Looks like they haven't revived the powerPC port that Be once had. I tried out the first couple of preview releases on my old PowerComputing mac clone, and i'd really hoped to see a decent final release. Be was awesome of that machine (210 mHz), and even though it was incomplete (couldn't print at the time), the number of new ideas there were amazing.
BBEdit is far from dead; it's a model for gui text editors across platforms.
The beautiful thing about BBEdit is that it's really a swiss army knife for text. It's good for a lot more than authoring code (which it does very well, with colored syntax for most languages).
The built-in grep engine alone saves me dozens of hours of work/year, all programs should be using it. Even if i'm laying out pages in Quark, chances are i'll run text through BBEdit for some cleanup.
For remote editing on my websites, i can easily ssh in and make my changes via a terminal, but for anything that requires a little poking around, i'll generally use Transmit over sftp and edit in BBEdit. Much easier to search through big files and look at multiple files at once than via command line.
The other beautiful thing is the Applescript dictionary. I've got plenty of scripts that use BBEdit as the engine to (cleanly) convert Word files to html, tag hundreds of test questions for online testing (WebCT), and a myriad of other automated tasks.
Pre-OS X, this was the only way to do this kind of work. Sure, this could generally be done with OS X/Linux shell scripts, but it's much handier to have a decent window where i can see my changes. Plus, Applescript lets me tie into other programs that i'm moving stuff in/out of.
For me, it's well worth the price. I bought it at 4.0, and i figure the upgrade cost is about 1/100 the price of the time it saves me every year.
Don't hold your breath, these chips will first appear in Professional desktop machines.
actually, it'll more likely show up in the xserve first (server apps are most likely to be 64-bit ready), and on the pro towers after ~6 months. Think new 64-bit pro towers next spring, and you'll be about right.
Probably 6 months after that before portables see them, unless others are right about the low power/heat with the 970s.
I'll be milking my iBook until there's a 970 in a PB, i figure a good 2 years yet.
Nope, no confusion with SSL, i'm well aware of how SSI works, it's handy. There are plenty of people using BBEdit and AppleScript to manage websites too. I've written my own handy little filesystem-based cms that allows updates through a browser... good times. Different tools for different jobs.
I still say that for the vast majority of smallish low traffic sites, the cpu overhead is neglegable. The most expensive commodity of a website is bandwidth - you aren't getting charged by the cycle.
If you want to argue scalable sites, i think a database is still the better choice. You can find plenty of database-driven CMSs that spit out static pages (Moveable Type, Radio, Greymatter) if you're planning for big server load.
I'm running a little site (plus 3 others) on a 210 mHz PowerComputing Mac clone with linux/php/mysql, and i still haven't seen a load average over 20% yet, unless i'm compiling something.
Good point, but the vast majority of the web servers on the planet will never be/.'d, and have more cycles to spare than bandwidth.
Plus, you have to look at the big picture (apologies if this has been raised already) - it's a lot cheaper and more efficient to add an extra server and run a (typically database-driven) CMS than it is to get a lacky to update the site manually. Almost any monkey can be trained to update a site with a sufficiently simple CMS system, not everyone can be taught/trusted to manage SSI files.
Actually, there is - i've used PHP for even tiny (10-page) sites, just for basic includes for header/footers and navigation.
It's way faster to bang out a quick site when you don't have to go back through files to check if that one link got updated. and a lot easier to add a page or two without even a global s/r.
I don't think they care Mac -vs- PC, they just want to port less and sell more. Look at the link at the bottom of the page - a whole page of redirects to hardware (mostly PC). Probably a nice kickback for each clickthrough.
Adobe's banking on Photoshop as a platform, that people don't care what they run, as long as Photoshop screams on it. Why can they do that? Photoshop has no competition. (no, not the GIMP either). If the PC makes up the majority of their market, they can slack on the Mac version parity.
The big problem with all of the "Photoshop Filter" benchmarks is that they're all true. Pick a filter, any filter, it's going to run on one thing better than another. There are dozens of filters, each optimized for a different environment, hence some are faster on mac, some faster on windows, maybe even some faster on unix. Choose your filters carefully, and you can 'prove' any performance claim.
The other thing they're doing is pushing print production to InDesign. I firmly believe that they're delaying Acrobat 6 to take full advantage of the angst over Quark's delays with version 6 for OS X. "No native Distiller? Well, switch to InDesign, and you don't need that old Distiller!"
huh, that is right. i didn't believe it, but the XServe doesn't include the fiber channel port - it's a $500 option whether you buy it with the XServe or XRaid.
Unless you're going to have multiple xserves, adding an xraid will apparently prevent adding a second ethernet card, unless you pull the video card.
