f13.net

Submitted by Squirrel (http://f13.net/index.php?itemid=148#more)

Good article.

17inch widescreen laptop = luv

I work on a PowerBook 17, and its great. Runs Warcraft OSX like shit, but thats what I have my PC at home for. I honestly think if more people converted to Mac, the world of computers would be a better place.

That kind of thinking is dangerous.

Dangerous, maybe, but also true.

Prove it. Yea, I went there.

For one, people wouldn't ask me how to install or uninstall shit (or do some other mundane task), or try it on their own and fuck up their computer in the process.

I'm certainly looking forward to the day when I can blow a bunch of cash on one of the new Intel Macs. I run Macs because (1) I'm a Unix freak that HATES X11 with a passion (2) since I already do too much computer work invoving fixing Unix troubles, the last thing I need to be doing when I'm trying to get stuff done is fighting what I find to be the most troublesome OS in existance - Windows. I like Windows to be just a gaming platform that I can fail to back up and delete when some poisonous application clashes and causes meltdown. I'd have to get far too invloved in the horrors of maintaining a clean and healthy Windows system if I actually relied on it to do real work. The regular "gardening chores" required to maintain a happy Mac platform are pretty trivial for a Unix maven. So the day I can run a bastion Windows partition on my "real computer" for game playing will be a good day.

I don't suppose any of you happen to know offhand how well one of these new fangled Intel laptops runs Aperture and one of the big music tools - Logic, Cubase, Digital Performer? In theory the processor & graphics card should put it up there with my G5, but y'know - laptop memory, disk and bus bandwidth, etc.

This doesn't fully answer your question, but since Logic is already the core of OS X's music subsystem, I'm sure it's already pretty tweaked for Intel, along with the rest of the system.

All three of the big music apps use Core Audio, and Aperture uses Core Graphics, so the Intel buy-in is assured. The music programs strain PowerBooks and certainly can't handle anything like the number of softsynth plugins as a G5, and Aperture is just horrible on PowerBooks. So it would be nice to know how these apps behave on the new MacBooks.

Aperature 1.1 runs fantastically on the Macbook pro's and less fantastically on the Macbooks. The integrated video solution on the Macbook's just isn't strong enough to really keep pace with Aperature, but i would suspect that depends on your usage. However if you're a casual photo junkie iPhoto should suffice. If you're serious about Aperature i wouldn't go with a Macbook though. I've seen it on one in a demo environment and wasn't impressed - but then i use Aperature on the Pro. However i've heard Adobe's Lightbox works well on the MacBooks as it utilizes the CPU more for processing images and it's also available as a Universal binary.

I don't get the Apple love.  I just don't get it.

The OS is good, but it doesn't cure cancer, heal the lame, and bring about world peace like so many people seem to claim.  It has it's own annoyances.  The hardware is basically the same stuff you're getting from Dell, but stuffed into a pretty case with a substandard video card.  For this you pay a fairly substantial premium.  To top it all off Apple is litigious as all hell, and has a case of Visionitis that puts SOE to shame.

I love the iPod, it's a top notch piece of consumer electronics that I couldn't live without.  That love doesn't translate over to the computer side of Apple's house.  We're all very, very fortunate that MS won the desktop war, because if Steve Jobs had the sort of power that Bill Gates had the world of computing would absolutely suck.

Last I saw, the Adobe beta was called Lightroom, and there was a neat indie app called Lightbox that used the Photoshop camera raw plug-in to do the hard work. But even Adobe seem confused about the name on their web pages, so have they bought Lightbox? I'm already addicted to Aperture though. I really like the "manly black" MacBook... apart from the mediocre integrated graphics. I'd really like a smaller MacBook Pro with a fast graphics chip, but its seems that for now Apple thinks that their laptop lineup is complete. If I chose now, I'd go with the 15" job.

As for Apple love? Not hardly, but I strongly disagree that we're better of with MS than Apple ruling the roost. They are both litigious fuckers of companies who stifle creativity to prop up their own IP hegemonies. And the world of computing already does largely suck.

FYI the video card on the Macbook Pro's is not substandard.  My laptop has a 256 PCIe ATI x1600. Pretty on par with any Dell offerings beside the SLI laptops. Other than that you're entitled to you opinion - facts FTW and all that.

EDIT: Yeah i was thinking of Lightroom - whichever is the Adobe standalone product.

