While discussing whether the cliffs around Bar Harbor were fjords (Somes Sound is), the origin of the phrase “pining for the fjords” came up.

Monty Python, of course, here it is:

After some tests, I’m convinced that Adobe’s CS2 apps are incapable of saving PNGs without shifting colors. I tried every combination of Color Management settings as well as input color spaces. No matter what I tried, the designated RGB values I started with were getting shifted when saved as PNG. Saving the same documents as GIFs output the correct colors.

I posted the following to Adobe’s Forums, including my workaround solution:

>Wasted a very frustrating hour with this today. There is definitely a color shift in PNG output that seems consistent across several CS2 apps. I first hit the bug using Illustrator’s
“Save for Office…”, which saves a hi-res PNG of the current Illustrator doc. After that failed a few dozen times (I tried a variety of color management settings, despite being hardware calibrated), I switched to Illustrator’s “Save for Web…” option. This produced exactly the same shift. Identical problems in Photoshop, though lesser when saving directly to PNG and skipping “Save for Web”.

>My solution was to save the Illustrator file as a GIF, then open that in the OS X Preview app, then resave as a PNG. Worked perfectly with zero color shift.

>This is Adobe’s bug, not a problem with the PNG format.

A few friends recently asked about whether or not they should buy a new MacBook Pro or wait a little longer for whatever’s coming next.

My first reaction, conditioned on years of Mac use and purchasing, was, “of course you should wait, there’s likely to be a new chip in the MacBook Pros any day now!”

I think I was wrong. Moreover, I think that whole line of thinking is finished.

We already know what the next chip in the MacBook Pros will be: The Core 2 Duo, probably running at 2.4 and 2.67ghz. None of this is a surprise, it’s all published on Intel’s Processor Roadmap and related documents.

Intel sticks to their roadmap. The roadmap doesn’t show any Core2 Duo chips in laptops before 2007. Despite the rumors, I’ll be surprised to see anyone shipping Core2 Duo laptops in quantity before Halloween (the actual first shopping day of the holiday season). Of course this is all speculation and I may be wrong.

The next CPU Intel designs will not make the previous model obsolete. They work on the principle of incremental progress. Mac users aren’t conditioned to understand incremental progress. Consider:

* The PPC blew away the 68k
* G3s crushed PPCs
* G4s ran circles around G3s
* The G5 was so hot it needed liquid cooling (and was faster than the G4s).
* The first Intel MacBook Pros were 5-10 times faster than the previous PowerBooks.

That kind of repeated beating gets you some learnin’. Thankfully, the days of imminent obsolescence are likely over.

The Core2 Duo is not radically better than the Core Duo. It is incrementally better, in some areas more than others. Compare the charts in this Core 2 Duo vs. Core Duo article on AnandTech. While some application tests do show a 10-15% performance improvement, most reveal 3-5%. Gaming Performance is almost identical between the chips. Also remember that a 10% speedup is equivalent to 0.2ghz of processor speed, something that tends to happen anyway between product cycles.

> **The performance difference here is not enough to justify an upgrade if you’re a Core Duo owner**, but for a first time buyer if prices are the same, the Core 2 Duo is simply the right choice.

Some in the higher nerd-echelons have realized the “shortcomings” of the Core 2 Duo and are already lusting after Intel’s next CPU, the mythical Santa Rosa platform. Me? I’m going to stop stressing about processors and enjoy my MacBook Pro for a while without worrying that it will be obsolete tomorrow.

Software however, that’s a whole other story…

Hardware

• Mac Pro with Quad Processors, or at least 2x dual-cores Right!
• New case for Mac Pro, the G5 enclosure needed to be huge mostly for heat management, Intel’s chips won’t need enormous radiators like the G5s did. I’m feeling high-gloss black, maybe. Wrong.
• Intel XServes Right!
• The return of 64bit CPUs. Right!
• Price drop on Cinema Displays, possibly with some new features, most likely a camera. If resolution independence is included in Leopard, higher-resolution may be offered, but I don’t see how they could sell high-resolution displays without supporting scaled UI features in the OS. Perhaps an add-on to 10.4? If there’s a significant surface redesign to the Mac Pro, displays might be redone to match. Maybe dropping “cinema” from the name too. Right! and sort of Wrong. too.
• Possible updates to MacBook Pros. These might include the rumored switch to Core2 Duo chips (obvious, but when? I don’t think Jobs really wants to stand up in front of several thousand developers, ask them how many are now using Intel Macs, then tell them those machines are obsolete. Especially when most of those developers just spent a laptop on admission to WWDC.) Other changes might include a MacBook like drive replacement rejiggering, which I’d welcome, even though gutting a MacBook Pro isn’t nearly as bad as the 15” G4. Right!, basically.
• A new sub-notebook to replace the much-loved 12” PowerBook. It will be significantly pared down, causing much consternation from those wanting a 12” replacement and much joy from those wanting a sub-notebook. (This one is a longshot, but not totally implausible.) Wrong.
• Mac Pros with dual GPUs or paired video cards. Also a shift to NVidia, mostly to appease Intel after AMD bought ATI. (I’m convinced the ATI/AMD purchase will lead to only two hardware choices for PCs; Intel-Nvidia and AMD-ATI. Intel might as well just buy NVidia since ATI’s stuff will likely be optimized for AMD hardware.) Close. NVidia is in, but no paired GPU cards and ATI is still a build-to-order option.

