Got another inherited G4.

I also inherited a Mirror drive G4 tower from a former colleague at Hempfield. I am working on a project for school and this is a perfect machine to turn into a server.

This picture here is what I have however, I have a 17″ Apple display not a 23″. I have 2 17″ lcds in fact, the one is with the G4 Cube.

I also inherited an original 15″ LCD that apple produced. I may use that for the server project. The cube can handle a dual 17″ display setup but I need an adapter. So I am excited to get this project started. I think my room is started to get a little warm with all the computers and monitors that are on and running. Thank god the cube has no fan.

PowerMac G4 Cube, ahead of it’s time?

I just procured an old PowerMac G4 Cube this past week. This machine was debuted in 2000 and then was laid to rest in 2001.

Overall it was a great machine for it’s time; the latest G4 processor, cd-rw or dvd-rom, up to 1.5 gigs of ram, and no cooling fan so its really quiet.

Another cool observation to mention, the design itself to get to the “guts” of the machine, you unlatch a handle and the entire machine comes out and is all grafted to a cube shaped skeleton. It makes things very easy to access (memory, wireless card option, hard drive, and logic board).

The problem was, the price. It was priced around $1499 and for that the consumers would rather put $1500 into a G4 tower with dual processors.

The machine itself is great, and saves so much desk space. If the price was different back then I believe it would have been as successful as the Mac Mini is today. I will utilize this machine until the day it dies. I may even pay to get a third party processor upgrade to a single 1.5 ghz G4.

This truly was an innovative computer design ahead of it’s time.

WWDC 2009 thoughts…

WWDC was exciting to se what new stuff would appear in the upcoming months. I am particularly excited about 10.6 and some newer features. Expose on the Dock is gonna be great for me when I have many documents or photos open in Photoshop. I am also really happy to know that I will be getting back about 5 gigs of HD space as well.

The new iPhone was less exciting for me, yea ok, faster 3G and come cool new features but nothing that I will plan on running out to upgrade, especially since I do not have as much of an income as I did at Hempfield. I do have to say that Apple will take more of the cell phone market with offering the $99 dollar iPhone, that will most likely piss many of the other cell manufacturers off since they just released new smart phones.

I have mixed emotions about the rebranding of the laptops. I read an article on monday about “Pro” not meaning “Pro” anymore as it used to. To me the pro version of the laptops are those still that are “mobile powerhouses” that can do the work of a Desktop in a laptop form. The difference used to be that the pro level laptops had a dedicated video card that could handle the more graphic intense programs. The new 3 lower end models of the macbook pros do not have dedicated video cards. I hope consumers realize that they aren’t getting a pro level laptop at the lower cost. the pro level laptops are the 3 higher end models of the Macbook pro line. However, those consumers who dont plan on do much in FCP, or high end manipulation in photoshop, or audio editing in Logic Pro, then the 13″ is fine. They still are amazing machines, just not what a “pro” is looking for.

More website work !

So after having so much fun, and so much pride in working with Derrick on his site. I am happy to report I have 2 maybe 3 more website projects I am doing for some people in the near future. I am really excited to see what they will be looking to do and see if I can test more of my skills and see if new challenges arise.