But the difference, and it's a huge one, is that MS is a litigious fucker company that only controls the software side of things.  Apple controls both in their little domain.  The way I see it it's bad enough being locked into an OS, I enjoy being able to pick up commodity hardware from companies forced to compete with each other, and wouldn't relish the idea of my one and only choice in hardware coming from a company that slaps a huge tax on everything they sell.  For fuck's sake, my video iPod, after buying all the doodad's (dock, protective cover, radio/remote extension, Applecare plan) cost me just a little bit north of $600.  I had to fight my inner cheapskate to pony up that amount for an MP3 player, but I did.  Would I pay similar extravagant amounts for their computers?  No fucking way.

I only reboot my Powerbook every time I make a software upgrade. That means months without rebooting. The sleep mode is faultless. I try that on my Windows machine some times for some days just for giggles. After that I know why I pay more and why software and hardware in the same hands are not always the worst idea.

And designwise there are worlds between the two. People that don't know shit about computers are ideal for the apple. Sit them in front of the thing and the OS works like they think it would. I, of course, had to forget some of the stupid things decades of Windows taught me. But it was worth it.

I don't think about my apple. I just open it, do my work, close it. Do you know how much time I win compared to all the aggravation I had with my Windows machine up until last April Gulp? The older I get, the more my time is worth compared to my money.

Laptops make more sense to me if you're going to go Apple.  They're still more pricey than from another vendor, but not too much so.  I can see going that route because a laptop is a laptop; it's a piece of equipment that you're never really going to upgrade.  You use it until it's obsolete and get a new one.

Unfortunately I'm not a laptop guy.  I like desktops, and there Apple just has too many disadvantages vs. the PC world.  With an Apple I can't just decide that it's time for an incremental upgrade and replace my motherboard or processor.  Aside from minor stuff like RAM and possibly the video card I'd be stuck with what I've got.  That's just unacceptable to me.  I refuse to grit my teeth and suffer through semi-obsolete hardware because I can't yet justify buying a whole new box, and that's exactly the choice that Apple forces you to make.

ETA:  Now that I think about it, I haven't bought a completely new computer in probably over 10 years.  I just go through a long series of continual upgrades until I get to the point that my original computer is dissasembled in a cardboard box in my closet.  Eventually I get around to cannibalizing all those parts for family members and building them an (admittedly antiquated) computer that meets their needs, which is pretty much just browsing, word processing, and email.  When I can do that with Apple then maybe I'll think about them as a possible choice.  Until then, no dice.

Although I like the new iMac's and the Intel Mini I agree with you. Apple's 'pro' laptops (Powerbooks and now Macbook pro's) are terrific machines IMO. But for desktops i prefer upgradeable PC's - my desktop is an XP AMD dual core. That said, I really suggest that if you haven't had a chance to use OSX and the included iApps (iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD and Garage Band) that you try and find a way to check them out. For consumer home computing, photos, music and movie making they have no peer on any OS. Yes there are better Pro apps, but for free? These tools rock.

But yes, I am an Apple fanboi specifically relating to their pro laptops which i love. I'm on my 3rd one and except for gaming they are my primary machines.

The only real difference is that you sock away money bit by bit, then buy a new computer all at once, and just send the old one to Uncle Florence. But yes, cost and availability of modular upgrades is where PC hardware wins. Not running a Unix as elegant as OS X is where it currently fails. As Apple well knows, if it becomes trivial for non-techies to circumvent their DRM and install OS X on generic beige boxes, their hardware days are numbered. I still think that they should go that route and sell many more copies of their software, but Jobs is a yellow bellied coward when it comes to ditching proprietry hardware, as we've seen a few times in the past. Also a copy of OS X for Sun hardware. And retire the Mach microkernel and go monolithic while they're at it. Hell, just put all the high level Mac goodness atop OpenSolaris and sell it for all hardware platforms for $200. And cut me in for a percent of the action.

Uncle Florence?!

Man, my family's names are so much cooler in comparison.  Uncle Otto, Uncle Johnny, Uncle Al.

[edit] And my Grandpa's name is Severin. How cool is that?  :-D

[edit] Oh, and just to stay on topic: Grandpa could definitely use a Mac. Someone got him a Dell laptop recently -- Which is downright malicious, if you ask me.

Not to say a Mac would solve all his problems, but it'd help...

