Slashdot Mirror
Apple Reveals Mac OS X 10.2, 17" iMac, Windows iPod
The Address Book is now system-wide, accessible from many applications, and even has Bluetooth integration. Jobs dialed his cell phone via Address Book, and then when someone called him back on that phone, the computer popped up with the caller's name in Address Book. He had the option to pick up the phone or reply with a short text message.
iSync is a new system for synching your contacts and calendars with GPRS cell phones, Palms, and iPods; so Palms and cell phones are now a part of the digital hub. The iSync program shows you connected devices, and allows configuration of what to sync, and when. The demo showed a complete sync of an address book on the computer to the cell phone, again over Bluetooth. iSync will also allow integration with .mac to update your contacts and calendars between multiple computers, and will be available as a free download in September.
The Mail app now has much better searching and spam filtering, and inline QuickTime (no, that won't be abused ...).
Rendezvous will allow such things as automatic accessing of other's playlists in iTunes, accessing USB printers on the network, and more, with "zero configuration" (I hope there is some configuration, so I can opt in or out of such things). Epson, HP, and Lexmark will have Rendezvous-compatible printers. Jobs didn't mention any way to share USB printers between Mac OS and Mac OS X.
iChat, the new instant messaging program, and iCal, the new shared calendar program, can work with the $100-per-year .mac subscription, or with the free AOL IM account and any web server. iChat will use Rendezvous for finding local users, and shared calendars can be sent via iChat or mail. iCal will ship in September, as a free download.
Sherlock 3 has been completely rewritten, using Internet services (SOAP? XML-RPC?) instead of trying to parse HTML. The demo showed movie listings with embedded trailers, eBay searches with intelligently organized information and pictures, Google image searching, and a Yellow Pages search that knows your ZIP code and sorts by distance, and shows directions and maps.
iTunes 3 is out today, with new features such as rating songs, keeping track of how often songs are played, playing back all songs at the same volume, integration with audible.com, and "Smart Playlists" with rulesets so they are automatically populated (e.g., "25 most played songs", or "500 MB of songs where playcount is 0", to play songs you've never listened to). It is only available for Mac OS X, and requires registration with an email address.
For the iPod, Apple lowered prices on the 5GB and 10GB models ($299, $399), and introduced a 20GB model ($499). The 10GB and 20GB have a solid state scroll wheel, a door to protect the FireWire port, a remote control, and a case. The playlist counts, Smart Playlists, and audible.com integration sync between the iPod and iTunes. Sound volume check has also been added to the iPod. The new 10GB model is 7.692 percent thinner than the previous version.
Also added to the iPod, in addition to the contacts, is calendars, synched with iCal, so it can really act as a PDA for most people. Jobs also announced Windows versions of iPod, synching with musicmatch and including a FireWire 6-to-4 pin cable.
The new iMac has a 17" widescreen display at 1440x900, with an NVIDIA GeForce4 MX, G4/800, and 80GB hard drive.
Jobs also noted that there are 2.5 million Mac OS X users, that 77 percent of owners of new Macs keep Mac OS X as the primary OS, and that they estimate there will be 5 million Mac OS X users by the end of the year, representing 20% of all Mac users using the new OS in the first 24 months.
Apple showed some new ads in the "Switch" campaign, including a student who lost her paper on Windows, a student whose CDs get messed up in his bag (although they didn't point out that he can use iPod under Windows now), and a comedian who ended his commercial with, "My name is Will Ferrell ... and I'm a porn actor."
So, I have an iBook. I got the iBook with OS 9 and OS X preloaded because Apple knew OS X was not quite good enough yet for sole use of that OS. I basically tested the software for Apple, and it does have some bugs, and it quite a bit slower than OS 9.
Now I have to pay to get an updated version?
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Twice. You buy X.0. Then you got X.1 for free and all the updates with it. You then buy X.2. Of course, if you buy a computer sometime in the last 2 years, you will only buy OSX once. Either once with having to upgrade to X.2 or once having to get X.2 for the first time.
This is not bug fixes.
This is an update.
You did READ what was posted is going to be in 10.2, didn't you?
If you had watched the keynote like I did (via quicktime), you'd know this is FAR more than a bug fix.
.
The wide-screen iMac specs page gives the native
resolution of the 17" iMac as 1440x900. This is a 16:10 display ratio, which is about as
close as any monitor I know of gets to the
Golden Ratio, (1 + sqrt(5)/2), or approximately 1.618.
Clearly Apple is trying to channel Pyramid Power
to sell more computers.
GollyGee Blocks -- 3D creativity software for kids.
What? The bug fixes cost HOW MUCH? How many times do I have to buy this damned OS?
The undertone of this keynote was, "We need more of your money." Other shows have been all about bringing more users into the fold, but this show was clearly about getting more money from the existing user base.
The funniest part was the absolute dead silence after the dotMac introduction, when users were informed that they were going to have to shell out $100 a year for stuff they've always gotten for free.
What's your damage, Heather?
i was having some problems putting together a new cutting edge x86 system, and said fuck it. now i'm just pricing some G4s. apple, you have succeeded finally in convincing me to buy me first apple since my IIGS. (oh... you know i had the COLOR screen on that folks)
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
wow.
All of a sudden this picture I did months ago seems all the more relevant...
a grrl & her server
"That's less than $1 for each major feature," he quipped."
Bah, I can get Windows XP for only $99 and get thousands of bugs^H^H^H^Hfeatures for my money!
------
Today's Top Deals
The upgrade for existing users is listed as $19.95. $129 is the full cost.
how are they doing the syncing of calender and contacts with phones ?
regards
john jones
Doesn't a demonstration of such kickass tech (especially the Bluetooth stuff) realised today for the consumer show just how many streets ahead Apple are?
This is all stuff that should exist under Windows, but doesn't. Apple has, after so many years, arrived at the point of equality (and now usurption) to everything else in the market - they can only produce better and better products.
Yay.
Neat. Ummm, at the risk of sounding stupid, what is a 6-to-4 pin cable?
It's just a pity that my major source of bandwidth is at work and they'd never ever let me open up my machine to stick in a firewire card :(
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
8^P
I am aware of that, but I am still pissed because I, and many Mac users, don't consider OS X to be a "finished product". It doesn't feel solid.
.2 update. I am starting to feel like being in the Microsoft trap when it comes to my laptop.
For instance, I have that f&cking beach-ball cursor pop up sometimes for 15 seconds for no apparent reason. I have 384 Megs of RAM, which should be sufficient to run 2 apps at the same time.
OS X feels slow and unresponsive sometimes. I have no data to support this, but OS X users know what I mean when comparing it to OS 9.
It just feels like a beta product to me. I am upset that I have to pay to get the next upgrade version. This is NOT a new OS, this is a
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
If everyone started doing this, interesting scenarios/questions emerge..
1) Would Apple let users to substract one dollar per bug as they are discovered ?
2) Would Microsoft start paying their users to use Longhorn ?
3) Somebody please tell me why Linux is free ?
Flamebait/OffTopic/Troll..Is that all you got???
Rapid Nirvana
I think I've mentioned before - I'd love to get a new iMac, but lack of software is holding me back. Not the generalised moan you often hear about, but three specific areas:
Sadly, I have to conclude the iMac is still not a viable machine for me. Damned shame - I'd love to get one otherwise.
Cheers,
Ian
Good:
.Mac - nice new features
.Mac pricing. There should be a scaled-back free edition, like the other services providers offer. I expounded on this in a comment on the initial .Mac thread earlier today.
- iPod upgrades and price cuts.
- iPod for Windows
- Jaguar before Labor Day
- All the new software tools
- Wide-screen iMac!
- Price cut on the old Superdrive iMac (though that's the original price pre-hike)
- iSync - way cool
-
Bad:
- The new iMac is still PC100/800 MHz
- No "upgrade edition" of Jaguar. A $49 or around that version of Jaguar that would only install over an existing MacOS X install would be good. I should get some bonus for being an early user.
-
- No support for either USB 2.0 or Firewire 2 yet. Introducing the new iMac with that would have been nice.
Indifferent:
- The iPod accessory kits (pretty much all available in the 3rd party market already)
- The pricing of the new iMac
- The lack of changes to the other price points (I was expecting across-the-board iMac price cuts, but no biggie)
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
iI ithink ithat ithey iare itaking ithis i'i' inaming ithing ito ifar.
yes, Darwin is available for x86 platforms. However, you'll miss the great Aqua user interface that comes with OS X. You could run KDE3, which is not as much fun...
Your experience is not typical. I work with many Macs, all running 10.1.4 or 10.1.5, and I don't see the ``spinning beachball'' problem that you're describing. It used to happen in 10.0.n, but I haven't seen it for a long time.
I think you might look into what's wrong with your system before you jump to the conclusion that the OS must be faulty.
looking at the .mac homepage, it appears that the $50/first year will provide a "full mac.com email" account and that a "full mac.com account" gives you more idisk storage. it doesn't say the free accounts are going away.
am i looking in the wrong place?
go get it
Alas, you are correct. It looks like they still have not fixed all the printing bugs.
Seriously, my USB-connected printer was hugely more functional under Mac OS 9. Rendezvous sounds wonderful, but it apparently won't do much for my current HP inkjet.
Yes, there are hacks to get USB printing working under the current OS, and I'll have to go with one of those, since spending $258 to upgrade the OS this year is...not going to happen very quickly. My most likely course of action now is to defer upgrading or purchasing any Apple stuff until 2003, which I fear is the opposite of what they were looking for here.
