September 5th speculation

September 5th 2007, what will Apple show the world? And will the rdf prove strong enough for me to buy it?
I've seen speculation on Apple bringing out a new iPod, or even an new iPod line, based on OS X. Some even speculate that Apple brings out an iPhone without the phone part and the main reason given is that such would both be cool and technically feasible. However, Apple has a tradition of focusing on its customers, instead of focusing on the Apple Geeks that want everything. Just compare the features of an iPhone to a Nokia N95 and see that the N95 is a much better phone feature wise. However, having played briefly with both phones, it's clear that the iPhone is way more attractive than the N95.
Or look at the video iPod. It does pictures really well, but you cannot store them directly onto your iPod. It does video very well, but it only supports one video format. And it does audio very well, but you cannot record on it. And the same goes for the AppleTV. All lack things that to a geek would seem basic functionality, but that most Apple customers don't care about.

So far this year, Apple had special events for both the iPhone and the iMac. Neither the MacBook, the MacBook Pro, nor the iPod were the centre of attention this year. And since the MacBook was refreshed in May and the MacBook Pro in June, it is time for Apple to focus on its iPod business.

Keeping the above in mind, I predict here that Apple will announce

1. New iPods
2. Based on OSX
3. Without WiFi
4. possibly prepackaged with Beatles music
5. New colour on the iPod Shuffle
6. Price drop on the Shuffle

Of course, it's always possible that Apple will astonish us with a very thin 12" sub note book based on flash, but somehow I doubt that.

Zaaf

256 character penny wise license

One of the software products we use at work is ARIS. It is an business modeling suite of tools written in java. To activate it, you have to enter a 256 character license-key. Why would you need a license-key that has more possible combinations than there are atoms in the universe when you have only tens of thousands of licenses sold? A possible answer is that it is incredibly safe.

But is a 256 character license-key more safe than, let's say, a 10 character one? A 10 character key is something you might be able to remember, which with a 256 character key it is virtually impossible to do. So that means it is safer to use right? Well, a 10 character key can be typed into the license-key registration box by hand. For the 256 character key you'd need either a highly accomplished and very unimaginative touch typist, or use cut-and-paste. And when using cut-and-paste, it means that you've already stored the key electronically, so it is easily swapped with co-workers. This really diminishes the value of the license-key since you now need only one instead of many. It really feels penny wise and pound foolish.

Zaaf

Mac Pro even screams Rosetta

Rosetta, named after the famous Stone of Rosetta, is the emulation layer that allows applications written for the PowerPC architecture to run on an intel processor. And every emulation layer is more code to process for the processor, so most of the time the emulated program runs slower than the native program.

However, on switching from a 1.42GHz DP PowerPC PowerMac, to a Quad-core 2.66GHz intel Mac Pro, the rosetta applications run noticeably faster on the Mac Pro than on the PowerMac. In fact, I would even say that their performance is screaming. (Now I know what Steve Jobs meant when he said that the Intel macs are 'screamers').

Zaaf

Mac Pro screams the sound of silence

Last night, I was working on transferring some data from my Powermac to my new Mac Pro, so both my computers were on. And only when I shutdown my Powermac to see if all was transferred correctly, I was engulfed by this quiet sensation, which washed over me like a warm blanket. This new Mac is so much quieter than the previous one, it is unbelievable.

Zaaf

Mac Pro: Here and back again

Friday morning I finally received the phone call that my Mac Pro is ready. I spent most of the afternoon remodelling the desk to fit the Mac Pro. To make it fit I had to mount the shelf above it after the Mac Pro is mounted on the desk. This means that I have to unmount the shelf when I have to move the Mac Pro. Next to the computer is a new 23" Cinema display. Because a bigger computer needs a bigger screen and since I was in a spending mood I threw caution into the wind and decided to replace my new 20" Cinema display.

