PPC VS. Intel Macs: A Buyer's Rationale

Having just bought a batch of Quad-Core PowerMac G5s for my lab, I must admit to a touch of buyer's remorse and defensiveness over said purchase. We knew the Mac Pros were coming, and there was much discussion here about whether or not to wait for them and buy Mac Pros instead of PowerMacs — or to do a half-and-half type scenario somehow. We even drew a pros-and-cons chart on the whiteboard. The bosses were on the fence; the decision was ultimately mine. As I mentioned in my last post, I argued in favor of getting all PowerMacs and waiting two years (which is the length of our lease cycle) to get Intel hardware. As drool-inducing as the Mac Pros look, I stand by my decision. And now I have some additional validation in the form of benchmarks.

My basic rationale for sticking with the PowerPC platform was the following:

• The PowerMac is a known quantity. We know what we're getting here. We know it will be great, and fairly precisely just how great it will be. It's the safe bet.
• This machine, while perhaps maybe not the fastest, will be plenty fast for our needs for the next two years.
• New Mac hardware tends to have "growing pains" — usually minor, but still sometimes troubling bugs and problems — that I'd just as soon avoid. Stability and reliability over speed and novelty. It doesn't matter how fast the machine is if it won't boot or it's in the shop.
• Buying Intel hardware would entail working with, and maintaining, essentially two separate platforms — one Intel, one PPC — each with it's own separate OS, applications, troubleshooting routines and set of software updates. Our lab is heterogeneous enough, thank you. Adding a new platform would only complicate things more in our already complicated lab.
• But perhaps the strongest argument I made was that, for all these potential troubles, we won't see much real-world advantage on the Intel hardware for at least the first year of the lease. Why? Because a large proportion of the applications we use on our Macs won't be Universal Binaries until some time next year. Applications like Maya, the entire Adobe suite (which now includes all former Macromedia apps), and the Microsoft Office suite are all mainstays of our lab. They are, in fact, the apps that get used the most. And they currently run slower on Intel Macs than on PPC. While the performance of Intel-native or UB apps is certainly better on the new Macs, this advantage is largely negated by the performance hit apps running in Rosetta will experience.

The Mac Pro: Be Afraid; Be Very Afraid
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After the initial release of the Mac Pro, I started to worry that I'd overestimated that performance hit. But a few sites have already gotten their hands on the new machines and are testing them. They seem to confirm my initial suspicions and my decision to stick with PPC for this lease term. MacWorld raves about the performance of the new Macs. But their tests mainly include native or UB apps. The one exception is the Photoshop test, in which the Quad G5 soundly trounces the Intel. Bare Feats' tests are more comprehensive, and again show the G5 Quad beating the Intel Mac Pro in all non-native applications. This is especially significant for us, since this includes our most commonly used apps. If you really think about it, at worst we break even, and at best come out slightly ahead in the performance game by buying G5s because of the apps we use. And we'll probably come out way ahead on convenience and manageability and all those little lab admin intangibles that mean so much to folks like me.

Finally, while factors like the amazing upgradability of the Mac Pro might influence some users to buy the new machine (and rightfully so — if I were buying for myself I'd probably go Intel), such issues don't concern us. Our machines are leased for two years. We will not be upgrading them. We're mainly interested in a certain level of performance — though not necessarily the absolute best — and stability. We want fast, reliable, easy-to-manage machines. And that's what we got.

In two years the transition to Intel will be truly complete from the standpoint of the end-user, and at that point we'll certainly buy Intel Macs. (We won't have a choice anyway.) But for now I'm pretty confident that I made the right choice in sticking with the G5. And so far, the users love the new Macs. They are great machines.

Except for the one that shot sparks out the bottom and had to be returned. That one, not so great.

I'm Back: Thoughts on WWDC 2006

I really shouldn't be writing this. I don't have the time.

That's right, intro-net. I'm back. Sort of. I realize I haven't posted anything in a while. I've been exceptionally busy. And I continue to be. But today, luck, fate and timing have conspired to give me a day that looks to be fairly free. So I'm spending my time writing my first post in almost a month.

Lucky you.