Babar
It sure would be nice if they had announced that I could spend like... $500 to get my 15" screen "switch"ed (HA!) to a 17" widescreen... oh well... once my flatpanel iMac becomes really obsolete I'll just buy their wearable computer that they will be selling in 2005...
Just one little interesting tidbit i noticed that is getting kind of lost in the noise: Did anyone else notice the little note on the Jaguar page? Apparently the 10.2 developer tools use GCC 3.1!
:)
I found this interesting, as i had heard that the bulk of the linux distributions had not yet managed to migrate to GCC 3. Neat to see Apple is staying on top of this whole UNIX-technology thing
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The NASDAQ is up as I write this, an hour or so after Steve's keynote. But Apple stock is down 13%.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
I took that comic strip to be part of the well-deserved backlash against the French , rather than Apple. Of course, when you insult the French, you're just preaching to the choir, too.
As a Mac user for nearly 18 years, I'm quite happy that Apple is now charging some modest fees for their value-added services.
.mac, they've got to fight similar interests at Microsoft.
This is something that Microsoft's hedgemony WON'T let other PC manufacturers do - at least not to the extent that Apple has shown here. If Gateway (Dell, whoever) wants to create a value-added portal like
Apple has no such conflict - they own the whole ball of wax, so the hardware and OS sides of the company can work together to produce a best-in-class (and don't pretend they aren't class-leading or at least very innovative and polished) set of services for Mac users - for free in many cases (iTunes, iPhoto) and for a modest yearly charge in other cases.
My ISP charges $20.00 a month for a 5MB mailox and 50MB of FTP space. Apple is providing more than that for $100.00 a year. That's half off for me - for more space.
Owning a mac has never looked better. Apple is again taking positive steps to increase revenue growth and reduce it's dependence on volatile hardware sales. Reasonable prices for services that generate recurring revenue...new product refreshes on a regular basis to win the fence sitters and an advertising program that _is_ winning over some converts (right here in my office) - rather unfunny Penny Arcade cartoons notwithstanding.
Good job, Apple.
Firewire has two different types of cables, the 4 and the 6 pin style. 6 pin is quite a bit larger, is used on all modern Macintoshes and can get quite a bit of power to the device. 4 pins is smaller but can't get the power to the device. Most pc's use the 4 pin variety but Apple stuck with the full sized 6 pin on both the Mac and the iPod so you can power and yes, charge the ipod from the Mac's power supply. With Windows they supply a more standard 4-6 pin cable which means you need a seperate way to charge it since one connector doesn't not have the 2 pins for power. Apple usually comes through and supplies an adapter to charge from the wall outlet.
You are sounding like one of those wacky open source advocates now. You should feel privleged that you can get such fine quality software for such a low price. Stop complaining!
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
With that said, giving a $20 upgrade only from people ordering today is not enough time for an OS that ships in a month. Any software vendor that ships an upgrade gives upgrade pricing to everyone that bought within the last 3-4 months. Apple should at least follow that model.
As the first keynote I've watched, I have to say I was impressed with how well it came off. Jobs had a few glitches along the way with some of the new feature demos, but recovered nicely. There're a lot of people saying Apple's so bad for charging for "what was free" but the thing is, they're doing what had to be done. iTools cost them money, and a pretty substantial chunk I'm sure. And .Mac will actually do nothing but improve the iTools featureset. iCal, five times the storage space, and iSync could make .Mac quite useful to a lot of people. I'm not one of them yet, but I definitely respect the effort they've gone to. Yes, I'm a bit upset that they're taking away my email address - and wouldn't be too surprised if they turned around and let people keep the email addresses for nothing if people complain enough - but I won't get pissed off.
And $100 a year isn't a bad price, considering the integration you get. One service to offer all those features, rather than five services and a mishmash of programs to do it.
And even though $129 seems a bit of a shock for 10.2, it really isn't a point upgrade so much as it is a rewrite level. Compare 10.2 to 7.5, if you're familiar with Mac history. 10.2 gives you a whole new rendering layer for new Mac machines, a hell of a speed boost from the reports I've heard, and several new features like iCal, iSync and Rendevouz. I'll probably pay for it. I -would- like a $49 upgrade for 10.1 owners, but I think Apple's probably feeling enough of a financial pinch not to do that.
I think the part of it all that would be most respected by Slashdot readers is the fact that open standards were touted quite loudly. SyncML and Rendevouz (zeroconf) primarily. They might not be opening up as much as we want in some areas, but at least when they're moving in a new direction they look like they're trying to make the best of it.
And I've decided people who push for open sourcing -everything- in OS X, or porting to x86 are just idiots with no business sense. That would kill Apple's income. 'nuff said.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
After 10.2 is out? Or does the support of people with 10.1's stop once 10.2 is avail? I'm referring to software updates, security patches, etc.
I just purchased OSX a few months ago to put on an old second hand iBook I bought, and Steve, I don't really wanna pay more money for it just yet. How's about making us pay for OS XI?
I'm actually looking for a good reason to put OpenBSD on my iBook and just hone it down with WMaker, OpenOffice, Opera, etc.
I love OSX, but if I have to fork out money every year for the latest patches then you can get fucked (Karma = Excellent is boring).
Plus, if need be, my next notebook will be one that supports OpenBSD the best (hint hint) and will not be the TiBook I really have been wanting.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
The iPod news is great. Especially if it were to have happened a few months ago when I actually purchased the thing.
I appreciate the response to what the market wanted. But half of the indication that the market wanted a Windows version iPod was that some people (read: me) bought it and worked around the mac-only restriction. Are there not going to be any updates?
Interesting enough, my wheel has deteriated a bit, and when I wrote CS for Apple telling them about it, they said that what I was describing was "not a common problem" and that it didn't "inhibit use of the iPod" so it really wasn't a problem. I wonder why they released a touch-sensitive, non-moving wheel if it wasn't such a common problem.
The reason working with Apple is a hassle is because of releases like this. While I would shit my pants to be able to switch my iPod with one with a touch sensitive wheel... fine, that's understandable. Such is the progression of technology. But a carrying case? It's not exactly an "industry first", as Apple likes to say about most things they do. Why not throw it out there when I had purchased my 10 gig beforehand? When I had purchased my Nomad II MG before this mp3 player, it came with a case. Not a good case, mind you, but it still came with it. That was appreciated.
There. Now I just might get an iPod, and by extention, a mac.
Audible.com is the shiznit, and those long commutes are much easier when you've got 18 hours of The Diamond Age or such like to listen to. :-)
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
when will it support my sailboat?
Oh yeah, ruby too.
Yeah. They could NEVER use a sort of trackpad like technology. You know, like the transporters in Star Trek had actual sliders, but the ones in Star Trek: The Next Generation had sliders with no moving parts. And they were pretty sad, because they could never go anywhere, because a slider control with no moving parts is an impossibility.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
If you dont like the .mac fees, let apple know here This is a general discussion forum for the new .mac service.
The ipod software download is still at the older version 1.1....
Grrr...
If you don't want the new features, don't buy them. Stay with MacOS X 10.1.5 ...
The "paying for features I don't want" excuse is getting old. If what you have is working well for you, then you have no need to upgrade. I for one still have several Red Hat 6.2 boxes running here because Red Hat 7.2 has features I don't need. It's a free upgrade if I want it, but I don't.
Mac OS X is a great OS. Apple put a lot into those new features you don't want. $129 isn't bad for what you're getting. Hell, look at Windows. It doesn't include half the functionalty and it costs $200-$300 depending on your persuasion (Home/Pro).
Apple finally fixed the visulization plugins in itunes 3 so that you get decent framerates. They also let it take advantage of the powerbooks widescreen display. Nice update
Clearly 10.1.5 is vastly improved over 10.0.anything, not to mention the Public "Beta", but there is no doubt that beachball spinning does still occur. Not that often, mind you, but I think the problem here is that you, the user cannot predict when you'll do something that will put you into the "spin cycle". With older versions of the OS, it wasn't tough to know when you'd see the watch cursor or why.
My anecdotal evidence is that beachball sightings are much more common with G3 than G4 computers, and much more likely if you have less than 512MB of RAM.
Frankly, it doesn't bug me that much, but I can't call the phenomenon "atypical".
Babar
Now, if they just change that silly hemispherical base to a pyramid they'll really have sometime.
I just got off the phone with Apple and they said "you'll have to buy two ipods if you want to use them on Windows and the Mac." Damn it, why can't Apple just for once make it easy.
I am putting off my order of the iPod until I find out if there is a workaround for the "feature". That really bytes too cause it looks like the Apple Store is also offering a free car power adapter with the purchase of the iPod.
Exactly. ANd I have the lastest 10.1.5 installed, and a pretty freshly installed system. This is not MY fault. It is Apples. That god damned beach ball is a problem that most OS X users hate.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Not only is the display 17", at 1440 x 900 with square pixels, it's wide aspect. This is far better for movie playback.
I'm seriously tempted to get one just for watching DVDs.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
If you qualify for student discounts, OS upgrades should only be $69.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
Only if you just bought your mac in the last month or so. The rest of us are expected to bend over and grab our ankles then cough up the money if we want to be supported in the future.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I don't know what to tell you except ``nuh-uh.'' There's something wrong with your system. You might check to see that your DNS stuff is configured correctly; maybe you're running into lookupd timeouts or something like that. Make sure the settings under the Network pane of System Preferences are all correct.