Yes, but you're overlooking a big, big flaw there:  The amount of time (which is lengthy) you have to suffer with a subpar machine because it's not quite subpar enough to replace, just yet.  I suffer no such affliction with a PC, I just replace whichever parts are dragging the system down.  Buying a whole new rig in one fell swoop may feel cathartic, but that's because for any catharsis to take place there has to be a long period of suffering beforehand.

How do you account for them running so well then? With shit components and a decient operating system, they sure run a step above a PC/Window box. I was hardcore PC for years, but now that I work daily on Mac, I really love them. Yeah, they suck for gaming, but for every thing else, they are superior.

Also, my point about having more people using them. Its so much more intuitave to use OS X than Windows. And from reading reviews Windows Vista is going to be even more complicated. I took my friend who had been a PC guys for ab out 5 years, but was not very computer literate, and convinced him to buy a Mac. He is now a devote mac fan, cause the computer actually works the way he thought it should.

For anyone who says "Mac sucks" I say to them, thats speaking out of ignorance. Both computer setups and opperating systems have upsides and downsides.

Do they?  How many times do you get the beach ball of death?  I personally haven't seen a blue screen in years, but a couple of my friends certainly run into issues (minor issues, admittedly) with their Macs.  As to them running so well, I call bullshit.  Since Mac is now on Intel we've been able to more fairly compare how a similarly decked out PC performs compared to a Mac on identical applications, and Mac has consistently underperformed the PC.

This is really immaterial, though.  I'll readily concede that OSX is a better OS than anything MS or the OSS community has put out, but is it that much better?  I've used OSX, and I've gotta tell you that at least on the desktop the advantages of OSX don't outweigh the disadvantages of being locked into Apple as far as I'm concerned.

Maybe learning it is much less intuitive, but I have been using Windows for so long that it really is not an issue.  I AM computer literate so I don't need the OS to hold my hand.  That is not a selling point to me at all.  If I needed the power of unix, I would be running linux so it isn't hidden.

For a computer newbie OS X might be a better starter system, but they best not hope for much support from me.  I can fix some things, however my experience is limited enough that I am not interested in learning a new OS to fix every problem they encounter.

I would tend to agree.

However, if someone said "the price of Macs suck" I would also agree...

There are a whole slew of non-SLI laptop graphic chipsets that offer better performance the Mobility Radeon X1600 including the GeForce Go 7900 GTX, GeForce Go 7900 GS, GeForce Go 7800 GTX, GeForce Go 7800, GeForce Go 7600, GeForce Go 6800 Ultra, GeForce Go 6800 and the Mobility Radeon X1800.

Prices of Macs suck far less than they used to. At first glance Macs may look more expensive than, say, Dells but if you actually configure a Mac and a Dell to be roughly comparable in spec you'll find they are actually pretty close in price. Macs tend to be more "full featured" in their base configuration which is why they look so expensive. Of course if you can make do with a cheaper base Dell configuration with less features then you are better off going that way if price is your primary concern assuming you aren't wedded to OS X.

The fact that those graphics chips exist doesn't mean that the X1600 is substandard. I'd hardly call the most recent graphics chipsets 'standard'. Of course you had to wait until today's new Dells came out for some of those chips to be in their lineup, so its not a very reasonable reply to a three day old comment either.

I am also computer literate and see no problem with having my computer hold my hand if it want's to.  I don't understand the pc pundits when they use the arguement that Macs are too easy.  It's just a weird point, in my opinion. 

It's sort of sad to see this degrade into a PC v Mac hate debate, anyway.  (cheers to Big Gulp)  Why is having the best of both worlds nothing but good?  I like to think that the calibre of f13'ers is better than this crappy tired old debate.

Just sayin'....

How am I in the Mac haters club?  I've already said that I can see going with a Mac laptop as sensible, and I think Apple has the best OS currently out there.  I've spent over $600 on an iPod and accessories.  In short, I'm not a member of the Anti-Apple Jihad. 

I do think they fall way, way short in the area of desktops on a simple but effective matrix of bang for the buck, software availability, and upgradability.  I'm also firmly of the mind that although they do have a good OS it's been vastly overhyped by Mac users.  It's good, but it's not that good, and shock of shocks, it has it's own annoyances!

