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Mac Pro, Mac OS X Virtual Desktops Announced at WWDC
haym37 writes "Of the many announcements yet to come at WWDC, the first is the announcement of the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro contains two Intel Xeons, up to 3 GHz, and is supposed to be 1.6x to 2.1x the speed of the PowerMac G5 quad. It can hold up to 2 TB of internal storage and up to 16 GB of memory. The graphics card can be up to a Radeon x1900 or an FX4500. The case will be the same as the PowerMac." MacRumors.com is providing running coverage from the floor (Note: "[U]pdates will be automatically inserted at the top of the updates section. Do not reload manually."), including another announcement that OS X will include virtual desktops. What a great idea!
I'd just like to see more OSX capability in GNUSTEP, so that we can have a free and open OSX as we're getting a free and open Windoze in ReactOS.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
I'll go through my impressions mostly in order (I'm writing this in TextEdit as I follow the keynote). Not much surprise in the Mac Pro department (although it's nice to hear that they are actually cheaper). The pure 64-bit OS was predicted and is unsurprising. I like the little jabs at Microsoft. It's one thing to say "MS steals from us" but to put up comparison shots is just great, after all the features are just implemented so closely. The price comparisons were neat, but I wonder how long they will hold (I don't think Dell will take it in stride, their prices will get adjusted I'm betting).
I've gotta say I love the idea of Time Machine. I'm glad they put that in there. Considering how little hard drive space the average person uses compared to how much space is in new computers, this is an excellent feature. Now I don't have to use some stupid 3rd party program any more. I question the interface a little though.
They are building Front Row into Leopard. That's kind of neat, although I don't see myself using it right now. Still, if I was in a dorm and had my iMac or something I bet it would be great.
Spaces! Seems like the true virtual desktops that everyone has been asking for. I like the idea that you can pre-create a space and then launch it and it will bring those apps up (if I'm reading about it right). That would be fantastic.
I'm glad they improved Spotlight. It is a tiny bit pokey on my 1.67 GHz G4. To use it as an application launcher is great. I used it that way for a while but it was just too slow, so I started using Quicksilver (although I don't use any of QS's advanced features). The ability to search across your home network is KILLER and would save my parents SO MUCH TIME from how they do things on Windows.
CoreAnimation looks interesting and I bet a few people will do some incredible stuff with it, although it's also one of those features I can see being abused. I found it very interesting they promoted Universal Access. You never hear about that in the Windows world (I know it's there, it just doesn't ever seem to be talked about on mainstream sites).
Moving ToDos into Mail is interesting. The idea that ToDos can be moved into multiple applications and they all talk with the same database is quite nice. I'm sure quite a few people will like the stationary idea, but to me e-mail is best as plain text. I can only see that ending up like looking at my little sister's AIM conversations. You want to talk about eye-bleeding-color-schemes (and they say men have no sense of color). Notes is great too. I've been using the scheme that I've used since I was on Windows (type them out in TextEdit or NotePad and just save 'em). Still, having the pictures in there well and making it look like the iWeb templates is nice. I haven't seen any other e-mail software really try something like that (not that I've looked).
Note: iWeb needs a SERIOUS update. It really proves the "Apple 1.0" theory.
I've got to say, these improvements to iCal and iMail just make me want a new Newton all the more. My Windows Mobile 2k3 device is just so clunky compared to iCal or the Newtons of olde.
Web Clip looks killer. That is just a great feature. I have quite a few sites where I only look at one little portion and to be able to bring up Dashboard and see that portion would be great. Only Apple seems to make it that easy for an end user. Why go search to see if someone has made the widget you need when you can do it yourself so easily? "See Grandma, computers aren't so scary."
Being able to show photos to people over an iChat chat is great.
My only real complaints with OS X as it is now are kind of minor. Dashboard sucks up WAY too much CPU (especially when starting). I'd like to see finder be multi-threaded, you can occasionally see it need it. I'd like to see a special button put on the MacBooks to activate Expose. Using F9-F12 is clumsy when F9 and F10 are already bound to something else and you have to hit "function". Using the screen corners just c
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
About time with the virtual windows! Took them long enough...all other major *nix based window managers have them. Makes their "photocopying" comment at WWDC seem double edged, eh?
Too bad about natural virtualization in OS X though. At least VM Ware is now coming to the party.
LainTheWired = isgod( int Lain, int denial, float truth)
I'm loving Boot Camp and the ability to use my Macbook Pro at home (OS X) and work (Windows XP). I had to use Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit to remap the right-hand Command key into a "delete" button so I could log into our domain...and I don't have the ability to use home/end/pgup/pgdown by depressing the fn key...which is OK since I use a bluetooth keyboard at work anyway. However, if I get some indication from Apple that they're going to provide full keyboard support for their notebooks under Windows XP, I'm definitely going to upgrade to Leopard.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I consider it a bit of a double standard to be criticizing Microsoft for "photocopying" on one hand and then unveiling a bunch of features that have been done before. Virtual desktop yes, but also the whole "time machine" which is really just a versioning system from the looks of it. VMS had that years and years ago, it's nothing new.
It just seems like they are stretching with Leopard. They promoted the hell out of tiger before the WWDC where it was first shown off, and for good reason. I personally will be sticking with Tiger till my next mac, which won't be till 2008 provided my powerbook doesn't get stolen.
Monstar L
The summary makes it sound like virtual desktops are some new and exciting idea. As the linked Wikipedia article shows, most X window managers have had this feature for at least 20 years.
...I am a bit surprised at the stagnancy that seems to be pervading Apple's style choices. Now that we've entered the Kubrick-esque world of white (or black!) plastic and brushed aluminum, it doesn't seem like the Apple line has anywhere to "evolve" to. The MacPro's case, for example, is simply the G5 tower case with another whole in it. The user experience seems to be a bit stagnant too; while I do believe that Tiger outshines Vista, and Leopard will as well, I've yet to see anything that says that Leopard will be a major leap for the end-user. Of course, I'd love to be proven wrong...
Going back to school for entry-level jobs?
Good features *should* be copied from operating system to operating system - that way everyone gets the best of what is available! Who cares who invented it first, as long as people are implimenting the slickest ideas and improving on them where possible.
I just hope they get around to copying window shading, window tabbing and focus on mouse as fast as possible.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
looks like Vista is gonna be delayed another 4 months now.
"Don't want Redmond's photocopiers started too early"
Seriously. Steve is smart NOT to show off every little detail of 10.5. Look at Microsoft, they promised so much in Longhorn/Vista, then take things out.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
I was hoping he's say the high-end will not be available until October (since I'm planning my Mac as a late-Oct birthday present to myself) and will sport a double-dose of the quad-core chips Intel is releasing in Q4.
But hey, dual 5150s for $2500? I think I might just buy that baby and an extra flat panel instead.
Start a happiness pandemic
Come on -- what's the TOP SECRET stuff? Where's built-in virtualization, or Apple's own implementation of Win32? Or the Tivo-like Front Row features?
And Leopard isn't available until Spring 2007?? Sigh.
I love my Mac, but after all the HYPE surrounding this WWDC -- this is a big disappointment. Maybe I should just avoid the Apple rumors sites from now on?
boxlight
The anticipation leading up to WWDC left a lot to be desired.. I was expecting some great new products, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Lame.
The outside of the case is almost the same as the G5 case...the inside is completely different, and has a pretty sweet setup for the drive bays, not to mention the 8 ram slots and room for a full length graphics card.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
... No iPhone or new iPod. Guess we'll have to wait for the next speech.
On the plus side, though, I hope the text-to-speech engine is now that good that you can understand that what is being said without reading it a the same time...
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
I was expecting more. Don't know how else to say it.
And I agree that if you're adding a feature that X windows has had for over a decade you shouldn't be throwing the "start your photocopier" stone at MS.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
I'm kinda disappointed that an updated line of MacBook Pros wasn't announced. (With the new 64-bit Core 2 Duo CPU, I mean.) I'm waiting for that one before considering upgrading my 1.5GHz Powerbook. To be fair, the Powerbook should probably last another year without any big problems. Even though it's not exactly the best computer for running Matlab on...
The view was horrible and the smell was even worse; Julie severely regretted becoming a proctologist.
apples page on leopard is up here
and the mac pros are here
i noticed nothing was said about the finder.. shame.
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
First of all I have to say that the specs on the new Mac Pros are great, but as I've been looking at replacing my gaming machine with a Mac Pro, I'm a little disappointed by the lack of SLI graphics support... How come Apple doesn't have an SLI or Crossfire option? This is 2006 and users want the capability of running two graphics cards, if for no other reason than the ability to dual-boot into Windows and play some games every now and then.
Too bad; I was hoping to replace my gaming machine and my Mac with a single machine that would be the best of both worlds... Looks like I'll have to wait for rev. B and hope that Apple wakes up and includes this technology.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
All the geek pr0n about the Mac Pro you need right here:
http://www.apple.com/macpro/
Nothing ironic here.
They seem to always skimp on the video cards in their high end computers. I would have expected at least a quadro card for them to compete in the workstation segment.
so it looks like Apple's Mac Pro and the new XServe are relatively powerful, etc., etc., but....
who fired their design team? I mean, Apple hasn't released a new form factor since the Mac mini... two years ago now, nearly? And I understand that there are technical challenges with making the transition to Intel, and that the Mac Pro is all new on the inside even if its little different on the outside.... but... Apple's products used to be items to be lusted over because of their looks alone.
The only new look from the Intel transition is the MacBook (not Pro) and... its almost uninspiring. Its like they took an iBook and flattened it a little... and while it is a pretty sexy form factor, its not like the days of yore when the PowerBooks were new and beautiful (and now you can get the SAME enclosure, almost unaltered, in a MacBook Pro, 3 years later), the iMac went from cute to beautiful, etc.
And I don't buy that Apple's worried about scaring away people with new form factors with the Intel transition - I mean, would anybody REALLY be that surprised by a new physical enclosure? I mean, really?
Sure, there are issues to be sorted out - MacBooks yellowing, MBPs burning at corona-like temperatures... but I feel like these are start up issues that would be the same whether Apple played it safe with new form factors or not.
So it looks like OS X is less about the new shiny than before, and their hardware's less about the shiny than before. Before, OS X and Apple's hardware were both technically advanced AND beautiful - why is Apple just saying "job's done, lets move on" with the beauty aspect?
Tim
The 30 inch Cinema Display has it's price reduced from $2499 to $1999. I don't think this was said on the keynote, but you can see it on the website.
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
Maybe I should just avoid the Apple rumors sites from now on?
+1, Insightful
This is a developer's conference, not E3.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
or the apple menu ;)
(think System 7 Era)
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
Also looks like the prices on Cinema Displays have been dropped a couple hundred bucks.
Have you seen my stapler?
Steve did say there were top secret stuff. Everything shown has good use for the developers (ie, use Core Animation, use the new built-in todo list, etc.). Obviously shown for the developers to use on the developer preview at the developer conference.
I would assume that all the fun user stuff wasn't shown due to Microsoft's "photocopiers".
Well, all in all I think it is what I expected. New MacPros, preview of Leopard with it being released this Spring (same pattern as Tiger). Now on my short list of new purchases to be made soon is a new Mac Mini. I don't need the firebreather (but BOY do I want one!).
