Agreed that Apple's web site can be opaque, but 3d-party Apple sites like Macrumors, 9to5mac, ifixit and others will give you the specifics. and Apple seems to be rather agnostic between ATI/AMD and nVidia... their focus on thinner and lighter tends to favor lower power consumption, whereas their use of higher DPI screens requires them to grab as much performance as possible per watt. What you'll get in the Mac Pro or the iMac 5K is plenty of power to do video editing work and rendering, with video drivers tailored and tested to run well on that model in MacOS. If they're not using nVidia, my guess is there's some reason they didn't make the cut, like too much heat, doesn't play well with dynamic switching with the Intel GPU, AMD cut a better deal for chips in volume, something like that. and Gaming? It's clear that gaming is not Apple's priority. Microsoft invested a huge amount in developing and advancing DirectX. Apple has barely dipped it's toe in recently with Metal, relying historically on OpenGL, which in spite of its promise has been hit and miss at best.
Apple is what it is, nothing more, nothing less. They do what they do well, but for other things you're better of with a PC. They're great for travelers and your parents, because they're reliable e-mail and web-browsing machines that don't break, look good, and they can take them to the store if they break instead of bothering you to come over. I travel with my Macbook, because when I bought it PC laptops, even the Thinkpad, thanks to Lenovo, were creaky plastic overheating consumer-grade crapturds (they've gotten a LOT better recently). But at home I work and game on a PC I build from scratch from time to time. My only problem is what to do with my old rig when I feel the itch to upgrade.
....better yet, outsource. If something goes wrong, the consultants are to blame (but you can take credit for successes). Salaried employees are a liability on the banksheets, them with their sick days and office space and benefits. Can't be hired and fired easily, dead-weights on shareholder value, and since the 80's came along, the shareholder is LORD you tiny little worker man.
Ha ha, no. Apple and Intel are tight, and Apples tend to get the best, latest intel chips that will fit within the (ever thinner) machine they're building. Easy to look up.
The problem with Apples they aren't very upgradeable. You're often stuck with what you get, and maxing it out at purchase time tends to cost a lot more than equivalent upgrades on the street... assuming those upgrades would fit, which they probably won't.
You buy a Mac because it has a warranty, will be sold in its same configuration for at least a year so getting support is easy, and will be repairable for as many as 5 years or more (my 2010 Macbook Pro just got cut off the list this year). Most other consumer electronics have the lifespan of a fruitfly. That Sony Vaio isn't a 2011 model, it's a VWETB236623626-ASD23423 that had a two-week production run and was replaced months before Sony cleared out a thousand of them for sale at Best Buy. Your Apple will be current for at least a year... but a year in, it'll still be sold with the same, now aging, CPU. Trade-off. That's why you check the Buyer's Guide at MacRumors.com before you buy.
But it's FUD that they're putting 2-year old crap in new models. Except, maybe, when you consider the GPU. It will be recent hardware, but it's mid-range performance compared to the best of what's out there. Because top-of-the-line desktop GPU's like the GTX Titan doesn't fit an iMac, and sure as shit not in a laptop or a Mini. Apple doesn't build an affordable desktop, and even if a funny-looking Mac Pro is on your radar, Apple does a frustratingly bad job of updating it as newer, faster chips come out.
So, there you have it. For most of what people buy Macs for, this isn't a problem. But nobody thinks of a Mac as a gaming rig. A recent Mac will play, Steam runs on it, but if you're serious about gaming you're serious enough to build a PC rig.
The Macbook comes with 8GB of memory built in. RAM is not upgradable in this model.
The Macbook has a 12-inch screen and weighs 2 pounds. And has one, single port for power and everything else. What knucklehead would consider that a gaming rig? It's a portable internet work machine for when a tablet won't cut it, for business people in airports and kids with 50-pound backpacks biking to class. You're paying for the thinnest, lightest... not gaming power or expandability. and the few comparablePC laptops are comparably spec'ed and priced. Games? Seriously? I use Macs, I won't game on a Mac.
Wait, you can game on a Mac. Build a decent PC rig based on, I dunno, Ars Technica, Toms Hardware, wherever, install Windows on PC, install Steam on PC, install Steam on Mac, use Steam client on Mac to stream game running on PC rig to Mac. There. Gaming on Mac. Using a PC. No worries.
