No, you're right there. No garage startup will define this coming market.
I see the current evolutionary hurtle to get over as the display technology. CRTs are desktop bound. FPDs are still way too costly (will they ever come down to earth?) and have errant pixel problems. The most obvious transition is to combine the TV and the computer display for home use. Differing bandwidth has prohibited that from becoming a mainstay, but with the widespread adoption of high definition TV it could make a comeback.
I think there will always be a need for desktops, if for no other reason than record keeping.
I just took delivery of a new desktop Friday. I sucked in my gut and deflated by bank account for a new eMac. Also picked up an iPod and an external 120 GB HD from EZ Quest. I'm still waiting on the two 512 MB memory modules. After I bumped the virtual memory up to match the built in 128 MB, I couldn't tell any speed difference in either OS X or 9. I did have a few problems though.
Adjusting to the eMac and OS X
The noisy fan blows. I can understand why it is in the very rear of the monitor cabinet. I'm thinking of building a custom wall across my desk with a hole in it just large enough to stick the nose of this eMac and the fan cooled EZ Quest HD through.
The automatic setup at initial boot in OS X didn't deal well with the fact that I already had Earthlink as a dial up ISP, and it never set me up in OS X. I had to go through another setup in OS 9.2 which completed the transaction with the same inputs and handed me off to Earthlink's own configuration handler.
Switching back and forth from OS X to OS 9 is much more than just a pain. It's confusing trying to make sure everything is filed and accessible in both OS's. Take a simple task like setting up iTunes, for instance. Most of my legacy aps are OS 9, so I anticipate spending most of my time in OS 9. I have the new external hard drive with 115 GB of formatted storage, so I copied all of my 7GB of iTunes music across the Ethernet connection to it. It took about 55 minutes. I then created an alias of the new iTunes Music folder just copied to the 115GB HD, and copied that to Macintosh HD/Documents/iTunes. The folder was already there because I had already opened the program once in OS 9. At this point, I just opened iTunes and chose "Add to Library" pointing the program to the alias in the iTunes folder. It quickly gobbled up the data for over two thousand mp3's and I was done. ... Not so fast, eigh? ... There was still OS X to deal with.
OS X and iTunes 3 wants to put every document, including all the mp3 music files for iTunes 3, in Macintosh HD/Users/herbvic/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/ and then subdivide everything by artist, then album. Not only that, but the process is automatic during setup because I mistakenly let the program search for the music instead of doing the "Add to Library" thing. ... So, ... I nearly missed the fact that now I have two sets of mp3's, one for OS X and the other for OS 9. Gotta fix that in my spare time.
Two things about OS X that everyone should know up front. 1> Folder names created in OS 9 should NOT contain a period (.). 2> OS X doesn't always handle aliases very well. In OS 9 I have all these nifty desktop images that are stored in the Appearance folder inside the OS 9 System folder. For the Appearance Manager, I was using folders full of aliases to group images together from different sources, then dragging the folder into the Appearance Manager's window to create random desktop collections. The Appearance Manager would simply choose one of the aliases at random during each startup. With about 70 desktop image aliases in a folder, I never got tired of my desktop image. I had even bought some desktop console images from blueskyheart.com that would knock your sox off. That guy is a REAL artist!
Anyway, I tried to point the Desktop module of OS X's System Preferences to the newly established OS 9 Appearance Manager folders. Not only does it not recognize the aliases, the image folders that contained a period in their name w e r e - t r u n c a t e d at the period.
Here's one for the book. I was trying to connect through AppleTalk across Ethernet to my iMac, but the login kept failing everytime. The login defaults to my administrator name in OS X, so I had gone to the iMac and set up a user account by the same name, but it wasn't working. Then, on close examination, I discovered that the administrator's name had a leading space in front. So, I went through System Preferences and clicked on Users. Wait ~5 minutes before anything happens. There's only one user, me. Click to edit user, me. Wait ~5 minutes before anything happens. Remove the leading space in the user name. Click on Save. Wait ~5 minutes before anything happens. Now I'm back at the list of one user, but it's window is not in the foreground. Click in window to bring it to foreground. Wait ~2 minutes before anything happens. Then I can click Show All for System Preferences or, better yet, close System Preferences. Now I try to connect to the iMac server. The default user name pops up and the leading space is still there! Arrgh! So, I went to predictable and reliable OS 9 on the iMac and changed the user name to include a leading space. The next day I had to remove it as the change didn't take place until I rebooted.
One unexplainable incident:
I'm using OS X across AppleTalk, browsing my hard drive on the iMac. I navigate to a folder that contains an image that I want, (Mars! Get your mind out of the gutter!) so I'm scrolling the window view in column mode. Suddenly, the two HD volume icons on the iMac's desktop disappear. At the same time, the eMac is locked up and the rainbow spinner is getting no traction. I had to boot both machines from scratch. Minor incident, but unexplainable because I immediately tried it again and had no problem.
I like the 17" screen. It is crystal clear and I am using it at the highest resolution of 1280 X 960 all the time. And my 54 year old eyes are not at their best these days.
The processor seems snappy enough. I'll know more about that when I get my 1GB RAM installed. iTunes 3's iCandy stays maxed at 30 fps most of the time. I was disappointed in Diablo II running under OS 9, but that was when I discovered that things run faster with 256 MB of combined virtual and physical RAM. It's still a little jerky though. Perhaps it'll improve with the addition of 1 GB of RAM.
Did I mention that'm getting 1 GB of RAM?
Looks:
From the side or the back, this computer is a thing of BEAUTY. Looking straight at the monitor, ... mmmm ... it looks a little Disneyesque. It looks like a retro-60's micro-wave with a monitor built in and speakers where the knobs should go. That's just how it looks to me. I make no apologies for it. But, HEY! It's form follows it's function. And I like that.
The iPod
I got the 10 GB one marked down to $350. I don't need it, but this gadget is a marvel of modern science. Everyone talks about how easy it is to learn to use. Well, I used it for 2 days before I figured out that you could change the volume. I was changing the Startup Volume, but then I'd have to turn it off and back on again for it to take effect. Guess I'm kinda dumb that way. All you do is rotate the thumbwheel, but I never noticed.
There is a problem that I can see. Music from different sources are often recorded at different volumes. Either the iPod doesn't deal with that very well, or there is something else I haven't learned yet. Even with iTunes 3's automatic leveling, the iPod doesn't get the message and can change from very soft to "HURTS! TURN IT DOWN!" from one song to the next.
All in all, so far the experience has been pretty painless. I'd recommend an eMac to anyone. The iPod? What can I say? It's just a marvelous toy! A miracle of science to impress the world.
Way to go Apple!
HerbVic |
