This is not a tag line!
apple
Blacktree.com is down!
Feb 2nd
Lord, help us! How will I get my Quicksilver fix now? 
And they’re back (albeit sans forums)!
Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford
Jan 24th
One of the best speeches I have heard is now available as a free video download from iTunes! Do yourself a favor: grab it and watch it, you won’t regret it! 
[MacRumors]
Geeking out
Aug 6th
Yet another Apple store opening, yet another limited edition t-shirt! This time, it was Pentagon City. Nice mall, nice store. Had to get up too early though in order to get there to be among the first people lining up. Went there with my friend David who managed to repay his “karmic debt” to Robert (as he himself put it) by managing to get an extra t-shirt for Robert. I also got to meet Barb, one of Robert and David’s co-worker and who’s going to help us with mesquite, though we didn’t really get a chance to talk about the project. We also managed to play a couple of Magic games, which, of course, did nothing to decrease the overall of geekyness of the day. I might add to that if I can muster some energy to work on mesquite before the end of the day, unless, that is, my newly acquired PS2 calls my name! 
Apple has released a multi-button mouse!
Aug 2nd
I’ll be damned! The technology looks cool with the scroller that allows for multi-direction scroll at once, programmable buttons and even squeezability! I need to see/touch/feel one of these Mighty Mice as soon as possible!
The interesting thing now is of course what’s going to happen to trackpads and if the new mouse will be bundled with new macs.
I stopped by the Apple store in Tysons Corner to test the mouse. It’s nice but I couldn’t quite fully test it: I managed to find only one hooked up to a computer (running 10.4.2) but for some reason, they hadn’t installed the driver so I couldn’t figure out just how much pressure is required for the squeeze action or how much you can program the different buttons behavior. Plus, I couldn’t even buy one if I had wanted to: they were sold out! As Robert pointed out in the comments, making it wireless would have made it a no-brainer. As it is, I think I’ll get one, provided I can try out all the functionality first.
Getting back in business
Jul 6th
Since I haven’t posted in a while I figured I would post something light so as to ease myself back in!
Let’s start with a great (though unintentional summary) of how marketing people approach technical problems, courtesy of Overheard in the Office:
Marketing guy: I don’t want you IT guys wasting a lot of time figuring out what’s wrong before you fix it!
More of the same still from Overheard in the Office:
Marketing exec: If we didn’t have to spend so much time telling you our requirements, you could be done with the code already!
Isn’t marketing great?
More seriously, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs called the family of a teen who got murdered by thugs who wanted his iPod. While it’s extremely sad that someone would kill to get an iPod, it says something about the icon status of the little white gadget. The fact that Steve Jobs would call the victim’s parents and not sound phony doing it says a lot more about him and his company. I doubt that anyone would kill to get a Dell DJ (or whatever these things are called) and I doubt even more that Michael Dell would call the parents and sound sincere if that were to happen… In any case, let’s hope we will never have to find out and that Steve Jobs will never have to call someone’s parents in similar conditions ever again.
Let’s conclude this little post with something that had me green with jealousy when I read it: Snowbird’s ski season ended on Monday, as in Monday July 4th!!! Snowbird is a great resort and I haven’t been able to get some real snowboarding this winter (sorry but Pennsylvania/Maryland hills don’t count) so you can imagine how I can feel when I read such reports… Oh well, always next year, right?
From The Inside from the album Meteora by Linkin Park
The end of the world as we know it?
Jun 6th
Well, it happened… Apple-oriented web sites (and others as well) all went crazy over rumors from CNet and Wall Street Journal that Apple would switch to Intel chips. I have to admit that I was far from being convinced and now that it’s been announced, I still have problems believing it!
Superficially, it strikes me as a Real Bad Mistake™ from Apple though, admittedly, it’s too early to tell. For one thing, Apple just announced that they won’t be selling any computers for the next year because who, in their right mind, would buy an Apple computer knowing that it’ll be obsolete in a year (then again, computers always are obsolete by the next year but we’re talking complete architecture change here)… Sure, I’m sure that there are some good deals to be fetched as far as PPC-based Apple computers will go but I doubt that Apple will see much computer sales for next year.
Now, who knows what Apple has planned, but I can see that switch backfiring and backfiring HARD! Apple is a hardware company, they make money from hardware, not software. And anyone who knows anything about computers will tell you that regardless of protections you put on something, given enough incentive, people will find a way to bypass it. How long is it going to take before someone figures out how to run OS X on any PC? Then, how will Apple make money? Selling software that can easily be cracked? Not a chance in hell! Microsoft makes money because they dominate the business side and business users pay for licenses. With Apple, business users will still need to buy an Apple computer so no dice there: if people are not switching now, why would they later? For that matter, I’ve managed to have some people switch to Macs at my office and part of it was the G5 with easy 64-bit computing. Sure OS X was part of it but the deciding factor was the combination of both. I mean, we all like UNIX but for our work, we can just use Linux and keep Windows handy for Office.
