Brent's Two Cents

Ahhh, That's Better

They called.

They called and said "Your G5 has arrived." I hung up the phone, slightly dazed, not really believing it after waiting so long -- months really. "Something will go wrong." I thought. Perhaps they made a mistake, or they forgot to put in the extra RAM, or a moth will have been fried on the motherboard causing some malfunction. Something about writing software for practically my entire life has turned me into a dismal pessimist. Murphy's law and all that. I calmly started a backup and drove over to the store.

That's right, I took the car, despite the fact that the Mac store is about three blocks from here. Good thing too, 'cause a dual-processor G5 is freakin' heavy. It's like they make those things out of solid metal or something. As it was there was no parking right out front, so I had to park about a block away. I lugged the box out to the car and jammed it into the trunk. It didn't fit. The box was just too big. I was overdressed for the weather, and was getting really sweaty. I successfully maneuvered the box into the back seat and chauffeured the G5 home.

I wrestled the box out of the car, up the elevator and into my office, then changed into some less-sweaty clothes. In a few short minutes I had cracked open the box and hooked the new Mac into the slot on my KVM switch previously occupied by our Wintel box. I gingerly touched the power button on the front of the case. Nothing. I pressed harder. Still nothing. Whoops! Forgot the power cord. Relief.

After providing power, the computer started. Hmmm. The startup sound is a little tinny, but I'll probably get some external speakers anyway. The mouse lights up -- things are working -- the monitor comes on. But instead of the grey apple on a white field, I see a scattered twitching mess of pixels -- the unmistakable hallmark of bad video RAM. Arrggghhh!

I shut the system down, pull out the phone and call Apple. While I'm on hold with AppleCare, I remove the cover and fiddle a bit with the video card. Seems to be seated solidly. Ahh whatever. I'm so pissed off -- not so much because the computer is busted, because that just leaves me with the status quo, and what's another few days in the greater scheme of things? No, I'm pissed off because I'm going to have to get dressed again, pack this behemoth back in it's box and drag it back to Mac Station to get it fixed. My mood sours. I replace the cover, and start the machine up again as the helpful guy from Apple asks me for the serial number of the computer. I don't have it handy, so I swivel in my chair and turn to look at the box. I read off the serial number and turn back to see the Mac OS "Welcome" application in perfect, non-garbagy video. I fixed it. Ahhh, that's better. I babble at the AppleCare guy for a while and then get started with my reinstall.

Luckily, I had had a couple of months to prepare, so I had all my backups and software ready to go. The install process was the least painful of any I have done. Why? 1GHz frontside bus, baby. I have never seen software install so fast. Even that viscous "optimizing" step that installers sometimes do is greatly shortened. I installed CodeWarrior 8 plus both sets of updates in less than 5 minutes.

This machine is so fast, it was confusing. I'd drag multi-megabyte files from one hard drive to another and there'd be no copy progress dialog. Busted? Did it copy? I open the window. Yep, it's there. I do a little experiment. You have to move about 8MB of data before a progress bar shows up.

I drag the hard disk icon into the dock and open it's menu -- something I never would have attempted with my G4/733. No sweat.

I launch iCal -- my all time favourite for lousy performance. It's fast. I'm starting to think I've achieved my goal: OS 9 speeds. But I've been saving the biggest test for last: iPhoto and our library of... (how many photos do we have? Hey, I'll just launch iPhoto and see)... two thousand and four 3.3 megapixel images. Here we go... I pick the "Italy" album which has 400 photos in it, and I drag the image size slider. The photos change size instantly, as if their size was actually controlled by the slider. No spinning rainbow. I drag the scroll bar. The field of photos scrolls. I can't believe it. Not a hiccup. I'm getting braver, so I select the Photo Library and unselect 'Film Rolls' from the view menu. iPhoto shows me 2004 photos. Drag the size slider back and forth -- a tiny bit slower, but still works fine. I make the photos really small so the window displays about 430 at once, and then drag the scroll bar. Here it starts to slow down some, but then it gets everything into memory and bang, just like nothing, I'm scrolling back and forth over gigabytes of image files. I make them as large as possible and drag the scroll bar again. This is stupid. Will nothing I do summon the spinning rainbow? I feel as though I have entered an alternate universe, one where iPhoto is responsive and Macs aren't intrinsically slow.

Even Stella's impressed when I show her this. "That's actually pretty fast," she says.

Fine, so it's fast. What are the numbers? I pull out XBench and give it a whirl. My old G4 scored an aggregate 64.68, the G5 is 170.52. You want to be wary of benchmarks, but this thing is -- on average -- two to three times as fast as my old machine, and as much as 6 times faster on XBench's memory test. It sure feels like it.

Ahhh, that's better.

Downsides? So far, I've noticed the 'beeping' sound that the machine sometimes makes, often when it's animating something in the dock. I can live with it. The machine is quieter than my G4 and quieter than my external hard disk, but the hum is a little higher-pitched and might get annoying. And it's huge and heavy.

Finally, the fun bit. I install the Bluetooth antenna and pair up the Mac with my phone. A few moments later, all my address book contents are living on my phone, along with my iCal tasks and appointments. Well, that couldn't have been too much smoother. I impluse-buy Salling Clicker and spend the next ten or fifteen minutes playing. Changing iTunes tracks and manipulating photos from your phone is kind of cool -- as is using your phone as a mouse -- but not something I think is exactly a killer app. But it's neat and fun.

Tomorrow's my first day really working with the new machine. I'll let you know how it goes.

Posted by Brent Marykuca at October 2, 2003 12:39 AM