Tag Archives: Mac

Pointless Apple Speculation: iMac Pro

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I’ve been reading a bunch of tech sites for a while and talks of the Power Mac G5 successor have resurfaced. It seems as if Apple has registered “Mac Pro” and people think that this will be the new name of the Power Mac since Steve Jobs said that they were done with “power.”

I had another idea. Based on Apple’s naming convention with their new notebooks (MacBook and MacBook Pro), I thought that maybe “Mac Pro” won’t be the name. The MacBook is the notebook aimed at consumers. The iMac is the desktop aimed at consumers. The MacBook Pro is the notebook aimed at professionals. So, why not the “iMac Pro?”

I know that the Mac Mini throws off Apple’s naming convention and my idea a little. But think of it this way, Apple has already gotten people to understand that the iMac is a slick device. Why wouldn’t they capitalize on that by introducing an iMac Pro line? Power Mac G5 users who are looking to get the new desktops will get them no matter what Apple calls them. So maybe Apple will go after markets where the Power Mac didn’t. Imagine seeing the line up of computers on apple.com and seeing iMac and iMac Pro. The consumer who has heard of iMac may be inclined to look over to see what this Pro model is about.

Then again, maybe the iMac will be renamed the “Mac.”

WMP 11 Looks Good

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Windows Media Player (“WMP”) 11 has made the rounds on the tech sites. I’ve taken a look at it and it looks good. I’m a Mac user and Microsoft has dropped WMP support with WMP 9 (which is terrible compared to 10 and 11). After seeing WMP 11 with its slick interface and organization of all kinds of files. If you haven’t seen the screenshots, WMP organizes pictures, CDs (I’m not sure about video organization) into stacks. You’ve got slideshows, music and video playlist management in a free piece of software.

I really want WMP 11 on Mac OS X. Hopefully, Mac OS X 10.6 – Leopard will have virtualization built in so I can run a Windows program on my Mac. I just haven’t found a true replacement for WMP since switching to OS X. iTunes is great for music management – it’s crap for video (it handles like 2 file formats) and iPhoto is a separate application. I would rather there was an all-in-one app for the Mac.

Video Lan Client (“VLC”) can handle everything great on any OS. But there just isn’t true playlist management like WMP. One of these days, I’m going to have to quit my complaining that VLC is not WMP by taking the open source VLC and giving it the functionality I miss. In the alternative, any one else can take my idea and feel free to implement full playlist management (maybe even smart playlist management like iTunes too while we’re at it).

New MacBook: Coming Soon.

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The new iBooks are expected this week, either Tuesday or Wednesday. Here’s my two cents on the new notebooks.

The iBook needs a revision badly and is going to benefit greatly with an Intel processor (solo or core duo). The 13.3″ screen that is expected sounds like a good idea. The 12″ with its 4:3 aspect ratio is too old school by Apple standards. I hear it’s going to be thin, light, with an iSight, Front Row and the Apple Remote. Plus I’ve read it’ll be offered in both black and white. All of this sounds great. A black iBook may tick off ColorwarePC (the company that offers painting services for many Apple products), but it would give the iBook a more serious look, especially if Apple wants to market the iBook to businesses.

It may or may not be called the MacBook. Fine with me.

Will I be looking into getting one? My wife has a 12″ iBook – it could be replaced… Nope. I’m not getting one for a long while. I bought the MacBook Pro about two months after it was released. I had heard about Apple’s 1st generation products – I wanted to read the reviews to find out how the MBP was. It’s a great machine, don’t get me wrong – but it ticks me off that it has a high pitched whining noise, one of the fans makes that “mooing” noise that people complain about and the battery life could be better. I didn’t find out about those things until after I bought one.

I’d rather not experience another 1st gen Apple product. Here’s hoping Apple has learned from its mistakes with the MBP and the MB runs free of annoyances.

PowerMac G4

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The other day, I won an ebay auction on a 450mhz PowerMac G4. I’ve got it hooked up to a 19 inch Acer monitor. I installed Tiger on it and it runs okay.

I’m not a fan of the 20GB hard drive, so I’ll be swapping it out with a Seagate 120GB later this week. I’ll probably use the PowwerMac as a test bed for experiments. I’ve been thinking about making it a server and / or making it a “widget machine.”

For some time now, I’ve been thinking about having a “widget machine.” This computer would have either Yahoo or Dashboard widgets displayed on a monitor. It would have news stories, weather, sports, pictures, and maybe tv listings.

Before more RAM was installed into the Titanium PowerBook that was its function. It would display images as a screen saver. I had the crazy idea of taking pictures of the inside of the fridge so when the screen saver would activate, I could get an idea of what was possible for dinner. It also had (then Konfabulator) widgets displayed with sports, weather and news. Plus, it was an internet terminal when I needed one in a pinch.

At worst, the PowerMac G4 will turn out to be a widget machine. If you’ve got ideas, let me know.

Fans.

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I switched from a Windows Media Center PC to an Apple Mac Mini around August of last year. My media files were still being hosted on a Windows box until last month.

I then had seven external drives connected to the mini in my living room. It was astonishingly quiet.

I hadn’t bought a PVR solution for the Mac Mini since I had read rumors that Apple was going to unveil one in February. Nothing like that happened, so I bought a device that let me watch TV on my Mac.

Since I connected that device to my system, the fans on some of the hard drives have been whirring – trying to cool them. I became tired of hearing the fans so I ran some wire from the living room to my office (they share a wall). I put my hard drives in the next room and now I can’t hear the fans. I’ve got to clean up the wires behind my TV again since I changed stuff. One day, I’ll come up with a well-thought out system for my hard drives and media.