It being my first day back and all, I'm a bit rusty and unfocused. So today's post will a running list of odds and ends — things I've noticed, complaints I've had, maybe even some stuff I've been working on, and then a roundup of my thoughts on this year's WWDC. Here goes.

For starters, where have I been? What have I been doing? Well, actually, I've been on vacation. It hasn't been all fun and games though. This year my vacation was spent working on and playing in a performance at Lincoln Center. It was a long and fairly arduous process from which I'm not completely recovered. I had a dream about it just last night, in fact. But it went well, and it's over. So it was worth it. Lincoln Center, baby! How cool is that?

This has left little time for systems work, hence the lack of posts. And now that I'm back on the job, I'm having trouble throwing myself back into the fray. I always kind of lose track of where I was after vacation. And now, with three weeks left before school starts, it's crunch time. Still, somehow, today I'm the only one here. Everyone else is either sick or off. It's weird.

There were a couple things I stumbled on over the past few weeks. Really little, tiny things but maybe worth a mention. First, the final word, in my opinion, on the whole Repair Permissions saga has just come down from MacWorld. It's fairly pro-repair — or at least not anti-repair — yet Gruber seems pleased. Go figure. It's a very clearly written piece that really demystifies the whole process, and at least to mind, says everything that needs to be said. Read it and then put it out of your mind. Finally.

Second, I discovered a neat little trick in Firefox: Pressing the control button while scrolling with the scroll wheel on your mouse activates forward- and back-page. Control+scroll-up will go back, and control+scroll-down goes forward. Seems backwards to me, but it's still kind of a cool trick. No, wait, you're right... It's dumb...

Finally, I wanted to talk a little bit about the announcements made at this year's WWDC. Overall, I'm a bit underwhelmed, I must admit. Maybe I'm somewhat jaded after all these years of WWDC announcements. Or maybe I really wanted there to be far, far more attention on the Finder. There was none in fact, which only leads me to believe — hope, at least — that improvements to the Finder are in the pipe, and that they were among the "Top Secret" features Steve Jobs mentioned in his presentation of Leopard.

The new Mac Pros look incredibly sweet. But then, each iteration of the pro Mac line looks exponentially sweeter, so I'm not floored. Plus, my now aging PowerMac dual G5 still feels like plenty of computer for anything I need to do. It handles it all without complaint and still feels fast. Underscoring my lack of enthusiasm, Apple now tends to release new pro hardware right after I buy my new Macs for the lab. This is fine, actually. I kind of like to stay just short of the bleeding edge here, preferring stability to speed and novelty. Getting a known quantity (we bought Quad G5s) just makes everyone's life easier. But It's hard to get excited about new hardware when you don't need any. Also, Apple has really been focused on the Intel transition, I think, so we're not really seeing many (any?) new products. Mostly what's been announced lately — and this year's WWDC is no exception — has been product revisions and speed bumps. Fine ones to be sure, but not exactly what I'd call exciting, and nothing that will change my life any time soon. *Yawn*

Some other things I noticed while watching the WWDC keynote:
Phil Schiller said, "Our [Intel] transition is complete." While Apple's transition may be complete, the transition for users is not. Apple is right to be proud of this amazingly swift transition to Intel chips. They're unbelievably good at this sort of thing, and it's one of the aspects of the company that keeps it fresh and alive and constantly moving forward. But make no mistake: the transition for users is still in progress. Many major applications are still PPC-only and must run in Rosetta, negating many of the advantages of buying new, Intel-based hardware for the near-term. And the OS is not yet Universal. This means that, in many ways, we're dealing with two separate platforms when we mix PPC and Intel Macs. Each platform must have a different OS and applications. In a lab setting this complicates matters a great deal. So, I think for users and lab admins the transition is just getting started. Once all apps are Universal and the Universal Leopard is out, then we can start to call this thing done. But as it stands, there is still a lot of work ahead.

