I gave up caring about privacy a long time ago. I'll use ssh and such to protect my passwords, but I figure that people probably can easily find out where I go on the Internet, no matter what I do. So why care?
I think Mac OS X is one of the factors (i.e., he wants to get away from Windows.)
But I agree totally. I'll probably never make a decision on color. General style, yes. Like the old iBook -- it looks too much like a toilet seat for me. But not the color.
I think the point of the earbuds is that they don't sound like a cat in a pillow. (Want to listen to my Rio? I can't stand the sound that comes out of the thing.)
When you buy a car, do you purchase the engine, then get the rest of the car on pricewatch?
The point of the device is that Apple took fairly standard components and did something with them that is appealing, and makes people go, "gee, now I want one."
That's great, but I want to know if I can go jogging with it and not cause a head crash. Skip protection is good, but I don't want the hard drive to be damaged.
After spending much time with a windows-oriented friend of mine (not a devotee, he hates it, but it does the things he needs), I think I have an inkling of why people who are predisposed to Slashdot hate Steve.
My friend, let's call him Dan, is looking to buy a new laptop. He wants an operating system that works (probably not Windows), a sensible hardware platform, and a good price.
He likes the iBook a lot, but hates the color. He doesn't know why there's no choice other than white, and he doesn't know why the iBook isn't like the Titanium PowerBook.
I tried to explain that the iBook is the consumer device, and is geared to what Steve thinks that market wants. He finds Steve's whims and "vision" to be ridiculous and limiting, and wishes that Apple would release notebooks in sensible colors that real people want. I tried to explain that all sorts of people find the iBook much more appealing than any other option, and they are buying it in spades. He still wants it to be black.
The wacky, headstrong attitude of Steve & co. is appealing to people who "get it." Those who aren't on the bus have no ability to understand why anyone would want a computer that's blue with white polka dots. I further think that it's near-impossible to explain that "groove" to people who don't get it naturally.
(Those are often the same people who have super-fancy E/GTK/etc. themes for their Linux desktops that are slow and awful. They love those, but they don't get how OS X is different, or how an OS X theme for Enlightenment makes the "on the bus" crowd's stomaches do acrobatics.)
I don't mean for that to sound as snobby as it came out -- there really isn't a right or wrong mindset, but there are differences.
There was a lot more to it. Apple expected that the clone makers would bolster the low end (where Apple had had trouble for years.) Instead, the clones occupied the space that Apple intended to keep for itself, and hardware sales suffered. Remember -- Apple is a hardware company. It has cool software, but that's there to see the hardware.
And, IMO, the only clone maker that was successful (Power Computing) produced the most uninteresting, lackluster product possible. It's products were the most generic possible approach to Macintosh hardware, and the price benefit was minimal. There were some cool clones (the Daystar 4 processor job and the Radius VideoVision workstation come to mind), but they were expensive, and not enough to carry day.
If I was getting a low end Mac, I'd rather have an iMac or a new iBook than a beige steel box with a generic PC monitor sitting on top (as used by the Power Computing boxes).
It's a dinky old 640x480 (iirc) camera with a proprietary serial interface. One of the Kodal DC cameras was the same device in a different box. If you have the QuickTake software, it probably will work fine in OS 9.
Well, most likely, when they decided to start making a widget set, they didn't figure it would be a big enough deal that there would be any sort of name-concept collision with a technology as completely unrelated as QuickTime.
I've been getting that a lot, too. And, much as I'd like to report the bug, Sourceforge won't let me without registering. And, as I have no reason to register at sourceforge, the error goes unreported.
(In fact, trying to post this message, I got "Invalid form key: eH7kBLVHZw !")
As per my reading, I don't think the poster was commenting about the sue-ability of the current topic, but was speaking abstractly about how Slashdot reacts to such stories.
This may sound like at troll, but it's how I honestly feel.
Do you actually like looking at that? There are globs of pixels everywhere, it's hard to look at, it's distracting.
I'm a devoted user of Mac OS X, but every estimation of the interface that I've seen has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The closer people get, the more obvious it is that things are just wrong.
I installed KDE for fun on my Linux box last weekend, and turned on terminal transparency, which is one of my favorite feature in OS X. I couldn't stop laughing when it just copied the desktop for the background of the window (and ignored any other windows that were below it.) I have great respect for the KDE and GNOME projects, but some of the stuff that they release for "coolness" purposes is so half-assed that I'd be embarrassed to put my name on it.