Some Mac fan boi's are going to be disappointed they are going to say....What no iPhone? No new iPod's?? These are guys who SHOULDN'T pay attention to the WWDC. The D in WWDC means developers. IE, this isn't where consumer stuff will be introed and a iPOd is just that. With that said, loosing the good/better/best thing is the best thing I think they announced. Make one config and reduce the costs of add ins.....well they did not do that but anyway....
Looking forward to any new announcements coming in the next month or so....
Gorkman
Does anybody know if Apple made their own technology to do backups, or did they actually implement ZFS? (there were rumors that they were going to put ZFS in 10.5)
The presentation made it clear that 32bit apps would run on 64bit machines, although I hope they make it easy to support both 32bit and 64 bit machines easily. I just ordered a MacBook and I'm a little worried about how quickly the current line will become legacy machines since it is pretty certain that Apple won't be shipping 32bit Intel machines in a year and has only been shipping 32bit Intel machines for a little while.
all well... no since in worrying too much about something that might not be an issue and that you have no control over.
The sweet cards are in the BTO - but they're damn hard on the bottom line...
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Wow, what are the odds of the Apple store being down during the keynote at a major Apple event?
Someone's gonna lose their jobs over this one, lol!!
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
> Moving ToDos into Mail is interesting.
I know! I remember when Microsoft Outlook came out in the 90's with that.
> Spaces! Seems like the true virtual desktops that everyone has been asking for.
How innovative!
As for the case design, I think Apple is sticking with a good thing until people get comfortable with Intel being in a Mac. To many crazy changes all at once can really scare users, and stock holders. Having the new Intel Macs look a lot like the old ones will make sure the person feels like they are using a Mac, not a fancy PC running OS X. Bright White, Shiny Black and brushed metal, (Black, Gray, White) are newtral colors that go well with most colors and look good in most homes, offices, and dorms, to match our cultures more consertive nature, in the 90's the "Hippy" styles and colors were popular and so Apple made their computers to work with that culture. It is like from going from college to work. (For me since I graduated 2001 it makes most sience) In college you wore very libral clothings and in the Corprate enviroment you are more town down, you may still look good either way but you are more formal. The same with Apples. The early iMac (G3) were attened mostly for college students, iMac G4 was a transistion still fun but a little more formal, to the G5/Intel Mac (which I personally dont care for) while interesting and different is more of a formal design. The same with the iBook/Mac Books, Now Black was added because they sold some black iPods and they were popular so they added black to the list, and I am sure using a Black Mac Book seemed more Manly then using the white ones. Brushed Metal Systems (for their Pro Line) are attened to look somewhat intimadating, They are ment to look more powerful and used for real computing. If you were an IT Consultant and you used a Mac Book Pro that were coled like the Toilet Seat iBooks you wouldn't be taken as seriosly as if you had a Brushed metal, or having a server room that looks like candy store. Perhaps color Macs will be in the future but right now Dull/Clean colors are in.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I agree, Time Machine sounds like just VMS file versioning - but I wouldn't discount Apple bringing a lot of good UI on top of that. There's a lot of value into bringing versioning to people who otherwise would not be able to use it.
I was actually pretty glad to see Time Machine as the file versioning coming in Vista was the one thing I was wishing I could get in Leopord, and did not expect to see.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is a good full write-up of the WWDC here: http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/07/live-from-wwdc- 2006-steve-jobs-keynote/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
[re: spotlight] Imagine that... quick access to your applications, including recently used ones... Sounds an awful lot like a "Start Button" to me.
Obviously you have no idea what Spotlight does. It's a search feature, and they intend to make it more convenient to search for applications. It is NOTHING like the start menu, which basically just presents you with a list of files (and thus boils down to just another take on the Mac OS 7-9 Apple menu, speaking of photocopying OS features).
I'd guess the "recent items" feature they were referring to pushes more recently used items to the top of the list when you search.
If you downgrade the Mac Pro to the 2.0GHz configuration (two 2.0GHz dual-core Xeons), you save $300. If you downgrade the 250GB hard drive to 160GB, you save another $50, bringing the cost to $2,149. Still a little more expensive than the base $1,999 Power Mac G5, but the base Power Mac G5 didn't have two dual-core processors (just one dual-core G5). Quite a great deal.
Yes, I would have loved for Apple to release a cheaper tower computer. However, Apple doesn't do product announcements like that during the WWDC. The WWDC is about releasing products intended for professional Mac developers; the operating system and the flagship developer machines. Professional developers such as MS, Apple, Adobe, and the rest of them need the most powerful Mac they can get with their money; the Mac Pro fulfills their dreams. Apple releases other products either during some other conference (such as the Paris event every September and MacWorld), or just out of the blue on a Tuesday morning.
For all of you dreaming about MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo machines, Apple tablets, $1000 Core Duo mini-towers, $700 Core Solo MacBooks, and other announcements, there is still plenty of time for Apple to release those products. Apple doesn't announce nor release those types of products during the WWDC.
how long have you been watching macrumors? 10 days, 10 weeks or 10 years?
Probbaly they've been all busy refitting the insides of various computers - laptops and desktops alike. Now that the transition is over I iamgine we'll start to see more external alterations again.
The ability to put four hard drives and two optical drives in the desktop is welcome news indeed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"...s simply the G5 tower case with another whole in it."
Ouch. A spelling checker did not catch your debauchery on the english language here.
Second of all, the G5 case is a splendid design, and whilst it looks the same on the outside, the innards have been thoroughly adapted, especially with respect to airflow and memory placement.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
I want-- oh, wait.
*checks wallet*
Uh, I want a Mac mini. With fries and a chocolate milkshake, please.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Why is it ironic ? They shut the store down until the product announcements are made. It's normal.
.. making, 2 years ago.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
hmm...so it looks like the Mac Pro still runs on ATI's cards, but Intel's processors...I wonder why Apple isn't moving to nvidia for its graphics cards, esply after AMD's purchase...also, no Crossfire option for the Mac Pro?
My sig has been answered.
I was at first skeptical when Apple said there are "millions of configurations" for the new Mac Pros. So I tested it out...
Based on the options from the Apple Store configuration page, the total combinations possible is given by 3 * 6 * 3 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 6 * 4 * 4 * 2 * 4 * 2 * 2 * 4 * 2 * 3 * 5 * 2
All this is fine and good, but we're still putting up with the !#@$# Finder on OSX ..
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I'm betting they bought the IPR for this from Quantum, who bought it from a failed startup I was working with in 2001/2002. It's a great concept. I can't for the life of me figure out why Quantum wasn't able to bring it to market.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I think he was making a reference to the recently used programs list in WinXP.
and nobody's talking about
...
"xcode 3.0 released today"
k2r
It was a yawn-fest for developers too, you know. Apple would have been better served by just keeping their mouth shut until they could actually talk about their "super-secret" features. This was just a total letdown.
- 2 x NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB [Add $150]
- 3 x NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB [Add $300]
- ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI) [Add $350]
- 4 x NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB [Add $450]
- NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB, Stereo 3D (2 x dual-link DVI) [Add $1650]
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
not yet. The OS doesnt support it, but the ahrdware should. They actually ahve 4 x16 PCIe slots in the machine and even let you run 2 of the bigger cards, or 4 of the smaller (7300s) cards all at the same time. As of yet you cannot use crossfire or SLI, they run as seprate cards for many monitors.
You go Apple! Now if we can only get some more mainstream software supported I would be in heaven. I currently have the Mac Book Pro and absolutely love the machine.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
Yes, I confess, I noticed that as soon as I re-read the -already posted- post. This is what I get for posting to Slashdot during caffeine withdrawl. I suppose that's what I get for not using the Preview Button. Ah, well, I'll get modded way down eventually, hiding my shame from the world. As for the MacPro case:I'm not faulting Apple's engineering feat, I just happen to think the "cheese grater" design rather uninspiring. But then, I'm one of those "hippy" college kids.
Going back to school for entry-level jobs?
I can choose 1,2,3 or even 4 7300GTs!!!~!1one
What Apple really needs to grab more Wintel users is a model in a small tower case that has the power of the iMac, but without the monitor built in. The Mini is just too slow and 2.5" drives just don't come big enough.
Room for two internal drives and a single PCI-X slot for upgradable graphics would be ample.
Nice and simple, for a good price. (like $100 less than an iMac)
Is it just me or is this a big gaping hole in their line-up?
*I think Apple is sticking with a good thing until people get comfortable with Intel being in a Mac.*
p ple-on-blu-ray-macpro-and-apple%E2%80%99s-media-ce nter-strategy-what-to-expect-and-not-to-expect-at- wwdc/
Did you come up with that or did you read in here:
http://www.dvdnewsroom.com/news/breaking-inside-a
Come on, Bush League.
Now Apple is borrowing good features from Solaris as well as FreeBSD. And the Xray GUI for DTrace looks pretty cool; I've been wondering why nobody has written such a GUI before.
You mean like the "Recent Items" list that's been in OS X since the beginning and, IIRC, the Classic Mac OSes since System 7?
Look, I know I haven't taken the time to research this properly, but I thought you'd like to read this:
... (skip ahead, I'm in a hurry) ...
Xerox Parc: The GUI, +1 Brilliant
Apple II: The Usable GUI on a home computer, +1 Informative
Apple II: Hierarchical File System, +1 Interesting
Apple II: 3.5" Floppy, +1 My Favorite
MS-DOS: Directories, -1 Redundant
Macintosh: QuickTime, +1 Interesting
Macintosh: 44khz 16-bit sound, +1 Funny
Microsoft: Windows, -1 Offtopic
Microsoft: MPC standard (attempt at multimedia), -1 Overrated
Macintosh: SCSI, +1 Fast
Macintosh: 68030 multitasking, +1 Useful
Microsoft: Windows 3.1, -1 Redundant
Macintosh: Apple Menu, +1 Informative
Microsoft: Windows 95 Start Menu, -1 Redundant
Microsoft: Windows 95 Recycle Bin, -1 Offtopic
Macintosh: PowerPC, changing processor architectures, +1 Gutsy
Microsoft: Windows NT Alpha, -1 Unsupported
Macintosh: OS X, +1 Drool
Microsoft: Windows 2000, -1 Bugfix
Macintosh: BSD utilities included, and the OpenDarwin project, +1 Insightful
Microsoft: TCP/IP stack, -1 Stolen
Macintosh: Spotlight, +1 Useful
Microsoft: Windows Vista, -1 Nothing To See Here, Move Along
Okay, and the preliminary scores are:
Xerox Parc: +1
Apple: +12
Microsoft: -10
And for the record, I don't own a Mac. (*shakes wallet, hears two nickels rub together*)
Does somebody want to reply to this with a more comprehensive and accurate list? I've gotta go watch "The Pirates of Silicon Valley."
What, automatic, free, version controlled backup isn't a leap forward? Data loss is probably the next biggest thing a user can encounter outside of spyware and viruses, and so far the Mac has proven itself relatively immune.
:)
Then there is the free built in video conferencing, desktop sharing, and remote access made possible with iChat.
