So on the day that it was announced that Network Rail had underspent by almost £1 billion, South West Trains had a massive signal failure at Woking for most of the day.
Thankfully it cleared by the time I needed to go to the Geek Dinner, however on arrival at Basingstoke station, this was how they were doing the train announcements…
So it has been confirmed, that Apple are to switch from IBM chips to an Intel based architecture. The main reasons given talk about a better roadmap for the Intel architecture, but basically boil down to the problems IBM have had producing fast and cool running G5 processors, rendering a G5 based Powerbook impossible.
Interesting gems from the keynote included confirmation of what has always been rumoured, that Apple have had an Intel version of MacOS X up and running for years. In fact every major version of the OS has been compiled on an Intel platform, and Jobs gave the entire demonstration with an Intel based Mac.
However, as has been speculated, although the underlying processor will be Intel, this won’t be running MacOS X on a PC. After the presentation and Apple VP confirmed that Apple will not support running of Windows on a Mac, nor will they allow MacOS X to run on non Apple hardware – however I doubt that will stop people from trying!
A couple of weeks ago Reuters started off on the Apple are going to switch to Intel chips rumour mill again. As usual nobody involved would comment officially, but there were a number of “inside sources” who have confirmed it. Robert Scoble has been commenting on the story, and claims inside knowledge.
However, others are offering a different take, considering whether Apple may be going Intel for something else.
The Tao of Mac site also links to the debunking, but also offers some reasons why even if they make the switch, you won’t be seeing a dual boot Windows/MacOS X machine.
Mac Rumours has a summary of the current state of the rumours.
From my point of view, I’m not overly bothered whose chips are in the machine, as long as it works, and as long as I’m not left in a situation where large amounts of software won’t work on the new machines because of a change of underlying processor. What makes a Mac what it is is the operating system. I’m also not expecting to see a version of MacOS X that will work on a normal PC either, as with Apple’s current business model where they sell high margin hardware, it would seem to be corporate suicide to allow cheap PC clones to run the OS. Let’s not forget that Apple tried it back in 1997, and pulled the plug on the clones.
Anyway, we shouldn’t have long to wait, as Steve Jobs is due to give a keynote at the Worldwide Developer Conference next week.
Episode 11 of Doctor Who was a definite change of pace. Although it opened with what seemed like it would be an action packed story, the Doctor captured the main enemy very early, and then the real episode unfolded. The main thrust of the episode was to consider what happens afterwards, and left the Doctor dealing with a big question of what to do with an alien who had potentially killed thousands, and would kill again if released, but was sentenced to death if he returned her to her own people. Ultimately the TARDIS solved the problem in a unique fashion, and the episode left us with a tantalising glimpse of the main event next week when the Daleks return in force.
Other interesting points were that the Doctor made mention of the “Bad Wolf” references, but then brushed them aside. However the appearance of a Bad Wolf website, and the next episode being called Bad Wolf tends to imply that there is something more on the way!
So after our trip to Windsor earlier in the week, yesterday we took a trip up to London.
The journey up was a somewhat quicker than usual. In the past we have tended to go from Winchfield station, where it is usually possible to find a parking space, and it takes about an hour. However a friend pointed out that under the revised timetable (which results in the trains from Winchfield stopping at Walton on Thames) there is now a fast train every hour from Fleet, so we decided to give that train a go.
We got one of the last few spaces in the car park, and managed to catch the fast train, and get a seat too! The fast train takes almost twenty minutes off the journey time as it doesn’t make a stop between Farnborough and Clapham Junction, so is a definite improvement.
Anyway, first stop in London was a trip on the London Eye. As it was the summer half-term there was a queue even first thing in the morning (according to one of the staff the summer half-term is their busiest week of the whole year as the numbers are more spread over the summer holidays), however we got on pretty quickly. The only problem was that they appeared to be having problems with the airconditioning. We had a portable unit hooked up in our pod, and one of the other pods was out of action with an air conditioning engineer working on it as it went round – probably one of the more interesting jobs he has I guess, but a bit of a problem if he’s left a spare in the van!
After our trip on the Eye, we went straight for the open top bus tour, picking it up on Westminster Bridge. We did part of the tour as far as St Paul’s, where we jumped off to take a look at the cathedral.
It’s a while since I’d been there, and the Canadian contingent hadn’t ever visited. First order of the day was to have some lunch, so we went to their excellent cafe down in the crypt. If you’re ever in the area and want a good place for soup and a sandwich, the crypt cafe comes highly recommended (and you don’t need to pay the admission charge to get to the cafe either). When we arrived at St Paul’s they were holding their regular lunchtime eucharist, using a straight order one modern language service. As with St Georges in Windsor that is alternating order one traditional and modern services it is good to see the new services in regular usage in our most high profile churches. It is quite interesting to look around St Paul’s, as to my mind it is pretty atypical of a Church of England Cathedral, although that is perhaps as much to do with it’s age as anything else. Oddly enough Beth said that whereas she usually finds going to a cathedral a calming experience, she didn’t get the same feeling sat in the knave of St Paul’s.
After our visit to St Paul’s we picked up the bus tour again, taking in the rest of the sights on the tour, and also a large dose of London gridlock – the tour taking nearer three hours than the scheduled two. We jumped off again when we reached Picadilly Circus, and went over to the Odeon Leicester Square to see the new Star Wars film on the screen there.
The Odeon has one of the few full digital screens in the UK, basically the cinema equivalent of a DVD, so the picture quality was excellent. However whilst they replaced the seats in the most recent refurbishment of the cinema, they didn’t bother to make them any bigger, so seeing a film there is a decided squash compared to some others. Now if I could get a combination of the screen at the Odeon with my armchair at home…
In terms of the film, I enjoyed it, and it wasn’t quite as cringe making as say the Phantom Menace. However, as with Attack of the Clones, I think Lucas has gone rather too far towards using computers, to the point where parts of the movie are just plain unbelievable. It is also pretty apparent in parts that computer technology is not up to it, particularly laughable being the computer generated Governor Tarkin (played in Star Wars by Peter Cushing) that is no better than you get in computer games. There was a sterling effort in trying to stitch the prequels together with the older films, although there are still a couple of plot holes and apparent continuity gaffes that may have me watching the original trilogy again to check out, and also taking a look through the list of changes between versions. In terms of the film overall I think that computer technology hasn’t come nearly as far as George Lucas seems to think. The computers can be great for enhancing scenes, but you still need real sets and real actors. Computers still can’t accurately render things, human beings especially. For example take a look at the older Star Wars movies, with real sets and real people in many places it looks a lot more impressive than he slightly unbelievable computer generated stuff in the new movies.
Anyway, after the movie we had dinner in the nearby TGI Friday’s, and then took the fast train back to Fleet. Definitely an enjoyable day.