, is downstairs in the living room. So, he wants to be able to run iTunes on his laptop, and have it stream music from his G5, and then route that out to Airport Express. Since I don't (yet) have a G5, I endeavored to get the Open Source "daapd" server working on my FreeBSD machine. After some hackery (I needed some newer versions of stuff in order to work with iTunes 4.6, and I had to deal with the usual compile/configuration/etc. problems), I managed to get a setup where my PowerBook could play mp3's that physically resided on my FreeBSD machine, via Apple's streaming DAAP protocol.

But then came time for the acid test -- could those same mp3's be heard on my stereo, via Airport Express?

Of course it works! This is Apple, after all! In fact, I didn't even try not playing the audio via Airport Express -- once I gained the ability to see all of the mp3s one redefine in my iTunes, I just hit play, and it worked.

So, there you go Chris, say good bye to another $130 of your hard-earned cash... :)

Thus far, I have only described two great things that I got today. What is the third thing? Well, some CDs that I ordered when I was in Portland showed up in the e-mail. Primary among them, the new EP entitled "H", from NJ-based "Philip's Head". This is the band that Mike and I hang out with whenever we go out east, because his cousin Ben is the drummer. The new disc is pretty good -- to quote Maynard, "I suggest you buy it".

-Andy.

Ethereal on MacOS X

A few weeks ago, I decided to try and compile Ethereal on my mac. I got as far as getting glib-2.x built (which has a lot more funky dependencies than what I remember from the 1.2.x days), but got stuck on the gtk+-2.x build. Specifically, I got stuck trying to make a shared library version of libjpeg. The problem was that MacOS X isn't an ELF system, rather it is Mach-O. Thus, you don't get ".so" files for shared libraries, rather, you get ".dylib" files. And I had no idea what magic incantations that I needed to pass to GCC in order to get these little buggers to poop out.

Fast forward to today, and I noticed that my dad has a copy of O'Reilly's "MacOS X Panther for Unix Geeks" lying around (he bought that, and several other OS X books, in advance of getting his new PowerBook from work). Sniffing around in this book, I found the solution to my problem.

And what was the solution, pray tell? Well, to use the "-dynamiclib" flag on GCC, of course! I ended up running a command like this after compiling the jpeg source (based upon the ar command that the makefile issued in order to make the "libjpeg.a" file):

gcc -dynamiclib -install_name libjpeg.dylib -o libjpeg.dylib <jpeg object files>

And I'm happy to report, much compilation later, I have met with success:

-Andy.

iSight

Happy valentines day to my PowerBook -- my iSight finally arrived today! So, I got home from work (Kevin arrived just at the same time), and while I played with my new iSight, Kevin went back to work.

After getting the thing unboxed, it took me awhile to get the bracket assembled the correct way, including the correct orientation of the FireWire cable. Then I gave my dad a call (he wasn't in front of his AIM client), and we started trying to get the AIM 5.5 <-> iChat AV 2.1 Beta working.

After having it fall flat a number of times, I finally managed to get iChat to tell me that it was having problems connecting to port 3060 on my dad's machine. This was the sort of debugging information that we needed, and it sent my dad SSH'ing over to his Linux box to bang on the firewall.

When that still didn't work, I jumped on my FreeBSD machine, and started running tcpdump. I noticed that not only did my dad not open port 5060, but my side was denying port 5060. So, I banged on my firewall (and my dad got his firewall change correct), and we were rockin'.

The picture quality from my dad's iSight wasn't so great -- I think that Apple includes some custom software on the mac which does some color correction on calibration. But, it did work surprisingly well. Even my mom was impressed (she thought it was going to suck, the last time she saw this technology was when we had QuickCams and CU-SeeMe). Fantastic.

And because I have to keep the moblog going, here is a photo from the iSight:

In order to take the picture, I had to download a 3rd party app -- I couldn't figure out how to take pictures with my iSight using only Apple's software. The software that I used: iStill. Go third parties...

-Andy.