Apple will have Intel inside: Jobs makes it official

Following my post about Apple/Intel rumours it’s now possible to confirm that the rumours are true:

Steve Jobs made it official at the keynote to the Apple World Wide Developers Conference today. Apple will be using Intel CPUs starting June 2006, and a complete transition will be done by 2007. Steve confirmed that for the past 5 years, Mac OS X for Intel has been in development, and Steve even did the whole keynote using an Intel-based system. As for Mac apps, Coca apps will require small tweaks; Carbon apps will require more tweaks; Metrowerks apps need to be recompiled using Xcode (version 2.1 was released today). Developers can then create a “universal binary” that can run on both PowerPC and Intel. Apple will also ship Rosetta, which will allow users to run PowerPC apps on Intel Macs. – MacAddict

The move marks a major shift for Apple, which has long relied on PowerPC chips from IBM to drive its computers. To help with the switch, Apple also announced the availability of a Developer Transition Kit, consisting of an Intel-based Mac development system along with preview versions of Apple’s software, which will allow developers to prepare versions of their applications which will run on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs.

“Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor roadmap by far,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It’s been ten years since our transition to the PowerPC, and we think Intel’s technology will help us create the best personal computers for the next ten years.”

“We are thrilled to have the world’s most innovative personal computer company as a customer,” said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel. “Apple helped found the PC industry and throughout the years has been known for fresh ideas and new approaches. We look forward to providing advanced chip technologies, and to collaborating on new initiatives, to help Apple continue to deliver innovative products for years to come.” MacWorld

The move is being seen as a big gamble for Apple strategy, and a boost to Intel at the expense of IBM.

It ends a decade-long relationship between Apple and IBM, which have recently wrangled over supply problems. BBC News Online

So, it’s official. I guess Mac and PC users can both join in on whether Intel chips are the best. What’s next? Would AMD ever get a look in? Is there any way back for IBM? Ironic, that they are making chips for Microsoft now?

What do you think?

Apple / Intel Rumours

“The rumors floating around for the last few weeks that Apple will turn to Intel processors for future systems are now being moved from the rumor column to the confirmed column, according to some news organizations” – InfoWorld.com

Apple and Intel – the history

“Apple has seriously considered switching to Intel at least twice in its history. One previous project code-named Star Trek actually ported Mac OS 7 to Intel based hardware in 1992. Most recently, internal IBM documents noted that Apple considered switching to Intel but felt it would cause too much trouble:” – MacRumors.com

This time?

Apple is about to announce that it is dropping IBM chips in favour of those made by Intel reports suggest.

The first Apple computers with the Intel chips onboard could appear by mid-2006, technology site CNet reported over the weekend.

The move would mark a big change in Apple strategy, and a boost to Intel at the expense of IBM.

Industry watchers are expecting an announcement by Apple on the deal on Monday at a company conference [World Wide Developer’s Conference]. – BBC News Online

Why?

Why would such a deal come about? Supposedly IBM are not making (or refuse to / cannot make) a wide enough set of chips for Apple’s needs.

Additionally, IBM now has the contract to providing PowerPC chips for Microsoft’s imminent Xbox 360 console, Sony’s forthcoming PlayStation 3 game machine and Nintendo’s future game-playing machine. Apple isn’t their biggest customer.

Likely?

Here’s Jim’s opinion:

Well, the media is just going nuts thanks to a rumor started by ‘analysts’ at the Wall Street journal about Apple possibly using Intel chips in upcoming products, and everyone’s just falling all over themselves buzzing about the possibility. Personally I think that anyone in the media that starts talking about such things should be fired for their incompetence, but here’s my take on all of this.
First of all, nowhere in the original article was the word PROCESSOR mentioned. You know, that really big chip that runs the whole show? Last time I checked, Intel made more than just Pentiums, and Apple has used Intel chips in the past in its products. In fact, at this very moment I’m staring at an Apple multi-port Ethernet card removed from a G4 server, and it has Intel chips all over it.

Personal Opinion

I’m a Mac zealot, and the initial thought of this possibly being true initially made me a little uncomfortable…

…then again, what’s the big deal?

If Apple can get better, lower priced chips elsewhere, then why not? The Mac relies on a lot of industry-standard components for its machines now, a far cry from over a decade ago.

If they were about to announce going into partnership with Microsoft to develop future Mac operating systems, that would be something to really worry about. (It’s never gonna happen, right?)