I had a great time making pinewood derby cars when i was a kid (70s). One looked like a corvette, sparkly red paint.
My dad worked at a food plant, so he'd bring one of their food scales home to weight the car when we were done, less trimming on race day. Nowadays, i'd get one of those digital diet scales.
As far as speed, what we'd do is put each nail into a drill and polish it with very fine emery cloth, then string all of the wheels together on a thin screw and sand/polish the outside so the running surface was smooth and round. Then we'd douse the thing regularly with graphite.
For weight, we did different things. One year, we epoxied a bunch of bbs into the bottom for the weight, and we gouged out one or two at the final weighing to get just under the max. My brother once made a car with a giant fishing lead weight sticking up in the middle, painted like a driver. I think we carved pieces off the back of his head when it was too heavy.
What would really make me lose a race every time: i'd drop the damn thing. Or, it would roll right off the table. Once you crack off part on one of those plastic wheel hubs, you're screwed.
I don't think this will fly in the consumer market though - look at all of the hospital and other field-type application that PDAs get used for. The people don't think of them as PDAs, because they're just using a tool to do a specific job. I can see tablets in a similar position, where they are adapted for specific uses in specific environments, and they do great.
I, for one, don't have good enough handwriting for anything to recognize. Even graffiti didn't get it right more than about 80% of the time.
Ironically, the only people left with decent handwriting seem to be older folks who didn't use computers until much later in life; their handwriting clarity was important for communication. Us "kids" (i'm 34) who use a computer all day generally can't hand write for shite.
nobody is going to watch movies on an iPod screen (not unless they make them about 8"). it would be like watching all of your movies in Finder preview mode.
Apple's been working on Bluetooth implementations for some time now.
the iPod has a surplus of processing power and configurability for being just a music player
my wife's biggest complaint about the iPod design is that it looks like it's running System 6.
the obvious solution: Apple will be coming out with a special edition videoPod that will wirelessly connect to your incoming TV signal and allow you to record your favorite TV shows directly to your iPod. You could preview the captured shows directly on the new high-res color screen (running OS X lite), but the genius is that you can use the optional* connection kit to connect your videoPod to any TV or computer** to play your movies with full HD quality and surround sound.
get those rumors flying!
* = Apple always seems to charge about $20 more for "optional" cables like this
** = in the rev2 version, Apple will offer an optional adapter that turns the videoPod into a digital projector, so you can tack a bedsheet on the wall and watch your movies anywhere, as big as you like.
i'm not saying that they aren't winning now... but remember the dry spell they had before Favre came along? It was like rooting for the Cubs, without Harry Caray to laught at.
Apple definitely needs to improve their efforts with their OS<=9 users, but I think they have been making some smart moves with their OS X strategy.
Think about Apple's position - they needed a new OS that was stable and user friendly. World + dog knew that they were working on a system with a Unix core (via NeXT), so they couldn't very well pretend it wasn't true, although classic Mac users would be very turned off by a "geeky UNIX machine".
At the same time, Apple is a shrinking company; it's been laying off engineers, and research is minimal. Sales are crap, but improving thanks to the iMac. By opening up at least part of the OS and adopting more and more open source code and open standards, they save engineering time ($), and potentially benefit from a large pool of talent who want open source as a philosophy to work.
Don't minimize the huge sea-change that Apple made by embracing open standards. They were known for years for creating their own (sometimes superior but seldom embraced) protocols. Now, they're working with the community on those issues, and everyone is benefitting (Firewire, Zero-conf networking).
So, Apple plays up the UNIX angle, it's part of the promotion: "easiest to use UNIX ever". What does that get them? The ear of current Mac users, plus linux and bsd geeks who have been griping about the *nix desktop forever.
It's working too. Look at the people who work for Apple now. Look at O'Reilly gushing over OS X.
Why not use NeXT code? They are. Why not Linux? It's frankly a mess of inconsistency. Plus, as Fink proves, the vast majority of Linux apps are a recompile away.
I think Apple is playing a very smart long-term strategy. They're working on mindshare, getting the geeks and college students excited. They're staying out of the devil's bargain that Microsoft is making with the record and movie companies, and smart computer users respect that.
Hopefully for Apple, this will all lead to new software and more users, and potentially, a foot in the door when those new geeks start getting jobs.
I'm happy to be an Apple fan, but it's more like being a Packers fan. They don't generally win, but here's the thing; sometimes they do. And, they're innovators too (only community-owned team in the NFL).
The Mac OS (and to a growing degree) OS X is the reason so many design shops are firmly entrenched. I've worked extensively in both, and by many times over, i'm more productive on a Mac.
