The Home Network of 2012
" The home network of 2012 is delivered and controlled by the service providers, says Motorola’s Jed Johnson." Sound funny to you too? Apparently, quite a bit of this is already in the works, according to this article. It's a vision of what home networks will be like according to three industry prognosticators. Considering that most people with less than 1 Mbit DSL are content to browse web sites and check email, I find it hard to believe that we'll have IP-enabled thermostats in 2012. Also, the DRM scheme in the article would never work because people are finally realizing that DRM is a nuisance, not a feature. Favorite quote: "While much of the population is enjoying services piped over 100 Mbps-plus broadband connections, slower 512K-1 Mbps broadband is available to everyone under nationwide subsidized programs." They obviously aren't talking about broadband in the U.S.
First Article!
So I finally sat down and added something to the Articles section. Check it out!
Does Apple still care about G5 owners?
I've happily been using the PowerMac G5 I bought in mid-2004. During this time, Apple has released many, many updates (some specific to the G5). These days, not so much, especially now that all their machines have Intel processors.
One nagging thing about the G5 (and the Mac Pro, from what I've read) is that the internal fans are controlled by the operating system. Yes, there are benefits to that, but there's one major drawback which has yet to stay fixed as far as the G5: The annoying fan rev-up problem.
This has been quite a contentious issue since the G5's release and seemed to particularly impact the late 2004 (Rev B.) G5s. I own a dual 2 Ghz G5 and this problem is still a... problem. For those that aren't familiar with the the fan rev up problem, basically it is this: every so often, no matter what you do, even if it's just mousing over the dock, your fans will spin up, sometimes sounding like a 747 taking off. This is the definition of annoying.
I can remember countless forum posts on the topic when it first arose and the solutions offered. The one solution that seems to actually work to this day is to change your processor speed setting from the default Automatic to Highest under Energy Saver under System Preferences. While I'm glad this does work (well, the fans don't go supersonic, but they do rev a little occasionally), I don't think I should have to fix the problem myself. I happen to like the Automatic setting because it clocks down the CPUs as needed, therefore keeping them cooler and using less energy.
In Mac OS X 10.3.8, the problem was at its worst. Apple finally responded and fixed it in 10.3.9, which I was happily using until Tiger (10.4) came out. From then on, it was fan rev city. As of this post, the latest version of Mac OS X, 10.4.9 still does not fix this. I can't figure out why this hasn't been completely fixed, but it sure is annoying. If anyone out there knows of a better, more permanent fix so I can go back to using the Automatic processor setting, I'd love to hear it. For the record, my Apple Hardware Test disc reports no problems.