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From this review it says that the book starts out with how to start a Cocoa application project with Project Builder

Where are the Xcode books???

I'd love to see a "more up to date" version of this that deals strictly with using Xcode. That seems to be the tool of choice for the OSX Cocoa developer's future.(imho)

There's an interesting article describing all the details about the benchmarks and how they actually prove that this is something beyond what Intel has to offer.

Ciryon

Well, bioinformatics is certainly the hot field right now (for those who want a little background I wrote a little introduction to bioinformatics here), (although it is biased towards Macs in bioninformatics).

To answer part of your question, there are many parallels between biology and computers, however some biological systems are much more complex and can only be modeled to a limited extent right now. Some systems are more easily examined in terms of circuitry, but we are still only half way to knowing what the components are and how they are wired (in the retina for example). Eventually, there will be hybrid bionic systems that can function as computers for certain tasks, but we are a long ways away from understanding all of the molecular paths as well. So the question in this case really becomes, at what level are you talking of integration? One could examine the molecular level using DNA and its associated proteins as a computational tool, or you could talk about integrating things at the systems level such as with a hybrid bionic/biological vision replacement device.

hey dumass, read up on your technologies. TPC/IP and firewire are totally different things. Why don't you go study some more before you clog up our boards with worthless crap, k?

I should have remembered this for my immediately prior post, but actually, I wrote an article about the implications of distributed computing including a discussion about TCP/IP over Firewire back in December. You can read about it here

It's been my experience that most folks tend to focus on one package for their work. Commonly it is Matlab or Mathematica it seems and each package has its strengths and weaknesses with Mathematica being the better choice for symbolic math while Matlab is used more for building applications to perform specific tasks. Mathematica is a favorite of mine and works well in solving problems related to applied mathematics.

For a couple of reviews of Mathematica, see Applelust Scientia

I've used my apparently already obsolete regular firewire port exactly zero times. So Firewire 800 will let me transfer nothing how many times faster?

Whose fault is this? I use Firewire 400 on a daily basis to back up many hundreds of gigabytes of data (soon to be terrabytes if the next grant goes through). Firewire 800 would save me and those who deal with large amounts of data or video lots of time. Also, I suppose that Firewire could be used for large scale interconnectivity. See an editorial I wrote here for details.

Gigabit?. Sure. Just as soon as I plonk down another $500 for an 8 port gigabit switch to replace my $50 8 port 10/100 switch.

There are those that use gigabit networking you know. Apple is not making computers *just* for you.

Sweet Applications?

Yes.

You mean iTunes and iMovie?

Yes.

You have to upgrade to the superdrive for iDVD to work.

Yes, but I also use the Superdrive for other data as well.

They are nice applications but PC owners can get nice applications with all the money they saved and stil have some left over.

And you end up at the same price point if not more for a kludgy inelegant solution that does not run UNIX applications along with Photoshop, Office, etc...etc...etc...

You have to come up with a convincing cost/benefit analysis based on benefits they will actually use.

I along with at least a few million other folks on the planet seem to think that there is a convincing cost/benefit analysis to purchasing a Mac. For me, I was able to buy a single dual G4 and replace a Windows box, an older Mac *and* my SGI Octane with a sweet display that saves much money in terms of software licensing, hardware purchase and maintenence contracts (SGI).

Based on the actual benefit to me, Apple would have to cut the price on that $1999 model down to under $1000 w/o the superdrive or around $1200 with.

Yeah, its called the iMac or eMac which can be had for educational customers at that price. If you are not a student or faculty member somewhere, it will cost you a little more, but for the money there are almost no other machines that will match feature for feature with a Mac.

Let me know when eBooks are practical (if I'm not dead by then...).(Yes, I had a Palm V. I tried the eBook thing and it was bad. The screen *alone* was hell to read. Who want's to read a book on a flickery screen anyways?