Nobody has any idea of how upgradable the Intel desktops will be. There isn't one available yet, even in the hands of developers. You can actually replace the components of the G5 boxes with different ones if you like - in some cases (like processor and motherboard) its economically pointless based on the lack of component suppliers in the retail market, but can be done through the 'spares' channel. I suspect that the only problem with the Intels will be the motherboard, which will presumably have the Infineon chip that OS X will need to detect to run. Everything else should be fine for upgrades, but its all hypothesis at this stage.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you hated anything.  I just blamed you for the debate.   :-)

EDIT:  Great article by the way.

I am not as knowledgable as you guys but from what I see a key point is missing in favor of the Mac for those of us whose lives often involve running many simultaenous programs at once with a need to view them all:

Windows.  Folks use alt-tab so you really only see one application at a time.

Mac.  You set up a portion of your dekstop with space for each application.  You can do this in windows too - but it's cumbersome - and in Windows you get a new fucking menue bar with every application, but in Apple you have the same singular menu bar at the top of your screen.  Depending on what application window you are working on - the Apple menue bar itself only changes.

I encountered this a lot working with 3D models while importing wire frames from Illustrator - setting up both applications with their  own windows is easy on Mac - fucking cumbersome on Windows.  Ditto data analysis - graphing apps, excel, stats software all on my desktop at the SAME time - with only one menu bar to serve them all.

Think different   8-)

I fucking hate that.  Both as a user and as a cross-platform GUI developer.  As a developer it means I can't have different menus for different windows the same way I can on other platforms, and as a user I'm always wondering where the hell my application's menu went because I accidentally clicked on the desktop and the active application, unbeknownst to me, is now Finder.

Think differently indeed.   :-P

It's a lot more space efficient and easier to bring them back to the foreground than when you tab down programs in Windows, I think (i.e. when things start cluttering up the taskbar).

That irritated the hell out of me - for a few days. Thats one of the things I had to get used to and then I loved it. It now feels more natural than do a scavenger hunt across the screen for the various menu bars.

Well, I can understand your PoV, of course, I come from X11 hell, so even Windows is taking the piss with menu simplicity. I'll tell you whats nice however - Expose, which comes with Tiger (the current version of Mac OS X). The more window operations I can do from the keyboard, and the less I have to push mice around desks arseing around with window operations, the better. Expose is the most wonderful life-changing interface improvement to come to any GUI. Dead simple, wonderfully effective:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/expose/

You can alt-tab (er, cmd-tab) in any version of Mac OS X.

I love OSX, and I really dislike Windows, as I say every time this crops up. I'm happy to see XP running on mac hardware, even at a premium for decent hardware, it's saving me the money of buying a mac for my future music studio + a new gaming pc.

I might be getting old, but it the mac's gpu isn't up to snuff for a couple of games (like what, anyway? FEAR? Shooters kinda suck). I'm playing Oblivion just fine on my 9800pro (fixed res panel ftw!), only 'missing' HDR. That's competition making gpu hardware kick ass.

Competition is a great thing in the OS world, and now macs are finally running on a competetive gpu.

A final word on OSX v XP: there is no comparison in my experience doing admin on both systems (since OS9/Win98/NT). OS9 sucked donkey balls, but OSX has made me a True Believer. It's easy and powerful without much of the hassle of working with Windows. Ghost can bite me, I'll stick with the eloquent Carbon Copy Cloner.

[A little late because I've been moving.  Ugh.]

It is not something I look down upon in and of itself, however listing it as an awesome feature that should change my mind about what OS I should use does irk me since it is a completely moot point at best, and a potentially annoying feature at worst.

I am generally happy with my choice of machines.  I picked what was right for me, the other person picked what was right for them.  It is all good.  Proselytizing annoys the heck out of me though.  I don't particularly like the rabid Windows users either, but they tend to leave me alone since I am already using their OS of choice.  I can also point out Windows strong points since it happens to be what I am most familiar with, but that instantly labels me as the enemy in some circles...

Actually, I just really want someone to hold my hand.  Righ works.  I'm lonely.   :-P

As long as I'm derailing... we're moving next month, too.  I'm trying to get a head start on packing.  God, I hate moving... and we do it way too often.  I see your ugh and raise you a bleh.   :|  I can't wait until 3 days after it's all over.

I wouldnt say that OS X holds your hand. Its just well designed, and intuitive. Shit is where you think it should be. Unlike Windows, where they seems to spread every thing around more and more with each OS design. I hear its even worse with Vista, where if you want to mess with your "video" settings, there are 3 different windows, and they are all accessable from different locations in the OS. Its hard for me to put my finger on it, but often times when using XP these days I constantly think to myself "why the fuck did they put that there?". Where as using OSX most things are right where I feel they should be.

