Before any major release of Mac OS X, a whole bunch of other applications and frameworks tend to be updated so they don’t have to be worried about when the OS itself is trying to be finished up. (I presume.)
And here we’ve begun. Just previously, it was Remote Desktop. Now, it’s Java 1.5 — long awaited, if I recall correctly. Hopefully it fixes my internet banking in Safari again, once and for all.
Don’t forget to mention the phrase “potential negative ramifications of the transition of all Macs to Intel microprocessors by the end of calendar 2006” in Apple’s second quarter financial results. (Boy, that paragraph’s a bundle of laughs.) I don’t recall anyone saying anything about the fact that all Macs would run on Intel chips by years end; perhaps that’s what the qualifier “or the announcement of such planned transition” means, although I interpreted it differently.
You know, I was/am secretly hoping that Apple will keep Mac OS X dual-platform forever, releasing computers with Intel or Power chips as appropriate. Wasn’t that quad core G5 PowerMac supposed to be pretty damn impressive? Well, in any case, they know better than me, so…
Oh, something else. From the otherwise pretty silly Forbes editorial (for one thing, of course sales are down 2nd compared to 1st quarter — 1st quarter has holidays and Christmas!):
With more than one billion songs served, Apple’s iTunes store now has nearly 90% of the paid-download music market, according to Nielsen NetRatings.
I really wonder what the subscription model of Napster is like. Obviously, they’re getting by, but the question is “how well”? Anyway, 90% is quite something, I’m sure you’ll agree.