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WWDC 2015 Roundup

Here's an overview of the main announcements and new products unveiled at WWDC today.
  • The latest OS X will be named OS X El Capitan. Features include: Natural language searches and auto-arrange windows. You can make the cursor bigger by shaking the mouse and pin sites in Safari now. 1.4x faster than Yosemite. Available to developers today, public beta in July, out for free in the fall.
  • Metal, the graphics API is coming to Mac. "Metal combines the compute power of OpenCL and the graphics power of OpenGL in a high-performance API that does both." Up to 40% greater rendering efficiency.
  • iOS 9: New Siri UI. There’s an API for search. Siri and Spotlight are getting more integrated. Siri getting better at prediction with a far lower word error rate. You can make checklists, draw and sketch inside of Notes. Maps gets some love. New app called News "We think this offers the best mobile reading experience ever." Like Flipboard it pulls in news articles from your favorite sites. HomeKit now supports window shades, motion sensors, security systems, and remote access via iCloud. Public Beta for iOS 9.
  • Apple Pay: All four major credit card companies and over 1 million locations supporting Apple Pay as of next month. Apple Pay reader developed by Square, for peer-to-peer transactions. Apple Pay coming to the UK next month support in 250,000 locations including the London transportation system. Passbook is being renamed "Wallet."
  • iPad: Shortcuts for app-switching, split-screen multitasking and QuickType. Put two fingers down on the keyboard and it becomes a trackpad. Side by side apps. Picture in picture available on iPad Air and up, Mini 2 and up.
  • CarPlay: Now works wirelessly and supports apps by the automaker.
  • Swift 2,the latest version of Apple’s programing language . Swift will be open source.
  • The App Store: Over 100 billion app downloads, and $30 billion paid to developers.
  • Apple Watch: watchOS 2 with new watch faces. Developers can build their own "complications" (widgets with a terrible name that show updates and gauges on the watch face). A new feature called Time Travel lets you rotate the digital crown to zoom into the future and see what’s coming up. More new features: reply to email, bedside alarm clock, send scribbled messages in multiple colors. You can now play video on the watch. Developer beta of watchOS 2 available today, wide release in the fall for free.
  • Apple Music: “The next chapter in music. It will change the way you experience music forever,” says Cook. Live DJs broadcasting and hosting live radio streams you can listen to in 150 countries. Handpicked suggestions. 24/7 live global radio. Beats Connect lets unsigned artists connect with fans. Beats Music has all of iTunes’ music, to buy or stream. With curated recommendations. Launching June 30th in 100 countries with Android this fall, with Windows and Android versions. First three months free, $9.99 a month or $14.99 a month for family plan for up to six.

415 comments

  1. 24/7 Live Global Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Live DJs broadcasting and hosting live radio streams you can listen to in 150 countries" -- So in other words, Apple re-invented shoutcast?

    1. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

      Yeah, but with APPS!

      I have no interest in being connected 24/7, I always own an older model of iPhone (free hand-me-down) which can never run the latest version of iOS, I don't want a smart watch let alone at the price Apple are asking, Metal on OS X is great news but I finally built myself a low-end Windows gaming PC and my music tastes are so far from mainstream that Apple music will probably be 99% useless (I'll check out the three free months to confirm that).

      This is the first time in a decade that I feel like I wasted time watching a Keynote.

    2. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, actually. It appears to have far fewer offerings than Shoutcast at this point. So Apple invented a less broad service with a higher cost.
      There must be more to this than I got from the conference.

    3. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by Noah+Haders · · Score: 2

      I thought they made a really compelling argument for Apple Radio. They are pushing on the idea of a distinction between radio and algorithmically-driven playlists. Of the role of a djay in curating music and placing it in a cultural context. On the very notion of pop music not as a pejorative term but as a dimension of our shared experience.

      Ok sure, I'll bite, at least for the trial period. $10/mo sounds expensive, tho.

    4. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Don't worry, I just wasted time reading your comment, so we're even.

      -- Tim Cook.

    5. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dear Tim,

      the last Mac mini update was incredibly lame. Seriously, what was that?

    6. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by dj245 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I thought they made a really compelling argument for Apple Radio. They are pushing on the idea of a distinction between radio and algorithmically-driven playlists. Of the role of a djay in curating music and placing it in a cultural context. On the very notion of pop music not as a pejorative term but as a dimension of our shared experience.

      Ok sure, I'll bite, at least for the trial period. $10/mo sounds expensive, tho.

      $10/mo is cheap compared to SiriusXM. SiriusXM is a terrible company, their customer service is awful and their marketing machine makes the people selling fake viagra blush. Advertisements on some channels (Comedy in particular) are some of the sleaziest late-night ads I have ever heard. But I have struggled to find something better. The barrier to entry into online services is a bit high- every online service there is requires some tweaking, customizing, or "learning your tastes" period, whereas I can just turn on Sirius and go to a genre channel and get exactly what the channel says it is.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    7. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by ajzimm3rman · · Score: 1

      Luddite.

    8. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And why do the macbook pro laptops come out every year but the mac mini every two years or so? Maybe Apple should outsource low-profit products like mac mini to outside OEM's.

    9. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      I know -- from Quad Core down to Dual Core. :-(

      Guess the profit margins are just high enough ...

    10. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      And on-board, soldered RAM with no upgrade possible after you buy it. Since you can't delay upgrades, that makes the Mac mini too expensive at purchase time. And the entry-level model just plain sucks. Only 4GB of RAM, a slow 1.4GHz CPU and still using a 5400RPMs HDD in a 600$CAD computer in 2015, really?

    11. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by jo_ham · · Score: 1, Troll

      Dear Tim,

      the last Mac mini update was incredibly lame. Seriously, what was that?

      Dear AC.

      Ask Intel.

      Regards,

      Tim

    12. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by jo_ham · · Score: 1

      I know -- from Quad Core down to Dual Core. :-(

      Guess the profit margins are just high enough ...

      Intel didn't have any quad CPUs that would fit at the time of the update, so they were all dual core.

      Assuming it gets updated again (it's been a while) then the CPU selection will be down to whatever Intel has shipping at that time.

      This is the same issue that has affected the 15" MBP refresh - the CPU was not updated since there were no quad broadwell CPUs with a suitable TDP, while the 13" was updated with the dual core broadwell chips that were available earlier this year.

    13. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 1

      Anonymous Coward,

      We would rather you buy our garbage can shaped Mac Pro.

      --Tim Cook.

    14. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except I am pretty sure (one of) my favorite radio stations IS nothing more than an algorithmically-driven playlist.

      Why is actual radio so dull? The station that doesn't repeat during the day simply repeats most of the playlist the next day. One of the others I swear the whole playlist is only 4 hours worth :( Most of these 'classic' stations play 2 decades plus worth of music, why does it feel like one from each year ...

    15. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by hondo77 · · Score: 1

      ...whereas I can just turn on Sirius and go to a genre channel and get exactly what the channel says it is.

      Which is its weakness, for me. I don't want to stick to a genre. I'd like things mixed up, genre-wise and era-wise. I suppose I'm in a very small minority that way.

      --
      I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
    16. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by goombah99 · · Score: 2

      Which doubles as a juicer as well. Just push the carrots through the fan and a revitalizing and nutritious drink is server right on your desktop. Turn that minty green nerd complexion into a sexy carotine tan. This is why all the apple execs look so tan.

      --
      Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    17. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shoutcast? Just run Winamp or a clone, find your MP3 streaming sites. Enjoy.

    18. Re: 24/7 Live Global Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? I thought it was that they are too focused on iSugarWater too care about the computers.

    19. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by Shadowmist · · Score: 2

      And why do the macbook pro laptops come out every year but the mac mini every two years or so? Maybe Apple should outsource low-profit products like mac mini to outside OEM's.

      This was already tried in the days of the Mac clones. The clone makers had no interest in the low profit zone and instead tried to poach the high end customers instead. This was why the first thing Jobs did when he came back was to end the clone experiment.

    20. Re: 24/7 Live Global Radio by zeigerpuppy · · Score: 1

      If you're looking for an alternative to the mini. Try an intel nuc hackintosh. I just built 4 of them and am very happy with performance (16GB RAM, EVO 850 SSD). http://www.tonymacx86.com/mave...

    21. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by brantondaveperson · · Score: 1

      I suppose I'm in a very small minority that way.

      No - I don't believe that you are. It's just that "genre" based music playlists are easy to generate more-or-less automatically, whereas a DJ hired because he or she has good taste in music (RIP John Peel....) is (relatively) expensive. Honestly, do people really just want to listen to one genre of music the entire time?

    22. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

      I was actually hoping for word on the new iPhone update that is (hopefully) coming by around end of summer.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    23. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by brantondaveperson · · Score: 1

      Of the role of a djay in curating music and placing it in a cultural context.

      Damn right. Algorithmically chosen music is the opposite of taste. It's colorless. It weakens my will to live. Why anyone puts up with it I have no idea - everytime I've tried it the suggestions have been uniformly terrible. Oh you like Radiohead do you? Then you'll love Muse. No - after I've listened to some whiny English guy sing about his troubles with technologically-enhanced alienation, I would probably prefer something completely different. That's what DJs are for. Or at least, that's what they used to be for, before they became an endangered species.

    24. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by fatwilbur · · Score: 1

      You two are comparing apples to oranges here. SiriusXM is a satellite based service. Most people drive places without cellular access and would be pretty upset when the radio cuts out each time the cell signal is lost.

    25. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by michelcolman · · Score: 0

      And when will you make a 17 inch laptop again? Mine's still going strong after 5 years after replacing the HDD with an SSD, but I would have bought an upgrade two years ago if you only made one.

    26. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by rvw · · Score: 0

      And when will you make a 17 inch laptop again? Mine's still going strong after 5 years after replacing the HDD with an SSD, but I would have bought an upgrade two years ago if you only made one.

      I'm afraid we can forget about that. My hope is that they will make a "Hacbook", a Macbook Pro that you can repair yourself, so harddisk, battery and memory can be replaced easily like with the pre-Retina Macbooks. They may be more heavy, thicker, but I think many people don't care. I think it's great that they try to make things smaller and lighter, but I want a top notch Mac laptop (with Retina, USB3 and all the good specs) and don't want to pay $2000 for that. Now my next laptop will be a $900 Dell or Lenovo with Ubuntu, plus a $700 Mac Mini. Yeah I know I could combine that into a $1600 Macbook, but I won't.

    27. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My big question about the inclusion of DJs is will we hear them? The moment you give the DJ a microphone, I'm out. I don't care what the person selecting the music has to say. I just want to listen to some music.

      Also, SiriusXM is absolute crap. I can't believe people pay for that service.

    28. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They also keep calling and mailing me after I've told them to "die in a fire" repeatedly.

      I have NO use for your Product/Service. I am not willing to pay you $10/month for it. How many times to I have to tell you that?
      Spend less money on marketing any you might be able to sell it for $2/month...

    29. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by MachineShedFred · · Score: 2

      Not only that, but the clone makers got to just build out hardware and ship it - they didn't have the R&D overhead to actually design the system in the first place, much less develop and maintain the operating system.

      Many of the clones were just Apple boards that were licensed and reconfigured. There were many PowerComputing boxes that were essentially a PowerMac 7300 for 20% off the price. I bought one instead of a "real" Apple back in the day. It's no wonder that Jobs put a stake through the heard of Mac cloners.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    30. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by macs4all · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but with APPS!

      I have no interest in being connected 24/7, I always own an older model of iPhone (free hand-me-down) which can never run the latest version of iOS, I don't want a smart watch let alone at the price Apple are asking, Metal on OS X is great news but I finally built myself a low-end Windows gaming PC and my music tastes are so far from mainstream that Apple music will probably be 99% useless (I'll check out the three free months to confirm that).

      This is the first time in a decade that I feel like I wasted time watching a Keynote.

      And yet you wasted even more time to tell us about it.

    31. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by macs4all · · Score: 1

      No, actually. It appears to have far fewer offerings than Shoutcast at this point. So Apple invented a less broad service with a higher cost. There must be more to this than I got from the conference.

      Um, it just got started. Wanna give it a few weeks/months to get some user-feedback?

    32. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sirius bottom line price is $5/month which is very decent. All you have to do is call to cancel every 6 months and hold your line, and they will offer either 29 for 6 months, or 25 for 5 months. But they do put you on auto-renew, so if you fail to call in time to cancel, they'll charge $100+ for the next 6 months.

    33. Re:24/7 Live Global Radio by schlachter · · Score: 1

      Agreed. $10/month is incredible value for access to the world's music on demand. Still, it's a luxury that not everyone can afford.

      I pay $5/month for SiriusXM. I wouldn't pay more, but I think it's good value at that price.

      Just call SiriusXM up and tell them you'll subscribe for $5/month but not a penny more. They'll agree after a few minutes of back and forth. Their prices are fluid.

      --
      My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
  2. Apple Music - too expensive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    First three months free, $9.99 a month or $14.99 a month for family plan for up to six.

    So it's either $10 per person if you're single with only one pay check or $2.50 to $7.50 per person if you're a family with possibly two incomes.

    Anyway it's more expensive than either Netflix or Crunchyroll, so I'll pass.

    1. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by theNetImp · · Score: 1

      *yawn* who cares.... Thought the apple music presentation was pretty terrible not even remotely excited about it.

    2. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by ganjadude · · Score: 1

      apple is aware of this place called the internet right????

      I mean when you have FREE services out there why would you spend 15 bucks a month?

      Didnt they learn from Jay-Z???

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    3. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by tagous · · Score: 1

      Agreed, should fail like other attempts for monthly fee based music services. Music to me is hard to ask for money every month. We have it in our cars for free. It doesn't decompose over time. We listen to music that was written years ago and still love it.

    4. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1

      What's the free equivalent?

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    5. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by ganjadude · · Score: 1

      legally? pandora, spotify and many many others. then there are torrents

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    6. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobex.

    7. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by goombah99 · · Score: 1

      First three months free, $9.99 a month or $14.99 a month for family plan for up to six.

      So it's either $10 per person if you're single with only one pay check or $2.50 to $7.50 per person if you're a family with possibly two incomes.

      Dear JealousSingleMan, I'll adopt you for $50 a year, so you can qualify for the family plan. Think of the savings!

      --
      Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    8. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by goombah99 · · Score: 1

      apple is aware of this place called the internet right????

        I mean when you have FREE services out there why would you spend 15 bucks a month?

        Didnt they learn from Jay-Z???

      Better notify Spotify. To the batphone Robin

      --
      Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    9. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by Karlt1 · · Score: 1

      "legally? pandora, spotify and many many others. then there are torrents"

      Neither Pandora nor the free tier of Spotify allow you to create your own playlist of songs.

    10. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by jo_ham · · Score: 1

      Where are the free legal equivalents that don't have adverts?

    11. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by ganjadude · · Score: 2

      moving the goalposts???

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    12. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by Cederic · · Score: 1

      For that $50/year do I also get half my mortgage paid, access to a second car when needed, contribution to electricity, gas and water supplies and the cats fed when I'm away for the weekend?

      Lets face it, someone else could move into my home and expect me to pay for their life and it'd barely register on my gross monthly outgoings.

    13. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by praxis · · Score: 2

      An alternative should be comparable. Ad-supported and subscription-based are pretty different types of services catering to different kinds of consumers. It was you who moved to goalposts by stating competitors that were quite different.

    14. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by goombah99 · · Score: 1

      Try having kids.

      --
      Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    15. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by ganjadude · · Score: 1

      im not sure that a 30 second ad every few hours is worth 15 bucks a month. for me its not, for most people i know its not.

      are we really that short on attention spans than we cant handle a 30 second ad...if it means saving $$180 a year?

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    16. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by Cederic · · Score: 1

      Ah, good call. The government will give me cash for that too, and pay for someone else to look after them while I'm at work.

    17. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by jo_ham · · Score: 1

      im not sure that a 30 second ad every few hours is worth 15 bucks a month. for me its not, for most people i know its not.

        are we really that short on attention spans than we cant handle a 30 second ad...if it means saving $$180 a year?

      It's $10 per month, so unless there are 18 months in a year where you are, it's not quite $180, but to answer the question - yes, there are a lot of people who will pay to remove the adverts.

      There will still be a free tier on Apple music - the radio station thing they have - but the (self directed/semi-curated) streaming service will be paid. They've clearly looked at it and decided that the free streaming market is already well supplied - Pandora and Spotify in the US, for example, and want to go after the customers who are willing to pay to be ad free.

      It's not about having a "short attention span", it's about perceived value. It's clearly worth it to many since both Pandora and Spotify have paid tiers, although clearly they have a lot more free users than paid ones.

    18. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Neither Pandora nor the free tier of Spotify allow you to create your own playlist of songs.

      iTunes lets me create my own playlists of songs already. For free. Why the fuck would I pay for a service to create a playlist? Or do they intend to cripple iTunes now unless you've paid up for Apple Music this month?

    19. Re: Apple Music - too expensive by afidel · · Score: 1

      I just did 18 months of Pandora for $45, that's a LOT cheaper than the Apple family plan (my wife uses my Pandora account with her own playlists)

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    20. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by goombah99 · · Score: 1

      who do you think will be paying for your Social security or the majority of the general tax revenues when you retire? People who raise kids create the future at great expense to themselves.

      --
      Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    21. Re: Apple Music - too expensive by goombah99 · · Score: 1

      What are you comparing? pandora is $5 a month so your $45 for 18 month seems like a discount. And for that you don't get arbitrary music playlists, just more skips of some algorithmic genre ordering. There's no comparison to here and it's not much of a savings if you really care about what you are listening too. If not just tune in an internet radio station that plays what you like there's thousands of channels out there so you can find one you like.

      --
      Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    22. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by konohitowa · · Score: 1

      You're wasting your bytes. There's no one more qualified than single, childless people to talk at great length on marriage and child raising. In my experience, they're also chock full of advice. They also enjoy having that pointed out to them. All-in-all, just a fun group to hang with.

