October 26, 2007
Leopard
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Today, at 10:30 am EDT, the Purolator guy dropped off the tiny package. Leopard is packaged in what have recently become Apple’s standard software package. A box barely larger than the DVD is housing the new system, along with a small booklet.
At 10:40 I had started the install on my non-essential iBook (G4, 1.42 Ghz 512 MB of RAM). With its paltry 512 MB memory, the iBook meets the minimum system requirement for Leopard.
It took 20 minutes to verify that the installation DVD is good (a good thing to do on the first use of the DVD). Total installation time on the iBook one hour and 28 minutes. The last minute (that’s when the installer progress bar reports ‘about 1 minute remaining) lasted about 18 actual minutes.
Once the installer was done, the iBook booted to the log in screen in three minutes.
From the log in screen to the Setup Assistant, 2 min, 40 sec.
After the smooth sailing through the installation and the reboot and the setup assistant, things became frustrating.
When the setup assistant declared that everything was done, including registration, the main menu bar showed up, the Dock showed up but the Finder was completely non-responding. I clicked Safari’s icon in the Dock and it launched, connected to the net and worked perfectly. First impression of Safari (3.04) is that it’s blazing fast, even on a busy, minimal machine.
The Finder still not responding.
I launched Terminal and started ‘top’. It reported no processor activity on the Finder, but the ‘mds’ and ‘mdworker’ were going crazy (mds is the main process for Spotlight and it launches an ‘mdworker’ process each time it needs to index something). Spotlight was re-indexing the drive.
By mistake, I clicked on the new ‘Downloads’ folder in the new Dock and the Dock became unresponsive. Not good so far.
I force quit the Finder and things improved a bit. Quicksilver launched after the Finder reloaded. The Dock is still stuck. I force quit that too. However, the Finder is still non-responsive.
It seems the Finder won’t respond until Spotlight is finished indexing the main drive (60 GB). That’s a crappy design if it is intentional.
After an hour or so, I lost patience and force rebooted the computer (the shutdown and restart menu items produced no results).
I rebooted the laptop using the installation DVD and checked the drive. All clear.
Rebooted again and this time the menu bar didn’t show up and the dock is non responsive. I can’t launch anything else. I can hear the hard disk whirring away. Spotlight indexing is proceeding.
I clicked on the Spotlight icon in the non-existant menu bar and it showed a panel telling me about Spotlight and showing a progress bar reporting 2 hours left of indexing.
So, so far, not very encouraging. The laptop doesn’t have any documents on it. So if indexing is taking this long on the system files and the applications (mostly standard), then I would be very, very hesitant to install it on my iMac, which has millions of files on it.
So, to sum it up: Leopard first impression on iBook 1.42 Ghz G4 with 512 MB of RAM: CRAP!
I’ll wait for Spotlight to finish and then try to get a second impression.
October 26, 2007
Rant
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Well, I’m excited about Leopard (Apple’s new OS), and of course, I pre-ordered it as soon as Apple started accepting pre-orders.
It’s supposed to come in tomorrow on the 26th, and indeed, I received my notification of shipment from Apple with a tracking number. However, the tracking web page is nearly useless. Here is what I get on Purolator’s tracking page:
2007/10/25 18:58 Shipment In Transit
2007/10/25 18:57 Received
2007/10/24 08:30 Shipment In Transit
So I get that it’s somewhere in the world and it changed hands once so far.
October 17, 2007
Opinion, iPhone
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After Apple’s announcement and subsequent release of the iPhone and later the iPod Touch, my brother and friends bitched about Apple’s stupidity and Steve Jobs’s control freakiness. They all complained about Apple’s unwillingness to allow or even encourage third party development of native iPhone applications.
Over the last few months, many, many articles have been written about the subject, mostly bemoaning Apple’s stance. Even Apple’s competitors in the cell business (namely Nokia) latched on to this and proclaimed that their phones are ‘Open to anything’, unlike the iPhone.
After few of such discussions with my brother and various other friends, I made a bet with all of them that as soon as Leopard is released, Apple will announce and then make available a native SDK (Software Development Kit) for the iPhone.
I made that bet on a logical rationale that my friends denied.
After the iPhone came out, it became widely known that it was running a version of Leopard. Since the Mac’s version of Leopard was still in Alpha stage at the time, it only made sense that the iPhone was running an Alpha version too.
Since Apple had set a June deadline to release the iPhone that meant they had to make sure that it works reliably. Which means that they chose a fairly stable build of the Leopard Alpha, fixed as many bugs as they could to insure stable and solid operation of the phone, made sure that their own applications on the phone are not stumbling on any bugs and they released that.
