The sweetest version of OS X 10.3.x (Panther)?

MacInTouch Home Page: "Panther dot 7 has got it all for now - .8 and .9 were both troublesome."

Now that 10.3 is a legacy OS, one can choose the 'stopping point' for older machines. This Macintouch expert votes for 10.3.7 as the place to stop for a machine that won't go to 10.4. I'm ok on 10.3.9 but I find this plausible.

iPhoto 5 bug - color shifting (Macintouch)

iPhoto 5 broke the color profile functionality that was present in past versions of iPhoto. That's bad enough, but it turned out to have a nasty side effect. Under some circumstances repeated edits of a photo causes cumulative damage to a photo's color information.

This appears not to be Tiger specific, but occurs with iPhoto 5 on Panther as well. This is a bad enough bug that one should not update to iPhoto 5 until it's fixed. From Macintouch:

Joe Zobkiw

Regarding the iPhoto/ColorSync Profile post from the Apple discussion boards, here is an interesting experiment to show the relationship between different color profiles:

Open "ColorSync Utility" from /Applications/Utilities. Click on the Calculator icon in the main window. Select two different profiles for the right and left sides (sRGB Profile on the right and Generic RGB Profile on the left, for example) and then move any slider. Note the opposite slider(s) and how far they move in comparison in order to achieve the same color in the other profile.

For example, if Generic RGB Profile has red set to .5 and green and blue set to 0, sRGB Profile has red set to .5732, green to .0975 and blue to -.0339. You can see immediately the relationship between various profiles and how if values are saved from one profile and "applied" to another profile (not using ColorSync functionality but just "saved" as belonging to the other profile) how the colors would be very different.


Stuart Hertzog

James Bailey is on the right track in pointing to a change in embedded profile as being the reason for color shifts in edited iPhoto files. But ColorSync is not the problem: ColorSync is just OSX's color management system.

It seems that iPhoto is not properly re-saving the embedded profile of an edited file, turning it into an 'untagged' file (without color management information). When a color-managed application such as Photoshop or iPhoto opens what it sees as an untagged file, it will assign whatever default RGB profile it happens to be using, thus displaying shifted color. The color information is all present and correct, it's just that the wrong profile is being used.

Gmail: 42/50 messages are spam

Gmail - Inbox

My Gmail inbox continues to drown in spam. Now at 84%. The same mail stream filtered by my ISP delivers only about 5% spam. Gmail can't be doing much in the way of filtering.

iMac G5 Developer Note - hardware

iMac G5 Developer Note

Via Macintouch. These notes have far more detail on the new G5s than Apple's marketing materials. The SuperDrive supports DVD+R double layer format, for example. Power supply is 180W.

Note the memory specs:

Additional DIMMs can be installed. The combined memory of all of the DIMMs installed is configured as a contiguous array of memory. The throughput of the 400 MHz memory bus is dependent on the DIMMs installed. If only one DIMM is installed, the memory bus is 64-bit. If two non-identical DIMMs are installed, there are two 64–bit memory buses. If two identical DIMMs are installed, the memory bus is 128-bit. Identical DIMM pairs have the same size and composition and provide the fastest and most efficient throughput.

On PCs at least paired DIMMS have to be purchased together. So when you buy a G5 with 512MB of DRAM, you've got to sell that somehow to get the fastest memory -- or donate it to a friend!

Shoebox: yet another OS X media management package

Shoebox

Like several others it claims iPhoto "import and export", but what they describe seems pretty simplistic. Perhaps they do more than it seems, but true iPhoto integration is not a trivial task. I'm still hoping for an 'iPhoto Pro' replacement for iPhoto build atop Tiger's infrastructure.

iMac essential: a thermal monitoring program

Macintouch: iMac G5 (Part 9)

Scott Richardson

Anyone that is suspecting fan or thermal problems with a newer Macintosh should get hold of the free program called Temperature Monitor or, for more detailed sensor information, the $9 shareware Hardware Monitor by the same author, and
run it in record history mode. Hardware Monitor will give you very detailed sensor data, and a plot recording of exactly what is going on within your system - temperature sensors, fan speeds, current, and voltage readings, plus you will have hard copy proof to show Apple Support if there is a warranty issue with your machine, especially if it is highly intermittent thermal problem you are trying to record on paper (like a fan that quits, or a power supply that goes out of spec). Couple this sensor data with the Console Log time stamp, and you have a very detailed record of any intermittent problems. Without the sensor data, you are really in the dark.

iMac 2nd generation: temperature data

Macintouch: iMac G5 (Part 9)

There have been 3 possible inter-related problems with the first generation iMacs:

1. Cooling problems.
2. Inadequate power supply.
3. Leaking capacitors.

So this temperature data on 2nd generation iMacs is interesting:

Scott McDonald

I'm wondering if there's a compilation of CPU temperatures that users are seeing on the new iMac G5's - I have a 2nd generation 2GHz 17" iMac, I'm seeing CPU temperature of 132 - 140 F when it's running mail only - when I'm actively using it to do Photo editing, web surfing, etc., the temperature is usually around 150-160 F.

If I turn the processor performance from 'automatic' to 'highest' I instantly see a jump in temperature on the CPU - I'm wondering what temperatures others with the new iMacs are seeing.

These are my current readings from a session that I'm VNCed into, the Mac is only running Mail.app at the moment:

125.6 F <-- Hard Drive
141.5 F <-- CPU
122.0 F <-- Smart Disk ST3160023AS

I'm using Temperature Monitor 2.5 from Marcel Bresink Software-Systeme. [You could try Jeremy Kezer's ThermographX. It includes periodically updated graphs of user-submitted temperature records. -MacInTouch]

Chris Perardi

Just thought I'd report in on the CPU temperatures of my new 2.0 GHz iMac G5 with 512 megabytes of RAM and 250 gigabyte hard drive. The temperature under a fairly mild load (listening to iTunes, browsing in Camino) stays a pretty constant 65¼C. The room temperature is around ~21¼C. During a fairly heavy load (watching XViD encoded video with VLC in the background while working on GoLive CS in the foreground) the temperature has spiked up to 80¼C, which is the highest I've been able to achieve.

The fan noise seem to be pretty constant. It's not a "whoosh" sound I'm used to in previous Macs; it's more of a higher-pitched whine. Slightly annoying, but I'm usually playing music anyway, which drowns it out completely. The machine almost always stays cool to the touch, except, somewhat oddly in my opinion, after waking up the system in the morning. Overall, I've been quite happy. The iMac has been very fast, the Migration Assistant was awesomely useful, and it's nice to have a Core Graphics capable graphics card.

If Apple is indeed talking to Intel about anything, I suspect it's because they can't get the G5 into a laptop. Intel has done incredibly well at producing relatively cool and energy efficient chips that that still perform quite well.

If one is torn between the 17" and 20" iMacs, a possible justification for the 20" is that there may be more room for the G5 to dissipate heat into.