The troller has a point... although it's buried in his vapid trolling. I like checking out the latest and greatest free desktop release and marvel over how far things have come, and remind myself of the old days when I spent countless, countless hours customizing and tweaking things until it was just right.
But then I need to get some work done. When my life revolved around an editor, an Apache server and a compiler, Linux was all good. Now that it revolves around a word processor, e-mail and a spreadsheet, and sharing everything with all sorts of people, not so much. Linux desktop is desperate for apps for every-day stuff, but even when I was hardcore linux, Konqueror just couldn't slide up to be my go-to browser. There's Firefox, but it's not built for KDE.
KDE seems to hold so much promise. But I just haven't seen anyone build anything with it except an IDE and a Desktop. Everything else in the linux desktop world seems to use GTK, so they look funny in KDE and don't always inter-operate well. Granted LibreOffice is already mature, so I guess there's no interest in KOffice except as a widget demo. Maybe KDE is evolving so quickly that developers don't feel confident building anything in it, in case the next release is going to blow them away.
I would LIKE to be told I'm wrong... but with examples. And not Krita, because I already have that one.
So, does this necessarily cripple Firefox, forcing it to be dependent on Flash/Silverlight plug-ins?
Using an HTML5 player to stream video with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) requires that the browser support the appropriate codec, support Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), and have a Content Decryption Module (CDM) compatible with the flavor of DRM that the video provider uses. A web browser distributed as free software won't be able to support a lot of Hollywood-approved DRM flavors.
A web browser distributed as free software won't be able to support a lot of Hollywood-approved DRM flavors.
"New opportunities may be created for monetization through individual and organization subscriptions and targeted advertising if an hereto unforeseen creative spark strikes the Microsoft VP placed in charge, and the resulting flying pigs set to work and develop a killer app grander than the ribbon and Windows 8."
FTFY
and as long as you're investing money so wisely, Nadella, toss me a round-off fraction of that $26 billion and I'll pay off my mortgage. At least that way, something tangible will result from this investment.
Apples and Oranges, my friend. MPAA/RIAA is copyright (and some trademark). This Fed thing is Patent, and the purpose for the award is, based on the jury's decision on the evidence, to get justice for Samsung making (huge) profits off stolen idea(s). Apple being a big company, the issue may get a little fuzzy. So, imagine if Apple were a tiny company of a few guys in a garage, making a few phones with their parents' money, and a year later Samsung is making billions of them that look and act just like them. The Patent system exists to give the garage guys a chance at some justice, so they and every other inventor don't just say fuck-it and hit the pipe.
If the jury finds that Samsung did steal, then the penalty is supposed to be severe, and the damages are hooked to the profits made off the theft. The theft concerned technologies associated with a mobile phone, and went into building and marketing a phone. So, the jury based their award based on profits made off Samsung's phones.
The Justice Department, for some reason, now wants the jury to split hairs and somehow figure out how much more Samsung's profits would be equipped with Apple's inventions vs. what Samsung would have earned if they had just done without. Given that juries in patent cases are typically in way over their heads in the first place... good luck with that!!!
Samsung's business practice has often been to unapologetically copy stuff and use their deep, deep pockets to out litigate patent holders, at least until they attain dominant market share, and then, mission accomplished, maybe settle. Apple's one of the few players big enough to fight back. I think the jury did the right thing, and $400 mil might be enough of a bite to deter Samsung from keeping it up. What the Justice Department hopes to accomplish here completely escapes me, except it will make it even harder for honest patent holders to ever see a dime out of well-financed thieves.
Admittedly, trolls might benefit, too, if they hold a patent that actually sticks. Most of them don't, and defendants like Newegg who don't fall for that shit have been shutting them down way before there's a question of damages. So, this is not about trolls. This is about a mega-rich vertically-integrated conglomerate stealing other people's R&D to become the dominant player in a market, and using every legal trick money can buy to weasel their way out of being held accountable.
