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PowerBook, Because Lives Are On The Line
WCityMike writes "Major Shawn Weed, an intelligence planner with the Third Infantry Division, eschewed his Panasonic Toughbook because it wasn't fast enough in processing giant satellite and reconnaissance images. He put in a requisition for and received a PowerBook G4, the only Apple currently being used in the entire Middle East theater. 'Frankly, lives are in the balance here, so the quicker I can get stuff done accurately, the better,' Weed says."
I think you may have just proved yourself wrong ... The Baked Apple still worked after being baked, so the PowerBook should be able to easily stand up the much lower temperatures of the desert.
A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
OT, but...
I'll be the one pulling the laptop out from underneath the Major's corpse trying to figure out where the heck is the second mouse button went.
Then just plug in a standard USB two button mouse and be done with it. I'd recommend a scroll mouse, personally.
I'm using a Logitech optical scroll mouse right now on my iMac. No drivers to install or anything. The right button brings up context menus on just about anything, and AppleWorks is the only program I have that doesn't respond to the scroll wheel.
I love the look and feel of the Apple 'Pro Mouse', and I'd pay Apple $50 for a two button scroll wheel version, but I'm perfectly happy to put up with this one piece of ugly beige plastic to get its superior functionality.
If you say, "now I'll be modded down because of X", I'll happily oblige.
Um... well, the fastest Toughbooks out there are like 1.8GHz P4s.
If he's utilizing Altivec optimized code (quite possible), it's quite possible that his 1GHz PowerBook can outperform a 1.8GHz P4.
Which tasks are Altivec optimized? Photoshop, for one. Certain encryption/decryption tasks are another. Certain video tasks, as well.
It's certainly within the realm of likely possibility, given the description that "Weed declined to specify what he does exactly, but said he works with giant satellite and reconnaissance images,"
Sure, a P4 is fast but when you're talking about a 800MHz difference, the other things (like cache, registers, Altivec, pipeline depth, etc) make more of a difference.
Now, if they were talking about 2.4GHz P4Ms or 3.0GHz P4 (desktops), that would be different. However, Toughbooks don't scale that fast (yet).
GPL Deconstructed
I have had a Ti G4 for about 8 months. It has not stood up to travel and mobile use at all well. It has had the CD unit replaced (under warranty); currently it does not charge the battery and that will be fixed when I get back to somewhere that has a Mac repair facility; it did not do at all well to operating in high temps; the case is malformed, the paintwork does not stand up to normal use and the hinges are fragile, plus the screen ripples (despite being carried inside its own protective case inside a large carry-on and always carried with me). Overall, it is a good looking but quite fragile piece of kit.
On the other hand I had a G3 Wallstreet for 5 years and it looked and operated as good as new at the end when I passed it on. I wish sometimes that I still had it with me.
Apple puts out lovely stuff but sometimes design flair and form is not sacrificed to necessary function. I will have to think very hard before I spend so much money again on a Mac beauty. And don''t get me started on function versus form of the iPod. I'll wait until a degree of everyday ruggedness is built in again for my next Mac laptop.
I wish the US military all the best and hope they go with Mac. But . . .
-braxton
Fortunately, Macs are damn near infinitely easier to figure out how to operate than PC's.
That was not the point I was trying to make - for Photoshop on a laptop, it is easier and faster than most of the alternatives - but it is different - menu behavior specifically. I traveled with a Tadpole (sparc based laptop running Solaris) for a while. We all ran the same app server / ldap / database, but most of the SE's were lost trying to start things up as soon as they saw it was not Windows (or Linux for that matter). With gobs of RAM I was able to get more work done than the others who had to drag around multiple standard issue Dells that had a physical limit of 512M RAM at the time. When I got pulled into another project leaving my environment (which was a fair mimic of the production system), chaos ensued. Solaris was just enough of a curve ball to miss the deadline. It is not like they were not qualified, the tools were just a bit different.
In the mean time, he's going to get his work done quickly enough to save lives (US soldiers and Iraqi innocents.)
This is a bit of a straw man, but I'll bite. The reality is the US Forces have a limited budget. More lives could be saved by having better satellite uplinks, better lenses on the recon equipment, tanks that went faster on less fuel, more powerful targeting lasers... the list goes on and on. Every standardization is a compromise somewhere down the line. You are a former RATT operator, so why did they not hand everyone an updated set rather than tuning both the old and new series so they could co-operate? Budget would be my guess. I suspect your CO would also have you peeling potatoes if you swapped personal equipment for older gear 'because it would save lives'.
I'm not comforted that your platform bigotry extends so far that it has you placing more importance on some tired two button mouse arguement than on people's lives.
Again - this is not about mac's sux, bill rulz! In an environment where you have to work with a fluid team, you cannot always select what you consider the perfect tool for the job.
Damn mods smoking crack again...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
is defined as: The author attacks an argument which is different from, and usually weaker than, the opposition's best argument.
Solaris was just enough of a curve ball to miss the deadline. It is not like they were not qualified, the tools were just a bit different.
Talking about straw men, you are equating the ease of use of a Macintosh with the ease of use of a Solaris. My 74 yo, life-time housewife mother-in-law bought an iMac because she wanted to see what this internet thing was all about. She had it up and running without any help. I wonder how she'd do with a Solaris. You are also comparing the ease of operating the same program (Photoshop) on two different platforems with the ease of manipulating the same database on two platforms. What client did you use on both platforms? Was it the same? Was it command line? If so, do you believe that comparing Photoshop with Photoshop is the same as comparing the command line environments of unix with that of NT?
Photoshop on a laptop, it is easier and faster than most of the alternatives ? but it is different ? menu behavior specifically
If you extend this logic, this means that if the entire army is not on the same version of Excel a replacement who is use to Excel 2000 on NT won't be able to do his job on Excel XP on a faster computer. Back to the software at hand, I am sure the amount of time it would take to find the Adjust Levels menu item on a Mac when you are used to finding the command on a PC will be negated by the speed difference. In the past, I have had no difficulty using PC versions of Mac software when it's required. I'm reasonably certain that professional users of PC technology can make the transition.
I suspect your CO would also have you peeling potatoes if you swapped personal equipment for older gear 'because it would save lives'.
Ummm...no. He would have had me do extra duty if I made modifications he didn't allow. We are talking about a rear echelon office analyst who has traded a chair in some Brigade or Division headquarters for a stool in a tent with a little more sand around it. You honestly think this Major snuck the Powerbook overseas? At that level, things are much more flexible than at the infantry squad level. Hell even our Batallion Admin office was a mixed platform environment. BTW There was a healthy mix of technology at all levels of RATT operations from Batallion level all the way up to Command level. We were expected to know how to use all of it. Some units still used Korean war era technology with Vietnam era encryption. The problem is, you are thinking about this as if you knew what you were talking about, and you don't.
In an environment where you have to work with a fluid team, you cannot always select what you consider the perfect tool for the job.
But he did, and his superiors let him because they saw merit in his logic, and the people who work with him are not as dumb as you think. You are acting like he's using Filemaker while everyone else is using Foxpro, when he's actually using two versions of the same program, a situation you can easily find on identical hardware.