I’ve been using my 15″ PowerBook for more than a day now and I’m very happy with it. The large screen is a lot more pleasant to work with than the 12″ screen. The battery life seems about the same as my old 12″, although I haven’t fully re-calibrated the battery yet. I find that it runs a lot cooler than the 12″ and I haven’t heard the fan yet. I barely notice the extra weight and I can still use it comfortably on my lap. The speakers sound a lot better than the 12″.
Macintosh
New 15" PowerBook
I now have my new 15″ PowerBook G4. I didn’t go too far from home all day so I wouldn’t miss UPS, but they finally came after 5PM.
The screen is gorgeous and it’s noticeably faster than my old 12″. I notice that it runs a lot cooler than the 12″. I’m still not used to the keyboard, since it’s set further back than the 12″ keyboard. I do miss the 12″ PowerBook’s small size & weight, but I’ll probably get used to this one quickly.
New PowerBook
I just ordered my new PowerBook G4: a 15″ 1.5 GHz with 80G internal, SuperDrive, and 512M RAM. I’ve been getting annoyed with the 12″ PowerBooks sluggish performance and I found that PowerMax would give me $875 for this one as a trade-in. I’m afraid if I waited much longer, I wouldn’t be able to get anything for it.
I’ve bought two other machines from PowerMax with trade-ins. A few years ago I bought my G4 minitower trading in my original graphite iBook. Last year I bought my 40G iPod trading in my old 10G iPod.
Meet'n'Geek
I went to the Meet’n’Geek event at MacCenter today. They had a few virtual book signings via iChat AV. I bought bought Wil Wheaton‘s “Dancing Barefoot” and The Joy Of Tech, which I had signed by Nitrozac & Snaggy, who were chatting from Vancouver. They signed it on a Wacom pad which was sent to the store to be printed and stuck to the book. I didn’t stay for Wil Wheaton’s signing, which was two hours later.
Here’s the best picture I took with my camera phone.
iPod not moving to Linux anytime soon
In a press release announcing that the Dell DJ is now supported on desktop Linux machines, Lindows CEO Michael Robertson noted that Apple had declined to allow the iPod to work on the operating system. “We talked with Apple Computer about supporting the iPod but they want to keep that a closed system,” said Robertson. “Linux users should seriously consider the Dell DJ if they’re looking for an affordable MP3 Player.” (via MacMinute)
Sometimes Apple makes some really stupid decisions like this one and refusing to support RealPlayer format. Keeping the iPod a closed system is a big mistake and will hurt it in the long run. There’s no good reason to keep the iPod closed; it does nothing to help sales and will not stop any of the competitors. Wider support on other platforms and allowing the iPod to support as many audio formats as possible can only benefit everyone and sell more iPods.
Camino
Since yesterday I’ve been using Camino 0.8b as my default browser. I find it much faster than Safari and it never goes into a spinning beachball for several seconds as Safari often does when I open a page.
Mac vs. PC Cost Comparison
O’Reilly Develper Network has an interesting Mac vs. PC cost comparison.
Their conclusion is that it isn’t possible to get a PC with the same capabilities as the $799 eMac such as video editing for under $1000.
Opera
At first I hated Opera 7.5, but now I’m starting to like it. I’m trying to use it as my default browser because it’s faster than Safari. I found that I could get rid of most of the toolbars & the sidebar to make it less cluttered. The only problem I find is that itms: URLs don’t work even when I specified iTunes as the handler for it.
TinyELF 1.0
My first computer was a COSMAC ELF. Here’s an emulator for OS X.
The ELF was based on RCA’s 1802 processor, a very simple low-power CMOS CPU. It featured 16 general purpose registers (16 bits each) and a very simple clean instruction set: the first 4 bits of each 8 bit opcode specified the operation and the last 4 bits specified the register to use, or in a few cases branch condition or other special instructions. The ELF was programmed via a hex keypad and it was fairly easy to hand-code machine language.
Riddled with security holes?
This techworld article is fucking bullshit; the worst anti-Apple hatchet job I’ve seen in a long time. He should take a look at Windows before he calls Mac OS X “riddled with security holes”.
Apple has released a range of patches for security holes – both old and new – for its Mac OS X operating system, which it advises users to download immediately.
The company is downplaying the issue but one security company at least is concerned that the vulnerabilities could be extremely serious. Secunia has given the five – yes, five – patches a “highly critical” rating and warned that they may allow hijacking, security bypass, data manipulation, privilege escalation, denial of service and system access.
In other words, it makes Microsoft’s current Sasser problems look no more than a nasty nip. The difference of course is that Windows is the vast majority of the market and Macs account for only three percent of operating systems. There isn’t a worm exploiting the holes as yet but the company is strongly advising users to download and install the patches as the OS looks like an easy target at the moment.
Secunia has given the series of patches a “highly critical” rating, which it explained was due to the Apple’s dismissive attitude to one of the holes. Secunia described a vulnerability within AppleFileServer that allows for a buffer overflow as an attempt to “improve the handling of long passwords”, but security specialists @stake warned that it could lead to the full system access.