Yep, you know, it's a thing. A business has got to make money, no problems. But smaller businesses that rely at least in part on the goodwill of their customers make exceptions on proper occasions. To make those exceptions, however, somebody with authority has to sign off on it. Finding someone with that kind of authority is easier in a small organization than a big one, let alone a huge one. And in a huge one, there is a magnified fear that any fuck-up, taking of responsibility, or bending of a rule will be used by some snot-nosed rival to take your job in the next restructuring... because the value of the deed is not easily measurable for being graphed in a PowerPoint chart.
But on the consumer-end, the same rules apply as for the small business. Make a fella feel good, he'll come back with a smile. McDonald's gets your order wrong, gave you a Big Mac instead of a Royale with Cheese, screw it... you can have the Big Mac for free. Turns out your date loves Big Macs. Well, hot damn! Next week at 3AM when you're out with your girl with the munchies, you'll remember this small act of kindness, swing by those golden arches.
So many Microsoft employees and shills want to dismiss it all as just a business. But like it or not, Microsoft is in the faces of everyone in the Western World and then some. Even the most avid FOSS-head has to bow to the Bill Gates empire every so often, when he takes money out of an XP-driven ATM or has to mount a FAT-formatted thumb-drive. And further like it or not, there just isn't a viable alternative, because having plural incompatible standards is a pain in the ass and, at least in the office (doctor's offices, law offices, banks, retail, media, government) nobody wants to step up. IBM used to have alternative products to Microsoft's Exchange and Office, they were called Notes and Symphony. For one reason or another, IBM threw in the towel and gave up, years ago. Apple seems to avoid the workplace altogether... I'm sure in Cupertino they got a BSD/Mac OS X paradise, but damn if they want to take responsibility for supporting it for anybody else. Linux? Does Red Hat offer products or support for anything outside the server room?
Yeah, there's Google Docs and it's online ilk, but businesses have to consider customer privacy and, oh, damn, the Internet's flaky again, somebody get on the phone and call Comcast (business-class internet... yeah right).
Microsoft has squished all its competition on the desktop (OS/2, Notes, 1-2-3, Word Perfect) until it really has no incentive to compete anymore. But the old Microsoft magic doesn't seem to be working with the Console, and mobile has been nothing short of a train-wreck.
All I'm sayin', it woudn't hurt if they were a little less dickish. Not holding my breath, but it would be nice. Cause if you work, you probably have to deal one way or another with Microsoft.
I think Microsoft could afford it. and wouldn't it be swell if mean old Microsoft said, "our bad you lucky freaks can keep your game and thanks for buying Xbox over that Sony thing" (and somewhere in Puget Sound, the body of a careless Microsoft employee is slowly picked-apart by the fishes). There, all's well, the universe made right. Would sure make me feel better about buying an Xbox. Instead, Microsoft exercises its DRM muscle to claw back those game licenses that it, entirely by its own mistake, let loose for a few hours. and next time, they'll take your little dog, too.
In other words, the $0.00 price was entirely their problem, their fault. They should man up and eat it. Instead, it becomes everyone else's problem because, you know, fuck those consumers we don't owe them anything fuck 'em. Well, thanks for nothing, Microsoft. Didn't I read something somewhere about a new 4K Playstation?
I think you mean 2003, but in all other ways yes. 2003 was the last version before they decided to ditch the menu bar for their precious "ribbon". I think it's because OpenOffice was reaching a point of being a reasonable replacement, almost indistinguishable on the surface, so Microsoft felt like they had to make Office... different.
The sad thing is they took away some really useful advanced features from 2003... like being able to create your own custom buttons with a little pixel editor and assign them to macros you write for automating repetitive tasks. Gone with the coming of the wretched, unbidden ribbon, the solution for a problem that didn't exist. There are some improvements and bug-fixes that come along with 2007 and 2010, but at the cost of having to train employees on a custom ribbon with the collection of buttons they used to rely on on a toolbar (because with the ribbon, you only get one toolbar... just because). If this included a custom button, you're out of luck.