Along these lines, as yet there has been no Intel-compatible version of Mac OS X Server. But I noticed that you can configure your new Mac Pro with Server — and the new Intel Xserves surely come with it — so apparently the Intel version exists. Where is this software? Are there two separate versions — a PPC and an Intel one, as with client — or is it Universal? The answer appears to lie at the Apple Store. Clicking "Buy Now" on the OS X Server page takes me to the store (I can't seem to get there from the Apple Store directly) where it's revealed that Mac OS X Server 10.4 is a Universal application. I'm not sure when this happened (did I miss it somehow?), but something tells me my old copy of Server won't be running on my new Intel Mac mini. I wonder if there's an upgrade path to the Universal version?

Mac OS X Server 10.4: Universal? Really? Since When?
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Another thing that struck me this summer is the fact that this is the first year I don't have to upgrade my lab systems. Sure, I'm running Software Update and updating various apps. But there is no new version of the OS, and there won't be for a while. This, as it turns out, is a godsend. With my promotion, and all the various new responsibilities and projects it entails, the last thing I need to be doing right now is testing a new — and, let's face it, probably buggy — Mac OS, and worrying about implementing it before summer's end. I have to say, the slowdown of new Apple OS releases couldn't have come at a better time for me.

The one thing that really did get to me this year was Time Machine. Time Machine looks amazing. It looks like magic. It looks like... Well, it kind of looks like a toy, actually. It's almost deceptive how childlike Apple has made some thing that, for many users, is an essential yet often vexing task. While I think the UI for Time Machine is ultra-cheesy (though no less so than Dashboard), I also think it's immediately and intuitively understandable. And for something like backups, that's no small feat. It may be somewhat garish-looking, but I think it's about twelve billion times more attractive and user-friendly than something like Retrospect. It's a look I could learn to love for it's personality. Here's hoping it works as well as it appeared to in the the presentation. No one but Apple could make backups so intuitive, so appealing and so fun. Yes, fun. Makes me almost want to lose some documents.

Time Machine: Powerful and... Fun?...
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And speaking of cheesy graphics, Core Animation looks great. I've little doubt that Core Animation will be used to great success. I've also little doubt it will be abused by bad UI designers. Can I just say? Brace yourselves for the cheese.

Spaces also looks cool. I've never been a big virtual desktops kind of guy. But once it's baked into the OS, I may end up taking advantage of it after all. It looks like Apple's done a great job with it. One thing: Some folks are complaining that Apple tends to steal existing ideas from small software developers and put them in OS revisions. I don't really think this is always fair. Here's how I see it: Apple puts out the OS. Things — like, oh, I don't know, Finder labels, for instance — are missing. In the interim, some enterprising software developer comes along to fill the void with a program that brings labels to the Finder. The people are happy. In the next OS release, Apple then adds labels to the Finder, thus effectively ending the need for the third-party solution. Suddenly people are accusing Apple of stealing the idea and putting developers out of business. But the fact is, Apple had labels in Mac OS 9, which is why people wanted them in the first place. If anyone stole the idea, it was the developer who implemented the third-party label solution. But the fact is, no one stole anything. These ideas — Finder labels, tabbed chats, virtual desktops — are out there already. Software developers know this. They know it's risky to develop apps that could someday be implemented by Apple themselves. In fact, unless you're idea is fairly original — i.e. not a web page creation tool, not system modification, not a browser — you should expect some competition. Whether that competition comes from Apple or another third-party developer makes little difference in my book. Spaces is just Apple's implementation of an idea that's been around for a very long time.

The vague demonstration of Spotlight's new features has me worried, as I always am when it comes to Spotlight. The big new feature of Spotlight (well, aside from the boolean functionality, which is great) is it's ability to search network drives. Yes, this worries me immensely. One of Spotlight's biggest issues, in my book, is the problems it has returning relevant results. When Spotlight searches my huge store of files and folders, the results I get are usually not very useful. There's just too much stuff there, and its relevance is determined — well, I don't know how it's determined, but it doesn't seem to be very accurate for most of my needs. I have chalked this up to the fact that I have a very large amount of data. Users with less data seem to like Spotlight more than I do. So my worry is, what happens when you add to this already burgeoning local data, the data of all the machines on your LAN, which in my case is about 30 Macs? Surely the boolean functions will help aggregate more sensible results, but I worry that the accuracy and speed gains of the new version will be negated by all that extra data. What I was really hoping for from Spotlight was more ways to customize and configure the app. It's possible that wish will still come true. I hope it does.

