And that’s that
Apple’s February 28th keynote is over and they’ve announced only one of the products I was interested in and a couple of products I have zero interest in, and actually find kind of insulting.
The Intel Mac mini has all the stuff I’d hoped for including an optical output and a dual core processor option. It even includes gigE which, while not a requirement, is certainly nice to have. With the included remote control, this is a pretty swanky – albeit expensive – little media computer.
But what’s this speaker contraption all about? Jobs actually used the word “Audiophile” in conjunction with the iPod and this new boom box. Who bloody cares? What does this have to do with computing? I tend to agree with Wozniak that Apple should just spin off an iPod division and stick to making computers and software. And maybe they will. A separate division focussed on producing iPods and accessories might hear my pleas for a hard-drive-based player with more than 60GB! I’ve been asking for this for so long, I’m getting hoarse. And what do they throw at me? A frackin’ CASE. In italian leather, no less!
No tablets, no airports with video, no new laptops and no new iPods. A case?? wtf?
My PowerMac “hitomi” crashed this morning. I think it knew it was gonna be a stupid day and wanted to not have to sit through it.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Computing, Entertainment, Film/Video, Hardware, Software
5 Comments
So are those x86 Macs in any way similar to a regular PC? Will Windows run on them for example (not sure who’d want to do that mind you). Just curious really. My guess is no because otherwise someone would then be able to run the Mac OS on a regular PC.
As for GigE, is that really news (for Mac I mean)? I’m pretty sure the raft of G4s we got at work about 2 years ago all had it.
Posted by bodensatz on 28 February 2006 @ 6pm
Hi Mr. B!
sure they’re similar, but not quite the same. They’re using a different firmware called EFI (as opposed to BIOS) which currently is preventing people from getting them to dual-boot with Windows. Apparently Vista will be able to run on this system. Some people have supposedly gotten Linux running on them, albeit in a crude state.
GigE’s a big deal for their low-end machines. Up until last year, the iMacs still had 100Mbps ethernet. It was a feature of the higher end PowerMacs (starting with the G4s codenamed “Medusa” and “Snakebite”) in 2000.
And people have gotten OS X to run on standard PCs — the main source of information have subsequently taken down their instructions due to fear of getting sued into the dark ages. (try googling for “OSX86 Intel”).
Posted by boolean on 1 March 2006 @ 8am
Hello right back at you, Mr B!
Interesting. We use Yellow Dog on the G4s at work. I’m sure it will be available on the new Intel-Macs soon enough, no? There is also more recently Fedora Core for Macs.
Posted by bodensatz on 2 March 2006 @ 6pm
I’m not sure if we’ll see YDL on the Intel Macs. They were always about providing high performance PowerPC distros so I don’t really see them porting to Intel Mac. Especially since they’ve recently acquired some PowerPC hardware of their own.
Fedora/RedHat is, afaik, not yet working on the Intel Macs though it will soon. They do have a PPC version. So far, I think Gentoo’s the only group with a semi-working port and it’s still very raw.
But seriously, running linux on a mac is like ripping the engine out of a fine automobile and putting in a lawn mower.
Posted by boolean on 2 March 2006 @ 8pm
Yes, it is kinda stoopid. We do it at work simply because G4 + Linux provides a dev env similar to our product, which runs on Linux on PPC.
Posted by bodensatz on 3 March 2006 @ 7am