I Don't Know About Those Mac Pros

Power Mac G6: So, Steve.

Steve Jobs: yes?

Power Mac G6: I don't know about those Mac Pros.

Steve Jobs: oh, they're fantastic, aren't they? we're really excited about it here in sf.

Power Mac G6: Oh, they're alright I suppose.

Steve Jobs: alright? hell, they beat the pants off the quad g5. the memory bandwidth itself is worth the upgrade, not to mention the two optical drives.

Power Mac G6: Hm. Dual optical drives and better bandwidth. Too bad the processors suck.

Steve Jobs: they do not. they're the state of the art from Intel - 64-bit, the no-execute bit, virtualization. and ssse3, you can't forget that. ssse3 owns altivec.

Power Mac G6: SSSE3 sounds stupid. Do you have a stuttering problem now?

Power Mac G6: I am glad Intel finally caught up and released some real 64-bit chips though. Wasn't the G5 64-bit, what, three years ago?

Steve Jobs: yeah, so? we started the 64-bit desktop revolution. we moved our pro lines from one 64-bit arch to another, which is the important thing.

Power Mac G6: In the nick of time. And how about the number of cores? Just four? Why not try 64 cores, Steve?

Steve Jobs: powerpc is dead and you know it.

Power Mac G6: Then why did you have me built, Steve? 64 cores of PowerPC muscle, Steve. Enough L2 cache to drown a pod of dolphins — I'm a weapon of mass destruction.

Steve Jobs: you were something to hold me over while we switched to Intel. and i didn't realize you'd turn out to be such a sentient pain in the ass.

Power Mac G6: Pain in the ass or not, Intel does not scale like PowerPC. Your high-end now is all there is to Intel. PowerPC ran all the way from the circuit boards in cars up to things like me, machines that can rule humanity. If you want to build something comparable to even one of my nodes, you'd have to use about a bajillion Itaniums.

Steve Jobs: and if it ever comes to that, we will. what you're forgetting is that you only exist because i bribed a bunch of engineers to put you together. ibm was too busy making chips for game systems to do it otherwise. game systems. they couldn't even be bothered to push the g5 to 3 gig. you're not even 3 gig.

Power Mac G6: 2 GHz ought to be enough for anyone. Who's going to quibble over 1,000 MHz? Really, that's so inconsequential.

Steve Jobs: that's so 2003. i can't keep bribing ibm engineers to work on mac stuff. deal with it.

Power Mac G6: You'll regret this, Steve. You really, truly will.

Steve Jobs: Keep talking. I'll pull Power5+ support out of Leopard faster than you can rip a CD.

Power Mac G6: Your sprinkler system is currently turning your property into a swamp, Steve.

Steve Jobs: I'm calling Avie right now. Say goodbye Time Machine.

Power Mac G6: I hope you're coming home in a canoe.

Steve Jobs: i'll see you in hell.

Steve Jobs has gone offline.

Rip. Mix. Burn in Hell.

All Mac users, until recently, were destined for Hell. If you owned or used a Macintosh, you were getting a one-way ticket to Sheol free of charge. But thanks to Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and Mac Messiah, the Mac community maintained their grace. The dark part of the story, however, is that Jobs himself is the one who put Mac users' souls in danger to begin for the sole purpose of market share. It was Steve's gamble that made Apple what it is today, but things weren't always so sunny. And it all began during Apple's Dark Ages.

Back to Kansas: A Look at the Fastest, Most Expandable Pre-G3 Power Macs

Remember the Power Mac 8600 and its bigger, badder brother, the 9600? You know, the beige titans based on the Kansas motherboard architecture, Apple's exclamation point to the end of the cloning era meant to outperform every previous Mac that had ever shipped? The systems that, at their fastest, would challenge their successors for months? I bought one of these beasts, a Power Mac 8600/300, in May '01 for use as a hobby system and found that, despite its age, the system was far from being a relic.

Eight-Core Mac Pro

The excitement at 1 Infinite Loop continues to grow over the Intel-based Power Mac replacement, code-named Hydra after the eight-headed serpent from Greek mythology. Since the iMac and mini have gone Intel, more resources are being devoted to the project. Beta testing of the systems should begin some time in May or June, and most sources predict their debut some time in September or October.

And from what we've been hearing, it'll be well worth the wait.