The windows machine will feel faster in some ways - windows will draw fast, things are a little snappier - but in actual production work, where i'm moving files around and bouncing files between apps, there's no contest.
When you toss in applescript, it's all over. I've had many days when i'm virtually doubling my work by having one machine automatically processing something or other while i'm still working. These are tasks that could take hours getting done in minutes.
Sure, i could be extra 1337 and write some of these routines in perl, but with applescript, i can train any old temp monkey to do the exact same work in 5 minutes.
Production professionals know that it's not how fancy you can make your windows look that gets the work done, it's a machine that allows you to get your work done.
So you've got good tires and know how to drive. That's no reason to make fun of people who are stuck.
yes it is.
I drive my Golf turbo past many idiots in the winter here in Minnesota, in sedans and SUVs alike, burning trails of ice down the road because they don't know how to drive.
i laugh and laugh. then i generally get out and help them push, with a little friendly advice thrown in too:-)
... and Apple bashers will always make up some weak-assed story to prove their "point".
The true story is that Hard Drive Setup worked well on the majority of hard drives, and where it didn't you got a free utility with the drive. I can't count the number of copies of Hard Drive Tools PE i have floating around.
I've been doing this very search for our graphic design department for some time now. We're trying to replace a uselessly old copy of MediaManager (published at the time by Imation, now abandoned).
We looked at packages like Canto Cumulus (as others have noted), and they're very nice, but very expensive. We're looking at a no-budget situation, plus we want multiple editors to have access to images for research, which would greatly add to the number of users we'd have to pay for under a program like Cumulus.
Our conclusion was to write our own web-based program, as there is nothing that currently does what we need. The closest i found is the scientific image database, which handles the multiple file types (tiff, eps, pdf) that we use in the print environment. All other packages that seem to do asset management are really photo gallery packages only designed to handle jpegs and very simple meta data.
So, we'll be writing one, using PHP and either mysql or ms sql server (gotta use what we have...).
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like they haven't revived the powerPC port that Be once had. I tried out the first couple of preview releases on my old PowerComputing mac clone, and i'd really hoped to see a decent final release. Be was awesome of that machine (210 mHz), and even though it was incomplete (couldn't print at the time), the number of new ideas there were amazing.
BBEdit is far from dead; it's a model for gui text editors across platforms.
The beautiful thing about BBEdit is that it's really a swiss army knife for text. It's good for a lot more than authoring code (which it does very well, with colored syntax for most languages).
The built-in grep engine alone saves me dozens of hours of work/year, all programs should be using it. Even if i'm laying out pages in Quark, chances are i'll run text through BBEdit for some cleanup.
For remote editing on my websites, i can easily ssh in and make my changes via a terminal, but for anything that requires a little poking around, i'll generally use Transmit over sftp and edit in BBEdit. Much easier to search through big files and look at multiple files at once than via command line.
The other beautiful thing is the Applescript dictionary. I've got plenty of scripts that use BBEdit as the engine to (cleanly) convert Word files to html, tag hundreds of test questions for online testing (WebCT), and a myriad of other automated tasks.
Pre-OS X, this was the only way to do this kind of work. Sure, this could generally be done with OS X/Linux shell scripts, but it's much handier to have a decent window where i can see my changes. Plus, Applescript lets me tie into other programs that i'm moving stuff in/out of.
For me, it's well worth the price. I bought it at 4.0, and i figure the upgrade cost is about 1/100 the price of the time it saves me every year.
Don't hold your breath, these chips will first appear in Professional desktop machines.
actually, it'll more likely show up in the xserve first (server apps are most likely to be 64-bit ready), and on the pro towers after ~6 months. Think new 64-bit pro towers next spring, and you'll be about right.
Probably 6 months after that before portables see them, unless others are right about the low power/heat with the 970s.
I'll be milking my iBook until there's a 970 in a PB, i figure a good 2 years yet.
Sure this is great, but when will i be able to buy individual Fugazi tracks online?
Apple needs to start cutting deals with the indies next.
whoops, that would be the "music for your pants" announcement... my bad.
here's Apple's next iPod accessory:
the Audi-oh
rip. mix. oh, ooh, oh! oh!
Nope, no confusion with SSL, i'm well aware of how SSI works, it's handy. There are plenty of people using BBEdit and AppleScript to manage websites too. I've written my own handy little filesystem-based cms that allows updates through a browser... good times. Different tools for different jobs.
I still say that for the vast majority of smallish low traffic sites, the cpu overhead is neglegable. The most expensive commodity of a website is bandwidth - you aren't getting charged by the cycle.