    23. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      I mean when you have FREE services out there why would you spend 15 bucks a month?

      Apple is vigorously working, right now, to convince the Big Music Publishers that they should stop allowing ANY free streaming of their music on the Internet.

      No, seriously. They're doing that, and working really hard at it.

    24. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by andymadigan · · Score: 1

      As another comment said, it's $120/yr not $180/yr. In any case I have a paid Spotify subscription, had one for years. Two reasons:

      1) I HATE ADS, I used Spotify free for a little while. If I have to hear another ad for Coca-Cola...
      2) I have about 1000 songs in offline playlists, they're downloaded to my iPad, which I use instead of a mobile phone. I can listen to music anywhere, even if there's no connection.

      Besides, there are better ways to pinch pennies. My iPad costs me $30/mo.

      On the other hand, Spotify likes to reset the "Start at boot" option whenever it updates (I use the Spotify desktop app maybe once every other month), and forces me to have "friends" who can see some amount of information about my usage. There's no way to remove "friends" or block them, so as soon as Apple Music is available I'll probably switch.

      However, I'm a bit queasy about switching to a service that in a previous incarnation was targeted at people who listened to hip-hop at skate parks with their "entourage".

      --
      The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
    25. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by Cederic · · Score: 1

      Given I'm likely to die before getting a state pension, given I'm making private pension arrangements so that I don't need a state pension, given I'm going to continue to be taxed way above my usage of the NHS and given I'm also paying to educate other peoples offspring I'm curious that you seem to think I should also subsidise a lifestyle that I can't afford for myself by giving money to people with a joint income, shared costs and two sets of tax thresholds.

      I accept that children aren't cheap but that doesn't mean the rest of us should pay for them. Trust me, this country isn't short of people right now, if the birthrate dropped to zero we'd have trouble maintaining population.

    26. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by rodrigoandrade · · Score: 1

      If you don't want friends on Spotify, then disconnect it from your Facebook account, make all your playlists private, and turn on private listening (it now remains enabled even if you close the app), so the stuff you listen to doesn't show up in your profile page.

      If your friends manage to find you through Spotify anyway, there's nothing much they'll be able to see.

    27. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He hasn't had the opportunity. He reads slashdot.

    28. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by andymadigan · · Score: 1

      I primarily use Spotify on the iPad, where it says "Private Session lasts until you've been inactive for 6 hours". With my usage habits, that would mean I'd probably have to reset it twice a day. I'd rather not waste 30 seconds every time I open Spotify to check if it's forgotten yet.

      Oh, and it's not connected to Facebook, and my playlists are private, but I'm not actually sure what's visible to other Spotify users. I'd just prefer that "none" was an option. I forgot to mention another annoyance with Spotify, occasionally an update will re-enable the "friends" bar. I'm so sick of getting nagged to let social media invade my screen. GMail's Google Plus, Netflix's Facebook integration, Digg Deeper, and Spotify. All of them are (or were) set up to nag you until you enable their social functionality.

      For a while Spotify would randomly pop up a message to enable some Facebook trash on the iOS app, I think they were actually hoping you'd hit it by accident. Even after multiple refusals it would keep coming back.

      --
      The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
    29. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Anyway it's more expensive than either Netflix or Crunchyroll, so I'll pass.

      Probably the cheapest they could negotiate with the "record" labels, who seem to have conveniently forgotten the role that broadcast played in their popularity, back when the LABEL payed the BROADCASTER, not the other way around...

    30. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by macs4all · · Score: 1

      moving the goalposts???

      No, simply trying to compare on equal terms. You can go ad-supported, or you can go subscriber-supported, or you can be ridiculously greedy like the cable companies, and suck down on both; but that's an entirely different thread...

    31. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by macs4all · · Score: 1

      There will still be a free tier on Apple music - the radio station thing they have - but the (self directed/semi-curated) streaming service will be paid. They've clearly looked at it and decided that the free streaming market is already well supplied - Pandora and Spotify in the US, for example, and want to go after the customers who are willing to pay to be ad free.

      And it isn't like Apple doesn't know about services like Pandora. Remember a few years ago, when basically no one was allowed to develop iOS Apps that ran in the background? Remember who else besides Apple was granted special permission to run in the background on iOS? Pandora.

    32. Re: Apple Music - too expensive by macs4all · · Score: 1, Troll

      What are you comparing? pandora is $5 a month so your $45 for 18 month seems like a discount. And for that you don't get arbitrary music playlists, just more skips of some algorithmic genre ordering. There's no comparison to here and it's not much of a savings if you really care about what you are listening too. If not just tune in an internet radio station that plays what you like there's thousands of channels out there so you can find one you like.

      Not to mention the fact that Spotify and Pandora, et al, no DOUBT sell your musical tastes into slavery; which it is pretty clear that Apple has no interest in doing. That alone is worth some real $$$.

    33. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by macs4all · · Score: 0

      Neither Pandora nor the free tier of Spotify allow you to create your own playlist of songs.

      iTunes lets me create my own playlists of songs already. For free. Why the fuck would I pay for a service to create a playlist? Or do they intend to cripple iTunes now unless you've paid up for Apple Music this month?

      Mods, mark the Parent as "Troll".

    34. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by macs4all · · Score: 0

      I mean when you have FREE services out there why would you spend 15 bucks a month?

      Apple is vigorously working, right now, to convince the Big Music Publishers that they should stop allowing ANY free streaming of their music on the Internet.

      No, seriously. They're doing that, and working really hard at it.

      Citation, please, or STFU, hater.

    35. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      moving the goalposts???

      He asked for equivalents for an add-free service. You replied with add-riddled ones. Who again moved the goal posts?

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    36. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1


      Tech More: Streaming Spotify Jimmy Iovine Apple
      Why Apple wants to end the era of free music streaming

    37. Re:Apple Music - too expensive by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      The link didn't work in above for some reason. Apple pushing music labels to kill free Spotify streaming ahead of Beats relaunch Why Apple wants to end the era of free music streaming

      Oddly enough, there's not a single music publisher who says they have even been contacted by Apple concerning that issue -so either Apple has every single publisher in their pocket already - or the clowns at BusinessInsider are again blowing their coke the wrong way.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  3. Complications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you knew anything about watches, you would know that "complication" is the horological term for an additional feature on a watch.

    1. Re:Complications by pollarda · · Score: 2

      He made a good point. It is still a terrible name. Don't complicate things.

    2. Re:Complications by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      The name of the technology makes no difference to how complicated the UIs are.

      "Widgets" is less use as it's not specific to watch face enhancements. "Complications" are.

    3. Re:Complications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heh-heh, heh. Hey Beevus! This guy just said "hor".

    4. Re:Complications by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      I knew what a "complication" means with regards to watches and my thought process was:

      "Clever! A widget on a smartwatch is just like a complication on a mechanical watch!"

      "Wait, that's just skeuomorphic bullshit.

      "So who cares what you call a phase of the moon indicator on a mechanical watch when deciding what it should be called on a smartwatch?"

      "And the word 'complication' in the usual sense is a terrible name for anything related to electronics, which we try to make simple and usable for people."

      So, it's a clever, but stupid name for widgets on a smartwatch.

      Widget is probably also a stupid name.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    5. Re:Complications by macs4all · · Score: 2

      "So who cares what you call a phase of the moon indicator on a mechanical watch when deciding what it should be called on a smartwatch?"

      If you haven't noticed, Apple has been bending-over-backwards to get the horological community to consider the Apple Watch a "Real" watch. So far, they've actually had some success in that endeavor, which is quite surprising for a fanbase that should, by all rights-and-privileges, despise them. For a contrast, I'd really like to see what the Horologists think of the Samsung Watch(es).

      Using Horological Terms-of-Art such as "Crown" and "Complication" are consistent with that vocabulary and marketing goal.

  4. WWDC Means... by eepok · · Score: 5, Informative

    (Apple) Worldwide Developers Conference. I had to look it up for myself, so I thought I would post it.

    1. Re:WWDC Means... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's about as impressive as Lindsay Graham bragging about how he's never sent an email.

    2. Re:WWDC Means... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mac OS X is now based on a *nix variant, bsd, so everything apple has to be on slashdot

    3. Re:WWDC Means... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Now? OS X is based on BSD since 15 years.

    4. Re:WWDC Means... by CptJeanLuc · · Score: 2

      I did not know, and it is interesting how the brain works hard to fill in the blanks - and after reading only the title, there is really no context at all except there is some kind of 2015 event, so the brain does not have much to work with. The first association was "World War something something". The next one was something related to wrestling or martial arts. Then there is World Wildlife something. All options are immediately discarded because this is Slashdot. Then you start skimming the article and realize it is an Apple event, and you wonder why on earth is there not an A somewhere in the acronym - or why could they not have added an "Apple" in the article headline.

    5. Re:WWDC Means... by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 1

      Funny...I thought it was a rock station in Washington, DC.

    6. Re:WWDC Means... by Cederic · · Score: 1

      We know, it was posted on here to great acclaim when it was first announced.

    7. Re:WWDC Means... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Most of us are just wondering how you haven't learned what a WWDC was by reading slashdot, since Slashdot talks about them always.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    8. Re:WWDC Means... by Bringer128 · · Score: 1

      I've never seen it, but I've only been lurking about 6 years...

    9. Re:WWDC Means... by CptJeanLuc · · Score: 1

      In the global connected world, in order to survive information overload one needs some layers of filtering to protect the brain from all the noise. I probably did not know it because I never cared - maybe not even a conscious choice, the OS just chose to ignore it for me without ever notifying higher executive functions. The only reason I will remember it going forward, is due to this thread which from my end relates to how it is a bad acronym and how it is not really something worth remembering.

      Well, your post was rather insulting which you are very much aware of having been so clever about how you are calling me retarded, so I should probably write something nasty back here, but hey - someone needs to be the one to stop it, so I will be the bigger man. Congratulations on your acronym remembering abilities.

    10. Re:WWDC Means... by macs4all · · Score: 0

      (Apple) Worldwide Developers Conference. I had to look it up for myself, so I thought I would post it.

      You had to look-up an annual developer event like this that has been held for something like 20 years, and which sells-out in seconds?

      I don't care if you've never even touched an Apple product; hand in your geek card, now.

    11. Re:WWDC Means... by schlachter · · Score: 1

      World Wide Distributed Cluster

      --
      My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
  5. "Complication" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The phrase "complication" is borrowed from watch horology, meaning some function that's unrelated to the basic three functions of the watch, telling the hour, minute, and second. So things like stopwatches, day/date/month displays, moon phase displays, mainspring reserve power, spelling out the time with a series of chimes, that kind of thing. For a mechanical watch, you're cramming in more and more functions into an increasingly small case, so more is more difficult and considered by some to be more admirable.

    If you want to see the ultimate example of pre-computer watch design, the Graves Supercomplication is worth reading up on, with 22 functions on both the front and back of the watch.

    1. Re:"Complication" by Jeremi · · Score: 4, Funny

      you're cramming in more and more functions into an increasingly small case, so more is more difficult and considered by some to be more admirable.

      I know a number of software developers who think along these same lines... ;)

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  6. I'm loving the future thing !!! by pollarda · · Score: 2

    I really love how we'll be able to turn the dial and see the future. This will be especially powerful when combined with the News app. See what next week's stock market will look like or who will win the next election. Of course, if we know the future it will potentially change the future. This means that the "futures" markets will change depending on the present which depends on the future depending on the present depending on the future which .... Oh, never mind.

    1. Re:I'm loving the future thing !!! by ErikTheRed · · Score: 2

      See what next week's stock market will look like or.

      They actually joked about that in the presentation: "We're having a bit of trouble getting the stock ticker to work..."

      --

      Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
    2. Re:I'm loving the future thing !!! by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      I really love how we'll be able to turn the dial and see the future. This will be especially powerful when combined with the News app. See what next week's stock market will look like or who will win the next election. Of course, if we know the future it will potentially change the future. This means that the "futures" markets will change depending on the present which depends on the future depending on the present depending on the future which .... Oh, never mind.

      You seem to have overlooked the killer app - seeing next week's Lotto results.

      We're all going to be rich, rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  7. Must be getting old. by jellomizer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Latest OS X: Expected, while interesting features nothing huge.
    Metal: New Graphic engine... Again! means developers will need to rewrite their apps so they look right with the OS.
    iOS 9: Kinda neat. When I get it I will update and play with it.
    Apple Pay: Nothing new to me.
    iPAD: Sounds like stuff android had for a while.
    Car Play: So I have to buy a new car to get this? Sorry I like a car that is good on fuel, dependable, and affordable, if it comes with Car Play great if not no big deal.
    Swift 2: Get me a version where I can make apps in Windows or Linux too... Otherwise OK that is fine, but staying to one platform development isn't my thing.
    Apple Watch: I still can't find a good reason to get one.
    Apple Music: I am looking for ways to reduce my monthly fees. Being that this cost more than Netflix or Hulu and you get less data traffic, it doesn't make sense.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:Must be getting old. by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

      Refinements. Not every version, every year can be stunning. After all a lot of what can be done with current mobile technology has already been done.

      What will revive mobile devices is external enhancements like the watch, glasses... Not to suggest that the watch is revolutionary (although some believe so).

    2. Re:Must be getting old. by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Informative

      Swift 2: Get me a version where I can make apps in Windows or Linux too... Otherwise OK that is fine, but staying to one

      Swift 2 CAN make apps for Linux. Apple's releasing the compiler and the standard libraries for Linux.

      And as its open source, someone can do the same for Windows. Given Microsoft's recent moves I wouldn't be surprised it Microsoft themselves port it.

      This is the big news for Slashdotters from this years WWDC.

    3. Re:Must be getting old. by Altus · · Score: 2

      Your comment on metal is total bs. Regular apps benefit because the underlying libraries (cores rapids and core animation) have been re written to use metal for better performance. Want to use it for your graphics or rendering engine? Then you will need to write code but your app will look just as native as always either way.

      --

      "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson

    4. Re:Must be getting old. by lokedhs · · Score: 1

      I agree, but which was the last version of OSX that was stunning?

    5. Re:Must be getting old. by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      And if someone can port Swift to Android, we'll finally have peace on Earth and the IPU will win the holy war against the infidels of the FSM.

    6. Re:Must be getting old. by Ravaldy · · Score: 2

      It's a good point. Maybe the changes are too incremental so nothing appears stunning. LOL!!

      Lets be honest. Other than new H/W support and GUI improvements what really changed in client OS tech in the last 10 years? I'd say very little.

    7. Re:Must be getting old. by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      Of course for app portability you'd need to write the equivalent of Cocoa Touch for Android. And the equivalent of all the other frameworks too.

    8. Re:Must be getting old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So basically you can use *now* (in beta) Silver (http://www.elementscompiler.com/elements/silver) with Sugar (https://github.com/remobjects/sugar), as some people are already doing.

    9. Re:Must be getting old. by Karlt1 · · Score: 1

      Metal: Not a new Graphics Engine. It's been on iOS for two years.

      iPad:"Android" hasn't had split screen. "for a while" Samsung has had split screen for a while but with little third party support. The iPad split screen implementation should work for all apps that were updated to support iOS 8's screen size classes.

      CarPlay: You have to buy a new radio if you don't already have a car that supports it. It's been out for a year.

      "Being that this cost more than Netflix or Hulu and you get less data traffic, it doesn't make sense."

      Yes because Hulu and Netflix both have licenses for all of the most popular movies and tv shows. Like Apple Music will probably have licenses for the most popular music.

    10. Re:Must be getting old. by BasilBrush · · Score: 0

      Certainly not the ones here. They're mostly haters without rationality. Doesn't matter what Apple does - they are successful so they need to be attacked.

    11. Re:Must be getting old. by suutar · · Score: 1

      there's aftermarket carplay head units. Crutchfield has a few, starting with this Pioneer for 500. I've been considering getting one for my old Civic (or whatever replaces it, if it continues to act like it wants to be retired).

    12. Re:Must be getting old. by Noah+Haders · · Score: 3, Informative

      here's a refinement: they finally fixed the shift key in ios9. by default, all the keyboard letters are lower case. when the shift key is engaged, all the keyboard letters are upper case. makes sense! this was sorely needed.

      My fear is that they keep adding complexity of different offscreen features and gestures. A big point for ios was that it didn't come with a user's manual because it was so simple and intuitive you didn't need one, but I feel like we're a stone's throw away from the dummy's guide for ios.

    13. Re:Must be getting old. by sribe · · Score: 1

      A big point for ios was that it didn't come with a user's manual...

      Actually it did come with a guide explaining basic navigation & gestures.

    14. Re:Must be getting old. by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Metal: Not a new Graphics Engine. It's been on iOS for two years.

      But what is the point of it? Instead of contributing their work to an open standard - like AMD has done with Mantle - they have switched from an open standard and created their own Apple-centric 3D graphics API that is just another case of NIH syndrome.

    15. Re: Must be getting old. by Karlt1 · · Score: 1

      Because anytime that you have an "open standard" that you don't control its always a slower process and not optimized for your needs. It's the same reason that Google forked WebKit.

      If you want to use an open graphic standard on iOS/MacOS, you're free to use OpenGL.

    16. Re: Must be getting old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. If you want to design to open standards, OpenGL/OpenGL ES gives you (we hope) the best performance you can reasonably get within the constraints of a platform-neutral system. If you care about that last few percent performance-wise, you use Metal, because that's as close as you're going to get to the hardware.

      Just as long as Apple continues to maintain OpenGL and OpenGL ES with reasonable performance, this is a very useful thing to have around. Now if they start to ignore OpenGL in favor of their own API, then we should be concerned, but I doubt they will do that.

    17. Re:Must be getting old. by Whiteox · · Score: 1

      A big point for ios was that it didn't come with a user's manual because it was so simple and intuitive you didn't need one, but I feel like we're a stone's throw away from the dummy's guide for ios.