Also, are you using NFS? I've seen the Finder lock up as you describe when trying to contact an AWOL NFS server.
I'm sorry to have to tell you that this is simply not a common problem.
Wow, I bet Apple will sell tons of this. For $200 more than the 15" iMac ($100 more than the original price), you a GeForce4 + 80 GB drive + the gorgeous 1440x900 cinematic display instead of GeForce2 + 60 GB + 1024x768. Who would still buy the 15" models?
And of course, it's also a first class and virtually portable Unix workstation with the best GUI on top of a rock solid open source foundation plus FREE and great programming tools, who on earth will ever pay silly money to buy a Wintel PC, or a Sun, HP, IBM or SGI machines? Apple is officially the biggest volume Unix vendor with 2.5 million installed base within the first year of OS X release, and that number will be doubled by the end of this year. Should MS and Dell be concerned ? My answer is yes, especially when considering the new features in the upcoming Jaguar, and the ever quickening innovations that Apple is creating on both the software and the hardware fronts.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I agree. Between 10.2. and .Mac, I'm beginning to wonder why Apple doesn't just hack into our credit cards and take the money out directly. H2K2 was not far away, after all...
10.2 looks compelling, but most of the new features don't seem immediately useful to me. I may just skip this upgrade until I get some Bluetooth toys to play with.
I also noticed this, snipped from macnn.com:
One last thing: Apple lowered the price of the SuperDrive iMac by $100 to $1,799 and introduces new 17" flat-panel iMac. It supports 1440x900--66% bigger than the 15" iMac, adds a Nvidia GeForce4. The 80GB/256MB/17"/SuperDrive/GeForce4 model is due in August for $1999.
That 17" iMac looks sweet, but I thought consumer-level computers were supposed to be getting cheaper lately. Even if this is the high end of Apple's consumer line, does Apple think that people will be willing to spend $2000 on an iMac? Or do they know something about the economy that we don't?
My DNS stuff works fine, I have my own internal wireless network with the wireless router acting as a DHCP server. My network settings are all correct, trust me. This is not just me, I have seen hundreds of people complain about this.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
OS 10.1.5
PowerBook G4
Everything Configured correctly.
Still have the beachball.
Quietly, I weep.
Have you actually seen the screen on the "Desklamp" style iMacs? We have plenty of flat panel displays around but they look like crap next to the iMac displays.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Hundreds? That sounds like an exaggeration. Can you back that up in any way?
There are so many things about OS X that are so far superior to OS 9, that I just don't buy the idea that it feels like an 'unfinished product'. From a work perspective (Web Design & Development) OS X gives me an unparalleled platform that makes me literally twice as productive. I felt like the 10.1 update was definitely necessary and was glad that they offered it for free. I won't mind paying for 10.2, however, because I'm totally happy with 10.1, and 10.2 seems to have gobs of new features.
"Doesn't a demonstration of such kickass tech (especially the database filing system stuff) realised today fro the consumer show just how many streets ahead Microsoft are? "
No.. but a *release* would!
Absolutely. Go to the Mac forum on Ars Technica, the various support Forums on Apples' own website, and Usenet archives (All of which I frequent). Do a search for beach ball. I am not exagerating.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I think I see a trend forming here. The 16:10 "Golden Ratio" iMac screen and the $100 per year "Golden Shower" .Mac services.
Check out their homepage. The slightly effete but expressive classic Apple Garamond font has been replaced by a plain, rather ugly version of Adobe Myriad Roman. Say it ain't so! But it is.
They started it with the eMac, but I assumed it was some education-only market differentiator. Apparently not. There's a little more at Mired.
Personally, I think it's a terrible change. And a stupid one. They'd built a huge amount of brand identity with Apple Garamond, to the point where anything written in it reminded you of Apple. The new font has no personality at all. Is that what they were going for?
P.S. The Myriad Roman link is a Google cache of a page that 404's now.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Well, let me know when you are using some of them. When you get your bluetooth phone and your bluetooth PDA talking to your bluetooth printer.
And also let me know when you atart getting spam with Quicktime 6 embedded in your emails, because that's a new feature too.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Please point me to a webpage which states that you can use your coupons. The upgrade page makes no mention of them.
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
The finder needs more features that made OS 9 and under great. Now with OS X, I can't color code files, I can't change the icon as easily, I can't sort by date or anything other than name when I'm saving files.
The finder also won't tell you if the file you are replacing is newer than the one you are replacing it with. You can't answer 'yes to all' or 'no to all' either. Grrrrr. Sure there are free/share/bloat-ware products to do all these things, but why am I forced to resort to these when the 'old' os had them built in?
BTW Apple: If you are reading this - your heads on a stake for removing the abillity to print to a localtalk printer. Yeah, I'm going to get my work to shell for a new laser printer. Nope, boot to OS 9. I think your punishment should be this: Every time you want to update Apple.com, you must quit OS X, boot to OS 9, make the change, quit OS 9, boot to OS X, check the results. Repeat 'til you kill yourselves.
I know that I can get an adapter to fix this, but damnit, what happened to 'Works out of the Box' ?
I hate to love Apple, I love to hate M$.
Back to work, Slashders!
The ipod warranty has been improved to one year, up from its much criticized 90 day warranty. The ipod service page doesn't reflect this new warranty yet... out-of-warranty repairs cost an amazing $256.
Yesterday I read an article in a major newspaper (NYT, WSJ, or washington post - sorry, couldn't find link) describing how many high tech things (including the ipod) didn't come with suitable warranties -- for example, dell just changed from a 3 year to 1 year warranty.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
was waiting for this day :)
In Apple's case they just finally realized they needed to charge for a service they had been offering for free for a long time in order to recoup some of their costs. Sort of like slashdot starting subscriptions, or any other website you can think of that used to be free but now has to charge or have ads everywhere to pay for itself.
What?
The update cost is $129, and there are two Macs in the house; I'm guessing that for Rendezvous to work, both computers would need to be running 10.2.
2*$129 = $258.
And, alas, it *does* look like this update will cost $129 even for user OS X 10.1 users, unless they change their upgrade policy. What they are aiming for here is a couple of million folks going along, getting them $258 million in cash and a huge profit margin.
That's where my numbers came from.
Babar
More likely because of the announcements.
They want you to buy their hardware too though. If you can get OS/X on an x86, why would you buy mac hardware? If they can get you to switch to their hardware solely for the OS, then they've got a good deal going.
What?
Now... if Linux got this... and the desktop folks got into this... We'd be unstopable. I really liked the printer demonstration. Just plug that puppy onto the network and viola! It's installed and configured. File sharing, etc would be a breeze. Oh, and it's an 'open' standard with IETF.
Take a black felt-tip marker and carefully ink out the lower 90 pixels of you 17" iMac monitor. This will give you a 16:9 ratio, which matches HDTV!
you can get a brand new retail inkjet printer for less than the upgrade price of $129. Maybe you want a new printer and not the upgrade. Buying a more compatible one this time around should save you headaches down the road.
Lets see... this $2000 computer comes with 256MB of RAM. What a great deal.
Ok, let's upgrade.
How much for another $128mb? Oh... only $75. Strange, I swore you could buy that much in pretty much any store for around $15-20.
Hmmm... how much for another $256? Oh... only $150. Again, I'm pretty sure that I saw that in a store for $60 yesterday (and that was before a $20 mail in rebate)
Ok... how much for a 512MB DIMM. Oh, only $250 more. Again, $119.99 in the store.
And for 1 GIG... 2 512 DIMMS. That's an additional $550. Strange, that would be less than $250 in any store around.
Oh... there must be a labor charge to install that RAM. Hmm... takes about 2 minutes max to put it in, so... I guess they're charging $9000/hour to install RAM. Sweet deal!
Casual Games/Downloads
Personally I'm glad to see Apple seems to have broken the MHZ VooDoo madness. With a CPU at 800MHZ and the new Intel processors at 2200+ MHZ it would have been a big issue in the past. Either Apple has done a good job of sidestepping the issue, people are happy with current speeds or a little of both. Maybe a little more development will be put into other areas that have a bigger impact on user experience and system performance.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Disclaimer: I am a very bitter OSX/ibook user.Be warned.
Dear Apple Customer,
Thank you for spending obscene amounts of money to purchase our hardware over comparably priced X86 PCs. Also, we thank you for giving us more money for OS X, which up untill now has really just been one of the largest beta tests in the history of computing. Thanks to your efforts and complaints, we have been able to fix numerous horrible bugs, add features that comparable free software had ten years ago, and finally figure out why the hell Quartz is so slow.
We are now ready to release our latest OS X service pack^H^H^H update for prices ranging from $19.95 to $129.95. That's right, now you can pay for the kind of updates that even the bastards at Microsoft give away for free! If you ever wondered why we brought back Steve Jobs, now you know just how good he is at bringing in new revenue!
Thank you again, dear customer, for continuing to flush your money away in the desparate search for a computer more stable than Windows without all the hassles of Linux! Just a few more years and a few more thousand dollars each, and the revolution will be in full swing!
Best regards,
Apple Computers
The smart lists in iTunes are completely done on the client side. There is no evidence that this is a data mining scam. Apple is not known for that type of thing.
.Mac subscriptions. The iCal program can use any web server (presumably through WebDAV). Apple is provideing better services thorugh .Mac.
.mac email address. But since I am not paying for it... I can't complain.