Finally, one other thing I noticed in the keynote speech. It's something I've noticed in previous keynotes, actually. Steve Jobs, at least when he's onstage, always uses point-and-click to navigate the Mac. He always uses the mouse. Now I can say with a fair degree confidence that I'm a power user. That is, I know a great number of keyboard shortcuts, and I tend to use the keyboard for as much navigation as I can. I would guess Jobs is, like, the uber-power user. And yet he always uses the mouse for presentations. You never see him use a keyboard shortcut. Never. And I just wonder why. I assume it's for presentation's sake. I assume it's to show the average, mouse-encumered user how to do things. I assume it's also just more visually interesting. But who knows? Maybe Jobs is just a freakishly prodigious mouse user.

Steve Jobs: King of the Mouse
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Anyway, as I said at the top, we're in crunch mode here, getting ready for the return of students to the lab. I'll post when I can, but expect things to be lean here for a bit longer as I actually try to do some real work.

UPDATE 1:
I've found some more information on Mac OS X Server for Intel hardware. Seems if you want to run Server on your Intel Mac you need to buy the latest, shrink-wrapped, 10.4.7 version from Apple. That version is Universal. Previous versions are not. As far as I can tell, there is no upgrade path.

UPDATE 2:
A fellow blogger tells me that the coolest stuff in Leopard is the stuff not mentioned in the WWDC keynote. This is being confirmed by other reports. I'm a bit baffled by Apple's decision not to include this stuff in the keynote. Did they think it was too low-profile? Not consumer-friendly enough? I thought this conference was for developers. And I'm not the only one who seems as, if not more, impressed by some of the unannounced features than the announced ones. Makes me really wish I had the time to attend WWDC, but it'd be a hard sell to the bosses, I can t

ell you. The timing is just terrible. Oh well.

On Backups

Let me just say up front, historically I've been terrible about backing up my data. But I'm working on it.

As far as backups go, I've tried a lot of things. I am responsible for backups of staff data at work, and here is where the bulk of my trials have occurred. For my personal data I've always just archived things to CD or DVD as my drive got full, or as certain projects wrapped up, but I've never had any sort of emergency backup in case of something like a drive failure or other catastrophe. Both at home and at work, though, the main problem I've faced has been the ever-expanding amount of data I need to backup. Combined staff data typically takes up a few hundred gigabytes of disk space. And at home my Work partition (I store all user data on a partition separate from the System) currently uses 111 GB. This does not even take into account the multiple firewire drives attached to my system at any given time. All tolled, we're talking several hundred gigabytes of data on my home system alone. I don't know what "the best" way is to back all this up, but I think I have a pretty good solution both at home and at work.

The Olden Days
Back in the day, staff backups were performed with Retrospect to a SCSI DAT drive. This was in the OS9 days. The tapes each held about 60GBs, if memory serves, and this worked fine for a while. But with the high price of tapes, a limited tape budget, and ever-increasing storage needs, the Retrospect-to-tape route quickly became outmoded for me. It became a very common occurrence for me to come in on any given morning only to find that Retrospect had not completed a backup and was requesting additional tapes. Tapes which I did not have, nor could I afford to buy. Retrieving data from these tapes was also not always easy, and certainly never fast. And each year these problems grew worse as drive capacities increased, staff data grew and tape capacities for our $3000 tape drive remained the same. The tape solution just didn't scale.

Enter Mac OS X
When Mac OS X arrived on the scene, I immediately recognized the opportunity — and the need — to revise our staff backup system. First off, Retrospect support was incredibly weak for OS X in those early days. Second, even when it did get better, there continued to be many software and kernel extension problems. Third, SCSI — which most tape drives continue to use to this day — was on the way out, annoying as hell, and barely supported in OS X. Fourth, the tape capacity issue remained. On the other hand, from what I was reading, Mac OS X's UNIX underpinnings would provide what sounded like a free alternative, at least on the software side: rsync. My two-pronged revision of our backup system consisted of replacing Retrospect with rsync and replacing tape drives with ever-cheaper, ever-larger hard drives.