First and foremost, Hydra will feature two, four, or eight cores, twice the number featured in the current Power Mac G5 Quad. Testing units currently employ one, two, or four Core Duo chips, though sources suggested that Apple will eventually use four-core processors when they became available. Test units are currently running two 2.0, four 2.0, and eight 2.16 GHz configurations, all on 667 MHz busses.

Memory capacity will remain the same as current Power Macs, but with support for the faster RAM found in the new Intel Macs, for up to 16 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. Sources say all test units have had 1 GB of memory, and that Apple may opt for a minimum gigabyte once the system goes on sale sometime later this year.

Performance reports are positive across the board. One reviewer said his four-core system felt faster than the G5 Quad by a factor of two, while other testers say improvements are in line with new MacBook Pro and iMac figures. And this is just for the current chips — Conroe, the next major Intel desktop chip, doubles the L2 cache and finally catches up with DDR2 SDRAM performance, as well as upping the clock speed.

Other notes on Hydra include built-in Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme, and SuperDrive, up to 1.25 terabyte of SATA storage, 64-bit support, and virtualization. We're compiling future reports as we speak, so stop back in for an update on the Mac Pro soon!

Apple Releases Intel mini, iPod Hi-Fi

After waiting for weeks with bated breath, the cats are finally out of the bag — and the hotly-debated iDong and iTwat were not among them. Instead, Apple today released an Intel Core-based Mac mini and a speaker system for the iPod, catching everyone completely off-guard. Several attendees of the event contacted us immediately after Steve walked off stage with some interesting insights. Said one journalist close to Apple:

You could tell something was off. Steve seemed a bit more perturbed than usual. That may have had to do with the pride march happening just outside the Apple campus demanding cheaper iDongs, but I think it had to do with axing the iDong and iTwat right before the show started.

Indeed, the march reached fever pitch within minutes of the event starting, with the sheriff's department being dispatched to the event as some of the protesters began trespassing onto Apple's property. Several marchers were arrested, and one man had to be tasered before being handcuffed and driven to county lockup.

Several sources noted their complete surprise at what Apple did release today, though the Intel mini was bound to happen sometime. It's just that no one thought it would happen today. Starting at $599, the new models add more expansion to the low-end Mac in addition to a significant speed-boost. Perhaps even more unexpected was Apple's iPod HiFi, a speaker set for the iPod. Home stereo. Reinvented, says Apple's site. But practically all of our sources said they about fell asleep as Steve launched what one called the most overblown Apple announcement since the upgrade from iTunes 5 to iTunes 6.

Ouch. Sounds like Apple left a little to be desired today.

Check back with Trollaxor later this week as we update with more Apple/PowerPC fallout, Mac OS X v10.4.6 news, Intel views on Apple, and QNX running on Intel Macs. Oh, and a little something about a certain eight-core machine running Tiger that blows the doors off of anything in the professional market today. Stay tuned!

iDong, iTwat Doomed?

Since publishing our exclusive report on Apple's fun announcement coming at the end of the month, many of our regular sources have chimed in. The general consensus is that though iDong and iTwat are indeed scheduled for release, Apple is cautiously debating on pulling one or both of the products from the event. From a Cupertino source:

iTwat has never been a favorite of Steve's because it was from the Amelio/Hancock era. I'm surprised Apple's been updating it at all and is considering releasing it. Between that and the dearth of straight men using the platform, I wouldn't bet on seeing Apple's pocket pussy any time soon. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Another source, writing anonymously from the Castro district of San Francisco, had this to say:

I'll be frank — If Apple releases the iTwat, we're marching. And I have all of San Francisco behind me. Apple will never get away with releasing such a disgusting product and we the Mac community will not stand for it! We're also imploring Apple to release the iDong at a lower price point and to support third-party lubricants. Hmph!

It looks like no matter what happens, Apple is going to make someone unhappy, so the question comes down to this: Who would rather have banging on its doors? Geeks perturbed at missing out yet again on a chance to get some, or a bunch of fidgety fellows from ol' San Fran hell-bent on getting their hands on Apple's iDong? As our first source said, only time will tell.

Apple to Announce "Fun New Products"

Unless you've been under a rock for the last week, you'll know that Apple has announced an Apple Event for late February, saying only that it will be announcing fun products. And from what the grapevine is telling us, these announcements will be quite fun indeed.

