Category: Technology

I am always impressed with Apple on how they could milk every single ounce of computing power from a microprocessor. This is the reason why I looked forward to installing the latest version of MacOS X on my Powerbook. Numbered 10.4, the OS is also known as Tiger- a silly big cat nomenclature that had started with Cheetah to Jaguar to Panther.

(This naming convention was actually the work of Apple’s marketing department who wanted to portray “speed??? and “agility???, though if memory serves right, Panther was supposed to be “Pinot???. Fancy working on an OS that is named after a puny grape? Didn’t think so…)

However, naming OSes after big cats is slightly better than Microsoft who went with names of ski resorts. The latest, most bestest, most futurestest version of Windows is known as Longhorn, which incidentally, is also the name for a species of cow. Whether intentional or not, this Windows shares similar nonchalant attitudes when it comes to timekeeping- which explains why it is delayed until 2007…and beyond.

Tiger is much more than just a marginal update. It is a major update that Apple touts as containing more than 200 new features. Of that, one major new feature could potentially change the way in which I use my computer. And I say this without exaggeration.

That feature is Spotlight.

Ever since starting with MS-DOS, my entire computing life has been one where I managed, manipulated, archived and catalogued directories and files. In fact, this is pretty much how everyone uses a computer. Failure to understand this renders one incapable of finding one’s file, which could remain unfortunately lost among billions of bytes of information that are encoded within nanoscopic grooves in one’s hard disk.

Microsoft proposed a new way to manipulate files. In fact, they were so ambitious that Longhorn was originally designed to have a new file system that would make folders and files less relevant. I used the word “originally??? because that feature has been deemed to be too complex and it was removed from development. But not for Apple.

Starting a couple of years after Microsoft boldly published the specifications of Longhorn, Apple first delivered File Journaling in Panther (MacOS X 10.3). On top of that new file database table, Apple built Spotlight, which is an ultrafast, ultradeep search function. Spotlight is not an application. It is a feature of the OS that can be used by any applications. On the Finder, it is used as a fast file search tool. Just type a keyword on the top right magnifying glass icon and Spotlight will return a list of files, applications, graphics, music, documents and even video that is somewhat related to the keyword.

As a test, I typed in “Star Trek??? and I found the teaser trailer of “Star Trek: First Contact??? within my hard disk. This was a file that I thought that I had lost a long, long time ago. In addition, I’ve managed to find also valuable MS Word documents that I had written long time ago but had not accessed because I had forgotten what their filenames were.

And to make it even better, Spotlight works so fast that it is unbelievable. Type in a word and it starts searching, with each search averaging about 5 seconds to complete on my 1.3GHz PowerBook G4.

How Spotlight would change computing is pretty obvious. With such an easy way to find files, the emphasis on creating proper directories and naming conventions is reduced. This means that all files can be dumped into one big folder (okay, some of us are already doing this but I’m not one of them) and Spotlight will keep everyone sane. Sort of like Google on one’s desktop.

Apart from Spotlight, another cool thing is Dashboard. To be fair, this is not anything new. Apple has a habit of copying from the best and adopting features into its own software; for more of this: read Fire in the Valley and see its made-for-TV-movie-adaptation Pirates of the Silicon Valley. This time, Apple “borrowed??? the idea for this software from Konfabulator.

Dashboard consists of widgets, like Konfabulator, and widgets are small applications and have them float freely around your desktop. These small applications could be pulling the latest news from the web, converting one unit of measurement to another or spitting up the meaning of a word from a dictionary.

Personally, I liked Apple’s widgets. They are cute eye candy versions of small apps that I always use when I am working on my computer. Take for example, the calculator: this helpful widget saves one an enormous amount of time as one doesn’t have to load the behemoth that is Microsoft Excel every time one wants to determine how much 7659763 divided by 65.8 is (the answer’s 116409.77203647, thanks Calculator Widget!).

However there is a slight and irritating bug on the weather widget. The weather widget gives one the highs and the lows for the day as well as displays the current weather in a graphical form. For example, if it is raining, one gets a cool animated rain graphic. But for Kuala Lumpur, the widget always seems to think that we are in perpetual darkness because the graphic that I get is always one of the moon- even though during daytime!

Another thing that got me a little concern is the ease with which widgets can be installed on one’s computer. Normally, this would be a good thing. This ease of installation, however, could cause security issues for the MacOS X. Malicious widgets could be attached to e-mail and unsuspecting users would unknowingly install these into their computer. Perhaps Apple should release a patch to allow users to uninstall widgets, which, at this point of writing, one is unable to do.

Overall, I like this OS and I think that this is the best MacOS X by far. I get very excited every time Apple releases a new OS and so far, they’ve managed to not only raise the bar ever so higher but to meet and exceed it with every release. The MacOS X 10.4 Tiger is a resounding home run.

View a of Spotlight.
View a video demonstration of Dashboard.

You know how some people get excited about Football Finals or Tennis Grand Slams? Well, I get that way about operating system updates. Yes, I’m that kind of nerd. So when MacAsia Apple Centre in GE Mall announced a Panther launch event on 24^th October 2003 at 8pm (which happened to be Deepavali as well), I was like a kid who just found out Christmas was coming early – if Christmas involved binary code and kernel improvements.

Being the slightly paranoid tech enthusiast I am (blame it on years of Windows trauma), I double-checked the date. You know, just in case someone fat-fingered the keyboard and I’d end up being that guy standing alone outside a closed store with my credit card and dashed dreams. Turns out, yes, they were really hosting it on a public holiday, complete with food and drinks. And no matter how much I cajoled them, they won’t sell me the software before that date regardless of how much I had spent with them.

Here’s the thing about Panther (Mac OS X 10.3 for those who don’t speak Apple): every new operating system software update makes your older hardware run faster. Coming from the Windows world, this concept was as foreign to me. In my Windows experience, new operating systems were usually just elaborate schemes to make you buy new hardware – kind of like how you are forced to buy a new house every time there is new interior design idea.

But Panther? This magnificent beast actually made my Powerbook and Powerbook purr. I’m not talking about that placebo effect where you convince yourself your computer is faster because you just spent money on it (we’ve all been there). No, this was real. I even installed it on my friend’s ancient clamshell iBook – which was crawling on Mac OS X 10.1 – and suddenly it was dancing like it had discovered caffeine.

So here’s my challenge to Microsoft: try making Windows updates that don’t require users to basically upgrade their computer. For once, it will be kinda nice to squeeze every ounce of power from older Intel machines.

Apple’s new 15” Aluminum PowerBook takes techno-lust to nearly uncontrollable levels.

The brand-new, stunningly sleek, and irresistibly sexy 15” Aluminum PowerBook from Apple is simply too much to handle! I’ve been using the older 15” Titanium PowerBook for about a year and a half now, and honestly, I have no major complaints—except for a couple of issues:

1. The LCD screen had 3 to 4 dead pixels (though I did get a perfect replacement after the first display completely failed in the 11th month).
2. The original 30GB hard drive failed (but I replaced it myself with a 40GB one since it was a standard component).

Aside from these two hardware hiccups, the PowerBook has been an absolute dream to use. Before Apple’s latest announcement, I had been anticipating something even bigger—perhaps a G5 notebook? But hey, something is better than nothing, right?