      Oh how right you are! You have to dumb yourself down somewhat.
      I hadn't looked at a Mac for over a decade when I was employed to train the elderly on them. And here I thought it would be a snap.
      Ever try and close Safari? Operate the mouse? I pretty much had to do everything through the Finder as I at least understood how that operated.
      "It just works" - yeah sure. If I ever have to do that job again, I'll spend a few days researching some How Tos. Let me know when the dummy's guide comes out.

      --
      Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
    18. Re: Must be getting old. by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Because anytime that you have an "open standard" that you don't control its always a slower process and not optimized for your needs.

      Of course it is a slower process to achieve interoperability between vendors, that doesn't mean we should abandon open standards except as a baseline to create your own proprietary extensions otherwise we end up back in the IE6/Netscape days.

      It's the same reason that Google forked WebKit.

      No it isn't, WebKit is not an "open standard", it is an implementation designed to present information formatted in an open standard way.

    19. Re: Must be getting old. by exomondo · · Score: 1

      This. If you want to design to open standards, OpenGL/OpenGL ES gives you (we hope) the best performance you can reasonably get within the constraints of a platform-neutral system.

      No, the whole reason for Vulkan is because OpenGL currently doesn't give you the best performance which is why the switch to lower-overhead APIs is happening but instead of collaborating - like AMD is doing - they are going off in their own non-standard direction.

      If you care about that last few percent performance-wise, you use Metal, because that's as close as you're going to get to the hardware.

      Just as long as Apple continues to maintain OpenGL and OpenGL ES with reasonable performance, this is a very useful thing to have around. Now if they start to ignore OpenGL in favor of their own API, then we should be concerned, but I doubt they will do that.

      Yeah great, back to the days of dealing with OpenGL, DirectX, S3d, Glide, MSI, CIF, NV1, etc... where every vendor writes their own API.

    20. Re:Must be getting old. by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      Of course for app portability you'd need to write the equivalent of Cocoa Touch for Android. And the equivalent of all the other frameworks too.

      And then the touch-n-feel Apple lawyers will descend on you.

      Apple isn't going to be the cross-platform panacea. There are other toolchains for that.

    21. Re:Must be getting old. by Shadowmist · · Score: 1

      Swift 2: Get me a version where I can make apps in Windows or Linux too...

      Check the keynote again. Swift will not only be offered for Linux, but will be made Open Source.

    22. Re:Must be getting old. by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      I was very much looking forward to the Alpine iLX-007 when it was announced. But at $800 MSRP ($599 at Crutchfield), you do NOT get Bluetooth, CD playback, or 24bit with advanced EQ options. You must route your own cable to wherever your phone will be placed as a direct connection is required for iPhone. And to make matters worse, it's NOT iOS animation or expectant experience in a dash. It looks like it would be, but trust me, it's not. TRY BEFORE YOU BUY!!! Last I checked, a local BestBuy had one up on display. To be perfectly honest, it felt "cheap".

      About that "cheap" comment. All dash receivers are like that. Even some of the LEDs are known to burn out or fade after year usage. 99% of the inside of the double-DIN units are pure air. It's amazing how much they cramp into a tiny surface mounted PCB these days. Plenty of tear-downs online; it's not like the units made in the mid to early 90s. Major differences in component and IC consolidation of functionality.

      My next upgrade will be the Alpine CDE-W265BT instead for my 2010 RAV4. I'm done waiting for CarPlay devices unless the next rev offers BlueTooth connectivity and improved iOS look/feel and multi touch-screen technology. In fact, I wouldn't mind in the slightest of Apple themselves made a double-DIN unit.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    23. Re:Must be getting old. by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      Indeed. It's not supposed to be a cross platform tool.

      But it is the answer to what whiners like you were claiming was the problem until today. That Swift was an Apple only language, and not open source.

      But of course because your complaint wasn't real, you've changed what your whining about now.

    24. Re: Must be getting old. by BasilBrush · · Score: 0

      If you're whining about stuff not being open source was real, you'd have taken the opportunity to congratulate Apple today for making Swift open source. But you haven't. Because you don't really care, it's just something you whine about.

    25. Re:Must be getting old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      When was the last time you saw a release of any desktop OS that was stunning in a good way? Frankly, I can't remember any this century.

    26. Re: Must be getting old. by exomondo · · Score: 1

      If you're whining about stuff not being open source was real, you'd have taken the opportunity to congratulate Apple today for making Swift open source.

      So because I care about the graphics API but not Swift I'm not allowed to criticize a particular element of it without first congratulating them on the thing I don't care about? Seriously some of you people take Apple way too personally, insisting that I offer them my congratulations on open sourcing something before I'm allowed to criticize something else is ridiculous, that's demonstrating you have a serious emotional attachment. I don't see why you're so worried that I might have hurt Apple's feelings without balancing it out with a "congratulations".

      But you haven't. Because you don't really care, it's just something you whine about.

      You're right that I don't care about openness in general, nor did I ever say that I did. But by all means please fill me in on what the etiquette is for criticizing a particular thing that Apple does, how many pats on the back do you need me to give them before I can make a critical comment?

    27. Re: Must be getting old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From Apple's very own Chris Crocker: "You don't even care! Leave Apple alone, LEAVE THEM ALONE!"

    28. Re: Must be getting old. by Karlt1 · · Score: 1

      Of course it is a slower process to achieve interoperability between vendors, that doesn't mean we should abandon open standards except as a baseline to create your own proprietary extensions otherwise we end up back in the IE6/Netscape days.

      Yes because it's much better to wait 10 years for a standard to finalize like in the case of HTML5 and web designers still have to go to a site like caniuseit to see what features they can use with which browsers.

    29. Re:Must be getting old. by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      How about Mac OS X? It was released in this century, and against the backdrop of Windows 2000 and Classic MacOS 9, it absolutely counted as "stunning."

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    30. Re:Must be getting old. by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Yeah, we've heard that they are going to open source stuff before, and we're still waiting. Where's my open FaceTime standard that Steve Jobs promised when he introduced FaceTime?

      I'd really like Apple to put Swift and Metal out there as open source - it will only increase the adoption rate. But past performance leads me to doubt...

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    31. Re:Must be getting old. by BasilBrush · · Score: 1, Troll

      You say open source, but then your singular example is an open standard.

      Jobs was a great man in may ways, including very often his impulses. But in this case they let him down. He made a unilateral decision just before the keynote to make it an open standard. What he didn't realise was that there were licensed patents in use which meant they couldn't do that.

      In the case of Swift, this has been in discussion in the Swift team for months, and the announcement was made by a member of the team. It's a done deal.

      They've released plenty of open source before. Your impression of past performance is illusory.

    32. Re:Must be getting old. by Yaztromo · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'd really like Apple to put Swift and Metal out there as open source - it will only increase the adoption rate. But past performance leads me to doubt...

      What, do you mean like with WebKit or CUPS?

      Sorry, but past performance shows you are wrong. FWIW, Apple never promised to make FaceTime Open Source; what they said was that they were going to openly publish the protocol. I'm rather cheesed that never happened as well, but they never promised to open their source code to FaceTime.

      On the other hand, Webkit is a huge OSS project, which is used by a variety of products and companies, and which has a lot of non-Apple/non-Webkit contributors. Indeed, if not for WebKit, there wouldn't be Google Chrome. CUPS is, of course, the print subsystem used by virtually every Linux distro.

      Those are the projects you need to judge Apple's OSS track record on.

      Yaz

    33. Re:Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 0

      Swift 2: Get me a version where I can make apps in Windows or Linux too... Otherwise OK that is fine, but staying to one platform development isn't my thing.

      You apparently missed the part where Swift 2 is OPEN SOURCE, and is going to be available for LINUX.

      Who gives a shit about Windows? It is on its way out.

    34. Re:Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 1

      How about Mac OS X? It was released in this century, and against the backdrop of Windows 2000 and Classic MacOS 9, it absolutely counted as "stunning."

      And besides, it was kind of refreshing to NOT see an endless parade of new APIs, paradigm-shifts, etc. with this release. It means that Apple is (finally!) getting satisfied with OS X, and can now concentrate on making the existing features better and more stable, which was unfortunately NOT the case with Yosemite, to the point that, even though I wanted some of the features, I decided to skip that version and stick with the much more stable Mavericks.

      But, after a brief waiting period, I think I will be installing El Capitan...

    35. Re:Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Ever try and close Safari? Operate the mouse? I pretty much had to do everything through the Finder as I at least understood how that operated.

      Why don't you try out Windows 8?

      I was practically in TEARS by the time I ACCIDENTLY stumbled on the way to close the Metro version of IE.

      If you can't handle a quick trip to the Menu Bar (which is in the same place in EVERY OS X App) and find the "Quit [appname]" command (which is in the same place in EVERY OS X App), then you are either illiterate, or truly sad.

    36. Re:Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 0

      Certainly not the ones here. They're mostly haters without rationality. Doesn't matter what Apple does - they are successful so they need to be attacked.

      But meanwhile, at WWDC, the real developers (ya know, the ones that don't have the time to hangout on Slashdot), almost gave a Standing Ovation when the Open Sourcing of Swift 2 was announced.

      It by far got the most enthusiastic reaction from those in attendance when it was announced that Apple had ported it to Linux.

      So you're right. The Apple-Hater pseudo-developers here on Slashdot (which I realize is not everyone) aren't going to even acknowledge that (yet again), Apple has given thousands upon thousands of hours of Development work to the world.

      You think it's easy to write a language? Try it some time. Then, write the mountain of documentation needed. Then write the complier, linker, debugger, etc. for it.

    37. Re: Must be getting old. by exomondo · · Score: 1

      So because version 5 of HTML took so long we should abandon all open standards in favor of everyone doing their own implementations of everything?

    38. Re: Must be getting old. by Karlt1 · · Score: 1

      So should Apple wait 10 years to make improvements to their OS while waiting on standards to catch up?

    39. Re: Must be getting old. by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Where are you getting 10 years from? Even if it were to take 10 years for some reason, Apple are a member of Khronos so make the Metal spec open so everybody can use it.

    40. Re: Must be getting old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It took 10 years for the HTML 5 spec to be standardized.

      It took 12 years for the C standard to be updated from C99 to the next standard - C11.

    41. Re: Must be getting old. by exomondo · · Score: 1

      It took 10 years for the HTML 5 spec to be standardized.

      It took 12 years for the C standard to be updated from C99 to the next standard - C11.

      Which may have relevance if HTML5 were a GPU API or if C was a GPU API but they are not.

      And you've ignored the second part, which is that the Metal spec could become a standard, except that it's proprietary and closed.

    42. Re: Must be getting old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're whining about stuff not being open source was real

      GP specifically said (multiple times) "open standard" and not once mentioned "open source", you need to get educated on the difference between the two.

      you'd have taken the opportunity to congratulate Apple today for making Swift open source.

      No it is not necessary to heap praise on them for an open source contribution to be able to level criticism at them for something else. If this were a Microsoft story and GP was criticising Microsoft for not releasing the DirectX12 spec you would not be demanding he/she first praise Microsoft for releasing .Net Core as open source.

      Because you don't really care

      However you definitely do care about Apple and how the company is perceived. You haven't attacked GP's point but instead GP's motives, it isnt the criticism that upsets you, it upsets you that GP is making that criticism about Apple. This is what separates Apple fanboys from Apple users, you are the former and give the latter a bad reputation for irrational and desperate emotional defense against anything you think could resemble and anti-Apple movement.

    43. Re:Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 1

      I'd really like Apple to put Swift and Metal out there as open source - it will only increase the adoption rate. But past performance leads me to doubt...

      What, do you mean like with WebKit or CUPS?

      Sorry, but past performance shows you are wrong. FWIW, Apple never promised to make FaceTime Open Source; what they said was that they were going to openly publish the protocol. I'm rather cheesed that never happened as well, but they never promised to open their source code to FaceTime.

      On the other hand, Webkit is a huge OSS project, which is used by a variety of products and companies, and which has a lot of non-Apple/non-Webkit contributors. Indeed, if not for WebKit, there wouldn't be Google Chrome. CUPS is, of course, the print subsystem used by virtually every Linux distro.

      Those are the projects you need to judge Apple's OSS track record on.

      Yaz

      And don't forget about Darwin and Bonjour and OpenCL, and GrandCentralDispatch, and launchd, and LLVM and ResearchKit and ALAC and DarwinStreamingServer and...

    44. Re:Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Metal: Not a new Graphics Engine. It's been on iOS for two years.

      But what is the point of it? Instead of contributing their work to an open standard - like AMD has done with Mantle - they have switched from an open standard and created their own Apple-centric 3D graphics API that is just another case of NIH syndrome.

      I do not know for sure; but if I had to guess, Metal is similar in INTENT to Microsoft's DirectX API. It would be difficult to make a generic, one size fits all Open Source API as efficient as a tightly coded, highly optimized, proprietary API.

      Remember? Apple tried going the OSS route with OpenGL, and people complained about sluggish performance of games on OS X vs Windows; so they took a page out of the MS manual and decided to write their own "DirectX"-type API.

      And so, now everyone will bitch that it's proprietary.

    45. Re: Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Where are you getting 10 years from? Even if it were to take 10 years for some reason, Apple are a member of Khronos so make the Metal spec open so everybody can use it.

      It cannot be an Open Standard; it is proprietary for the same reason DirectX is proprietary; it has to be allowed to pull every cycle-saving, down-and-dirty, low-down, ugly trick in the book to be AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. It is likely written largely in old-fashioned, hand-coded, hand-optimized Assembly, with all sorts of exception code for different GPUs, etc, etc. IOW, it is the direct antithesis of the way you would write something that you were going to publish an Open Standard on.

    46. Re:Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 1

      To be perfectly honest, it felt "cheap".

      Let me let you in on a little secret about Alpine: It IS cheap!

      Alpine is the car-stereo division of the electronic component manufacturer, Alps Electronics. Alps makes a wide variety of crappy passive components, mainly potentiometers and switches. ALL of their components are craptastic, failure-prone stuff that is found in virtually every cheap-ass car stereo and portable radio, tape/disc player, "boombox", etc. NOTHING they make is in any way, shape, or form "high quality".

      And guess whose components are in that $800 Alpine car stereo?

    47. Re:Must be getting old. by exomondo · · Score: 1

      I do not know for sure; but if I had to guess, Metal is similar in INTENT to Microsoft's DirectX API. It would be difficult to make a generic, one size fits all Open Source API as efficient as a tightly coded, highly optimized, proprietary API.

      Why do you think that? It's not as though DirectX targets any significant subset of desktop computing hardware over OpenGL, I don't think I've seen any benchmarks demonstrating any significant performance advantage of DirectX over OpenGL and certainly not related to the availability of the spec. Also why would it be less efficient if they released the spec?

      Remember? Apple tried going the OSS route with OpenGL, and people complained about sluggish performance of games on OS X vs Windows; so they took a page out of the MS manual and decided to write their own "DirectX"-type API.

      OpenGL isn't OSS - in fact pretty much all commercial implementations are proprietary, the spec is open if that's what you mean but I don't see how that affects performance - and the performance issue vs Windows is not down to DirectX which is why we don't see this "sluggish performance" issue in Windows vs Linux (take a look at games available on Steam), in fact the DirectX improvements for low driver overhead that Metal is doing are in DirectX 12 which isn't even commercially available yet.

    48. Re: Must be getting old. by exomondo · · Score: 1

      It cannot be an Open Standard; it is proprietary for the same reason DirectX is proprietary; it has to be allowed to pull every cycle-saving, down-and-dirty, low-down, ugly trick in the book to be AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.

      I'm not quite sure you understand how this works, Microsoft does not write the DirectX driver for the hardware, they just provide the specification.

      It is likely written largely in old-fashioned, hand-coded, hand-optimized Assembly, with all sorts of exception code for different GPUs, etc, etc. IOW, it is the direct antithesis of the way you would write something that you were going to publish an Open Standard on.

      The specification is not the same as the implementation, you don't write "old-fashioned, hand-coded, hand-optimized Assembly, with all sorts of exception code for different GPUs" into a specification.

    49. Re:Must be getting old. by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      Apparently you came pre-dumbed-down. Though you probably never had more intelligence than my water bottle to begin with, so it's not really accurate to add "down".

      You can't actually quit apps through Finder anyway, so you obviously have no fucking clue how a OS X works.

    50. Re:Must be getting old. by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      The whole Apple developer world will rejoice when Apple finally writes all the documentation needed.

    51. Re:Must be getting old. by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      Patents wouldn't prevent publishing a standard.

    52. Re:Must be getting old. by Whiteox · · Score: 1

      That's a bit unfair.
      Expecting complexity with the Macs I was working with was wrong, so yes, dumbing down is what I did.
      Finder can show running apps btw, but your right - I have no fucking clue how OS X works.

      --
      Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
    53. Re:Must be getting old. by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      And if someone can port Swift to Android, we'll finally have peace on Earth and the IPU will win the holy war against the infidels of the FSM.

      Well, Apple Music is coming to Android - and I don't think they wrote the App in Java ,,,

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    54. Re:Must be getting old. by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      Yeah, we've heard that they are going to open source stuff before, and we're still waiting. Where's my open FaceTime standard that Steve Jobs promised when he introduced FaceTime?

      That has been blocked by patents from somebody else.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    55. Re: Must be getting old. by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      So because version 5 of HTML took so long we should abandon all open standards in favor of everyone doing their own implementations of everything?

      That's funny, because if people like Apple hadn't made their own implementations of HTML 5, that would still be years away, with the W3C still trying to push XHTML.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    56. Re:Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 1

      I do not know for sure; but if I had to guess, Metal is similar in INTENT to Microsoft's DirectX API. It would be difficult to make a generic, one size fits all Open Source API as efficient as a tightly coded, highly optimized, proprietary API.

      Why do you think that? It's not as though DirectX targets any significant subset of desktop computing hardware over OpenGL, I don't think I've seen any benchmarks demonstrating any significant performance advantage of DirectX over OpenGL and certainly not related to the availability of the spec. Also why would it be less efficient if they released the spec?

