I know, I'm taking the title thing too far, this will be the last one I promise.
The Mac article is done and has been done for a while, the publication date is October 8th. I pushed it so far back so I could hopefully have more Mac articles done, giving you all a nice continuum of Mac articles for a while; unfortunately things don't always work as planned. At this point ATI has been the most cooperative when it comes to supporting the Mac section; they've always been good to send me Mac related products and later this month I will be making a trip up to ATI's Marlborough, MA offices to talk to their Mac team about what they're working on. NVIDIA on the other hand has been far less helpful, I've been requesting their new 6800 Ultra DDL since before the wedding and have yet to receive anything firm. I will get through to them, it's just going to take a little more time. One of the first product-review related articles will be a GPU roundup, I just need NVIDIA to cooperate so I can actually make it happen.
Next up: hard drives. I told you all I was going to work on a follow-up RAID article before I got married and I meant it, but what I wasn't prepared for was how massive the project was going to get. The innocent little RAID article has now turned into a massive set of HDD Guides, about 10 in all, to be published starting the end of this month and continuously throughout the end of this year. What's going to be covered? Everything. Desktop, gaming, server performance, SATA, ATA, SCSI, controllers, RAID, everything. The project is so big that I had to split it up, like I said, into around 10 individual articles or guides (not sure which I'm going to call them yet). I have already put in requests with all of the hard drive manufacturers and I have already started receiving drives. Controllers have also been requested and they will hopefully be fulfilled soon. I expect to start initial benchmarking by the end of next week; I'm waiting for some more motherboards and CPUs to arrive at our place here in Branford before I can start benchmarking.
Over my blog hiatus I also brought on a new editor to AnandTech, he's someone that most of you have probably already heard of and he'll be contributing content about once a month. More on him later...
This month should be relatively interesting, there are a couple of NDAs coming up that you'll hear more about in the coming weeks.
Take care and enjoy the weekend.
The Mac article is done and has been done for a while, the publication date is October 8th. I pushed it so far back so I could hopefully have more Mac articles done, giving you all a nice continuum of Mac articles for a while; unfortunately things don't always work as planned. At this point ATI has been the most cooperative when it comes to supporting the Mac section; they've always been good to send me Mac related products and later this month I will be making a trip up to ATI's Marlborough, MA offices to talk to their Mac team about what they're working on. NVIDIA on the other hand has been far less helpful, I've been requesting their new 6800 Ultra DDL since before the wedding and have yet to receive anything firm. I will get through to them, it's just going to take a little more time. One of the first product-review related articles will be a GPU roundup, I just need NVIDIA to cooperate so I can actually make it happen.
Next up: hard drives. I told you all I was going to work on a follow-up RAID article before I got married and I meant it, but what I wasn't prepared for was how massive the project was going to get. The innocent little RAID article has now turned into a massive set of HDD Guides, about 10 in all, to be published starting the end of this month and continuously throughout the end of this year. What's going to be covered? Everything. Desktop, gaming, server performance, SATA, ATA, SCSI, controllers, RAID, everything. The project is so big that I had to split it up, like I said, into around 10 individual articles or guides (not sure which I'm going to call them yet). I have already put in requests with all of the hard drive manufacturers and I have already started receiving drives. Controllers have also been requested and they will hopefully be fulfilled soon. I expect to start initial benchmarking by the end of next week; I'm waiting for some more motherboards and CPUs to arrive at our place here in Branford before I can start benchmarking.
Over my blog hiatus I also brought on a new editor to AnandTech, he's someone that most of you have probably already heard of and he'll be contributing content about once a month. More on him later...
This month should be relatively interesting, there are a couple of NDAs coming up that you'll hear more about in the coming weeks.
Take care and enjoy the weekend.
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James - Monday, October 18, 2004 - link
I have to say that Anand is both correct and incorrect in his price estimates. I've only started using macs in the last 6 months before which I was a die hard "build it yourself" pc user (I never owned a pre-built machine except my laptop...not even my first ever computer).Anand was correct in his judgement that if you build your own pc and have no need for ultra quite, top quality cases or other frills you can build a comparably fast PC for much less.