When working with an alpha-grade system, an SDK is nearly impossible. If I were Apple, I wouldn’t want to expose the inner working of an alpha-grade system to outside developers either.
Now that Leopard reached release status, that means all the features have been finalized and the code has reached an acceptable stability level. So now a native SDK has become feasible (Finally!).
However, Apple is still cautious. Just like prudent users who don’t install and use a .0 release on a mission critical system, Apple is taking its time to finalize and release the SDK. They’ve set the date of the release to sometime in February. That would give them time to iron out the majority of the big bugs that will crop out as soon as Leopard is released.
The iPhone’s SDK will be based on Leopard version 10.5.2 or 10.5.3. Of course the iPhone’s firmware will be updated to reflect the more mature version of Leopard available.
Now all we need is a firm date for the availability of the iPhone in Canada.
October 3, 2007
Opinion
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Today, Microsoft released a new version of their music player the Zune
and again, they failed to offer something more than ‘good enough’.
In a market almost completely dominated by Apple’s iPod, their offering look like they could compete with last year’s iPods; that’s not good enough to compete with this year’s iPods.
They have a couple of features that iPods don’t have, like an FM radio tuner and wireless syncing, but nothing really compelling.
If the new Zunes existed in a world of their own, then they could be seen as excellent. However, they don’t and they aren’t. The Zunes are Microsoft’s answer to their own pathological need to enter and try to dominate every market that has any kind of software in it.
What they got right:
The new Zunes look sleeker than their predecessors
However, this is just a visual assessment. Last year’s Zunes looked good in pictures. But, about a month ago, I had the chance to hold one in my hand and my reaction ‘Wow, what a piece of crap’. It feels extremely clunky, especially when you compare it to the same year’s iPods. So, I’ll withhold further judgement on that one until I can hold one of these new ones in my hand.
Wireless syncing
It is nice to be able to sync your music player to your computer’s music library without having to connect it with a cable. Although, since you have to charge it usually, connecting it isn’t a big hassle. So this is nice to have, but not a big seller feature.
FM Tuner
Nice to have sometime. Again, not the most compelling feature for a ‘Personal Music Player’. The biggest draw of all digital music players is that they allow you to listen to whatever you want, whenever you want. Having somebody else make a playlist for you and interrupt it with talking and commercials is not exactly what most people want. But, it’s nice to have if you like talk radio from time to time.
What they got wrong:
Nothing compelling
While this not exactly something wrong, it’s still a drawback. There is nothing about the new Zunes that makes you go ‘Ooh, I must have that’.
Still no Mac support
If Microsoft wants to be taken seriously and give the impression that they’re not just trying to extend their Windows monopoly, then they need to start supporting other platforms. Like it or not, Mac users tend to be influencers. If Microsoft can’t seem to get itself to appeal to those who have a greater influence in the consumer electronics market, then they show that they don’t understand the market they’re trying to dominate.
Lame marketing
They announced this new version of their music player. But, it’s not available immediately (big mistake when they’re competing against Apple).
Their website is completely lame (I mean really, how hard is it to make a picture clickable? a tiny ‘learn more’ link is not enough).
The Zune’s site is a joke. For a company as big as Microsoft, you would think they could have hired an advertising company to design their promotional pages on the site. If you want to have a big share of a consumer electronics market, you have to get people excited about your products. Microsoft doesn’t give the impression that even they are excited about their own stuff. That impression carries to their audience.
The impression that I got from their site and from what I’ve read today in the media goes something like ‘Yeah, here is our new version of the Zune, we know it’s not as good as the new iPods, but we have to release something’.
Colors
The black one and the red one are OK, but the green and pink! ugh! those look like ugly toys. Got to have attractive colors.
That’s all I can think of without being able to see and hold one in person.
I’m a Mac user, and an iPod owner. I’m only disappointed in Microsoft because I believe that Apple is getting complacent. Currently, Apple doesn’t have any serious competition in the digital music players field. They’re not as innovative as they can be. Actually, that’s not the correct word. They are innovative, look at the iPod Touch. The more appropriate word is not ‘aggressive’ enough.
The iPod classic is basically the same as last year’s with bigger drives. No real innovation beyond a new metallic outer shell. Why there is no Touch with a big hard drive? If anybody is serious about watching video on an iPod, then the Touch has the largest screen, and consequently would need larger storage for the big video files. And why is there no Mail application on the Touch?
Only with healthy competition, can a healthy market exist. So far, nobody has put up any serious competition to Apple in the music player business.
To paraphrase Paul Giamatti’s character in ‘Shoot’em Up’, “Either Apple is really that good, or its competition really, really sucks”. From Microsoft’s recent offerings, it’s a bit of both.