Apple OS Gallery

More 30th Birthday Apple goodness: Wired’s OS Gallery, from the Apple II DOS 3.0 through OS X 10.0. Some of the more obscure ones: SOS, Lisa, MouseText, and the GS.
Clicking the thumbnails no worky, so here’s some linkage:

• DOS 3.3
• SOS 1.3
• Lisa
• System 1.0
• MouseText
• Apple ][ Desktop
• MultiFinder
• GS
• HyperCard
• System 7
• Mac OS 8.5

Happy 5th!

Mac OS X turns 5 today. Ars takes a stroll down memory lane.
Gotta wonder what they’ll do when they run out of stealthy flesh eating feline names. Mac OS X BooBooKitty? I’m outta here at the Lloyd Webber release.

Intakes, Pumps, and Exhausts

This thing’s like a friggin’ 747…

Mac pr0n

hawt.

Drool

I really want a new Power Mac. My poor machine is nearing it’s 5th birthday, and while it’s no dog and I’ve shoved a hefty amount of upgrades into it, I can no longer deny it’s suffering from bus speed inadequacies and the woe of upgrades which are only partly compatible (for example, the FW 800 card I have in the machine prevents it from sleeping properly. WTF?)
So, I’ve been drooling over the Dual 2.7 G5 with all it’s water-cooling goodness, and then I see this on MacObserver today hinting at dual-core machines from Apple based on the latest 970 from IBM. Perhaps September. Perhaps never. Whatever, I really want to love one of those machines, as a dual-core 2.7 is 30% faster than two 2.7’s separate. Imagine two dual-cores in one machine. Oh, just imagine.
This isn’t unlikely. IBM announced the chip last month, the only real potential large-volume buyer of such a chip being Apple. It may appear at the Paris Expo next month.
If Apple loves me, they’ll deliver this machine as a testament to the PowerPC. The chip offers an ungodly amount of power and cutting-edge technology. So, Apple, please, give me one last PowerPC-based Mac before you stumble into the Intel world. I’ll wait a few years until you get all the kinks worked out then happily get my Intel-powered Mac.
And, no, I won’t buy a Windows machine. They totally disinterest me, with the exception of being able to play City of Villains.

iTunes 4.7.1

After installing the latest iTunes, I found it didn’t want to play all my de-DRM’d music I had purchased through the iTMS. Granted, without FairPlay, the music industry would of never played with Apple in the first place, and I’d imagine what cropped up in 4.7.1 is just more knee-bending to the industry.
Anyway, long story short, the situation is easily fixable. Check out the JHymn page.

Octiv Volume Logic

Shameless plug:
I’ve been using Octiv’s Volume Logic for about a year now, and while I admit it’s a CPU hog, it’s a miracle addition to iTunes.
In short, it gives concert-hall quality to iTunes, despite your speakers or headphones. Well worth the money.

Three Mac OS X Finds

Got a bunch of stuff I should post, and will soon, but some recent Mac OS X finds which I’m fond of:

• Path Finder: I used this back when it was called SNAX, and someone at work recommended it again. I’ve got a couple of peeves with it, and I think having an integrated text editor and terminal is kinda geekboy overkill (terminals as part of a window rather than being their own window strike me as stupid), but whatever. The smart sorting is nice, as are its column browsing and about a billion other features. (Uh, thanks Rob.)
• OmniWeb 5: This is still in beta and it shows. But it shows real promise. The tabbed browsing, while different, is really turning me on. You get thumbnails of web pages in a sidebar rather than tabs — which is actually quite handy. Given a known website, you can look at the thumbnail and see “where it is.” Other niceties include location shortcuts (for example, type “google schmeeve”), per-site customization, Safari bookmarks (it’s live, not just imported), and other goodies. It’s got a way to go, and this version uses Apple’s WebKit, allowing the browser itself to focus on GUI gadgets and bells n’ whistles. Me like. However, the unchangeable icon set is butt-f’ing ugly. Side note: disable FruitMenu if it crashes on launch. Side note 2: It’s nice that there’s such a variety of good viable browsers for Mac OS X: Safari, Firefox, Mozilla, Camino, OmniWeb, even iCab. God bless Mozilla.org for producing 3 of those. I still think Gecko rules, and were Camino given more attention that’d still be my everyday browser.
• NeoOffice/J: an implementation of OpenOffice tailored for Mac OS X. No X11 required. Again, beta, or really even alpha, but definitely much easier to install than OpenOffice.

mini iPods?

With Apple selling 1.79 iPods per minute in 2003, they’re still not satisfied… Now, apparently aiming at the low-end MP3 market, a mini iPod is rumored for Expo 2004.

Think Secret pegs ~$100 mini iPods (in multiple colors) with 2-4GB capacities.

Also rumored: major iLife updates to iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, and iTunes.

I’m still lusting for the video iPod (probably reality but maybe not ready for primetime) and the Mac tablet, which is perhaps a bit more far fetched…