The only potential gain I see is getting more performance and I hope that’s not a shortsighted gain. They probably thought long and hard about it and they know more than I do about processors but my personal perception was that the PPC architecture has always been superior and it seems like it has a bright future in multi-core and 64-bit computing. I mean, all next generation consoles are switching to PPC? Heck, it seems like everyone and their brothers is switching to PPC nowadays! Apple only is bucking that trend. Maybe what’s holding up Longhorn is the fact that Microsoft will switch to PPC!
Then it kind of pisses me off to think about all the people who spent efforts optimizing their apps to work on the PPC. Then again, it won’t be the first time or last that hard efforts will go to nought (I know something about that myself).
All in all, what I know for sure, is that OS X better kick Windows’ ass performance-wise now that they can be compared equally. No more excuses! Apple fans have suffered enough through dark performance days getting solace with Altivec, multi-processor systems and 64-bit computing. Hopefully, Intel won’t hit the performance wall they seem to be currently hitting and will solve their problems with their 64-bit chips. Maybe, Apple will manage to make Intel use Altivec (though I am not sure if it’s even technically possible)?
I’m still stunned by the announcement and I sincerely hope that Apple will pull stronger out of whatever will happen. For me, and I suspect for many Apple fans, it’s a little bit as if it was the end of the world as we know it, like Luke going to the dark side! Apple hardware has never used a little-endian processor before and this announcement changes so many things it’s mind-boggling…
Oh, yeah, amid all of this, there are probably other interesting news from WWDC but honestly, right now, who cares that OS X 10.5 will be called Leopard? Or is it a hint at the blazing speed that the OS will offer on Intel hardware?
For a good summary of blog coverage of the pre-keynote rumors, see The Unofficial Apple Weblog (and I concur on urging codepoet to reconsider posting pictures of himself naked!)
As always, John Siracusa provides a nice perspective on the situation with a point of view that I completely share:
If all goes as planned, the Mac platform will be stronger in a couple of years than it is today. (Who knows, maybe Doom 4 will even get decent frame-rates.) I’ll buy a multi-core, multi-CPU x86-64 Mac and I’ll like it because it’ll be fast, good-looking, and it’ll run Mac OS X. But I’ll still think of what might have been…and what someday might be again. Call me a hopeless romantic. I’ll miss the PowerPC.
Geeking out
May 2nd
As you may or may not know (though if you’re reading this blog, you probably know!), Friday was the release of Tiger. Like the dedicated machead fanboy that I am, I went with some friends and lined up in front of the Arlington, VA Apple store. Can you pick me up in the line from these Mac Observer pictures?
To finish the evening as proper geeks, we went and watched the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Quite good, though I cannot judge the movie in reference to the books since I haven’t read them! Made me want to read them though…
All in all, a very enjoyable geeky evening!
New job!
Apr 1st
I have been quiet lately because I had been in the process of finding a new job and had to keep everything hush-hush until the deal was done. I had come in the US in the hope that I would be one step closer to achieving my long time dream: work for Apple. However, ever since I started enjoying writing C++ code at work, I realized that my love for original, beautiful designs was largely overrated. When I received an offer from Microsoft to work on ensuring backwards compatibility of Windows 95 virii in Windows XP, I knew it was an offer I couldn’t resist so much so that I was even willing to take a significant pay cut… I have already given my two-week notice. Wish me luck!
Apparently, Microsoft has been on a hiring spree: Matt Raible also accepted a position at Microsoft!
Happy Birthday, Macintosh!
Jan 24th
Kottke and just about everyone else wishes Apple’s Macintosh a happy 21st birthday by linking to the original unveiling video by Steve Jobs. More at kottke.org.
Mac minis look great…
Jan 17th
… and OS Opinion has an article on the fact that the Mac mini costs significantly less than DIY PC. This is not surprising. I’ve talked about that same subject before. For me, though, what matters when getting a personal computers is not having to deal with the hassle of:
- having to buy the parts
- building it
- having to install a bunch of stuff just to make it work a little better and pray that the computer doesn’t get compromised in the time needed to download all the patches
- having to clean up the mess that eventually takes over and re-install every couple of weeks because the computer is too far gone to work properly anymore
OK, I’m exaggerating but not that much… My time is worth more than the couple hundreds of bucks I’m going to save at purchase. When you buy a Mac, you not only buy a quality product, you also buy peace of mind and you end up saving a lot over the long run in productivity… I just wish Apple would make that clearer to prospective buyers. Buying a PC: penny-wise, pound-foolish.
Sing For The Moment from the album The Eminem Show by Eminem