      Remember? Apple tried going the OSS route with OpenGL, and people complained about sluggish performance of games on OS X vs Windows; so they took a page out of the MS manual and decided to write their own "DirectX"-type API.

      OpenGL isn't OSS - in fact pretty much all commercial implementations are proprietary, the spec is open if that's what you mean but I don't see how that affects performance - and the performance issue vs Windows is not down to DirectX which is why we don't see this "sluggish performance" issue in Windows vs Linux (take a look at games available on Steam), in fact the DirectX improvements for low driver overhead that Metal is doing are in DirectX 12 which isn't even commercially available yet.

      Ok. As I said, I don't know for sure, and I haven't the slightest clue about game development; however, if there wasn't a performance improvement to be had with Metal, why would Apple spend what must be thousands of hours doing development, documentation, testing, internal training, etc.on Metal? And "Lock-in" isn't a good-enough reason, due to the fact that, except for possibly in iOS, Apple still holds a severely-minority stake in the PC gaming market, and the fact that developers are still free to use OpenGL.

      And in the case of DirectX and Metal, in neither case do those APIs have to target specific hardware (although in Apple's case, it would be far more likely to be able to pull-of such an advantage); instead, both APIs can still offer significant performance improvements by essentially being simply a more efficient way to get from "high-level" drawing commands to the underlying BitBlt-style primitives. IOW, both could be nothing more than a more efficient "Presentation Layer", and still achieve faster overall performance, relative to the usual "Draw" API.

      And yes, I realize I am leaving out the fact that both DirectX and Metal also bundle a lot of common "game logic" functions for the convenience of game developers, and that that alone is a good argument for their existence; but in my original comment, I was concentrating on the potential performance advantages.

    57. Re:Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 1

      The whole Apple developer world will rejoice when Apple finally writes all the documentation needed.

      I think you can include EVERY platform in that shortcoming, don'tcha think?

    58. Re:Must be getting old. by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      How about Mac OS X? It was released in this century, and against the backdrop of Windows 2000 and Classic MacOS 9, it absolutely counted as "stunning."

      With MacOS 9 they were starting with an extremely low bar.

      An MS-DOS 5.0 OS with a UI based on Microsoft Bob would have seemed stunning by comparison.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    59. Re:Must be getting old. by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Ok. As I said, I don't know for sure, and I haven't the slightest clue about game development; however, if there wasn't a performance improvement to be had with Metal, why would Apple spend what must be thousands of hours doing development, documentation, testing, internal training, etc.on Metal? And "Lock-in" isn't a good-enough reason, due to the fact that, except for possibly in iOS, Apple still holds a severely-minority stake in the PC gaming market, and the fact that developers are still free to use OpenGL.

      Metal, DirectX (more specifically Direct3D) and OpenGL are not about "game development" they are about using the GPU for drawing, there's nothing particularly "game development" about them at all. Low driver overhead has been a key feature for the next generation of graphics APIs, Apple obviously implemented this on their iOS devices and having it on OSX as well provides an easy transition for developers within Apple's products...but why make it Apple-only?

      And in the case of DirectX and Metal, in neither case do those APIs have to target specific hardware (although in Apple's case, it would be far more likely to be able to pull-of such an advantage)

      The API doesn't target hardware at all. The specification and API (Application Programming Interface) are just that, where are you getting the idea that they would target specific hardware at all? When it comes to hardware drawing the implementation is down to the manufacturer of the hardware to provide the implementation (that's what the driver is for).

      instead, both APIs can still offer significant performance improvements by essentially being simply a more efficient way to get from "high-level" drawing commands to the underlying BitBlt-style primitives. IOW, both could be nothing more than a more efficient "Presentation Layer", and still achieve faster overall performance, relative to the usual "Draw" API.

      It seems what you're describing is just "hardware accelerated drawing".

      And yes, I realize I am leaving out the fact that both DirectX and Metal also bundle a lot of common "game logic" functions for the convenience of game developers, and that that alone is a good argument for their existence

      No you're not leaving that out, Metal doesn't at all, neither does OpenGL and the comparable component of DirectX - Direct3D - doesn't either.

    60. Re:Must be getting old. by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Has this always been the case?? I was real interested in car audio back in the mid 90s (93-96). To my recollection, Alpine and Kenwood were the gold standard followed by JVC (digifine series), Pioneer, Panasonic, Sony, and Blaupunkt. Obviously I'm way out of loop on this, so I'm glad you chimed in.

      In your opinion, what brand of head units are worth looking into? Or, is it all cheap crap now?

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    61. Re:Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Then, if all that you are saying is true, then I need to just bow out of this particular part of the discussion.

      I'm an embedded designer of mainly industrial controls. Good graphics performance is rarely a design criteria in my Projects...

      Thanks for the edjumication.

    62. Re:Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Has this always been the case?? I was real interested in car audio back in the mid 90s (93-96). To my recollection, Alpine and Kenwood were the gold standard followed by JVC (digifine series), Pioneer, Panasonic, Sony, and Blaupunkt. Obviously I'm way out of loop on this, so I'm glad you chimed in.

      In your opinion, what brand of head units are worth looking into? Or, is it all cheap crap now?

      Don't EVEN mention old Skool Kenwood, or even some Pioneer in the same breath as Alpine! I have no direct experience with Blaupunkt; but I have no specific reason to hate, or love, them.

      But I will say this: In my brief experience as a repair tech for a company that got the repair work for all the local high-end audio shops (around half a dozen at that time) in our city, that a LOT of very-pricey audiophile products look like science-fair projects on the inside.

      As far as today's high-end audio, whether home or mobile, I am so far out of it as to have no relevant opinion, sorry.

      Actually, my knowledge of Alps Electronics comes from thumbing through their product catalogs and sampling their stuff in my decades as an embedded designer. I can't remember where I found out that Alps and Alpine were one and the same; but they are.

    63. Re:Must be getting old. by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Fair enough ;) In any case I'm not opposed to Metal, just opposed to it being an Apple-only thing.

    64. Re:Must be getting old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Apple tried going the OSS route with OpenGL, and people complained about sluggish performance of games on OS X vs Windows"
      I know that this a heresy, but Apple sucks at writing drivers. And fanbois sucked it.

    65. Re:Must be getting old. by macs4all · · Score: 1

      "Apple tried going the OSS route with OpenGL, and people complained about sluggish performance of games on OS X vs Windows" I know that this a heresy, but Apple sucks at writing drivers. And fanbois sucked it.

      Name someone who doesn't suck at writing drivers. I haven't seen anything but, in multiple decades experience with multiple drivers for multiple things on multiple platforms.

  8. Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by HannethCom · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Mavericks and Yosemite introduced a number of really bad bugs and annoyances. Has this fixed some of them?
    -Can you access the file dialog with out waiting forever with just the spinning disk showing?
    -Does the filesystem update when things like screenshots are taken with out having to force a reload of the filesystem cache?
    -Can you lock the dock to a certain position on one screen?
    -Can we have it so the HDMI Port stops cutting out?
    -Can the screen properly update without black boxes sometimes covering content / UI elements?
    -Can we have an OS that doesn't feel like it is from the early 90s?
    -Can we have more graphical setup options instead of having to do things through the command prompt?

    --
    Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
    1. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by tlhIngan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      -Can we have an OS that doesn't feel like it is from the early 90s?

      You can blame the "journalists" for that one.

      Basically the big reason why iOS made the change to flatness and why flatness is the new hotness is because some very big loudmouths started saying they hated the way everything looked the same as it did before.

      I believe the term bandied about was "stale". As in "iOS6 - the same old iOS that looks the same as it did since 2007. Stale, compared to the flashy updates to the UI Android makes, or the radical flatness of Windows phone". Ditto OS X.

      Of course, everyone who's ever worked in UI knows people like UIs to, well, not change - that some menu option will always be located in the same place, that things generally look the same. If there's a change, there had better be a damn good reason for the change.

      TL; DR: Some loudmouth bloggers, journalists, etc., hated the way things looked the same and called it stale and needed refreshing. Apple obliged and the "new UI" was adored by said loudmouths. And hated by everyone else didn't think it was stale, but functional.

    2. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      -Can you access the file dialog with out waiting forever with just the spinning disk showing?
      -Can the screen properly update without black boxes sometimes covering content / UI elements?

      So it's not just me then. Core 2 Duo with nVidia 320m, 8GB RAM and 5400RPM HDD here, what about you?

    3. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've experienced literally none of those things on any of the Macs or iOS devices that I come in contact with daily. Are you certain that those aren't particular to your own system?

      Not implying that those are bug-free OSes, I say typing on "ComputerName (23)".

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    4. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, I'm no apple apologist, but i have had 0 problems with your first 5 issues you list.

      I think the OS is ok but not fantastic. (Things that are fantastic impress me and make my life easier at every turn, not put me in a Lowest Common Denominator box)
      I totally agree about being able to configure stuff.

      It sounds like you probably have some bad video ram or something or at least a serious caching problem.
      I manage 50 or so macs and one had a similar issue, it was some bad v ram that would only act up once it was full (all 4 gigs!). this would usually be when I had BMD Resolve open and Adobe Premiere. It would happen often when waking from sleep as well, maybe something wasn't getting stored right.

      Anyway that's my anecdote.

      -S

    5. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I experienced all of those things.

    6. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What the fuck is wrong with your Mac? I've never experienced any of those problems and I own 4 Macs. As far as the last two items... meh.

    7. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by BasilBrush · · Score: 0

      Haven't experienced any of the defects described. But I have experienced flakiness with WiFI. And that has been addressed by going back to the pre Yosemite connection demon.

    8. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Flavianoep · · Score: 0

      Microsoft, Apple, what's the difference? Both want to steal money from devs and control users with walled gardens.

      Or you can use Linux and have more annoyances for free.

      Frankly, I can't get how so many people still want to pay so much for an OS, when you can just download one for free and pay as much as you consider reasonable, if you feel uneasy with the free of charge thing.

      In the end they all look the same, until you hit into problems.

      --
      Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
    9. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The spinning ball in the file dialog happened to me too. In that case, the file browser was pointing to an iCloud directory, that may be why...

    10. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No it's not you, unfortunately. I have a tricked out 2012 MBP 13 with max memory and SSD and it can take seconds to bring up the damned panel. Yet the SSD benchmarks properly, and file copies behave as expected...

      Wirth's Law, I guess.

    11. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by hondo77 · · Score: 0

      Frankly, I can't get how so many people still want to pay so much for an OS, when you can just download one for free...

      Yosemite is free. Always has been. El Capitan is almost certain to be free, as well.

      --
      I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
    12. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by jo_ham · · Score: 2

      The file dialog needs some love, or a setting that says "do not poll all disks" - I have an SSD as the boot drive, but I do have connected external and internal storage on spinning drives that is accessed infrequently.

      It's a pain in the ass when you open a file dialog box and the system pauses to wait for all the drives to spin up. I would prefer it to only spin the drive up if I click on a folder or volume that is on that drive.

    13. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mavericks and Yosemite introduced a number of really bad bugs and annoyances.

      You're holding it wrong.

    14. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by james_marsh · · Score: 1

      -Can you mount Kerberos NFS directories without suffering a kernel panic after a random amount of time?

    15. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Noah+Haders · · Score: 0

      yes, the os is free, but you can only download it by buying a computer or having owned a computer. then there's lock in because anything you do in el capitan also needs to be done on a computer

    16. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by sribe · · Score: 2

      -Can you access the file dialog with out waiting forever with just the spinning disk showing?

      Sure, that's easy. Never use a network share. Not ever.

    17. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by bidule · · Score: 1

      - If I use the right screen Dock, can it open in the right screen?
      - When I switch Page, can the focus stay on the current screen?

      --
      ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
    18. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by SvnLyrBrto · · Score: 1

      Regardless of the opinions of anyone on "flatness"; a big motivator was a growing dislike of skeuomorphism amongst the public and Apple's developers. They couldn't get rid of it, though, because Scott Forrestal was in love with the idea and had the clout to force it on everyone. And when he bungled the Maps transition and "retired" later on, what should probably have been a more careful and gradual transition was rushed. causing some annoying peculiarities.

      --
      Imagine all the people...
    19. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, yes. An operating system does require a computer. I'm not sure what else you would expect.

    20. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, it would be nice to have some deeper features as well:

      1: It was rumored that root would be made into a role by default, similar to Solaris. This would be useful just because it bumps up security, and if one did want the all-powerful user, they could allow it.

      2: Since OEM hardware comes with TCG 2.0 (required for Windows 8 certification), why can't Macs use the TPM hardware? This way, I can set a boot password (separate from my user and firmware PWs) which will add an exponentially longer delay the more guesses are made. I can also use that hardware for secure storage of keys with KeyChain as well.

      3: On the note about KeyChain, it would be nice if Apple had built in OpenPGP support, using KeyChain as an additional way of storing keys.

      4: Not VNC, or ARA, but a way to RDP into a Mac via Windows, perhaps even use App-V.

      5: Better behavior when it comes to AD, like better GPOs and such. Apple would make money hand-over-fist in the enterprise desktop sector, and it is easier to nail one sale for 10,000 units than 10,000 customers buying one unit.

      6: Get with VMWare and go with a hypervisor like ESXi, so the OS doesn't touch the hardware. This will go far in protecting internal devices like USB keyboards, video cards, and other items from being flashed with rogue code.

      7: Can we have a real filesystem? HFS is something out of the 1980s, HFS+ was made 10 years later. Everyone else has gotten real filesystems, be it Windows and Storage Spaces/ReFS, BSD with ZFS, Linux with btrfs. Apple? Time for the 21st century with a filesystem that has snapshots. ZFS was a part of Darwin/OS X... it is time for it to return, and return soon.

      8: Can we get some TRIM functionality on external USB SSDs? Even going via USB 3.0, a SSD is still useful, especially for random I/O tasks like virtualization, since you don't have two operating systems fighting for the same drive head.

      9: Can we get some in-memory protection so someone can't plug a Thunderbolt or FireWire device into the box and dump the RAM?

      10: Can we get OS X to have an option on FileVault for a password that isn't connected to any user? This way, I can use a shorter password for a user, but if the machine is off or suspended, the potential attacker has to figure out a much longer passphrase.

    21. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Basically the big reason why iOS made the change to flatness and why flatness is the new hotness is because some very big loudmouths started saying they hated the way everything looked the same as it did before.

      No. Purely utilitarian people misinterpret this because their idea of imagination begins and ends with their brown suit, beige volvo and their indifference to the drab gray cubicle office environment in which they work. Hey, it's functional so why change it, right?

    22. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Guy+Harris · · Score: 1

      The file dialog needs some love, or a setting that says "do not poll all disks" - I have an SSD as the boot drive, but I do have connected external and internal storage on spinning drives that is accessed infrequently.

      It's a pain in the ass when you open a file dialog box and the system pauses to wait for all the drives to spin up. I would prefer it to only spin the drive up if I click on a folder or volume that is on that drive.

      Code that thinks it's cheap to look at all volumes needs to be introduced to reality. Spinning disks up isn't even the worst case; think about attempting to contact a remote volume mounted from a slow server, or a server on a slow network, or a disconnected server.

    23. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Guy+Harris · · Score: 1

      Well, yes. An operating system does require a computer. I'm not sure what else you would expect.

      OS X, unless you're willing to violate the license and whip up a Hackintosh, requires a computer from Apple. Linux doesn't, so, unlike OS X, it's less likely require you to buy a new computer in order to be able to use it.

    24. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by _xeno_ · · Score: 1

      And OS X isn't the worst for that. Windows 8.1 has this lovely thing where if you drag a file over the directory tree in Explorer, it will spin up every single goddamned disc and network drive and freeze the drag operation until it's done.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    25. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Kenshin · · Score: 2

      Personally, I was thrilled to get rid of the glossy bullshit.

      A "lickable" OS was great to differentiate OS X and show off new technologies, but after a while it just looked tacky.

      --

      Does it make you happy you're so strange?

    26. Re: Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have the 2012 MBP 13". I just installed an SSD finally and did a fresh install of everything: is't like a new computer. No slowness in Finder at all.

    27. Re: Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Word is that the next update to Yosemite gets rids of discoveryd and brings back mDNSresponder, which was the culprit behind a number of network bugs and, apparently, wifi glitches.

    28. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by BasilBrush · · Score: 0

      Fucking cry-baby.

    29. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      Windows 8.1 is old news, and will be really old news in about a month and a half. I am really looking forward to Windows 10 on my Asus tablet. I'm hoping, honestly, that it kills the iPad. Which it very well could. I guess Apple phones are nice from what I've heard. None of my iPod touches (three of them) are older than the Windows 7 box that I can upgrade soon to Windows 10, yet they are all now stick with iOSes two to four versions old. Six months from now school kids will groan when their teachers issue them iPads.

      I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

    30. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Shadowmist · · Score: 1

      Frankly, I can't get how so many people still want to pay so much for an OS, when you can just download one for free and pay as much as you consider reasonable,.

      Both El Capitan and the new Windows will be offered as free downloads.

    31. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Zaurus · · Score: 1

      I would just settle for bug fixes and a better name than "El Capitan". In fact, the name bothers me so much it drove me to start a blog again just to rant about how bad the current naming scheme is.

    32. Re: Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Flavianoep · · Score: 1

      The price for the OS is included in the price of a Mac computer, so you pay for it somehow. However, your comment makes me remember how things are different in different countries. In Brazil, the Macs are so more expensive that no one would ever say that anything that comes in it is free.

      --
      Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
    33. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by brantondaveperson · · Score: 1

      Can you access the file dialog with out waiting forever with just the spinning disk showing?

      Well... I can now, but I did have to install an SSD to make that happen. It didn't happen very much though, and forever was normally less than a few seconds.

      Does the filesystem update when things like screenshots are taken with out having to force a reload of the filesystem cache

      Yes it does. Perhaps you have a hardware issue on the disk? Might explain your spinning wheel on file open dialogs too.

