The Apple Code

My blogging buddy (and friendly OS nemesis) Mark had a fascinating dream that sounds almost like the Da Vinci Code turned into a story about operating systems. Mark would make a good substitute for Prof. Robert Langdon in such a book — maybe he should write it, after all, computer debates do have a tendency to take on a religious feel.

Unfortunately, Mark still has not seen the light concerning Mac OS X, so I need to help him understand the nature of this “insanely great” platform.

Now 5x Faster! Mark rightly questions how Apple could go from claiming that PowerPC was better than x86 to announcing the new Intel Macs are “5x faster.” You'll notice that the 5x number only shows up on the comparison of PowerBook vs. MacBook laptops. This is for the simple reason that Apple couldn't get a PowerPC G5 processor into a PowerBook, and hence everyone was still using a Pentium III-era competitor in the Pentium M and D-era. I think very few were deluded in this regard. The PowerBooks do handle extremely well given their aging architecture, but that's a testament to *nix not to the architecture (though RISC still seems admirable in many ways). I would suggest that the PowerPC remains a superior architecture (even Linus says so!), but that PowerPC needed someone of the likes of Intel or AMD to be pushing its desktop-oriented progress forward for it to have become a success (PowerPC's manufacturers primarily focus on the embedded space).

The Mac Pro is a different story. If you look at the numbers, while it is faster, it isn't that much faster, especially when you consider it came out almost a year after the PowerMac G5 Quad. The Xeon should be faster, because it is significantly newer and has more cache and other goodies. If we ask whether the PowerPC G5 was “slow” because a processor that is a year newer and has more cache happens to go a small amount faster, then we should also ask if pre-Woodcrest Xeons are perhaps “slow” too. The answer, of course, is no, they are just older. In fact, even in the case of the PowerBook, I would add that the Intel Core line of processors not only speeds things up because of the delay in any significant upgrades for the G4 series laptops, but also because Intel has made seismic leaps in progress over the last six months.

As a whole, no surprises, if we don't look to find fault with Apple just for the sake of finding fault.

Apple the iPod Maker. It is true that Apple now draws a significant portion of profit from the iPod, but I would note that it is still a minority of their business, and most people now seem to have come to grips with the reality that it cannot be Apple's primary focus forever — especially now that Microsoft has decided to go into its “we'll lose money for as long as it takes to beat our target” mode against the iPod. I don't think anyone other than Sony (with their PlayStation) and Google have held up to Microsoft when it decides to lose short term money in order to win a market, and right now even Sony is in for the fight of its life. The Redmond road is littered with companies such as Netscape and Palm that have been unable to resist Microsoft.

Apple the Evil DRM User. iTunes does not make the iPod DRM laden. If you never use the iTunes Music Store, you will never touch DRM. It is that simple. Now, why do pragmatic foes of DRM such as myself use the iTunes Music Store? Because every once-in-a-while I'd like one song from an artist, and I sure like paying ninety-nine cents a lot better than $13.99 for that one track. (And, by the way, you do get a nice digitized album cover in that price, and if you buy the whole CD you often get a digitized booklet and perhaps a music video, so the point about lack of album art is moot.) I don't know how many others are like me, but I for the most part have what I call my “two track rule.” If I try a new artist (or old one, for that matter) and find that I want to buy more than two tracks from a given CD, I refuse to buy any more from iTMS and wait until I feel like coughing up the price for a normal CD. Right now, for example, I have an embargo on buying any tracks from MercyMe because I have bought a track or two from each of their CD's, and now I'm going to either buy nothing more from them or buy a real CD from them.

Apple the Stealer of Virtual Desktops. XGL vs. Spaces is really a stupid kind of comparison. This is really looking at things backwards. While it is true that XGL and related technologies have provided 3D representations of virtual desktops first, I would note that all of these FOSS implementations appeared initially as ways of cloning Apple's Exposé, which premiered in June of 2003 at WWDC and was released to market in October 2003 as part of OS X 10.3 Panther. Spaces continues by adding the virtual desktops that FOSS has had for years, yes, but Apple was the one that came up with 3D accelerated navigation of running applications — Spaces is a logical extension of Exposé. Yes, Apple is copying virtual desktops, but XGL is nothing more than playing catchup with Apple's Quartz Extreme (which showed up in OS X 10.2 Jaguar in 2002) and the aforementioned Expose. Apple was the first to offer an OpenGL hardware accelerated desktop, something Linux is just starting to offer in a consumer oriented distro this summer and Windows will not offer until next year.

AAPL and the "Butler Curse"

My dad has always joked about the “Butler Curse,” a curse that dooms any stock that a Butler invests in to sinking share prices or something worse. He came to believe this after having the two or three forays he made into the stock market plummet quickly after he took ownership of the shares.