RsyncX
The only problem with the UNIX rsync was that it famously failed to handle HFS+ resource forks (as did, incidentally, Retrospect at the outset). This situation was quickly remedied by the open source community with the wonderful RsyncX. RsyncX is a GUI wrapper around a version of rsync that is identical in most respects to the original UNIX version except that it is capable of handling resource forks. Once I discovered RsyncX, I was off to the races, and I haven't found anything to date — incuding the Tiger version of rsync — that does what I want better.

My Process
These days I do regular, weekly staff backups using RsyncX over SSH to a firewire drive. For my personal data, I RsyncX locally to a spare drive. This is the most economical and reliable data backup solution I've found, and it's far more scalable than tape or optical media. It's also been effective. I've been able to recover data on numerous occasions for various staff members.

My system is not perfect, but here's what I do: Every day I use RsyncX to perform an incremental backup to an external hard drive. Incremental backups only copy the changes from source to target (so they're very fast), but any data that has been deleted from the source since the last backup remains on the target. So each day, all new files are appended to the backup, and any changes to files are propagated to said backup, but any files I've deleted will remain backed up. Just in case. Eventually, as I'm sure you've guessed, the data on my backup drive will start to get very large. So, at the end of each month (or as needed) I perform a mirror backup, which deletes on the target any file not found on the source, essentially creating an exact duplicate of the source. This is all run via shell scripts and automated with cron. Finally, every few months or so (okay, more like every year), I backup data that I want as part of my permanent archive — completed projects, email and what not — to optical media. I catalog this permanent archive using the excellent CDFinder.

Almost Perfect
There are some obvious holes in this system, though: What if I need to revert to a previous version of a file? What if I need a deleted file and I've just performed the mirror backup? Yes. I've thought about all of this. Ideally this would be addressed by having a third hard drive and staggering backups between the two backup drives. A scenario like this would allow me to always have a few weeks worth of previous versions of my data, while still allowing me to keep current backups as well. Alas, while I have the plan, I don't have the drives. Maybe someday. But for now this setup works fine for most of my needs and protects me and the staff against the most catastrophic of situations.

Consider Your Needs
Still, when devising a backup scheme, it's important to understand exactly what you need backups to do. Each situation presents a unique problem and has a unique set of requirements. Do you need a permanent, historical archive that's always available? Or do you simply need short-term emergency backup? Do you need versioning? What data needs to be backed up and what doesn't? For my needs previous versions are less important; emergency backups are critical. Also you need to consider how much data you have and what medium is most appropriate for storage with an eye towards the future. In my case I have a lot of data, and I always will. Hard drives are the most economical way for me to store my large backups — as data needs grow, so too do drive capacities — but they are also the most future-proof. In a few years we may not be using DVDs anymore, or tapes. But drives will be around in some form or another for the foreseeable future, and they'll continue to get bigger and bigger. And since I'm not so much worried about having a permanent archive of my backup data (except in the case of data archived to optical media), I can continually and easily upgrade my storage by either purchasing new drives every so often, or by adding additional drives as needed. And transferring the data to new media — to these new drives — will be faster than it will with any other media (tape and optical media are slow). This system scales. And while it may be less reliable over the long term than optical or tape, it's plenty reliable for our needs and easily upgradeable in the future.

Lately everyone seems to talking about backup solutions. Mark Pilgrim recently wrote an intriguing post asking how to archive vast amounts of data over the next 50 years. I don't think there's an easy answer there, and my solution would not help him one bit. But it did inspire me to share my thoughts on the matter of backups, and my own personal system. It's certainly not the be-all-end-all of backup systems, and if others have thoughts on this complex and important topic, feel free to post them in the comments. I'd be curious to hear.

Boot Camp and Partitioning: Cooler than You Think?

Today Apple released a beta software package called Boot Camp to facilitate running Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac. I'm practically speechless. Which doesn't happen too often.

Apple's Boot Camp Beta: Brilliant!
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Now we all know a few weeks ago this nut was already cracked by some enterprising young hackers, so we all knew it was possible, and in fact probable that installing and booting Windows on Mac would become a fairly trivial and commonplace happening. There were even rumors that the next version of the Mac OS would provide "virtualization" software for running Windows in an emulated environment from within Mac OSX. But I have to admit I was quite taken aback by today's news. Official support from Apple for installing and running Windows on the Mac.

