Report from the WWDC Floor

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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

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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.

Gift Ideas

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Since my 29th birthday is rapidly approaching, I'm going to take this opportunity to say that I'd like the set of grey rubber floormats from WeatherTech for our 1998 Ford Windstar, as well as their racksack for the luggage rack. If it asks, no, we don't have any entertainment system installed. Also, stuff from my Amazon wishlist, especially the Freaks and Geeks DVD set is appreciated, and there's always the cool stuff on my ThinkGeek wishlist as well.