Slashdot Mirror

He might also want to have a word with his old buddy Steve Jobs too. Apple has been getting meaningless patents left and right, just like MS and all these other corps. And at least Allen and Gates are using some of their ridiculous money for charity. What exactly has Jobs been doing to innovate, or contribute to the world?

I love Woz, but if he's going to criticize, he needs to include his old friends and not just his old enemies.

Woz does criticize Apple when he thinks they have done something wrong. Sometimes he goes as far as donating money to the legal defense of people apple sues.

Just for an examle: how do you think this guy felt?
http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=9630
should patents last for however long the inventor lives?

But not very many. Net Applications reported that Intel Mac use surpassed PPC back in November. Tack on a year and there's just not that many PPCs still out there. It'd be aggressive, even for Apple, but the benefits of not supporting two CPU architectures are obvious, and they're probably not above using system updates to sell new hardware

Notice also that some of Apple's recent software is already Intel-only, like the AVCHD support in Final Cut, or their Java 1.6 (which is not only Intel-only, it's 64-bit Intel-only).

I agree.

Jonathan *had* to know he might get burned for spilling the beans before Steve. Jobs has a track record of being harsh, almost vindictive in his dealings with companies which betray his trust.

Exhibit A: Samsung runs their mouth about being selected to supply software to drive the next-gen iPod Nano. Apple turns around and drops them.

Exhibit B: ATI runs their mouth about some specs for new macs before Macworld. Apple removes ATI boards from their computers and refuses to offer them as a build-to-order.

Simply put, don't try to scoop The Steve.

Just google the quote. Here's the first result: http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=6726

Whenever Microsoft has a major new thing, they tout their $100 million marketing budget. Whether it's the new MSN Search, Media Center PCs, a campaign to maintain interest in Win XP as OS X Tiger was released or Windows Longhorn Vista, Microsoft marketing is at the ready with the $100 million check to buy mindshare (except for MSN 8, back in 2002. They got a $300 million budget. Remember that campaign? Me either). The best part is that, as this Slashdot article can attest, just saying you're going to spend $100M is enough to start getting some free press, though maybe not as much press as the $1 billion Windows 95 campaign.

Oh, to be fair, Apple isn't much better.

Here's a couple of GIS'd SoundJam screenshots I dug up to clarify the point above.

Exhibit A
Exhibit B

None of the pics online seem to contain folders like I mentioned. You just gotta trust me that it did it...

Apperently, if anyone was wondering what the Apple lawyers were gonna do, it's here

I think that is wrong. It also doesn't save you the pain in the ass of installing the old OS again. There's a better way around this; the install disk is actually a full install disk but it has an app that checks what's installed and won't let you install unless it deems conditions correct. Fortunately you can delete the app and burn a new fully installable OSX CD by following the instructions here, near the end of the thread (but before all the pr0n links).

Fine - but just remember, you made me do it:

http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=2797

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&thre adid=61377

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=152 73

I believe that is what you were talking about...

Power supply fan affecting sound card issues here

http://www.osxaudio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=797 69

Finally, read the first sentence of this:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showpost.php?p=12272 0&postcount=16

And there it is - it can be loud or quiet, depending on use - so when you called my comment half right and half assed, you were completely wrong. I was very informed on this topic, and I have no bias towards either PC or Mac as anyone who knows me could tell you. 8 to 9 fans in a system like this? That's insane. My PC has half that, and I run it under full load consistently (SETI, DNET, Movie Rendering, etc) in Colorado, where temps are in the high 80's to 90's all summer long, and I didn't build a machine that needs 8 to 9 freaking fans. I have a high performance graphics card, high performance memory, and a fast AMD cpu - and I'm willing to bet my life that my machine is quieter than any Apple G5 on the market. And, then there's your comment:

"Do not confuse the G5 with some of the homebuilt Athlon abominations that have poor layout, poor airflow, and require multiple screaming fans."

Trust me, I won't, and didn't. I compared a G5 to a machine I would build, or anybody could these days for that matter using very common cases, fans, and power supplies. My machine is not an abomination that requires screaming fans, I use Panflo low rpm fans, and my case is more than sufficently cool. Everything else in my system requires passive heatsinks and runs quit well thank you.

While you may have a quiet G5, many people don't - so you should check yourself before calling me half right and half assed buddy.

I think he was referring to this.

...or a Mac.

Reports on G5 noise are mixed; apparently it varies alot between machines, or they built some early noisy ones and then fixed it.

Now if only Apple started designing kitchen appliances and livingroom fixtures so everything could look as nice.

Why is Dell's Digital Jukebox, an iPod competitor, white-- when just about EVERYTHING ELSE DELL MAKES is dark in color?

As most Slashdot users probably already know, there has already been a ripoff of the iPod UI, designed to run on Windows-powered handhelds. Apple got that shut down.

The Expose feature in Mac OS X 10.3 has already been ripped off for Windows users. Initially it was even called WinExpose, but has since been renamed to WinPlosion (it is not known if that was at the behest of Apple Legal or not). Don't be surprised if Microsoft steals Expose as well and it shows up in Longhorn, whenever that ships.

Let's not forget the shameless iMac-lookalike PC clones that Apple had to smack down years ago via "trade dress" suits.

I can't find the links now, but there's at least one company cranking out PC cases that have a metal mesh front panel and look suspiciously similar to the Power Mac G5.

It never ceases to amaze me how these Apple competitors simultaneously cannot deride Apple's stuff loudly enough and copy it quickly enough.

