Sorry for not coming back to you earlier, but the last weeks have
been a bit hectic with postgraduate exams and too many on-calls and
such. But here I am, rejuvenated after a day off and completely and
utterly baffled after that odd anticlimax that was his insanely great
Steveness' Expo keynote. There I was, sitting in my little cottage
overlooking the Loch, my two 64k ISDN channels desperately trying
keep up with the transmission of his Jobsiness trying to switch on a
digital camera (brilliant line: "Hey I need help: It's
technical").
Just like everybody else in the known Mac universe I was hoping
for that revolutionary revamp of the aging
iMacs and what happened: nothing. Well, the well known G4s
now look silver, but everybody who had hoped for an processor speed
increase above that psychological oh-so-important gigahertz level
(just to shut up the grinning Wintel users) was bitterly
disappointed.
All we know now after this presentation is that OS X slowly
but surely works as well as it should, that DVD recognition still
takes too long (brilliant: Jobs sitting in front of his Monitor and
desperately waiting for that window to pop up), and that Steve Jobs
can't switch on a digital camera (or was it a OS X flaw?). Oh
yes, and Adobe and Apple are still friends. Allegedly.
No wonder that people got angry. I certainly thought that I wasted
90 minutes of my time, and I was just sitting comfortably with a
coffee in front of my ancient iMac, not stuck in a stuffy conference
hall, shelling out bucks to see this sorry state of affairs.
Sure enough, the stock market reacted just as frustrated as the
Mac-parish, and Apple's stocks fell again. Sigh.
So, what are we going to do? Well, there's always waiting. Wait
and don't panic. The economic signs are pretty good: The CFO of Apple
is doing good work in a tough market in a electronic recession. The
new retail strategy of dedicated Appleshops will help to broaden the
mass appeal.
I am sure that the iMac line will be revamped for Christmas, so all
the kids (and big ones, like me) will want the shiny new iMac that
would just fit brilliantly with the school's new silver iBook.
So, no worries there.
Nevertheless I'll just wait a little bit longer before I buy
OS X (my Samsung laser printer is still not supported), and my
shiny new iBook that will hopefully pop through my letterbox really
soon (hey, it's supposed to be pretty slim) will continue running OS
9.1 for the time being. Amid all these optimistic soundings, the only
thing that is left for me to do is invite you all to the biggest and
best European Hacker Conference, HAL
2001 in Twente, The Netherlands, where I will be holding a talk
on the use and misuse of medical information on the Internet. With
some happy cheers from Scotland, this is Dirk
Modding Your Old Mac to Make It More Useful, Phil Herlihy, The Usefulness Equation, 10.09.
If your old Mac is too slow, too noisy, too plain looking, or has too little room for expansion, you might want to mod it.
Best 15" MacBook Pro Deals, 10.09.
Used 1.83 GHz Core Duo, $995; 2.16, $1,125; new, 2.2, $1,400 after rebate; refurb 2.4, $1,699; 2.5, $1,999; 2.6, $2,299; rebates on new.
Best Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' Deals, 10.09.
DVD upgrade from 10.3, $75; upgrade bundle with 10.3, $118; full version, $129; family pack, $200; 10-user Server, $350; unlimited, $400.
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aging
iMacs and what happened: nothing. Well, the well known 
appeal.
I am sure that the iMac line will be revamped for Christmas, so all
the kids (and big ones, like me) will want the shiny new iMac that
would just fit brilliantly with the school's new silver 
