sethbc’s (infrequent) blog…

Well, I suppose I should mention the flurry of announcements that Apple made at WWDC.

First, I’m very pleased with the new hardware. When you apply the ADC Hardware Discount, the prices on the Mac Pro are actually very reasonable. I’m definitely interested in one of the Mac Pros, but only if I get much more into the rails development. I’m really liking the way they do things BTO now. It’s nice that they don’t have multiple configurations. I think the stock one is good enough for most people, and you can go from there!

Second, Leopard rocks. I’m definitely looking forward to playing with it. There were a number of innovations steve mentioned, but what everyone seems to be abuzz about is what he didn’t mention. What were the “Supar Sekrat Features” that he said we couldn’t see? Who knows. I am a little annoyed that they bumped the release date until spring ‘07, however. I think they should be gunning for Vista for real, and vista will have a head start on them when it comes out (unless steve knows something we don’t know).

Finally, I’m pleased to see Apple picking up where OpenDarwin left off. I know they closed their doors, and I know why. Still, its good to see that the code is out there. Certainly the “Open Source” aspect of Apple development is minor when compared to a full project like the Linux kernel. Still, I feel like it was important for the xnu Kernel to be out there. Apple (recently) has been making headway in the super-computing field, and this will only better their foray into that (lucrative) area of computing.

Okay. So i’ve watched like 12 episodes of 24 in like 15 hours. Ridiculous. It really is like crack. I want to go scouring the streets for the remaining DVDs that i don’t have!

Still waiting on my MacBook Pro. Order status says I should be getting it by like the 3rd of March. I BETTER!

Alright. 24 is on soon…and it’s the new season. I gotta get my fix!

Well I decided to check out the WebKit nightlies that are up at http://nightly.webkit.org/builds/ . The nightlies are running spectacular on my 12″ PowerBook.

I’m wondering though, if they are planning on releasing nightlies for the x86 as well.

I’ve been reading some very positive reviews of the MacBook Pro, and I’m really happy with my purchase. Safari on the intel is supposed to be the fastest browser on any platform ever! Maybe I’ll be giving up my Camino in favor of Safari!

Oh, and my MacBook Pro is showing a ship-date of February 15th. That’s encouraging news! Apparently none of the delays associated with the MBP are due to technological concerns, but rather with delays due to supply issues (most notably the Core Duos).

Technorati Tags: MacBook Pro, Apple

I ordered my MacBook Pro mere minutes after it was announced. I’m not showing ship dates yet on mine though (it appears some people are seeing the 15th of february as the preliminary ship date).

I’ll have to check up on it a little later, and hopefully they’ll get that information updated.

I’m a little perplexed as to the removal of the dual layer dvd burner, but that’s pretty much the only gripe i have with it.

Mac World San Francisco today!

Who knows what Steve is going to announce? I can’t even begin to imagine. Is Apple going to release plasmas powered by a computer? Who knows? I guess we’ll see tomorrow!

Can someone explain to me why (pragmatically) we have 92 different DVD-/+R/W formats? It’s so freaking annoying. My old 15 inch powerbook just spits out the DVD+R’s that I’ve got right now!

It looks like Apple did a bunch of things yesterday. They’ve certainly had a busy couple of months!

First, they bumped the PowerMac line to dual-core chips. This is certainly cool, as it definitely gives the PowerMac a major performance boost, but I wonder what the point is? Apple said they’d be releasing the Intel stuff by next year, and I’m more interested in waiting on those. I don’t feel like buying some piece of hardware that has already been deprecated. That being said, this is a major revision of the PowerMac hardware, and I’m sure that the facilities in OS X for multi-core chips will support the x86 chips as well. All this has left me wondering about the performance of the new Intel chips. When they release the new Intel PowerMacs, is it going to be a step backwards? I’m certain that they don’t to do this.

