The Apple thread

[WiteWulf]

It'd be nice to think the old Xserve might get some upgrade lovin'...we're really eager to use Xserves at our place but the lack of redundant PSU is an ongoing problem.

[WiteWulf]

New Macbooks with Santa Rosa Real Soon Now:

http://www.macrumors.com/2007/11/01/app ... gma-x3100/

Should be on the Apple Store later today...

[swooshy]

Hello. I'm thinking of getting one of the new iMacs now Leopard is out. Coming from a PC background I've a couple of questions that I thought some of you Mac users here might be able to help me out with, they're all pretty simple I hope.

Are they up to running World of Warcraft? I'm assuming they are as their spec. seems way better than my current PC which manages it ok.

These new Macs can run Vista now can't they? (Just needed for the odd thing). Is that a duel boot system? or is it launched from os x? Does this ability come as standard? or do I need to buy another piece of software to do this?

When running Vista, is it basically just a regular PC then? Would I have any problems running things like .Net or XNA game studio?

1Gb doesn't seem like enough for os x from what I've read, does it make sense to buy 2Gb from a 3rd party and fit it myself? Apples price seems a bit steep to me. (Any recommendations on where to shop appreciated).

Same with the HD, the standard amount is OK, but if I wanted more, is it simple enough to swap the drive out? Again, Apples prices seem a bit much for what you're getting for these bits.

That'll do for tonight, thanks everyone!

[Guru-Meditation]

Depends how well you want WoW running. The wifes 3 year old iMac can run it, and her Mac Mini can run it. It's a bit juttery with a window about 1280x1024 in size and most of the effects turned off but playable nonetheless.

[pogo]

1Gb doesn't seem like enough for os x from what I've read, does it make sense to buy 2Gb from a 3rd party and fit it myself? Apples price seems a bit steep to me. (Any recommendations on where to shop appreciated).

Same with the HD, the standard amount is OK, but if I wanted more, is it simple enough to swap the drive out? Again, Apples prices seem a bit much for what you're getting for these bits.

You certainly can upgrade the RAM - I upgraded both my iMac and MacBook were to 2GB using RAM bought from Crucial. Far cheaper even though I had to chuck the built in RAM as I bough 2 x 1GB each time.

As for storage you can swap out the drive but it's not an upgrade meant for users so is far from easy. Much easier is an external drive, such as USB or Firewire. You also don't lose the capacity of the internal drive, can use it for backup (Time Machine requires a separate drive, or at least partition), and can use it on other machines. You probably also pay less, as large external USB drives in particular seem very cheap right now.

[WiteWulf]

Are they up to running World of Warcraft? I'm assuming they are as their spec. seems way better than my current PC which manages it ok.

As already mentioned, the older iMacs were quite capable...the new ones should be quite happy running WoW.

These new Macs can run Vista now can't they? (Just needed for the odd thing). Is that a duel boot system? or is it launched from os x? Does this ability come as standard? or do I need to buy another piece of software to do this?

When running Vista, is it basically just a regular PC then? Would I have any problems running things like .Net or XNA game studio?

You have a couple of options, actually. You can dual boot using a piece of Apple software called Boot Camp. As Macs now use pretty much generic x86 hardware all the devices will be supported and it'll be just like using a 'normal' PC. You may want to invest in a proper mouse, tho

Your other option is to use something like Parallels and have Windows run 'in a window' in a virtual machine within Mac OS. This is good for quick access to certain apps but is a bit slower than booting into a pure Windows environment and gaming probably won't be too snappy. If you're feeling adventurous later builds of Parallels allow you to essentially hide the Windows OS side of things and just launch Windows applications stright into OS X. This looks great but can be a bit buggy sometimes. Virtual machines traditionally use a large file in the host OS's file system to store it's files in. Parallels can operate like this but if you've already got a Bootcamp install of Windows on another partition it can use that instead so you'll have the same environment and files whether you're booted fully into Windows or running a VM within OS X.

1Gb doesn't seem like enough for os x from what I've read, does it make sense to buy 2Gb from a 3rd party and fit it myself? Apples price seems a bit steep to me. (Any recommendations on where to shop appreciated).

Yup, put in as much memory as you can afford. Get it from Crucial, tho, not Apple

Same with the HD, the standard amount is OK, but if I wanted more, is it simple enough to swap the drive out? Again, Apples prices seem a bit much for what you're getting for these bits.

Upgrading the internal HDD in iMacs is possible but a complete PITA. Get a big external HDD instead. If you only plan using it on the mac get a firewire device (it'll be considerably faster) but get a USB2 (or combo USB/Firewire) unit if you want to use it with a PC that doesn't have Firewire. Again, if you only plan on using it with Macs you can format it as HFS+ (the standard disk format on macs) but if you want to access the data on Windows or [*nix|*BSD] systems use FAT32 as it's readable by just about everything.

[Kemper_Boyd]

Real or fake?
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/01/02/ne ... ld-you-so/

[Peet]

I hope it's true. I'd really like to find out how they intend to make sensible use of a multitouch trackpad.

[pogo]

Real or fake?
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/01/02/ne ... ld-you-so/

Fake - heck even I could PS that in a few minutes with two photos of the same machine, burred to hide my poor skills. Plus it's ugly. But most importantly multitouch in a laptop only makes sense if it's built into the display - using trackpad no matter how big would just be confusing.

[Kemper_Boyd]

Real or fake?
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/01/02/ne ... ld-you-so/

Fake - heck even I could PS that in a few minutes with two photos of the same machine, burred to hide my poor skills.

People thought that the first Fatpod pictures were obvious fakes.

Plus it's ugly.

Fatpod!

But most importantly multitouch in a laptop only makes sense if it's built into the display - using trackpad no matter how big would just be confusing.

Apple patent for wide trackpads with multitouch.
http://www.macsimumnews.com/index.php/archive/11145/

I agree the picture looks odd, but as I've said real pictures look like
fakes as well sometimes. As well as Fatpod remember the new
keyboards, people were very skeptical about those as well.

[SiN]

Looks pretty neat and all, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was real, but what's the point of the wider touchpad? I guess it would allow you to type and move the mouse at the same time, but it's just as easy to type with your fingers and shift your thumbs to use the trackpad instead.


SiN

[Kemper_Boyd]

Looks pretty neat and all, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was real, but what's the point of the wider touchpad? I guess it would allow you to type and move the mouse at the same time, but it's just as easy to type with your fingers and shift your thumbs to use the trackpad instead.


SiN

You could use one half like a shuttle and the other like a mouse.
Or split it into dials. Or a mouse with soft buttons at either end.
It wouldn't be a substitute for just a mouse any more. Think of it
as a mouse + X. You could do many of these now, but it's not
practical with a small track pad to have different regions, although
you can do some gestures such as two finger scrolling.

[SiN]

Ah yeah, I can see that. I just wonder how they'd incorporate that type of thing into the applications. If the ultra-mobile is going to run on OSX "proper" I wonder how the multi-touch aspects of an application will work on a MacBook or iMac.

I guess we really need an official announcement at this point to make any sense of this. When's MacWorld, then?


SiN

[psychorob]

I'm still surprised when I go back to using a PC Laptop and find how small the touchpad seems compared to my MacBook, I don't think I could handle it being any bigger

[RiK]

I guess we really need an official announcement at this point to make any sense of this. When's MacWorld, then?

15th Jan