At times, I almost think there was something to it. As you may recall, I purchased a small number of shares of AAPL (that's Apple, if you don't keep up on your stockspeak) right before Jobs' keynote at MacWorld in January. The stock went up about ten dollars beyond what I bought it at ($72 a share, I believe it was), but then began a steady decline that continued until about two or three weeks ago. The shares sank when the new Intel Macs came out ahead of schedule. They sank when critics lauded the new Intel Macs. They sank when more Intel Macs came out. They sank when Apple outperformed the rest of the industry. They sank and sank, bottoming out at about $50.

I planned to buy more before WWDC '06, but it started going up just before I did so, and I almost did not go through with the plan to buy my pre-WWDC shares. I decided to go ahead and buy some at $69.50 yesterday and then sell it when it appeared to top out after the keynote — I'm thinking we'll see it hit between $85 and $90 after the keynote.

That sounded really good when I ordered the shares right before the market close yesterday. I logged on this morning to find something had happened last night: Apple announced it would have to restate its earnings back to 2002 due to accounting irregularities with stock options. Fortunately, my order did not go through until this morning, when after-market trading had already forced the stock's opening price down to $67. Unfortunately, it was already about a dollar lower than that and sinking by the time I looked.

I almost decided to cut my losses and sell. I actually setup a trigger to sell if it hit $64. The Butler Curse had struck AAPL shares not once, but twice — in six months! I was a believer, I really could destroy companies by buying their stock. Sure, I own a bit of a few funds, but the only standard stock I own falls every time I buy it. (This could actually be a thing I could make money with, I suppose, but killing companies isn't exactly my type of business.)

Fortunately, the stock closed up about a dollar from where I bought it, but I'm still not so sure. Beware if I buy into any company you own equity in or work for.

Greek Posting

I'm working on a web site for a client that requires posting in Greek. When this did not work, at first, I blamed it on (my) SAFARI, however it has turned out to be a problem originating in the way Microsoft Word exports Greek and compounded by how Apple Safari sends Greek characters via forms.

Switching to OpenOffice/NeoOffice and Firefox solved the problem. Good 'ol FOSS for you, huh?

I'm Gonna Surf Like Its 1997

For the first time since 1997, I typed in a username and password that belonged to me and heard “Welcome. You've Got Mail.” Yes, I am once again a member of AOL. If you haven't heard, much of AOL is now free, including an aol.com e-mail address and access to it either via the web or the classic AOL software. Will I use it? I doubt I'll use it that much — I have not used my AOL AIMMail account much — but it was just very amusing to see the old service again.

I didn't start out at AOL. Conversely, my start online was Prodigy in February 1993. My address was dpbx52b — something I can still remember off the top of my head without any trouble, for some reason — and later dpbx52b@prodigy.com. I use to love to play around with the Mobil Travel Guide and Ziff Net download service. All of this stuff seemed so cutting edge thirteen years ago. There were a few nifty games, including one where you moved around a maze. You'd see one drawing that looked sort of 3D. Click, then wait. Then another screen. Well, I'm getting off track.

In 1994 or so, my family did try both AOL and CompuServe. This was the golden age of the online service. CompuServe was intriguing just because it was archiac — we first signed on using a MS-DOS based terminal program known as COMit and were greeted by the famous “CIS” prompt. Later, a copy of WinCIM (Windows CompuServe Information Manager) arrived, but it did little to bring the oldest online service up to the fancy standards of AOL or Prodigy.

AOL offered downloads (the best part of AOL to me at the time, since Ziff Net downloads on Prodigy cost a buck or two a piece), forums and some other neat stuff, but Prodigy's EGA color palate on fully graphical pages was more inviting looking than any other option until the Web gained HTML 3.0 or so, I'd say. Prodigy got even more exciting in 1994 when they added real photos to their news section, photos you could watch load one line at a time (it seemed very slow at 2400 bps and was still tedious at 14.4 kbps). Prodigy also introduced its Prodigy Web Browser (pweb.exe) that year and I believe it was sometime late in 1994 that I first surfed on the web, at the time mostly interested in video game sites, like Sega of America. Prodigy offered unlimited service for $14.95 a month, while AOL and CompuServe metered their service at that time.

CompuServe was canceled within a month or so of the end of the free trial, AOL survived a bit longer, but not much. I never used it that much, so I can't recollect my screen name.

