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Friday, August 16, 2002 |
Analysis shows new DDR Ram Macs are slow
Writing in his GlennLog site, Seattle journalist Glenn Fleishman writes:
Speed the Fruit. Unfortunately, according to Rob Art Morgan who has tested this, the new PowerMacs from Apple that use DDR (double data rate) memory like its Xserve rank-mount unit cannot access the memory any faster than the cheaper and slower SDRAM found in the previous system arch. A controller limits the data rate to 1 Gbps, while DDR could work more than twice as fast. Unfortunately, this makes mincemeat of the architecture, as it bus/memory-bounds 2D and 3D graphics and rendering. In practical terms, my chart showing the Apple vs. Dell server comparison is now pointless: the new Macs can't compete with the same-price or cheaper Dells because the Macs are just as slow as the old Macs. You can boost the processor speed somewhat (jump to dual 1.25 GHz), but you can't extract nearly enough speed from the memory ... [GlennLog]
6:04:19 PM 
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Radio users could get new capabilities soon!
Dave Winer writes: "Heads-up, some time in the next few hours (Murphy-willing) we're going to release tcp.im, which allows Radio and Frontier to be an instant messaging client or server (either can be either). It was a collaboration between Eric Soroos, Jeremy Bowers and myself; with Jake Savin doing the close. There may be some bugs and more docs to write over the next few days. Should be final on Monday. Allows us to write chatbots, to reactivate instant outlining, and allow weblog posts over IM. The first two transports supported are Jabber and AIM. There's a driver framework that makes it easy to support more. Obvious next choices are Microsoft and Groove. Looking forward to seeing what developers do with it." [Scripting News]
5:47:56 PM
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A Bluetooth mailing list for Mac users
80211b News: Macintosh Bluetooth mailing list: The coming of OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) also opens the way for full Apple support of many Bluetooth devices. This mailing list could help sort out equipment and pitfalls.
12:03:38 PM
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A quick note on the baseball strike
CNN and everyone else is reporting that the Major League Baseball players union has set a strike date of August 30. What does that mean for Mac fans. Nothing. But it will put to rest a conversation in my house, as I have still been following the Seattle Mariners' season even though there was every chance that a strike would happen. Natalie, you are right...it, meaning the standings and this MLB season, doesn't matter.
Now I just wonder what I will listen to on the radio while out driving across the sagebrush lands of Eastern Washington while doing research for our upcoming book? Listening to the M's on the radio drove us home on a number of weekends so far this summer. No more...
11:07:30 AM
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Writing the Living Web
The A List Apart site has an interesting article for people who write on the Web: 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web. It is a good primer for anyone interested in writing a Weblog. Another interesting note is that the article comes from Mark Bernstein, one of the people behind the Tinderbox program from Eastgate Systems that I have been trying to wrap my mind around this week. I haven't had enough time to spend with Tinderbox yet, but once I understand it I plan to write a review for MNJ...
7:45:26 AM
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What you need to know before switching to the Mac
Nathan Torkington offers an interesting top 10 list of the things he wished he knew before taking the leap into the Mac world and OS X: iBooks and TiBooks and MyBooks
7:37:52 AM
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Macworld offers an in-depth Jaguar review
If like me you have been thinking more about the realities of moving to Mac OS X 10.2 next weekend, you may want to take a look at Jason Snell's Macworld Review: Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar". It offers a good overview of the new OS for those of us who haven't been playing with pre-release versions.
I am also happy this morning to see yesterday's note from Ken Bereskin from Apple, a Radio Userland user who confirmed that Radio works without a hiccup in Jaguar. I just wish that the news was as positive about the use of Java under Jaguar. I have read a few reports that Java runs slow on pre-release builds of Jaguar, and the folks in charge of development of my favorite Web browser Mozilla noted yesterday on MacCentral that there are serious Java problems with Mozilla under Jaguar. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.
Surely the next couple of weeks will be an interesting time to be a Mac user...
6:56:03 AM
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NetNewsWire Lite updated to 1.0b12
NetNewsWire Lite 1.0b11. This release adds new features such as the ability to group subscriptions and have multiple aggregate views. It gets a new icon by Bryan Bell. For more about what’s new, see the change notes. [ranchero.com]
Update: Brent Simmons has since released NetNewsWire Lite 1.0b12, with more interface adjustments and bug fixes...
6:04:23 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Rob McNair-Huff.
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