Apple Archive

Analysts and others are raising questions over Apple Computer's claim that its new Power Mac G5 is the world's fastest personal computer. Articles at News.com, ExtremeTech. Apple is defending their benchmarks. In the meantime, the first reference of how faster the G5 is against the G4s, is available.

I was present at Apple's WWDC yesterday and witnessed one of the historical moments in Apple's history, the introduction of their 64-bit platform. Am I impressed? The answer is complicated. I was happy to see Apple moving on and deliver. But I would have expected nothing less from a 4 billion tech company who had the need to catch up with the "other" platform, the 32-bit PC. You all heard by now what's new in yesterday's press releases and news coverings. But here is a wrap up of the first day of the conference and a commentary on what Apple really announced yesterday, underneath its surrounding distortion field.

"Steve Jobs should take his own advice and sacrifice some profit margin in exchange for some market share. When Apple releases 970-based Macs, they may well be better than their PC counterparts, but Apple's current price structure will drive the masses off to the competition." Read the editorial at MacObserver. C|Net News.com says that Apple is preparing to introduce a new line of machines that are built around IBM's speedy new PowerPC 970 chip, analysts say, a move that won't erase the "gigahertz gap", but should at least narrow the chasm. Elsewhere, Shake 3 is out.

A number of web sites reported that the database that holds the Apple Store data has been accidentally updated (and later its webmaster took down the whole Store website). While the headline in the final rendered web page is still calling it a "G4", the specs are mentioning the following:

Apple resellers are becoming increasingly disgruntled with the product expansion and aggressive pricing of the vendor’s online presence, Apple Store. While a level playing field exists for hardware – allowing resellers to take advantage of face-to-face contact with customers and value-added service levels behind the sale – channel partners are worried about discrepancies appearing in the pricing of some third-party software and peripherals.

Bangkokpost says that the dev tools on Macs are not so great. And there is already a rebuttal article on the subject. Elsewhere, Roz Ho, the general manager of Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, has confirmed that no future versions of Internet Explorer will be released for the Mac. In the meantime, Apple Security Update 2003-06-12 for OS X Server 10.2.6 only is out and available for download.

"Instead of a hot new model, Apple needs a new manufacturing process that will enable it to compete price-wise with Windows. Of course, the G5's release instantly lowers the price on the G4. And those G4 Titaniums are still looking good." Read the editorial at OSOpinion by James Maguire.

eWEEK is reporting that Apple is nearing the release of a new Power Mac known internally as Q37, which will include the new chip. However, Q37 will ship before Apple rolls out a 64-bit version of Panther in September. Instead, the new Power Macs will ship with a special Jaguar build train code-named Smeagol. Smeagol will run on the new chip but won't take advantage of many of its key features, limiting initial performance gains.

In an exclusive two-part interview with SunSpot, Apple Computer's co-founder discusses Steve Jobs and the company's roots. Read the first part here.

TheRegister reports that Motorola boosting its PPC processors by 20 percent. According to the article, "With Apple expected to announce a shift to IBM's 64-bit PowerPC 970 processor in just a few weeks' time, the timing of Motorola's announcement takes on a new relevance." Additionally, iSync 1.1 adds broader phone support, Safari bookmarks while QuickTime 6.3 adds 3GPP, improves iApp support.

"Can I run my business on Macintosh?" David Coursey answers the question in his editorial at C|Net.

Apple.slashdot.org features an interesting question by a reader, asking for a bootable "live" Linux CD for the Mac, the way Knoppix and/or Morphix do it on x86 (one CD with KDE and another one with Gnome, plus apps). I would like to urge Yellow Dog Linux, the premier Linux distro for Macs (review), to build such a version, as it would not only help their product marketing-wise, but given the reluctance found in the majority of "normal" Mac users (as opposed to power users) to re-partition their Macs and try other OSes, it should "push" and introduce these users to Linux in an easy and comfortable way. UPDATE: I put up a poll for you, come in and vote for your favorite Mac Linux distro (vote even in case you don't own a Mac; there is an option for it).

Deal.com has an analysis of the Apple situation and they suggest a restructuring of the company, even if that might mean break up into smaller companies a'la Palm/PalmSource.

Old article, but nevertheless, interesting retro reading for the weekend. The first Unix from Apple, A/UX.