Solipsism Gradient

Well, I thought it couldn’t happen that way, but it did. The demos at the keynote were most convincing. More tonight…

I was about to post a longer note about the whole “Apple switching to Intel” brouhaha (and no, I won’t link to the original story), but John Gruber did it faster than I could, as usual.

I agree with him that the original story and its offshoots in other media paints only part of the picture. There are several more likely explanations than Apple ditching all of its AltiVec optimizations and switching to a plain x86 codebase. So, in my view, here’s what might be happening tomorrow (not necessarily in order of probability):

• WiMax; Intel has the standard chipset for that, and it’s the natural step beyond WiFi.
• Intel building a PowerPC variation; Apple should have enough rights, as a member of the original AIM consortium, to use outside companies for fabricating such chips. G6? Or perhaps they’d be moving off the G numbers entirely, as they’re getting a little long in the tooth. Hey, perhaps this means that Windows is moving to the PowerPC, following all the game platforms??
• Intel building a hybrid chip that runs both standard x86 and PowerPC/Altivec code either natively, or with some hardware assist, even if it’s just an endianness switch bit. Doing such a transition with purely software emulation is impossible. Endianness is so pervasive in non-trivial software that you can’t just recompile and hope it works. Also, emulating a PowerPC on x86 at any reasonable speed is unfeasible, because there aren’t enough hardware registers – this could be hacked by doing a special L1 cache implementation, but once you do this, putting in more hardware assistance is trivial.
• Apple will launch a completely new line of stuff that uses some Intel-owned tech. Like an ARM-powered tablet. Newton, anyone? Or should it be called Einstein now? Or perhaps a set-top box? At least that would mean I won’t have to build fat binaries for my applications.

About the only thing I’m sure won’t happen is Apple building, and running Mac OS X on, standard x86 motherboards. Tomorrow around this time we’ll know for sure; I’ll be at the keynote.

Yesterday I had a fun but tiring day wandering around the downtown area and doing some shopping. I ended up buying a RAM expansion for the iBook (600MHz, dual USB) I’m typing this on, and a Belkin F8T041-B bluetooth mouse. This mouse has 4 buttons, a scrolll wheel and it’s quite larger than the mice I’m used to, but very comfortable. The included adapter is the F8T003v but without the cap for the USB connector; instead it comes with a small dock with 3 ft. of cable attached.

No software was needed to get it working; just some fumbling around with the control panel, as I’d never used anything bluetoothy before. The manual says that the 2 AA batteries should last for about 25 days “average use”. Let’s see what that means in practice; I suppose that’d mean about a week for me, and I’ll be looking into buying a couple of NiMH batteries with a recharger. About the only downside I’m seeing so far is that there’s no power-off switch on the mouse itself; hopefully it’ll give up trying to pair when the computer’s asleep, and enter a standby mode. If not, I’ve still got my soldering iron from the old days at home.

In practice, both my hopefully soon to-be-sold PowerBook and my new iMac G5 have built-in bluetooth, so the adapter will travel around with the iBook. I’ve never really gotten as precise with a trackpad as with a mouse, so this will be a great help. The list price is $109.99, but I got it for $30 less.

As for the RAM, it worked great, despite being a lesser-known brand. It was twice as expensive as current RAM, but being for a discontinued model, that was to be expected. If anyone at WWDC reading this needs a working RAM module for an old white iBook (256MB, SODIMM, PC133-333) please tell me. I’m asking about $90. I’ll also be selling a brand-new, never-used, 512MB RAM module for the new iMac G5; I believe it’s PC3200-400 DDR SDRAM, Apple RAM, and should be worth around $110.

I’ll stay at the hotel until after lunch, then I’ll take the BART over to Moscone Center to sign in; I’ll hang around there between 5 and 7 PM, if anyone wants to meet up.

Rainer Brockerhoff wrote:

…But perhaps some enterprising accessory maker might machine a small aluminum plate that on the bottom fits exactly over the mini, and on the top has the proper grooves to accomodate the display foot?

Looking at some more photos of disassembled minis, it seems that placing any metal plate (or even anything whatsoever) may impair wireless/BlueTooth operation… pity.

Apple

While looking up some stuff about the recently-introduced Mac mini, it struck me that the Apple displays’ feet appear to be just a little bit smaller than the mini itself.

So why not just place the display directly on top of the mini, for an even smaller footprint? Well, Walter Mossberg says:

You can’t place anything on top of the mini or the DVD drive could jam.

But perhaps some enterprising accessory maker might machine a small aluminum plate that on the bottom fits exactly over the mini, and on the top has the proper grooves to accomodate the display foot?

From the pictures, the 30″ display has a larger foot, while the two smaller models have roughly the same size, but a blank (or perhaps slightly corrugated) upper surface might fit all. The bottom would have to be slightly arched or recessed in order to distribute all the weight onto the sides of the mini, leaving the DVD drive unstressed.