I'm staying with OS X. Heck, I installed XFree86 and realized that I don't really have an urgent need to run Gimp (which I think is awful) or XEmacs. It's just fine as it is.
Don't forget that an equally important aspect is that Apple doesn't want people to interact with something that looks like Aqua and doesn't work right.
Don't forget that Apple is in a very sensitive position. They're moving to a whole new OS, and a whole heck of a lot of people (many in the press) can't wait to see a stumble. If people don't even bother using the OS because they used a skin for Windows XP that kind sucked, Apple is in deep doo-doo. As far as they can see, this is the only good approach.
You remind me of a great comment by Mark Twain. Paraphrasing: "Every time you're tempted to use the word 'very,' change it to 'damned.' Your editor will delete it, and your writing will be as it should." (Paraphrased.)
"Older versions of the MacOS spent 100% of the CPU on rendering the menu anytime you clicked on the menu bar. Nobody, except for the people that were trying to run background tasks (very few and far between in the Mac world), seemed to mind."
------
That was one of the coolest things about the old MacOS -- if you wanted to suspend processing for some reason (usually reading something before it went away for some reason), you could open a menu and keep reading. When you were done, let go. The system would proceed. =)
I still instinctively do it in OS X, and am slightly frustrated when the system keeps working.
Does anyone else find the lameness filter annoying? I just copied and pasted the previous comment, and it flunked the filter until I cleaned up slashdot's html.
Also, remember that there are hoards of people watching breathlessly to see Apple make the slightest mistake. If a random journalist were to boot Mac OS X on his 7300 and it was unpleasantly slow, then wrote a scathing article about the speed, Joe G4-user might just skip the upgrade and continue happily with OS 9. And that's one of Apple's worst-case scenarios, I figure.
Huh? It runs on your G4. It's an OS. Yellow Dog is a different OS. They don't run simultaneously. (I know about mac-on-mac projects, but those aren't working with Mac OS X yet.)
Slashdot Mirror
I gave up caring about privacy a long time ago. I'll use ssh and such to protect my passwords, but I figure that people probably can easily find out where I go on the Internet, no matter what I do. So why care?
I think Mac OS X is one of the factors (i.e., he wants to get away from Windows.)
But I agree totally. I'll probably never make a decision on color. General style, yes. Like the old iBook -- it looks too much like a toilet seat for me. But not the color.
I think the point of the earbuds is that they don't sound like a cat in a pillow. (Want to listen to my Rio? I can't stand the sound that comes out of the thing.)
"Apple is selling an overpriced, under spec`ed item to its tiny market ... AGAIN. When will they learn?"
Uhh...when they stop making millions of dollars of profit?
I thought they settled that when QuickTime came out.
When you buy a car, do you purchase the engine, then get the rest of the car on pricewatch?
The point of the device is that Apple took fairly standard components and did something with them that is appealing, and makes people go, "gee, now I want one."
That's great, but I want to know if I can go jogging with it and not cause a head crash. Skip protection is good, but I don't want the hard drive to be damaged.
After spending much time with a windows-oriented friend of mine (not a devotee, he hates it, but it does the things he needs), I think I have an inkling of why people who are predisposed to Slashdot hate Steve.
My friend, let's call him Dan, is looking to buy a new laptop. He wants an operating system that works (probably not Windows), a sensible hardware platform, and a good price.
He likes the iBook a lot, but hates the color. He doesn't know why there's no choice other than white, and he doesn't know why the iBook isn't like the Titanium PowerBook.
I tried to explain that the iBook is the consumer device, and is geared to what Steve thinks that market wants. He finds Steve's whims and "vision" to be ridiculous and limiting, and wishes that Apple would release notebooks in sensible colors that real people want. I tried to explain that all sorts of people find the iBook much more appealing than any other option, and they are buying it in spades. He still wants it to be black.
The wacky, headstrong attitude of Steve & co. is appealing to people who "get it." Those who aren't on the bus have no ability to understand why anyone would want a computer that's blue with white polka dots. I further think that it's near-impossible to explain that "groove" to people who don't get it naturally.
(Those are often the same people who have super-fancy E/GTK/etc. themes for their Linux desktops that are slow and awful. They love those, but they don't get how OS X is different, or how an OS X theme for Enlightenment makes the "on the bus" crowd's stomaches do acrobatics.)
I don't mean for that to sound as snobby as it came out -- there really isn't a right or wrong mindset, but there are differences.
