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news of 2004-02-27
Nokytech.net: PC cases like G5s
Nokytech.net (French) posts some pictures of the Lian-Li beasts.
 
They look quite okay, as you can see.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-27 at 19:14 CET ]
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Quad PowerMacs?
MacDailyNews posts a rumour about quad-processor PowerMac G5s. Their nostalgic take on it doesn't make the rumour very believable, but it would sure kick some ass if we could buy quad processor 2.5 GHz PowerMac G5s anytime soon. The low power consumption of the PPC 970FX would allow Apple to do this in a reasonable computer case (such as the current one).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-27 at 19:04 CET ]
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Good news about the iPod mini
MacWorld.co.uk has a story about the iPod mini overtaking the first generation iPod's sales of 125'000 units in the first quarter. (It's a short article.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-27 at 19:00 CET ]
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Why buy MS Office 2004 :mac?/Why buy office packages at all?
MS Office 98 was a finished product. So was Office 2001. And Office v.X. What do you need Office 2004 for?
Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac does not offer the XML-file formats and -options that Office 2003 for the PC offers. That's one biggie. I would update to 2004 for that, maybe. But as I'm not really working with Office (I only have to have it because of file compatibility with clients), I don't see much reason to upgrade. I'd rather see better stability in another update to Office v.X. That might still happen, but I guess MS will soon enough forget about v.X, because there's 2004 now.
Microsoft has a problem. The problem is: They won't innovate that much in the next five to ten years concerning Office. They haven't innovated much in Office in the past five years. So why buy an office package? The next five years, in my opinion, will show open source alternatives catching up. We'll see an OS X native version of OpenOffice.org in that time frame, I believe, and it will be just as good as MS Office. Or at least good enough if you consider its price.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-27 at 18:48 CET ]
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Some thoughts about notebooks
Early last year, Steve Jobs named the year 2003 the year of the notebook. While this was certainly true for the whole PC industry (the ratio notebook:desktop changed faster in 2003 than in the years before), Apple acted rather against their own words. The PowerMac G5, while certainly needed, took away a lot of the initial momentum Apple was building at MWSF 2003 with the introduction of the 12" and 17" PowerBooks. Apple only updated the PowerBooks once more in 2003 and added the 15" model to the aluminum list. (And the iBooks made the step into the G4 family of processors.)
It's 2004 now for almost two months and Apple's been mum about PowerBooks and iBooks. Well, they did say that a PowerBook G5 would take some time and that they wouldn't expect one before the very end of 2004. With the PowerPC 970FX, however, a 64bit PowerBook has become the focus of many discussions around the web. The question is not if Apple will make one, the question is when it will be released.
The new PPC 970FX consumes 12.3W at 1.4GHz. The new PPC 7447A consumes 20 Watts at a clock speed of 1.42 GHz. So, actually, the G5+ is the processor that's better suited for a professional notebook! We can safely assume that if you run the G5+ at 1.4 or 1.6 GHz, it makes quite a viable notebook processor. Apple can build the machine around it, I'm sure. Whether a 12" PowerBook with the current form factor can hold the beast: I just don't know the exact size of the G5+ compared to the G4 used in PowerBooks now. But I wouldn't mind if Apple replaced the 12" PB with a 13" widescreen one offering 1152*768 pixels.
Now to the when. After yesterday's notice about PB G5s I again contacted my previous sources in the know about future PowerBooks (although they missed the 12" and 17" models in early 2003), and they more or less said that it'd still take a month or two. My take? WWDC 2004. It seems to become the culmination point for Apple this year (Apple won't attend MWBO 2004, it seems...). We'll certainly cover the possibility of a PowerBook G5 in the near future, scrambling through all the information we've already got.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-27 at 17:04 CET ]
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