Brilliant!

Dual Booting
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One of the best things about all this is the fact that Apple is providing Windows drivers for Mac-specific hardware. So you no longer need to search the internet to find them. But to me, coolest thing is the portion of the assistant that creates the partitions. Here, for the first time in Mac OS history (at least that I'm aware of), we see an Apple-branded utility that will partition your drive without erasing it. It's uber-smart of Apple to provide this functionality for people who want to test this out without the inconvenience of a full system reinstall. But it also has immensely cool implications if partitions are as important to you as they are to me, or if you happen to use an Xserve RAID. I'll explain.

Space Maker: The Caption Says it All
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I use partitions on my systems to wall-off user data from system data. So I have one partition with all the system components and applications. Root. The boot drive. I try to keep this drive to as reasonable a size as I think I'll ever need, and then create a second partition with my user data: projects, mail, videos, music — everything else, essentially. This partitioning scheme works great, but it breaks down when someone like Apple decides to release a suite of applications that suddenly takes up eight times more space than the previous version. All of sudden, I no longer have enough space on my root drive for all of my applications. A partitioning system like mine fails when I am unable to accurately predict the amount of space all my apps will require, both now and in the future. And this is becoming increasingly common. A utility that would let me dynamically resize my partitions would be a godsend. Now I don't think the partitioner included in the Boot Camp Assistant does dynamic partition resizing, and it probably never will, and I'll just have to roll with it. But I can dream. And there is another area in which a utility like the one in Boot Camp would have immediate benefits.

I have a client who purchased on of Apple's Xserve RAID systems. This is a pretty cool beast. Fast. Stable. Very reliable. But there's a scalability problem, and it's one reason I won't buy one for my lab. When you read the datasheets and the manuals for the XRAID, you're told that drives can be dynamically added to the RAID in the future, should you ever require more storage. Add the new drive and the RAID will, theoretically, add it to the RAID set and you'll have that much more storage space. This is typical of enterprise-level RAIDs I'm told. It's one of the reasons you get them: scalability. But if you ever try to actually do this on an XRAID you'll run into a little snag. You see, while it is possible to add a drive to the RAID system and have the RAID recognize the new drive and add it to the set, the Mac OS host is responsible for partitioning the RAID. So what happens is, you add the drive, the XRAID sees it and adds it to the set automagically, but the Mac does not recognize the additional capacity. The Mac still sees the original partitioning scheme. I've read through the manuals and discussion forums — hell, I even talked to one of Apple's RAID specialists — and it turns out there is no way to grow the XRAID without repartitioning it from the host Mac. And as you're well aware, I'm sure, there's no way to repartition a Mac drive without wiping it. So, you want to grow your XRAID? Well, you'll have to wipe it. And that just sucks.

Boot Camp on PPC: No Boot Camp for You!
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Apple's RAID specialist told me that they were working on a solution to this. That was about a year ago, and I've heard nothing since. But the partitioning utility in the Boot Camp Beta gives me great hope that a solution is indeed imminent. It may even be here already, if you have an Intel Mac that is. I've tried it, and no, the Boot Camp Beta will not run on a PPC Mac. No surprise there. But if the information on the Boot Camp page is any indication (Apple calls "Space Maker" the "most elegant hard drive utility ever"), a new and improved partitioning utility is on the horizon for the Mac. And I'm just as excited about this as I am at the prospect of booting Windows on my Mac. Maybe more.

It's been a long time coming.

UPDATE:
I'm told by a colleague that growing a filesystem (like on a RAID) and partitioning a filesystem (what the Boot Camp Assistant does) are two different things, growing being the harder and, according to him, requiring a grow-able filesystem, which HFS+ is not. So maybe this is a pipe dream.

Apple has a FAQ up about the Windows installation process for Intel Macs, and there are some interesting things there. Most notable in the context of this article is the fact that Boot Camp Assistant will only work on "an Intel-based Mac that has one hard disk partition." This does not bode well. Still, I remain hopeful that this utility is indicative of possible future utilities that would allow for more flexible, less destruct ive partitioning.