Apple has had a policy at least since November to address the issue by replacing the supply upon request. When I got my G4 fan replaced it was a simple drop-in replacement. I donated the old power supply to the local computer recycler Free Geek.

I've considered a Powerbook, but to be totally honest I haven't seen the stunning build quality that is so often remarked upon in the Mac community. Sure, they're better than cheapo eMachines-type kit, but they're still Taiwanese ODM systems and I keep reading about problems with warping, logic boards failing, screen scratches, duff drives, dodgy touchpads, and so on. I think I'll settle on a Thinkpad or Toshiba Sat Pro - they're built like tanks.

By the way, here's the URL of one report I was reading: http://www.insanely-great.com/features/011130.html . Can anyone confirm this guy's musings? It'd be interesting to hear from other Slashdotters on the matter!

itms offers indie labels... does a rather good job too - at least according to cd baby. source is here:
http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=2221

The problem in Mac-land right now is that while they have superior software (in just about every thing I can imagine) the hardware is so far behind....

• target-mode booting to access a Mac's internal HD. Macs have that options since the first powerbooks (called SCSI Disk Mode at that time). Why is this not possible on an x86 box?
• standard gigabit ethernet on Powerbooks and PowerMacs
• better design on powerbooks
• finally (with notable exceptions) Apple HW lasts longer (it's like buying a German car or washers)

For one thing, they have already started making the motherboards.

Reminds me of the E-Power and the eOne. Coincidentally, all three of them share a common feature: They look like cheap Mac rip-offs that would cause any self respecting PC user to be the victim of a beat down for being a wuss. And, if any lesson can be learned from the fate of the former two, it isn't a good idea to walk around admitting that you tried to mimic the Mac design.

Or you can go straight from S-Video/Composite/Audio into a DV format using a Sony DVMC-DA1 Media Converter or a Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge -- but I would use the Sony so you don't have to deal with hooking it up to your PC. The Sony box will even convert DV back out to S-Video/Composite/Audio!

Or you can go straight from S-Video/Composite/Audio into a DV format using a Sony DVMC-DA1 Media Converter or a Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge -- but I would use the Sony so you don't have to deal with hooking it up to your PC. The Sony box will even convert DV back out to S-Video/Composite/Audio!

http://www.insanely-great.com/news/01/1334.html

Signing a contract with MS was a crime, certainly. But Apple's fortune already existed before any alleged crime may have occurred.

How clueless can this guy be ? If someone went to such great lengths to defeat the 2gb limit, then I'm pretty sure it's because it's been a problem for a while. Uncompressed video comes to mind [...]

You don't even have to reach that far. Compressed video easilly grows to larger than 2 gb for any non-trivial project. For example, I used dvgrab to capture multiple small video clips[1] from my ieee1394 sony trv-900 camcorder and media converter (sony), then edited them together into a 25 minute home video. This is all using compressed DV format, which is small enough that captures work perfectly fine in realtime to ATA33 IDE drives (unlike traditional analog captures which demand much faster drives because the quantity of data is so much greater).

25 minutes of video, even in 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 compressed DV format, is way bigger than 2 GB.

My solution was to upgrade to kernel 2.4.0 (which is easy to do with Mandrake 7.2, as long as you do not compile in devfs support) with the ieee1394 fixes. I opted to use SGI's XFS filesystem (which rocks) but to get around the 2GB limit upgrading to 2.4.0 was sufficient (ext2 and reiser both worked fine for test files of about 5.5 GB in size).

[1]This is a limiting bug in dvgrab which segfaults at around 900MB, but works fine in "looping" mode with filesizes 900MB.

Got this from a mailing list a while back.
Try it, it works.

---

http://www.insanely-great.com/news/98/5/news04.htm l#excel97

"FLIGHT SIMULATOR" HIDDEN INSIDE EXCEL 97

It's pretty basic. Check the credits on the "hillside"

Ever wonder why Microsoft applications become slower with each new release?
Apparently the constant rain in Redmond has driven Microsoft to obsessive flights of fancy. Below are instructions on how to access a little flight simulator that was inexplicably hidden by precipitous programmers deep inside Excel 97.

1. In Excel 97, open a new blank work sheet.

2. Press F5 (go to function) and type X97:L97 in the 'Reference' box.

Then click OK

3. Now hit your tab key once (you should end up in cell M97).

4. Here's the tricky part: press CTRL + SHIFT while clicking once on the 'chart wizard' icon (the one at the top with the blue-yellow-red bar chart).

5. After a few moments, you should be flying.

6. Steer with the mouse, accel and decel with the left and rightmouse buttons respectively, and look for the monolith with the program credits. You can exit the screen by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.

7. Steer with the mouse. Moving it sideways moves you sideways.

8. Acceleration depends on mouse acceleration. Left Click to zoom in, right click to zoom out. You can hit ESC to quit. But then, you must restart EXCEL and do it all over again to get back.

A link to that very interesting site was posted in July 1998, so this is not really new for those who have been on /. for more than a year.

Several interesting links were posted among the replies to that story. I will re-post a few of them here, so that you do not have to browse through the old messages:

• useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website.
• Usable Web: Guide to Web usability resources
• MacKiDo/Interface: What is user interface, and what is superior (and why).
• User Interface Engineering

Follow these links if you are interested in user interfaces (mostly for GUI). There is no lack of good advice on the net. This makes me wonder why we still see so many bad user interfaces in the latest programs (even in GNOME and KDE).

Windows is a dog, but the population is dyslexic.