And all of the applications you named can be used without
Personally I will regret losing my free
i had to buy a new printer..... my Epson 1160 is long not supported by epson... now that i have a 1280 it works really well under OS X. i was pissed i had to upgrade (they are both oversized inkjets that cost $400+) but i was able to seel the old on on ebay for literally $1 less than the new one (i do not know).
as for HP, i do not know what to say. i've been using Apple computers for a long time, i dealt with the mess of using HP printers in the 90's and since then i just don't feel comfortable buying their stuff.
::cough:: Troll ::cough::
Um, if you have one now, it'll be $50 for a year. Not bad considering what else you get besides the email. Oh, and when did Apple ever say that your mac.com address would be free forever?
I have a shitty sig!
17-inch display resolutions: 1440 by 900 (native), 1152 by 720, 1024 by 640, and 800 by 500 pixels at 16:10 aspect ratio; 1024 by 768, 800 by 600, and 640 by 480 pixels at 4:3 aspect ratio.
Guvegrra?
As Apple has stated repeatedly and Steve mentioned in is keynote, Apple is the first company that AOL allowed under the hood of AIM. This is 100% AOL sanctioned.
t'nera semordnilap
I have a nearly two year old PowerMac that runs MacOS X only about a third slower than the current top-end model. That's not bad at all.
In reality, it's Windows XP that has to jump through this hoop - our IT guy just quit, and his 1ghz Athelon XP system is distinctly sluggish. XP's published specifications include system requirements that exclude any system more than a year and a half old at the time.
D
Technically, Windows Me was an update. It had a somewhat updated GUI, and some new software. It may have been ridiculously slow and buggy, but what company makes Windows? Right.
Ya, buy XP is a HUGE upgrade from ME. Heck, it's almost a completely different product. When XP SP1 came out - with major updates, not just bug fixes - we didn't have to pay $20. I think I'd be frustrated as an OS X user. Personally, I think they should just price major versions accordingly so that all updates are free. As a developer, this would ensure that a larger population was upgrading to newer versions
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Digital photography, which works better on a Mac than anywhere, is far cheaper than conventional photography. In fact, taking pictures is basically free, which is a big step up from film photography's $10-odd per 36 exposures.
Most people obsessed with value are also obsessed with tradition, and therefore love family photos. Imagine, then, being able to take all the family pictures you want at no extra cost per photo, loading them on to your computer, printing them out and emailing them to your friends.
And imagine there is a computer that comes with special free software that makes cataloguing them dead easy, so you'll never lose that great picture of your baby laughing or your 11 year old riding the skateboard.
That computer is a Mac.
I'd call that basic value, wouldn't you?
D
I didn't have to do anything to configure my right-mouse button. I just plugged in my Kensington USB mouse-in-a-box (same model I use on my Windows box at work) and it just works (equivalent to Ctrl-click). The scroll wheel works in the Finder, IE, and other apps but not all apps. I think the Kensington MouseWorks software lets the scroll work in more apps but I haven't bothered installing it.
I heard they had a deal. It was mentioned in that article the other day about microsoft "Stealing their thunder". MS was upset that Apple didn't consider MSN Messenger instead.
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
First thing I thought about when I saw Sherlock 3 was Watson. Even Apple's Phil Schiller said how cool it was. I guess Apple thought it was so cool they would practically copy it!
Watson provides many more services than Sherlock 3, but it also costs $30.
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
My ISP charges $20.00 a month for a 5MB mailox and 50MB of FTP space. Apple is providing more than that for $100.00 a year. That's half off for me - for more space.
.Mac doesn't include is dialup (or broadband) access of any kind. If Apple had struck some kind of deal to package an Earthlink or AOL dialup and include it in the .Mac package, I might be sold. But you'll still be paying $20/month for your ISP, $240/year, and then paying Apple an additional $100/year for their storage and email account.
Yes, but the one thing that
This is the problem for me. For $100/year, I want to be able to kick my current dialup account out the window. An extra $9/month isn't much to ask, but it is when my ISP already provides email and storage, the two features that are most important to me.
The people that have already bought and paid for OS X are Apple's staunchest supporters. If anyone deserves to finally have a fast OS, it's them. Yet they are being asked to pay full tilt ($129) for the speed that should have been there in the very first release.
OS X as it currently sits can be slow even on fast Mac hardware, and annoyingly laggy on slower Macs. This is simply not acceptable. Mac OS X users deserve these fixes for free, and I suspect that most people will take them without paying if they have the opportunity.
It's not. If you look in the top right hand corner of the now-Patterned 'Mac OS X' tab on apple's site, you will see that the jaguar spot behind said title is more of ring. This is what makes jaguars easy to distinguish from cheetahs, who would have solid spots.
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
What's this business with audible.com support in iTunes 3? Do they use DRM? This document says they make a special codec:
h tm
http://www.fullplaymedia.com/partners/partners.
and this document says they definitely do:
http://www.cognitrol.com/ADBL/devices.htm
So is this audible.com support a trojan horse for DRM in iTunes? The answer is likely yes. This is one mac user who won't upgrade to iTunes 3.
Apparently, iPod also now supports it, so beware firmware updates.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Did anyone else catch that the release date for the new OSX update is August 24th. - the same day Microsoft picked for the release of Windows '95?
Maybe it's just coincidence, but it just struck me as interesting. Can't help but wonder if there's any significance behind it.
(In any case, it's also my birthday. Unfortunately, I don't own a Mac - so I don't think I'll be looking for a copy of this OS as a gift this year.)
I haven't looked for a complete list of what you get on a normal install, but you can safely assume a fairly vanilla BSD kit, including development tools: emacs, perl, gcc, etc. It's all free with MacOS X, as it should be. The supplied versions aren't always the most up-to-date, but that's what fink is for.
Also, the Mac OS development environment (which includes updates to NeXTStep's really-quite-impressive development environment, Interface Maker and Project Builder, full API docs etc) is a free download. I believe it's included on the harddrive (as an installable package) on new machines.
Your best bet is to check developer.apple.com. Signing up as a developer is free, although you have to pay $700+ to get stuff like advance betas of the OS, WWDC proceedings on DVD.
now i'm just pricing some G4s.
Do not buy a PowerMac until the new models come out -- either in mid August or early September.
...much as i wish it were. There was no mention at all of discounts for those of us with software coupons. It's full price for everyone except those who bought the computers today or later, presumably to stop people holding off on buying new hardware.
Then XP was released and I realized Win2k was just temporary insanity on Microsoft's part.
I'm now a happy OS X (and occasional Win2k) user.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
The new 10GB model is 7.692 percent thinner than the previous version.
I think I need a few more significant digits to adequately assess this new iPod.
I bought a Mac last summer because OSX seemed like the best thing since sliced bread for me as a Java developer. Java version parity with official JDK releases really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Performance of the Apple runtime is barely tenable. For me, the Mac has become a curiosity, a toy, nothing more. I've gone back to x86 Linux for the majority of my development work. I'm even eyeing the Mac I have as a candidate for Yellow Dog or Gentoo PPC. I will buy the upgrade, but there's no motivation to do so by the end of the year.
Stop whining about Apple's upgrade policies, since they've historically been done this way. You always have a choice. That's the great part about capitalism.
However, for those of you for which the Mac is a primary computer, think of the alternatives.
1) Load Yellow Dog/Gentoo/. Your cost is nothing but time. Learn to become one with the source. MacOnLinux will allow you to run any Classic apps you'll absolutely need.
2) Sell the Mac. Buy a PC. Move to the Orwellian world of Microsoft licensing vis a vis Windows and Office XP. Enjoy PAYING EVEN MORE for EVEN LESS.
3) Suck it up, plop down the 130 clams and support one of the best damn *nix desktops I've seen to date. Normal people can use it! It even has Office for those of you who need it.
Apple is trying to make themselves ubiquitous when it comes to consumers who have digital cameras, camcorders, mp3 players, etc. Everything they do now is moving the company closer and closer to that vision.
Even for those of you who bought the public beta and the first full version, 130 bucks is cheap for what you get. Yes, printing may not be perfect. Yes, there are still a lot of bugs. Yes, Apple has a penchant for adding things we current users don't need or want, but they have to balance what existing customers want vs. what will bring new users to the platform.
The following is a personal motto of mine, which gathers more credibility each day:
Pay now or pay later, but keep in mind that you WILL pay.
Pony up the $130 bucks for the upgrade. Be a good MacHead and support your platform of choice. Use something else if you don't. The ultimate alternative is that Bill gets your money and control over your desktop.
Rant complete.
Ready.
Keith
--- If you hadn't stayed to read this
When XP SP1 came out - with major updates, not just bug fixes - we didn't have to pay $20.
/sarcasm
XP SP1?
Please let me know where to find this, because it's surely not on Microsoft's website!
Okay, $1999 for the 17" iMac.. That's NOT bad, if you consider the display itself is worth almost $700+ (comparing to a Samsung SyncMaster 171S), and the SuperDrive isn't exactly cheap on its own either. Sure, Apple wants a bit too much for RAM, so just get it with 256 megs and get on crucial.com to buy the rest of your RAM.
:)
I've been a die-hard PC user for years, but I'm also a wireless nut (cell phones and such).. The Bluetooth integration and that display just excited me and gave me goosebumps...
I know this is the Mac I _have_ to own.
My boss just made a comment - he'd love to buy his wife one, but he's afraid she'd never touch a Windows PC ever again.
