I thought I’d vent a bit about the fact that there is still no Merom-based Apple laptop. I was foolishly hoping that Apple would silently roll out Merom-based MacBook/MacBook Pros along with all the other goodies today, but no such luck. I wonder if the Inquirer is right in saying that there will be no Merom-based Apple laptops this year due to limited supply of the chip from Intel. That’d be a bummer, since I need to purchase a new laptop soon, and I was hoping it would be a Merom-based Apple laptop. Oh well, I can still wait it out a little longer.

If memory serves, Apple has a worldwide market share ranging somewhere between 3 and 5% of all computers. However, the company’s recent moves will allow Apple to capture a good chunk of the consumer market (if it hasn’t already). On the other hand, I think that Apple will have a much harder time with the business market, which makes up a good chunk, if not the majority, of computer sales. Read More »

Just a quick thought on the relative performance of PowerPC Macs vs. Intel Macs. Recently, I had the opportunity to “acquire” a PowerPC-based iMac 17″ Flat-screen. For those who don’t have Apple’s iMac naming down cold (including yours truly), that is the G4-based iMac with the hemisphere base and the super-cool screen on the swivel arm (picture is available at the prior link). After installing an Airport Extreme card, I had the machine up and running on the home network. I promptly installed Firefox (since I’m not a Safari fan), and voila, I had a good-looking casual web browsing and email terminal functioning. Aesthetically, the machine is great. I especially love how easily the monitor can be moved on the swivel arm. However, I couldn’t help but notice how slow the machine is (it is a 1GHz PowerPC G4 box with 1 GB of memory).

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It appears that my wife purchased a MacBook with the dreaded random shutoff problem. The other night, I was trying to figure out why Safari mis-renders the heading of this blog (the i and Morphous should appear on the same line, but don’t in Safari), when suddenly, the MacBook just turned off. I quickly checked the Magsafe connector and the battery. Connected, and the battery showed a full charge (via the nifty little battery test button on the bottom of the laptop). My heart sank. I gulped, and pressed the power button to restart the Mac, but to no avail. The computer spun up the hard disk but before it could power on the screen, it shut itself off. There I was holding a useless MacBook that wouldn’t turn on, just after I had posted an article on how Apple was one of few manufacturers that could compete with IBM’s Thinkpad in terms of quality and that I was going to switch. After reading posts by other users with this problem, I feared that my wife would be without her machine for weeks. Would Apple and Apple Support let us down like it had the others who posted their stories online?

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I’ll admit that the title of this post is a bit deceptive. The article really presents the analysis I used to decide to switch to a Macbook (not a pro) from my IBM Thinkpad T42. For the record, the last time I could be called an Apple user was when I was relegated to using a Mac Plus as a terminal to a VAX and IRIX machine during a high-school internship. For the past 8 years I’ve exclusively used IBM Thinkpads (an i1300, T32p, and T42), except for a few months when I used a year old Dell Latitude (which I obtained for free) in place of my stolen IBM Thinkpad T32p. So, I’m no Apple fanboy and yet I’ve decided to switch. Below I explain why; I think my reasoning will apply to lots of other users as well.

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