Mac OS X

The Washington Post gives some good advice for those who are computer shopping:

Can you name any one program that you must use? If you can't, that's your cue to get a Mac.

There's a lot of cool stuff coming out of MacWorld.

• The ModBook is an awesome tablet-style computer, covered by EnGadget here and here.
  
• AOL seems to have a digital media player but they could have at least gotten one that had the keys on right.
  
• The 10 best UI modification applications for the Mac.
  

Powerbook explodes... soon they won't let you carry laptops on planes.

Want to see something cool? Check out the lab Microsoft uses for testing Mac compatibility

So Apple is going to migrate away from the IBM PowerPC processor platform to the standard Intel x86.

I am sure that the faithful are going through the five stages of acceptance. The Register is correct to mention "the suicidal groans of the faithful, who've seen a decade's worth of evangelism flushed down the pan."

The Reg also mentions the Osborne Effect, where you kill your existing products when you announce the Next Big Thing before it's ready and people refuse to buy The Current Thing. The incentive for anyone to buy an apple between now and the ship date for intelmacs is significantly diminished because of the prospect for a very forcible planned obsolesence.

Slashdot points to an article in eWeek discussing the impact in x86 Linux and Windows Longhorn. I do think this may result in a definite shift away from Linux, although the repurcussions are yet to be felt. I think that the appeal of Darwin in an enterprise setting are notable compared to having a contract with Redhat, which is in far more tenuous control of their product.

I wonder if the plebeian nature of the x86 platform will detract from Apple's designer image. It's amazing how much having a designer image can get you.

Update (02:00 6/10): Could this be a move to slay Microsoft with an Apple-Intel merger?

The Washington Post has a couple of somewhat contradictory articles today. First, they tell us about how Microsoft is chasing the features and delivery schedule Apple has been able to pull off. Then, they tell us how Tiger (10.4) is not a compelling upgrade to Panther (10.3).

I suppose perhaps these aren't directly contradictory. Microsoft is so far behind the curve that a competitor can be far ahead without revolutionary improvements in every one of their versions. But the conclusion I tend to come to is that perhaps these buzzword-compliant features that Apple is hitting and Microsoft is missing aren't as important to the user experience as one might have thought.

Ever wondered if Apple's higher prices were worth it? Well, someone in the local mac-users group at my company happened upon this article, which is worth readin in it's entirety if you are considering making the purchasing decision between an Apple and a PC.