So, a major problem has been the screens and text rendering technology. Yeah, I too tried reading books on my Palm at one time (even on my old Newton which had a much better screen than the Palms), but the text was too small and you were still dealing with pixelated letters and words. With the systemwide support for anti-aliasing that OS X has however, reading books with the Quartz rendering setup and an LCD would not be that bad. (See OS X is easy on the eyes for more detail).

At any rate, even with the best OS for eBooks (OS X) we are still stuck reading on laptops unless Apple pulls something out of their hat soon (tomorrow) and released a tablet or similar device for eBooks and markup that would be Acrobat capable. ;-)

This is not to say that there aren't any good O'Reilly books, though. Most of their stuff published before 1999 was pretty good and their Perl coverage is second to none. However most other topics are pretty shabbily approached and the situation doesn't seem to be getting any better.

Actually, I have found their willingness to extend into new areas rather interesting. Take for instance their exploration into bioinformatics. I wrote a review for one their bioinformatics texts here and found it to be rather useful. How many intro to bioinformatics textbooks are there? I'll answer that. Not many, and their text was a good start and quite useful for many universities interested in starting a program in bioinformatics.

We actually have a number of articles on our website regarding webcam astrophotography here. There are four articles in all discussing first steps, photomontages, imaging of the planets and more.

I don't think it matters what you majored in--these days you can cross over.

When it comes to bioinformatics, this is certainly true. However, to be successful in bioinformatics, people need a basic knowledge of chemistry, biology, molecular biology, genetics, programming, medicine, comp. sci. and perhaps some library science to be proficient in bioinformatics and this combination can be hard to come by. Additionally, an ability to successfully communicate with folks from all of those disciplines is crucial and can be even harder to come by. For another article on some of these issues in bioinformatics (with an admitted bias towards the Macintosh) read this article I wrote for Scientia et Macintosh

I don't think it matters what you majored in--these days you can cross over.

When it comes to bioinformatics, this is certainly true. However, to be successful in bioinformatics, people need a basic knowledge of chemistry, biology, molecular biology, genetics, programming, medicine, comp. sci. and perhaps some library science to be proficient in bioinformatics and this combination can be hard to come by. Additionally, an ability to successfully communicate with folks from all of those disciplines is crucial and can be even harder to come by. For another article on some of these issues in bioinformatics (with an admitted bias towards the Macintosh) read this article I wrote for Scientia et Macintosh

There certainly has been an increase in the number of amateur astronomers as hardware has become more available and software for astronomy has certainly helped. Additionally, meteor showers are an easy way to experience some of the wonder of astronomy with almost no investment other than getting away from the cities and all the light polution.

For more info on astronomy applications and discussions (with a Macintosh flavor) see Scientia et Macintosh at Applelust.com

Turning to the monitors, it's usually not a simple issue of LCD vs. CRT, but of monitor quality.

It's not just monitor quality. I would argue that it is also an issue of operating system quality with text antialiasing being a huge factor in eye strain. See an article I wrote for Applelust here for more details:

Scientia et Macintosh [applelust.com]

I wonder how shock absorbent this guy is

I can't speak about the Nomad, but the I have taken the iPod jogging, mountain biking, bicycle commuting etc... and have never had a skip. Essentially the iPod has a huge RAM buffer (can't remember how big, but something like 32 or 64 MB). The hard drive spins up briefly and loads music into RAM before spinning down again. This saves battery life, limits the damage to the hard drive, and keeps music from skipping. I looked at a number of MP3 players before deciding on the iPod and I must say I am truly happy with the iPod. The other bonus is that I can take the iPod and almost half of our collection of music with me with the 20GB model after synching it to our home stereo system (iTunes powered). Thats about 13 days of music folks and you can have road trip mixes, exercise mixes etc.... that can easily be updated before walking out of the house.

See scientia et macintosh for more iPod commentary.

The underhanded way in which Congress routinely hides laws with far-reaching impact in things like appropriations bills (when was the last time you perused one?) is thoroughly disgusting. It perverts the entire idea of a democracy.