Software

• Subversion becomes part of the base OS X install. If not the base install at least installed with XCode and the Developer tools. (I will be among those cheering this one) Right! it’s in there!
• Resolution Independent displays in OS X (I will immediately start running at 80%, just for the smaller menu bar) Wrong. not yet.
• iChat improvements, demo’ed with Phil Schiller. Right! Right!
• Quartz 2D Extreme will have been cleaned up, renamed and turned on by default. Close.
• Some sort of gaming initiative, to encourage and make game-development easier on Macs. Wrong.
• Color coding for mailboxes in Mail.app. Wrong. Notes and todos aren’t what I was hoping for.
• Significantly better video handling user experience in iTunes. Wrong.
• Some sort of network-collaborative document framework. Wrong.
• Garbage collection in Objective C. This was sort of leaked a while back. Right!

Nots

• No new iPod, wrong audience and not enough press. Right!
• Virtualization, I thought Apple might do it, but now I’m doubtful. Partly because of Parallels, partly because it kind of undermines the MacOS. (Brent thinks Apple might buy them) Wrong.
• QuickTime Pro license included with .Mac subscription. This will never happen, but it should. An alternative would be a free QT pro license with each iPod or after so many songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store. Wrong. no surprise.
• iTunes Music Store renamed to iTunes Store. Probably not at WWDC, but it will happen. Wrong.
• No iPhone. Not because of any technological hurdles, rather due to the bone-headedness of American wireless carriers. So yeah, this is totally fake. Right!

Misc.

• Either Adobe will demo CS3 on Intel during the Keynote or Quark will be invited onstage to show off XPress. Wrong. Wrong.
• Before the zillion derivitive cards were posted, I would have expected Jobs to pre-empt John Siracusa’s WWDC Keynote Bingo card if events had lined up. Imagine a slide that just said “Bingo” before something good, at which point the crowd, knowing what’s coming, would have gone completely nuts. But now that there are a bunch of variants, the fun is sort of gone. The most reliable “wins” in the original card would be diagonal up from “New kernel in Leopard”, and across from “‘New’ Finder in Leopard”, which just aren’t all that exciting. Wrong., Wrong., Wrong. One guy in front of me did have a card printed out, but no one yelled anything.
• TextMate will win some sort of Apple Design Award. Allan more than deserves it. Right! Go Allan!
• David Watanabe will not win an Apple Design Award. No matter how much he deserves one and how beautiful NewsFire is, David wrote Acquisition and Hell will freeze before he’s invited on stage by Apple. Still, I hope I’m wrong. Right!, unfortunately.

This is a mix of what I think we’ll see and what I’d really like to see, hopefully there will be some crossover. I meant to post this last week, but forgot to (life distractions aplenty). A few things were added after seeing the buzzkill banner this morning. I’ll update this post after the keynote to see how I did.

The url of the website for the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) currently uses an acronym presumably leftover from its days as the NYC Board of Ed (NYCBOE). It’s easy to see why this is a problem when shown side-by-side in lowercase:

nycboe.net (working URL for Department of Education)
nycdoe.net (non-working url)

How much email has been lost because of that little letter-flip?

It’s New York City’s third day in a row where the temperatures haven’t gone below 95°F and we’re starting to see some trouble. Not a blackout, but evidence that the system is straining.

Con Ed has problems on the East Side

>Con Ed tells Eyewitness News that three feeders are out in both the Madison Square and Kips Bay networks. It believes at least one of the inoperable feeders in each network should be back around noon.

>Kips Bay has 12 feeders altogether. Madison Square has 24.

>There are no voltage reductions in place because of the problems, but Con Ed is asking for extra conservation between 5th Avenue and the East River from 14th Street to 40th Street on the East Side.

>Con Ed says it was manhole fires that damaged the feeders, and that the company is in constant communication with the New York City Office of Emergency Management.

Power problems in NYC

>Con Edison asked New York residents and businesses between 40th Street and 14th Street from Fifth Avenue to the East River to shut off any unused or unnecessary appliances. The area is largely residential.

That would be our neighborhood. The 14th St Y is dark and has signs in the doors reading “Closed to conserve power.” Stores on First Ave north of 14th St are running without AC and most have their lights off. Several traffic lights north of 16th St are on low-power mode (1st Ave flashing yellow, cross-streets flashing red).

I’ll post more if I find anything out.

**Update** I just walked from our apartment at 14th and First to the office on 20th just west of Fifth. Not much evidence of anything past Second Ave. All the stores on Fifth were open, Park Ave and even Irving Place seemed completely normal.