Also, to some one on page one. You can Alt Tab on OSX, you dont need to have every porgram open on the desktop at once. Also, networking on OSX is much much much easer.

I am by no means a "APPLE RULES YOU STUPID PC IDIOT" kind of person, but I have seen what a better opperating system can do, and I enjoy it. I also dont over look all the problems OSX has (Like the network beachball of death) but in general I find it just works better.

Good luck with the move.  Packing ahead of time helps alot.  I really hadn't wanted to move myself, but that's the way these things go sometimes.

Have a blarg for good measure.

Both OS X and WinXP are good tools for certain tasks. IMO OS X is superior for general computing (web surfing, writing, email) and graphics/photography work. XP is good for MS Office and Gaming.

Some nifty features of the OS X interface if anyone unfamiliar with it is interested:

Spotlight - absolutely the bomb. Seriously best OS search tool I've ever seen, i couldn't live without it now. (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/spotlight/)

Dashboard. Some cool widgets and interesting ideas. (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/dashboard/)

Expose. Linked above as well, check out the movie. In conjunction with virtual desktops a very useful feature. (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/expose/)

Anyway I'm no Apple zealot, I spend about 30-40% of my computing time in Win XP for either Excel/Outlook (corporate mail standard) or gaming. But for everything else I think OS X is better.

Actually, I hate Spotlight, but then I hate all text indexing doohickeys that do shit in the background. Full text searches are for archive file servers, not my desktop. Plug a removable disk into a Mac with Spotlight on it just to grab a file off it quickly and tell me that you still love it. :)

If anybody wants to know how to disable, remove and clean up after Spotlight, I have the answers.

On this, we agree.  I don't use Windows' search, or Google's for anything on my PC.  I keep my files in order in the first place, and don't need such an app.

My boss, a longtime mac zealot, loves the doohickeys like spotlight. Expose is cool, but I never use it. Dashboard is middling, once you get enough nice widgets it is cool. You can get all the functionality elsewhere, but having it one keypress away is nice. RidingWithRobots ftw :P Actually, useful stuff like routing tables, wifi finders, the ubiquitous calculator, calendar and weather guide.

I like the way apps tend to behave better; though they can still litter three places, they tend to stick all their associated files in the .app "folder", hiding it from casual users, but opening up things for more advanced users. That's the key to OSX, it's easy to use but deep if you want to dive in.

I also hate the registry.

I guess I'll toss out my current XP problem: can I boot from an external drive (I have a usb 2 drive). I can't even seem to get the stupid OS installed on there. Even so, as I mentioned, I think Ghost sucks and CCC is sublime. I can image OSX onto an external drive (firewire), boot from it and reimage the host drive in less time than I spend on Google trying to figure out if I can even do that in XP.
We've been using Office for Mac for years now. 2004 version is pretty damned nice imo (though of course bloated with all the wrong defaults enabled...it IS Office, after all :))

Not on an Intel Mac it isn't. That bloatware running under emulation is horrid. Also Entourage<<<<Outlook when it comes to connecting to Exchange 2002+ servers.

It's been working fine for me, I've had a mactel mini for a while now. Since we can't afford G5s, the Core Duo is a step up for most everyone here (though only I am using one for evaluation right now). I'll grant you photoshop is a total hog, I'm trying to filter a 1.7GB scan on a mactel imac with 1GB RAM. Yeeouch. But my daily apps run at least as good as they did on my G4 mac, windows run very well. I'm happy with it, so long as I don't want to run any 3d games. Entourage is bloaty, but I like it. I'm the only one using it, though. I've done a good job at promoting alternatives, so most people use different solutions, most use iCal but for email clients it's all over the place, from thunderbird to browsers.

My supe and I had a lunch conversation about 3d vs 2d, lamenting the fact that 3d is such a hog (he's looking at specs for Civ, which had traditionally been hardware-friendly). I have to side with him, for many games, 3d is more of a drawback than a blessing. Is it just that schools are grinding out so many more 3d artists or what? It sucks, Civ 4 is uuugly (not that Civ's ever been purty, but now it's a system hog, too).

I haven't had time nor opportunity to check out the X1600 gpu in the imac or mbp.

