Month: June 2005

A totally geeky post about Apple & Intel

A copy of a note I just posted to the local Mac User group (DEMUG). Warning, not for the non-geeky, it’s probably really boring to even those who know what I’m talking about. Having said that:

To be honest I’m going to wait and see about all this because I really don’t know enough about the pros & cons here to have a really educated opinion on it AND there’s nothing we can do to stop this switch, like it or not, your likely to have ‘Intel Inside’ in your next Mac. I do have a few comments based on things mentioned in this thread so far;

Chip’s Vulnerable to viruses – You really don’t here about many Linux viruses and a majority of Linux distributions run on Intel’s chips. While exploits have been found to prey on some of the intel architecture I’m sure the motorola one has similar problems if the right hackers focused on it. The good thing is, the intel architecture has been the primary focus of hackers for years and thus all the obvious exploits are pretty well known and can be prevented. Kind of the ‘open source’ philosophy here, hackers can be helpful. Also, we all know that if the right people focused on Mac OS we’d get viruses too. It’s been fun for the past decade to tease Windows folks about viruses but it’s time we all raised shields and got careful anyways.

Trusting Apple – Apple has had a track record of good decisions recently, but this has not always been the case. Steve Jobs has made alot of good decisions for Apple but also it’s pretty well known that he can be an arrogant stubborn pain the *ss and it wouldn’t surprise me that this whole switch is done more to spite Motorola/IBM PowerPC folks or for some other reason. Ok it sounds conspriracy theory like but I don’t think Steve Jobs is infallable. On the other hand, from what he’s saying if they didn’t make this switch then Macs would have a reputation of being really slow. I am curious why Apple got in bed with Intel instead of AMD but oh well. BTW – Sun has also released it’s OS in an X86 format. The days of the RISC chip may be waning.

I think we need to remember that Apple, while a hardware producer, is mostly a software company (ok mostly an mp3 player company with computer hardware and software on the side, sad as that may be). They make enough off hardware to not want to give any of that up with clones, but the majority of what they “make” is software. On hardware front they basically make pretty machines that contain standard hardware. Yes their engineers are very good at what they do but they aren’t ‘making’ anything really.

In order for them to survive they have to cut some corners and running on ‘standard’ hardware is the easiest way. People screamed when they moved from SCSI to IDE disks, but it reduced the cost of the machines. Same thing from SBUS to PCI, ADB to USB, removed the floppy drive etc. Basically, people don’t like to hear that the new machine they are running on now has ‘old’ technology, it’s like GM just said ‘All our cars are going to run on Diesel by 2007 because normal gas was found to be inferior’. (ok the analogy needs work but you get the idea). Also, proprietary or uncommon hardware can be a pain to maintain and support (and costly to replace).

Also, Steve Jobs recently gave a commencement speech at Stanford ( http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html ) and he basically said the same thing the Steve Wozniak (the other founder of Apple) said at a commencement speech he gave years ago: “We won. Every computer is a essentially a Mac.” (referring to the fact that windows came about to try to copy Apple’s GUI OS, etc.). Though I guess the reverse may now be true too.. every computer is basically a ‘PC’ 🙂

Ok I’m getting off my soap box now. Thanks for listening 🙂

-Matt

Brian Jenkin’s in my dreams

My letter to Brian Jenkins this AM about the dream he was in last night.

Hey Brian – Long time no chat. So for some strange reason you were the main character in a dream I had last night. Thanks to my stupid dog barking at 4 AM and waking me up I still remember parts of it though it’s fading fast.

Note before all this I’m about to write about I was with you in some blues band jam. You played drums and the harmonica player was really ugly but did things with a harmonica that I had never seen/heard before. But that’s not the point…

It was at Antioch and it was your senior project in computers & multimedia or something along those lines. Apparently there was some rumor of you not graduating because you had only been playing video games for your senior project or something like that, so if this presentation failed it spelled doom, but you weren’t worried at all when I chatted with you, you basically said ‘Hey..like I need that piece of paper? I’m just doing this for fun, and then i’m leaving here to do what I want regardless of what anyone else says’. You also told me to sit near the front, cause it was going to be fun.

oh and it was.. but I’m getting ahead of my self. So the presentation starts, and your standing in front of the room (closest one I can think of at Antioch was McGregor 113, the one where community meetings took place) with a paper bag. Your talking about video games and their history, and in the tradition of ye olde ‘So there were these two horses named Moe and Joe…’ it’s mind numbingly boring. “And then in 1977 the concept of a sprite…. games became more interactive with the addition of …. ‘. The room is grumbing, people are leaving… you finally get to “so I was thinking … {long pause as you reach into your paper bag}… what if you could animate a simple object {pulling spall 4” diameter beach ball} in 3D space? {you toss the ball in the air and then catch it and look to the room for approval. All you get is yawns}.
“So I was thinking.. if you lined an object with simple metal flakes of the right type of metal, and set up focused magnets around the room {you reach over and flick a switch and the lights dim a little and room makes a hum. People are confused.} “and hooked them to a computer to manage the x, y, and z coordinates” {you pop open a laptop on the table next to you and tap a key} “that maybe you could.” {you throw the ball in the air again and this time, 4 feet above your head, it freezes in mid-arc and stops there, spinning on it’s axis}.

“So.. if the magnets worked, theoretically {wink} I could move the object around {tap on keyboard and the ball zips from left to right (one axis)}. “No i mean.. really move it around {the ball zips across the room zig zagging all over, occasionally hitting a feel people and then moving on it’s way. Someone eventually catches it} “Oh fine.. be that way” {you dump your bag of 4 or 5 other multcolored beachballs and they all promptly take off in an aerial pattern”

“So might this be usable in a video game? Sure.. beach ball games could be pretty big… but there needs to be a virtual world too.” {you flick a switch and fog makers start all over the room and the lights above start changing colors. I look up at one of the lights and realize it’s not a light, it’s a video projector that’s just been showing bright white so far. In fact.. I realize you have like 50 video projectors webbing the whole room into one big screen. You notice I’m picking up on this and say ‘shh’ to me and wink. The beach balls are dancing all over and you have some rave like techno music throbbing that they are dancing too. Your still talking about stuff but people aren’t listening to you,t hey are already fascinated by 3D rendered objects. You pull out a few other inflatable objects, a lifesaver ring, a few big white rafts, a few other big white balls etc. They all hover nearby you. One of the projectors changes the color of one of the white balls to red and this gets people’s attention (and in the techno mix there’s a little ‘Wizard Of Oz’ music blip, nice touch (from B&W to color, ya’ know). Then you paint the ‘walls’ of the room, which at this time are now cascading streams of fog, with a virtual jungle and put animal animations on the white rafts & balls etc. You have a giant ball that’s now a lion pounce on Bob Devine repeatedly.}

At this point I had to leave the room for some reason, something about my cousin’s leaving or being drunk or something.. and I just remember looking back at the room with colorr, fog, throbbing techno music and objects dancing all over in 3D and thinking ‘he’s gonna be so rich from this, about time Antioch had a super succesful alum.. wonder if he’ll give any to the college?’ and then I was off to deal with my cousins. I later returned ‘after the show’ to give you back 2 beach balls my cousin had apparently left with and we chatted briefly but I don’t recall about what.
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SO thanks for the wild head show last night Brian. What’s new with you? 🙂

-Matt