And on top of that is the network capable Spotlight, allowing a private network to access public files from any machine... a great reason to have a second machine
Data is:
1) No longer trapped on a single machine (think end users who require floppies and CD-Rs to transfer files)
2) Data loss is less of an issue (think end users to delete whole directories by accident)
3) Remote access is easy (think end users who don't know how to use the Control Panel to update their settings)
GPL Deconstructed
It's curious that that the tech community seems pretty accepting of Time Machine when just over a month ago every tech blog worth its salt was warning us of the dangers of Vista's Previous Versions. It seems like they do essentially the same thing. --bsiegel
I'm pretty excited about this release and the xeons they are releasing.. what I think mac does well is keep what is good and improve on what needs to be improved on. The best example of this is the G5 case. For those of you in the PC world and may have "modder" friends who buy over-expensive lian-li cases and the like, take a look at your typical G5 (and now mac pro case). There are no cables anywhere, they wrap around the outside and the ends pop up exactly where you need them (i.e. for drives) the machine opens by simply pulling a lever, you access the memory/pci slots by removing the giant fan (which just slides off the case) ... the only thing that was not good about the G5 case is the two drive slots which they finally fixed..
.. The important practicality of this is *seemlessly* everyones laptops are now completely backed up onto a server (i.e. simply a desktop) w/out any complicated manual intervention on their part. Now couple that to time-machine you have backups and versioning of laptops everywhere..
The time machine is also remarkably well done. Yes it is has been there since VMS but the fact is 99% of us do not use versioning.. its the ease of use that is the key... As an example of this, one of the lesser known features of the mac server is the mobile user login for laptops... it basically is simply a set of login/logout and anacron style scripts that "rsync (equivalent)" your desktop to your laptop and resync it when you are back on the network... (This is part of the same package that does nfs (equivalent) mounting for roving home directories)
the mail program stationary and the ichat program is fluff.. fun fluff (well w/ the mail its annoyinf fluff) but whatever... the "to do" list is brilliant... god knows we all do it... we send ourselves emails as our todo list... bad habit we should be using a calendering program but this will fix that by making it seemless and possibly by having other peoples todos merge into ours (groupware like)
25 GB/s memory per processor for the woodcrest chips is mad, whats the bus speed on the conroe chips? They are seriously going for the high end here.. I have a feeling the conroe chips are going to go in the imac equivalent and the mini equivalents later this week or in spring... but the specs on that machine are brilliant... for the specs it may compete w/ dell but in the pc world buy boxes w/ conroe chips for $1k w/ a reasonable graphics system... i.e a low end G5 w/ upgradability.. i wish apple had something for that audience (i am not sure the imac/mac mini really qualifies)
..sigh... i wish i could build a box running linux with those specs ....anyone know where i can find one ?
Let's face it, folks. The open source community has been a FAILURE when it comes to beating Exchange & Outlook at calendaring. Don't waste my time with Mozilla "Lightning" or Sunbird. They have managed to create exactly *dick* in the past few years. (See my previous posts about it.)
Here comes iCal, doing everything that Sunbird should have done several years ago. Here is the first chance at an "Outlook killer." Mail 3 & iCal = notes, to do, free/busy scheduling, auto scheduling, resource scheduling..
http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/ical.html
The year of Linux on the Desktop? No. It's the decade of OS X taking over the desktop.
From the graphics card options available it looks like the hardware might not support it. SLI also has to have hardware support (some type of cross-connector bus the graphics cards can share information on).
Another question I have is whether PC graphics cards will work in the new Mac Pros. It used to be Mac had a different BIOS on their cards, but now that they are using standard Intel chipsets this is most likely a thing of the past. I would love to be able to pop my own Nvidia 7900GTX 512MB card in there.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Look, the Time Machine thing is cool. Yes, I know about MS Shadow Copy and I have used NetApps with snapshots for years. Also ZFS from Sun (The best filesystem ever) has the snapshot feature. Now, show me one of these that has made it so simple for an end user to use? Hum...thats what I thought.
.filename. Just make a copy of that and...." ????
Apple is about two things, innovation for new ideas and innovation with old ideas but making them work better and be accessible to the average user. Hey Slashdot - you are not an average user. Your mother, your grandmother or the users you support at your IT job are. Ever try to explain to and end user "Well just open explorer and the turn hide hidden files off, then you will see a file called
http://www.beastproject.org/
I agree whole-heartedly
I recall around the time that it became clear Apple was poaching members of the Sony Vaio dev teams, a rumour saying that there was some really special stuff coming. It hasn't come.
the white G3 iBook was revolutionary 5 yyears ago, but everyone does white laptops now and the MacBook just doesn't stand out in design terms. Frankly, the G5/MPro case isn't that special either.
I want to have a computer that I can love - which is why I'm still using a Clamshell G3 and a (seriously upgraded) PMG4
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
They only demoed 10 things today, for devs. Wait until Macworld '07 for the new UI, etc.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I gotta say that Windows' System Restore and Time Machine are VERY different in intent. System Restore only tracks a subset of changes, and is intended to rescue your system from an unbootable/unusable state after installing some piece of software that completely screws up the system.
System Restore doesn't do anything to preserve your documents, which is more-or-less the whole point of Time Machine. You CAN use Time Machine to roll back the system software, but the intent is mostly to save you from yourself, when you save the wrong version of a file or accidentally delete something.
At least a spell checker would have caught " newtral colors" and "For me since I graduated 2001 it makes most sience ".
I want to shoot the messenger!
So when Apple includes the BSD utilities, it's "insightful", but when Microsoft includes a BSD networking stack, it's "stolen"?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
For me since I graduated 2001 it makes most sience) In college you wore very libral clothings and in the Corprate enviroment you are more town down
I think you should consider returning to school (and perhaps slapping the teacher who was supposed to have taught you to spell.)
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Good features *should* be copied from operating system to operating system - that way everyone gets the best of what is available! Who cares who invented it first, as long as people are implementing the slickest ideas and improving on them where possible.
Apple and M$ deserve criticism for doing the non free hype thing and claiming more than they deliver. It's odd that the least featured interfaces are hyped up as the most productive, isn't it? Interfaces that lack basic features like virtual desktops are routinely drooled over in the tech press as "must buy improvements" to stuff that's even less useful. As a user of free software, the lack of virtual desktops on Mac is a real jaw dropper. Because M$'s interface is ubiquitous, I know it's even further behind. Listening to the hype, a gullible user would think that Apple has the best GUI available, M$ is not far behind and everything else is difficult. That's not the way the world and those who present things that way deserve should be put straight.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Since I use my G5 as a de facto media center, I would have liked it to have the Front Row / Apple Remote functionality. It sounds like I'll be able to run the program officially come Leopard time, but the Mac Pro doesn't include the remote. Or, more to the point, a sensor for it, making it the only Intel Mac to lack that functionality.
From the Leopard Accessibility page:
QuickTime currently supports closed captioning by including a text track alongside audio and video content. But improved QuickTime support will automatically display the CEA-608 closed captioning text standard in analog broadcasts in the U.S.
In analog broadcasts? Wouldn't that suggest some sort of interoperability with TV equipment? Which would require hardware...hmm...perhaps a hint at things to come?
The recent items thing you are referring to made its debut in System 7.5. It was not in System 7.0. It was copied from a shareware extention that did the same thing.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
16GB RAM and 2TB of disk is overkill, but...
Is there anything preventing the MacPros from sporting 8x8GB FB-DIMMs or 4x750GB drives?
Will this box be able to achieve the max 192GB ceiling for FB-DIMMs?
---k--
</stupid>
Look at Microsoft, they promised so much in Longhorn/Vista, then take things out.
It's more like they initiated a mass exodus of features out of Vista. It's actually rather unfortunate. Some of the features like WinFS sounded like an interesting idea.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
A spelling checker did not catch your debauchery on the english language here.
heh heh. Grammar?
I'm not surprised that they didn't change any of the design elements (case, etc.). An important part of the marketing strategy during the transition to Intel was to assure mac fans that "it's still a Mac, even if it has Intel inside". Keeping the same industrial design highlights that the change of chip doesn't make them any less Mac.
Now that the transition is over (no PPC macs left in the product lineup), expect a future release of the new generation of apple design (judging from the MacBook and Nano... I'm betting on black, which will be "the new white").
This was just a total letdown.
I am here at the conference and I don't feel "let down". And the lasagna was pretty good too.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I'd guess the "recent items" feature they were referring to pushes more recently used items to the top of the list when you search.
You mean like "My Recent Documents" and the left side of the start menu, where your most recently run programs sit?
...because there was very little for users. Backdrops in iChat? Spaces? I'd definitely call myself a Mac fan, but there was nothing here that made me go 'Wow, I must have Leopard for that feature!'
;)
I didn't quite get this quote about Time Machine, either: "If your hard drive dies, you can buy a new hard drive, put it in your machine, and be right back where you were." So Time Machine backs up your HDD to the ether?
Seriously, Steve, how about something basic like improving the damn Finder, which is still very nearly as clunky and annoying as it was in 10.0? Or is that something you're saving for the next keynote that you don't want MS to photocopy?
You must think in Russian.
Can I just say, I have absolutely nothing to say about this article, but macs are so amazingly cool, I want to have their babies.. Oh so much better than Linux or BSD or Windows! WOW I am so cool.
Anyone who says otherwise must be either stupid or off-topic or redundant or a troll...
And these virtual desktops sound the biz! I am not surprised apple came up with such a cool idea before those Linux loosers...
(now wait for the mod points to roll in)..
Oh damn! forgot to log in.
I'm interested in loading one of these up with 8-16 GB of RAM and it looks like apple is making that expensive as usual. The base price is OK, but why ream people on the RAM? Notice that the base model and the next few options give you 512 sticks, you have to spend an extra 1100 to start getting some 1 GB sticks - this means that if you want, say 8x1GB bought third-party you're somewhat screwed.
Woah my bad, don't get your apple panties in a bunch. Go was the dust off your hornrim glasses and give me a call.
Unix had multitasking years before (and Multics and other predecessors did as well), and Unix 680x0 boxes had it as soon as there were 680x0 boxes. f you'd prefer, you could rate it "+1 Well it's about time" instead....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm a little worried about how quickly the current line will become legacy machines since it is pretty certain that Apple won't be shipping 32bit Intel machines in a year and has only been shipping 32bit Intel machines for a little while.
The faster it drops the price of powerpc notebooks the happier I'll be. My 1.2 GHz PIII M is burning a hole through pocket faster than my money does. I might try playing around with underclocking but it would be nice to have a higher efficiency chip to begin with. It's not worth that much too me, so I'll wait. Both run Debian.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yes, use of free software is smart. Throwing out the license and pretending as if you made it your own is not.
They always bring down the store during the keynotes, and then bring them back up just after, so all the mac-heads can build their dream machine and then not buy it.
Yeah, that sounds like slashdot alright...
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Stevei gets a punch on his face...who's with me?? who's with me??
My guess is recent items adds a 'recent items' sub category to the Spotlight results... Right now its like
Top Hit: foo
Documents: foo-bar
Mail Messages: Re: Foo Bar
etc...