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this isn’t just some elaborate wind-up. Steve Jobs may well make some form of announcement, it may even involve Intel, but it could well be different to what everyone has been rumouring – we know how the mainstream media have messed things up before, and unfortunately on far more important issues.

Rather than repeat everything that has been said thus far, here are some links that might be useful for further reading:

We’ll wait to see what (if anything) Mr Jobs has to say on the matter.

Retro games on display

Speaking of old video games, for those in Melbourne, check out the installation in the Degraves Street subway at Flinders Street station at the moment. It features images of, and actual, Nintendo NES and Game & Watch systems. Plenty of 80s games nostalgia.

Copying iPod to computer

Turns out it is possible to copy songs from an iPod back to a computer. Tony found this article which details how: in summary, you hook up the Pod, and your computer should be able to see a drive containing its contents.

In Windows you’ll need to display Hidden Files. Look for the ipodcontrol/music directory, and copy it back to your hard drive.

On a Mac, do a cp from the command line: cp -R /Volumes/youriPodName/iPod_Control/Music DestinationPath

Dialog inviting me to wipe the iPod clean, since I'm plugging it into a new computerThere’s a catch: Since the iPod isn’t registered on my computer, when I connect, iTunes pipes up to ask me if I want to wipe the Pod. After you’ve replied “Hell, no” the drive doesn’t show up in Explorer. What you have to do is leave that iTunes dialog unanswered while you copy the files.

Once the files are on your hard drive, you can import them back into iTunes, though you’ll find the tracks are stored in a bunch of different directories, and dammit if iTunes makes you add them one directory at a time.

Still, it works, and it means not only can I wipe the Pod and copy everything over again, but in future I don’t have to keep all those tracks on my PC if I need the diskspace.

In other iPod news, Apple is set to offer US$50 gift vouchers to early iPod battery victims.

XP logon screen tells you about unread mail

Okay, this is from the Windows XP logon screen.

XP Logon prompt: 188 unread mail messages

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that I have nearly 200 unread mails, I want to know three things:

After all that messy anti-trust business, surely Windows XP and Office 2003 shouldn’t be so closely coupled as to provide this information on the logon screen.

Who decided providing this on the logon screen would be a good idea? What other surprise supposedly private items might popup for all to see?

How the smeg do I turn this off, while still using the Welcome screen, and preferably leaving Fast User Switching on?

This KB article describes it in more detail. I’ll need to do a little more digging to figure out how to turn it off.

Update 12:45pm. This article describes a registry hack that effectively disables it, by removing the privilege that updates the message count.

7:30pm. Yes, that registry hack seems to work. (And thanks to Wilson, who spotted it before I spotted it).

HDTV PVR: heartbeat

I tried hooking the cards up to the included antenna. Far worse than the bunny ears. Hooking the cards up to the house antenna made things a lot better. Channels nine and seven are 98% strength, two and ten are passable at ~80% strength, and SBS, with just 60%, is unwatchable.

My house antenna is a funny beast. I can’t find it. It doesn’t have a presence on my roofline. I have to go up into the roofspace this weekend to see if its one of those magical in-roofspace antennas, but I don’t think so. There used to be an antenna mount on the back of the house, which you can tell by the holes and lack of paint at that particular spot. I’m thinking a better antennna (or maybe even having an antenna) will improve the reception.

I’ve also got it doing output via the video card to the TV, but it’s not ideal as it stands. The TV software wants to put a grey boarder around the picture, which is fine if you’re watching a monitor, but bites arse if you’re watching a TV. And, not surprisingly, 16:9 doesn’t look that big on my 4:3 TV. Hopefully switching to PVR software like MythTV will help with this.

As for noise, the plan is to have the box in the next room and run cabling through the walls. Quieter. But it will make loading a DVD a pain in the butt.

So, more problem fixing, but given the hardware seems to work, I’m going to start fiddling with the OS next.

HDTV PVR: intial impressions

I use my video purely for timeshifting – watching a show that screens at midnight at a more socialable hour. But the quality leaves a lot to be desired.

My grand plan is to retire the VHS recorder, replacing it with a shiney new digital thingy – a PVR, Personal Video Recorder. Which you can buy off the shelf, one or two grand (AUD). And I would. But, then again, I’m a geek, and that means why buy something when you can build it yourself for twice the price and with the enormous expenditure of your own time?