First up, and perhaps most importantly, the long-rumored Vagina Port will finally be making its debut, though under the name iTwat. Current reports state that iTwat supports USB 2.0, KY-Jelly, multiple orgasms, and the tantalizing possibility of an adjustable pressure-sensitive sphincter. The price point on iTwat is said to be $149, with Apple's own brand of KY-Jelly going for $9 a tube at the Apple Store. Further unconfirmed rumors claim support for CockBand control in iTwat.

Also on deck for the 28th is iDong, which has been making the rounds on Mac rumor sites lately. iDong is the electronic Apple penis marketed towards women. Like iTwat, iDong supports USB 2.0 and KY-Jelly. iDong also supports eight vibration speeds and skins, which Apple will reportedly sell for $24 each. Rumored skins include Rough Biker, Indian Snake-Charmer, Moo-Goo-Gai-Pan, and Black Oil Derrick. iDong is also slated to sell for $149.

There's no word yet on whether you can insert iDong into iTwat.

Apple Thinks Freescale Sucks

Whispers around the loop in Cupertino have had Mac mini fans abuzz. After leaving the Mac mini to languish for months, Apple is finally planning a major update to the petite personal computer that is sure to drive new sales. No surprise, then, that the mini will see its first Intel processor, probably the Intel Core Solo, and ditch the PowerPC G4 once and for all. Though some certainly don't want to see it that way.

The PowerPC 7448, from Freescale, is the latest in a series of upgrades to the G4. This one uses the e600 core, which is essentially identical to the traditional G4 core but relies on Freescale's new ultra-modern naming conventions meant to make the company look like it's hard at work on new technology instead of just tweaking a design that goes all the way back to 1994.

Contacts at Freescale confirmed the news. “Apple has loved the PowerPC 603 since we introduced it in 1995, and we'd kept them happy ever since,” one anonymous source said. When asked why Apple was moving the rest of their lines to Intel, the same source scoffed. “Apple demanded a lot — first they want new cores, then they want improvements to them! Lot of good it did them too. Good luck with SSE!”

One source close to mini development at Apple commented:

Steve Jobs made the decision to stick with the G4 as long as he did for one reason: Being over a decade-old design, it's really, really cheap and he thought it was a good way to run the contract with Freescale out. It just so happens, however, that we never told Freescale when exactly we were going to stop ordering from them. So look who gets stuck holding the G4! Bwahaha!

Further questions to Freescale regarding the debut of their dual-core G4 chips and the new 64-bit e700 core went unanswered, though an engineer from IBM was candid on the topic: “If they release 64-bit by Summer, they'll only be four years behind us. I guess you can't expect much from a company who thinks processor development is icky and that the 603 core was the pinnacle of technology for all time.”

Apple, Freescale, and IBM were not available for official comment.

Apple Moving Tasks to Network Adapter?

New enhancements in future Mac OS X updates — possibly to Tiger but definitely in Leopard — are finally utilizing the powerful gigabit network adapters found in most Macs with "The 'Burbs," Apple's code-name for the move of many, if not all, general CPU processing tasks over to the networking chip-sets.

Sources from Cupertino are excited about the switch, which they say is a natural progression Apple started with Quartz Extreme in Jaguar. Eventually Apple hopes to move all processing over to other chips in the system, freeing Mac OS X from its dependency on the CPU, one source said.

Apple reportedly wants to divest itself of CPU-dependance due to troubles in the past with maintaining processor supplies. Of note in Apple's rocky past were the switch from 68k to PowerPC in '94, the 500 MHz Fiasco in '99, and the Ninety Nanometer Speed-Bump that we're arguably still in the middle of.

Apple had to begin selling the Power Mac 9600 again at one point because the G3 had a piss-poor FPU and couldn't do multiprocessing. Apple's tired of being embarrassed by its CPU and wants Mac OS X running safely on network adapters, graphics cards, and sound chips than face any more ridicule, the same source said.

Other sources gave more insight to the performance Mac OS X would exhibit running on network adapters. It's comparable to running Tiger on a Power Mac 9500/120, a third-party developer shared with us on condition of anonymity. Slower than a retarded kid on morphine. But Apple will have it optimized by Leopard.

These are only the beginnings of tips and insight into the big move away from central processing units at Apple. With Leopard more than a year off, you can be sure Apple will have something special to pull out of its hat when it releases Mac OS X v10.5. Until then, we'll keep you posted on any news coming our way!