Second, Apple bumped the PowerBook G4 line. The bump doesn’t really affect performance that much, but it brings the PowerBook more in line with the notebook offerings by other companies. My biggest complaint with the PowerBooks has always been with the screen. You’ve got a 29 inch laptop screen that is at 640×480. Okay, so I’m exaggerating, but there was certainly a problem. The other thing Apple did was keep their battery life at about double that of the competition. I’m not sure that its double, but I’ve got to say that by using the new G4’s, the power requirement is definitely lower, and the battery life is supposed to be 5.5 hours now!

Finally, the big announcement that Apple made yesterday was the release of Aperture. This is yet another move by Apple that keeps them at the forefront of the professional media market. Now I’m hardly a professional photographer, and my camera doesn’t even support RAW, so this isn’t all that useful for me right now, but it is definitely promising. I’ve often thought of getting a Digital SLR, simply because I love the ability to control every aspect of the shot. A Digital SLR is certainly not the kind of camera I need over here in Europe (I want something that’s small and easy to carry), but I’d be interested in getting one in a couple of years.

I think Apple has made some really smart moves in the last several months, but I would shy away from buying their computing hardware for the time being. Of course, I already have a PowerBook and I don’t need a desktop over here, so I’m not necessarily talking about myself. I’ll just say that it is definitely a good thing Apple had some not-insignificant hardware bumps in the pipeline and very strong revenue support from the iPod before announcing their shift to Intel. I don’t have any hard numbers right now, but I assume that hardware sales have lagged a little bit as the hardcore Apple fans wait for Intel hardware to emerge. Regardless, it looks like Apple has pulled a complete 180 from their position in the late 90’s, and it looks like things are only getting better.

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I found a great guide for ripping DVDs for the iPod, and Macs in general using H.264 (thanks to Boing-Boing for the link). I haven’t yet ripped anything because I’ve been looking at average times, and it looks like to rip a DVD with full quality will take about 16 hours on the old 1.5 Ghz G4. Does anyone know of some good settings for ripping a DVD? I don’t really care about keeping the file size under 700 megs, because I’m not planning on burning anything on CDs. I suppose my main question is about the interoperability between the iPod and the computer. I don’t want watch movies at 320×240 on my computer. If I fullscreen that movie, the quality is going to be crap. So can I rip a 640×480 movie and watch it on my iPod? Or something of a higher resolution? I’m going to investigate whether iTunes will down-sample the video, or whether the iPod is capable of doing this on its own.

In other news, Apple released a new media-player like iMac. I’m wondering why we’re not seeing a tv card on the new iMac though. It seems like this is a feature that Apple should definitely look into doing. If Apple is really interested in making the Mac the digital hub, and the iPod the portable extension of that hub, this is definitely where things are going. The problem with that of course, is that then the TV studios wouldn’t make as much money on the sales of their TV shows through the iTunes Media Store (after all, it can’t really be called the music store anymore). I think Apple is trying to infuse their hardware sales while most of the apple fans are waiting until the new Intel chips.

Speaking of the new Intel chips, I was looking at the Altivec to SSE migration guide, and it looks like they aren’t going to be releasing the EM64T chips with the macs, because they haven’t even come up with an API for 64-bit x86 programming! Apple, the champion of the 64-bit desktop, appears to be backing off their big 64-bit push. All of the SSE registers are bigger than 32 bits though, so I guess there are still some 64-bit registers available. I still think this is a mistake though. Apple pushed so hard for 64-bit computing, and this platform switch gives them the opportunity to start over with a clean slate. I know Apple wants more gigahertz for their computers, but this shouldn’t be at the expense of other causes they have supported (especially where the EM64T technology is already available). The flip side of this coin is that the regular x86 P4’s are going to be cheaper. I hope Apple decides to drop their prices though. If they do, the recent explosion they’ve seen in the last year will look like a blip on the radar screen.

Technorati Tags: Apple

Well they did release the iPod, but they didn’t add the movie-ripping capability yet. That is going to be the real kicker. I haven’t looked at it much yet, what codec are they using?

Technorati Tags: Apple