      Can you lock the dock to a certain position on one screen?

      Such as where? Left, bottom or right. That's about it.

      Can we have it so the HDMI Port stops cutting out?

      Yes, if your hardware isn't broken or marginal. I suggest a trip to the store if you're having that problem.

      Can the screen properly update without black boxes sometimes covering content / UI elements

      Yes. Sounds more and more like some hardware issues..

      Can we have an OS that doesn't feel like it is from the early 90s

      In the early 90's we had Windows 3.1 - I remember that pretty well, and it didn't feel much like OSX.

      Can we have more graphical setup options instead of having to do things through the command prompt

      No. Which is slightly annoying I suppose, but I do find I spend less time fiddling with it and more time getting work done.

    34. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, OS X is quite dodgy at times. My MacBook Pro 2012 SSD often doesn't recognise file changes in Finder for minutes at a time. Editing files, creating new files, etc. while trying to use Finder, commit to git (via SourceTree) or copy or move things around is a giant pain when half the system doesn't notice things changing. Spotlight doesn't seem to be in the way on this one, either. I usually have to drop to a terminal, prod the directory with some commands and then things magically appear.

      Yes, things otherwise seem fine, the disk has valid permissions, is fixed and verified. System load doesn't seem to affect things. There's no obvious malware in action, but hey, who knows these days... it's hard to know anything for sure.

    35. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by andymadigan · · Score: 1

      There is at least on file browsing problem. Have you noticed that newly created files somehow have "no date" as a created/last mod time? This means if you sort by descending date (newest on top) new files actually sort to the bottom. Seems to take a while to stamp a date, maybe a weird cache issue?

      --
      The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
    36. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      Of course, everyone who's ever worked in UI knows people like UIs to, well, not change - that some menu option will always be located in the same place, that things generally look the same. If there's a change, there had better be a damn good reason for the change.

      Everyone in software development outside UI knows that. Everyone who works in UI desparetely believes that people want change, because that way the UI people they justify their existence. Hire someone new in UI, and the first thing they do is change the user interface.

    37. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      And OS X isn't the worst for that. Windows 8.1 has this lovely thing where if you drag a file over the directory tree in Explorer, it will spin up every single goddamned disc and network drive and freeze the drag operation until it's done.

      Apple tells its developers that disk I/O should always be done asynchronous for these reasons. Both Apple and Microsoft would do better following Apple's advice.

    38. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I used Onyx to clear out the caches and Yosemite is working much much better. Evidently there are still out-of-date stuff in important cache files that survive the update and they need to be removed manually.

    39. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Hey, they can even spin up all the drives. That doesn't mean you can't draw the UI and make most of it responsive in the meantime. OS X freezes almost the entire OS when a drive is spinning up.

    40. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Only if you already own a license to a previous version. With the exception of the embedded version of Windows 10 such as what will be free on Raspberry Pi.

    41. Re: Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Now that would be undecidedly Apple - redesigning a framework with a major OS release, realizing that it's shit, and then reverting to the concrete-stable way you did it for a decade rather than botching it together until it sorta works.

      This is a change for GOOD.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    42. Re: Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      The difference here is that the next few releases of OS X will also be unpaid when you buy a Mac.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    43. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you experienced an uncut big black dick in your ass? Would you like to?

    44. Re:Does El Capitan Fix Major Problems? by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      yes, the os is free, but you can only download it by buying a computer or having owned a computer. then there's lock in because anything you do in el capitan also needs to be done on a computer

      And here's to a completely unnecessary shifting of goalposts. Cheers.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  9. This just in by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2

    Nothing happened at WWDC today.

    No, even less than that.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Swift is coming to linux, the language and tool chain, not the OS-X and iOS specific API and libraries.

  10. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Obvious troll is obvious.

    iOS 9 seems to support older hardware better than previous versions.

    iOS 9 and OS 10.11 are mainly speed related updates and having everything run on top of Metal now as well as other tweaks means older devices that normally would've been dropped can handle iOS 9 and may even run better than they currently do on iOS 8.

  11. Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by chispito · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" Is that 240% the speed of Yosemite, or is that 140% the speed of Yosemite?

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    1. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can someone translate "240% the speed of Yosemite?" Is that 2.4x the speed of Yosemite, or is that 1.4x the speed of Yosemite?

    2. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by BlackPignouf · · Score: 1

      It translates to "it will look faster than Yosemite, but only after a fresh install. After you installed your beloved programs, it will be slower".
      Fun fact : If you multiply all the supposedly "X times faster" since 1984 and take into account the faster CPUs, you'd probably have startup times of a few nanoseconds.

    3. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      Depends, what's the speed of Yosemite relative to Snow Leopard?

    4. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's 240% the speed of Yosemite.

      'Faster' includes the baseline of the old speed, and increases from there.

      Thus if you have a car with a top speed of 80MPH, and another car that is 1.4x *faster*, it will have a speed of 80MPH + (80MPH * 1.4) or 192 MPH

    5. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by danbob999 · · Score: 1

      Actually, I understood it the other way. 2x faster means twice as fast, 100% faster, or 200% of the baseline. 1.4x faster is the same as 40% faster, 140% of the baseline.

    6. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      Apple sheep here(I own 3 daring fireball shirts, so I think that should establish my sheep cred here).

      It's marketing pablum. It's not slower, and really, that's more than what I can say for other OS upgrades.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    7. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by exomondo · · Score: 1

      1.4x faster is the same as 40% faster, 140% of the baseline.

      That doesn't make any sense, 1.4x is 140% of the baseline. It's really not that complicated: If your baseline is 100% and you want to get to 140% you need to go 40% (or 0.4x) faster than 100%.

    8. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by Pfhorrest · · Score: 1

      "x% more than" means "(1+x)% as much as", whatever metric you're comparing.

      So "1.4x faster than" means "2.4x as fast as".

      If it helps make intuitive sense, turn it around instead: if it had been "1.4x as fast as", that would have meant "0.4x faster than" the original 1x speed, because 0.4x faster than 1x is 1.4x. Likewise 2.4x is 1.4x faster than 1x. So since it's 1.4x faster (than the original, which is by definition the 1x being compared to), that makes it 1x + 1.4x = 2.4x as fast.

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    9. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by Pfhorrest · · Score: 1

      Or to clarify another way: something that's 100% faster than something else is twice as fast, or 200% as fast, because 100% + 100% = 200%.

      On the other hand something that's 100% as fast as something else is 0% faster, because it's not faster at all, it's exactly 100% as fast as.

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    10. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by danbob999 · · Score: 1

      I know, but language isn't the same as math. Three times faster means 300%. Just like three times slower means one third, not that you are going faster but in the opposite direction.

    11. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by GrahamCox · · Score: 1

      Jeez how to overcomplicate and overthink a simple thing. However they worded it, it's no way 2.4x faster than Yosemite - that's not possible on the same hardware. It's 40% faster than, or 1.4x faster.

      And what exactly is faster? They don't say, but perhaps that's a mix of typical operations (launching, drawing speed, searching and sorting, etc), or perhaps they're just cherry picking a few routines that they've managed to optimise that are low level but will benefit most apps equally (but which won't translate into a 40% speed up to the user in most cases).

    12. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by exomondo · · Score: 1

      I know, but language isn't the same as math. Three times faster means 300%.

      No, it absolutely does not. If you are saying 1.4x (140%) faster when you actually mean it is 0.4x (40%) faster then your language is irrefutably wrong. By your logic saying it is 40% faster would actually mean it was slower, which is wrong.

    13. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by Pfhorrest · · Score: 1

      I'm not talking about the software, just about language, which you're still misusing. If it is 40% faster as you say, then it's not 1.4x faster, it's 1.4x as fast, which is the same thing as 0.4x faster. 0.4x is the same thing as 40%.

      Maybe whoever originally wrote "1.4x faster" is the one who got it wrong, and they should have wrote "1.4x as fast" instead, but my only point is that "1.4x faster" means the same thing as 240% as fast.

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    14. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by danbob999 · · Score: 1

      40% faster is not slower. But nobody will say 0.4x faster. 0.4x means slower, yes.

    15. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by omnichad · · Score: 1

      1.4x is multiplication by juxtaposition in algebraic terms. However, you're quoting 1.4x faster and not 1.4x the speed (which is what was probably intended). And that would be 1x + 1.4x. Am I the only one seeing the language confusion for what it is?

    16. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by exomondo · · Score: 1

      0.4x means slower, yes.

      But "0.4x faster" means 40% faster or 140% of the original speed. I think what you're struggling with is the understanding that the language describes a mathematical equation, maybe it's the shortening that is tripping you up:

      It's not particularly complicated, if you were to say "it is 1.4x faster" what this means is "the new speed is 1.4 * {the original speed} faster {than the original speed}." So if your original speed is 10 the language is quite clearly describing the equation as:
      new speed = 1.4*10+10

      It's very, very simple.

    17. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by exomondo · · Score: 1

      1.4x is multiplication by juxtaposition in algebraic terms. However, you're quoting 1.4x faster and not 1.4x the speed (which is what was probably intended). And that would be 1x + 1.4x. Am I the only one seeing the language confusion for what it is?

      I agree, the language has probably been used incorrectly, in fact that is exactly what I'm saying but you still have these morons claiming it has been used correctly and that "1.4x faster", "1.4x the original speed" and "40% faster" all mean the same thing.

    18. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by danbob999 · · Score: 1

      I understand all that. It's just not what people say.

    19. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by exomondo · · Score: 1

      So you understand "1.4x faster than the original speed" and "1.4x the original speed" to mean the same thing? Plenty of people say incorrect things, that doesn't mean it's not wrong.

    20. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by danbob999 · · Score: 1

      I understand most people are wrong, but at least I understand what they mean. The purpose of language is to be understood by others.

    21. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by exomondo · · Score: 1

      That's not what I asked, I asked if you understand those two statements to mean the same thing.

    22. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by danbob999 · · Score: 1

      Of course I understand the difference, however, call the article wrong if you like, but I am 99% sure that the author meant 40% faster.

    23. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by exomondo · · Score: 1

      If that is what the author meant then it is wrong. The concept that "faster" includes a baseline is a pretty concrete and very simple.

    24. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      If that is what the author meant then it is wrong. The concept that "faster" includes a baseline is a pretty concrete and very simple.

      Yes. And the baseline for percentages and for "times" are different. Deal with it.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    25. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      So you understand "1.4x faster than the original speed" and "1.4x the original speed" to mean the same thing? Plenty of people say incorrect things, that doesn't mean it's not wrong.

      So to you "Zero times faster" and "One time the original speed" are the same? And "minus half times faster" the same as "half the speed"?

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    26. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      And what exactly is faster? They don't say

      Actually, yes they do. In the keynote and on their web page. http://www.apple.com/osx/elcap...

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    27. Re:Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" by exomondo · · Score: 1

      So to you "Zero times faster" and "One time the original speed" are the same?

      Of course they are, they're redundant but they are the same. If you think differently then I would be interested to hear your explanation. The language describes the math, so what math do you think is being described?

      And "minus half times faster" the same as "half the speed"?

      Yes, again the former is pretty redundant.

  12. what will happen to paid radio? by u19925 · · Score: 1

    Looks like paid radio services will have some tough time ahead. Specially for families, the Apple Music will be actually cheaper than Pandora premium. Also, with complete iTune catalog on it, it will be have vastly more content than competitors. And now it works across range of devices, so yet another benefit of using Pandora like services is going away. Not sure what is happening, but this is very very frightening with Apple holding all your eggs.

    1. Re:what will happen to paid radio? by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      What's more interesting is how hard Apple is trying to sell all the music publishers on not allowing ANY access to their catalogs for free streaming. They're kind doing the Bill Gates 'letter to hobbyists' thing to convince the music pubs to kill any possibility of free streaming music on any of Apple's competitors.

    2. Re:what will happen to paid radio? by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      What's more interesting is how hard Apple is trying to sell all the music publishers on not allowing ANY access to their catalogs for free streaming.

      At least that's what the competition is claiming, who is left behind by Artists who don't want to but up with them anymore.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  13. Re:WTF by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1

    This is disgusting.

    In what way?

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  14. Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Cutting_Crew · · Score: 5, Informative

    The apple developer program is now all in one instead of paying a separate license or Mac OSX, iOS and Safari. This is good news and makes sense. It was kinda pointless to have a separate license for all these common features between devices/hardware.

    1. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by _xeno_ · · Score: 4, Informative

      Wait, you guys (Apple developers) have to pay *licenses* to Apple to write programs and apps on their platforms?

      No, of course not, Xcode is a free download and you can write programs and apps for any iDevice for free. (Ignoring the cost of the Mac you need to buy in the first place, of course.)

      You just can't let other people use them without forking over $100/year. (At all for iOS or without making users disable scary security dialogs for OS X.)

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    2. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 2

      Wait, you guys (Apple developers) have to pay *licenses* to Apple to write programs and apps on their platforms?

      Of course not. Apple makes Xcode available for free and you can use it to your heart's content. The paid license is for distributing apps through Apple's store. That's almost a requirement for iOS development (although you can install home-written software on your own stuff, I think), but not at all needed for Mac development. Lots of software is available via the Mac app store; lots more is available through developers' own websites.

      How are you guys OK with this?

      They wouldn't be. Fortunately, they don't have to be.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    3. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Cutting_Crew · · Score: 4, Informative

      uhh. the license provides you with pre-releases of the updates (like as of now) for mac osx and ios before the public release so your apps will work with any updates changes to any of the devices mentioned in the keynote. it also allows you to have access to all of the sessions if you werent able to make it to WWDC. If you are able to make it (you cant go unless you arent a developer, unless you get a special invite) you get one on one time with developers in the session labs to look over your code, help with bugs and in other technical help you might have. You also get the developer videos as well as access to the apple developer forums.

      You also get two technical support incidents with actual apple engineers that will go through your code, look at bugs with you, offer suggestions/help.feedback/ and help you fix your problem. Obviously this would be something worthwhile in case you've exhausted all avenues of technical support from the web or from other colleagues.

      It also includes the ability to sell your apps on the apple store. Sure, you could do it but how are you going to get the visibility you need to get your app noticed if it is not in the app store? How are you going to set up the payment system/networking/server maintenance/etc/etc so that you accept all major credit cards and get all that secure for people to buy your app? (assuming you have enough traffic to even warrant such as set up)

    4. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by irrational_design · · Score: 2

      Easy. "Me: Hey Boss, I'm expensing $100. Boss: Sure, whatever." Though, in reality I don't actually run things by my boss before expensing them. But, if I did, this is the response I would get.

    5. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by _xeno_ · · Score: 1

      That's almost a requirement for iOS development (although you can install home-written software on your own stuff, I think),

      Nope! You need to pay them to do that, and there's a limit to how many devices your organization can install apps to. I'm not sure what the limit is for the base plan since I only have ever used the Apple developer program through my employer. But there's a whole process to get a device "provisioned" to be able to run apps you're developing and there's a limit based on your plan with Apple.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    6. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      The "Process" for a development device (one that gets the app automatically when you hit compile in XCOde.

      1 - Add the device ID to your developer profile.
      2 - Ensure that your app set to the "auto" profile. As it will be anyway for new apps.

      That's it.

      For beta testers, you can have 1000 of them, and you don't need their device IDs or Apple IDs. Just their email address.

    7. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by jeremyp · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wait, you guys (Apple developers) have to pay *licenses* to Apple to write programs and apps on their platforms?

      No.

      You can get Xcode and all the SDKs for free either through the app store or by registering as a developer (free). You pay $100 for the ability to sign your compiled applications. On OS X this means people who download your compiled binaries won't get a warning that the code is unsigned.

      On iOS you can't put unsigned code on any device, not even your own, without the signing cert so to do serious development, you need to pay $100 (your code will run in the simulator without signing, but the simulator runs x86 binaries so it's not a proper test of the code's behaviour on a real device). This isn't really a big deal because to develop for iOS you must have a Mac and some sort of iOS device so you can probably afford $100.

      The $100 also gives you early access to all betas, so I could install El Cap now, if I wanted (I don't), however, over the last year or so, for me it's been most useful for access to Swift betas. The early versions of the Swift development environment were tragically unstable and produced code that was quite slow. You had to be on the bleeding edge to get all the bug fixes.

      --
      All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
    8. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 5, Informative

      Back in 2008...

      Symbian code signing was like 200 bucks every six months(So 400 a year!) back in the Symbian days and you got little to no support.

      BlackBerry signing was a little complicated and had three tiers of API usage, each tier costing $100.

      Qualcomm had their own requirements that was something like 100 apps for 400 bucks for use on the Verizon game store.

      So in 2008 when Apple announced that it was going to only cost $100 bucks for unlimited apps and all public APIs with a storefront that you could make money on, it was a godsend.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    9. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by santiago · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Additionally, you no longer need to be in the developer program to build and run code on an iOS device. The $99 / year membership is now only needed for selling things in the App Store. Anyone with an Apple account can download the Xcode 7 Beta and deploy a compiled app to their own physical iOS device.

    10. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by sribe · · Score: 1

      Nope! You need to pay them to do that, and there's a limit to how many devices your organization can install apps to. I'm not sure what the limit is for the base plan since I only have ever used the Apple developer program through my employer. But there's a whole process to get a device "provisioned" to be able to run apps you're developing and there's a limit based on your plan with Apple.

      If you're in the "enterprise" program for large companies, I'm pretty sure there is no limit on the number of devices to which you can install.

      There is a limit to "ad-hoc" installs. But the reasoning there is that those are really only intended for beta testing and so on, not real distribution. If you happen to have a situation where your need to distribute fits under that cap, well then cool for you, but it's not what that part of the program is really meant for.

    11. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lucky. At my work, it would go more like Me: Hey boss, I'm expensing $100.

      Boss: What the hell? Why are you wasting money? You work for a multimillionaire who's in business to make money not waste it.