Things will change with Jaguar(10.2), so I've broken this up:
/usr/bin/ leaving you free to build a later Perl if you want. Perl 5.6.1 is buildable on 10.1 and can be installed to /usr/local/ without problems. Some config muckery is required to build 5.6.1, notes are available on various websites. Perl 5.8.0rc3 builds out of the box on 10.1.
10.1
----
- Perl 5.6.0 is included in the base install, with a fairly minimal library set. Perl is at
- Niether Python nor Tcl/Tk are included with 10.1 although both are available from community sites in both source and installer formats.
- GCC is not included in the 10.1 base install, but instead in the "Developer Tools" installation. If you buy a new machine you won't get the Dev Tools in the box, but you can register with Apple as a developer (for free, the basic developer membership) and download an ISO of the CD for free. The dev tools also include ProjectBuilder and InterfaceBuilder (showing their NeXT inheritance).
- Their "clumsy" Terminal emulator is the old NeXT terminal, and is about as xterm compatible as I need (and far better than many terminals I've tried over the years). I conclude that you haven't tried it and are simply guessing that you won't like it (if I'm wrong I apologize and I'd love to know what you think is missing from Terminal). That said, if you want it you can get xterm prebuilt (along with a full X install from source or binary) from the Fink project (http://fink.sourceforge.net). apt-get to your heart's content.
Jaguar (10.2)
-------------
- Perl 5.6.1 is included. Python is included (not sure about version). Ruby is included. Not sure if Tcl/Tk is included, but again its almost sure to be available from community sites.
- Terminal is reported improved even more. See http://www.apple.com/macosx/jaguar/unix.html
- All the free dev tools (including GCC3) will be available as a part of Jaguar, probably as a separate download again.
As for the rest of it... Well, the free dev tools are very good. I suspect coming from a Linux world they will meet your needs. Some folks prefer the CodeWarrior dev tools which still require separate purchase. Mostly these are folks from Mac backgrounds (including myself) who have used CW for years and like it.
To find out what's included in the Darwin (UNIX) layer of MacOS a poke around the Darwin site is likely in order http://developer.apple.com/darwin/. If you want you could even install on X86 and try it out (although obviously this won't be the same as the experience of MacOS X which includes both Darwin and the higher level items like ProjectBuilder).
More generally, the Apple developer site http://developer.apple.com/ is a good resource for developers. Third party developer sites such as http://www.stepwise.com/ are also invaluable.
Information on portability of common UNIX tools to OS X is usually dictated in part by the opensource community for that tool. So for example, you really should check the Perl porters list/site for details on Perl port.
For projects which are not porting to OS X on their own the Fink project(http://fink.sourceforge.net) is likely your best bet.
Hope this helps,
Bas
They should bring back the pizzabox mac. On the low end, you have to buy a big, clunky, monitor-included thing. If you want a "component" system, you have to buy a tower, which is big and costs much moolah.
If they sold a cheaper no-monitor system, people who already have monitors for their PCs could slip in a Mac instead.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
This is hardly a minor release; the real mistake is that Apple is calling it 10.2 which implies a free upgrade, instead of 10.5 or 11. This isn't a shortcoming fix release; that's what 10.1 was. 10.2 is about including all the features everyone has asked for and then some, and getting the GUI and Finder speed at least doubled. Quite a bit faster than WinXP, anyways, and I haven't been able to try a build more than 5 weeks old :)
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
No, it is only for one user license. But the OS doesn't check for serial numbers or anything, so you'll be fine (but crooked) ifyou just buy one and install it on both computers.
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
You bash the platform for a number of purported deficits, and yet you claim (and demonstrate) a complete lack of knowledge about it.
I suppose I should just let it go, but what really frosts me is how you seem to feel that you are far too "l33t" a badass unix stud for any toy system to satisfy, and yet you obviously aren't willing to invest even the tiniest effort to investigate the actual facts. Do you even realize how asinine that combination of arrogance, ignorance, and ineptness really is? Would you think it appropriate if someone trashed Linux/Perl/GPL/whatever with the same pathetic incompetence?
In a nutshell, though, the answer is yes. Perl? Yes. GCC? Yes. X11? Yes. MYSQL? Yes. Apache/PHP? Yes. Ruby? Yes? POV-RAY? Yes. GIMP? Yes. NetHack? Yes. Whatever does not come preinstalled is readily available not only from Apple, but from the standard distribution channels for the specific tools. In fact, if you look around you will see that most popular apps have OS X on the regular build tree -- run the nightlies all you like.
Anyone who is interested in learning more about the Unix infrastructure of OS X might want to check out the following starter list:
Darwin - Darwin is a complete open-source BSD distribution. Apple makes both the source and extensive documentation available for free. It does the same for a number of other major apps, such as the QuickTime Streaming Server. This does not include the source to things like the Aqua and the user-experience GUI, but it is everything you would get in a regular Unix...because it IS a regular Unix.
Apple Developer Program -- For the price of a free registration, you can download the latest tools (e.g., gcc3, ProjectBuilder), APIs, and sample code directly from Apple. These tools include "generic" Unix favorites as well as a number of extremely powerful OS X-specific tools.
Fink -- The major source of convenient ports using the Debian dpkg and apt-get tools. There are other systems, but Fink makes installing things such as X11, KDE, Gnome et al a snap and has over a thousand of the top apps ready to roll. Don't forget Fink Commander, which gives you a convenient Aqua interface to the Fink tools.
O'Reilly's OS X Developer Center -- O'Reilly needs no introduction, but their OS X developer articles and resources are an excellent source of information for developers of all levels.
Stepwise -- Scott Anguish and the Stepwise folks cut their teeth on NeXT, but they continue to offer gurudom to the OS X community. They regularly detail how to use the latest ports and patches, and know a ton about Cocoa and Mac development.
MAc OS X Labs -- Though their focus is on using OS X in higher education, they are a decent resource for OS X-related development and integration.
Just read Apple's knowledge base. If you turn off the Automatic iPod update in the iTunes control panel, you can COPY the music to the iPod from several Macs. You cannot copy the music back to the computer though without third party software.
Sure I agree with your sentiments, but not too so accurate (excusuable as your not a Mac OS X user :).
:).
:-) along with a faster Finder and better mail client (and less important stuff to me like iChat, iCal, new Address Book which is still cool none the less etc) make it worth while and reasonable IMO.
It was awful of Apple not to give away 10.1 upgrade for free (even 20 USD was way to much!), that really was a 'bug fix' release, IMO. I am still mad about that. There were not a lot of neat features in it, mostly just fixes and a badly needed speed boost. That was fairly greedy and seemed petty.
I don't mind paying for 10.2 though, the update is massive (not as big a deal as say ME to XP, but a big deal none the less). Say comparable to NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 in terms of scale (as in NT 4.0 'worked', but Windows 2000 works well
The Quartz Extreme, improved Windows file sharing (no more kludgy samba command line faffing, whoo hoo, mmm gui
If they do this once a year I can live with it (which appears to be the plan). Veering off topic, the total shutoff of mac.com email has got be really pissed though. The should have at least kept forwarding avalible for a longer period and they could very well have warned people about this 6 months ago (though I guess they are counting on people having to pay to keep it on line at the last minute so as to avoid loosing email as a point of revenue).
I'm actually sucker enough to buy it as the email account has been *really* fast and reliable and I hate changing my address all the time so I will probably pay for it, I don't have a credit card but I'm worried I won't be able to pay for it before it get's shutoff because stuff like this sometimes takes a couple of months to show up in the UK (even in London).
I haven't really give a monkeys about iDisk (nice idea, not enough space and I can do this on my own BSD/Linux server anyway), but with 100 MB storage, a speed bump and an interated backup utility it's suddenly more appealing.
If you didn't ask for the features and you don't want the features, then what's the problem?
And why do you suppose 10.1.5 won't be supported? Because you just learned that Microsoft has dropped support for Windows 95 and Windows 98?
GPL Deconstructed
As I see it, you really, really want to upgrade for some reason, but just not enough to pay for it. Well, it sounds like upgrading isn't worth it to you.
Where's the problem here? It's not like they're disabling your computer all of a sudden. Just don't upgrade.
The online petition to oppose the new .Mac charges is available at here.
My 2 cents: The email accounts should remain free. The rest can be value-add fee-based.
Peruse groups.google and you will see people who have the t39 working on cingular's GPRS network. It really depends on where you are in the cingular network and lying about what your phone is.
I've had a t39 for a long time and used it on the Cingular crapfest... but unforunately they are seemingly taking forever getting GPRS going in SF. As far as syncing, as long as you get an approved bluetooth solution or have infrared the t39 will sync.
--- I do not moderate.
Excellent. I was actually getting really annoyed that straight-ahead printing stuff didn't get fixed, since it wasn't listed as a headline "feature" even though it was a fix for a show-stopping "lack of feature", as it were. I could have dug a bit deeper into the Apple site and found this out, but the ol' cable modem seemed remarkably slow this morning for some odd reason...
Babar
Also, for those whiny babies complaining "I bought a Mac last week and I'm pissed now!", shut the hell up. Practically everyone on the planet knew Apple was going to talk about Jaguar and a butload of other stuff at the MacWorld conference. Anyone with half a brain would have waited a bit longer until the conference, if nothing else in the hopes of a price drop on the computer itself. I bought a new G4 a month and a half ago, and I'm not going to complain about the Jaguar price.
