...more recent posts
Even though the rumors were flowing over the weekend I was still stunned at yesterday's news that Apple is dropping IBM (and their G5 processor,) and beginning a 2 year transition to Intel x86 chips.
According to Jobs, IBM couldn't deliver the speed, and more importantly couldn't deliver the speed at low power that Apple needs to make the kind of small form factor very quiet machines it loves to make.
Here are a few of my initial thoughts:
For the average end user this makes little real difference. The Mac experience is primarily the experience of the Mac OS, and that isn't going to change.
Most present applications will run unmodified on the new machines thanks to a software emulation layer. Apple is very good at this sort of thing. Still, it's clear they are hoping that developers will do a little bit of work to recompile their apps to take full advantage of the new architecture. Adobe has announced full support which is very important to the Mac community.
You won't be able to buy OS X and run it on a Dell (or any other generic x86 machine.) The Mac OS X will continue to run exclusively on Apple hardware.
Although they won't be officially supporting it, Apple VP Phil Schiller stated that they won't do anything technical to preclude you from running Windows (or, one presumes, Linux) on the new Apple hardware. This might have some interesting benefits for Apple's "switcher" efforts. Now a windows person can buy a Mac and have the ability to switch back to Windows if they don't like it.
This moves seems to confirm that the Cell processor (variations of which will drive the Sony Playstation III and the new Microsoft XBox,) is not a viable desktop processor (or else, presumably, Apple would have stayed with IBM and that future.)
There could be something more here than meets the eye. It is at least possible that the switch to Intel has something to do with Hollywood and DRM. We know there is DRM in these new Intel chips. So possibly Jobs is trying to work out something like the iTunes music store for movies with Hollywood, and they simply won't do it unless it runs on these Intel chips. This is pure speculation at this point, but maybe something to keep in mind.
I shudder to think of what this is going to do to sales of present Macintosh computers, especially going into the Christmas season when the first of the new machines will be right around the corner (shipping early 2006.)
For me personally this greatly complicates the already complicated decision I need to make regarding my next server. I can't wait for the new machines (which I'd love to do since being able to wipe the Mac OS and install Linux on x86 is exactly the fall back position I would be most happy with.) But do I really want to drop (for me) a huge amount of money on a last generation G5 server? Is that really a machine I will be happy with in 4 or 5 years. My provisional answer is no, which would cause me to just buy an x86 now and run Linux.
But like I said, I don't think this is really a big deal for the average user. The software is going to stay the same. The Mac will still be the Mac even with Intel inside.
Hello again. Long time no blog.
I didn't really plan on taking a hiatus, but sometimes these things happen. I am going to try to resume a normal blogging schedule now. We'll see how it goes.
I've been here, in NYC, but not really getting out much. I have been doing a lot of coding. More on that in following posts.
I am also about to buy a new server and move all the sites from the computer in California to the new server which will be colocated here in NYC. There are some difficult decisions surrounding this purchase, so more on that in following posts as well.
And, lastly, I am also incorporating a company that hopes to use the new system I have just built, plus the new server I am about to buy, to create a business.
This blog will be details and notes from that effort. Probably it will be pretty similar to the stuff I was blogging about before, although hopefully the business quest will give it a little more focus.
I'm trying to get more of that.
Okay, more soon. Nice to be back.
32 hours left...
New BitTorrent 4.0.1 clinet for Linux, Windows, and Mac. (Well, 4.0.1 is new for Mac I'm not totally sure if it's new for the other platforms.)
FAQ: Forty years of Moore's Law.
Today, on Apple's 29th birthday, the latest developmental build of Mac OS X 10.4 - aka Tiger - was declared gold master. That means all development is done and it now goes to the factory to get pressed for distribution. This process usually takes a few weeks, so the April 15th rumors look to be right.
Here's a list of email to SMS gateways that I will probably need some day:
AT&T:Stolen wholesale from the wireless weblog.
AreaCode+Mobile@mobile.att.net
Verizon:
AreaCode+Mobile@vtext.com
Nextel:
AreaCode+Mobile@page.nextel.com
T-Mobile:
AreaCode+Mobile@tmomail.com
Sprint:
AreaCode+Mobile@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Cingular:
1+AreaCode+Mobile@mobile.mycingular.com
AFP548 is a site I just found geared toward Mac OS X Server administrators. The forums are amazingly good.
More annoying Mac boosterism, this time from Paul Graham. Of course I don't find it annoying, and what's more, he's right :-)
All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs. My friend Robert said his whole research group at MIT recently bought themselves Powerbooks. These guys are not the graphic designers and grandmas who were buying Macs at Apple's low point in the mid 1990s. They're about as hardcore OS hackers as you can get....
...If you want to know what ordinary people will be doing with computers in ten years, just walk around the CS department at a good university. Whatever they're doing, you'll be doing.
In the matter of "platforms" this tendency is even more pronounced, because novel software originates with great hackers, and they tend to write it first for whatever computer they personally use. And software sells hardware. Many if not most of the initial sales of the Apple II came from people who bought one to run VisiCalc. And why did Bricklin and Frankston write VisiCalc for the Apple II? Because they personally liked it. They could have chosen any machine to make into a star.
If you want to attract hackers to write software that will sell your hardware, you have to make it something that they themselves use. It's not enough to make it "open." It has to be open and good.
And open and good is what Macs are again, finally.
But this has been clear for a while in terms of Apple. Lately I've noticed that Yahoo! is also beginning to attract a different (although somewhat overlapping) crowd of alpha geek web developers through the same method: being open and good. I wonder if their fortunes will follow similarly?
Drunkenblog interview with Jonathan 'The Wolf' Rentzsch, uber 1337 OS X programmer. Pretty technical but really interesting.
I just love the way really good programmers express themselves. It seems like it is almost always the case that the best of the best are also the most humble.