Please, the start menu is a total abortion. Here's a list of issues I have with the start menu:
Ok, I can't think of anymore. I've been using Spotlight to launch apps and it's definitely not perfect. If I type "VLC" the first hit is almost always "VLC.crash.log" instead of the application itself. I have to wait a few seconds for that to come up (thankfully, it inserts itself at the top of the list, so it's not all bad). But you know what? It never gives me a hit for the version of VLC I deleted 2 months ago. It never gives me a folder that expands to cover up other choices. For the most part, it just works.
I want a mid range mac to replace my g4 dual tower. I don't want a huge tower and I want more than the mac mini. The trouble is.. there is nothing in the 1000$-1200 range without a screen.
Come-on apple. There is a middle ground between "pro" and "home"
They deliberately stuck with the case designs going from PowerPC to Intel. Notice every single product has had exactly the same case -- the iMac, the Mini, the Powerbook / MB Pro, and now the desktop and rackmount lines. Do you really think this is an accident? This _is_ Apple we're talking about here.
So the question to ask yourself is, why would they stick with those designs in such a deliberate fashion?
The stated answer from people inside Apple is that market research showed consumers would more easily accept the transition to Intel if the boxes themselves stayed the same. So you're looking at a two-phase upgrade path -- first the internal components, then the external shell. Next year you can expect at least a couple case upgrades, if not all of them. The likely scenarios are:
* Mini transitions into some sort of home electronics-friendly look&feel, to put in your living room
* MacPro cheese-grater gets thrown away for something significantly smaller, now that they don't need to dissipate so much heat. No way will they simply downsize the current model, either, it'll change significantly.
* Macbook Pro is due for some changes, although I have to say that since I've a 15" version in both the PowerPC and Intel versions of this, that it's hard to see what they can improve. The most significant thing they could do for me would be to add a second mouse button -- which of course people will say "OMG ABOUT TIME"... Other nice things -- maybe make it so the case itself doesn't get so damn hot. And trim 2 lbs off it, but I don't see how.
* I have trouble imagining what the next iMac will look like, but somehow I don't think Apple has the same problem.
The one model I don't think will change is the XServe. It's just fine like it is, so other than technology updates I doubt they'll mess with it. Plus, just how much can you do with a 1U rack mount server anyway?
Is it just me that remembers Rewind by Power On?
l ?item=140
http://www.overstockelectrical.net/cgi-bin/item.p
Better cancel my order then.....
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
The problem - which you obviously fail to grasp - is that virtual desktops are confusing to users. Understand that and you'll realize why Apple did not include that feature in their OS and why Microsoft has never added it top theirs. The people who *demand* that "M$" Windows and OS X have virtual desktops are the same who fail to realize that there are ways to be more productive without introducing the complexity into the mix.
The great thing about it though, is that for all your whining about my "lack of freedom", if I were so dense as to actually want virtual desktops I can get them in both Windows and OS X. So the option is there.
Listening to the hype, a gullible user would think that Apple has the best GUI available
Do you contend otherwise? Tell you what - I won't ask you to prove Apple is *not* better, just prove that *your* alternative (which I assume is Linux?) actually is. Game? Let's see it.
Throwing out the license? The BSD license doesn't require the opening of source code, you know.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Oh how oh how I wish they had stuck with the "good things" like PCIx and PATA controllers on the motherboard, such that my last 3 upgrades didn't require me buying either completely new Pro Tools cards or storage for every upgrade.
Yes I know they had their reasons, but I'm one of those few mac users that actually uses the extra drive bays and peripheral slots, and they've been very cruel to my kind over the last three years.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
318,504,960. I think that qualifies quite well as "millions". :)
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
Hey, isn't that Shakira over ther caked in mud?
It's all about the distraction, y'see.
Okay, I scanned down the comments here and saw people complain about not overhauling the finder. People want...
Am I the only person here who loves the Mac's Finder for what it is? Clean. Spatial. Mouse-driven, including Exposé gestures. I can't keep my file organized on a Windows machine. Windows' file organization makes me feel chlostrophobic and I lose stuff. With a Mac, I stay organized.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
From 4 amps max on an Xserve G5 now to 8 amps max on the new Xserve Xeons? Ouch. Remember seeing pictures of some of the mac supercomputers that have machines spaced out only on even numbered slots, with odd slots being blankers? Now imagine that with half those machines gone, in order not to overload their power or cooling.
If this is "better performance/watt" from Intel I'd hate to see what "worse performance/watt" was. I'm honestly not sure what you'd have to do to cool a 42U rack full of these new machines. The racks I work with that are full of the Xserve G5s already have an 18" raised floor for under floor cooling plus above-rack Liebert XDV units for additional top-of-the-rack cooling. I'm not sure where (or how) you'd shove more cold air at the rack without just stuffing a big old cooling coil in the front rack door itself.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
More likely it's an extension of the versioning system available in Aperture. It wouldn't be the first time Apple has taken the functionality of an application and extended it throughout the OS.
Given that this is a developers' conference they would have said ZFS if it were ZFS.
So has anyone actually looked at apple's implemtation of multiple desktops (aka: Spaces)?? Its a little slicker than X windows. Check it out http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/spaces.html
Okay I don't know what level of expertise you have with non-Windows OS's so I'll assume none and go from there. Say you want to launch photoshop. In Windows you go to the start menu or the Windows explorer, navigate to it and run it. To do this you use the mouse. It takes more time than you think, since when you're using the mouse, you concentration is focused. If you actually watch someone else do it, this takes a little time, but nothing to unreasonable, unless they actually have to hunt through menus to find it, like they sometimes do. For the few programs you use most frequently, say top 10, Windows has them right there for you. And maybe you remember the locations of the next ten most common. Then there are the ones you rarely use which you actually have to hunt for in the start menu, maybe in Start->Programs->Utilities->Ubisoft->Monkey.exe or something.
On OS X the search feature is fast enough that it is easier to just use it for everything including launching most applications. Sort of the way Google is faster than trying 3 URLs before finding some company's fairly obvious domain name. You hit cmd-space and type the first few letters of the application or file name. then you use the arrow keys to select it (usually the top item) and hit enter. The whole thing is really, really fast when you try it, much faster than using the start menu in Windows. The recent items feature refines this slightly, so that if you have say 15 images beginning with the same letters, it will pull them up, but put the most recent ones on top. This is not the most recent 10 items you've used, but the most recent 10 items beginning with whatever letters you entered. The granularity and the interface mechanism are the difference.
All in all this is pretty cool, unless you don't have any idea what the name or contents of the file or program you are looking for are, then you have to fall back to using it like a traditional search (with content) or use the hierarchical directories for organization. I personally find it useful to organize my files and folders in a start menu like way, for when I want to launch that audio editing app whose name I don't recall at all. Then I just right-click on the icon on my dock and navigate to Audio and select it. Both methods are better for different instances, but they are not the same thing by any means. I hope that helps to clarify it for you.
What, automatic, free, version controlled backup isn't a leap forward? Data loss is probably the next biggest thing a user can encounter outside of spyware and viruses, and so far the Mac has proven itself relatively immune
c id=15860550
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193342&
Not a leap forward. Just continuing on bringing big iron technologies to the PC.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
But...
"The Mac Pro contains two Intel Xeons, up to 3 GHz,"
Apple's homepage advertises the 'Mac Pro Quad Xeon 64-Bit Workstation'. Is it called quad due to dual core or something, or does it actually have 4 CPUs?
Unpleasantries.
It doesn't state that multiple 7300s are usable in SLI mode. You can hook up 4 cards to drive multiple monitors but that doesn't mean they will work in tandem for increased 3D performance.
Why are only the 7300Gts available in multiple card configuration? This is a LOW END video card. You sure wouldn't want to do quad SLI with the 7300 series that would just be silly.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I think this time machine is just going to make it harder to remove porn off my work computer without leaving forensic evidence.
The problem isn't that they are doing it, that's wonderful, I think the GP is just pointing out the hypocracy. There is nothing wrong with learning from your competition. When someone does something good, do it as well. You see it in the auto industry all the time, the car makers don't operate in a vaccuum, they all influence each other. Computers should be no different. Now that storage has grown to the point most people offically have too much, it's a wonderful idea to do a versioning system on the desktop.
The thing is, this isn't an Apple orignal here. As you noted, VMS did it, and Windows has a GUI version in 2k3 server. No big deal, but it then look sstupid when you rag on them for taking your ideas. I mean ok, if the deal is being totally orignal then fine, but then don't take ideas from other people. If you are going to borrow ideas (and even your entire kernel) that great, but don't get pissey when people do it back to you.
That's just one thing about the Apple mentality. They like to crow on about orignality, and indeed they do orignal things, but they act as though they invented everything, when in reality they liberally use the work of others. One good example would be the "SuperDrive". They sold it as though it was an Apple orignal. In reality it was just a Pioneer DVD burner.
Well, if Apple bothered to go through standardization of the APIs, then people could become compatible with it. Right now, Apple is clearly deliberately pulling a Microsoft: keep the APIs changing so fast that no third party implementation can catch up with them.
Of course, the whole thing is like beating a dead horse anyway: Objective-C, GNUStep, and Cocoa are 1980's technology. The only reason they have been competitive for so long is because Microsoft was shipping even more outdated technology (MFC, C++), but that's changing. What Apple really needs to do is to figure out how to move their platform into the 21st century. The Macintosh platform perhaps doesn't need standardization so much as it needs a major overhaul.
Not sure about the cheese grater argument. Yes the heat model has changed a bit, but look at the internals. It's pretty tight in there. The g3/g4 model design was around nearly 4 years. The grater was introduced in 2003, so there's at least a year left to go with this design if history means anything (it doesn't but didn't it seem like this argument almost made sense a minute ago?)
Frankly, I still like it compared to the B/W to mirror-door versions which just looked more bizzare with every revision (I think it only looked good in the dark gray (grey for uk) version).
GIven the extra crap towers are known for having to play host to, I'm not sure how small one can get before you chop-off the flexability. At least they're not as large as the "campus-fridge" Quadra 950s. Yoicks.
Aren't you supposed to get at least four 30" monitors with your new Mac Pro?
XCode 3.0 let's you "rewind" programs while debugging. No more stepping through and accidentally stepping over a point. Just hit rewind and go back o the part of the program you missed. Huh! Guess it's dumping everything to disk while you run it. Also the Xray program seems kinda neat, shows your application performance sorta like it was running in GarageBand, you can hit different spots and see what was going on right there. The screen at the bottom is hard to see, but that's Xray stepping into a spot on an App named PictureFrame. XCode 3.0
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
At the keynote, they showed entire stacks of iPhoto photos being "undeleted", which means after being "deleted" they were lying around, taking up space. Add videos to that, add huge temporary files that you might copy onto your computer; where does that leave your hard disk space? I'd like to know: at what point does this Time Machine stop? Or is it intended to keep storing backups of *everything* right up to the time it runs out of drive space? Whats the recovery strategy? Who decides which files are more important to keep than others?
I don't want to read
The user obviously does not use OS X, since Safari's Text Box component does supports spell checking as you type.
:).[/disclaimer]
[disclaimer] Yes its a joke, but yes it does support it, and darned if I didn't JUST find it myself
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
The dual-core Xeons (and other dual-core chips) have two (more-or-less) independent processors packaged onto a single piece of Silicon. Apple calls these "quad processor" systems, because as far as the applications can tell, there are four independent processors to work with. The OS may do some things differently in the scheduling department based on which processors are physically located close together, and then again it may not.