Actually, 10.2 does fix USB printing as has now been pointed out. But I don't want to get a brand new printer since the old one works just fine, was a Mac-compatible (recommended even!) USB printer, and worked perfectly under Mac OS 9. Unless the CUPS stuff is also made available under 10.1.5, though, the only Apple-blessed way to get USB print sharing working again will be to upgrade, and probably upgrade both boxes. Which is the source of my pain...
Babar
It's a huge update, but since you just bought your PowerBook, you qualify for the "Up to Date" program. There should be some documentation on how to use it, that came with your PowerBook.
A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
How many times has AOL blocked Trillian? That's why iChat is the first 'compatible' with AIM. AOL considers iChat as an official AIM client; they say the exact opposite about Trillian.
What's up with Job's quote:
'...Apple is now the biggest supplier of Unix-based operating systems in the world -- "bigger than Sun, bigger than Linux" -- Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced during his Macworld keynote speech on Wednesday...'
Anybody buy this?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
That's odd. I walked into the Apple Store in the Mall of America and said "Hi, I need the 10.1 upgrade" and got handed the package and was in and out of the store (without paying, I might add) within 5 minutes. It would have been shorter but I had to stop and drool over the large flat panel display...
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
I just called the Apple store at 1-800-my-apple, and the rep told me that the upgrade proof of purchase coupons you get when you buy a new machine will not apply to this upgrade, so it's $129 across the board, (unless you buy your machine starting today, and it doesn't already have Jaguar installed).
She told me Apple is taking comments from (potential) customers to gauge their reactions, and that it could possibly result in changes to the plan. (Remember that the upgrade isn't actually available until August 24...plenty of time for them to change the pricing policy).
In my case, I told them I was a "switcher" who has bought two new macs (an iMac and an iBook) in the last four months, and I was very unhappy that I'll need to pay $260 to upgrade them to 10.2. I suggested that they should at least honor the coupons and give a price break for them.
Call them and tell them what you think...maybe we can make a difference.
Wow, it turns out that, all this time, Apple's really just been interested in making money. The bastards.
--Bradley
The local Apple store won't get the new iPods for PC until next month. Anyone know the lead time to get one directly from Apple's Web Store?
The wide-screen iMac specs page [apple.com] gives the native
;-)
resolution of the 17" iMac as 1440x900. This is a 16:10 display ratio, which is about as
close as any monitor I know of gets to the
Golden Ratio [surrey.ac.uk], (1 + sqrt(5)/2), or approximately 1.618.
Clearly Apple is trying to channel Pyramid Power [geocities.com]
to sell more computers.
Uh... no. 1.618 is just the aspect ratio of most film stock.
Movie makers knew about that ratio a long time before apple even existed.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
iWant to iGet iMyself iOne of iThose iNew 17" iMacs.
Back up...
98 to 98SE was FREE. I got the disk directly from Microsoft for the cost of shipping and the CD... $7.
Defecation occurs.
A very strong arguement can be made that no matter how they price the .mac service it is going to be an Apple add all the time. Every email sent and web page built with a mac.com address is in essence an advertisement for Apple. I think that providing a minimal free or extrememly cheap ($5-10 per year for example) service in addition to the premium one would be the best way to leverage this advertising budget.
Trying to make money from your advertising is tricky business and can backfire big time.
You're saying Microsoft doesn't charge a lot for a development package? Last time I checked, Visual Studio was $600.
Yes to all your tools questions. XFree86 runs on top of OS X, either in Rootless or Rooted mode (separate screen or local screen). If you've ever used Cygwin on Windows, you'll know what rootless X-Windows are like. Rooted is just like linux, with your window manager and everything. Speaking of Window Managers, Gnome, Enlightenment, fvwm, fvwm2, and quite a few more are available. I haven't seen a KDE port yet (probably because of QT), so that isn't available. If you're feeling extremely zealous, you can run a window manager on top of OS X and arrange your iconbars and stuff so it is usable.
It is also possible to run Gnome on top of OS X, with Gnome's title bar underneath the OS X menu bar. I had to move the mac icon bar to the right side, but I don't believe the latest versions of gnome require this.
Python comes as both a Fink module (essentially a debian package manager file, so probably a tarball as well) and a Framework, depending on how you aquire it. Jaguar is supposed to include Python. Perl is on all distrobutions. TCL/TK can be downloaded and installed.
just gnot like gnu or gnome and most certainly knot like kde kdesktop which is trying to konquery the world as well.
:) heck, i could still use my 486 if i wanted to, we just got suckered into this performance/spec/mhz war.
everything is drawn out in the pc world
if it isn't one thing it is another
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
This isn't something that I ever saw. What I did see was the Windows 98 update CD that included the service pack and the security patches to that point, and I think also IE5.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I mean, youare talking to people in a community who think it's cool to serve web pages on a Mac Plus.
You start talking about how long a computer stays useful and decide to get in a pissing contest with the Mac and you're goin down hard. Part for part upgradability I'll take a clone PC built on my kitchen table any day but for getting the most life out of the parts you bought when it was new nothing touches an Apple.
A 3 year old PC (RUNNING WINDOWS - pick your current version, this works in any era) is damned near useless. Of course take that same box and remove the OS and you got some life left in it but then that's not where the comparison lies really is it?
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Correction:
Microsoft has terminated support for Windows 95. Windows 98 and 98SE will be supported through the end of June, 2003, almost a year away. Yes, it's a bit short considering the number of people still running Win98, but it is still supported.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Thank you for the suggestion. I will give it a try. I hope it is that simple.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
It is just not acceptable to change conditions like that after people have given out their supposedly free email addresses. It makes people feel that they can't trust Apple to stand by their promises.
The issue is not charging for value added services, the issue is charging for email addreses that used to be free. At $100/year, most people would not have started using iTools; many people will now have to pay because changing their email address is more painful, not because they like iTools so much that they are willing to pay that kind of money.
No, actually I am running a 500MHz G3 iBook with 384 MB RAM. A lot of the problem is that IE is a hog on OS X for some reason.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
The list of new UNIX things in 10.2: http://www.apple.com/macosx/jaguar/unix.html
Development environment information: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/projectbuilde r.html
The list of UNIX things in the current OS (10.1.5): http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
The tools that OS X ships with are a superset of what you get with most Linux distribs, so I think you'd be pleasantly surprised.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Actually with the XP Pro upgrade CD I believe you needed a 2k cd, you weren't allowed to 'upgrade' from 98, or ME, and maybe not even NT 4 and less. I'd have to check to be sure about the exact rules, but it was pretty restrictive as far as where you could update from. With 2000 you could stick in a win 95 cd and 'update' to 2000.
What?
My anecdotal evidence is that beachball sightings are much more common with G3 than G4 computers, and much more likely if you have less than 512MB of RAM.
this is exactly why I upgraded my Beige G3 with a 500MHz G4 and 1 gig of RAM. Like magic! No more spinny beach ball!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Call up and bitch. I'm sure they'll cut you some slack.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Apple stated that only computers bought on this date or later would be able to upgrade for $20, the rest of us suckers pay full price.
--
Insert Witty Sig Here
I think it's interesting how people are calling Jaguar just a "bug fix release" or "service pack" even though there are a TON of new features and archetecural improvements running behind the scenes.
Apple is one of the few non-Unix companies that still cares about a semi-consistant versioning scheme:
v A.B.C
A=Major release number, new paradigms, etc...
B=Minor release number, incremental improvements
C=Bug fix release
In the past, Apple has bumped the minor release to x.5 when some sort of major incompatability occurred (ie, OS 8.5 was the first to require a PowerPC Mac). They didn't do that here, but I wonder people would be as bent out of shape about it if Apple *had* called this Mac OS X 10.5. Or maybe Mac OS X 2002? Compare the product on a feature-level, not a numeric level.
Apple usually isn't willing to inflate a version jump for marketing purposes:
- Mac OS 6 to 7 was a giant jump in terms of structure.
- Mac OS 7.1.1 to 7.5 wasn't quite as big, but did greatly expand the "experience" with new technologies (and doubled the distribution size).
- Mac OS 7.6.1 to 8.0 had a major UI overhaul, mutli-threaded Finder, and major architectural re-writes.
- Mac OS 8.5 began life as 8.2 until it hit beta and it was decided that it would be PowerPC only. (Even though it was 8.6 that deserved the monkier thanks to the new microkernel.)
- Mac OS 9 was Mac OS 8.7 until a beta as well, although that was probably to help maintain a clear separation between OS 9 (designed to work with X) and 8 (not).
- Even though OS X is in roman numerals, it's still numerically just OS 10.x.
Compare this to Microsoft (and, by following MS's example, a majority of the Windows software out there) which gets away with murder by renaming a bug patch according to the current year and can charge an arm and a leg for it. Even MS realized that Windows 98 was just Windows 4.1 (and Office 98 contains Word 7.0).
Could someone please tell me where the hell Windows Media Player 8 went though?
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
just gotta gloat a little:2 637
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=26184&cid=284
just my blog and pix
Go to the federal employee store. Click that nice shiny "I Accept" button. Buy Jaguar for $69.50. Enjoy chewing satisfaction.
There's a GSM sleeve-thingy for the iPaq that turns your PDA into a tri-band GSM/GPRS phone with Bluetooth. It's expensive, but it works. When I looked at it the first time, I though, ``That's way too bulky to be practical. I'd hate to hold that up to my ear.'' Then I realized that it would stay in my backpack all the time, while I just wore the wireless headset in my ear. It's technically a phone, but a different sort from anything I've used before.
