Over has hell frozen

Sorry, chanelling Yoda there for a minute. The tech news of the day is that Apple has announced that it will be switching next year from IBM's PowerPC chip to Intel's Pentium series. That's a b-i-g change. Turns out that Apple has been secretly maintaining Pentium versions of Mac OS X ever since the first release five years ago. Of course the whole time they've been busy trash-talking Windows and the Pentium chip. They can still trash-talk Windows I guess...

The funny thing is that the presentation was run on a PC for the first time, and software developers can get a headstart right now buying special PC hardware from Apple. So we're faced with Mac developers using PCs to create new Mac software and at the same time Microsoft developers are using Apple's PowerMac G5 computers to run prototypes of the Xbox 360! Ironic.

Turning briefly to film, I did see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith last week. My team wanted to go together, so we headed over to the Silver City movie-plex after work. Although I enjoyed the special effects I have to say I was disappointed in the film. It all seemed rather pointless: just layer after layer (after layer) of special effects, silly gadgets, and improbable landscapes. And in spite of the technical polish the whole thing seemed unsophisticated and predictable. I just couldn't "suspend my disbelief". As an exercise in graphic art Revenge of the Sith is entertaining, but as a film it is a waste of rendering time. Bleah. We did have some good laughs over a beer afterward.

In a combination Sci Fi and technology news, it seems that Opportunity, the Mars rover that has been stuck in a sand drift for a month has been worked free and is once again on the prowl! Kind of like a real little R2D2... The three month life-spans NASA had hoped for have been left far behind.

Listening to: Daft Punk Is Playing At My House by LCD Soundsystem from LCD Soundsystem.