*scottstuff*

A few notes on Tiger:

• Ooooh. Search. Search has been one of my big things lately, and I like what I’ve seen of Tiger so far, but it’s too early to tell how well it’ll work. Fundamentally, searching seems to scale better then strict hierarchical organization. For instance, with a good search tool, it’s faster to search through the 100,000 or so old email message that I have laying around then it’d be to change folders and skim through a couple dozen messages by hand. The big problem is that search tends to be resource-intensive–I’ve been playing with Zoe, QuckSilver, and HistoryHound, and they each end up wanting over 100 MB of RAM. Fundamentally, there’s no real need for this, and we’ll see how Apple does with Tiger. I’m hopeful, but I’m used to disappointment. Specifically, I want to see what Mail.app lets me do with smart folders; Can I tag messages with tags like ‘Important’ or ‘To-Do List’ and get smart folders that show me all of the ‘To-Do List’ items? There’s no real indication that Apple is going to let us add generic metadata, and that’s a pity; it’ll have to wait for ‘Lion’ or ‘Tabby’, or whatever comes after Tiger.

• 64-bit application support. This isn’t a huge thing for most people today, but for some types of applications, it’s utterly critical. Anything that wants to use more then 4 GB of RAM needs it, and it starts getting useful around 1 GB, generally. It’s the way of the future, and it’s nice to see that it’s showing up now; in another two years, it’s going to be important to all of us.

• cp understands Mac OS resource forks. Finally. Files are files; the fact that copying Mac-specific files with Unix tools tended to destroy bits of them was kind of irritating.

• Safari has an RSS reader. After watching Apple’s RSS movie, I’m not really sure about this one–it’s a neat feature, but it pales in comparison to NewNewsWire. Frankly, RSS belongs in Mail, not Safari.

• Real-time video effects using the GPU. Cool, but not terrifically useful to me, particularly with my underpowered PowerBook 550.

• iSync SDK. ABOUT FSCKING TIME. The Zaurus people have been trying to write an iSync plugin for years, but haven’t had any documentation. Personally, I’d love to see what happens one you graft bits of MultiSync into iSync–you should end up with free calendar and address book synchronization between Macs, Linux systems, PocketPCs, and whatever else MultiSync supports now.

• iChat supports conferencing. Yeah, but does it support non-AIM SIP servers? It’s totally unusable for me right now, between generic NAT problems and Asterisk wanting port 5060 on my firewall. It’d be really nice if I could use iChat as a softphone with Asterisk.

Apparently, it’s all shipping in 1H2005, or up to a year away. It’ll probably end up being February-ish, if they follow their Jaguar/Panther shipping trend. That’s a long time to wait for the handful of features that I’d really like to see (mostly the Spotlight search tools), and as always, there’s the $129 question–is the upgrade really worth it?

Pretty much everyone is buzzing about the latest Treo update rumor. Basically, it adds a few UI refinements, bluetooth, a better camera, a slightly faster CPU, and a 320x320 display. The Treo 600’s 160x160 display is just too low for me to consider. On the other hand the Treo Ace/Treo 610/Treo 660, as rumored, isn’t that far from my ideal PDA. I’d be happier if it had 802.11, 64 MB of RAM, and a 320x480 display, but the specs given are probably good enough for me to swap my Clie and T616 (and $500) for a Treo. Given the choice between the Tungsten T4 and the Treo Ace, I’d probably go with the Treo 4 times out of 5.

As cool as the new Treo rumor is, I’m still waiting to see what PalmOne does with the Tungsten C line. All things considered, a fuller-featured Tungsten C2 would probably be the best fit for my needs.

Update 7/29/2004: The TreoCentral article linked above is long gone. Try Engadget’s page instead.

Update 8/26/2004: There are a few more details available now. It looks like the name’s going to be ”Treo 650”.

Engadget is running a rumor about PalmOne’s next handheld–the Tungsten T4.

The basic specs look promising–802.11g, bluetooth, 320x480 display, faster CPU, more RAM, yadda yadda. The are a couple little issues with the rumor, though. First, it’s claiming a 450 MHz CPU. I thought that Intel’s newest CPUs are 624/520/416/312 MHz. I don’t know where 450 MHz comes from–an underclocked 520 in an attempt to save power? Also, the rumor calls for 96 MB of RAM, which is unusual. Memory sizes in handhelds are usually a power of 2, so I’d expect either 64 MB or 128 MB. There’s a chance that there’s really 128 MB in the thing, with 32 MB reserved for something else–Sony and Handspring have both done similar things in the past.

Finally, the T4 is supposed to run PalmOS 6/Cobalt. It was announced months ago, but none of the (rapidly shrinking) pool of PalmOS manufacturers has yet produced a handheld that uses it.

All in all, this sounds exactly like the device that PalmOne needs to replace the T3, but it’s still a little short of the next round of PocketPCs. HP has a couple 640x480/128MB/612 MHz models due for release soon, and Toshiba and ASUS already have similar models on the market.

Which brings up another question–since PalmOS and PocketPC handhelds are now using almost exactly the same hardware, is there any chance that someone will start using the same hardware platform for both OSes? ASUS in particular could easily produce a PalmOS version of their handheld without really surprising anyone.

Finally, what about the Tungsten C family? The handheld that I really want is the Tungsten C2–a cross of the T4 with the current Tungsten C. I’m really slow with graffiti, and a keyboard would be great, even though it adds a couple inches to the height of the thing.