My friend in the next office has one. He's in a meeting right now, so I can't get the details.
I just get annoyed with the whole Microsofty feel of the thing. (I mean my iPaq now.) I wish Apple would release an embedded version of Darwin specifically for things like PDAs. Put an Aqua UI on it, and Rendezvous and Bluetooth in it, then a GSM adapter, and I'd be in heaven. No more of that ugly ``Pocket PC'' user interface.
Steve has a clue. It's called Marketing. In one statement, he's quelled the concerns of the PHB's who hear they "need" Unix/Linux. Apple/Steve just said that he sells more than anyone else, including that "Lie-nix" stuff that someone on his staff told him about.
To a PHB, Linux could be an OS, a company, or a dessert topping. Steve just said he does Unix better and sells more than anyone else.
It's marketing.
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
First of all I want to point out that Apple tries to bring powerful technology to the masses by reducing unnecessary complexity. Something I don't look down on. In fact, I get annoyed when something is more complex than it has to be. That focus means, however, that they will hype things like iTunes, not the included Perl 5.6. On the other hand, they seem to be very hard at work at creating the best possible environment for developers, something which indeed was lacking in the past. But I digress and offer my assistance:
To get to the page you seek, you go to Apple.com and click on 'developer' (top right). The page that comes up contains links to documentation and sample code for when you decide to try out Cocoa, a login button for the developer programs (there is a free one that allows you to download the developer tools and other stuff) and an intro-page for programmers. You'll be very interested in that page since it contains links to various documents (the 'essential reading') on the technical underpinnings of OS X. You'll want to read up on that to understand the way things work. Next stop might be the page specific to Unix. You'll see that a few major Unix-apps are being named, but alas, no mention of python or tcl/tk. Fortunately, the page does contain a link to the Fink package manager (based on apt-get). You can find many more packages there, including a (optionally) rootless version of XFree. It allows you to use your familiar X apps next to OS X apps (be sure to use Orobor to have your X apps use Aqua widgets).
I don't have a list of all the Unix software that is standard on OS X or that you can download, but I don't think that you'll find any of the more popular tools missing. Given the number of Unix developers and users switching to OS X, I expect OS X to become a first class citizen in the Unix world quite soon. As of yet, you might still have to change paths in makefiles to get the less common software to configure, make, make install. I don't think an experienced Unix-guy like you will have a lot of problems with that however. In return for these minor issues, you will (hopefully) have a great experience using OS X.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
At this link there is a petition going to ask Apple to reconsider the $100/year fee for those who thought Apple was serious when they said "email address for life".
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
iTunes 3 lets you merge tracks when you import, and you have been able to get near seamless playthrough by turning on crossfade and setting the time to 0 since iTunes 2.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
Why would I want to spend $369 dollars for a bluetooth headset
when I can spend $29.99 for a non-bluetooth headset?
or $399 for a bluetooth HP color inkjet
When I can spend $129.99 for a non-bluetooth HP color inkjet?
I don't think I'm inconvenienced by $200 or $340 to have a cord.
I think my sig more than says it all about these new announcements from Apple.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
You aren't forced to, now, pay Apple for 10.2; you can just, well, install FreeBSD. Or Darwin at least. Or Yellow Dog Linux. Or Debian. Or whatever. Why does exiting Apple mean going for cheaper and lower quality components? You can still run your iBook or 17" iMac with a conventional Linux or BSD based OS...
Now, as I see it, what you're trying to do is avoid becoming an addicted zealot.
That is understandable. I loathe myself for lusting after a 20gb iPod and a 17" iMac or a 23" Cinema HD Display.
But... it almost seems that you're overcompensating in your actions.
"Hm, I don't want to be prey to AppleLust and AppleZealotry, so I'll get rid of my Mac altogether."
Is this like losing weight through purging? Or controlling sexual desire through abstinence?
The weakness is in you, not in Apple. Getting rid of the Apple hardware doesn't remove the fact that you still have that weakness in the first place.
The difference (for me) is that I recognize I have the weakness (AppleLust), but as much as I *want*, I don't let it compel me to instant spot purchases or decisions.
GPL Deconstructed
No, that was System III. (There were, I think, UNIX 4.x releases used inside AT&T, but they were never released as "System IV"; they went straight from "System III" to "System V".)
As a shareholder, I'm not going to complain about the free (as in beer) services going away. I'd actually like to know exactly how much it cost Apple to host 2+ million email addresses and file space, and how much they'll be saving (and earning) by going to a pay service.
As a consumer, it's quite a disappointment. Having a mac.com address was a nifty thing, and I was just starting to use iDisk and the free Web hosting aspects of the iTools system. It's a shame it's going away.
As an entry level system admin with a smattering of WebObjects experience, I should think it would be possible to remove the iDisk and Web aspects of an iTools account, and leave just the free email service available.
As a loyal Mac user, I'm surprised that Apple would have nuked such a popular system as iTools without offering something, even of a lesser quality, in it's place.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
I'm wondering if this means they've fixed the long-standing BSD (and therefore OS X) password issue?
(Once word of that gets around we'll get a few points back on the stock, right? Right?)
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Actually, XP is Windows NT 5.1. Windows 2000 is Windows NT 5.0. Far from "virtually 100% new code."
Don't you know never to buy anything before a keynote?
Uh, that's about 0.854. We're looking for a number around 1.618. Try (1. + 5.**0.5)/2. It is the number Phi such that Phi = 1 + 1/Phi.
From scratch for $500 or under, and I'll buy your precious OS... Otherwise, Apple holds a monopoly on the PowerPC market, and in addition, an unfair and artificially inflated pricing scheme for their hardware...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
What do you mean by "almost"? They are completely different products. XP is NT and ME is DOS 7 with a pretty shell.
Well, then just give me the powerbook now, because they're not going to change it. They're not going to back down because people are pissed about it. I seriously doubt that they're stupid enough to think that no one would be pissed once they announced it. They probably figured that the benefit outweighed the cost, same as every other company makes business decisions.
If you had 10.0, you got a sheet with three coupons on it. That's all you needed. I mailed one in to Apple with 19.95 and got the CD.
I also walked into CompUSA and asked them for the update and got one with no proof of purchase, for free, although one of those coupons would have been the all the proof needed.
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
Gee, I don't know. My Epson Stylus Photo 870 works great with OS X. It worked the first time I set it up and has worked fine for the past year. Zero problems. What bugs are you talking about? Maybe you have a printer with no driver? That's not a bug.
Also, I was at the Expo today, and 10.2 is MUCH faster... It felt like I was using OS 9, only smoother! This thing rocks.
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
2*$129 = $258.
Ummmmm, you can buy one copy and install on both Macs.. what are you, simple? Apple doesn't use unlocking codes like MS.
You are actually a Windows user, aren't you?
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
Why would you have used all three? And on what?
My G4 came with OS 9.0.4. I was able to get 9.1 with a coupon, but not OS X.
So I bought OS X 10.0, and used one of the three coupons in that to get 10.1.
You can not go from 10.1.x to 10.2 for $19.95 unless you just bought a new Mac that came with 10.1 and has the coupons. I heard the words come from Steve Jobs' mouth myself. So the left over coupons are useless anyway.
But then Windows 95 to Windows 98 was a paid update, and it's still Windows 4...
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
You can get the upgrade for $19.95
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
Marketing doesn't have to mean treating your potential customers like idiots.
The point of this now rantish response is to say that 0.1% of these gee whiz tech demos are going to turn into products. Just because Steve Jobs is on stage doesn't mean it isn't vapor ware.
There is a distinct difference between Apple and everyone else out there that does this. It's why there are a gazillion rumor sites and people get up at all hours to watch the keynote.
When Steve or Avie or Phil talk about a product, a technology, or some other thing, you WILL be able to buy it in short order and it WILL work as demonstrated. Apple has not done a vaporware announcement in the last 3 years at least (last one was Rhapsody which begat Mac OS X which was slightly pre-Jobs). If you see it on stage, you can own it usually within 2 months.
Jaguar will ship on Aug 24 and if you are seeded with Mac OS X betas, you can do it today with the usual beta caveat. The phone he demoed on was the Ericsson T68, which you can buy now (a friend of mine just got one the other day.) It'll also work with at least a dozen other phones and bluetooth equipped PDAs.
I challenge anyone here to point to anything that Apple has mentioned even in passing that will be the next great thing even 3 months out. Nothing that was shown today will ship later than Sept.
No mention of G5s, or future applications, or devices. No tablets that will someday revolutionize your life. No flying cars or vacations on the moon. These guys generally don't even hint at products that they'll ship in 12 *hours* let alone operating systems that will slice cheese in 2006. Bottom line, if Apple talks about it, it'll ship, it'll ship soon, and it'll work.
Instant gratification is a rare thing in this industry, and you get it frequently with Apple. If you can't download it today, you can go to the store and order it today. We got the first mention of iTunes 3 today. I downloaded it no more than 45 minutes later and it does a few things not mentioned in the show. I'm thrilled.
I'm sorry that Microsoft and Sun and all the others have led you to believe that the industry is filled with liars and false prophets. If you would like a change of that view, look at Apple more closely. They don't supposedly have a super-duper tablet shipping next year for $499, but if they've told you that you can put a printer on the network and have your computer identify and configure it automatically, you can bank on it. It's worth the premium to have products that ship and that work as advertised.
This is why people say they hate surprises.
.NET attack on our wallets has us all edgy, and they pull this stupid .mac stunt and blindside loyal users with this change.
