24th Jun 2003
Gee, Five
Yeehah! I am stoked to see Apple make a couple of key big steps: Panther and G5. No more Motorola incompetence! (MOT: we’ll get around to bumping up the speed, uh, eventually)
I took time yesterday from Flexiphoto to watch the Steve Jobs WWDC keynote.
Rather than endlessly reiterating specs here, I’ll just say “go to the Apple site”.
The Italian site, Macity, has excellent "http://www.macitynet.it/immagini/visitaconnoi/wwdc2003/keynote/">photos of the proceedings, as well as some closeup shots of the G5
Panther looks great! Is it worth the $129 upgrade? I think one way to rationalize it is to consider all of the shareware installs it would take to duplicate some of the 10.3 crumbs:
- iChat AV
- Switch Users
- Expose’
- Redone Finder with searching
- Fast Preview with searching
- IPSec-based VPN
and so on … there are a LOT of new things in 10.3 that are immediately useful.
I already see a use for the Switch Users functionality: make pseudo-users for yourself that represent different types of use (office apps, design, fun), and use SU to flip between (handy if you get enough memory to handle it all). An X11 analog would be virtual login sessions, or something clever with VNC. Panther simply does it well! I’m also looking forward to XCode.
I’m really happy to see the specs on the G5! it’s about time. The gap between cheap Intel hardware and Apple has become huge in the last few years. What would Apple have done if they hadn’t been working with IBM? Offer quad-processors? The case (someone on a Mac site used the phrase “cheese grater”) may take some getting used to. I don’t really care though - my Mac and Linux machines stay under the desk. What happens on the screen, and to my ears, is what really matters. btw, just what are the specs on their sound output, compared to a Sound Blaster Audigy 2? The pricing (especially if you look at the developer’s discount) is very good, for what you get (SATA, USB 2.0, FW 800, and so on …)
Apple has been making some great moves all year (Music Store, Safari, etc.), and so my hopes are up for them. Yes, I still have my eyes on an ASUS P4P800 board for Linux and sometime Windows use, but I also see a G5 in my future.