Two dual-core processors are essentially equivalent to 4 single-core processors in terms of throughput, so it's a reasonable way to refer to things.
Steve railed on Vista for copying stuff from Apple -- This is nothing new, the Windows folks have been ripping off Macs since way back to MS Windows: The Terrible Beginning. Thing is, Microsoft hasn't really improved on the best mac features, always seems 2 steps behind. Now, you got Apple bringing their Time Machine and Spaces implementations to the masses, and it seems kind of fresh and cool. Not to mention many many of the other software features that they introduced today -- almost all having been done before in some way or another. I think "photocopying" is not a problem, if you can do it better. Sure, version backups and virtual desktops have been around, but they aren't exactly smooth and friendly. I'll hold out final judgement, but Apple's own ripping off of other features from UNIX, etc, seems like a great thing, since it is done well.
Oh how I had a chance in 1992 to purchase Virtspace for 3000 USD from its authors. To those that don't know, Virtspace was a virtual space app for OSX's grandaddy, NeXTstep 2.x and 3.x. The concept isn't new, and integrating into the OS is LONG LONG over due. But no reason for me to purchase OSNeXT 10.4+ Give me integrated dev tools that do something more than simply allow RAD, and I'm into buying the new release.
Wait, when did they suddenly need to dissipate less heat? A quick glance indicates that the new xeons at 2.6GHz will consume about 65W each, up from the 52W consumed by the powerpc 970 at 2.5GHz.
I can only assume that the newer video cards will put out similar or more heat, and the new enclosures support two more hard drives and one more optical drive.
I can't imagine that the total heat generation of the system did anything but increase.
they are useing EFI bios so your video card by need that and I don't think that all of slots are running at x16. They are x16 slots but may be just running at x1 , x4 , or x8.
FROM BSD license
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
They didn't, thus they threw away the license.
I suspected as much, but...I guess it still feels a bit misleading. To me, 'Quad Xeon' should mean it has 4 sockets, 4 chips, 4 heatsinks, 4 fans, etc...I guess the definition is getting a bit blurry these days though.
Unpleasantries.
If it's the top item, just hit command-return instead of using the arrow keys. Much, much faster.
"I'm a Genius!"*
*Not an actual Genius
Plus, just how much can you do with a 1U rack mount server anyway?
Blades. I'm waiting for the all-in-one xgrid box that is upgradable by hot-swapping in minis that also work at standalone workstations. Sixteen or 24 $500 dual-core x86-64 blades (or $350 model without drives) in a $1500 1U chasis would seriously destroy most similar clusters for price, performance and power consumption. Also, the idea of stuffing 1344+ processors into an ad-hoc cluster on one rack is sexy for a number of reasons.
Certain design choices already point in this direction.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
macrumors is to news as pro wrestling is to sport. It's purely entertainment.
I check out macrumors and thinksecret several times a week, but I sure don't make purchasing plans based on them!
"We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
"The problem - which you obviously fail to grasp - is that virtual desktops are confusing to users."
... keeps on going, and suddenly instead of on the far right, you're on the far *left* of the next workspace over.
I think this depends on how they're implemented. For instance, I would not advise someone totally unfamiliar with virtual desktops to use one based on the auto-flipping paradigm (where moving the mouse to the edge just
Gnome, KDE (and I suspect most other Window Managers / Desktop Environments these days) tend to have a little pager, with either icons or miniature windows showing the state of each virtual desktop, and it's not quite so easy to accidentally flip yourself to the wrong one.
So, Yes, they can be confusing, but as the saying goes, the only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned, and with a simple implementation of virtual desktops (which exists in the major DEs I just mentioned), it's far handier than it is confusing to me and to others I've shown it to.
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Why why why, after 22 years does Apple STILL insist on making us buy proprietary graphics cards? Why go to the trouble of adopting an industry standard bus like PCI-X and then let it only use Mac-only versions of graphics cards that are much cheaper on PCs that use the same bus? It was somewhat understandable when desktop Macs were built around the PPC, but it's annoying as hell now that they're Intel boxes.
It's true the concept of versioned file systems is as old as the hills; Apple did not invent it.
But againb the innovation Apple brings are the UI touches that make versioned file systems approchable. When I was dealing with them only from the command line it took a little getting used to.
It's the innovations in UI and integration that Apple is teasing Microsoft they are copying, more than deep concepts. Practical implementations have always been a lot harder to produce than simply throwing an idea ouut like "Gee, I'd like an indexed filesystem with metadata" or "I sure wish I could automatically version files". To me it matters little which company claims to have thought of an idea first so much as which delivers a practical working example.
I should say here that really this conversation is in two halves in my mind - I don't think Vista in any way "stole" versioning from Apple, I think that was more of a simultaneous kind of thing with little borrowing on either side. When talking about Microsoft copying UI I'm thinking more of other features of the system or Applications.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I headed for live IRC chat coverage and was prepared to get hyped up over Apple products, a dedication I haven't really shown much since I've not been too interesting in their products. But with their recent change of focus on Intel platforms, things have changed.
But what I heard left a bad aftertaste. Here, Steve is not hesitant at making bold claims of Vista copying OS X, and yet he afterwards goes on with providing Mail with HTML mail features, HTML templates (please god, no!), and todo lists. Their old Outlook child is starting to evolve in other words. Heck, Steve even spent time demoing the "todo notes" feature. What, does he think his audience is brain dead? Who needs a demo of this?
And that's what among the least common features; before that, we had virtual desktops, something *nix has been living with for ages and even Microsoft delivers as a powertoy since years back. And it just kept going on. Windows Server 2003 and Vista's shadow copies being revolutionary, new... shadow copies on Mac? And then there was a brand new... active desktop feature?
iChat was also covered, with several MSN like features, besides basically just one ridculous feature making you your own Conan O'Brien using green screens. Sure, innovative. And bloat in a chat software.
If what he in the start whined about with Vista copying and making e.g. the "Start Menu button" look more jelly/aqua-like, then that was nothing compared to the ripoffs he went on with presenting as OS X features. Among the key features seemed to be their new backup method, that are shared already since years back by Windows and *nix systems alike.
Apple is free to make their software head this way, but for christ sake, the kind of demonstration was a bit like if Microsoft had presented User Access Protection and password protected system action as something new compared to what Linux has.
Oh, and the OS X fans in the chat after the presentation? Well, none of us were really enthusiastic, besides those being sarcastic about now going to start sending HTML mails.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Apple's network stack in OS X is certainly based on a BSD network stack. How does it reproduce the copyright?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Apple didn't change the ID for the products because they changed the insides so much. It is a strategy to give the customers the impression "nothing's changed". It was probably devised due to all the people being scared that Apple would be making clones now or that Macs would start to be virus-ridden because they use the same processor as PCs.
I'm sure now that each machine has been revised under the "nothing's changed" plan, there will be new IDs to come.
But I go with the other poster, if you get something right, there's no need to change it. Look at the Nano versus the Mini. Did people complain about Minis scratching? No. So why did Apple change it?
That having been said, I don't find the current iMac (nor the previous) very pleasing.
At $4000, any food tastes good...
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Thought this was an interesting feature and funny comment from the new Xcode page:
Project Snapshots
Record the state of your project anytime, and restore it instantly. Experiment with new features without spending time or brain cells committing them to a source control system. Like saving a game in Civilization 4, Xcode 3.0 lets you go back in time without repercussions. If only reality worked this way at the Pentagon...
If anyone knows or can find the answer to this, please let me know.
Does Time Machine backup the file literally every time it is modified? Can I pull a file from 10:15am and another file from 11:00 am on the same day? Or does it take 1 backup per day? It sounded in the keynote like the former, however on the website, what I'm seeing is leaning it towards the latter.
From the website:
"Backup Time: Time Machine will back up every night at midnight, unless you select a different time from this menu."
If you're planning on buying a loaded tower, consider getting a devloper membership just to get the hardware discount, even if you can get the usual student discount. IIRC, the Student membership is $99 and the Select is $500 (I'd check but that page is down). For a tower with max out memory, hard drive space, 3 ghz Xeons, dual 30" displays, a Quadro gfx card, 16 gigs of memory, a couple extras and OS X Server:
Regular price: $18,332
Student price: $16,003
Devloper price: $15,144
So by getting a Select membership for $500, you save over $2,600 over the regular price and $1,800 over the student price.
You are forgetting about NTFS ACL's, EFS, the *very best* backward compatibility of the world (i can run some dos binary software i've got many years behind... while you stupid mac users are locked into the n-1 version and nothing older, DirectX (the best API for game programmers), Visual Studio best RAD, OLE32/COM/DCOM object model, .Net and its CLI, Active Directory, not to mention the fact that Microsft had REAL multitasking back to NT3.51 and Apple got its REAL multitasking in 2001 with the slow, buggy, first version of OSX.
.cdf, precursor of RSS, the Active Desktop, the Windows ME System Restore, Fast User Switching, Cleartype (and no, apple subpixel is truly not as good), configurability (i can give the good old windows 95 look AND feel to Vista if i want to. Heck, i can switch the explorer to a Spatial mode. In OSX, you are stuck to Playschool style, in Windows, you can choose to use a real Desktop, not a kid toy.), a fast and responsive desktop (something only BeOS did better), while gnome and OSX is sluggish even as today and KDE got fast only in the latest 3.4/3.5 releases.
But there's also the
There's a slick little demo and documentation on Time Machine that'll answer a few of your questions at:
t ml
http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/timemachine.h
The short of it is that it can work on the local drive or on an external firewire/USB drive.
They haven't released details of what the space/backup length tradeoffs are yet, but I'd imagine that it starts culling the oldest versions of files as space becomes an issue and you can probably specify what percentage of your startup drive you want to use if you don't have an external.
Yeah, there have been various CVS style tools and Retrospect-alikes over the years, but this is one damned elegant interface. Even with the cheesy warp field graphics.
... shit, shit, shit! I don't like the way he looks, he's thin to a point that makes me weary of his health. Given the medical problems he's had I'm getting worried. Come on Steve... stand fast, there's that Os X 10.30 "Lion" WWDC Keynote we're looking forward to.
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Bear in mind that this machine is aimed at graphics and video professionals - neither of which require insane frame rates - and there's a $$$$how much!?? professional card for serious 3D visulaization.
You're paying a hefty premium to get quad cores - great for high-end graphics, video and (non-real-time) rendering using pro applications written for multiprocessor systems, probably not money well spent for gaming.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I'm still waiting for the Core 2 Duo iMac.
And maybe the rest of whatever Apple has outside of the PowerMac. Or Mac Pro, whatever.
Though it's about damn time that they have more than 1 optical drive and 2 hard drives crammed into the Mac Pro. Gives more incentive to ditch my behemoth PC Tower.
Perl, n. A language spoken by Eskimos.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Consider that Intel's current product line has single-core and dual-core processors, and that they're likely to ramp that up to 8-16 cores in a few years (they've said as much, in public statements).
When Core Quad and Core Octo (I made those names up) chips are available, you might see single-chip systems with 8 cores, and dual-chip systems with 4 cores if they're still using Core Duo for some systems.