After finally fitting and connecting everything I fired up my brand-new computer. I was greeted by the Tiger intro and the setup wizard which asked me to pair my bluetooth mouse and keyboard. After entering my Apple / iTunes ID, most of my personal details were filled in. Next it asked whether I wanted to transfer information from my previous mac. I booted the PowerMac, as per instructions, into Target FireWire mode and connected the two together. The setup wizard found all my accounts and asked me what I wanted to transfer. Selecting everything, it seemingly went ahead to transfer information. Hereupon I went downstairs to provide lunch for the kids. After lunch I went back to check, only to see that the Mac Pro had gone asleep without tranfering anything. Mmm. Having tried it one more time I just booted into the new admin account to take care of things manually. Here the Migration Assistant worked well. All four accounts were set up correctly and e-mail et cetera worked flawlessly.

However, I noticed that somehow too much PowerPC architecture information was transferred to the intel Mac Pro. After rebooting twice, it stopped working. So I did an Archive-and-Install from the setup disks. The installer showed that there were too many kernel extentions without intel code in them. And after a few more hours, it died on me too. While going through the errors, I noticed that I had only 2GB RAM available where I had bought 4. System profiler told me that there was only one module installed. But when I looked at the memory there where two banks inserted, only the faulty one had a big red marker dot on it. By this time it was 2 'o clock at night so I called it a day.

The next morning I was awoken at seven by our lovely kids. Seeing this as a good sign, I decided to install Tiger from scratch, apply all updates and sent it back to the store to have them look at the memory. The store opened at 10, so there was plenty of time to do it. At the store, they immediately swapped both memory banks for new ones, tested them and handed me the computer back. There techician told me that since a Mac Pro is supposed to have two equal banks of memory side by side, the source of my problems could well lay in the fact that one of the banks was faulty. Well, we'll see.

However, we had already decided to spend the weekend at my in-laws so, here I am, somewhere in the middle of nowhere with a powerful Mac Pro in the back of my car dying for a change to get back home to re-create the mess I had on my PowerMac. The only consolations I have are that the weather is nice and warm and that my father-in-law has broadband internet and an Apple eMac which I'm now using.

Zaaf

Mac Pro is on its way

When seeing that the special Apple event of last Tuesday did not yield anything about Mac Pros, I decided to order one. It is due later this week. All I need to do now is to prepare the computer corner in my home-office and prepare the data on my Powermac for transfer to the Mac Pro.

Currently my desk houses a Powermac and it just fits on the desk, under the shelf above it. The Mac Pro is, with its 51 cm in height, almost 9 centimeters taller than the Powermac and it will not fit. So some remodelling needs to be done there.

In the three years of its life, my Powermac acquired a lot of applications. Most of them I do not need and some of them I've never used. Moving towards a new computer is a nice moment to do some belated spring-cleaning. And since the Powermac uses ATA-100 drives and the Mac Pro uses S-ATA drives, I can't just put the drives of the old computer into the new one. So we'll see how it will go.

Zaaf

Roman Catholic Church bad for gene-pool

In medieval times celibacy was introduced into the Roman Catholic church. The main reason was to keep the riches aquired by the church, in the church. Otherwise it would be inherited by the children of the bishops and cardinals and the like. Preventing them to get children made sure that the riches of the church were kept intact.

A side-effect of this was that the Roman Catholic church made sure that a lot of smart people could not spread their genes, thus preventing the population of the whole of western Europe to become smarter. Of course this unintended effect helped the church in staying on top of the population. By telling The People to do what the Church wanted the Church needed The People needed to be kept stupid. Celibacy was a means to more than one end.

Zaaf

From A to B

Cars are weird things. After spending quite some time in our car during the past three weeks, I've come to the conclusion that cars are overengineered. The killer application of a car is of course bringing a person from A to B. Why is it then that it takes 1100 kilograms to move 80 kg? This feels overly complex, a bicycle of 20 kg performs the same function only you have to put in some effort yourself. So to remove the effort and add some comfort like a roof, 1000 kg is needed. If this would be halved, then a lot would be gained. The car would most likely be smaller, so it it would take up much less parking space. Because of it light weight it would have less impact on the infrastructure. And since a lot of energy is taken up into accelerating a lighter car would be much more fuel efficient, thus greatly decreasing its carbon footprint.

The things you think about when camping,

Zaaf