Well, this is odd. Apple's own website it now touting Parallels Desktop. Is there a buyout coming?

http://www.apple.com/getamac/windows.html

Anyone has any experience with that? Sounds like something I oughta buy next year with my Macbook Pro if it perfroms well. Especially if Apple owns it by then  8-)

http://www.macworld.com/2006/06/secrets/tcowindows/index.php

Ack I see. Same old problems. Thanks for that link, won't get my hopes up too much.

Same old problems as what? It seems more promising than most of its predecessors for most non-game tasks. high end gaming will always be a problem since most games tend to want to write to the video hardware, and the video hardware folks dont usually give out source code to people wanting to build abstraction layers. However, since they appear to be working with Intel's Directed IO, it may become the first virtualization environment to be able to do such stuff. I certainly like the developers' pace and style.

Since high end gaming is my crux specifically (I have nothing workrelated that can't be done on my Mac, most times better. Games are the only reason I still own a PC), it has at the moment the same problems all other virtualization software had for me in the past. If you are talking about application support, I'm with you. That is nothing I care about, though. Lets hope they really that 3d hardware support off, I'm the first that would be happy about it.

Boot camp works great, and you are running XP natively. Only downside is you need an XP install disc with SP2, but shouldn't be a big deal to slipstream one, eh?

I keep forgetting to test our MBP and iMac that have the X1600 gpu. I think the iMac has beefy vram, too, because it's for document scanning, I'll probably be dropping more RAM in it, as well. Could be a decent gaming machine, and it's locked in a remote office ^^

I just got a MacBook Pro with 1.5 GB of memory and I've made a Windows partition using Boot Camp and installed XP SP 2 and Titan Quest on it. Its a fast little Windows machine too. Easily the best Windows gaming laptop I've used to date. And when Im done playing games, I can reboot out of the suck. :)

Great article. I was thinking of going with a Mac Pro for my next computer, and that pretty much settled it for me.

Now hopefully Apple buys Parallels and changes the software so that you can boot into Windows for pure performance, or just use the VM when you need to run some small, stupid app. THat would be dead sexy.

I gotta go get me one of these… …my PB is pushing 4 years old now (still runs WoW nearly as good as a G5 but something like Civ4 I don't think will work, the stated requirements are for G5 or Intel Mac…). I've been reluctant due to (a) 1st gen issues namely with heat, but 1st gen Apple products seem to be plagued with problems in recent years and (b) waiting for Adobe to come out Universal Binaries for CS2 suite (or CS3 to hit the shelves).

I played around with BootCamp at a local Mac outlet nearby when it first released and was impressed. And the salesperson guy even was playing a recent FPS release on it…

But it's a little over a week until WWDC (http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/), and that is one of those points in time where the product line and pricing gets reshuffled…

WWDC will be the Intel replacements for the G5 desktop and server, I suspect. The server will be technically more interesting, both will probably utilize the Woodcrest Xeons. Going with the AMD/ATI theme, the desktop will likely launch with an nVidia GPU by default. So as not to undermine the impact of the final part of the range moving to Intel, refreshes of existing Mactel boxes probably won't happen at WWDC. Besides, there's Leopard to preview, perhaps with a VIP from Microsoft showing Bootcamp and spewing some shitty marketing pap. But worth waiting unless you see a bargain beforehand (I snagged a now discontinued 1.83 GHz model for ~$1500).

As for heat - this notebook was on fire when I started using it. It was instantly fixed by the firmware update I downloaded - it tends to run ~60C on the processor under load now, which is around on par with the Dell and Samsung laptops of similar spec. The wireless was regularly dropping as a result of the airport card just turning itself off - it took a reset of the power manager to cure that, so not a disaster, though it suggests a bug still existing in the second version of the firmware.

Adobe are still claiming we need to wait until CS3 for an Intel build. Likewise, Microsoft will make folks wait for a new version of Office. Fortunately OpenOffice is native today, and does everything I need, and Photoshop under Rosetta is sufficient now that I use Aperture for bulk RAW image processing.

Some of you Mac fans might find this program (http://www.transgaming.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&file=index&func=display&ceid=24) useful for game playing.  It's biggest drawback is that the game has to be designed for it, but it should be a lot easier than porting.

A crafty non-game developer that wants a larger market might use it, too, although I don't know how well it would support things like spreadsheets or word processors.

If nothing else, it is something to keep your eye on.

Only useful for the developers. Not quite sure why they can't pull off the same thing as Cedega, but its presumably not technical. Some fun license cost or other IP shenanigans on the part of Apple, no doubt.