The Little Black Box
I have in my possession one of the most coveted items of the year, and certainly the most talked about of this day. Yes, that would be an iPhone. In Apple’s usual style of quiet elegance, the box sits there revealing little (as if there was much that has not already been revealed through months of slow leaks of rumors). It is nearly begging me to open it, much like its call beckoned me into the AT&T Mobility store earlier this evening despite my better judgment. I have it, but do I open it? Read my musings on Open for Business.
The Approach of the iPhone
OK, how can anyone not want one? Sure, I'm not going to be there on Friday night, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be delighted to be one of the writers who had a review unit in my pocket right now. The rate plans seem to shore things up nicely too, with unlimited data ringing in at a very decent price of $20/month. It is really unfortunate that the phone does not support 3G data, because with it being EDGE it won't be nearly as beneficial, but… that's for iPhone 2.0. The support for MS Exchange that has been revealed today also looks like it should help ease some concern about the phone's capabilities.
It's still a lot of money, it still lacks some things I wish it had, but, I can't say I don't find it tempting all the same. It may be a “status phone,” but it is intriguing for ever so many additional, vastly more important reasons.
Static IP's, Two Subnets and Linksys Routers
So, say you sign up for a DSL plan that comes with five static IP addresses. Let's also say you want most of your systems behind a NAT (Network Address Translation) system, nice and safe away from the internet, but you want a few systems to use those static IP addresses so that they can be easily accessed online. That's the scenario my church has at the moment.
In January, when we moved the offices back to the main building, I configured the network using two Linksys WRT54G routers. We only needed one wireless router, but for the small difference in price, it seemed advantageous to me to stick to one model for everything. We'll be deploying more WRT54G's as access points around the building eventually.
At any rate, I installed the first router directly connected to the DSL modem. I set it up to do PPPoE authentication. I tried to match the IP's and subnet on this unit to what the AT&T installer gave to me. The second router I assigned a static IP address to and told it act like a normal SMB router does — it assigned NAT IP addresses (in the 192.168.1.1-254 range). The majority of computers in the office connect to this second router either by wire or wireless. The second router is connected to a 16-port switch that helps fill in our wired needs.
At any rate, this worked fine for the NAT'ed computers, but for the one machine (other than the second router) that was hooked to the first router, things were amiss. This second computer is supposed to be accessible remotely for various reasons, and I assigned it one of our static IP's. It wouldn't connect from outside. Some other problems took over my time, and I only returned to this recently when it became more important. I reworked much of the network trying to figure out what was wrong. I ended up with the second router performing PPPoE and the first router acting merely as a switch. I thought maybe the Linksys router simply wouldn't work with static IP's (in fact, I was told by some that I was trying to do the impossible).
Well, I talked to AT&T support and found out at the install time I had been given the wrong subnet mask. I went in and tried the new subnet mask, but it didn't seem to work either. As it turned out, the problem once I had the right subnet was that I no longer had the routers setup like I originally had them. Once I returned the routers to my original configuration and entered the new subnet, everything sprang to life. It was frustrating that many, many hours were wasted because I was given the wrong subnet mask, but at least things finally work!
This is a far cry from the original network that was in place when I first started administering our systems in 1997. The network was not connected to the internet (everyone fought over getting a turn on using the fourth phone line to dial-up to Juno), was merely four computers hooked up to a switch, and the “wiring” was a multi-line phone cord that had been made to work as an ethernet line. We now have almost twenty systems running through the two routers and connecting via either 802.11g or high quality CAT-6 lines (in preparation for a future Gig-E upgrade); these systems run three different operating systems (Windows XP, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux). And, hopefully in the next few months, I'll be able to bring online some kind of GNU/Linux network authentication server that will allow granular access to the access points that will cover the building in connectivity.
Exciting times!
Making Sense of Facebook
I've been thinking lately about the dynamics of Facebook. I think there might be a real article in this, so I'm not going to go really deep into it here, but I thought I'd just write out a few ideas off the top of my head. I was talking with a friend the other night, and she pointed out how frequently the differences between how one interacts with a given person on Facebook and in real life can be quite stark.
