It looks to me like there's huge amounts of wasted space at the top of each and every window. The title bar + menu is even bigger than the standard icon bar. How is that possibly progress? If they had OSX style menus swallowed into a universal menu bar than I could understand reclaiming the screen real estate, particularly with the push towards netbooks and ever smaller displays. But all they've done is turned three buttons into one button.
I had this in my contract, working for a hospital no less, in a medical capacity. They wanted rights over anything I produced that is "related to their business". To my mind, that could mean practically anything as a hospital is massively broad with many departments. Even if I wrote song they could claim it's related to their music therapy dept. (although I doubt they would). When I got the contract to sign, I rulered through those lines, initialed the amendment, put in block capitals on the front "please see my amendments on page 27", then sent it to HR. Never heard anything back from them.
If you believe the Apple PR machine, then Lion will have exactly what you describe - a universal, transparent, application-level revision control system with a pretty GUI. I'm sure this will require specific implementation by each developer rather than being an OS / FS level interface, so will take some time to appear fully and may never be implemented in some apps. What will be interesting is how (if at all) it interacts with Time Machine. If the Time Machine interface can intelligently handle these revisions so you have a one-stop revision and backup GUI then it could be a huge benefit for creative professionals and developers.
Icons also represent documents, folders, and "the Desktop", whatever that means. I think the Recycle Bin is supposed to be like a folder, which is why it can be moved around, although in reality it's a special case GUI function. I prefer the Mac metaphor where it has a fixed location although it's annoying that there's no way to get a link to it on the left bar of a Finder window, which means always dragging all the way down (or across in my case) to the edge of the dock. It's redundant really, because you can always create a folder on the fly when doing some mass deletions, check everything you wanted to keep is still there, then delete the folder, but it is useful for newbies to feel confident when deleting.
You just answered your own question - if you can't view the files or navigate subdirectories then it's not a folder, it's a special-case that opens a window that happens to have the same GUI decorations as a standard Explorer window with the one function of selecting files in order to restore them.
He hasn't disabled it, he's removed it from the desktop to try to discourage the user from immediately emptying it after deleting a file. I'm sure a user with the knowledge/insight to wonder where it's gone and miss its functionality would be able to re-enable the icon or at least request the admin to do so.
You mean, like Time Machine? It occurred to me recently that the Trash Can on my Mac is basically pointless, because except for files that I've only had on the drive for less than a couple of minutes, there's always a copy in Time Machine.
I think I bought mine in a hardware store. They're not rare, but you have to know what you're looking for, and might need to get mail order for the exact size / power rating you want. I think the most useful application at home is for 'candle' style fittings in dining rooms where you want the candle shape and want to be able to dim them.
I think there is an argument for phasing out standard incandescents. For places where CFL won't be a good choice, small halogen bulbs in a glass envelope that fit into a standard fitting are a much better choice, with longer life and better light output. They also work with dimmers. My concern is that legislation in several countries will throw out the baby with the bathwater and ban the more efficient incandescents along with the outdated 40W / 60W non-halogen bulb.
You wouldn't need to put the port onto an add-in video card, if you have a desktop setup then you would plug the monitor straight into the video card. The only reason to combine the ports is when you're working with a laptop and want a one-plug connection to you desktop peripherals.
What I'm finding quite interesting is that Thunderbolt is PCI Express, which makes me think it will eventually be possible to have a high-spec graphics card in an external box and run the big display from that, making the 13" MacBook Pro look like a pretty good option to have something that you can carry on the road and plug in at home.
Well, both would be good:). I do actually think they will eventually go in that direction, Apple seem to take quite a long-term view on things: remember how everyone slated Apple when they introduced Mini DisplayPort for no [apparent] good reason? Well, now we know why. I have a feeling that we'll eventually see a strategic partnership with a company manufacturing X86 servers. Or maybe we'll see something really weird, like a rack box that only has Ethernet and Thunderbolt connectors? I don't think they're done with Enterprise, at least not SOHO Enterprise, I think they're figuring out how to make money from it and provide something unique.
