Welcome to The Hoosier Illuminati. Macintosh bigot, clothes horse, motorsports fanatic (as long as they turn right), Anglophile.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance. --Henry Ward Beecher

Mac OS market share up 35% over last year

Apple’s Mac operating system market share is up 35 percent year-over-year from October 2005 to October 2006.  Data rounded to the nearest whole percent, actual rise is 34.6 percent.

Please note that this does not mean that Apple’s market share is 35 percent.  The number represents percent increase.  Data used in this post has been obtained from Market Share.

Key Percent Increases

* Up 52.8 percent since January 2005
* Up 48.0 percent since April 2005 (Mac OS X Tiger launched April 29, 2005)
* Up 23.8 percent January to October 2006 - despite Intel transition
* Up 10.4 percent since September 2006
* Up 20.3 percent since August 2006

I think that number goes up after Vista is released.

Oh happy day!

After waiting a near eternity (well, ten months anyway) SlingPlayer for Mac is finally available. 

OK, so it’s still in beta and it’s not very, well, Macish, but at least they’ve finally made it available and it actually works.  So you folks with Macs and Slingboxes who need a new way to goof off at work now have it.  I’m just hoping they do a little bit of UI work on it before it goes gold. 

The latest thing the Muslims are offended by is…

...The Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in NYC.

No, I’m serious.  Really. 

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reports that the glass Cube Apple erected earlier this year on New York’s tony Fifth Ave, dubbed Apple Mecca by many of the Mac faithful, is offensive to Muslims due to the Cube’s resemblance to the Ka’bah (aka The House of Abraham). The report goes on to say that there’s a genuine belief that the design of the store was specifically meant to provoke Muslims and cites other contributing insults such Apple housing “bars” that sell alcoholic beverages within the Cube structure and it being open 24/7.

The Apple Store.

The “Ka’bah”.

Well, sure, the resemblance is obvious.  They’re both cubes, and we all know the Muslims have the patent on all things cube-shaped.    I can’t imagine a more blatant insult to Islam. 

I think the Muslims might want to actually VISIT an Apple Store and check out the little fact that the Genius Bars dispense not alcohol but information, but hey, when has truth ever been a factor in what sets off our friends in the Religion of Peace Pieces? 

Muslims, grow up.  Not everything is about you. 

MacBook Part Deux

Creating the XP ISO from the Virtual PC disks was really no big problem, and I now have both OSX and XP running on the MacBook.  As soon as I decide which distro to install, I’m going to blast a Linux virtual machine on there too, just because I can. 

This really is a beautiful machine.  I’ll be happy when Parallels (or VMWare, who is also working on a Mac virtualization program) gets all of the Mac hardware working in the Windows virtual machine.  Right now it only supports USB 1.1 devices, FireWire not at all, and the built-in iSight camera doesn’t work.  (It all works using Apple’s BootCamp software, but you have to reboot.  I’ll take the convenience of not rebooting until Parallels gets it straightened out.)

So far so good though. 

Finally, a MacBook!

So my MacBook comes in and I’ve installed new RAM and a new hard drive in it.  I run the migration assistant and a half hour later all of my files, apps, bookmarks, cookies and keychains are happily running on the new machine. 

I am happy because Apple makes my life simple.

Then I make my mistake.  I decide to install Parallels and use my product key for the copy of XP that came with Virtual PC on the old Mac to install XP on the new Mac.  Except that product key isn’t valid with a real XP install disk, only the VPC crap. 

So tomorrow my job will be to use the XP files on the VPC disk to create an XP ISO that can use the product key I’ve paid for.  I should have known Microsoft would figure out a way to screw this day up for me. 

But the MacBook is generally nice.  The keyboard takes a little getting used to, as does the size (it’s just enough larger than my old 12” PowerBook that I’m going to have to learn a new way of holding it).  I was a bit concerned about the glossy screen, but that’s not an issue at all.  The MagSafe power adapter is brilliant, as is the new trackpad.  I’ll be glad when Microsoft gets their act together and supplies universal binaries for Office, Word takes forever to open using Rosetta, but once open it seems to be fairly responsive. 

All in all, it’s typical Apple.  Well designed, well executed and a pleasure to use. 

If you ever thought about buying a MacBook from CDW…

Don’t.  Here’s the availability info for the MacBook that’s on the CDW website this very moment:

My MacBook has been on backorder since 9/12. 

Either change the availability information or send me my freaking MacBook.  You KNOW what will happen.  I’ll wait for over a month for the thing, I’ll finally get it, I’ll crack open the box and that very second Apple will begin dropping Core2Duos into MacBooks.  And I will be very irritated.

A 24” iMac for $1999?

Oh my.

BTW, if no one noticed, the specs for this thing are full 1080p.  And you can sit another 24” display right beside it if you like since they have dual display capability.  The pull, it’s getting harder to resist…

I want one.

Totally don’t need that kind of firepower, but what the hell. 

Apple today unveiled the new Mac Pro, a quad Xeon, 64-bit desktop workstation featuring two new Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors running up to 3.0 GHz and a new system architecture that delivers up to twice the performance of the Power Mac G5 Quad. With advanced performance, greater expansion, higher performance graphics options and unprecedented customization, the newly designed Mac Pro is the ideal system for the most demanding user. The introduction of the Mac Pro marks the completion of a rapid and seamless transition for Apple, with the entire Mac family now using Intel’s latest processors.

The new Mac Pro features the new Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5100 series processor based on the revolutionary Intel Core microarchitecture, delivering breakthrough performance and power efficiency. The new Mac Pro is up to twice as fast as the Power Mac G5 Quad running industry standard benchmarks and features two Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors running up to 3.0 GHz, each with 4MB of shared L2 cache and independent 1.33 GHz front-side buses. With 667 MHz DDR2 fully-buffered memory, the Mac Pro also boasts a 256-bit wide memory architecture for amazing bandwidth.

Every Mac Pro comes standard with the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT with 256MB of video memory, providing built-in support for dual-displays and Apple’s 30-inch Cinema HD Display. The ATI Radeon X1900 XT and the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500, both with 512MB of video memory, are available as build to order options and provide built-in support for up to two 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Displays. The Quadro FX 4500 also includes a stereo 3D port to connect goggles for stereo- in-a-window applications and is ideal for the most demanding animation, special effects and scientific visualization applications. The Mac Pro supports up to four PCI Express graphics cards to drive up to eight displays at once for advanced visualization and large display walls.

Actually, I’d be just as happy with a black 20” iMac with a Core 2 Duo in it, but The Steve unleashed no such beast today.  Ahh, well.  Maybe next month at Mac Expo in Paris. 

Apple finally gives us a wireless Mighty Mouse

It’s about freaking time.

According to the FCC filing, this is a Bluetooth Mighty Mouse. 

You know, I may be the only one (I’m not....) but I completely hate Apple’s input devices, so this won’t be big for me.  I’m just happy that they finally got around to giving us a wireless, (sorta) two-button mouse, late as it is.

I’m still a huge fan of the Logitech S530 Cordless Desktop as my Mac input devices of choice.  If I liked ergonomic keyboards, I might even try Microsoft’s effort, now that they finally got around to some dedicated Mac hardware.  Even if it really doesn’t match worth a damn.