If you want to argue scalable sites, i think a database is still the better choice. You can find plenty of database-driven CMSs that spit out static pages (Moveable Type, Radio, Greymatter) if you're planning for big server load.
I'm running a little site (plus 3 others) on a 210 mHz PowerComputing Mac clone with linux/php/mysql, and i still haven't seen a load average over 20% yet, unless i'm compiling something.
Good point, but the vast majority of the web servers on the planet will never be /.'d, and have more cycles to spare than bandwidth.
Plus, you have to look at the big picture (apologies if this has been raised already) - it's a lot cheaper and more efficient to add an extra server and run a (typically database-driven) CMS than it is to get a lacky to update the site manually. Almost any monkey can be trained to update a site with a sufficiently simple CMS system, not everyone can be taught/trusted to manage SSI files.
Actually, there is - i've used PHP for even tiny (10-page) sites, just for basic includes for header/footers and navigation.
It's way faster to bang out a quick site when you don't have to go back through files to check if that one link got updated. and a lot easier to add a page or two without even a global s/r.
mmmm... centralized navigation... gaaar...
I don't think they care Mac -vs- PC, they just want to port less and sell more. Look at the link at the bottom of the page - a whole page of redirects to hardware (mostly PC). Probably a nice kickback for each clickthrough.
Adobe's banking on Photoshop as a platform, that people don't care what they run, as long as Photoshop screams on it. Why can they do that? Photoshop has no competition. (no, not the GIMP either). If the PC makes up the majority of their market, they can slack on the Mac version parity.
The big problem with all of the "Photoshop Filter" benchmarks is that they're all true. Pick a filter, any filter, it's going to run on one thing better than another. There are dozens of filters, each optimized for a different environment, hence some are faster on mac, some faster on windows, maybe even some faster on unix. Choose your filters carefully, and you can 'prove' any performance claim.
The other thing they're doing is pushing print production to InDesign. I firmly believe that they're delaying Acrobat 6 to take full advantage of the angst over Quark's delays with version 6 for OS X. "No native Distiller? Well, switch to InDesign, and you don't need that old Distiller!"
i saw mentioned elsewhere that the format will be AAC (Advanced Audio Codec), not mp3
huh, that is right. i didn't believe it, but the XServe doesn't include the fiber channel port - it's a $500 option whether you buy it with the XServe or XRaid.
Unless you're going to have multiple xserves, adding an xraid will apparently prevent adding a second ethernet card, unless you pull the video card.
I had a great time making pinewood derby cars when i was a kid (70s). One looked like a corvette, sparkly red paint.
My dad worked at a food plant, so he'd bring one of their food scales home to weight the car when we were done, less trimming on race day. Nowadays, i'd get one of those digital diet scales.
As far as speed, what we'd do is put each nail into a drill and polish it with very fine emery cloth, then string all of the wheels together on a thin screw and sand/polish the outside so the running surface was smooth and round. Then we'd douse the thing regularly with graphite.
For weight, we did different things. One year, we epoxied a bunch of bbs into the bottom for the weight, and we gouged out one or two at the final weighing to get just under the max. My brother once made a car with a giant fishing lead weight sticking up in the middle, painted like a driver. I think we carved pieces off the back of his head when it was too heavy.
What would really make me lose a race every time: i'd drop the damn thing. Or, it would roll right off the table. Once you crack off part on one of those plastic wheel hubs, you're screwed.
I don't think this will fly in the consumer market though - look at all of the hospital and other field-type application that PDAs get used for. The people don't think of them as PDAs, because they're just using a tool to do a specific job. I can see tablets in a similar position, where they are adapted for specific uses in specific environments, and they do great.
I, for one, don't have good enough handwriting for anything to recognize. Even graffiti didn't get it right more than about 80% of the time.
Ironically, the only people left with decent handwriting seem to be older folks who didn't use computers until much later in life; their handwriting clarity was important for communication. Us "kids" (i'm 34) who use a computer all day generally can't hand write for shite.
the obvious solution:
Apple will be coming out with a special edition videoPod that will wirelessly connect to your incoming TV signal and allow you to record your favorite TV shows directly to your iPod. You could preview the captured shows directly on the new high-res color screen (running OS X lite), but the genius is that you can use the optional* connection kit to connect your videoPod to any TV or computer** to play your movies with full HD quality and surround sound.
get those rumors flying!
* = Apple always seems to charge about $20 more for "optional" cables like this
** = in the rev2 version, Apple will offer an optional adapter that turns the videoPod into a digital projector, so you can tack a bedsheet on the wall and watch your movies anywhere, as big as you like.
i'm not saying that they aren't winning now... but remember the dry spell they had before Favre came along? It was like rooting for the Cubs, without Harry Caray to laught at.