Anand was incorrect in comparing these two scenarios to begin with. On Anandtech, we constantly see articles for Value Buyer's Guides and High End Buyer's Guides. . .however, the High End Buyer's guide is not summed up with an off-handed "but a comparable system can be built for less if you don't get the . . .". It goes without saying that if you don't get the Lian Li top of the line case, the brand new Nvidia 6800 Ultra and the name brand 600 Watt PSU that you've just shaved about a thousand dollars of the price of your "high end pc".
Unfortunately, we can't mix and match with apple hardware. However, it makes no more sense to make price point statements based on this in the same way that we would compare two options in the same class than it would to review a Ferrari and than conclude with: "But a toyota has four wheels and a trunk and only goes for $12,000". . .such claims are 100% correct and 100% off base.
David Smith - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
As a clarification, most good Mac apps are "application bundles", which is a folder that the operating system treats as a file. This allows all the support files for the application to be contained inside it (you can see this by right clicking and choosing show package contents). There are a few other files (prefs at such), but they're created by the application when it launches for the first time. I've never heard of an application overriding the drag functionality in the way Anand describes.Anonymous - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
The 'installing' operation that Anand described is apparently unique to MS Office 2004.The two standard ways to install on Mac OS X are copy the executable to where you want it, normally into the Applications folder but you can put it wherever you want, and using a normal installer program. The second method isn't (and shouldn't be) used very often because such installer programs are what take control away from the user. Moving executables around is much better.
melgross - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
I thought so. It just sounded as though there were some.Thanks.
Anonymous - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
(posting here because I don't feel like registering)I enjoyed reading the mac article and mostly agree with everything it says (as a Mac user who avoids Windows whenever possible)
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"Furthermore, finding out the correct key to hit to select the option that you want [from a dialog box] is most definitely a guessing game, as there are no underlined characters or anything indicating what key to hit. Given OS X's strong support for keyboard shortcuts, this shortcoming (no pun intended) is puzzling."
Some Classic version of the Mac OS changed the button labels for dialogs to the key equivalents when you pressed the command key. Apple has definitely taken a few steps backwards by 'forgetting' to include little features from the Classic versions of the OS. And there's basically no reason for many of the omissions.
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"Well, to install an application, you simply drag the application's installer to any folder on your hard drive and it's "installed". Doing so actually triggers a number of files to be copied to various places on your drive, but the fact that you are separated from that process, it really made me feel like I wasn't in control of my system."
That seems and odd characterization of my experiences. I would say that after downloading and uncompressing (or putting the CD in or whatever) you just drag the application (or the directory with the app and it's files) to where you want it rather than dragging an 'installer' which causes many files to be copied to various places around the hard drive. Often all the files needed are self contained in the app and there's no application directory (look up 'Mac OS X Bundles') and you don't have to worry about anything else.
Uninstalling is the similar, drag the app to the trash and delete it. If you want you can also find the preference file and other similar files in standard places in order to delete any sign that the app was ever on your drive.
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"the task switcher is activated by holding down the Command key and hitting "tab" to sequence through all of the open applications. Releasing Command activates the selected application and everything continues as it would under Windows."
For people who use the mouse a bit more it's nice that once the task switcher has been activated the mouse cursor can be used to select items from it. That's much faster than selected the app from the keyboard. Once an app is selected with the mouse clicking it will then switch. command-h and command-q work the same whether you select apps by repeatedly hitting command-tab or by moving the mouse.
Lucian - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
Next time you decide to take screenshots, try Ambrosia's Snapz Pro X (www.ambrosiasw.com). It's a sweet program.Anonymous - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
Hey Anand. Can you find out what the deal is with Nvidia and ATI not shipping enough of the good stuff? Here in Aotearoa, 6800GT cards are literally impossible to buy. There is simply no stock. And worse, no one knows when or if new stock will arrive. What's the deal? Thanks buddy.Anonymous - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
#21: AnandTech has just started their Mac section so there is not anything in it. No matter what you do, it will not have any articles in that section unless Anand writes them.Missing? - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
Yes, you're missing the secret handshake and the "I'm an American too" loathing.melgross - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link
I've been reading AnandTech for some time now, and I don't see any place where any of these Mac articles are supposed to be.There has never been anything in the Macintosh section. Even the membership password doesn't help. Every time I've tried, I've been told that I'm not allowed there.
Are these to be the first, or am I missing something?