Apple

For your information, this column’s name refers to the apocryphal chinese curse “may you live in interesting times”. The idea is that for people who were extremely conservative, living in so-called interesting times would be terrible. For the curious, here’s a site about the origins of this saying.

But I myself simply love living in these interesting times. For instance, when I started out in this business, I worked with an IBM1401 with the huge amount of 4000 memory positions… and I say huge, because every bit (a ferrite core) was visible to the naked eye! Today, only 34 years later, my laptop has exactly 268435.5 times as much memory, takes up a much smaller space, for about 1/1000 the cost… and besides, it’s just mine. I won’t even mention speed! But of course, I’d like it to be even smaller… and faster… and cheaper… who knows, even an implant? 🙄

A decade after my dinosaur wrangler days, the first microcomputers appeared – my first, in 1977, was an Apple II – together with Byte Magazine, where the latest industy news were published. Soon after, the first Brazilian manufacturers came on the scene, and I promptly went to work for one of them – probably the first outside São Paulo (Brazil’s largest city and industrial hub), a company called Quartzil Informática. The queer name came from the company’s beginnings as a quartz oscillator manufacturer, in Montes Claros (MG), inside an area subsidized by the government.

The company’s first product was the QI-800, an 8-bit computer based on the Zilog Z80A (which still is the world’s best-selling microprocessor), running Digital Research’s CP/M-80 operating system, the standard of that time. It came on the market around the end of 1982, if I recall correctly.

To the right of the screen it had an 8-inch (eight!) Shugart SA800 diskette drive, and in the second cabinet, up to three more drives could be mounted. Every diskette could hold an amazing 243K, and the drive’s spindle motor was powered by 110 VAC! Internally, the system used the IMSAI‘s S-100 Bus, which later became the IEEE-696 Standard. As this bus used expensive 100-pin connectors, they used the kludge of buying two 44-pin connectors and cutting out, from the boards, the 12 central pins (which happily were not vitally important). The boards were large but specialized; one held the CPU, another one the video controller, another one the RAM, and so forth… there were 6 or 7 boards altogether.

The remaining specs were not impressive. The QI-800 had 64K of RAM and an 8K EPROM. There were dozens of other companies building almost exactly the same equipment. One advantage would have been the recently-launched hard drive (or Winchester, as they were called at the time); a Brazilian factory was beginning to assemble 5 and 10 MB (yes, megabytes!) hard drives, but so far as I remember, none was ever sold with this system. The price was astronomical, something like US$4,000.

Sales of the QI-800 were not very satisfactory, and they decided to develop a splashy and revolutionary (but at the same time economical and flexible) system. This new system, the QI-900, will be discussed in the next installment; it was the first Brazilian computer with movable windows, menus, preemptive multitasking, and operating system in EPROM.

(clique aqui para ler este artigo em português)

There’s a comprehensive list of iPod stuff over at the iPodlounge. Quite a lot of items; some are good for a chuckle, such as the ProClip, which is described as “small, neat, and descreat”. 🙂

After nearly a year with my 40GB iPod I’m quite satisfied. I have ripped most of my CDs onto it, and I’m now starting on my extensive old collection of vinyl records, most of which haven’t been reissued on CDs, unfortunately.

There are some small issues, though. To my surprise, battery life isn’t one of them. My normal usage pattern may not be typical in that regard; I leave the dock and power supply connected to my home sound system, and leave the iPod charging most of the time. When I leave home I hook the iPod onto my belt and in the car I connect it with a short cable to a $35 car stereo I bought solely for that purpose. Sound quality isn’t great but then a car isn’t a noise-free environment either. Anyway, I rarely let the battery discharge entirely and so far have noticed no capacity decrease.

Unfortunately, the standard belt case for the iPod is bulky and cumbersome. Except for jogging, where you can place it in the back, the thing is heavy and keeps snagging on things… I can see the rationale for getting a mini, now. So I hit upon the trick of placing it into a pocket (without the case), which also conveniently removes it from sight for added security. However, last month I noticed that the cable insulation broke at the point where it comes out of the remote control plug. So, with some regret, I’ve started using the case again, after winding the break with some stiff tape to keep it from getting worse…

I suppose if the cable came out of the plug at a 90-degree angle, as it does on the Engineered Audio Remote, this wouldn’t have happened. Alternatively, someone should make a special slim “pocket case” with a curved duct to prevent strain on the cable. I wonder how much Apple’s design of the remote control is tied to American-style clothing.

…because tomorrow we’ll be off on a 4-day trip to São Paulo, for some personal visits, a wedding, and business contacts. Friday I’ll probably be at the Macmania magazine offices.

In the aftermath of the major data loss I had a few days ago, I plan to buy a new external FireWire drive. Today I found an offer of the Iomega HDD250 at a relatively low price – R$1500, slightly more than US$500. Unless I find something better in São Paulo I will buy this when I come back…

In the meantime, expect light blogging until Sunday.