I just can't think of how dumb this is, because all the customization capability of 2003 was effective product lock-in for Microsoft, making OpenOffice a less-than-ideal alternative for shops with a lot of time-saving macros (no, not the kind of macros that travel with documents as malware). Microsoft traded this for a fucking ribbon, because... I don't know, pick one:
1. unless it looks different, nobody will buy it 2. all the pre-ribbon developers were either retired or promoted to management, and new-hire young developers didn't want to read old code 3. some VP wanted to make her mark, droning: out with the old, in with the new, change is good, you see that? I did that! Promote me! 4. some focus group mistook OpenOffice for Microsoft Office, and that's got to stop 5. copyright/trademark the ribbon, thereby put a stop to free software coming up with same-looking turnkey replacements
None of the above have anything to do with creating a better, more useful or productive product for the customer, but with proper focus groups Microsoft can astro-turf their way into promoting the ribbon as an improvement. If there weren't a stack of less-visible but important features in Microsoft Office that Open/LibreOffice still haven't replicated (here's an incomplete list), my organization would have shimmied out of Microsoft's shackles long ago.
So, Microsoft is headed full circle, with the cloud as the new mainframe? In the day, they nearly wiped out the IBM model (and IBM with it); now they're aiming to be the next IBM. Amazing. IBM wasn't too good at the consumer end, because they figured out which side of the bread got buttered. Will Microsoft do better? or is the X-Box doomed and desktop Windows 10 going to more and more resemble a thin-client X terminal (and Scott McNealy goes, "dammit, that was my idea!")
The steady work on Hyper-V seems impressive with each release... M$ seems to be giving this product a lot of love, but does M$ permit you to run another M$ OS in it, or am I right they expect you to buy another license?
It kinda feels like a rip to pay full-price for a license for an OS that's only gonna run in a virtual machine. Running as a guest, you'll never realize the full benefits of many of the OS' features (e.g., Direct X). So, why pay full price?
Windows 7 Pro gave you a free licensed copy of XP, back when XP was still a supported OS. Apple let's you run as many instances of virtualized OS X as you like (so long as your host is Apple hardware, if you're reading the fine print). Linux, of course, is free. But having a virtualized M$ OS is just convenient to have, for testing, rolling back an undo drive, true virtual workspaces, all sorts of stuff. If M$ packaged a canned version of 10 with Hyper-V, that could get interesting.
Yes! Edge HAS Adblock Plus, starting with Insider Build 14342. Testing it in Virtual Box, working as advertised. Not quite enough for me to switch from Chrome, but this puts Edge ahead of mobile Safari or mobile Chrome, which to my knowledge still do not support extensions (if Google permits AdBlocking extensions on Android, I'd like to know about it).
The government can't keep you safe from hackers or terrorists... Not only that, but if you look at history you are far more likely to be killed by a government than a terrorist.
But the government DOES keep you safe from thieves, gangs, swindlers, home-invaders, pick-pockets, kidnappers, extortionists, burglars, muggers, con-artists, drunks driving the wrong way down the road, your crazy homicidal ex who swears the baby's yours, and even corporations who once enjoyed putting lead in your gasoline and in the paint on your kid's toys (but now they can't, because government).
And most important, if any of those unfortunate things actually happen to you, you can call 911 and (holy shit) they actually listen to you, review whatever evidence you have, and begin an investigation!
If you would like to experience what it's like where the police and government have no authority, or just don't give a fuck, there are many, many places in South America, the Middle East, Africa, even Eastern Europe you can visit where you'll learn just how good we got it. Get beat up and robbed? Not connected with a powerful local family? That's tough luck, Westerner... maybe you got relatives who might pay American currency for your release?
The only thing half-way true is the unlikelihood of being killed by a terrorist... on U.S. soil. But try and explain that to the people who had their legs blown off in the Boston bombing. Our government found those fucks, greased one of 'em and is now set to send the other one into solitary until he goes completely insane. 100% safety is a lie, sure, but shit's good enough, we don't have to shut down every public event forever because some misguided adolescent who's been convinced that life cheated him because some girl gave him the blue-balls wants to show "the world" what a MAN he is by blowing shit up.
The only things worse and more corrupt than our "government" is.... every other fucking one of them. I'll take my chances here.
Operating Systems, as much as they are supposed to just bootstrap your PC, are nonetheless expected to be like Santa Claus, bringing all kinds of goodies along for the ride. Apple has Garage Band, iLife (photos, messaging, facetime, a dictionary, etc.), and now iWord, all gratis. Linux distros come with billions of stuff... arcade-style games, office-like apps, math apps, astronomy apps, card games, puzzle games, wacky screensavers, and a lot of them actually work! There's hours of fun going through a new Linux distro, before you realize you're missing a proprietary 3-D driver.