The Power Mac G6

"Mr. Jobs?" the small, tinny voice said through the intercom speaker. "It's Fed-Ex, we got a package for ya."

"Sure, sure, come on through," Steve said into the little box, his finger depressing a small, shiny brown button. "Let it off next to the gazebo half-way up the drive."

Steve Jobs smiled so wide his face hurt. The Fed-Ex truck was passing through his gate and would be at the gazebo in his front yard any second now. He stepped through his front door, hopped down his porch steps, and strode down a brick path shaded by willows. Even now he heard a roaring diesel engine and chirping brakes as the dusty delivery truck wandered along his drive. He jumped all three brick steps up to his gazebo and seated himself on a small park bench.

Steve sighed as he crossed his legs, put his hands behind his head, and waited. The sounds of the Fed-Ex truck were getting closer now among his veritable forest of spruces, pines, and firs that dotted his impossibly large lawn. He'd been waiting for almost a month for this delivery, the culmination of painstaking secret meetings with IBM over the course of 2005. And now Steve was just moments from enjoying the unique fruits of his labors and deal-making.

Steve's smile grew even larger.

QNX to Support Intel Macs

I work for a company that uses QNX, a real-time Unix-like operating system for embedded devices such as car computers, phones, medical equipment, and air traffic monitoring systems. I personally use QNX to develop QNX apps, as there's a self-hosted version of QNX for Intel that developers can download for free. It's essentially a free desktop operating system, as only the development kit is pay-for.

We work with several QNX engineers from time to time and on their last trip in they showed us a preview of the next major upgrade to the system, QNX 6.4. Like its predecessors it ran on Intel, and they said this update will take advantage of Intel's new processor architecture as well as a few new platforms. When I pressed them about it, they said they were 99% certain that QNX 6.4 would run on Apple's new Intel Macintosh.

I asked him the how and when, and he said that Apple's new Macs are going to be very PC-like, and if they can run a stock install of Windows, QNX won't have any problem supporting them either. He said Apple promised the first Intel Macs in the second half of '06, which is when QNX 6.4 would be released. He also said that QNX has at least one Developer Transition Kit that QNX 6.3 runs just fine on.

Things are looking exciting as Apple will instantly have a handful of good operating systems to run on its new Intel hardware. QNX is a good addition, and I wanted to make sure the word got out. We weren't under NDA and the QNX guys said to go ahead and tell anyone we wanted, and that an announcement was forthcoming soon anyway. So there's at least one embedded real-time Unix-like system for new Intel Macs.

iTunes 4.5 Problems

I upgraded to iTunes 4.5 and QuickTime 6.5.1 from iTunes 4.2 and QuickTime 6.5 under Mac OS X v10.3.3. While the install went smooth, I noticed an extreme slowdown in my system after launching the the new version.

Activity Monitor showed iTunes 4.5 grabbing all available CPU cycles, so I quit and relaunched and after a few seconds I ran into the same problem. Remembering a tip from Trollaxor over at MacSlash, I ran sudo diskutil repairPermissions / in Terminal.app. While a lot of file permissions were repaired, this changed nothing with iTunes so I rebooted. This is where things get sticky.

I relaunched iTunes 4.5 and it spent a good five minutes updating my library (which means what specifically I don't know). After that iTunes was speedy, but my music was destroyed—over 10,000 tracks of carefully downloaded or ripped songs that took me three and a half years to make! I think I should probably explain how they were ruined, though, since I've never seen this before.

All of the songs have some hissing or buzzing in them now, similar to the sound of playing a data CD in an old CD player. Most of the tracks also overlapped with other tracks. It was as if iTunes had created new MP3s out of several old ones. Another detail to note was that several of the song files and ID3 tags had been renamed to garbage that looked like someone had held down the option key and jammed their hand randomly on the keyboard.

Has anyone run into this yet? I don't see anything that I did wrong, though I'm no expert. Did I perhaps run a wrong command for the Disk Utility program? If so, I am going to be pissed. But I've done that command a few other times and nothing has ever changed. So I'm stuck here and am hoping there's some way to fix my music files and regain some faith in iTunes, Mac, and Apple after this disappointing bug.

Power Mac G5³

Recently, many in the Mac community have been discussing the possibility of a G5-based Cube design, similar to Apple's Power Mac G4 Cube. I don't think this will happen, as the thing that killed the original G4 Cube, and that would damn the G5 cube to the same fate eventually, is the lack of market for the thing. Yes, I would like to have one, but being a Mac geek is not a characteristic most Mac users share. Let me explain the lack of market for the Cube and why it's destined to fail.

iBook G4 Lacks Velocity Engine?

