Category: Apple

Jeez.  I wish I had known that G4 powered iBooks were going to be out this soon.  The only thing holding me back from picking up a G3 iBook earlier this month was the G3 processor part.  The G3 has been out way too long, and now that the G5 is here, it is just a matter of time before G3 support starts fading away.  I guess it always happens like that: settle on a major purchase and the thing that you’ve always wanted becomes available soon afterwards.

The specs look good though: $1099 will get you a G4 800MHz, 256 megs of ram, a 30 gig drive, a 1024×768 12 inch screen and an ATI Radeon 9200 video card.  The 14 inch model tops out at a 1GHz G4, all for under $1500.  I have a feeling that with these new iBooks, Apple is going to bump up its share of the laptop market in the next quarter or two.

I just wish that I could contribute to those numbers…

Go read all the specs and fun stuff at the Apple Store.  Thanks to Mac Central for pointing it out.  On a side note, if anyone is looking to get rid of an older blue & white or black & white G3/G4 tower for a couple hundred bucks, let me know.  I’m dying to run OSX, and my tricked out 8500 just doesn’t cut it.

CNet and MacCentral note that Apple has had over 1 million downloads of iTunes for Windows and over 1 million songs have been purchased at its music store since Thursday.  Of course they’re not really making any money, but buzz is good, and they’re hoping that iTunes + iTumesMS will boost sales of the iPod, which has to have a good bit of markup built in to it.

Hey, at least it’s not a loss-leader.  It’s a break-even-leader.

To quote Erik immediately after installing iTunes for Windows:

Erik: I just installed iTunes for Windows.
Erik: argghh.. needs a restart
Erik: brb.

Well, at least it feels a little like a Windows app….

Frank pointed me to MacMinute’s coverage of the Apple event at the Moscone center in San Francisco.  It looks like us lowly Windows users will be getting iTunes after all.

I really want to know how the did it on a technical level: how hard the port was, if they used XCode and cross-compiled, or if they ported XCode to win32.  What kind of libraries did they have to port over in order to get things to work.  How hard would it be to port other Mac-centric apps (like NetNewsWire!) over to the PC?

I’ll be downloading iTunes for Windows as soon as I can get my hands on a link.  Frank points out a load-balanced download link.  Get ’em while they’re hot!

Talk about a great day!

Update: Russ threw up the first screenshot.  I installed it on my laptop but don’t have many MP3’s on it yet and don’t have connectivity at the moment to buy and download new tunes.  I can’t wait though!

MacCentral:

An Apple retail store will open at Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va., on Thursday, Sept. 4. The grand opening will be from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

El Reg via MacNN:

Mac OS X 10.3, aka Panther, will not be a 64-bit operating system, despite running on a 64-bit processor, the PowerPC 970 aka the G5.

Instead, the next major release of the Mac operating system will be a hybrid, much like version 10.2.7, codenamed ‘Smeagol’, which Apple has running on its pre-production Power Mac G5 machines and with which it will almost certainly ship production units.

If this is anything like the Carbon Finder Fiasco, we’re in for a good one.

Macworld:

MacHack is the annual gathering of Mac developers, coordinated by developers, that descends each year on Dearborn, Mi. It’s a round-the-click geekfest that runs for three days in June. The event’s coordinators have unveiled this year’s planned list technical sessions and papers.

From the MacHack site:

Dates for the 18th annual Conference for Leading Edge Developers have been finalized. MaHack will take place June 19-21. Note, that as is customary, MacHack will start at 12:01 AM on Thursday, in this case June 19, 2003. Get ready and mark your calendars. Expect more information on the conference to start appearing here in the near future.

Brent:

Spymac reports that Mail.app is going metal. It’s a rumor, of course.

Where do I sign the ‘Metal Sucks!’ petition?

Rael notes that OSX 10.2.4 is out.

The Washington Post:

The shadowy, closely-analyzed photo of space shuttle Columbia’s underside was not snapped with cutting-edge military equipment, but by three researchers playing around with an old computer and an ordinary telescope in their free time, officials said Wednesday.