In my own experience, I tend to think this is true. I think it is probably true of any electronic communication; there is something freeing about writing in bits and bytes that changes the social dynamic and frees people to communicate more. This is observable more in Facebook because it is a social networking system based primarily on real world connections, at least during most of its history. By initially limiting those who could join to those who had proof of membership in certain organizations (schools and businesses), it insured that quite a few of a person's Facebook friends are also real world friends from that organization.
The real value of Facebook in my estimation is that it is a useful way of sharing information and staying in touch with those one knows from the brick and mortar world. I resisted the idea of joining for quite awhile simply because I like to go against the flow. I'd rather do something different. But, this useful value to Facebook convinced me that maybe going with the crowd wouldn't be such a bad idea. The emphasis is obvious: not only do you have to prove your membership in a particular network (other than the regional networks), one also is encouraged to denote how one knows friends (e.g. work together, took classes together, etc.). All but five of my Facebook friends are people I have actually met.
Like I said, I think this also makes for a stark contrast, though. Because I know these people offline, I know how I interact with them normally. Because of this, I can note that I talk to some people on Facebook quite a bit more than I ever did in real life. This isn't bad at all, but it is a curious phenomenon. What does that indicate? I'm not quite sure, but I'm thinking about this. A few cases can be explained easily: they are people I would talk to more, but I may not see all that often. Other cases are more puzzling.
Really, it might be a good topic for a sociologist to pick up on.
To Fedora or Not to Fedora
I'm presently trying to figure out what Linux distro to install on my church's library computer. It has been running Mandrake 9.2 for some years now, and as it is in for a “overhaul,” I thought I should give it a new OS. I was going to do Ubuntu, but I cannot even get Ubuntu to startup all the way, which makes it impossible to get to the installer. I think that is because the system only has 128 megs of ram.
As such, I was trying to decide between Fedora Core 6 and openSUSE 10.2 My main goal is to go with a system that will require minimal effort from me. I also am insisting on GNOME as the desktop (well, it is going to be a web kiosk, so primarily all the user will see is Firefox, but I digress). I think I'm going to go with FC6, but I'm open to those who want to persuade me otherwise. I'm really not too keen on the idea of an OS that uses anything other than RPM or DEB packages, but that too is negotiable, if anyone can come up with a good reason why I should try something else. The big thing is time: I need it to work as a desktop out of the box without any X11 tinkering or anything else of that kind.
Thoughts?
The Worst Part About Being a Techie
You know, I think the worst part about being a techie is that everyone expects you to fix their computer problems. I like helping, but some now expect it, rather than just hoping I'll be of help. Worse, if I cannot help for awhile, I get the sense that the same people become more than just a bit irritated with me.
Sometimes I wish I had not bothered to learn IT stuff at all.
Comparing Apples to Apples
I've been trying to help a fellow who bought an Apple Mac mini Core Solo and finds it slow, particularly with Camino and Audacity. The Core Solo variant never should have been offered, and no longer is, but he got one, so I wanted to figure out if it was actually slower than its predecessor G4 system and how it stacked up to other systems. Here's what I wrote, for those who enjoy benchmarks.
OK, so here's the full comparison, including my PowerMac G5 Dual Processor @ 2.7 GHz, my Dell Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.66 GHz (Windows XP SP 2), my Mac mini PowerPC G4 @ 1.44 GHz and the previous results. The PowerMac has a ATI Radeon X850 XT with 256 megs of ram; the Dell has an ATI Radeon 9700 with 128 megs of ram.Rendering Single CPU My Mac mini (PowerPC G4): 138 Nathan's Mac mini (Core Solo): 206 My Pentium 4 @ 2.66 GHz: 259 MacBook Core Duo 2.0 GHz: 303 My PowerMac G5 @ 2.7 GHz: 410 Rendering Two CPUs/Cores My Mac mini (PowerPC G4): -- Nathan's Mac mini (Core Solo): -- My Pentium 4 @ 2.66 GHz: -- MacBook Core Duo 2.0 GHz: 564 My PowerMac G5 @ 2.7 GHz: 744 Shading (CINEMA 4D) My Mac mini (PowerPC G4): 152 Nathan's Mac mini (Core Solo): 206 My Pentium 4 @ 2.66 GHz: 267 MacBook Core Duo 2.0 GHz: 348 My PowerMac G5 @ 2.7 GHz: 405 Shading (OpenGL S/W) My Mac mini (PowerPC G4): 463 Nathan's Mac mini (Core Solo): 888 My Pentium 4 @ 2.66 GHz: 1097 MacBook Core Duo 2.0 GHz: 1141 My PowerMac G5 @ 2.7 GHz: 1279 Shading (OpenGL H/W) My Mac mini (PowerPC G4): 475 Nathan's Mac mini (Core Solo): 940 MacBook Core Duo 2.0 GHz: 1031 My Pentium 4 @ 2.66 GHz: 2336 My PowerMac G5 @ 2.7 GHz: 2902First note: this isn't terribly scientific. Not all the systems are configured as closely as possible, but it'll provide an idea. My Mac mini has 256 megs of ram; my PowerMac has 1.5 GB; my Dell has 768. My mini is running Mac OS X 10.4.8 Server. The Mini and the Windows system are on a KVM switch hooked to an LCD panel doing 1280×1024, as is the MacBook (well, it is wide screen, so the resolution is a bit different), I believe, whereas your system was driving a higher resolution 1440×900, which ought to slow it down a bit, and my PowerMac is driving a 1920×1200 screen, which should slow it down even farther.
