New PowerBook G3 & the iBook

Krakus Irus wrote in with the alert that Apple has released the specs on the new Powerbook G3. Up to 400 mhz, USB, firewire, 20% thinner then the previous machines and two pounds lighter. 14.1 display-it looks nice. What we're waiting on is the news about the new consumer portable-that will be coming out today. Check the rumours about the new consumer book. Update: 07/21 03:19 by H : It's been announced. The new iBook-and it looks /really/ nice. Comes out in Sept. at 1599$US.

Comments

You're a geek

[binarybits]

Don't get me wrong, most Slashdotters are, including me. Being a geek isn't a bad thing. But most people are not geeks. And most non-geeks are happy to have a "toy" OS that gets the job done. They can do word processing, graphics, web browsing, email, and games, and that's about it. But that's all they are interested in doing. The computer is a tool. It's a very useful tool, but it's still just a tool.

Even those of us who do like to tinker with out systems from time to time still want to be able to hide that complexity when they need to get other work done. When I am writing a paper, checking my email, or playing Starcraft, my "toy" Mac OS works just fine. The interface is much nicer, it's much simpler to set up and use, and it's generally more productive. When I want to tinker, I have an old Mac on which I install LinuxPPC, and then I can tinker to my heart's content.

There's no reason non-geeks should learn to use vi, know a programming language, reformat a hard drive, or edit text-based configuration files. These tasks are not the least bit relevant to their lives, and are simply extra work. An oversimplified interface and glazing over of problems is a good thing for 90% of what people do with computers. If their computer crashes, it doesn't matter to them why it crashed. There's no point in giving them the gruesome details of what failed where and how. They'll just reboot and try again. If it continues failing, they switch apps and/or upgrade. They might run disk doctor occasionally, or ask a more knowledgable friend for help. But for the most part they just want the OS to do as it's told, even if they aren't using it as intended.

A good analogy is a car. For most of us, it's much nicer to have a simple dashboard that gives us a sumarry of what our car is doing than a window that let's us look and the engine and take measurements manually. The mechanically inclined might like rebuilding their engines, but for the rest of us, we are happy to think of our cars as a black box that needs oil changes, fillups, and the rest gets taken care of by the mechanic. Most peoples' lives do not revolve around their computers, any more than around their cars.

Re:You're a geek

[binarybits]

The biggest one is that computers are powerful because they are programmable. Not because microsoft has programmed something for them, not because I hacked out something for them, but because anyone can program them.

If I were among the 90% of computer users who are not geeks, I would be bewildered by this attitude. For those people, a computer is no differenct from a toaster. You turn it on and get a job done with it. That's it. Learning to program takes a large investment of time, and I can think of very few jobs that home-written, amateur programs can do better than professional apps. I'd be interested in some examples of things that Joe Sixpack will want to program. I can't think of any.

You seem to have no comprehension of the time and effort it takes to learn to program effectively. Becoming a competent programmer takes more than just learning the syntax of a language. It requires thinking about your computer in a whole new way. For most users, the computer just presents them with a menu of options, and you pick one. How the computer does what it does is irrelevant. You just point and click and the computer does as it's told. Programming, on the other hand, requires systematic and careful thought about precisely how a task should be carried out in a step-by-step fashion. It is non-interactive, and computers are not the least bit helpful when something goes wrong. I shudder at the prospect of teaching my grandfather, my mother, or my sister to program. All of them are plenty smart, but they simply do not have the interest or the patience to learn programming skills.

Learning to program may be required for getting "the most out of your computer." But learning to rebuild your cars engine is likewise necessary for getting "the most out of your car." That does not mean that everyone should learn to rebuild engines any more than we should all learn to rebuild kernals.

Let me repeat myself: not everyone's life revolves around computers. Most people don't care if they are getting the most out of their systems. They want to take advantages of the things that computers are most useful for, and do it as quickly and painlessly as possible. For non-geeks, that means a simple GUI like the Mac OS, and using apps like email and word processing. Getting more out of their computers requires more effort than they are willing to invest. This does not make them stupid, lazy, or ignorant. It simply means that their priorities are different than yours. For most people, email, web browsing, word processing, and games are the only things worth taking the time to learn.