[…]

But contrary to reports last week, the photo was not snapped by one of Starfire’s extraordinarily powerful telescopes, which are designed to spy on enemy satellites and detect incoming missiles.

Instead, it was taken by Starfire Optical Range engineers who, in their free time, had rigged up a device using a commercially available 3 1/2-inch telescope and an 11-year-old Macintosh computer, the researchers said. The telescope was surplus laboratory equipment, kept in a cabinet at the Starfire range.

Thanks to MacSlash for pointing this out, but <rant>SHAME ON THEM for pointing to the printable version rather than the on-screen version.  I think that’s bullshit.  We’re using their resources (information), and they need to pay for it (ads).  I also totally lost any chance of navigation from that story to elsewhere in the site.  The other problem with the printable version is that at first it didn’t seem credible.  It was text on a blank background with a teeny Washington Post logo.  I thought it had been faked.  I checked the URL to see if someone had spoofed the address (washing.tonpost.com or similar), and had to remove the ?language=printer to be sure.</rant>

I need more caffeine!

Congrats to Brent for all his hard work.  He has shipped NetNewsWire 1.0!

All the OSX users in the house should buy it now.

CNet:

In its Xserve server line, Apple added faster 1.33GHz processors. A single-processor server with 256MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory, a 60GB ATA drive and Gigabit Ethernet networking sells for $2,799. A dual 1.33GHz processor model sells for $3,799 and includes 512MB of DDR memory and a 60GB hard drive.

[…]

The Xserve RAID systems introduced Monday feature up to 2.5 terabytes of storage in a 5.25-inch-high rack-mounted system. With standard prices ranging from $6,000 to $11,000, depending on the configuration, Apple says it is offering storage as low as $4 per gigabyte.

As with a lot of Apple’s high end stuff, it’s nice, but too expensive for me.  *Sigh*

nf0:

I solved my computer problem today. I bought a 12″ PowerBook :).

Nice.  Congrats!

Slashdot:

Same old ‘scary cyclops’ quicksilver face. Up to 1.42 Ghz, FireWire 800, 802.11g and entry-level pricing has dropped.

MacNN:

Apple today announced speed-bumped Power Mac G4s, featuring up to dual-1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 processors. The updated Power Macs also feature FireWire 800 and offer internal support for 54Mbps AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth wireless networking. Based on Apple’s Xserve (up to 2MB of DDR Level 3 cache and 333 MHz DDR memory), the new Macs offer up to 21 gigaflops (21 billion floating point operations per second) of performance. The Macs bundle both iLife and QuickBooks for Mac New User Edition. The 1GHz Power Mac G4 ($1,500) and dual-1.25GHz Power Mac G4 ($2,000) are available now, while the dual-1.42GHz Power Mac G4 ($2,700) will be available starting next month.

• single 1GHz G4/133MHz bus/256MB PC2100/60GB/Combo drive/Nvidia GeForce4 MX — $1,500.
• dual-1.25GHz G4/167MHz bus/256MB PC2700/80GB/Combo drive/ATI Radeon 9000 Pro — $2,000
• dual-1.42GHz G4/167MHz bus/512MB PC2700/120GB/SuperDrive/ATI Radeon 9000 Pro — $2,700

Mac Rumors has similar information, announcement of a 20 inch LCD, as well as some discussion on the new hardware.  Mac Rumors also reports that OSX 10.2.4 and iLife are due out soon.

Rael reports in with rumors about a new Apple product possibly called Document:

Potentially the most interesting Apple software software rumour — especially in concert with Keynote — is Document, an MS Word killer.

MacNN reports:

A MacNN reader notes that the Apple Store in Tysons Corner has the 12″ PowerBook in stock.

Hmm.  I’ll have to take a (short) road trip to play with it.

Good stuff from Wi-Fi News:

Get the 911 on 802.11g, especially AirPort Extreme: My book co-author Adam Engst and I have co-written a 3,000-word article on the state of 802.11g equipment including an enormous amount of detail about AirPort Extreme: both the Base Station and the AirPort Extreme Card. This article will be available next week as a downloadable PDF with illustrations and photos, too. (And remember: we launched an Apple AirPort-specific blog earlier this week, too, for all your AirPort needs and questions.)