> If it's a PDA, I hope it won't be
> too expensive so it can be a killer.
Argh. I was about to settle on a PDA/cell phone device. If this is legit, I'll have to reconsider the whole shebang.
I'd be happy is that was the device =)
That's definitely worth remembering for later!
There was a lot more to it. Apple expected that the clone makers would bolster the low end (where Apple had had trouble for years.) Instead, the clones occupied the space that Apple intended to keep for itself, and hardware sales suffered. Remember -- Apple is a hardware company. It has cool software, but that's there to see the hardware.
And, IMO, the only clone maker that was successful (Power Computing) produced the most uninteresting, lackluster product possible. It's products were the most generic possible approach to Macintosh hardware, and the price benefit was minimal. There were some cool clones (the Daystar 4 processor job and the Radius VideoVision workstation come to mind), but they were expensive, and not enough to carry day.
If I was getting a low end Mac, I'd rather have an iMac or a new iBook than a beige steel box with a generic PC monitor sitting on top (as used by the Power Computing boxes).
It's a dinky old 640x480 (iirc) camera with a proprietary serial interface. One of the Kodal DC cameras was the same device in a different box. If you have the QuickTake software, it probably will work fine in OS 9.
Well, most likely, when they decided to start making a widget set, they didn't figure it would be a big enough deal that there would be any sort of name-concept collision with a technology as completely unrelated as QuickTime.
I've been getting that a lot, too. And, much as I'd like to report the bug, Sourceforge won't let me without registering. And, as I have no reason to register at sourceforge, the error goes unreported.
(In fact, trying to post this message, I got "Invalid form key: eH7kBLVHZw !")
As per my reading, I don't think the poster was commenting about the sue-ability of the current topic, but was speaking abstractly about how Slashdot reacts to such stories.
This may sound like at troll, but it's how I honestly feel.
Do you actually like looking at that? There are globs of pixels everywhere, it's hard to look at, it's distracting.
I'm a devoted user of Mac OS X, but every estimation of the interface that I've seen has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The closer people get, the more obvious it is that things are just wrong.
I installed KDE for fun on my Linux box last weekend, and turned on terminal transparency, which is one of my favorite feature in OS X. I couldn't stop laughing when it just copied the desktop for the background of the window (and ignored any other windows that were below it.) I have great respect for the KDE and GNOME projects, but some of the stuff that they release for "coolness" purposes is so half-assed that I'd be embarrassed to put my name on it.
I'm staying with OS X. Heck, I installed XFree86 and realized that I don't really have an urgent need to run Gimp (which I think is awful) or XEmacs. It's just fine as it is.
Don't forget that an equally important aspect is that Apple doesn't want people to interact with something that looks like Aqua and doesn't work right.
Don't forget that Apple is in a very sensitive position. They're moving to a whole new OS, and a whole heck of a lot of people (many in the press) can't wait to see a stumble. If people don't even bother using the OS because they used a skin for Windows XP that kind sucked, Apple is in deep doo-doo. As far as they can see, this is the only good approach.
Same concept =)
But why the hostility?
You remind me of a great comment by Mark Twain. Paraphrasing: "Every time you're tempted to use the word 'very,' change it to 'damned.' Your editor will delete it, and your writing will be as it should." (Paraphrased.)
"Older versions of the MacOS spent 100% of the CPU on rendering the menu anytime you clicked on the menu bar. Nobody, except for the people that were trying to run background tasks (very few and far between in the Mac world), seemed to mind."
------
That was one of the coolest things about the old MacOS -- if you wanted to suspend processing for some reason (usually reading something before it went away for some reason), you could open a menu and keep reading. When you were done, let go. The system would proceed. =)
I still instinctively do it in OS X, and am slightly frustrated when the system keeps working.
Does anyone else find the lameness filter annoying? I just copied and pasted the previous comment, and it flunked the filter until I cleaned up slashdot's html.
Also, remember that there are hoards of people watching breathlessly to see Apple make the slightest mistake. If a random journalist were to boot Mac OS X on his 7300 and it was unpleasantly slow, then wrote a scathing article about the speed, Joe G4-user might just skip the upgrade and continue happily with OS 9. And that's one of Apple's worst-case scenarios, I figure.
Huh? It runs on your G4. It's an OS. Yellow Dog is a different OS. They don't run simultaneously. (I know about mac-on-mac projects, but those aren't working with Mac OS X yet.)
Why, the alluring, digital beep on the hour, of course!