Winds of Change July 2005

Winds of Change

from Mouse Tracks July 2005

written by Charles DeVore

The next OS X is to be called Leopard—because Apple is changing its spots! Yes, that's right (to anyone hiding under a rock for the last three weeks), Apple will be using Intel chips for computer processor chips. The change will start next year and finish up some time in '07. Finally my friends at Intel will happy even though my friends at IBM will be a little sad.

According to Steve Jobs, Intel can provide more performance. The PowerPC gives 15 units per watt of performance, compared to the Intel road map of 70 units per watt.

A new technology called Rosetta (described as a dynamic binary translator) will run our existing PowerPC applications. This program is very lightweight and very fast and is supposed to do a great job without you knowing that it is working.

A: Many reasons, but most likely because IBM promised Steve (Jobs) 3 GHz G5s by last summer and failed to deliver. Yet IBM is making similar 3.2 GHz PPC chips for the Xbox 360. Apple says it believes Intel has the roadmap for the next 10 years. We'll see. This does afford some competition between motherboard chip manufacturers (VIA, etc.) and processor manufacturers (Intel, AMD.)

A: Short answer: No. Long answer: Not without a lot of hacking. OS X is Open Firmware based and Apple's Macs with Intel Inside will be also. Apple could also put custom chips (ASICs) on the motherboard to make running OS X on a generic PC much harder. Time will tell if someone is able to hack OS X onto a generic PC, but if they do, look for the lawyers. Apple makes nice money from selling boxes and stands to only increase their profit margin with this switch.

A: Hard to tell at this point. There was mention of an emulation layer. Until we know how fast it is, etc., I can't speculate. For most applications, emulation will probably be "OK." For some applications, like Photoshop, you'll want a native version.

Q: Will it be hard for developers to make their software work on these new Macs?

A: Most likely not. If a developer's application already compiles with XCODE, then a recompile should work, followed by some changes for the differences in Intel and PPC. As for AltiVec code, I'd guess that is toast.

A: No, not unless you run some form of Windows on your Mac. This is no different than if you ran Virtual PC on your Mac and let the Virtual PC have access to your entire home directory. Nothing changes here. OS X is OS X and is not more virus prone due to a processor change.

A: Jobs says there will be machines available by this time next year, 2006, and by 2007 there will be no Macs shipping with PPC processors.

A: Macintels do not use Open Firmware. What they do use, I am not sure. There will be system calls to replace Open Firmware to query what hardware is available, etc.

Rosetta is designed to translate currently shipping applications that run on a PowerPC with a G3 processor and that are built for Mac OS X.

• Bundled Java applications or Java applications with JNI libraries that can't be translated

What didn't come out in the announcements: It comes down to the hardwired DRM capabilities of the new Intel chips, and DRM is what Steve needs to do to get Hollywood in his pocket. Jobs wants the downloadable movies market like he wanted the music market. DRM will allow Apple to sell movies over the internet and Hollywood will be happy due to the embedded copy protection wired into the chip set.

While we wait for the future...
It's amazing what you forget when working on a project. I was installing a 250Gig hard drive into a mirrored door G4 and could not figure out why I was only getting 130Gig to show up, then realized I was using System 9's format utilities. I knew the controller and bus could handle the size, so I booted up under OS X and formatted it there as the 230Gig it was supposed to show. My next mistake was to try to boot from an OS 9 system on it. Due to the fact that the customer did not need it to be the boot volume, it turned out OK. I could have partitioned it into 120Gig volumes and copied the system over. Then everything would have worked under OS 9. It really is crazy how much has changed in the last five years with hard drive sizes and System upgrades.

Widgets
Tiger has its bugs and I believe most of them live in Dashboard Widgets. Many of the widgets I download have strange things happen to them, such as calculators that don't add correctly. Other people have reported that some widgets just keep taking more RAM after each launch.The weather widget that installs with 10.4 is one of these. My best find for a widget utility is a freeware program that can restart the Widgets bar. With this utility you can turn off a widget and not delete it, then turn it back on later. Widget Manager also allows you to delete widgets you don't want. It's the perfect tool for folks who do not want to poke around in the Library files. I like the widgets, I just think the bugs should get fixed soon.

Problems with third party FireWire hard drives seem to be producing Kernel Panics. Some of the older drives have chip sets that do not conform to current Apple requirements. Many of the vendors who slap in cheap components are of course gone, leaving the problem squarely in your hands. This is a good reminder that your warranty is only good if the vendor is still there to honor it. A good case costs about $80, so moving your IDE hard drive to the new case is about all it takes to be up and running again. I have always tried to get Oxford chip sets in the drives I buy due to the fact that they are committed to FireWire for the long run. Yes, they have had some problems, but they created fixes so you could update your drive and get it running again.

Electric Sheep
One of the really great things about PMUG's Electric Sheep is that discussions on just about every topic are explored. Lately the topics have been digital cameras, lens, and CCDs. Very interesting information; if you're not a member of the Sheep you may want to check it out by coming into the PMUG office on a Tuesday night, someone there can give you a tour.

New Apple Store
As some of you know, Apple has opened another store at Bridgeport Village near Crate and Barrel. We were at the grand opening on Saturday, the 4th of June. I know that some of you are asking why you were not informed of this event. The truth of the matter is, Apple feels it does not have to advertise itself or its openings; they figure others will do it for them. PMUG was not informed by Apple, we got an email from a member (thanks Richard Guerrero) asking us if there was going to be a group from PMUG there. We then posted a notice on the Sheep. Janet and I, along with PMUG members Steve Riggins and Richard Guerrero, all showed up to talk PMUG and pass out older copies of Mouse Tracks. The manager, Dawn Quesenberry, is a fan of user groups so hopefully more communications will happen about these things in the future. This leaves one more store to be opened in Portland later this year. That one will be located in Pioneer Square downtown.

We seem to be the envy of several other cities who have no Apple stores. On that note, please remember your local Mac vendors who have been supplying your Mac products long before Apple ever thought about building stores. Apple tends to forget that these vendors kept them in business during the slow times.

After years of being looked at as the people on "that other platform," Janet and I are humored to find ourselves beings asked by parents of college-bound kids what Macintosh they should be buying their kids. Then they get surprised at the amount of information we ask about what their child's interests are. The answers mean the difference in a low-end iBook for taking notes and doing papers to a high-end PowerBook for creating movies and digital content. There really is a difference, and it's far better to make the right choice now than to under or over buy what's needed.