What Mac to buy? Macintouch has very surprising results.

Performance Comparison: eMac G4, iBook G4 and iMac G5

Fascinating results of some serious testing from a reputable source. We've had hints of this in the past. The G5 is fundamentally not that much faster than the G4, and real-world performance is not processor bound. Performance is affected by much more than the CPU. There were significant design compromises to fit a G5 into the iMac, and they have performance implications. Disabling the iMac's power management features helps performance, but it may stress heat management -- and those fans will run. (Of course in Minnesota we can simply put the iMac in the attic -- no heating problems in winter there!).

BTW, I think a similar analysis of various Intel systems would show similar results. Performance nowadays is often about heat, system throughput, memory, hard drives, etc. The CPU isn't the big factor for a lot of functionality.

Implications? The G4 iBook and G4 eMac are very interesting alternatives to a G5 iMac. The major unknown is Tiger. If one wants to run Tiger, should one opt for a G5 iMac? My general rule is that when an OS upgrade is very important (like Tiger -- it's something I want), the best strategy is buy hardware that ships after the OS goes GA and that ships with the OS.

Since I want a new Mac now and I want to run Tiger, I may choose to shop around for a used G4 system, or a new eMac, and plan to buy a new system post-Tiger. Nobody should upgrade from a fairly recent G4 machine to an iMac or even a G5 tower.

... Using QuickTime Pro 6.5.1 and QuickTime Player, we export a high-quality 50-second DV file to MPEG-4 format. Source and target files are on the hard drive. We use the standard "Default" settings.

This is a good real-world test of system performance, and the results are surprising: Right out of the box, the eMac G4/1.25GHz outperforms the iMac G5/1.8GHz system at Apple's standard settings, and the lowly iBook G4 is right on its heels.

If you change Apple's standard Energy Saver options to get "Highest" processor performance, the iMac G5 will outperform the eMac, but there must be some reason that's not the default, and clock speed alone should give the iMac a big advantage.

Apple is using the G5's special "slewing" feature to reduce heat and power drain, and the result is a real bottleneck.

Conclusions

The iMac G5 is a wonderful system, and we'd rather pay a few hundred dollars over the cost of an eMac to get one, but all the Apple hype about the G5 falls a little short when you see the low-cost eMac, with its slower G4 processor, pushing the iMac G5 in performance. The eMac is actually faster in several real-world situations, and that raises some serious technical questions that long to be answered.

In the meantime, you'll be getting a high-performance bargain with either the eMac G4 or iBook G4, and you still can't go wrong with the iMac G5.

If you want the ultimate in performance - or maybe just a super-large screen - the Power Mac G5 is the way to go, although we have some concerns about reliability with the liquid-cooled 2.5GHz model and would probably stick with 1.8- or 2.0GHz systems.

PowerBooks are nice, but pricy. The biggest advantage you get for the extra cost of the 12" PowerBook is the ability to drive a larger external screen in dual-display mode (up to 2048x1536), although the built-in screen has the same 768x1024 resolution as the iBook. [jf: the iBook hardware supports driving an external desktop, but Apple disables this -- possibly for heat reasons, possibly to protect PowerBook sales.]

The 15" PowerBook is an ideal mobile machine, and it can drive a big external screen on a desktop or use FireWire 800 to get disk performance more on par with a desktop computer's. This laptop costs almost twice as much as an iBook G4, however, making it an expensive option for part-time portability, and it's not as compact as the jewel-like 12" models.

The 17" PowerBook strikes us as an expensive alternative to the iMac with better portability and battery power.

One last factor is the G5's support for 64-bit processing, which is supposed to get a boost with next year's Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger". Theoretically, this may be an advantage for G5 models, but the real-world advantage for general applications is questionable at this point.

TweakXP.com - disable "shortcut to" prefix without external programs

TweakXP.com - disable "shortcut to" prefix without external programs

This tweak stops windows creating the annoying "shotcut to" prefix when creating shortcuts to the desktop via either dragging/dropping or right clicking and selecting send to . This means that you do not need to rename all those shortcuts on your desktop . Here's how -

Start Registry Editor.

Locate the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
Modify the data value of the Link value to be 00 00 00 00.

NOTE : For Windows 95, the Link value does not exist by default. Create the Link value as a Binary value, with a data value of 00 00 00 00.

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One of the greatest of all windows annoyances. I found this using AskJeeves, it often works where Google gets lost in noise.

Omni Outliner Pro 3 (Beta) - great with MORE 3.1

The Omni Group - Applications - OmniOutliner - Beta

I can't find the page for downloading the Pro beta, maybe they took it down temporarily. It's very impressive. OO Pro is now a full fledged writing tool. I imported some fairly large (20 page+) documents written in MORE 3.1, OO Pro had no problems. It even imported and embedded graphic elements.

MORE 4.0? OmniOutliner Pro

The Omni Group - Applications - OmniOutliner - Beta Download

This app imports and exports in a bewildering list of outliner formats, including all those old Acta and MORE documents. It has hoists, etc. Really, it sounds like MORE 4.0. I'm probably going to buy it when it's available.