It's much less confusing to count up the total number of processor cores, and just give people that number. That way, customers don't need a lot of technical know-how to know if the "dual-chip" system is faster than the "single-chip" system, or vice-versa.
Well, I'm still a student too, and I too make mistakes every now and then. If we don't correct each other, however, we are doomed to a downwards spiral.
I don't really know what to turn the cheese-grater G5 case into that won't let it look too tacky though. Plastic a la HP or dell is a big no-no, so you're left with metal or wood.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
At the keynote, they showed entire stacks of iPhoto photos being "undeleted", which means after being "deleted" they were lying around, taking up space.
The idea is, they're taking up space you weren't using anyway. Most newbies don't use more than 20-40GB, but 160GB and larger hard drives are cheap now. Or, say you plug in a 300GB external FireWire drive, and set it to do incremental backups to that every night. It's customizable, they just didn't show you all the options.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
You nailed it!
I think the reason that Microsoft gets a disproportionate kicking on this issue is that Microsoft shills are always banging on about how all innovation springs from Microsoft and Microsoft alone, and that's why it's so important that no one ever question their profit margins, because if it wasn't for MS bleeding their customers white, there'd be no innovation, None, Not ever again! In fact, you fanboy! Yes, you, hiding in the corner! You ought to get down on your hands and knees and worship the ground Bill Gates walks upon, because if it wasn't for Windows you'd still be counting on your fingers, and ONLY on your fingers, because if it wasn't for Windows, Toes Would Not Yet Be Invented! Because Only! Microsoft! Innovates!
Whereas by contrast, Apple just seem to go ahead and do stuff. People don't mind that so much.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
This is a major misconception about Time Machine. It does not magically store all these file versions on your OOTB Mac with the click of a single button. It must be pointed at a server or secondary media (the example was an external HD) to perform backups. This means it won't consume disk space like you fear but it is not nearly as simple and easy as the presentation made it look.
I think it should be possible to convert the stream to a file, perhaps using Mplayer or similar but I can't find the appropriate executable to call from the command-line in the Mplayer.app binary I just downloaded. If anyone has any joy with this I'd love to see a torrent of a single movie file of the presentation, so I can actually enjoy watching it.
I'm sure it used to be possible to watch Steve's keynotes live on the web. Or maybe it's just that when I used to work full-time I was able to avoid commentary on them until after I'd watched them. In any case, reading about a keynote just spoils it for me - there's something about the show I enjoy.
Stroller.
But someone from the future kept editing the code they had written and removed it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Really the Finder was fixed for me when they added notifications into the filesystem and Finder windows updated automatically.
I find column view better than any other way of looking at files I have seen.
I'm not sure what people want really, but I'm pretty happy with Finder as-is.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the ginourmous Spotlight and Universal Access icons? Betcha one of those Top Secret features is a scalable UI with 512x512 icon support. At last!
Like this
Let's not forget that story about Apple suggesting scalable graphics in webpages.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
The Mac Pro case looks the same as the Power Mac G5, but it isn't. It's a complete redesign, and a very neat one at that: http://www.apple.com/macpro/
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Spaces looks neat, and it may be the main feature that would push me to get Leopard. However. . . I still miss my old Amiga's custom screens and public screens. The biggest shortcoming I see with Spaces is that it still (as far as I can see) doesn't allow an application to open its very own workspace, with full control over it. If you could allow a game like World of Warcraft (or Second Life, or Civ4, etc.) to run in fullscreen mode and still be able to switch to the other workspaces at will, then it would fulfill all my wishes. But since Apple aren't really into games, I tend to doubt that they've considered such a thing.
Nothing about X inherently gives multiple workspaces/virtual desktops (well, unless you count 'slippery' desktop, but that isn't really considered anything useful), it's just that window managers have for eternity provided it.
Looking at the demo, it only has one functional feature lacking in most common implementations, dynamic reordering of the workspaces. The rest is visual fluff (most of which you can reproduce using XGL). Doesn't do the virtual desktop at all (which most window managers don't seem to do anyway nowadays), where a window could span multiple visible spaces, but rather does the workspace thing of nearly entirely discrete workspaces.
One thing that the video doesn't make clear, including the narration, is whether applications can have windows in multiple workspaces. I.e. when they click an app icon, it switches to 'the workspace where that application is', which I wonder how it decides when the app spans multiple workspaces. The one illustration of a window being moved was a single-window application. It doesn't show whether or not an entire application would move with it. I remember one early OSX implementation did workspaces by twiddling with application hiding, which induced such a restriction. I can't imagine Apple would end up with the restriction, but the video didn't do a good job explaining the degree to which their implementation is flexible.
All in all an important step to a serious power user desktop out of the box, but nothing significant to say it's different from traditional unix window manager implementations. It's not a bad thing (I can't think of much of a way to improve on the model), but just because Apple does it doesn't mean it's magically better than everyone else's.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
...is up on the apple website:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc06/
For the past 3 monthes ive been considering buying a Macbook Pro, or Mac Mini and starting to lean towards OS X as my choice OS.
I really started to like what apple was doing with itself.
Then in the WWDC, i both read the live text feed, and watched the streaming video from apple... I was appauled.
Every chance Apple got they bashed against Microsoft. Comming from a corporate world, their school yard comments on their banners like "Redmond has a cat too. A copy cat" is rediculas. And cocky.
Currently Apple has a 12% market share in notebooks, they are still easily the underdogs for now. What gives them the right to bash down Microsoft? Because of similiar features, oh damn.
I am sorry but if you company was close to saved due to 150Million in 1998 from the very company you are throwing a fit at, you have issues.
Secondly, if you are completely playing an ego trip onto a company that has way more customers than you have currently. Boot Camp has 1/2 a million downloads BECAUSE probably 50% of those people want to use XP.
I'm fed up with Apple after seeing/reading about that conference, they are on an ego trip, and i definitely look down on them for that.
In Windows you go to the start menu or the Windows explorer, navigate to it and run it. To do this you use the mouse.
I don't use the mouse for the start menu, neither do most of the Windows users I know. It's also easy to organize the menu.
Windows key + "P" (for programs) + first letter of program (category folder if you've got it organized like I do) + first letter of program again. Hit enter. Almost as easy as Windows key + arrow keys.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Um...have you tried Google Calander yet? Why settle for features people have 10 years ago when you can get better ones.
* Public calanders: Football fan? Add a team's schedule to your calander, whether it's Manchester United or the Washington Redskins. Create your own calanders or search google's.
* GMail integration: If bob sends you an email message saying "There's a party saturday at Joe's place at 11 PM" google will know this is a date and time and add it to your schedule. It's like appointments, but no special formatting.
* Available anywhere: All I need is a web browser and so it's also cross-OS. Also, if my hard disk dies, I still have my calander.
* Free (as in Beer)
So why do you use 1996 technology again?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
IIRC, because there are no Xeon-chipsets that support it.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
It's not completely clear from the keynote (and the server didn't stream 100% smoothly either), but it seems to boil down to:
1) Some kind of auto-sensing of the backup volume being plugged in, and performing *scheduled* backups. (I.e., probably NOT VMS/ITS/etc. versioning, where *every* write creates a new checkpoint.) I.e., users are more likely to have this turned on, and just have to remember to plug in their portable backup drive every-so-often. Or have a server.
2) Nifty interface, possibly depending on use of Core Data or similar Cocoa framework that
2a) shows backup files in the same document interface, not just as "last modified 10 Jan 2005, 1.80 MB"
2b) allows for easy click-to-select restoration into the current document/application
Not sure how robust the API actually will be, because you can imagine restoring bad versions making huge cuts in your current document, but maybe it is as intelligent as the iPhoto example made it look.
These things are real UI improvements over the typical drag-and-drop semi-scheduled backup, and rooting around old directories trying to identify exactly which version is the one that has what you want. It is not some glorious return of versioned file systems.
Nice to see the Virtual Desktop return to the OS. Versioning is nice, but my HD is not big enough. Time for another Dev Mailer subscription. :)
FINALLY full 64bit support!
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Naturally, as with all Intel-based Macs, it will contain a special chip to implement DRM in hardware
Sorrt, but the TPM chip does not perform any kind of DRM role. OS X merely uses it to check on boot to mac sure it's running on a Mac. After booting, the chip is not used.
God you anti TPM people are pathetic. I was against TPM before but you people are such idiots about when to actually cry wolf that I've just plain given up saying anything against it, for fear I'd be associated with your kind somehow.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
WTF kinda drugs are you on?
Sure, version backups and virtual desktops have been around, but they aren't exactly smooth and friendly. I'll hold out final judgement, but Apple's own ripping off of other features from UNIX, etc, seems like a great thing, since it is done well.
Yeah version backups are hard , espescially on Linux/UNIX... modify any text file and almost ANY distro has it set up to create filename~ not to mention i DON'T want binary backups... just extra clutter. not to mention if you need someone to hold your hand for virtual desktops (hmmmm my program is on desktop 2 what do i do, click on the DAMN ICON THAT IS MY VIRTUAL DESKTOP APP?? ) you need some serious help.
About time with the virtual windows! Took them long enough...all other major *nix based window managers have them. Makes their "photocopying" comment at WWDC seem double edged, eh?
Yep. A 64-bit OS running 32-bit apps too, even MS has managed that.
Lets face it, you are the typical Apple fanboi. Your head is so far Steve Job's ass that you are eating his crap and shitting it out of your ass. Let me clue you in to why NO SOLUTION has been able to take on Microsoft. Its called Exchange, and EVERYBODY uses it. Solutions like Evolution are improving to meet this. But to claim that some app that runs on ONLY 2% of computer systems in the world is going to cause some sort of mass exodus from Outlook and Windows and one quickly realizes that Steve Job's dick is way to far down your throat for you to speak reason.
And this brings me to my other point. Slashdot USED to be about open source. But seeing how your asinine comments were modded up, it proves this site is has been infested with Steve Job's funboys. I say its time to bring out the bug spray.
Apple acknowledges the open-source projects used in its OS on this web page, in case you didn't know.
..sigh... i wish i could build a box running linux with those specs ....anyone know where i can find one ?
o otCamp.
The Apple Store, http://store.apple.com./
I believe some folks have BootCamp working with Linux, http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_B
... took them long enough ...
...
And in keeping with that theme there is always Steve's 3 GHz in 12 months. When the PowerPC G5 was introduced?
I just can't help but chuckle at Apple singing Intel's praises these days. Althugh part of me is sad, I did enjoy programming in PowerPC assembly, creating 16 local variables in a C function and watch them all go to registers,
What, automatic, free, version controlled backup isn't a leap forward?
Not when Microsoft beat you to it by several months, and VMS by many, many years.
From a developer's point of view, that's what the WWDC sessions are for.
I think that's meant for multiple monitor setups (the hardware specs mention support for up to 8 displays). If this was actually an SLi setup, you would have seen it mentioned somewhere on their website.
I, for one, welcome our new karma-whore sig writing overlords
Yeah, you can also do "Run Command" and type in the program name. I don't know how fast this OS X Spotlight is, but starting Windows applications can be quite fast if you know what you're doing. Personally, I tend to throw everthing into my path and use the tab-completion of bash running through Cygwin (when I have to run Windows). Just to throw in my 2 cents, I think the point of the Mac is to do things quickly with no learning curve.
