Ramblings of a Programmer

It turns out that Rush Limbaugh is a big Mac fan.  He apparently
has five Apple computers and just loves Tiger.  He has an audio
file that you can listen to where he plugs Tiger.  Take a look at the small Tiger ad on his web site.

I finally placed the order.  I ordered the dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac
system with 1 gig of RAM, 160 gig drive, and the bluetooth/wireless
options.  I also threw in the 20″ Cinema display and a .Mac
account to top it off.  Wait… almost forgot.  I also upped the video card to the 256 meg ATI Radeon 9650. 

I am just glad I do not have to go through the Tiger update.  I
get to spend time with my new baby right off the truck.  Hopefully
my wife does not kill me over this. 

Apple released the Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0 Release 1 for Tiger yesterday.  To get more details and for the download, check the J2SE 5.0 Release 1 update page.

If you have Tiger already, then you should check out Apple's Dashboard Widgets
page.  There are quite a few widgets available for whatever might
interest you.  Some are free, some are shareware, and others are
demos of commercial widgets.

OK… what kind of Apple would the teacher want? 

Unfortunately, I cannot afford the dual 2.7 GHz Power Mac system at
this time.  I really do not want the liquid cooled system anyway
due to some of the things that I have heard about it not lasting more
than a couple of years, albeit rumors.  I cannot decide between
the dual 2.0 GHz and the dual 2.3 GHz system, however.

The major differences between the two are 160 gig vs 250 gig hard
drive, and PCI slots vs PCI-X slots.  The hard drive space is not
that big of a deal.  Hard drives are cheap and if I ever ran out
of space on the 160 gig in the dual 2.0 GHz system, I could buy another
one.  The PCI-X slots would be a nice-to-have, but as I saw
someone post over in MacRumors forums today, PCI-X on a non-server
machine is kind of a waste.

I do not see myself doing anything with Fiber-Channel or anything like
that, so would it really be worth the money for the extra bit of hard
drive space and the PCI-X slots?

At first, I thought I had decided on the dual 2.3 GHz system, but now I am not sure about that.

Oh… decisions… decisions. 

Apple announced updates to their Power Mac line of
computers today.  The new systems do not include the new 970MP
(dual core) CPU at this time.  The top of the line Dual 2.7 GHz G5
system is still a water-cooled system.

Apple also announced price drops
on their Cinema display line of LCD monitors.  The drops on the
20″ and 23″ HD Cinema displays of $200 and $300 respectively were nice,
but it was disappointing to not see a price drop on the top-end 30″ HD
Cinema Display.

Several of the rumor sites are now stating that the new hardware will be announced Wednesday. 
The hardware is being rumored to be dual 2.0 GHz, dual 2.3 GHz, and
dual 2.7 GHz G5 systems.  Other than a minimum of 512 meg of RAM,
larger base drives, and a new 16x Dual Layer DVD burner, there are no
extended technical specs.

New pages on the Amazon.com web site make it appear that they are getting ready for the release of these new systems.

Update - Amazon.com has changed the pages and now just reference upcoming products from Apple instead of giving system details.

AppleInsider is reporting that new Power Macs may be on the way.

Apple Power Mac G5 systems en route to company stores

It looks like Microsoft does not hate Apple as much as everyone might think.  Check out information on the new XBox 360.

Apple has released a Java update for Mac OS X 10.3.9 to fix systems
that may have some issues with Java applications and Java-enabled web
sites when using Safari.  You can get more information from Apple's site for the update.