UPDATE 2:
I've been doing some hunting around on Apple's RAID capabilities and discovered that you can now (as of Tiger, I believe) use Disk Utility to create what called a Concatenated Disk Set (also referred to as JBOD, for Just a Bunch of Old Drives). These sets can be combined with other forms of RAIDs as well. Until yesterday I'd never even heard of Concatenated RAID, but apparently it's the oldest form of RAID. Concatenated RAID doesn't have the redundancy advantages of RAID 0 or the performance advantages of RAID 1. All Concatenated gives you is more contiguous disk space. I've read that Concatenated could be used to append a new drive on an XServe to the RAID set, though all it would do would be to add to the set's capacity and would not be a true member of the set. This is recommended as a stop-gap measure more than anything, and it's recommended that the reformat necessary to truly join the new disk to the set be performed later, at a more convenient time. Interestingly, this seems to suggest that a Concatenated RAID can be performed without wiping the disks in question, though I can't find any documentation that states this one way or the other. Also, the disks in a Concatenated RAIDs do not have to be identical, as with other forms of RAID. Concatenated RAID disks can be all different sizes, shapes and colors. As soon as I can find some drive to offer up as sacrifice, I will be testing out Concatenated RAID. I'll let you know what I find.

UPDATE 3:
It appears that a new verb for the diskutil command has been added in 10.4.6. The verb is resizeVolume and it's what allows the non-destructive partitioning done by the Boot Camp Assistant. Don't look for it in the man pages; it's not mentioned there. But if you just run the diskutil programsan arguments you'll see resizeVolume listed as an option. I first read about this on Daring Fireball, which links to a MacGeekery article that outlines, in-depth, the process of using the new option to non-destructively resize volumes. I don't know yet if this works on PPC Macs — the article suggests it's for Intel machines only. But I'm sure going to give it a whirl. I'll post a follow-up on all my partitioning experiments in the near future. Stay tuned!

Yawn! Slowest News Week Ever

Despite yesterday's "fun" announcement from Apple, it's been a slow news week. In fact, the whole of February's been pretty dull.

Yesterday Apple unveiled one new and one revised product. The new product is Apple's iPod Hi-Fi, which is essentially a speaker set for your iPod. Now I'm not a big iPod fan. I just don't get the appeal of listening to music while walking around. Call me old fashioned. So the iPod Hi-Fi really leaves me understandably cold. And that new iPod leather case? If you listen closely you can hear my head hitting the desk as I pass out from boredom.

The revised product is only slightly less thrilling: a revamped Mac mini. The most hyped feature of the new machine is that it now sports a fast Intel processor — quite a step up from the G4 of the previous models. Apple's getting a lot of mileage out of this Intel switch, and they're being very smart about updating the slow, G4-based machines first. Personally, though, I'm more excited about the fact that the new Mac mini comes with gigabit ethernet. This makes it much more viable as a server, which is what I use my (well, the school's) Mac mini for currently. Other cool features: The high-end model boasts a faster DVD Burner that is capable of burning dual-layer discs, and memory can now be upgraded to 2GB. So, aside from the obvious processor enhancement, there is a lot to recommend the new Mac mini over it's predecessor. I will go out on a limb and say that the high-end model gives you a faster processor with an extra core, a larger hard drive, and a much better optical drive, so in my opinion, it's well worth the extra $200 clams. The only bummer about the Mac mini is the use of integrated Intel graphics, which uses free processor power and system memory to enhance graphics performance. (Not that this was a great graphics performer anyway.) The impact of this on overall system performance remains to be seen, but I tend to think it will be negligible.

Still, it's hard for me to get excited about any of this. Lately the rumors have been so much cooler than the reality. That fake video iPod might just have got me to finally cough up the cash for one, just for the cool factor alone. And the idea of a tablet or an ultra-portable gets me pretty hot as well. I'm definitely in the unimpressed column and have really been itching for a new Apple product for some reason. What we got yesterday just doesn't do it for me.

Man, I'm bored. I'm so bored I'm actually writing a post about things I'm not even very interested in. Now that's bored.