Report from the WWDC Floor

/

One of the UNI IT staff is at the WWDC show, and here's what he just sent to us:

I just browsed the iTunes Music Store on a PowerMac running a 3.6 ghz Intel chip. They have several of them set up in the labs here at WWDC.

I wanted to see if I could see Rosetta working so I downloaded Cyberduck and ran it. Either Cyberduck is "universal" (not likely!) or Rosetta is pretty transparent. I couldn't find it in Top.

If you sit down at one of these machines you can see the difference. There is a menu item by the clock that lets you turn hyperthreading on and off. Also, there is a preference pane called "Processor" that allows you to set hyperthreading on or off by default.

This is all very strange. It's even stranger when I think about the fact that after this week, I may not see another Intel based Mac for another year.

So long Big Blue

/

Wow, Cnet is reporting that Apple is moving to Intel CPUs, and will announce it on Monday. I'm surprised, though I know the PowerPC hasn't been scaling like it was supposed to... It's a great move on the desktop, my iMac G5 runs hot and the fans that keep it cool add a great deal of noise. On the other hand, my 1.33Ghz 12" PowerBook is a great little machine, and relatively quiet, even when I'm pushing it to the limit. It gets a little warm on the left palm, but it's quieter than even the Pentium M laptops I've had in the past.

Frustrating Tiger Bug

/

I've encountered my first frustrating Mac OS X 10.4 bug. This bug is driving me nuts at home, where I have three base stations covering my house. When I roam between them, I suddenly lose my connection and have to reestablish it. This better be fixed in 10.4.1 or I may be going back to OS X 10.3 until such time as it is, as it really sucks to be in the middle of an instant message conversation or file transfer and suddenly wind up disconnected. I can also try going back to just one wireless AP to cover my house, but I've had problems getting a solid connection throughout the whole house on one AP before.