Category: Apple

MacWhispers writes their dream scenario for WWDC keynote…

1. Steve comes out and immediately begins recapping… millions of iTunes downloads… new iPods have carried sales above 1 Million units… iLife, Switch, and retail have been huge successes in recruiting consumer buyers… but…

2. Things have been a little sluggish in the pro market, he admits… something, believe it or not, Apple is aware of, and has been working on… Let me show you a video…

3. Lights dim… familiar music theme starts… and, surprisingly, a very familiar TV commercial grows into motion on the gigantic screen: the Snail commercial from 1998!

4. Lights come up. Steve says, “You know, I really enjoyed those days, didn’t you? Well, after five years of struggle, I have some good news for all of you, today: Those days are back.”

5. Panther. The first fully 64-bit enabled consumer desktop operating system. Enjoy!

6. What good would a 64-bit operating system be without 64-bit hardware?

7. Introducing the new PPC 970 powered Power Mac G5 and Powerbook G5. Single processor versions available today from the Apple online store. Dual PowerMacs coming in July.

8. One ungodly lovefest/demo follows where Panther is run in all its screaming glory on a dual 2Ghz PPC 970 Power Mac G5… concluding with the biggest smiling Phil Schiller we’ve ever seen running the Photoshop bakeoff of all bakeoffs: the 2.0GHz Dually kicking the butt of a top of the line 3.2Ghz P4 Dell… by a factor of over 2 to 1… **scalding** the Pentium system… Then, just for giggles, Steve suggests that people might want to see the same test with the now available single processor Power Mac. So, Phil runs it again with the single processor G5 and, though it’s a lot closer than with the dually, that PowerMac wins the bakeoff as well, by a convincing margin of about 20%.

9. Steve says he has one more thing he wants to show before closing… the new Power Mac TV commercial. Down go the lights. Up comes the coolest remake of the Snail commercial you’ve ever imagined… “Our apologies to the Pentium 4… but, the Power Macintosh G5…”

Pretty much what my dream keynote would be. We’ll find out here in a couple hours.

A recent article in comp.sys.mac.comm talks about how to change the attribution line in Mail.app (using OS X 10.2.x).

1. Edit /System/Library/Frameworks/Message.framework/Resources/English.lproj/Message.strings in TextEdit.
2. Change REPLY_MESSAGE_PREFIX and REPLY_MESSAGE_24HOUR_PREFIX to whatver
   you want, such as "%%@ said:\n\n"
3. Save your changes

Don’t forget to make a copy of the original file before you start editing things.

There’s actually two different models of base stations. The $199 “broadband” model and a $249 “modem-broadband” model. Note that the “modem-broadband” edition comes with an external antenna jack.

…and I’m still habitually hitting cmd-T to open a new browser tab. Grrrr… Want tabs…

Just got back from the AppleStore opening in Pasadena. Big crowds there and damned if they didn’t have a 12″ PowerBook there already. Knee-jerk impressions: it’s noticably light and the small screen didn’t bug me. Most important, my big hands fit the keyboard pretty well. Still technolusting for the 17″, but I wouldn’t want to drag it around a backpacking trip in Europe.

No mention of this during the keynote, but Apple has also released it’s own packaged version of X11.

X11 for Mac OS X Public Beta is an implementation of the X Window System that makes it possible to run X11-based applications in Mac OS X. Based on the de facto standard for X11 the open source XFree86 project X11 for Mac OS X Public Beta is compatible, fast, and fully integrated with Mac OS X. It includes the full X11R6.6 technology including an X11 window server, Quartz window manager, libraries, and basic utilities such as xterm.

I predict the following will happen during tomorrow’s keynote.

• I’ll drink an ice latte from the nearby Peet’s Coffee
• Steve Jobs will wear something black.
• Something will be announced that will be immediately hailed as genius, moronic, or both.
• FireWire 2 and 802.11g will be talked about, possibly with a product announcement of some sort. Perversely, Steve will get to talk and brag about speed without once mentioning CPU megahertz
• Folks will ultimately be disappointed which will engender another round of genius/moronic/both flaming.

Anyway, I’ll be watching it from the AppleStore at Fashion Island. Say hi if you’re there!

MacEdition reports on the current status of QuarkXpress for Mac OS X.

Publishing professionals who attended a Quark-convened “executive summary” in New York last week are still abuzz over the performance of Quark CEO Fred Ebrahimi, a gentleman whose outbursts make Steve Jobs seem like Captain Kangaroo.

The ostensible topic du jour: the pending integration of Quark Publishing System and Digital Media System within a framework of Microsoft’s .Net and SQL Server technologies. Notably absent from the roadmap: any support for Mac OS X Server.

Indeed, these witnesses attest, audience questions about Mac OS X provoked an Ebrahimi tirade of Old Testament proportions: Quark‰s Dear Leader told his squirming guests that “the Macintosh platform is shrinking,” and that “publishing is dying.” He suggested that anyone dissatisfied with Quark’s Mac commitment should “switch to something else,” although he insisted that making the move to Adobe’s long-Carbonized InDesign package is “committing suicide.”

“Everyone was stunned, and most folks left by noon,” one attendee reported. “It was awful.” Although many of Quark’s hapless visitors were lured to the gathering by a promised demo of XPress for Mac OS X, Quark provided precious few details and no time line.

The implication there is that anyone staying with Quark at this late stage is committing suicide. FWIW, I made the move to InDesign full-time when v2.0 was released and haven’t looked back since.

Hey, I just noticed that the latest Chimera build now opens up a new tab when invoked from NetNewsWire instead of opening up a new window. Cool!