      Me: It's required for my task.

      Boss: Well, you'll just have to do without it.

      Me: It'll mean more hours with a higher value than that, and I won't work them for free.

      Boss: Fine. Just get it done.

      Boss: What the fucking hell is all this overtime? I didn't authorize this, and I refuse to pay it!

      Me: You authorized it on the day you refused to pay the $100 for that Apple licence.

      Boss: I did not! Why are you so incompetent? Why can't you just get stuff done? ...and so forth. Yes, I'm looking for another job.

    12. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      How are you guys OK with this? Like, what discourse goes through your mind to justify this when you are forced to pull out the credit card?

      It's a cost of doing business? If you think Apple is bad, try developing games for Nintendo.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    13. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by mfearby · · Score: 0

      This is the biggest piece of good news from the WWDC. I have an iOS developer program license ($150 in Australia) and have been holding off on buying one for OS X until my app is mostly ready (why pay for it and let time tick by without having an app in the App Store?). Now I won't have to :-)

      And to MildlyTangy (in reply to Cutting_Crew's post) yes, we have to pay, but only if we want to distribute apps through the App Store. We're free to build OS X apps and put them on the 'net for free, but to distribute an iOS app, there is no free method (unless you and all your users are into jailbreaking, which kinda limits your customer base!).

    14. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1

      Tell your ineffective boss to GFY and upgrade to a real job. I'm not even joking a little. A shop that won't give you the tools to effectively do your job is a special kind of hell that no one deserves. Get out of there before your skills fall so far out of date that you're stuck for life.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    15. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by irrational_design · · Score: 1

      My recommendation is to find a job with a fortune 100 company.

    16. Re: Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by ljw1004 · · Score: 2

      What cognitive dissonance? There is none. Apple have lots of money. I'm comfortably well off. I don't mind paying this money to them to pursue my hobby.

      Other bits of my coding hobby cost a lit more, like paying for web hosting of my ad-free resources that I put up. And paying for equipment.

      The developer fee is pretty cheap. Last date night out with my wife cost more, once we factor in dinner and gabby sitter.

    17. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by djbckr · · Score: 2

      Think of it like the MSDN membership, which gives you a *lot* of free, advanced releases of Microsoft software, plus lots of educational tools. You pay for that too. In fact, I think you pay a lot more for that than Apple's fees.

    18. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a cost of doing business?

      Since when does software development have to be a business? Is there no room in the Apple world for hobbyists anymore?

    19. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1, Troll

      It also includes the ability to sell your apps on the apple store.

      Wrong. It affords you the privileged of petitioning Apple for permission to sell your apps on the Apple Store. And if they decline, you are shit out of luck.

      Sure, you could do it but how are you going to get the visibility you need to get your app noticed if it is not in the app store? How are you going to set up the payment system/networking/server maintenance/etc/etc so that you accept all major credit cards and get all that secure for people to buy your app?

      There's this weird old thing called 'selling software without having to go through the Apple Store.' It's shocking, I know, but people have been doing it for awhile now on many platforms. And if you make a free app, you don't need a payment system, etc. etc. etc. FTP is a very mature software distribution system. But Apple didn't invent it yet so it probably doesn't exist.

    20. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      You can download Visual Studio these days for free. There are limits to what you can do, but NONE of those limits preclude you from giving your binaries away to 30,000,000 people if you can find 30,000,000 people who want to install them.

    21. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      On iOS you can't put unsigned code on any device, not even your own, without the signing cert so to do serious development, you need to pay $100 ...

      Until today.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    22. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by mfearby · · Score: 1

      You can give away your binaries to 30,000,000 people with XCode, too, without having to have a developer license (when making an OS X app which you don't wish to distribute through the App Store, that is). People will have to go into System Preferences and "Allow From Anywhere", though (but most haven't or won't).

    23. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 1

      The apple developer program is now all in one instead of paying a separate license or Mac OSX, iOS and Safari. This is good news and makes sense. It was kinda pointless to have a separate license for all these common features between devices/hardware.

      That's good news. So far I've only been registered for the iOS license, and have to renew in July. I might actually get back in to Mac programming again. On a side note, Safari developer has always been free.

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    24. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      its a steal compared to the MSDN membership... https://www.visualstudio.com/products/how-to-buy-vs

    25. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by brantondaveperson · · Score: 1

      Xcode is free, and so a hobbyist writing code for their mac - and anyone else's too if they're willing to turn off the "store only" switch in their settings - is completely free to do whatever they will.

      And as of this latest announcement, you can do the same with your iOS device too.

      This seems pretty open to hobbyists to me. How much more open would you like it to be? Bearing in mind that the "store only" switch in OSX's settings is a fairly significant security win for non-hobbyists.

    26. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by ljw1004 · · Score: 1

      Wait, you guys (Apple developers) have to pay *licenses* to Apple to write programs and apps on their platforms? How are you guys OK with this? Like, what discourse goes through your mind to justify this when you are forced to pull out the credit card? I'm actually now getting pretty curious as to how the cognitive dissonance gets resolved in your minds.

      What cognitive dissonance? Dissonance is when you simultaneously hold two contradictory ideas in your head. I don't!

      I have a hobby - coding. For some of it I pay money for web hosting so I can offer my code, my web-services, my online apps, for free without ads. For other bits of it I pay money for software tools, and for hardware. The sums of money are pretty small. They're more than I pay for some hobbies (e.g. windsurfing) and less than I pay for others (e.g. driving a classic car). The money I pay for the apple dev license is smaller than a date night out with my wife, once you factor in the cost of dinner and babysitter.

    27. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is apparently changing. From : https://developer.apple.com/education/

      "Starting this fall in Xcode 7, everyone who has an Apple ID and is over 13 years old will be able to build apps that run directly on their Apple devices without joining a developer program. "

    28. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bullshit. i have to pay my developper fees to be able to run my code on my ios devices.

      Apple is back to their pre-90's hubris. It will finish exaclty in the same way.

    29. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is not 100$. It is 100$. And 100$. And 100$. Every year. After 10 years, it adds up, for a hobbyist.

      Also, god forbid if you want to add a device during wwdc day. Apple developer web site is down, and you can go fuck ypurself. Or if you have to click an updated eula, and the website is down for 6 weeks, as it happend a couple of years ago.

      Also, you get the privilege to get sucked into a half-backed and buggy, certificate ridden, drm-packed ecosystem, in which compilations randomly fail because the privact policy of apple have been updated, your apps stop working after 30 days, your certificates expire before important demos, or your tester cannot test your app because they bought a new hardware.

      The drm of apple ios is a collossal piece of shit.

    30. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Xcode is a free download, but with a website that makes Slashdot Beta look nice. This isn't "go to Github, click download", this is... go, register, oops, I registered ten years ago and forgot the password, okay, I reset... okay, I do that other thing... they really need a credit card associated to the account? ... I want which copy of this thing? Oh, I don't need all the tools, can I just grab the command line stuff? Oh, no, they changed that with this version, so I gotta download this, then inside the application I need to...

    31. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by ripvlan · · Score: 1

      I enjoy having to wait 9 months to get the cool new features that my Android friends already have.

      Seriously - Apple needs to find a way to update certain apps more frequently. These "huge" OS uplifts are painful. While I can appreciate some features needing to be part of the OS (low battery sleep mode) others need to come out "now."

      As for Apple streaming - sounds good. I'm not personally interested in it - no more than I was with Radio. But please please Please --- don't make it the default widget that comes up in the Music app. What a PITA Radio was. I don't use Radio - stop trying to launch the widget/tab and then showing me the message "you are not subscribed to Radio" --- well Duh !!!

      Developer "free" is always welcome. So that us home hobbyists can play. While $99 wasn't expensive (on top of a $1,500 Mac) - allowing people to goof off and try fun things out will probably generate new ideas and new developers to the market.

    32. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by _xeno_ · · Score: 1

      These days I'm pretty sure it's just "download it from the App Store" - to the point where I'm not sure you even can download it any other way.

      But that does mean you need to a valid Apple Account and it also means you need a valid credit card. It was fun convincing someone to let me "use" a corporate credit card to download a free copy of Xcode.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    33. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      My recommendation is to just find a job where you aren't working for a bag with which one douches.

      You don't have to be in the Fortune 100 in order to have managers that aren't complete fuckheads and will actually provide the tools necessary to get the job done.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    34. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      But wait, I thought Symbian and the Nokia N900 was the pinnacle of all things mobile! How dare you say that someone might have done something equal or better!

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    35. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by irrational_design · · Score: 1

      No, but Fortune 100 companies tend to have deep pockets so that expensing a $100 developer fee is inconsequential.

    36. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

      (At all for iOS or without making users disable scary security dialogs for OS X.)

      I'm sometimes surprised that more people don't know this, but you don't have to turn off the "scary security dialogs" to run unsigned apps on OS X.

      While the standard double-click on such an application will bring up a security dialog, if you use right click -> Open instead you'll get a different security dialog with an option not present not he default dialog that permits you to whitelist the application in question. Once whitelisted, you won't be bothered about code signing for that application ever again.

      Yaz

    37. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      It's almost as if there's a greater context to why Apple did the things they did and maybe the super nerds are wrong about apple needing to be more "open."

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    38. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      I'm sure it will. After all, Apple has more money in the bank than God and a stock price to please anyone. Their "pre-90's hubris" hurt them a lot; we can tell.

    39. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      Have you actually worked at a Fortune 100? Because I have, and I haven't met a manager who was both cavalier with expensing and had the authority to do so. Maybe 20-30 years ago, but not now.

    40. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      You deserve to die painfully. Your parents deserve to be tortured for not aborting you when they had the chance. Your siblings should be shunned just for being related to you. You are truly a scourge upon humanity.

      Oh, you're also an ignorant and stupid piece of shit.

    41. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting projection. What am I ignorant about, Mr stupid ? All the example I gave are real life example I had to live with. Get me schooled on Apple dev env, I want the lauch. But even if you think you are the shit, Think that my history goes from call -151 to WKInterfaceImage, passing by G 40F6D8 or -NXApp. Get ready to be steamrolled.

      Oh, and I was on /. Way before it had uids, so, to be sincere, I consider you a noob in every aspect, including your childish insults.

      So, what part of my post was ignorant, jackass?

    42. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by irrational_design · · Score: 1

      Uh yeah. I've worked for one for the past 15 years. I'm just describing my current job situation.

    43. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by schlachter · · Score: 1

      You just can't let other people use them without forking over $100/year. (At all for iOS or without making users disable scary security dialogs for OS X.)

      You can develop for a Mac in any development environment. It doesn't have to be Xcode. That's just a free IDE from Apple.

      You can distribute your software to anyone without paying Apple anything. The Mac is an open platform.

      Only for iOS devices, which are closed platforms, and which all software is sold by Apple and not third parties, do you have to pay $100/yr to have Apple sell your software.

      --
      My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
    44. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by schlachter · · Score: 1

      yeah, the cost is trivial. No one cares. Except perhaps in principle.

      --
      My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
    45. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      But that does mean you need to a valid Apple Account and it also means you need a valid credit card.

      No, it doesn't.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    46. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by _xeno_ · · Score: 1

      Then that's new since they originally moved it to the App Store, because I remember having to enter a credit card number to be allowed to download the "free" download. I don't remember whether or not the Apple Account I created was for that or not (pretty sure I needed it earlier solely to get access to Apple's Developer Program through my employer), but I do remember being forced to enter a credit card number despite Xcode being free.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    47. Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, asshole, care to go a few minutes on the developper apple forum to have a look at the latest apple drm fuckup? All xcode 6.3.1 submissions crashing, all ipas. with watchkit extensions getting refused, and impossible to enroll, plus probably others.

      I don't have to use an insult generator to tell you what you already know: you are a gigantic cunt, full of shit.

  15. What about all the competing content sources? by ErichTheRed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Far be it from me to throw cold water on an idea, but I do have an observation. One of the byproducts of the mobile/social/web 3.0/content dotcom boom is the sheer number of different content providers that offer a library of movies, music and TV shows. Amazon offers Prime Instant Video plus for-purchase titles, Google has the Play Store, Netflix offers streaming, Hulu offers streaming, Spotify offers streaming, Microsoft is offering content, and now Apple offers a mix of both like Amazon does. (Fun fact, you pay a couple more dollars in Apple tax for the same content if you use iTunes rather than Amazon to buy some movies.)

    The question is -- when will the Great Consolidation happen? Now that everyone is opting to license their content rather than pay for physical media, will there come a day when all the competing App Stores, Music Stores and Movie Streaming Services start merging, and what will happen to the content when that happens? It just seems to me that having Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Apple, and all the TV providers maintaining their own separate content libraries can't be sustainable. Nor will people want to purchase subscriptions from all of them, or the Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, Google TV, etc etc etc

    1. Re:What about all the competing content sources? by Mantrid42 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yes, maybe we could consolidate them all into some sort of bundle. Perhaps with differently priced tiers; cheaper tiers get access to less content than more expensive tiers. Why, with this model, you could even have some less popular services subsidized by the purchase of more popular services.


      Thank God we've finally cut the cord!

    2. Re:What about all the competing content sources? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      I've wondered the same thing.

      I'm getting tired of content provider A providing X, and Y but not Z; content provider B providing X and Z but not Y.

      The greed of licensing makes it frustrating for consumers.

      Consolidation? Probably never. The pie is too big. i.e. Think Cable, Streaming, Physical order multiplied by Music, Radio, DVD, BluRay.

    3. Re:What about all the competing content sources? by blazer1024 · · Score: 1

      Are you advocating one giant content-monopoly?

    4. Re:What about all the competing content sources? by yeshuawatso · · Score: 3, Informative

      This made my day. What's funny is the lack of understanding that these companies and many stores offer more competition to consumers than ever before, and the average price is still ridiculously low. Even if you were to subscribe to every service and buy digital content from each company on a frequent basis, it would still be cheaper than shelling out $150-200/month for the same/similar level of content from cable providers. Hollywood is the only loser in this game as they're watching their home entertainment profits erode from foreign competition, indie stuff, and these companies just growing a pair and coming up with their own stuff.

    5. Re:What about all the competing content sources? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think he's advocating for anything - just that it will happen one day. I agree - it really isn't sustainable.

    6. Re:What about all the competing content sources? by Whiteox · · Score: 1

      Yeah but I'm still wondering why some company hasn't yet made some software/hardware that can consolidate these licensed providers into a transparent UI.

      So Cable/Sat/Streamer providers can be accessed through a single interface.

      --
      Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
    7. Re:What about all the competing content sources? by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      The Redbook Standard is one hell of a content monopoly.

      I know, I know, it didn't start out that way. But still. It evolved. I think that's what GP was talking about. Some sort of evolve deal.

      I stopped at Half Price Books tonight on my way home from work and picked up a few $2 DVDs off the clearance cart. Now I have a permanent license to a couple more movies. A permanent transferable license, no less.

      We'll have to see what evolves out of the current mess.

    8. Re:What about all the competing content sources? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Remember chat / IM clients ? they never consolidated --the myriad protocols just died out with social network births (IRC remained but outside of anime credit footnotes I never see it on mainstream life)

      It used to be called vendor 'lock-in'. Besides, consolidation requires opening up protocols, taking patent lawsuit risks as soon as more hands can work on the projects, and getting threats from some content providers who basked in exclusivity deals the likes of iPhone1+AT&T*5years.

      Every USB port you see on a phone costs companies money to the point that Samsung [my 2011 dumb phone] and Apple products still have a hard time rolling out long-resolved incompatibilities...
      Fragmentation of services is the rule, due to network effects, not the exception.

  16. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

    "Only AMD Macs" would mean they would need to drop support for the Mac mini, most MacBooks and even some iMacs.

    But yeah, if there's one thing they didn't say, it was which hardware was going to be left behind with "El Capitan". I'm pretty sure my old Core 2 Duo, nVidia 320m Mac mini isn't going to be on the list of supported hardware.

  17. Re:WTF by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

    Disgusting? Compared to what? The billion of locations that support credit card payment?

  18. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by Altus · · Score: 3, Informative

    They specifically said that iOS 9 will support all the same hardware as 8

    --

    "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson

  19. Complications by CockMonster · · Score: 1

    The names comes from horology. Complications are the fancy stuff you get on watches... chronometer, date, moon phase. The more there are the more expensive the watch, but for real watches it actually involves top-notch engineering, not flashing a chip.

  20. Yet another proprietary API... by Misagon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anybody else think that Apple should ditch Metal in favour of Vulkan? If they want the latest games ported to Mac then they should use an open API that is used on other platforms.

    But I am starting to think that maybe ports is not Apple's game... Maybe they want there to be almost only Apple-specific titles on Mac so that people wouldn't compare performance on Mac to that on PC or consoles. Now that they are known mostly for laptops and their desktop machines are also having laptop-grade internals then they are not going to be able to compete on graphics performance anyway.

    --
    "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
    1. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by alvinrod · · Score: 1

      Anyone who's really serious about gaming that has a Mac is probably going to run Windows. Even though Mac support is probably the best it's ever been, there are a still a lot of games that don't support Mac at all or are sub-standard ports.

    2. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 2

      Is Vulkan ready yet?

      Because Metal has been shipping since iOS 8 and usable now.

      Microsoft has their own API but you're not crying foul about DirectX

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    3. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      But I am starting to think that maybe ports is not Apple's game... Maybe they want there to be almost only Apple-specific titles on Mac so that people wouldn't compare performance on Mac to that on PC or consoles.

      Apple has always wanted that, and their deliberately doing things a little wacky has always prevented them from having a more complete software library that would permit them to compete with Windows on an even footing.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Misagon · · Score: 1

      It doesn't look like it is far off.

      Imagination Technologies showed a demo of Vulkan on PowerVR the same day as Vulkan was presented at GDC this year.
      PowerVR GPUs have been powering all of Apple's iOS devices.