I've seen a lot of things, but I've never been a witness.
The "backup" could easily be a snapshot, which is what ZFS does best.
Which version of Windows, or Windows filesystem addon incorporates it? This is an honest question - some weeks I don't bother reading any tech news, and I may have missed it.
If it's a beta product it doesn't count (and neither does Apple's until they actually ship).
So everybody wants every machine gadget and doo-dah released all at once. Not gonna happen. Xeons were released a month ago and Apple is now releasing machines using that chip. Apple is not going to steal the thunder of the Mac Pro with another machine released at the same time. Today was about PROS. I will bet that there will be an Apple Mac released in the next little while. Why? Look at the pro machines all dual processor. Previous generations were 1 dual with 2 single. This means there is a single (Conroe) processor machine on the way. Breath in, breath out. Apple is not going to announce that machine until it has enough chips in the factory. Otherwise all it will do is cannabalize existing sales for no good reason. Same with Merom MacBook Pros. There is no Meroms coming out the door from Intel's fab plants. When they do Apple will upgrade the machines. Likewise Apple is not going to overshadow its operating system and MacPros with iPod, iPhones, iToothbrushes or anything else. Apple knows MARKETING! They have built up a bit of a mystique over time and now uses it to get the maximum bang from each product it releases. I would estimate that it'll be less than a month before you see Conroe based machines. Just over a month for Merom based products and new iPods. Closer to November for the real Video iPod/movie service and next year for the phone. (all of these are approximates of course). Yes Apple has hype, but it also delivers on it. Watch and learn. GG
I just watched the spaces demo, and I don't know of any VD implementation that looks that good.
So to the original poster's sarcasm I offer this counter:
Who's implementation of Virtual Desktops is that cool, that user friendly and that well done? If not, who will be the first X related desktop to pull off copying Spaces? Will you submit that article?
Just wondering.
a man, a plan, a canal, panama
If you had watched the keynote presentation, you would have seen Jobs mention that they are keeping some features under wraps for now.
Presumably so they don't get 'innovated' by someone else in the near future.
What version of Windows was released this year that had automatic backup and restore and file versioning?
GPL Deconstructed
VoiceOver + foreign language text == nifty second language learning aid
I have no idea why people keep bringing up Volume Shadow Copy. It's what it says it is - a COPY! A single copy, no more, no less.
"Time Machine" is a whole version control system with incremental updates. Want to see what a document looked like a week ago? Two weeks ago? Yesterday? Time machine will show you all that. Shadow copy will only ever have one copy, made whenever the last scheduled update was made. I can do that today by any number of means (personally I use SuperDuper which is essentially a fancy rsync). But I have no illusions that's anywhere near as useful as actually versioning all my documents.
Imagine not ever having to save out a v1, v2,v3 of a document - just keep making changes and if you ever want to see the older version use the Time Machine. Volume Shadow Copy can't do that.
Vista does have something pretty much the same with "Previous Version" - but the UI for that is a lot more like what you get with CVS explorer integration, basically a right-click menu. It does not seem as useful (or usable) to me (though I admit I have not used it).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This seems to be a case of putting a neat GUI on top of SVN.
With MacOSX including SSH since way back...Time Machine + SSH could be a real bargain for developers who telecommute.
I usually manage to fill 8 virtual desktops with a total of 40 to 60 windows. I might try 10 some day, because 8 is slightly cramped.
Honestly, I don't know how the Windows users can function without virtual desktops. I suppose they close the apps? I like to leave my apps open for months at a time. (excepting firefox, which grows too big after a few weeks) I keep apps on specific virtual desktops so that I can find them back as needed. Rather than hunt in the taskbar for one of 40 to 60 apps, I just pick the right desktop and then can probably see the app already open. Worst case, I might have to pick from a dozen items in the task bar -- not the whole 40 to 60 apps!
I don't get the whole home-directory-in-the-desktop thing either. What a mess! It's not as if this is easy either, because the desktop gets buried under all the apps. What, I'm supposed to close or minimize all my apps just to work with some files? I guess... the crazy pathnames (huge, with SPACES!) ensure that the command line won't be seeing much use.
Then there is not having focus-follows-mouse. I guess the system wasn't awkward enough. That must be it: Windows provides office workers with excuses for not getting much done, and provides them with plenty of things to click on so that they look busy.
There's already a mechanism in place in OS X for a process to be notified every time a write occurs (this is how Spotlight keeps its index up to date), so "real" versioning is not completely out of the question.
$4000????
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Xeons, eh? Not impressed. Power hungry, high heat, underperforming. If Apple was serious about a professional desktop PC, they'd use Opterons, not Xeons. If later Xeon-branded CPUs don't suck, ok, use those. Sticking with an Intel product just because it's an Intel product is a shortsighted move on Apple's part. With the stock debacle, they have to be more careful.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Displays report preferred video modes and frequency limits. This is so that the OS can choose a nice video mode.
Dell fucks this up. The preferred mode is illegal according to the given frequency limit.
Some proprietary drivers seem to have a hack to deal with broken Dell displays. The X.org nv driver, as used by a normal free OS install, can not overcome this defect. (the flat panel is programmed by the BIOS to some crappy non-native mode)
It's been this way for years.
The "photocopying" jab is for MS simply copying without innovating or improving. In many cases, even copying down to the color scheme.
Sure there have been versioning systems before. This one is a brilliant VISUAL implementation and individual applications can take advantage of it to provide record-level versioning as well. (See the demo where they restore an individual Address Book entry.) Plus, being graphical it lets you preview the document you want to restore before going ahead with the restore (I believe).
NOT a photocopy.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I don't want to read
Apparently, since Steve came back, he's spent most of his time at Apple.... being nostalgic.
Desktop Switching? Mac, 1986
Tiny desktop mini-apps (Dashboard or desk accessories)? Mac, 1983
Simple, but unexpandable, "appliance" design? Mac, 1983
Meta data about files? Resources forks are so 1983.
What *has* steve brought to the table?
Well,
Damn, where to start..
1st of all, you owe me a new privacy filter... I don't think the coffee I shot out my nose is going to come off of it anytime soon...
The Dock is from Next, not M$..
Ditto w/ Application Switcher...
User Switching? I'd say X-Windows has them both beat, but Fast User Switching in MacOS X 10.4 actually has a UI my parents can use w/o being convinced their Mac has been possessed by demons...
And Time Machine?
I think you're thinking of Shadow Volume.. I'd love to see any of the masses of Win users use it effectively, lol. 99% of Win users don't know it exists!
System Restore is a slightly better known feature of Windows, however all it really does is restore a fsckd up registry. It does not, can not, will not restore family photos...
Rewind a few years, and you'll find that PowerOn Software had this feature on MacOS 9 before Microsoft even thought of it. What Rewind lacked, however, is the best part of Time machine.. discrete restoring of individual files, address book entries, photos, etc... (Shadow Volume is a hidden feature - to most - in Server 2003/XP SP2)
Google PowerOn Software Rewind for more info.
I was very sad when PowerOn decided to let Rewind die when MacOS X came out. Sent many feature enhancement requests that Apple add Rewind-like functionality to MacOS X. As far as I'm concerned? It's about damn time! And add to that, discrete restoring of individual files, address book entries, photos, etc...And with a UI even my parents can use effectively!
This will be a godsend to those of us that are the "Mac guy/gal" for family and friends.
Is it Spring yet?
Yes, I did miss that it could do multiple copies - but that is all they are, copies. They are not incremental so as you say they take up space. Real versioning stores diffs, not whole copies - primarily my point stands, the point of Time Machene is to hold every version since the start of a file, not as many versions as I can cram in spare space and keep dropping off the older ones.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So if the dual CPU, dual-core Xeon 3GHz is twice as fast as the previous quad G5 model, then my work desktop XP machine which is a single CPU dual core Xeon at 3.2GHz is faster than a G5 quad?
Just how slow then is my DP2.0??
I feel a little cheated.
You mean to say that hasn't been Apple's business plan since Steve said to Steve.
"You know we could build a hobby computer to run this BASIC stuff"
"Call us when the New age is old enough to drink" Beck
I used to use spotlight to launch apps before I found quicksilver, which does it much better + have hundreds of other nice features (like global hotkeys, clipboard history etc). Try it! You'll like it...(it's free!)
Free GPL Java Mobile Tetris game: Jamos
The OS X improvements in leapord are great, but nothing revolutionary. CoreAnimation seems to be the most important new piece, IMHO. Other new features, like Time Machine, just point to the OS's growing maturity. In some ways, the OS is just now becoming as usable mature as old OS9, as archaic as that OS is from an underpinning standpoint. On the hardware front, it's not suprising they released a desktop MacPro, but I'm a tad disappointed about what still seems missing from the Apple lineup. Considering the Core2 Duo is now released, with non-extreme editions only days away (8/15), I'm shocked, frankly, Apple didn't announce its immediate use/replacement for the MacBook and MacBook Pro lineup, as well as use a Core2 based Xeon, rather than the kludgy, power-hungry Netburst architecture. Also, and I'm sure everyone will point to the iMac for entry OSX desktops, I'm still disappointed Apple hasn't appealed to the non-workstation, build-it-yourself crowd. Plenty of people in the PC world, and particularly here on /., like to express creative effort when building PCs. Interesting and bizarre cases have shown up over the years in direct violation of the "beige box" phenomenon, thanks in large part to a high availability of commodity PC parts. Apple should, IMHO, sell Motherboards (or at least barebones systems) (heck, they could just slap a 90 warranty on it and make the OS unsupported for tech calls on configurations built using Apple boards) to the PC tuner market who like to build giant Lara (Tomb Raider) cases or other novel concepts that have flourished for years on the PC side of things. Sure, you don't necessarily make as much profit as high-end workstations, but there's something to be said for attracting creative types - the type of users Apple has touted it claims to have held on to all these years. Sure, you could buy a high end MacPro, but at $2500 for an entry price, budget for creativity pretty much goes over the way-side. To ensure Apple makes a healthy profit, though, they could charge basically the cost for an ASUS board (who manufactures them in the first place) plus the price of OS X and include it. (MB+$130=$300-350). That way they'd already get around OS X pirates - they'll have already paid the entry fee. Just my 2 cents.
It's xcode 2.4 today.
i don't know, I found that the changes that are skin deep to be the most interesting. Support for 4 hardrives, 2 superdrive, 4 graphics cards (i don't think they are sli), and 16 megs of ram to be a hugh leap forward. Personally, I think Apple like Lenovo (IBM) should settle on one design and just work out the bugs. This way they can produce a sleek reliable product. Don't be so superficial. Besides, that design is light years over anything Dell or Hp has produced to date. Apple has got breathing room so should focus on reliability.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about, and have been drinking the Maccie kool-aid. I relaise you've got a need to believe that Apple does everythign better than MS, but it's just not the case. They both make copies of the files. Trying to do an incrimental system as you suggest would be really error prone. That would mean that the latest revision of the file, the one that is actually shown to the user would be dependant on EVERY VERSION that came before, that's how incrimentals work. You have to have the first full version, then ALL incrementals to present. That means you could never remove old versions.