Yeah, I'm sure you're right, but the previous poster claimed that he had "never had any of the problems" described, including driver downloads, which is clearly nonsense. Of course, you do have to download third-party drivers for Mac OS, but you don't have the nightmare of reinstalling a system and starting up in 800x600 video with no internet connection and having to go to another computer to try to get drivers. On the other hand, the Mac user was exaggerating how often you have to reinstall Windows. I've found that every 6 months is frequent enough so long as you only use the computer occasionally.
I have often wondered whether there was some way for Apple to offer OS X "server" for use in commodity hardware without making it available for desktop use, maybe by some sort of user interface limitation (remove quicktime?) and making it relatively expensive at low volumes so that it makes sense for enterprise but doesn't eat into their workstation and laptop market. I've never thought that it would be a good move for Apple to commoditise OS X per se, but since they no longer sell server-grade hardware, I think they could start selling it as a software solution. It would also neatly get them out of the issue of supporting weird and wonderful hardware, just certify selected Dell and HP servers and make sure RAID and networking work well, everything else is secondary.
A lot more than just having a spare server in the cupboard. For the price of the Mac Mini server, that's a much better option than messing around with redundant power supplies, which only guard against another point of failure. Use Time Machine for a rolling backup, use offsite storage for a backup against fire, flood etc. on the premises, and keep a fully set-up spare server in the store cupboard.
Yup, my wife's nearly four year-old white MacBook is still going strong, still relatively fast, and still looks pretty good. You really do get good value for money with Macs, all the PC laptops I've ever had were pretty much worn out by three years old and didn't have any resale value. When I buy her an 11" MacBook Air in a couple of months, I'll still get three to four hundred pounds for the four year-old laptop on eBay.
What I love, is that Apple has been working on this with Intel for some time. When Apple changed to Mini DisplayPort on the last generation of MacBooks, everyone slated them for 'yet another connector'. 18 months or so later, we have a superb solution that does exactly what I want - everything is on my laptop, no syncing or messing around, but when I want to do some serious work I can plug it into my desktop setup with two leads (power and Thunderbolt) and have all the hard disk space, monitor real estate, and audio/video I/O I could possibly want. This is a serious step forward, and far more interesting than USB 3.0.
It will never be ready. I have the perfect "speech recognition system" at work, where I speak into a dictaphone and one of the secretaries types out a letter. It's much much quicker to just type straight into a word processor, it doesn't make me hoarse, and I can start anywhere I want (i.e. write the key points down and build the letter around them).
Even instructing another human who's used to the process of letter-writing is frustrating: "change who to whom, no not that one, the one in the first paragraph, no the FIRST paragraph, no- up a bit- left, uh, forget it...". Proper speech recognition (that fulfils all your criteria) would be great for environments when spoken instructions make sense (e.g. driving), but I doubt it will ever replace keyboard and touchpad/mouse/touchscreen, at least not with computers that look anything like they do now.
The UK has no ID card. The closest we have to a SSN is the national insurance number (XX nn nn nn X) which is used for official forms related to income (e.g. tax return) and requested by banks for handling tax on savings interest, but isn't usually used as any form of ID. Bizarrely, when I was a teenager, the government started issuing the number on cards, but it was literally a credit-card sized piece of plastic with a logo and the name and number embossed on the front. I've never been asked for it and I'm not even sure where it is right now. The most anyone could do if they stole it would be to pay taxes on my behalf, for which I would be most grateful. I suppose if they really planned ahead they could eventually collect my pension, but I suspect the UK will have some sort of formal ID card system by then.
I don't think they're using the SSN as the unique identifier for each entrant. I guess they use a Google account for that. The last four digits of a SSN are not unique, and in fact they would statistically need far fewer than 10000 entrants before they hit a duplicate.
That's not the case in the UK, and I would guess most of Western Europe too, although I'm willing to stand corrected. In the UK, at least, the vast majority of people have no idea how much a phone really costs, and only buy 'subsidised' phones where you essentially pay the full price of the device over the duration of the contract.
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We've had PIN codes in the UK for at least 8 years.