      I am sure that AMD would use the same core for Mantle, DirectX 12 and Vulkan. They are phasing out development on Mantle in favour of Vulkan.

      --
      "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
    5. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by edxwelch · · Score: 1

      Actually, Vulkan *is* mantle. There are only minor differences between the two APIs.

    6. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Is Vulkan ready yet?

      Because Metal has been shipping since iOS 8 and usable now.

      Open standards are a collaborative effort, instead of contributing to working with other vendors Apple has just created their own proprietary non-standard API. Whereas AMD created the Mantle API as a prototype implementation of a low overhead GPU API and then contributed that work to the Vulkan development as a baseline for the standard which can be used by all vendors. Instead of just being a leech, be a contributor.

    7. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      Do we know when Vulkan was conceived? The trademark for Vulkan was filed in February, so... I don't know the behind the scenes dynamics at Khronos or Apple.

      Metal has been worked on since at least 2013, when the betas for iOS 8 were being written. Metal as an API has been ready to ship since iOS 8 came out. Vulkan's still in the proof of concept stage and might replace or augment Metal in the future.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    8. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Apple hasn't cared about games for a long time.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    9. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Andy_R · · Score: 1

      This isn't about getting 'the latest games ported to Mac', this is about getting iOS games ported to Mac.

      The iPhone/iPad platform has a hell of a lot of exclusive games, and if Apple can make the process of also offering those games to Mac owners sufficiently easy for developers, they might just end up with more games being available on Mac than there are on Windows.

      --
      A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
    10. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Do we know when Vulkan was conceived? The trademark for Vulkan was filed in February

      The initiative before that was called glNext but discussions about low driver overhead APIs have been going on long before the Vulkan name was decided.

      I don't know the behind the scenes dynamics at Khronos or Apple.

      Apple is a member of the Khronos group.

      Metal has been worked on since at least 2013, when the betas for iOS 8 were being written. Metal as an API has been ready to ship since iOS 8 came out. Vulkan's still in the proof of concept stage and might replace or augment Metal in the future.

      And yet they didn't propose it for glNext, they just went and created their own incompatible proprietary API.

    11. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by BasilBrush · · Score: 0

      What does that even mean? Games are just a category of app, nothing more nothing less. And Apple cares about apps a lot.

    12. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Games are just a category of app, nothing more nothing less.

      That's exactly what it means.

      Games have a need for high-quality graphics and high-responsive input; if you care about games, you're going to make sure the APIs are available to do those things. If you're just thinking of 'games' as another app, you're not going to go out of your way to make sure the graphics are good.

      Of course that doesn't stop Candy Crush from showing up on your platform.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    13. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      You must have missed Metal.

    14. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      Are they still blocking a button on the iWatch to activate a fart app? Because I think a fart app on the iphone in your back pocket that you could trigger with a button on your watch is a killer app.

      Games are just a category of app, nothing more nothing less.

      You really really really don't get it. It's been years since you last played Shufflepuck Cafe, eh? Yep. That was what we call a 'game.'

    15. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by dottrap · · Score: 1

      The OpenGL standards committee had done very little to solve the real problems game/graphics developers had been complaining about for years. Interests in backwards compatibility and CAD were making OpenGL compromise and please nobody.

      AMD Mantle drew a lot of attention that something could be done, but too many questions about it such as will it only work on video hardware designed exactly as AMD designed it (and displeasing companies like Nvidia), kept any real advancement from happening.

      But Apple Metal shipping last year was a real shot in the arm for Khronos because it finally forced them to do something or become completely irrelevant. (DirectX 12 had also started making noise.) We finally saw it presented at GDC a few months ago in draft/prototype form. What is interesting is Vulkan is a clean break from OpenGL so there is no backwards compatibility interest/attempt.

      You can't fault Apple for needing to ship something real, today (actually last year). You can thank Apple for forcing the Khronos committee to finally do something.

      The real question is if Vulkan will be usable on Apple platforms in the future, either provided by Apple or built as a wrapper on top of Metal by a 3rd party.

    16. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Shadowmist · · Score: 1

      Anybody else think that Apple should ditch Metal in favour of Vulkan? If they want the latest games ported to Mac then they should use an open API that is used on other platforms.

      But I am starting to think that maybe ports is not Apple's game... Maybe they want there to be almost only Apple-specific titles on Mac so that people wouldn't compare performance on Mac to that on PC or consoles. Now that they are known mostly for laptops and their desktop machines are also having laptop-grade internals then they are not going to be able to compete on graphics performance anyway.

      Ports means you're writing to least common denominator. The point of Metal is to make use of the iPhone and Mac hardware. And big companies like Blizzard are already sigining up to do Metal games. What exactly would be the point to ditch Metal to use some kind of compromise multi-platform alternative that ... IS NOT EVEN OUT THE DOOR YET?

    17. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Yeah, Metal could be a new direction for Apple. I'm interested in seeing where it goes.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    18. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Mantle was being used in commercial titles before Metal to prove the concept and was then offered as a basis for glNext as AMD is a contributor to Khronos. If inaction on the part of Khronos (which Apple is a part of, so I'm not sure where you're drawing the line here) then why did Apple not just offer Metal as a candidate for glNext or even release Metal as an open standard?

    19. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by BasilBrush · · Score: 0

      Clearly you don't get it sonny, if you don't understand that a game is just a category of app.

    20. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by dottrap · · Score: 1

      Because it was unclear, even to Apple, if Metal could work outside their tightly integrated ARM/PowerVR designs. (Engineers who asked about Metal on OS X at WWDC last year said they would like to, but they aren't sure they could actually pull it off since.)

      This was a similar early concern about Mantle. To get high performance, "to the metal" often means certain requirements. Things like Apple's A8 or AMD having a unified/shared memory architecture on chip between the CPU and GPU is vastly different than Nvidia having separate VRAM from CPU RAM. Hardware differences like these are not easy to abstract away without performance loss.And for an API that is supposed to be "to the metal"/"direct to hardware", nobody wanted to repeat the current problems we have with OpenGL.

    21. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Because it was unclear, even to Apple, if Metal could work outside their tightly integrated ARM/PowerVR designs.

      So why continue that when they are a part of Khronos which has exactly the same goal?

      This was a similar early concern about Mantle. To get high performance, "to the metal" often means certain requirements. Things like Apple's A8 or AMD having a unified/shared memory architecture on chip between the CPU and GPU is vastly different than Nvidia having separate VRAM from CPU RAM. Hardware differences like these are not easy to abstract away without performance loss.And for an API that is supposed to be "to the metal"/"direct to hardware", nobody wanted to repeat the current problems we have with OpenGL.

      I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say there because it turns out this was not that big of an issue at all. Indeed we saw this early on with Mantle (if you were in the developer program) which is precisely why AMD contributed it to glNext so why is Apple now creating their own proprietary hardware-agnostic 3D graphics API for the desktop? It's just more pointless fragmentation, we have been through this vendor-specific situation before.

    22. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by dugancent · · Score: 1

      Games =/= graphics. Some of my favorite games have little no advanced graphics. I simply don't care.

      --
      SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
    23. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      I know. Yours is not the common viewpoint.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    24. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by dottrap · · Score: 1

      - Apple needed to ship something that worked for real on their platform (iOS/ARM/PowerVR) that they could ship, not vaporware or theory. Nothing existed. AMD Mantle the closest thing didn't work with the ARM/PowerVR design. Hence they did Metal for iOS.

      - One year later, they figured out how to bring it to OS X and announced it today.

      - A few months ago, Vulcan was announced, but is still not final. That doesn't help Apple for devices shipping this fall.

      - Vulkan probably wouldn't haven't gotten as far as it had gotten without Apple's push on Metal and noise by Microsoft on DirectX 12. Consumers benefited from competition.

      - The trade off of waiting for standardization that to many didn't look like it would ever come, was stagnation.

      - Fragmentation sucks, but this is nothing new. 3DFX/Glide, Direct3D, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, and all the incompatibilities between versions and feature sets, including shader version incompatibilities.

    25. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by edxwelch · · Score: 1

      Most iOS games are using OpenGL ES which is pretty trivial to port to OSX.
      If there was any difficulty porting iOS games it's more likely due to the mobile screen size rather than the graphics API.

    26. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      You don't get it, if you insist on shoving a 'game' category into your list of 'apps' and treating the game market as just another 'category.'

      Even the app store(s) know better than that. Games move in the market very differently than, say, an Outliner or some widget that reminds you to take your pills, gramps.

    27. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by BasilBrush · · Score: 0

      Look you mental midget, you don't seem to realise that iOS is the biggest games platform there is. All from treating games as just another category of apps.

      http://arstechnica.com/apple/2...

    28. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by exomondo · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure what your point is, that list is just a list of things that have happened. I can see why Metal was originally created, just like Mantle but you are ignoring the fact that Apple are not independent of Khronos, they are a part of Khronos. So instead of creating their own proprietary closed specification and API why is it not open and could have been used as the basis for the new Khronos standard?

      None of the points you made go anywhere toward answering that question.

    29. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by dottrap · · Score: 1

      I've been sticking to the facts because logical conclusions can be easily drawn from the facts.

      Last Year:
      Submitting Metal last year for standardization would have been a waste of everybody's time.
      - It only worked on A8/PowerVR. Apple didn't know if they could generalize it.
      - Nobody else would waste time with it for standardization if it wasn't going to work for anybody else.

      Today:
      - As of a few months ago Khronos now has what hopefully will be a usable standard.
      - Apple has just finished (or nearly finished) porting to Metal to OS X for 10.11.

      There is probably little interest now for Apple to submit Metal as a standard. Khronos is committed to Vulkan now. Nobody else is going to take Apple seriously for Metal at this point if they tried. And submitting Metal as a standard would mean Apple would be unable to improve/change things quickly.

      Not to mention all the work and time of writing draft standards and proposals. Standards ratifications are really hard, especially if somebody on the committee doesn't like you.

      Look up Apple's attempt to standardize Bonjour (Zeroconf) with the IETF. It got really close to ratification, but Microsoft spiked the Draft Standard at the last minute. With some aggressive searches, you can find Stuart Cheshire (creator of Zeroconf) lambasting both Microsoft for offering a completely unusable counterproposal simply to kill/poison/derail ratification, and members of the IETF for going along with it, knowing full well Microsoft's proposal had not been implemented, didn't address the point of Zeroconf, and wouldn't even work. Even without ratification though, Zeroconf is now shipped standard on every major platform except Windows where Microsoft is stilling being obstinate. (Bonjour, Avahi, Android NSD.)

      Historically, the OpenGL committee hasn't agreed on much of anything of practical use for graphics developers. Hence the new Vulkan standard, to dump some of the conflicting interest. But you can imagine interests from Samsung, Microsoft, Google, would look at Apple suspiciously and may even try to spike it again. (Apple did manage to get OpenCL standardized, but not a lot of interests were invested in this technology and paying attention in that period. But you can look up the stories of how Google/Android is now spiking OpenCL support and pushing RenderScript.)

    30. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Submitting Metal last year for standardization would have been a waste of everybody's time.

      I'm not saying "submit it for standardization", even AMD didn't do that with Mantle. I'm not saying they shouldn't have done it created it either, just that if they do then don't make it yet another vendor-specific, closed, proprietary API.

      - It only worked on A8/PowerVR. Apple didn't know if they could generalize it.

      Where did the idea that "Apple didn't know if they could generalize it" come from?

      There is probably little interest now for Apple to submit Metal as a standard.

      I didn't say they should, just that they should be working with the standards body they are part of rather than creating their own closed, proprietary competing specification and API that nobody else can use.

      Standards ratifications are really hard, especially if somebody on the committee doesn't like you.

      Look up Apple's attempt to standardize Bonjour (Zeroconf) with the IETF.

      Just because they had problems with the IETF doesn't mean they would have problems with Khronos, in fact the history of OpenCL proves the opposite. But again, I didn't say it should be pushed as a standard.

      But you can look up the stories of how Google/Android is now spiking OpenCL support and pushing RenderScript.

      It's odd that you say Google is "spiking" OpenCL by pushing their own RenderScript yet you don't see a problem with Apple "spiking" open graphics API standards by pushing their own proprietary Metal.

    31. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      You're a moron. Look at the first tab in the App Store app. Games are heavily promoted - more so than any other category. The App of the Week is almost always a game. Apple most definitely does not treat games as "just another app category".

    32. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      I'd think the difficulty is in dealing with input.

    33. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by dottrap · · Score: 1

      - It only worked on A8/PowerVR. Apple didn't know if they could generalize it.

      Where did the idea that "Apple didn't know if they could generalize it" come from?

      Attendees who asked Apple engineers about it at last year's WWDC.

      Standards ratifications are really hard, especially if somebody on the committee doesn't like you.

      Look up Apple's attempt to standardize Bonjour (Zeroconf) with the IETF.

      Just because they had problems with the IETF doesn't mean they would have problems with Khronos, in fact the history of OpenCL proves the opposite. But again, I didn't say it should be pushed as a standard.

      An underlying point that is under appreciated is that it is a lot of work/time/money to submit with no guarantees of acceptance. I don't see much incentive for Apple to standardize it at this point. Nor should they throw away Metal, because it works today. Viable Vulkan would be at least another full release cycle for them to adopt.

      But you can look up the stories of how Google/Android is now spiking OpenCL support and pushing RenderScript.

      It's odd that you say Google is "spiking" OpenCL by pushing their own RenderScript yet you don't see a problem with Apple "spiking" open graphics API standards by pushing their own proprietary Metal.

      Just reiterating my earlier statement of fact (Glide, DirectX, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Mantle, Metal, Vulkan) that standardization doesn't necessarily mean anything in the end.

    34. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      You're a paedophile. Games may be the largest category. They may be the top category. But they are just another category of app. No different.

    35. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Modern OpenGL has a few API calls which are part of the "Near Zero Driver Overhead" methodology. This allows OpenGL to be used at very similar speeds as Metal and Vulkan. I am hoping that OS X will upgrade OpenGL to a newer version so those calls are included (the calls are part of the "core" profile.)

    36. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      Anybody else think that Apple should ditch Metal in favour of Vulkan? If they want the latest games ported to Mac then they should use an open API that is used on other platforms.

      Oh, the old "Shouldn't Apple use the new standard that will be finished next year instead of their own solution, which has been used by developers for a year now (and was the reason why the new standard has been pushed from being two years away)."

      Anyway, https://www.khronos.org/vulkan... lists Apple under Working Group Participants. FWIW

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    37. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      So instead of creating their own proprietary closed specification and API why is it not open and could have been used as the basis for the new Khronos standard?

      How do you know Metal isn't the basis for Vulkan? Put up, or shut up, instead of basing all your "arguments" on the fact that you have an irrational hatred for Apple.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    38. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 2

      Apple hasn't cared about games for a long time.

      Yeah, that's why they constantly bring out more games-related APIs - because they just don't care. And looking at how many iOS Apps use them, neither do the developers. [/sarcasm]

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    39. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      Are they still blocking a button on the iWatch to activate a fart app?

      Well, if you are the kind of "Gamer" whose highest aim is to "play" a fart from his watch, than Apple really isn't interested in "Games".

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    40. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by exomondo · · Score: 1

      How do you know Metal isn't the basis for Vulkan?

      Because it is based on Mantle, which is not Metal.

      Put up, or shut up

      Sure, it's not hard to use Google but it's obviously beyond you. So Here, here and probably plenty of other places.

      instead of basing all your "arguments" on the fact that you have an irrational hatred for Apple.

      Sorry but it's not irrational and it's not "hatred", I know there are Apple fanboys and there are Apple users, I'm the latter because don't have an emotional attachment to the company.

    41. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      How do you know Metal isn't the basis for Vulkan?

      Because it is based on Mantle, which is not Metal.

      So you admit that you want Apple to use Vulkan because it is based on a proprietary product by somebody else, and even so it isn't ready for use. Because of your irrational hatred for Apple.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    42. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by exomondo · · Score: 1

      So you admit that you want Apple to use Vulkan

      No, I never said I wanted Apple to use Vulkan.

      because it is based on a proprietary product by somebody else, and even so it isn't ready for use.

      I'm quite happy for them to use whatever they wish so long as the spec is open to promote interoperability rather than proprietary lock-in.

      Because of your irrational hatred for Apple.

      No, sorry but just because I don't love and praise 100% of what Apple says and does doesn't make me an "irrational hater".

    43. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      So you admit that you want Apple to use Vulkan

      No, I never said I wanted Apple to use Vulkan.

      Great - now you don't want them to use any graphics acceleration. Way to prove you don't have any irrational hatred of Apple.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    44. Re:Yet another proprietary API... by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Great - now you don't want them to use any graphics acceleration.

      Wrong. Where did you get that idea from?

  21. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Informative

    The OS X v10.11 Developer Beta supports the following Macs:

    iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)

    MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)

    MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)

    Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)

    MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)

    Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)

    Xserve (Early 2009)

  22. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

    +1 informative

    Also, I'm glad my old Mac mini is still supported! (mid-2010 model)

  23. Didn't see... by captnjohnny1618 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Didn't see this in my quick scan of the comments here:

    Boooooooorrrrrrriiiiiiinnnnnngggggg

    AND I used to pretty much exclusively use Apple products...

  24. Re:WTF by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

    "In what way?"

    Because NFC was cool only when Europeans had it, but nobody else did. A US company supporting it makes it evil and corporate.

  25. And faster...how? by Radical+Moderate · · Score: 1

    Faster boot up? Faster application launches? Faster searching? What, exactly, is faster?

    --
    Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
  26. Those issues are real enough by FreeUser · · Score: 1

    I've experienced literally none of those things on any of the Macs or iOS devices that I come in contact with daily. Are you certain that those aren't particular to your own system?

    I've run across most of those issues at one time or another on Mavericks, on both my work macair and my wife's powerbook (the display port drop-outs are particularly annoying). It isn't helpful to simply dismiss issues people raise ... frankly, it makes you sound like a systemd developer. Better for all of us if these issues are raised and fixed (even if the corporate master in question will never officially admit such issues exist). Then we all win.