You seem to not understand what real versioning systems are like - usually the current copy is stored whole, and all previous versions are reverse-diffs based backwards from that. That's how you lack any performance hit from using the current version. I'll cut you some slack on your lack of understanding how versioning systems work sicne I goofed on not knowing that much about Shadow Copy before.
Real versioning is also better in that it updates with every change made, Shadow Copy only copies at pre-determined intervals (if you can find any links that update on demand I'd love to see them, I cannot find any that say that and do not know how that would happen with the filesystems Windows uses today). I don't know if Shadow Copy also detects no changes are made and doesn't do a new copy if so, which would be another point against it.
Read up on how CVS and now Subversion work. True versioning is well understood at this point, keys are leightweight storage of versions through diffs (understanding exactly what in a file has changed) and the ability to revert back to any previous version since the creation of the file.
Part of what makes this possibly for Apple is that pretty much all file formats from apps they support are XML, making storing incremental revisions much lighter in weight than more binary formats where storing each change truly means storing a copy. I think it's why the Microsoft BU is adding OpenDocument support to Mac Office, partly to make version storage more lightweight.
Also you are denigrating what Vista is adding by claiming it's just the same stuff in 2003 server. It's also more advanced and is a true versioning system as well - thus I am confused by my being called a kool-aide drinker on this matter. I like what both Apple and Microsoft have done, is that so bad? I am excited to get something I really liked in VMS many years ago.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nobody seems to have noticed this yet:
"Apple is a member of the CalConnect Consortium and is committed to open, standards-based calendaring and scheduling protocols. To further the widespread adoption and deployment of these calendaring standards, complete source code will be released to the open source community as part of the Darwin Calendar Server project, hosted on the opensource.apple.com website"
Here's your competition to Outlook & Exchange right here. See that? "complete source code." Maybe this is the chance the OSS community needs.
"No, they're just about claiming it."
No kidding. One of the primary differences between much of the OSS world and companies like Apple or even like Microsoft is a marketing division. Even in the Gnome/KDE camps, if one adopts a feature the other has you're not going to see a blog or press release that says, "Man, we really liked X feature from Y competing product so we added it to our own."
"KDE/Gnome counts for a surprising fraction when you compare it to OS X's fraction."
That's totally irrelevant. Apple's fraction wasn't relevant either. If you actually read what I said (instead of trying to interpret what I wrote as if I am some kind of blind faith driven Apple maniac) you'd get that. Apple is competing with Microsoft for OS superiority. There's no reason to compare themselves to Linux because the average person isn't familiar enough with Linux to make a comparison nor do they have a big enough market share in the desktop market (and even if they had a bigger share than OS X, you don't compare yourself to second place).
Furthermore, "whatever else some tiny fraction of the population uses" was NOT a reference to KDE or Gnome. It was a reference to X window manager or some lesser known DE like XFce. And I hate to break it to you, but I doubt the combined use of those less significant WMs or DEs is equal to Apple's share. I'm not saying anything bad about their quality, but merely speaking about the numbers. (Considering I run XFce on a couple older boxes, I obviously have no problem with it.)
"just a bunch of nebulous, subjective opinions supporting the idea that Apple is somehow inherently better than everyone else."
Seriously, what are you? 16? 17? Did you just discover emo and Linux? Are you being a hardcore anti-corporate rebel?
"Apple polish" is subjective, but gimme a break. What isn't? I'm sure there are actually some color blind and aesthetically bereft individuals out there that would claim that fvwm is prettier and cleaner than OS X's UI. However, if we took a poll on polish, I can promise Apple would win. Very little, even in computing, isn't subjective.
"Apple merely takes great technology and makes it usable" And this isn't subjective unless you care to show me another version control type system that the non-geek could use. They brought simple video editing to mom and dad too. (Oh yeah, and while we're on the subject of video editing, what fine application to you use for video editing on that Linux box? Heh.)
I have never claimed Apple was the be all end all but they win in the ease of use department and the polish department. And this isn't coming from some long term Mac fanatic. I've used every version of Windows from 3.11 up, and ran a KDE desktop under Linux for over two years before I got a 12" PowerBook. Plus I have a couple Linux servers and a FreeBSD server.
Give credit where credit is due. Just because Apple is good at something doesn't mean The Holy Book of OSS is totally inferior in every way. It doesn't even mean Windows is totally inferior. Apple has their strengths though and anyone who doesn't recognize that (and instead, tries to imply that Apple is totally inferior) is just as annoying as any pro-Apple fanboy.
Good lord, you can't even compliment Apple without being labeled as a fanboy now. You people have got to stop treating technology platforms like religions. It's pathetic.
I don't use the mouse for the start menu, neither do most of the Windows users I know.
From all the usability studies I've seen, you and everyone you know are a huge abnormality. I've seen hundreds or even thousands of users navigate to programs in Windows and one or two use the keyboard.
Windows key + "P" (for programs) + first letter of program (category folder if you've got it organized like I do) + first letter of program again. Hit enter.
There are several ways this is different. First, you still have to know the organization of your folders within the start menu if you have things sorted so they can be easily found. Second, the start menu excludes files by default, whereas spotlight includes them by default. In Spotlight I can hit cmd-space f-o-o and enter to open up a file in Users/me/Documents/Work/cvs_checkouts/Documentatio n/reeasename/codename/version401/foobar.pdf. Better yet, if foobar.pdf is a document all about MPLS that has that acronym in it numerous times, I can type cmd-space m-p-l-s enter to open it, even if I don't remember the name of the file. Finally, assuming I have a hundred files about MPLS, none of which I've opened for months, doing the last operation in Leopard with the feature we are discussing will still pull them up, with the few most recently accessed ones at the top of the list, whereas Windows will only present it if it is one of the most recent 10 or so documents out of all my documents.
Now we have a easy way to hack into any MAC machine. Beware of buying any: http://www.kaneva.com/asset/assetDetails.aspx?asse tId=8469&communityId=0
No, the sheer mental cost of remembering how the offscreen information is organized is more than most people can handle. Either you have to memorize the positions and contents of Y layered windows on X different desktops, or you have to train yourself to follow some kind of 'this information goes on this desktop' work scheme, or you have to play 'hunt like hell' for that one window you were using five tasks ago, which has the information you want. ... It takes skill to use virtual desktops ... Most casual computer users lack those skills...
The ease with which I organize my tasks in Enlightenment 16 makes you wrong or me a genius. I'm not a genius. Like the Wiki says, being able to run the different instances of the same common tools on each desktop makes division of work easy. Yes, I make myself put "this kind of work" on one desktop at a time, which is not hard at all because I only have three or four tasks at any given time. Three desktops with nine screens each are more than I need to lay everything out for easy work. It's like having a separate physical desk for those tasks but it's easier to move things from one to the other when required. E16's excellent pagers give me thumbnails and popups so that it's easy to find what I was working on. They can be as big or small as I like and brought to the top with a single click. If pagers fail me because a program got covered up, a middle click on the drag bar gives me a listing of every program I'm running. Some very common programs, like shells to start new programs get put into an icon box. While it sounds complicated, it's really just as easy and intuitive as the three separate desktops I mentioned.
KDE and Gnome and others have similar features, but I've gotten used to E16 and the more I use it, the more I like it. Yes, edge flipping can be a little confusing at first and it's occasionally annoying. Not being able to move things out of the way is worse.
The Redmond way of doing things, 'hunt like hell' on a single screen is unbearable for complex tasks. It was using W2K as a systems engineer that taught me the value of virtual desktops along with the pain of non free software. I was expected to bring together information from many sources and put it back together in others. It was not bad for a single task, but there was always more than one task and they would always go on for days. It only took four five icons to make the text on the start bar go away. Two tasks typically required ten icons. From there, it was a game of find the gofer in one of three identical icons. The oversized things had to be printed out I ended up using it for organization and place keeping because had to boot your machine and start fresh every day. The work got done, but it was wasteful and painful. Virtual desktops and system stability are a must for anyone with any real "information worker". When you segregate your work properly, it's easy to recognize the immediate task by visiting the browser in the center screen of your desktop. With system stability, your virtual desktop acts like a real one and placekeeping is possible, your computer file system takes over from your paper one and you are much closer to a paperless office than M$ every will be.
For the average user, a few virtual screens is nice. One for email/PIM, another for that ebay auction browser and related stuff, one for the music player and mixer. My wife does absolutely everything through a single tabbed browser, but "everything" is webmail and social sites. Having space for games neither taxes nor bothers her. Indeed, saying basic organization skills and the ability to remember two things is beyond most people is crazy. With a proper pager, the extra space is never invisible and people don't even have to remember that much. There's nothing very special about me, except that I've had to use a computer for more than one task at a time. Now that I've done it, I understand that the virtual desktop makes it easier. The average user, given proper guidance, will come to thing the same way you and I do.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Hate to say this but I suspect Apple has finally copied the multiple desktop feature from KDE that I've been using for years. Sure they've added a few extra's to it but those are already planned for the new 4.0 release, which is where in hell they got the idea.
Some have commented on the "new feature" of single dock instead of individual docs for each desktop. Let me tell you, KDE has had that Since v2.? and the bit about clicking an application in the taskbar/dock taking you to that desktop? Once again kde's been doing that for damn near ever.
Hell Fluxbox can have more desktops then what you get with kde and it even has a nice taskbar/dock that immediately takes you to that desktop and with a little bit of effort, it's pretty damn easy to bind applications to specific desktops in the fluxbox config file.
So although Steve usually does a wonderful job of introducing/encouraging excitement about new features, I hate to say it but this time it's pretty laisse faire as he's behind the curve.
What version of OS X was released this year that had automatic back up and restore and file versioning? I just saw a Beta of Leopard. Or was that the final release?
One manufacturer is quoting peak thermal output and the other is quoting the average. I'm also fairly sure that the G5 needed a fairly insane northbridge that also put out a considerable amount of heat.
It's a case of do what you like best. I prefer the single screen thing, and abhor virtual desktops. You prefer virtual desktops. Now that four major OS' support it in some fashion (XP, OSX, FreeBSD/Linux and Win2K (yes, I have used it using a freeware program I forget the name of now)) at least people get the choice.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
And yet, http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/macpro/powerusa
That has the potential to be huge, but unfortunately in the business groupware and scheduling sphere Exchange's stranglehold is probably stronger than their lock on the desktop OS. Everyone else put together still doesn't equal Microsoft here... unless what they come up with happens to also be compatible with Exchange. Were that to happen then they could do an end run around Microsoft and suddenly there are no longer any features and capabilities for which Outlook is the only option. Any idea if this is the plan, or even feasible?
We have a department that uses Macs for almost all of their work, and they were hoping to get rid of their PCs entirely. These aren't IT people, so having both a Mac and a PC at each of their desks is a huge headache for them. As much as they wanted to cut their ties to Windows and despite the availability of Entourage, just the fact that they'd lose some of their scheduling capability was a deal breaker for them.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
Indeed, you're pretty ignorant. Intelligence is not this amorphous quantity that some geniuses have a lot of. It's a complicated collection of skills. People can be quite smart and not be able to juggle a lot of info in their heads. On the other hand, being able to remember a lot of shit is not necessarily a sign of intelligence, rainman.