d00dism

All right, so Apple released Mac OS X 10.4.3. There were a huge number of improvements. The most notable of which Safari passing the Acid2 Test (even though this was attainable before the update by using your own custom WebKit), homepage URLs in the Address Book are synchronized, iChat sessions over .Mac names can be encrypted, and Disk Utility can verify the boot volume.

We saw a new round of Powerbooks that were pretty unexciting without a processor improvement. The screen resolutions were enhanced and DDR2 was added, but only for the 15″ and 17″ models. The 12″ model was completely passed over. The message is clear, nothing big is coming in the Powerbooks until they go Intel.

The Powermacs got a boost with DDR2 RAM (which they can actually utilize). They also got dual core processors which only really benefit the high end model, the only one retaining two processors. However, the clock speed dropped to 2.5 GHz instead of 2.7 GHz processors. They were also outfitted with dual gigabit ethernet ports. AGP and PCI-X were dropped in favor of PCI Express. They also introduced a Quadro FX 4500 (be prepared to mortgage your home). Read the rest »