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
    1. Re:Those issues are real enough by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1

      It isn't helpful to simply dismiss issues people raise

      Agreed, and I'd never do that. I asked it OP was sure that they weren't hardware problems on his own computer and not something more widespread. I did that because I haven't seen any of those problems myself and hadn't heard of them before now.

      Better for all of us if these issues are raised and fixed

      Also agreed. I've filed plenty of bugs to Apple's tracker over the years so that they know someone's affected by them.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    2. Re:Those issues are real enough by sribe · · Score: 1

      Agreed, and I'd never do that. I asked it OP was sure that they weren't hardware problems on his own computer and not something more widespread. I did that because I haven't seen any of those problems myself and hadn't heard of them before now.

      Fair enough. I've seen them all. On my machine and on clients' and they all started with Mavericks. The last two releases have been awful for stability.

    3. Re:Those issues are real enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      powerbook g3? or g4?

  27. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Xserve (Early 2009)

    Whaaaa? I haven't been able to get anything newer to install on our intel Xserves. Are they supporting them again, or do you have to trick the installer?

  28. Future Shock by goombah99 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've been beta testing this feature and you are right about it being useful with the News and Stockmarket app. It seems buggy though because I can get it to turn past the 2016 NASA news release about an unseen asteroid suddenly passing by the moon heading for earth. The only apps that continues further into the future is the weather app which reports blackout skies, and 2700K surface temperatures with rains of ash and nitric acid. And The health app shows my pulse rapidly rising then flat lining about that time. Facebook shows I was unfriended by the whole world and all the you tubes are of a fireball in the sky, but nothing past that date.

    The watch actually allows you to travel into the future as well. It's a beta version so the rate of travel is really slow right now, but you can feel youself travel about 1/sec into the future every 1/sec if you watch mickey mouse's hands. If you put it in developer mode there's also a timetravel stop watch. It freezes the whole world except you. I was using it to rob a bank one day and I dropped it. So I traveled back in time to post this on slashdot to warn everyone about this.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:Future Shock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You too? When I dropped mine the slashdot app was open on the watch, and now it's stuck. So posting here is the only way I can contact other humans.
      --
      Omega Man.

  29. yeah less features, smaller storage. by goombah99 · · Score: 1

    As someone once said "Lame."

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:yeah less features, smaller storage. by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      Still lame, after all these years.

      But extremely popular with the mainstream.

      And highly profitable.

    2. Re:yeah less features, smaller storage. by brantondaveperson · · Score: 2

      extremely popular with the mainstream....And highly profitable.

      Wish everything I did was that lame.

    3. Re:yeah less features, smaller storage. by macs4all · · Score: 1

      As someone once said "Lame."

      Yeah, and we all know how that assesment turned out...

  30. wage gap by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0

    I understand that Siri only gets paid 76.5% of what Clippy gets. That hardly seems fair.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:wage gap by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      I understand that Siri only gets paid 76.5% of what Clippy gets. That hardly seems fair.

      What Clippy gets is a good swift kick in the pants. Siri should count herself lucky to only get 76.5% of that.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    2. Re:wage gap by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      What Clippy gets is a good swift kick in the pants.

      Clippy got a golden parachute and invested in a social media startup.

      He currently lives in a Portland duplex.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:wage gap by Whiteox · · Score: 1

      I'd like Siri to answer Cortana (and vice versa) one day. That'll be a blast!

      --
      Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
  31. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by Karlt1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Imagine that, a phone introduced in September 2011, still getting updates....

  32. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Guess my 2007 C2D iMac will still be updated. And it sounds like ElCap will make it run faster. Not a good way to drive hardware sales. Short the stock!

  33. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by gnupun · · Score: 1

    Why don't they just provide bug fixes to those old devices? FYI, bug fixes for older devices go away once iOS9 is released. Also stop forcing new apps to be link to the new iOS9. 9 operating system versions in 9 years is crazy fast versioning. Are they planning on slowing down with stable APIs?

  34. Re: Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by Karlt1 · · Score: 1

    Not necessarily. Apple provided a security patch for IOS 6 for the 3GS after iOS 7 came out to fix the goth fail bug.

    AFAIK, you can still release software that supports iOS 4.1.2 or at least iOS 5

  35. Apple Music -- editorial content by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was surprised to hear about the human curated playlists. (They're not talking swarm intelligence, but an editorial office at Apple.)

    They will have 30 million songs. Musical tastes are more diverse than ever. To me, it seems pretty much infeasible to have a sufficient number of playlists created by Apple's editorial staff. Is this a marketing gimmick? It seems that Spotify's approach to playlists (a "music intelligence platform" called Echo Nest) seems much better suited to handle a collection consisting of 10+ millions tracks.

    1. Re:Apple Music -- editorial content by Jarik+C-Bol · · Score: 1

      XM radio still thinks that people like listening to D.J's blab for 5 minutes between songs also, so yeah...

      --
      I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
  36. Cursor growth by Qzukk · · Score: 1

    Someone on the design team has obviously watched people try to find the pointer.

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    1. Re:Cursor growth by turp182 · · Score: 1

      This is a good thing, although, given your sig, this isn't an issue for you and your larger optics.

      --
      BlameBillCosby.com
  37. Can/Should I Upgrade to iOS 9, or not? by billstewart · · Score: 1

    iPhone 5S - Does it have the resources to upgrade to IOS9? Will it run faster or slower? Will the batteries last longer for somebody who mainly does phone calls and texts?

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
    1. Re:Can/Should I Upgrade to iOS 9, or not? by konohitowa · · Score: 1

      http://www.apple.com/ios/ios9-... Compatibility at the bottom.

    2. Re: Can/Should I Upgrade to iOS 9, or not? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Real answer: iPhone 4s and up

    3. Re: Can/Should I Upgrade to iOS 9, or not? by konohitowa · · Score: 1

      Does that include the iPad?

    4. Re:Can/Should I Upgrade to iOS 9, or not? by tomxor · · Score: 3, Funny

      Will the batteries last longer for somebody who mainly does phone calls and texts?

      ... Why do you own an iPhone.

    5. Re: Can/Should I Upgrade to iOS 9, or not? by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Does that include the iPad?

      Anything that can run iOS 8 can run iOS 9; so iPad 2 and up. Split-Screen-Multitasking restricted to a few newer models (can't remember which ones); but that appears to be the only restriction on iPads.

  38. Apple music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "First three months free, $9.99 a month or $14.99 a month for family plan for up to six."

    Bwahaahaha.... they think people are going to pay for music!

  39. The great consolidation already happened by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Its called Pirate Bay.

  40. Lolololockin: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apple Music: “The next chapter in music. It will change the way you experience music forever,” says Cook. [...] Launching June 30th in 100 countries with Android this fall, with Windows and Android versions.

    Apart from too many Androids in this sentence, what kind of fool would invest money into a music library to be used "with Windows and Android versions" in an Apple-controlled proprietary format with DRM? After a few years, the future of the Windows and Android versions will quite slowly look more and more dire, first by rumors, then update speed and quality, with an increasing feature gap, with long-standing compatibility problems and so on and so on. Not wanting to lose your investment in music, you'll be coaxed, threatened and finally forced into buying Apple devices for continued "ownership" of music you "bought".

  41. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by BasilBrush · · Score: 0

    Compared to what? Android is up to release M. So that's 13 versions and it's not been out as long as iOS.

    And of course it's even more complicated with Android due to all the fragmentation.

  42. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This smacks of "get off of my lawn". Embrace change and you never get old.

  43. Objective-C generics by roothog · · Score: 1

    Certainly not as sexy as the Swift announcements, but has anyone else noticed that the Xcode 7 developer beta release notes state that 7 will add generics to Objective-C? Looks like a major language update.

    1. Re:Objective-C generics by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      Objective-C generics is a trivial update. If you have an NSArray, you can now specifiy that all elements are of type NSString. That means you get type checks when adding objects or reading objects, and most importantly when accessing the array from Swift, it is mapped to an array of string, and not an array of AnyObject. There is no code change, and very little in the compiler frontend to handle it.

  44. hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Music will support Android and Windoze... hats off to Apple for this...

  45. Swift for Linux? by msobkow · · Score: 1

    Swift for Linux piques my interest...

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  46. Continuing problem by Sqreater · · Score: 1

    Just more layers of busy-tech complexity added to life.

    --
    E Proelio Veritas.
  47. Re:WTF by omnichad · · Score: 1

    NFC was cool when only Android had it. And in my opinion, only Android still does. Apple is crippling all the other useful features that NFC enables.

  48. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At least you get bug fixes at all - can't say the same for a lot of Android devices.

  49. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

    Note that some of this hardware is now 8 YEARS old, and still being supported.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  50. Complications!? Watch widgets = watchits by EzFlier · · Score: 1

    Apple's missed opportunity.

  51. Two notes by rochrist · · Score: 1

    1) Swift open source is kind of big. 2) Re Apple Watch 'complications', complications is the traditional term for the inner working of a pocket watch.

  52. Siri by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    iOS 9: New Siri UI. There’s an API for search. Siri and Spotlight are getting more integrated. Siri getting better at prediction with a far lower word error rate.

    Two features Siri desperately needs:

    1. Limit its "How do I get to ...?" navigation queries to the current continent. i.e.: Don't return results for England or Asia when I'm sitting in downtown New York.
    2. Mode of transport for navigation queries, e.g.: "How do I cycle to ...?" should start Maps with a bicycle route; "How do I walk to ...?" should start Maps with a walking route; etc.
    1. Re:Siri by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      I'll get right on it!

      Oh wait... no... I am not an Apple developer. Right. Sorry.

      Perhaps you should post these suggestions where an Apple dev might actually see them?

  53. Beckibox Backup and Charge Your iPhone's Photo& by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.webackers.com/Proposal/Display/179

    Kris' Top Recommend
    http://www.beckietech.com/landing/

    One-click backup LINE Whatsapp data to new iPhone 6/6plus:
    https://www.facebook.com/sinhantek

    , Beckibox
    https://www.facebook.com/beckibox?fref=ts#
    https://www.facebook.com/events/712325522209624/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular&feed_story_type=117

  54. Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap? by schlachter · · Score: 1

    pretty amazing. the yearly updates make me feel like I'm getting a new device each year.

    --
    My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
  55. No, you're just stupid andymadigan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Besides, uBlock is using 33MB of RAM" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Inefficient: Hosts @ 6mb here only w/ CURRENT data vs. threats + ads (& things a bloated browser addon can't do by a longshot & you RAN FROM IT http://apple.slashdot.org/comm... )

    ---

    "1) Will it run on my iPad (and no, I'm not jailbreaking)?" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Sure hosts can: jailbreak it (like on ANDROID via ADB use).

    ---

    "2) Can I use it to block annoying "toolbars" that sites cover 20% of their content with (e.g. Wikia)?" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Sure - don't load toolbars dumbass (or use hosts or firewalls to block their content they pull in) OR DON'T USE SHITHOLES LIKE 'EM (I don't - they're blocked due to what you said).

    ---

    "3) Can it be used to defeat modal boxes" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Stopping javascript does it - using what you already HAVE natively (for more speed too) - only FOOLS run that crapscript indiscriminately everywhere! Opera allows it via "by site" preferences in 12.17 64-bit for instance.

    ---

    "4) How about the auto-playing video" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Easy - block a source if not the same site (ads served on the same site don't pay, admen don't trust webmasters "alleged" hitcounts & I don't blame 'em) or use better sites.

    ---

    "I can even use it to block the stupid "videos" feature on the Slashdot" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Again - Stall javascript (or cut video sources via hosts).

    APK

    P.S.=> You fail - You do STUPID THINGS "bolting on 'MOAR'" increasing overheads & doing LESS off a slower mode of ops vs. using what you NATIVELY HAVE THAT'S MORE EFFICIENT & DOES MORE TOO...apk

  56. Have you noticed how STUPID you are Andy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Besides, uBlock is using 33MB of RAM" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Inefficient: Hosts @ 6mb here only w/ CURRENT data vs. threats + ads (& things a bloated browser addon can't do by a longshot & you RAN FROM IT http://apple.slashdot.org/comm... )

    ---

    "1) Will it run on my iPad (and no, I'm not jailbreaking)?" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Sure hosts can: jailbreak it (like on ANDROID via ADB use).

    ---

    "2) Can I use it to block annoying "toolbars" that sites cover 20% of their content with (e.g. Wikia)?" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Sure - don't load toolbars dumbass (or use hosts or firewalls to block their content they pull in) OR DON'T USE SHITHOLES LIKE 'EM (I don't - they're blocked due to what you said).

    ---

    "3) Can it be used to defeat modal boxes" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Stopping javascript does it - using what you already HAVE natively (for more speed too) - only FOOLS run that crapscript indiscriminately everywhere! Opera allows it via "by site" preferences in 12.17 64-bit for instance.

    ---

    "4) How about the auto-playing video" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Easy - block a source if not the same site (ads served on the same site don't pay, admen don't trust webmasters "alleged" hitcounts & I don't blame 'em) or use better sites.

    ---

    "I can even use it to block the stupid "videos" feature on the Slashdot" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Again - Stall javascript (or cut video sources via hosts).

    APK

    P.S.=> You fail - You do STUPID THINGS "bolting on 'MOAR'" increasing overheads & doing LESS off a slower mode of ops vs. using what you NATIVELY HAVE THAT'S MORE EFFICIENT & DOES MORE TOO...apk

    1. Re: Have you noticed how STUPID you are Andy? by andymadigan · · Score: 1

      I've got to say, it's great for once to see a spammer work himself into a puddle. When you (for instance) mark an e-mail as spam you just don't get this kind of satisfaction.

      --
      The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
  57. Why do you use an inefficient adblocker? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Besides, uBlock is using 33MB of RAM" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Inefficient: Hosts @ 6mb here only w/ CURRENT data vs. threats + ads (& things a bloated browser addon can't do by a longshot & you RAN FROM IT http://apple.slashdot.org/comm... )

    APK

    P.S.=> You fail - You do STUPID THINGS "bolting on 'MOAR'" increasing overheads & doing LESS off a slower mode of ops vs. using what you NATIVELY HAVE THAT'S MORE EFFICIENT & DOES MORE TOO...apk

  58. Andymadigan's fail list... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "uBlock is using 33MB of RAM" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

    Inefficient: Hosts @ 6mb only w/ CURRENT data vs. threats + ads (& things a bloated browser addon can't do by a longshot & you RAN FROM IT http://apple.slashdot.org/comm... )

    ---

    "my question is, which blocks more ads? Answer: uBlock/Adblock" by andymadigan (792996) on Sunday June 14, 2015 @12:04AM (#49907001)

    WRONG - "Almost ALL Ads Blocked" is PAID OFF to NOT block all ads by default, dumbo -> http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/...

    &

    ABP too http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...

    ---

    "your system blocks fewer ads" by andymadigan (792996) on Sunday June 14, 2015 @12:04AM (#49907001)

    See above & a 'shitty idea' does MORE BY FAR with less & you RAN from it bitch - see 1st link above!

    ---

    "I'm more than happy to spend an extra 1% of my computer's power to block far more ads than your shitty idea does." by andymadigan (792996) on Sunday June 14, 2015 @12:04AM (#49907001)

    Ah, so you're 'happy' being illogical & stupid? LOL, ok!

    AdBlock's 4++gb & 100% CPU usage flooring inefficiency -> https://blog.mozilla.org/nneth...

    +

    ClarityRay defeats it - it can't do that to hosts (since clarityray dumps what browser addons you use so addons are EASILY DETECTED via native browser methods & YOU'RE BLOCKED STUPID).

    AdBlock adds complexity/room for breakdown/exploit + from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).

    APK

    P.S.=> You've GOT to be the MOST STUPIDLY illogical moron I've *ever* met on /. ...

    ... apk

  59. Why you lie on ublock ram use Andy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    UBlock consume 63++ MB http://www.ghacks.net/2014/06/...

    SPECIFICALLY IN THIS SCREENSHOT THERE -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte...

    * Man, you're a DAMNED LIAR!

    APK'

    P.S.=> I personally have a 4 million line hosts file (took me 15++ yrs as an experiment for HOW FAR I CAN PUSH IT) - however:

    Folks using my program will only have a 3-6mb one with CURRENT DATA ONLY in it!

    (They can 'build it up' IF they like though, as I have but NOT TO THAT EXTENT, if they're smart... I am only doing mine as an experiment LONG TERM... you can & should ''purge" it once in a bit to be more accurate - my app provides means for it too via pings OR remove lists from my sources for hosts data).

    In the end Andy?

    YOU will ALWAYS LOSE to me!

    Heck:

    YOUR LIES SHOWN ABOVE do the job for me, along with your MASSIVE FUCKUPS LIST vs. myself, SHOWN HERE -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... do the rest... apkSPECIFICALLY IN THIS SCREENSHOT

  60. Why'd you lie on ublock ram use Andy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    UBlock consume 63++ MB http://www.ghacks.net/2014/06/...

    SPECIFICALLY IN THIS SCREENSHOT THERE -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte...

    * Man, you're a DAMNED LIAR!

    APK'

    P.S.=> I personally have a 4 million line hosts file (took me 15++ yrs as an experiment for HOW FAR I CAN PUSH IT) - however:

    Folks using my program will only have a 3-6mb one with CURRENT DATA ONLY in it!

    (They can 'build it up' IF they like though, as I have but NOT TO THAT EXTENT, if they're smart... I am only doing mine as an experiment LONG TERM... you can & should ''purge" it once in a bit to be more accurate - my app provides means for it too via pings OR remove lists from my sources for hosts data).

    In the end Andy?

    YOU will ALWAYS LOSE to me!

    Heck:

    YOUR LIES SHOWN ABOVE do the job for me, along with your MASSIVE FUCKUPS LIST vs. myself, SHOWN HERE -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... do the rest... apk