Recording sound and transcribing it for OS X

Boing Boing: Excellent transcribing app: Listen&Type

AudioRecorder for sound capture, Listen & Type for transcription.

I have a device that turns my iPod into a recorder. Works very well! (Griffin something.) This sounds very handy for the laptop.

PalmSource goes Linux -- shades of Apple's Pink

PalmInfocenter.com: An open letter to the Linux community from PalmSource

Today we at PalmSource announced we're going to extend Palm OS® to run on top of Linux. We've written this letter to explain what we're doing and not doing, why we're doing it, and how we're doing it. We'll also answer some likely questions.

... We intend to offer future versions of Palm OS Cobalt as a software layer on top of Linux (specifically, on the Linux kernel plus selected Linux services appropriate to mobile devices). The Palm OS software layer will include our well-known UI as well as a set of middleware and applications that encompass the best of Palm OS. We intend that properly written Palm OS 68k applications will run unchanged on Palm OS for Linux, and that Palm OS® Cobalt native applications using the Palm OS Protein APIs will port with a simple recompile. In addition, Palm OS for Linux will be able to run many third party Linux applications and services (GUI applications will need to use the Palm OS APIs).

... We're not open sourcing Palm OS®; we're going to implement it as a software layer that runs on top of Linux. Our business model will be licensing that layer, with hardware companies that use the layer in a device paying us royalties. We don't charge developers a license fee to create software that is compatible with Palm OS. Our development tools are also free; they are built on Eclipse, and we are a member of the Eclipse Foundation.

While we're not open sourcing all of Palm OS, we do expect to open source some of our code, and will actively seek to invest in the open source community through code contributions and other means.

... We think the Linux platform will become a leading operating system for mobile devices [jf. note they didn't say PalmOS mobile devices only], and we believe the endorsement and support of PalmSource for that platform will greatly accelerate that process. We think the combination of Palm OS and Linux can attract more mobile licensees and developers, create more new devices, and bring in more users than either could on its own.

... The Palm OS layer written for use on Linux will be designed to be portable to any suitable mobile Linux distribution, and we'll expose Linux APIs under the Palm OS layer.

... Together, we'll have the technological and market critical mass to challenge -- and, we believe, beat -- even the biggest proprietary operating system companies in the mobile market. [jf. of course they're still proprietary, but what the heck -- they're not Microsoft]

... We are acquiring China MobileSoft, a leading Chinese mobile phone software company. CMS has been developing a version of Linux with optimizations designed for smart mobile devices, especially around battery management and fast boot time. We will be using that technology as the foundation of Palm OS for Linux (although we will also support other Linux distributions).

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The original PalmOS was based on an embedded device OS. Something out of Canada if memory serves. I'd love to know what when wrong with Palm's OS development process.

Apple spent years on OS development during the Classic era. They tried Pink (hence the title of this posting), Taligent (with IBM), the OS-like OpenDoc project (I really liked that one), and the beloved NewtonOS. All more or less failed. Finally they bought NextStep with its Unix based OS. That became OS X.

Now Palm revisits those days. Indeed, I think they've watched Apple and decided Apple's mixed (some would say parasitic) open/closed source strategy is a good one. I thought at first Cobalt was dead, but if they're really following Apple's example PalmSource may keep enough of the Cobalt API to make it worth pursuing -- though I doubt there will be many apps released for Cobalt directly. Sounds like CMS has done a lot of grunt work -- Linux is not known for power management.

It's interesting that they're using Eclipse. They intend to capture developers by allowing them to produce PalmOS and even non-PalmOS (write directly to Linux API) apps that may be repositioned for other platforms.

Clearly PalmSource and PalmOne are going in different directions. PalmSource wants to put their software atop many devices that will come out of Korea, Taiwan, Japan and China -- countries where pen input is very workable (though Korea has a phonetic alphabet -- of which they are quite proud -- and is less pen dependent than China). On the other hand PalmOne has talked of using Microsoft's OS. I'm not impressed with PalmOne's hardware direction -- actually I'm incredibly unimpressed -- so this may not be bad. Maybe PalmOne just needs to go away.

I'm very curious as to what Apple might do with this new picture. Does it change their calculations at all?

Given that the Palm platform has most of its extremities in the grave, this isn't a bad move -- though it feels late in the game.

RAW format management and Photoshop Elements 3

Macintouch Digital Cameras (Part 3): "...Nikon Capture 4 at $100 is splendid for batch processing. (It's not THAT slow.) A new contender for low-cost entry is Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 at $80, a super editor for RAW files. It has the same Camera Raw 2.3 Plug-In found in Photoshop CS and it supports RAW (NEF files) from Nikon, and Canon and whoever else, all seamlessly. A bargain.

For anyone wanting to understand the RAW format (including Nikon's NEF, which is their flavor of RAW) get Bruce Fraser's excellent book 'Real World camera RAW.' [$23.79 @ Amazon] Once you understand what RAW can do you will never shoot JPEG again."

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News to me that Elements has the RAW editor!