Apple definitely needs to improve their efforts with their OS<=9 users, but I think they have been making some smart moves with their OS X strategy.
Think about Apple's position - they needed a new OS that was stable and user friendly. World + dog knew that they were working on a system with a Unix core (via NeXT), so they couldn't very well pretend it wasn't true, although classic Mac users would be very turned off by a "geeky UNIX machine".
At the same time, Apple is a shrinking company; it's been laying off engineers, and research is minimal. Sales are crap, but improving thanks to the iMac. By opening up at least part of the OS and adopting more and more open source code and open standards, they save engineering time ($), and potentially benefit from a large pool of talent who want open source as a philosophy to work.
Don't minimize the huge sea-change that Apple made by embracing open standards. They were known for years for creating their own (sometimes superior but seldom embraced) protocols. Now, they're working with the community on those issues, and everyone is benefitting (Firewire, Zero-conf networking).
So, Apple plays up the UNIX angle, it's part of the promotion: "easiest to use UNIX ever". What does that get them? The ear of current Mac users, plus linux and bsd geeks who have been griping about the *nix desktop forever.
It's working too. Look at the people who work for Apple now. Look at O'Reilly gushing over OS X.
Why not use NeXT code? They are. Why not Linux? It's frankly a mess of inconsistency. Plus, as Fink proves, the vast majority of Linux apps are a recompile away.
I think Apple is playing a very smart long-term strategy. They're working on mindshare, getting the geeks and college students excited. They're staying out of the devil's bargain that Microsoft is making with the record and movie companies, and smart computer users respect that.
Hopefully for Apple, this will all lead to new software and more users, and potentially, a foot in the door when those new geeks start getting jobs.
I'm happy to be an Apple fan, but it's more like being a Packers fan. They don't generally win, but here's the thing; sometimes they do. And, they're innovators too (only community-owned team in the NFL).
pay attention - they're very much off the pot.
:-)
except for steve maybe...
it's probably been 3 years since i last saw an article that started off "beleaguered Apple Computer..."
The Mac OS (and to a growing degree) OS X is the reason so many design shops are firmly entrenched. I've worked extensively in both, and by many times over, i'm more productive on a Mac.
The windows machine will feel faster in some ways - windows will draw fast, things are a little snappier - but in actual production work, where i'm moving files around and bouncing files between apps, there's no contest.
When you toss in applescript, it's all over. I've had many days when i'm virtually doubling my work by having one machine automatically processing something or other while i'm still working. These are tasks that could take hours getting done in minutes.
Sure, i could be extra 1337 and write some of these routines in perl, but with applescript, i can train any old temp monkey to do the exact same work in 5 minutes.
Production professionals know that it's not how fancy you can make your windows look that gets the work done, it's a machine that allows you to get your work done.
So you've got good tires and know how to drive. That's no reason to make fun of people who are stuck.
:-)
yes it is.
I drive my Golf turbo past many idiots in the winter here in Minnesota, in sedans and SUVs alike, burning trails of ice down the road because they don't know how to drive.
i laugh and laugh. then i generally get out and help them push, with a little friendly advice thrown in too
Haven't seen that one, very interesting.
There's also an interesting article about three wisconsin hunters who hunted together, and all 'coincidentally' died of rare brain diseases.
I don't think we can assume we know anything about prions and what they can do.
... and Apple bashers will always make up some weak-assed story to prove their "point".
The true story is that Hard Drive Setup worked well on the majority of hard drives, and where it didn't you got a free utility with the drive. I can't count the number of copies of Hard Drive Tools PE i have floating around.
the laptop idea was in a recent wired story:5 ,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,5608
second pic down on the left.
I've been doing this very search for our graphic design department for some time now. We're trying to replace a uselessly old copy of MediaManager (published at the time by Imation, now abandoned).
We looked at packages like Canto Cumulus (as others have noted), and they're very nice, but very expensive. We're looking at a no-budget situation, plus we want multiple editors to have access to images for research, which would greatly add to the number of users we'd have to pay for under a program like Cumulus.
Our conclusion was to write our own web-based program, as there is nothing that currently does what we need. The closest i found is the scientific image database, which handles the multiple file types (tiff, eps, pdf) that we use in the print environment. All other packages that seem to do asset management are really photo gallery packages only designed to handle jpegs and very simple meta data.
So, we'll be writing one, using PHP and either mysql or ms sql server (gotta use what we have...).
Of course, i *meant* that the NEC plastic is recyclable - they don't claim to be using recycled plastic.
Wouldn't it be great if they did though?