It looks to me like there's huge amounts of wasted space at the top of each and every window. The title bar + menu is even bigger than the standard icon bar. How is that possibly progress? If they had OSX style menus swallowed into a universal menu bar than I could understand reclaiming the screen real estate, particularly with the push towards netbooks and ever smaller displays. But all they've done is turned three buttons into one button.
I had this in my contract, working for a hospital no less, in a medical capacity. They wanted rights over anything I produced that is "related to their business". To my mind, that could mean practically anything as a hospital is massively broad with many departments. Even if I wrote song they could claim it's related to their music therapy dept. (although I doubt they would). When I got the contract to sign, I rulered through those lines, initialed the amendment, put in block capitals on the front "please see my amendments on page 27", then sent it to HR. Never heard anything back from them.
If you believe the Apple PR machine, then Lion will have exactly what you describe - a universal, transparent, application-level revision control system with a pretty GUI. I'm sure this will require specific implementation by each developer rather than being an OS / FS level interface, so will take some time to appear fully and may never be implemented in some apps. What will be interesting is how (if at all) it interacts with Time Machine. If the Time Machine interface can intelligently handle these revisions so you have a one-stop revision and backup GUI then it could be a huge benefit for creative professionals and developers.
Icons also represent documents, folders, and "the Desktop", whatever that means. I think the Recycle Bin is supposed to be like a folder, which is why it can be moved around, although in reality it's a special case GUI function. I prefer the Mac metaphor where it has a fixed location although it's annoying that there's no way to get a link to it on the left bar of a Finder window, which means always dragging all the way down (or across in my case) to the edge of the dock. It's redundant really, because you can always create a folder on the fly when doing some mass deletions, check everything you wanted to keep is still there, then delete the folder, but it is useful for newbies to feel confident when deleting.
Why can't I traverse a high-granularity timeline of every change made to every file I deal with?
It's coming in OS X Lion. With Time Machine on hourly backups to a local drive or over a fast network it's practically there now. [/fanboi]
He's an idiot then, because at some point an admin will come to fix his mailbox and empty the trash.
You just answered your own question - if you can't view the files or navigate subdirectories then it's not a folder, it's a special-case that opens a window that happens to have the same GUI decorations as a standard Explorer window with the one function of selecting files in order to restore them.
He hasn't disabled it, he's removed it from the desktop to try to discourage the user from immediately emptying it after deleting a file. I'm sure a user with the knowledge/insight to wonder where it's gone and miss its functionality would be able to re-enable the icon or at least request the admin to do so.
You mean, like Time Machine? It occurred to me recently that the Trash Can on my Mac is basically pointless, because except for files that I've only had on the drive for less than a couple of minutes, there's always a copy in Time Machine.
I think I bought mine in a hardware store. They're not rare, but you have to know what you're looking for, and might need to get mail order for the exact size / power rating you want. I think the most useful application at home is for 'candle' style fittings in dining rooms where you want the candle shape and want to be able to dim them.
I think there is an argument for phasing out standard incandescents. For places where CFL won't be a good choice, small halogen bulbs in a glass envelope that fit into a standard fitting are a much better choice, with longer life and better light output. They also work with dimmers. My concern is that legislation in several countries will throw out the baby with the bathwater and ban the more efficient incandescents along with the outdated 40W / 60W non-halogen bulb.
You wouldn't need to put the port onto an add-in video card, if you have a desktop setup then you would plug the monitor straight into the video card. The only reason to combine the ports is when you're working with a laptop and want a one-plug connection to you desktop peripherals.
What I'm finding quite interesting is that Thunderbolt is PCI Express, which makes me think it will eventually be possible to have a high-spec graphics card in an external box and run the big display from that, making the 13" MacBook Pro look like a pretty good option to have something that you can carry on the road and plug in at home.
Well, both would be good :). I do actually think they will eventually go in that direction, Apple seem to take quite a long-term view on things: remember how everyone slated Apple when they introduced Mini DisplayPort for no [apparent] good reason? Well, now we know why. I have a feeling that we'll eventually see a strategic partnership with a company manufacturing X86 servers. Or maybe we'll see something really weird, like a rack box that only has Ethernet and Thunderbolt connectors? I don't think they're done with Enterprise, at least not SOHO Enterprise, I think they're figuring out how to make money from it and provide something unique.
