Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

On My Blog Menu:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue

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11/3/2003 -  11/4/2003
10/27/2003 -  11/2/2003
10/20/2003 - 10/26/2003
10/13/2003 - 10/19/2003
10/6/2003 - 10/12/2003
9/29/2003 -  10/5/2003
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  1/7/2002 -  1/13/2002
12/31/2001 -   1/6/2002
12/24/2001 - 12/30/2001
12/17/2001 - 12/23/2001

Tuesday, November 4, 2003
17:57 - *It's still* a good time to be a Mac user**	(top)
Mac users had it pretty rough through the mid-90s-- but as with all kinds of all-weather fans (except those of the Cubs or the Red Sox), fate eventually turns in their favor and rewards their steadfastness. Of course, people like this guy are welcome to their nay-saying, but it's getting rarer and more desperately strident as more and more people seem to be finding their way around to an open-minded and positive view of the Mac. iTunes has done a lot of this lately (more and more people seem to "get it", after the inevitable initial gear-grinding), and Panther is now doing the same. All it takes, really, is for someone to see Expos� in action, and they immediately see something that's undeniably useful and heart-stoppingly cool. "Dammit! Why can't my computer do that?" I hear at work from time to time. Even eWeek is getting into the act, with this short but glowing review, the only down note being that "Unfortunately, Mac OS X runs only on Apple machines, which significantly limits a company's hardware purchasing options." In Mac OS X Version 10.3, Apple Computer Inc. combines its latest ideas with pieces drawn from the open-source world, from Mac OS versions past and from operating system rival Microsoft Corp.'s Windows. In so doing, Apple delivers what's probably the most polished desktop operating system available today. Pretty heady stuff. eWeek has been fairly Mac-ambivalent in recent years, pointing out the cool stuff while being careful to jab at flaws, but rarely doing any in-depth coverage or secondary or tertiary analysis about the possibilities of the Mac platform and whether it might even (gasp!) survive into the 21st century. But lately they've been covering Panther like a campfire, with all kinds of articles from developers' and enterprise and security angles. They're genuinely excited about this stuff. That's what it's like, really... once you let yourself peek in the window and admit that part of what's in there is cool, it's damned hard to stop chugging the Kool-aid on the sill. (Maybe "Slurm" would be a better metaphor...) Meanwhile, though, ExtremeTech notes the amusing prospect of the Xbox switching from Intel CPUs to the IBM PowerPC family. Yes, that's right-- anything from the latest G3s that zip past G4s in clock speed, to G5s, to the rumored G6es (PPC980) that I oddly haven't heard anything about in some months. I mean, think about it-- what kind of psychological blow would that be to Intel, to have to admit that Microsoft of all people was abandoning their court for the hated PPC, even after the years of FUD? To say nothing of the windfall it would be for IBM, and indirectly for Apple. If the G5 (or a relative from the same R&D wing) did end up as the flagship processor for the Xbox, it would be a massive validation of the Apple-IBM joint investment and CPU design effort-- and it would cement the future of the East Fishkill facility to a level never dreamt of by the Apple that floundered unhappily through the doldrums of Motorola's becalmed 1GHz-class G4. We've endured pundit after pundit telling us that Apple's only salvation was to go to Intel processors. We've parried and dished over the rumor of "Marklar", the shadowy x86 build of OS X. We've wondered, increasingly worried as the G4's speed crept negligibly upward, if crow was on the menu. And now this? Do forgive just a momentary chortle. I think it's pretty safe to say that Steve has reason to smirk over his bottled water these days. And so do a lot of Mac fans, the ones who clung to faith in his long-term vision even when it seemed there was none. (Maybe there wasn't one anyway-- this was all just luck. But still.) Whatever. All I know is: F9 F9 F10 F9 F10 F11 F9 F9...