Bye bye G3?

Apple pretty much suprised everyone today by announcing new iBooks with the G4 processor! With this announcement, the G3 processor no longer features in any of Apple’s product lines..and is officially obsolete! Despite owning a G3-based iBook, I do welcome the move to G4: after all, sooo many of Apple’s own applications applications built into OS X run so much better with Altivec, so it doesn’t make sense to sell a “crippled” product.

While on the subject of “crippled”, it seems that Apple has FINALLY decided to equip every single one of its Macs, including its base models, with a combo DVD/CDRW drive instead of a pathetic CD-ROM drive. This means that “Burn” button in apps like iTunes and iPhoto will definitely be working in all Macs being sold from now on, Similarly, Apple seems to have finally acknowledged that OS X crawls with 128MB RAM, and has made 256MB minimum in all its machines (except for the new lowest end US$799 1GHz eMac – but heck, it’s so cheap that adding more RAM is a non-issue)

The only problem I forsee is that the iBook G4 is now such a great deal that a lot of people are wondering what reason anyone would go for the more expensive Powerbook line instead? Well, I can think of a couple: monitor spanning, DVI output, Superdrive option, smaller dimensions, lighter weight, more L2 cache on the processor and a more “professional look” (subjective, I know). Apple will need to make these differences really clear to users though, or they might risk the iBook cannibalizing sales of the Powerbook!

Now that the iBook has moved to G4, it’s also possible that we’re not very far away from seeing the G5 in the Powerbook. I guess we’ll know soon enough!

iTunes 4.1 for Windows

When I first got my iBook and started using the Mac OS X, one of the things that got me hooked right away was Apple’s built-in iTunes music jukebox software. Having alternated between Music Match Jukebox, Real Jukebox and WinAMP for many years on my PC, iTunes’ clean and simple interface was a fresh of breath air and a joy to use. So you can only imagine my excitement when Apple released iTunes for Windows yesterday!

Generally, the interface seems to be identical to the OS X version, right down to the “brushed metal” look. Features and Music Store browsing (still can’t buy if you’re not in the U.S yet).

Rendezvous (Apple’s implementation of Zeroconf )music library sharing is really amazing! I enabled sharing in iTunes in my iBook, and right away my music library appears in iTunes in my family members’ PCs! Including playlists! If I shut down my iBook, it will automatically disappear from the other PCs’ iTunes “source” window. This is how sharing resources over a network ought to be! Hopefully it catches on soon.

I can see where Apple might need to improve on for the next version though:

* CPU consumption is low on my AthlonXP 2500+ during music playback, but resizing the window is somewhat sluggish, albeit not intolerably slow. Probably more noticeable on slower PCs though.

* The maximise button doesn’t work like a Windows maximise button. This is consistent with the Mac version, but might annoy some Windows-only users.

* Scrolling in the iTunes Music Store window is somewhat sluggish. I’m not too bothered by that since I can’t buy anything from there anyway.

* Doesn’t play WMA files, even the non-protected ones. While I personally wouldn’t use Microsoft’s ever-changing proprietary music file format to store my music, the reality is that many people have been fooled by the “convenience” of built-in CD ripping to WMA in Windows Media Player (which is built into Windows, of course). Probably Apple’s trying to avoid a support issue, since the iPod, which also happen’s to be the world’s No. 1 portable hard-drive based music player, doesn’t support Microsoft’s WMA (yet, anyway).

* Doesn’t sync to any player other than iPod. Which actually makes sense since Apple would naturally want to promote purchase of their own music player! :>

* It autoloads services for synching with iPod. People who don’t own iPods might mind. There should be an option to easily disable this for people who want to do so.

Nonetheless, considering it is a version 1 release on Windows, iTunes is an excellent piece of software. It is very stable and does what it is supposed to do well. Highly recommended, especially considering it’s a FREE download. Go get it now!

Cool Balls!

After getting tired of my palms sweating all over my oh-so-white iBook, I finally decided to get myself a Speedball. Speedball comprises a pair of cool shiny plastic half-domes which, if you put together, will form what looks like a ball (duh). But seriously, this invented-by-Singaporeans product is not only relatively inexpensive at S$18.90, but it’s also quite useful for increasing convection cooling on a computer notebook and (more importantly for me) also elevates the notebook so that your neck, shoulders and wrists don’t hurt so much after working for a couple of hours. So simple yet so useful!

Inaugural Post!

This is my first post on the blog. I guess the idea is to see just what exactly this output will turn out, and from then on figure out how to integrate it into my (soon-to-be-redesigned) website…heh.