For example, it would be nice to be able to burn TV onto DVD. And most PVRs have a single tuner – while we all know that TV stations schedule the show you want to watch at the same time as at least one other you want to watch; you can only record one; and, incidentally, you can’t watch the other unless you have another digital receiver like a settop box (I’ve seen ’em for $80 at Safeway). Sure, you could tape one and watch the other, but that doesn’t work so great at midnight when it’s a schoolnight. And most PVRs are Standard Definition, not High Def – and if you’ve had the misforturne of trying to watch a SD signal, you know it doesn’t hold a candle to analogue (I’m not going to take a step back here). The biggest hard drive you’ll find in a PVR is 120Gig, and that’s the super-top-end-gee-whiz unit; most come with 40Gig – which might be fine with SD, but bites when recording HD at 15Gig/hour.

So in general, PVRs suck arse. I’m gonna build my own.

I got the bits last night – bottom end PC, two tuner cards (different brands – for reasons that will become apparent), 200Gig HDD (I figure I’ll upgrade to a decent sized RAID array later). Loaded up Windows (I’m using it to prove the concept, then swapping to Fedora 3 once I know the hardware’s good), dropped in drivers (God, what a nightmare; it seems like it eventually loaded) and hooked the whole setup to a bunny ear antenna.

One card can show me Channel 9. That card isn’t happy about the other channels it found, which was nowhere near what’s out there. They’re called things like “Ch@&&el T#n”.

The other card doesn’t show anything, but found all the channels. I think it found Channel 7 twice.

From the bunny ears I’m getting 75% signal strength.

So, now I can play around with recording SuperNanny and Enterprise, but I don’t think there’s much of a future with the current setup. I’ve got to try slightly more sophisticated antenna technologies. And I’ve got to see if I sucessfully can hook my creaky old TV up to the video card – there are a number of adapters that look promising.

I’ll keep you posted.

Upgrading OEM Nero 6

My new PC came with PowerProducer, which can produce DVDs, as well as an OEM version of Nero 6.0. On Tony’s recommendation I looked at the full version of Nero, but interestingly if you download and install the latest 6.6 version using your OEM licence, it doesn’t provide the MPEG-2 encoder required to produce DVD movies. To get that, you have to buy a key for the non-OEM version.

And before you suggest paying just for the upgrade from OEM to 6.6 non-OEM, it turns out that this special price isn’t available to users in Australia. Okay, so perhaps I could have lied and claimed to be in Europe or North America, but I have a nasty feeling that might lead to credit card complications further down the line. Thankfully the saving over the full version is only a few dollars, and even buying the full version online is heaps cheaper than going and buying a retail box.

So, after buying the full version key and re-installing 6.6, there it was, with DVD movie burning capability, and it seems to be a lot easier to use than the OEM PowerProducer, with a masterfully simple menu system letting you pick what kind of disc you want to burn. Now I can burn DVD movies of the kids’ antics for the family. (What, like I’d be using it for anything else??!) Obviously it lacks the subtleties of a more complicated DVD editing tool, but it’s good enough for me for now.

Don’t Believe The Hype

For iPod owners contemplating purchasing an iTrip, pause a second.

I’ve been unhappy with my iPod battery life pretty much since I purchased it six months ago. Finally I’d had enough and sent it off to Apple support to be checked. It took them three weeks to run a one day test and the test showed it was fine. They sent it back and, $20 later, I had my same iPod that still seemed to have a battery life considerably shorter than the promoted 12 hours.

It was only a few days later I realised what was wrong.

a) I mainly use my iPod in the car to and from work.
b) I use a Griffin iTrip
c) The iTrip FAQ told me ” it uses VERY little power from the iPod and has no real effect on battery life”.

It was believing C that cost me $20 and no iPod for almost a month.

I finally twigged that C may not be correct so I ran my own test.

I kept the volume level the same for each day, set it to shuffle play and did not touch the unit until the battery expired.

Day 1 – iPod, no headphones. Batteries lasted 11.5 hours
Day 2 – iPod with iTrip. Batteries lasted 7.5 hours (No power bars visible for about the last hour so it looked as though it had run out after 6)
Day 3 – iPod with headphones attached. 11 hours.

Now this is very unscientific and a sample size of one but the iTrip reduced my iPod battery life by approx 32% – that seems a lot more than a ‘VERY little’ reduction to me.