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Archive for November, 2005

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Saturday, November 26th, 2005

When 2005 began, I doubt that many of you expected Apple would announce a switch to Intel processors by the middle of the year. At the time, the new products included a pair of product lines that Apple said it wouldn’t produce: The Mac mini and the iPod shuffle. So you knew from the get-go to expect the unexpected, but did you ever believe that would include a switch to Intel processors?

The news came out of left field, and I scarcely believed the published reports in the mainstream press months later that it was about to happen. Yet when Steve Jobs explained the reasoning, it made perfect sense. Apple had fallen behind the curve with processor performance, particularly the PowerBook, and both Freescale Semiconductor and IBM had failed to deliver the goods. Yes, the rumors that Apple had been doing parallel development of Mac OS X for Intel were true. When Intel CEO Paul Otellini embraced Steve Jobs on the WWDC keynote stage, you could actually believe they had become close friends, though the cynics among you no doubt wonder how long that’ll last.

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Saturday, November 26th, 2005

I have been preaching the frequent backup religion for years, and sometimes people listen to me. Maybe I’m a little more obsessive-compulsive than you, but I actually have two external backup drives. In addition, I will use a DVD or CD for archiving. No, I don’t use bank vaults all that much, but it’s either that or buying a safe. Well, maybe one of these days.

In any case, I like my backups simple. My backups are actually clones of my startup drive, so in the event of a sudden drive failure, I can reboot from one of those drives and not lose more than a few hour’s work. I also do periodic file backups throughout the day, to avoid even that few hours. Over the years, I’ve had to rewrite whole book chapters twice, and it wasn’t fun. Having a root canal may actually be less painful, although it’s a close call.

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Saturday, November 26th, 2005

Whether Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows has less than 90% of the browser market or around 85% depends on which survey you’re looking at. Regardless of which stats are correct, it’s certainly true that both Mac and Windows users have a generous choice of browsers. But I’ll only worry about Macs, as usual.

First, of course, there’s Firefox, the upstart open source browser that’s taken the online world by storm. It’s rolling towards a final 1.5 release, weeks later than expected. The major improvements include automated updates, so you can be alerted when new versions are available without having to check your favorite software update site, or a news release. Other improvements include the ability to drag and drop the order of browser tabs and various and sundry performance enhancements. The version I have is RC3, so there’s work left to be done. I wasn’t able to measure much of a speed boost, but the interface has been cleaned up somewhat and is a bit more Mac like. Yes, the little things do indeed count. However, launch times are still a little on the slow side, at least for the Mac version; I haven’t had a chance to check it out on Windows.

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Saturday, November 26th, 2005

Several weeks after setting up a client with a new (make that refurbished) Mac mini, he phoned and said he needed a monitor. His aging CRT display had begun to show pictures with a green texture. The symptoms would sometimes vanish after a period of time, but that period had grown longer in recent weeks. I’ll avoid the obvious puns here, except to say that this particular client watches dollars very carefully and he didn’t want to spend a bundle.

But he also had some basic requirements, and one was that it should be a digital flat panel display. He also wanted me to keep the price under $200, but when I said that the cheapest flat panels were usually analog only, and that the picture wasn’t as good, he decided he might be willing to spend a bit more if I could find something suitable.

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