Yeah, I'm sure you're right, but the previous poster claimed that he had "never had any of the problems" described, including driver downloads, which is clearly nonsense. Of course, you do have to download third-party drivers for Mac OS, but you don't have the nightmare of reinstalling a system and starting up in 800x600 video with no internet connection and having to go to another computer to try to get drivers. On the other hand, the Mac user was exaggerating how often you have to reinstall Windows. I've found that every 6 months is frequent enough so long as you only use the computer occasionally.
I have often wondered whether there was some way for Apple to offer OS X "server" for use in commodity hardware without making it available for desktop use, maybe by some sort of user interface limitation (remove quicktime?) and making it relatively expensive at low volumes so that it makes sense for enterprise but doesn't eat into their workstation and laptop market. I've never thought that it would be a good move for Apple to commoditise OS X per se, but since they no longer sell server-grade hardware, I think they could start selling it as a software solution. It would also neatly get them out of the issue of supporting weird and wonderful hardware, just certify selected Dell and HP servers and make sure RAID and networking work well, everything else is secondary.
A lot more than just having a spare server in the cupboard. For the price of the Mac Mini server, that's a much better option than messing around with redundant power supplies, which only guard against another point of failure. Use Time Machine for a rolling backup, use offsite storage for a backup against fire, flood etc. on the premises, and keep a fully set-up spare server in the store cupboard.
Yup, my wife's nearly four year-old white MacBook is still going strong, still relatively fast, and still looks pretty good. You really do get good value for money with Macs, all the PC laptops I've ever had were pretty much worn out by three years old and didn't have any resale value. When I buy her an 11" MacBook Air in a couple of months, I'll still get three to four hundred pounds for the four year-old laptop on eBay.
You don't have to install drivers on Win 7? And you didn't with Windows XP?
What I love, is that Apple has been working on this with Intel for some time. When Apple changed to Mini DisplayPort on the last generation of MacBooks, everyone slated them for 'yet another connector'. 18 months or so later, we have a superb solution that does exactly what I want - everything is on my laptop, no syncing or messing around, but when I want to do some serious work I can plug it into my desktop setup with two leads (power and Thunderbolt) and have all the hard disk space, monitor real estate, and audio/video I/O I could possibly want. This is a serious step forward, and far more interesting than USB 3.0.
It will never be ready. I have the perfect "speech recognition system" at work, where I speak into a dictaphone and one of the secretaries types out a letter. It's much much quicker to just type straight into a word processor, it doesn't make me hoarse, and I can start anywhere I want (i.e. write the key points down and build the letter around them).
Even instructing another human who's used to the process of letter-writing is frustrating: "change who to whom, no not that one, the one in the first paragraph, no the FIRST paragraph, no- up a bit- left, uh, forget it...". Proper speech recognition (that fulfils all your criteria) would be great for environments when spoken instructions make sense (e.g. driving), but I doubt it will ever replace keyboard and touchpad/mouse/touchscreen, at least not with computers that look anything like they do now.
The UK has no ID card. The closest we have to a SSN is the national insurance number (XX nn nn nn X) which is used for official forms related to income (e.g. tax return) and requested by banks for handling tax on savings interest, but isn't usually used as any form of ID. Bizarrely, when I was a teenager, the government started issuing the number on cards, but it was literally a credit-card sized piece of plastic with a logo and the name and number embossed on the front. I've never been asked for it and I'm not even sure where it is right now. The most anyone could do if they stole it would be to pay taxes on my behalf, for which I would be most grateful. I suppose if they really planned ahead they could eventually collect my pension, but I suspect the UK will have some sort of formal ID card system by then.
I don't think they're using the SSN as the unique identifier for each entrant. I guess they use a Google account for that. The last four digits of a SSN are not unique, and in fact they would statistically need far fewer than 10000 entrants before they hit a duplicate.
That's the one ;).
L.
That's not the case in the UK, and I would guess most of Western Europe too, although I'm willing to stand corrected. In the UK, at least, the vast majority of people have no idea how much a phone really costs, and only buy 'subsidised' phones where you essentially pay the full price of the device over the duration of the contract.