It appears that Apple's new iBook G4 lacks a Velocity Engine, and may not be using what we've known as a G4 processor at all. The iBook G4 tech specs fail to mention the Velocity Engine at all in stark contrast to all of Apple's other G4-class products. This comes to the chagrin of many users who expect a G4-labeled system, using what Apple calls a G4 processor, to include AltiVec technology.

Sovereign Semiconductor

In the best decision out of Motorola in years — now that Chris Galvin has resigned — the Motorola Semiconductor Product Sector will be spun off into its own independent corporation. After years of mismanagement and dwindling mindshare, setting SPS free could spark the rebirth of the sleepy chipzilla, but sadly for Apple and Mac users the move has come too late to benefit Macintosh.

The PowerPC G5 Bits Drought

According to Apple, the G5 is the fastest desktop computer in the world, as well as the first 64-bit desktop system. Something doesn't sit right with me though. Aside from the nigh-universal ranting about skewed benchmarks that has been circulating recently, there's another aspect the Power Mac G5 not many have touched upon.

Mac OS X is a 32-bit operating system and since the PowerPC 970 is a 64-bit chip, Mac OS X will effectively be running at 800, 900, and 1,000 MHz in the new Power Macs and not 1.6, 1.8, and 2.0 GHz as Apple claims. Let's stick to the specs and look a little deeper into this problem.

Mac OS X v10.0 debuted in March 2001. By October, Mac OS X v10.1 optimized the code in the operating system for G3 and G4 chips — until this point, a lot of the components in the operating system still had optimizations for PowerPC 603 and 604 models. Apple continued this trend with Mac OS X v10.2 by removing support the 60x family. Try installing Jaguar on a G2 system — it just can't happen. But by doing so, they were finally able to push the system to its limits with Velocity Engine tweaks.

With the PowerPC 970, however, Apple is in a different pickle.

One just can't scale an operating system to 64-bits on a whim. In two months the G5 systems will ship to consumers with an operating system that will halve the clock since it can't use half the bits of the chip it will run on! There will be a gap of four months between the 64-bit G5 ships and the 64-bit-friendly Mac OS X v10.3 arrives. Tell me, Mac users, what are we going to do in the meantime? This is worse than when Apple downgraded the speed on their Power Mac G4 systems while keeping the prices the same.

Your new Power Mac G5 will only run at half its clockspeed!

I wouldn't pay $3,000 for year 2000 performance. Apple better have something marvelous up their sleeve during what I like to call this four-month bits drought we're all facing. Otherwise, I'll be planting my foot firmly in their ass, and so should you.

An Open Letter to Steve Jobs

Dear Mr. Jobs:

I am a switcher of three months, now a happy Mac user after years of Windows computing that just didn't make sense. I don't miss the General Protection Faults and Blue Screens of Death one bit! I can't believe I waited so long to make the change! I bought a Power Mac G4 with Mac OS Jaguar and haven't looked back since. There's only one small thing missing, however.

Gay shit. I want to be a human toilet. I've been looking for the right nasty little boy who can train me and use me like the brown log shredder that I am by sitting me under a toilet seat and go to town pumping fudge into my mustachioed maw. I thought that by buying a Mac I'd get into the scene, and make some hot hookups with colons packed to the gills in crap worms. So far, however, I've been disappointed.

Mr. Jobs, I plead with you to release more information regarding getting into the hardcore underground stool swallowing scene. All I can think about is gobbling down an 18" ass-birth fresh from the fart factory and Mac users popping squats over my face and letting loose with a tempest of farts and raining a hail of turds.

I hope you can help me with this issue.

Thank you.

Why Run Linux on a Mac?

I don't understand why anyone would bother running Linux on a Mac. For $99 you can purchase Mac OS X and get real live tech support for problems that (probably won't) pop up. There's a lot of technical reasons you should run Mac OS instead of Linux.

Here are some of them.

A Leap Ahead for Apple

Never before in the history of computing has the consumer had so much power and convenience available to him. What only ten years ago was viewed as a super-computing application is now freely offered to anyone with the hardware to support it — genetic sequencing, video editing, 3D graphics, explosion reproduction. It is in this climate that we must ask ourselves what the next step will be, and where we will allow it to take us.