In 1995, I was caught up in the excitement about Windows 95 and, after installing Windows 95 on its launch day, we signed up for the new MSN service. It offered charter members some kind of cheap deal — maybe it was $4 or $5 a month — but only offered five hours of service. We suspended our Prodigy account, although I quickly noticed what was missing: the Internet. This was before the infamous direction change at Microsoft that set it on a course to build internet apps. MSN had internet access in certain regions, depending on what MSN's contracted connectivity provider in the area offered, but St. Louis was not one of them. For a number of months, I fell off the Internet. We never reactivated our Prodigy account, as Prodigy had redesigned its service under the designation “the new prodigy” with the hopes of making it seem more Internet savvy, but had, in reality, destroyed the quaint feeling of the Prodigy Classic service. The newer classic service was stark and was also quite a bit slower. MSN won the day for a bit.

But, MSN was still a metered plan and had some problems, so we signed up for AOL again in August of 1996 or so when AOL sent out a win-back promotional flyer. This time, we switched to AOL. My screen name was “twnm.” The service worked fairly well, really, and we kept it for about a year. The advantage to AOL was that, as the hub of the online world, you could find almost everything on it — or so it seemed. The final blow with AOL was that its unmetered plan was $19.95 a month, and MCI was offering Internet access for $14.95. The Internet was seeming more and more useful without the need for an online service, so we moved on.

With the switch to MCI, the curtain came down on my time as a holder of an account with a traditional online service provider… until today. Now, I've got mail again. How interesting.

Need a MacBook Pro? Sure you do.

Well, I'm pretty good on computers right now, but if you need one, CNET found quite a bargain on a MacBook Pro at Amazon.com. The system, a base model MacBook Pro (which isn't exactly a “base model” by any other metric), is only $1,650 after a $150 rebate.

While that's not exactly cheap, it puts the MacBook Pro within $150 of a Black MacBook, and while the premium MacBook has a faster processor, the MBP adds a dedicated video card, a larger screen, an ExpressCard slot, a lighted keyboard and other goodies worth considering.

Just an FYI.

Web Sites, Web Sites, Web Sites.

This is Mark's new Thursday Question meme. Last week's I answered on his site, but I thought I'd answer it here this week.

1. What is your favorite site to visit? (portals, blogline type readers, etc don't count)

It depends what I'm in the mood for. News.com is probably my most regular non-portalish read, along with various blogs. My regular routine is News.com, then OSNews, then MacNewsBytes, then Drudge, then my asisaid Recent Comments page, then using my blogroll to visit other blogs. If time permits, I might go to CNN after that.

2. What site is known to be popular but you just don't get it?

I'm having a hard time digging Digg. It just doesn't do anything for me.

3. What is your biggest pet peeve regarding web site design and ease of use?

Overzealous use of stuff like JavaScript menus and Flash that just get in the way of letting me get where I want to go.

4. What speed do you surf the internets [sic] at? Reality vs ISP promise.

I surf at a promised speed of 3 mbps thanks to Charter High-Speed Internet. In reality, I get somewhere between 2.5-2.8, according to Broadband Reports.

5. What web site, which is no longer with us, will you forever miss?

I'm not really sure. Just for old time's sake, I'd go back a bit farther and say I miss the odd charm of Prodigy Interactive Services.

6. What gem of site have you just found?

SAtechBlog is run not only by a guy that loves the Mac, but more importantly, is obsessed by AT&T's U-Verse (Project Lightspeed). Suddenly, I can go to just one place and keep up-to-date on this fascinating technology.

Intelligent Stick for $29.99

Returning to the subject of the little grocery store that isn't just a grocery store, I'd like to point your attention to the fact that Aldi has been recently carrying the PQi Intelligent Stick 1 GB USB key for just $29.99. I picked mine up about a week ago, and have been meaning to say something on here ever since — I'm not sure if they have any left, but if you want one, you might take a gander at your local Aldi. Ask at the checkout if you don't see them on display as they've been keeping them in the back room to avoid theft.

Why would you want this USB key? Well, let's just say it isn't simply a large capacity stick, it is also a very small stick, somewhere between an SD card and a Memory Stick card in size. I've had a 128 meg I-Stick for about a year (which, oddly enough, I discovered for $19.99 at the Home Depot), and I find it indispensable. It is small enough that it comes with a credit card shaped protector that can hold two of the keys and then slip into the credit card section of your wallet. Because of that convenient method of carrying the key, I always have it when I need it, which was not the case with other USB keys I have, which, at best, generally can be carried in one's pocket (another thing to remember to stuff in there in the morning) or attached to a lanyard (do I really want to wear my storage device?).

The i-Stick is also really durable. I had my 128 meg stick slip out of my case into my pocket, without noticing it, a few weeks ago. I only discovered it after it had been washed and dried. I let it sit in a warm, dry place for a few days and found afterward it was no worse for wear (my data was all intact!).

If you can't guess, I highly recommend this USB key, should you be in the market. How can you beat it for under thirty bucks?