What bugs me about this is that Apple flubbed the spin by being all secret about it. If they would have leaked how much usage had exceeded expectations, then how much of a drain this was causing, I think people would accept this better. Now we feel hoodwinked and betrayed.
On the other hand, they *have* given me a little over two months to clean out my iDisk and shut down my @mac.com addy. It would be nice if they had offered a bare-bones email POP/SMTP, but I've got other adresses and storage possibilities.
So this is one of the moments where I really hate Mr. Jobs' love of secrecy and surprises. Microsoft's
I may be preaching to the unconverted or the converted because it doesn't matter.
When did it become everyone's god given right to have free e-mail? (although Apple will still give you free e-mail just no free iDisk or free HomePage, etc.)
Are there any other providers of free e-mail without obnoxious ads everywhere? not to my knowledge.
You don't have to pay for anything. you don't even have to upgrade to 10.2, though you'll be laughed at by your peers for having ignored the best new technology ever to have come out of any OS provider.
Why does everyone figure they deserve a free ride? OSS is wonderful, i use it every day, but I also contribute back to the community. Do you?
Linux and other OSS solutions aren't out there for leeches, they are out there for contributers. The reason they are free is to entice new contributors and reward old hats by improving on what they started, to the benefit of everyone.
"I for sure am not giving you that address, as I do not want your spam into that address - not any more"
Guess you're not as in to the free exchange of information as you proclaim... hypocrisy at it's finest ladies and gentlemen.
BTW if you don't want that mac.com address to close take another look at your account site in a couple of weeks and sign up for the free e-mail service that will be available, well before the for fee service takes over.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
One of iPhoto's strengths was the ease with which non-computer people could put up their photos on their home page. Without iTools, that goes away. The integration with iTools was a big part of making the iMac usable and interesting for home users, and Apple made a big deal out of that and out of the fact that it was free.
Because the 10.1 upgrade was only and upgrade CD (and did a full install anyway) I felt it was it a pain the ass to install and meant I had two CD's, rather than one, to take care of (when they could have had a simple exchange program. Yes, better than Microsoft, but not as good as say, Sun. :)
Re: Windows 98 & USB support actually you can get USB support in Windows 98 initial release and even Windows 95 both via a free download from Microsoft (though most devices *said* Windows 98 was required for USB support most actually worked fine in an appropriately upgraded Windows 95).
Your right about MS being expensive for upgrades. A Windows 98 CD was about 120 UKP and the upgrade was about 70 UKP, so I bought the upgrade (hey I had just bought my first place and was earning only 12K UKP a year in my first 'proper' job:). Now I didn't have Windows 95 or 3.1 CD and needed to do a fresh install on my brand new x86 games boxen but I was feeling weasely.
The 'required specs' for the upgrade effectively said Windows 3.1 or newer required, or something to that effect. Now as I said I didn't have Windows 95 or 3.1 CD's, but I did have a licensed SoftPC running 3.1 on my Mac, so I called Microsoft tech support, they agreed that was legally within the term's of the license for the CD and without any argument gave me a full license (non upgrade key) for the CD over the phone- meaning that I could now do upgrades as well as clean installs with it. Mmm technicalites.
I really, really hope that this is Python2.1, otherwise my Zope install will be broken. And as that's what I run my personal site from, I won't be pleased.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
the best one i heard was from a friend using the first pet name - mothers maiden name,
It still reminds me of the Adobe upgrade to InDesign fiasco. Adobe came out with InDesign 1.0, which was exciting, but still very horribly beta quality. There was a long list of hugely important bugs (I couldn't even create a document and directly save it -- required a workaround), and we awaited a bug fix desperately.
Then Adobe announced InDesign 1.5 with a $100 upgrade price and most users went ballistic. Yes, they'd added a lot of features, but in order to fix these huge bugs, we had to buy the extra features too! Enough loud shouting and downright angry rants got the price down to $29 for us.
That's like this OS X upgrade (except you did have a couple post 1.0 fixes). You want the bugs and exceptional slowness fixed, but you have to buy a whole bunch of other stuff in order to get it.
I noticed it too. The consensus seems to be that the new font is Adobe Myriad Roman. I think it's just... too boring. It lacks wit. I hope they wise up.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
And I'm not even Trolling! I am really jealouse, I have been dreaming about a setup like that for a while now! I think possibly the only thing that would be more cooler(not necessarliy more usefull) would be a cellphone/bluetooth card that would alow you to just have a palmpilot, and a bluetooth headset. Possibly the addition of voice dialing like on that stupid ('pet-za' comercial, they work better than advertised btw) that and a bluetooth home phone and car phone, that would switch you between the different phones based on location.
I hear that. I too was dreaming of a setup like this, not even realizing that it existed until I finally decided to join the 20th century and get a cell phone. :) I've got an Ericsson T60d (possibly the phone fubar104 has?) for which I can purchase a bluetooth module and a bluetooth headset. The phone also comes with voice dialing and, when using a handsfree setup, a more full voice command system allowing you to do most of your basic features such as answer and reject calls, etc. I haven't used much more than the voice dialing features yet, as I haven't purchased a headset yet. Also, the bluetooth module and headset are unfortunately pretty expensive for a poor college student. On the plus side, however, this phone does come with a standard 2.5mm headset jack, unlike a lot of other phones, so any old $15 headset will work with it. Still, it's nice to be able to dream and imagine that if I somehow came into a lot of money, I would be able to afford the bluetooth module and headset. :)
One thing the parent didn't mention, is that using bluetooth, the phone can be used as a wireless modem for your laptop. (OK, so I think it can, but I'll admit to not knowing a whole lot about bluetooth, so somebody please correct me if I'm wrong on this.)
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
Quartz Extreme is nothing like Direct X. They are 'chalk and cheese', to use an English expression.
Open GL is far more comparable to Direct X than Quartz Extreme is is. Direct X is about speeding up graphics performace, primarily in games and 3D applications (much like Open GL).
Quartz Extreme is about the entire Windowing environment and drawing *everything* in Open GL, Direct X does not do this - having Direct X installed does not mean that your Windows, Icons, Desktop and all your applications are displayed using hardware acceleration.
over to a Thinkpad A31 from my present Mac. Hasta luego, Apple!
I'm OS-agnostic, pretty much, and three of my friends were convinced by the "Switch" ads to go to the local SuperMegaComputerCenterStore and look at Apple product on Monday. They convinced me to go along with them.
.Mac and the stupid free e-mail accounts going away and Apple charging for the bugfixes. The one who already ordered canceled his order and the other two are not considering Macs anymore. Which is somewhat sad for Apple's marketing department, if you think about it: here they managed to lure in three customers, fully ready to plop down their dosh for product, and then by going on the cheap and behaving like other computer companies, Apple lost a couple of points of differentiation that it sorely needed to help justify its pricing. The customers saw that mac.com email as a kind of exclusive club that only Macintosh owners could join, a paid-for fringe benefit that came with the higher hardware price. Likewise the insanely great software and free bugfixes. Take it all away and all you have to compete with is quality, which doesn't necessarily win in this marketplace.
All of them were sold on buying Macintoshes Monday night (not by my efforts, just by sitting in front of them and using them.) One of the three ordered one that night for pickup Friday since only a demo was in stock of what he wanted, the other two were going to wait and see if they could get better deals after Wednesday.
Then they heard about
For one thing, Red Hat 6 was a mature OS when released (for free) as release code. OS X 10.0, on the other hand was beta code that cost $129.
I wouldn't say I'd be paying for features I "don't need", I'd say I'm paying for features I ALREADY paid for... Aqua was supposed to be high-performance all along, not as a $129 upgrade. Carbon was supposed to work all along, not as a $129 upgrade.
I use OS X.1.5 exclusively on my mac, (mandrake supporting samba on my music server) and I can tell you there are many aspects of this OS that need work, that some parts of OS X are production-ready, some are not. Carbon libraries, for example, have several flaws...The first that comes to mind is the one that makes Mozilla OS X crash and burn if you launch it from a UFS partition.
Yes, it is a good OS concept. Yes, it "looks" good. Yes, some of the functionality is there, BUT, a lot of basic stuff simply isn't.
Printing, for a second example, is a disaster for OS X users... Better carefully test a printer before you deploy it in production with OS X. Variably, the new drivers: Don't exist; Do but have flaws that make output inconsistent or; (occasionally, in Candyland) Work perfectly when released. And there's no hard and fast rules, either. Your $1000 printer is as likely to print reliably in OS X as your $50 one.
I have one of each, and neither one prints worth a shit from OS X. I guess you could say that I personally have a 0% chance of printing reliably from OS X as it stands today.
Who did what now?
I think you're totally right here.
The mac.com address was a great viral marketing tool for Apple. It's essentially like wearing a t-shirt 24 hours a day that says, "I own a Mac and love it. Ask me questions about switching."
Now what happens when people drop their mac.com addresses in droves, angry with Apple for their bait-and-switch?
Apple has earned so much goodwill over the past few years for their embrace of UNIX and Open Source technologies. I guess they think it's time to burn some karma.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Apple is the first one to tell you not to use UFS in OS X. There's no reason to use it. HFS+ is better.
Printing, for a second example, is a disaster for OS X users...
I have a two year old, discontinued Epson Sylus Photo 870, and it works as well in OS X as in 9. better actually, because in 9 if you used background printing, the Epson monitor would usually crash.
It must be your installation of OS X... the UFS partition is a tip off...
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol