Midnight Cheese

Here are more photos as promised.

And there was much rejoicing heard throughout the land.

My new laptop arrived this morning! I’ve got more pictures to post, and a more in-depth report of Photoshop running under Rosetta coming soon. For now, after using my old PowerBook G4 for almost 4 years, the MacBook Pro is FAST. Very Fast. iPhoto is smooth and silky. Photoshop 7 running under Rosetta performs noticeably faster than Photoshop 7 running native on the 800mhz G4. Much faster than I had imagined.

My old PowerBook will soon be up on Ebay.

Judging by the red curtain on the invite, and the announcement taking place at a beautiful old theater, I’d say they’re going to announce some type of video integration with iTunes. Maybe Netflix meets iTunes in the form of h264 downloadable movies. Would definitely be a good use for those 30″ displays.

Quickly: After watching the keynote it looks like this transition will go insanely smooth. Universal Binary says it all. And in grand Apple style they make it as simple as clicking a checkbox for developers to make the switch to new hardware. This will be nothing like going from OS 9 to OS X. Rosetta is perhaps the biggest head-raiser of all. Where did this technology come from? Born from Apple alone? Transitive Corporation? It looks pretty fast from the keynote footage. This will create much speculation until Apple spills a little more info.

It was interesting to hear the Intel CEO talk about Intel chips getting cooler. Just this weekend I put together a P4 system for my brother, and that thing is HOT. The monster fan that accompanies the chip is terribly loud. It will be interesting to see how Apple and Intel address the heat issue.

The biggest downside to the switch to Intel will be the forthcoming pirated copies of OS X that will be running on every script kiddie’s Dell machine in the coming year. Apple will continue to only allow OS X to run on Apple machines(via OpenFirmware, some special ROM chip, etc.) but this will be cracked, and I predict very quickly. (Perhaps this was one reseaon behind the much-hyped Tiger Leak Lawsuits?)

There was a lot of speculation that Intel would be making a custom x86 chip for Apple alone, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.

The switch to Intel opens the door VERY WIDE for a WINE type app to be integrated into OS X that lets Windows users run most of their favorite Windows programs on their brand-new Macintosh.

Quick notes:
The guys from Wolfram Research were superb in their presentation.
What the hell was M$ thinking with their MacBU spokesperson? She looked like Gates in drag, and sounded even worse.
While many expected a switch to Intel, I don’t think anyone expected a potential transition to be so smooth and so soon.
Jobs eluded to upcoming PPC products multiple times. What will they be?

Stopped by the new Apple Store in Green Hills Mall on Saturday with Ernie. There were lots and lots of people in there. Completely packed. The store is smaller than the one in Atlanta, but it’s still packed full of good stuff. They have a Sony HDV camera on display that you can try out with one of the G5s and the gigantic 30″ display.

On the way out of the store I walked by this girl and thought, “Oh she’s pretty.” Immediately Ernie turned to me and said, “Hey, that was LeAnn Rimes.” To which I said, “Who?” I’ve heard her name before, but I thought she was some old-time country singer person. (I know nothing about country music, and generally hate it. Yes, hate. Most of it anyway. Definitely anything recent and pop.) Ernie explained to me all that she’s done… winning a Grammy at an insanely young age, some TV show, etc.

So, LeAnn Rimes is an apparent Apple fan, if that was indeed her.

Tomorrow, 10am, Green Hills Mall, it opens.