DVD Blues

After some friends came to visit St. Louis in the first part of June, I decided to construct a DVD of photos and videos taken from their trip. This isn't something unusual for me to do, only they stayed for long enough I got a lot of photos and a lot of video, much of which was worth including. I made an hour long DVD in iMovie, spliced together appropriate music bits from iTunes and presto — almost.

It seems that somewhere in the soundtrack there is something that is corrupted. Not to the extend that keeps me from previewing the movie, but bad enough that it causes iDVD to freeze when it tries to encode the audio to the MPEG-2 for the DVD. Worse, at three or four hours a shot to try encoding before it freezes at the very end, this isn't something I can easily locate. I thought perhaps it was my PowerMac, so I burnt a CD with the 4 GB of movie data and put it in my PowerBook and set that system to work. After rendering for five or so hours, it too failed.

Presently I'm trying a last ditch effort: iMovie creates a “reference” QuickTime file, as I understand it, a patchwork of links to the bits included in the iMovie Project playable in QuickTime. This is the file that iDVD receives to encode. This file, for my project, happens to be in MPEG-4 format (H.264). I fed this file into MPEG Streamclip, a program for converting and exporting MPEG files and set it to work at 1:45 p.m. yesterday to the task of creating a real MPEG-4 file out of the reference file. As of 12:22 a.m. today, I am now at 94%. I just hope it works.

I am obsessed — I've essentially given up most access to my computers for the last two days to let them render and encode, despite needing them for other things, because I've come too far not to see this movie burn. It just has to! So, here I sit, waiting.

I hope it works.

Advice on Range

Ok, so lightning hit near church and managed to get a surge to our network router, which promptly “shared it” with the wireless access point, switch, numerous computers and other sundry items. That means, among other things, I've had the chance to go on a “get new stuff quick” shopping spree or two.

I went with my old standby, a WRT54G router from Linksys for the main router and access point (replacing a BEFSR81 8-port wired router and an Apple Airport Extreme working as an access point) coupled with a donated 16-port D-Link switch. I replaced the Linksys standard antennae with a pair of CompUSA branded 9 dB ones.

I'm getting much better range than before (despite the Airport being hooked up to a nice range extending antenna), but I'm still not satisfied. I'd like to blanket 500 or so feet with Wi-Fi, if possible. So, I'm looking at the options, such as an affordable outdoor Wi-Fi antenna (I classify complete solution that I can add to the router for less than $150 as affordable for this purpose). It needs to be omni-directional to be really useful, so cantennas are out, though perhaps not for another project (I'd like to send a signal about 1/2 mile at another locale).

Any suggestions on how I might go 500 ft. omni-directionally or 3,000 ft. mono-directionally?

Oh, as a hat tip to new blog reader M. M. and her husband, I just had some wonderful cake with strawberry filling from the Dierbergs' Bakery. I highly recommend it!

My New Friend

I haven't done a really geeky post in quite awhile. Prepare yourself — here comes a megadose of 100% pure geekiness.

I've been using SQL databases for about five years now, and I've slowly learned the Structured Query Language that goes with it mostly out of necessity — I need to do something new, so I learn a new bit of syntax. Tonight, I did a bit more of that. You see, I designed SAFARI (the CMS that runs this blog) so that it creates an entry for each posting in the table known as “articles.” Besides that entry, it also creates numerous entries in the “objects” table for things such as what categories an entry belongs to. Essentially, the objects table is a metadata table.

Now, the problem arises when I want to view a category, such as “Computers and Technology.” Previously, I asked MySQL to collect all of the article ID's (or aids) in the objects table that belonged to the Computers and Technology's parent object id (or pid), then I sent another MySQL query which selected all of the items in the articles table that had one of those article ids. This is really inefficient, not only because it requires two queries, but also because of future growth: if there are 1,000 articles in “Computers and Technology,” the second query must include every one of those ids. Why? Because, for instance, if I am sorting by date, it can only find out which of those 1,000 articles must be requested to get the last twenty posts by actually requesting them. Sure, I could presume that the twenty highest numered ID's were the most recent, but I think that's sloppy.

So, tonight I read the MySQL manual and learned about subqueries. With a subquery, MySQL can be told I want all of the items in articles that match one of the appropriate objects in the objects table. To present a simple example, I am basically saying to MySQL, “Give me every article in 'articles' that has an object in the 'objects' table that belongs to the 'Computers and Technology' parent object.” At first, this didn't work, so I read a bit more closely and found out that my old, 4.0.x version of MySQL was incompatible with subqueries. Thirty minutes later, I upgraded the server to MySQL 4.1.x and the subqueries worked!

My code will be more efficient in no time!

What does this bode for the future? I'm not ready to unveil my master plan, but it means some exciting changes for the currently hibernating OfB, as well as asisaid, in the coming days and weeks. I'll talk about this more very soon.