A basic principle of economics is involved here: the division of labor. One of the reason we are so productive is that each person specializes on a specific task and gets really good at it. We geeks are good at making computers go. Other people become good at other things. To expect everyone to learn to program is as silly as expecting everyone to learn to be plumbers or doctors or carpenters. The whole point of having programmers is so *they* can do the programming, and the rest of the population can concentrate on other tasks. I don't plan to learn the ins and out of other peoples' profession, and I don't expect others to learn how to do my job. If someone has a computer problem they can't solve, they should hire a geek to solve it, not try to become a geek themselves.

*sigh*

[EXpunk]

I used to be a die hard Mac person. I mean, right down to knowing every little detail about every machine Apple had sold since 1980. Someone need to know what kind of PRAM battery a IIFX used? I'd be yer guy. (2x 3.6v lith). So I really do like seeing these articles on /. and in the news.


But prices and the OS just really caused me to drift away. 7.5x was an absolute nightmare and 7.6 no real help. Bash 98 to your hearts content, I'll join you, but if I saw "An error of type 11 has just occurred" or "The application "unknown" has unexpectedly quit" one more time I'd have eaten my own spleen. From what I have seen this was around the time Apple really began to lose many of it's more loyal user base.


These new powerbooks look spiffy, certainly, and I really do hope that Apple gains a bit more of a foothold over M$. But with this snooty attitude that no matter what, people will continue to buy their product (not that M$ doesn't take the same 'tude) IMO they will never regain more than cult status. If the new consumer model has even a small amount of upgrade-ability (meaning more than just RAM) and if users will have more than just one OS as an option for them I would consider buying one for my niece.

I'm sorry though, but I just want to kick Mr. Black-turtle-neck-tofu-munchin'-sandle-wearing Steve Jobs right in the kiwis. I saw an interview with him and his wife and they talked about their being healthy vegetable-aryans, and his kid had done something really really good so as a treat Steve gave him a cup of fruit flavored tea. Tea? You're a billionaire, you cheap git, buy the kid a fucking bike ferchrissakes :-?.

iBook Specs.

[Maktoo]

Here are the specs from the presentation at MacWorld...

"iBook"
the
"iMac to go"

-- 12.1" full TFT
-- 800*600/millions color.. ATI RAGE Mobility
-- 300MHz G3
-- built-in 24 CD
-- 32MB.. expandable 264MB RAM
-- 56K, USB, 10/100 Ethernet
-- full keyboard
-- 6 hours battery life]
-- iMac plastics and rubber coating
-- handle, opens like a cell phone (no latch needed)

$1599-- available "this September" in volume

accepting pre-orders today

wireless networking... "AirPort wireless"? 802.11 11Mb/s... working with Lucent
Airport base station... 56K/10-100 can accept an "AirPort" card... iBook has built-in antennas... 10 iBooks can share one base station

150 feet away

Wrong wrong wrong wrong and wrong

[the red pen]

• The biggest one is that computers are powerful because they are programmable. ... If you are really going to get the full use out of a computer, you aren't going to do it by just surfing the web, by just using some wordprocessing program to type up a paper.... I am saying that to really be able to use a computer, programs other people have written are not going to perfectly suit your needs.

This is just techie elitism.

People don't need to program their computers. In fact, you program very few of the computers you use.

Other people wrote the programs that run my VCR, my microwave oven and my car engine. Maybe I could think of some reason to reprogram them, but I don't want to and I certain don't want to be required to know how these things work in order to use them. The computer that runs slashdot was programmed by other people and I can't do a damn thing about it. (I'd have used Java Servlets, which are much more efficient than Perl CGI.)

For the record, I'm perfectly capable of programming the computers I own. I've done assembly programming for microcontrollers in embedded environments. I can debug with a (real) ICE. This makes me considerably more 31337 than computer literacy evangelists like you. Still, embedded programming is a headache and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Back in 1980, an MIT grad student friend of mine told me that there would eventually be two kinds of computers:

1. The "appliance" that you would just turn on an use with little ability to program or configure. This would be the computer for the "Masses."
2. The "workstation". This would be like Linux or OS/2. It would be a powerful system that was open to programming (or, in the case of Linux, anything).

In reality, we got three kinds. The third is the common "Office Workstation." This is clunky, broken piece of shit that tries to simultaniously provide a robust progrmaming environment yet be simple to use for the non-technical. This is what Windows is. This is what OS/2 became. This is what Linux is evolving into now (Gnome + E? Yikes!).

I think we should follow my friend's vision. Rather than trying to make Linux easy to use, in general, we should have "Home Linux" and "Office Linux" distros, which are much too rigid for you and me, but simple for people like my uncle Bob.

Sigh... something to do in my "spare" time. Ha!