Big point: the Core Solo performs substantially better in every test over the PowerPC G4 Mac mini — even in the hardware OpenGL test — despite the PowerPC Mac mini's discrete video card with 32 megs of video ram.
There's a number of things that could be going on: first, not all apps are optimized for Intel yet. Your best bet is still to use the apps optimized for the job. Safari should best Camino, GarageBand should do better than Audacity (Audacity isn't even a native Aqua app, and as I've said, I'm not sure how well Apple's X11 is optimized — it is OK, but still…).
But, given that the Core Solo outperforms my Mac mini, I'm scratching my head a bit. I'm not sure why yours isn't performing acceptably, because mine is quite usable even though it is quite a bit slower.
The other thing I can offer from this is that at least in terms of rendering power, you can see that the PowerMac is still a monster compared to the other systems. This might indicate that you should consider buying one. They are getting cheaper on eBay and it still has some good life in it. Or, given that the Mac Pros are showing up as even faster, if you spring for the extra expensive system, it should give you a LOT more performance.
Nevertheless, I think the Core architecture really shines here, once you go to a multi-core system. If you look at the MacBook, it performs significantly better than the Mini, especially when you have two cores going. Part of that is purely a clock difference, but the second core helps a lot. The MacBook @ 2.0 GHz bests the faster clock speed Pentium 4 @ 2.66 GHz on every test, even when using just one core, save for when the test is primarily based on video card performance (the last test), where the Radeon 9700 with 128 MB of ram still shines fairly well.
I think that means that you would see a substantial performance increase with a Core Duo Mac mini, but whether it would be enough for you is hard to say. Waiting for a Core 2 Duo Mac mini might be the best thing. It will give an additional speed boost, but still would be cheaper than a used G5 or a Mac Pro.
So there you have it. If you had a sleepless night last night wondering if a Pentium 4 could beat a MacBook, or whether a Mac mini Core Solo would trounce a PowerMac G5, now you know.
Alan Weinkrantz Gets It
Apple, the newly emerging convergence technology company, and AT&T, the newly emerging convergence technology company, collaborate on a phone. You think perhaps part of the vision has to do with converging media? Good, succinct points from Alan, who is one of the AT&T U-verse pilot program members.
Just in case you were all wondering...
…yes, I am very impressed with the new iPhone. I would love to try one. I was fairly certain whatever they came up with would not live up to the hype — the hype was so incredible — but I think this goes beyond the hype. It is about the only phone I can imagine that would make me consider moving away from Sony Ericsson's products.
Wow!
Hey, Steve, any chance I could get on your board so I too can have one ahead of time?
The iPhone Conundrum
Steve Jobs is known for being able to pull a rabbit out of his hat fairly regularly – far more regularly, anyway, than almost any other CEO. Like most Mac users, Timothy Butler finds himself anxiously awaiting the likely announcement of the Apple phone tomorrow. That people are excited would seem to be a good thing. But, given the amount and kind of hype, could it be that Apple is faced with demand for something it cannot provide? Read more on Open for Business.
