New Apple articles, part one
Jul 8, 2008 8:19:00 GMT
Post by CharlieChomper on Jul 8, 2008 8:19:00 GMT
Since most of the recent articles have been focusing on Microsoft or Windows, I thought to focus on Apple for a change.
When I went through some of the articles I had saved involving Apple and some issues as well as things to come, I was admittedly surprised I had so many and that it amounted to about the same as the articles I still have yet to share involving Microsoft and/or Windows. I likewise had forgotten just how massive the number of bookmarks I actually have about just OS X and Macs is in just one browser (I currently have bookmarks spread out across several browsers and almost don't want to fathom just how many I have saved on the topic of Apple).
That said, I thought I'd start this series off by displaying what to expect for the next major release of OS X (due out next year and currently under the working/code name of "Snow Leopard"--whether or not the name will change by release has yet to be determined as Apple has sometimes kept and reused the code/working names for releases of OS X in the past...) for those interested. There are a few other Apple articles thrown into this as well, since they largely didn't fit in with other topics or else I didn't wish to have them just as "stand alone" articles.
Among the upcoming changes, will be a complete drop of support for the older PowerPC architecture in favor of the current Intel-only architecture that Macs have been using. There's more info involving some of these changes which you can read about here. There's also more commentary involving it at a tech event in which Steve Jobs is quoted, which you can read about here.
One new change which most users would probably not have reason to be aware of and wasn't listed is that Apple will be also making changes to the filesystem in use to Sun's ZFS filesystem (which is currently in use by Sun's Solaris and OpenSolaris operating systems as well as by a number of open source Unix-variants such as BSD (which is what OS X is actually made up of) as well as Linux), partly in an attempt to address speed and stability problems. No word yet as to how this will affect users of the current filesystem or their files.
For those using PCs and who may be interested in OS X, someone actually has managed to get OS X working on a PC (which isn't terribly surprising as the two use the same architecture these days) and even listed the hardware involved in order to do so. Since this first came out, however, it has caused some controversy amongst Apple users/fans, in terms of some being very angry or decrying the fact that someone not only was able to do this, but even posted how to go about it.
Which brings me to another article related to PC and Mac hardware. The article was actually written by a Mac user and fan and shows some insight into the current state of hardware and costs between the two platforms. They came to find in pricing just laptops with identical hardware configurations (the PC laptop having been built by Dell), that it would cost them 200% more for the Mac laptop than it did for a PC laptop that had literally identical hardware.
The next article, I'll preface by saying that I have been debating for a few months now as to whether or not to even post it.
If it creates any controversy (which would ironically prove the point of the article) and if requested to do so by Kiri, I will remove it.
That said, the article discusses an interesting situation involving the perception and interpretation of bias against Apple by Apple fans even in otherwise positive reviews written by reviewers who are, themselves, Apple fans. It's interesting if only to get a better understanding of the situation as a whole and better insight into that community. Semi-related to this, ironically enough when the article was first posted it did create some controversy amongst Apple fans who basically proved the point the article was trying to make.
Part two will be posted soon.
When I went through some of the articles I had saved involving Apple and some issues as well as things to come, I was admittedly surprised I had so many and that it amounted to about the same as the articles I still have yet to share involving Microsoft and/or Windows. I likewise had forgotten just how massive the number of bookmarks I actually have about just OS X and Macs is in just one browser (I currently have bookmarks spread out across several browsers and almost don't want to fathom just how many I have saved on the topic of Apple).
That said, I thought I'd start this series off by displaying what to expect for the next major release of OS X (due out next year and currently under the working/code name of "Snow Leopard"--whether or not the name will change by release has yet to be determined as Apple has sometimes kept and reused the code/working names for releases of OS X in the past...) for those interested. There are a few other Apple articles thrown into this as well, since they largely didn't fit in with other topics or else I didn't wish to have them just as "stand alone" articles.
Among the upcoming changes, will be a complete drop of support for the older PowerPC architecture in favor of the current Intel-only architecture that Macs have been using. There's more info involving some of these changes which you can read about here. There's also more commentary involving it at a tech event in which Steve Jobs is quoted, which you can read about here.
One new change which most users would probably not have reason to be aware of and wasn't listed is that Apple will be also making changes to the filesystem in use to Sun's ZFS filesystem (which is currently in use by Sun's Solaris and OpenSolaris operating systems as well as by a number of open source Unix-variants such as BSD (which is what OS X is actually made up of) as well as Linux), partly in an attempt to address speed and stability problems. No word yet as to how this will affect users of the current filesystem or their files.
For those using PCs and who may be interested in OS X, someone actually has managed to get OS X working on a PC (which isn't terribly surprising as the two use the same architecture these days) and even listed the hardware involved in order to do so. Since this first came out, however, it has caused some controversy amongst Apple users/fans, in terms of some being very angry or decrying the fact that someone not only was able to do this, but even posted how to go about it.
Which brings me to another article related to PC and Mac hardware. The article was actually written by a Mac user and fan and shows some insight into the current state of hardware and costs between the two platforms. They came to find in pricing just laptops with identical hardware configurations (the PC laptop having been built by Dell), that it would cost them 200% more for the Mac laptop than it did for a PC laptop that had literally identical hardware.
The next article, I'll preface by saying that I have been debating for a few months now as to whether or not to even post it.
If it creates any controversy (which would ironically prove the point of the article) and if requested to do so by Kiri, I will remove it.That said, the article discusses an interesting situation involving the perception and interpretation of bias against Apple by Apple fans even in otherwise positive reviews written by reviewers who are, themselves, Apple fans. It's interesting if only to get a better understanding of the situation as a whole and better insight into that community. Semi-related to this, ironically enough when the article was first posted it did create some controversy amongst Apple fans who basically proved the point the article was trying to make.
Part two will be posted soon.
Thank you once again for such interesting articles CC.