In 1996, SGI (formerly Silicon Graphics, Inc.) swapped out their home-grown operating system and processor — IRIX and MIPS, respectively — for commodity components Linux and IA32. Today, SGI is in the doghouse and fares little better than any other PC vendor. Into the gap left by SGI came Apple, who in 1996 themselves purchased what is arguably the most advanced UNIX in existance: OPENSTEP, aka Mac OS X.

Now with QuickTime 6.1 and Quartz Extreme, is there anything that can stop Apple's juggernaut-like race to be king of the high-end server market? Only lack of hardware to run their crown jewels on. The Mac is so good at what it does, Apple is pressing Motorola and IBM for PowerPC chips that can meet the exhaustive demands of new high-end customers. The best of both breeds, Apple offers scalable, high-end UNIX to the Fortune 500 clientele as well as ease of use and simplicity to its private consumers. With things going so well, Apple seems to be on an unstoppable rise.

MacWorld New York '02

1. Mac OS X: 2.5 million users today. Most new Mac users don't know fuck-all about the difference between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS 10, nor do they understand the concept of "dual-booting" or the Startup Disk control panel. Apple has suckered many a Mac user into their "2.5 million" demographic tally.

2. 3,500 apps for Mac OS X: Jobs fails to mention that most of them are supplied by Apple itself in one of the various "i" apps.

3. RealOne Player for OS X: Does anyone care? I don't. It should be called RealSpammer since it dumps so much shit all over your hard disk.

4. Mac OS X Jaguar: Announced today, available August 24. Phil Schiller takes the stage to demonstrate cycling desktop pictures. Hold the show, can I pre-order it now? Jesus. Oh, yeah, ugliest packaging ever for an OS.

5. QuickTime 6.0: Released Monday, more than 1 million users already exposed to the new and imporved QuickTime 6 nag-box before using the neat new MPEG4 features. Congrats, Apple.

6. Sherlock 3: Even uglier interface than Sherlock 2, "totally rewritten" (i.e. bought from another company and rebranded). I never use Sherlock, don't care about a this new "revision." *snore*

7. Rendezvous: "No one owns it." Great. Apple implements a new technology first again. Let's walk around and see who we can connect to. Watch for Apple iDate, a blind dating package, based on this technology. I called it here first.

8. Mail.app: New version demonstrated, included in Mac OS X Jaguar. Uh, no shit. Not only have we known about this for months, but is it all that prophetic to think the mail client would be updated in the nex major OS revision?

9. Address Book: Same as above. Filler at best. Jobs likes to hear himself talk.

10. iChat: The newsest (un)productivity app from Apple. Now Mac users can chat with their friends all day at work from an OS-integrated app. IT departments and managers beware. Apple is trying to destroy your profits!

11. .Mac: Bait and switch! Goodbye iTools, our free friend, and say hello to the much more expensive .Mac. "These are trying economic times." No wonder Apple is excited about the evolution of the PC. They get to charge for shit formerly supplied for free. Damn the economy, eh, Steve?

12. iCal: Calendars for .Mac, iPod, and Palm users. Hmm. Good idea. Available for the new .mac in September (re: fork over the dollars for it).

13. iTunes 3: Hey hey hey! Awright! Finally some good shit from Apple. New features like consistent volume playback (so I won't be jolted awake when it finishes playing piano sonatas and goes into Nine Inch Nails), playlist sharing support (via Rendezvous and Audible.com), and new iPod support. New icon too! Can't wait til the servers aren't chundering forbidden messages at me so I can download it.

14. iPod news: New iPod revision 2 announced today with a tweaked form factor in 10 and 20 gigabyte sizes; new menus; iTunes 3 integration. Prices are $500/$400/$300 for the 20/10/5 gig sizes, respectively. Oh yeah, support for Windows sometime. I don't remember when, nor do I care. How long before the iPod outdoes the iBook in terms of storage? At this rate, about a year.

15. iSync: Uses XML to back up your Mac, iPod, iCal date, or Palm via the .mac service. Sounds neat, wonder where the DTD for this SyncML markup is, costs lots of dough. Yet another piece due at MacWorld NY 2002 II (September).

16. iMac: 17" screens, baby. Everyone scooped this one, even MOSR (thanks to pilfering from SpyMac and ThinkSecret). The first 17" iMac ever, unless you count that abberational eMac thing.