But Microsoft has forgotten all this. Everything in Windows 10 is for THEIR benefit, not ours. They have Skype to Apple's facetime, but Skype is a tease to upgrade to a paid account. Same for Office. Instead, they've TAKEN AWAY the stuff people liked about Windows 7. Media Center. Solitaire. Plus! Minesweeper. TweakUI. Cool screensavers. Aero. Gadgets (ok, maybe they were a security mess - get rainmeter). The Start menu (ok, they put that one back). Even 3-D Pinball has been binned. Sure, go to our Store, they say. But that's just a tease for us to buy stuff. Hello? Santy Clause doesn't charge subscription fees, ask you for your credit card number, or force you to take lessons in touch-interfaces so you can jones for a tablet that nobody wants.
So, how bout it, Micro$osft, are you willing to throw in some candy in some near-future release? Or are you so stuck in this monetizing-everything shtick that you're determined to suck all the fun out of having a computer?
Well said, sir. But I respectfully point out that the key to your analysis is "if". IF all the infrastructure for monitoring, enforcing, and monetizing data caps results in an angered, unsatisfied customer, and IF that angered consumer has choice to go elsewhere where caps and their operating costs are absent (admittedly, in the U.S., that's a big "if"), and IF the company finds itself abandoning this cost structure as being too unpopular with its customers, THEN the marginal profit is never realized - instead you just have sunk costs in equipment and complexity, and billing staff to lay off. But I suppose, the accountants can spin that into a win as a write-down. Not sure. Not a tax attorney. Then again, IF the ambitious VP who came up with this scheme in the first place can keep the fiasco going long enough to get himself hired somewhere else at a higher salary before things go south for the company, then, well, mission accomplished.
I really, really, want to see more management and owners considering the points of view of their customers, and seeking first to provide the best product or service as a means to accomplishing the end of greater profit and market-share. But unfortunately, another model can be successful as well. I call it "Fuck the customer, any which way you can." and it begins with the question, "can we corner the market?" The local cupcake store probably cannot - they had better make consumer satisfaction their top priority. But telecommunications, for example, BEGINS with arranging a contract with a local municipality for a de-facto monopoly, because of all that nonsense of telephone poles and rights-of-way and hundreds of miles of wires going through people's neighborhoods. There's nothing preventing your local cable company from putting customer satisfaction as their top priority, even at the expense of some profit distributions to shareholders, but somewhere in some exclusive, expensive country club where they still permit smoking in the bar, some member of the board asks over his 12-year-old Scotch, "why bother?" That is, IF the company has achieved the un-holy grail of market capture (kind of like achieving "air superiority" in war), THEN, the Board has to ask itself a question: re-invest profits into customer satisfaction for customers who don't have any alternative anyway, OR take a bigger cut for themselves and re-invest the rest into protecting their market-lock position, say, with lobbyists, lawsuits, press campaigns, all of which might impress Wall Street to raise the value of the stock because stock analysts love companies who have achieved market capture. Particularly IF the Board bows down to the Milton Friedman principle, THEN there will simply be no question to which course or action to take, and any dissenters will be politely asked to take their "Blowin' in the Wind" hippie let's-get-along wasteful leave-good-money-on-the-ground goody-goody-two-shoes asses elsewhere. This ain't no charity we're running here. This is Business, only (grizzled, one-track, money-worshipping crush-your-enemies dead-on-the-inside greed-is-good kneel-before-the-glory-of-Ayn-Rand) grown-ups allowed. Not that I'm getting all long-winded here. And there's absolutely NOTHING wrong with making money, particularly in return for providing excellent goods and services for your customers. A little "marginal profit"? Why not? We all gotta eat, feed the kids, take some time off so we don't go insane. But there is a mechanism available in our "free market" that permits shit to happen. And it starts where there's an opportunity to either work without competition, or else where the competition can be made to disappear. Then your customers become your captives. And then, you can fuck them. Because they're captives
... spent on all the equipment and staff directed to data measurement and billing that tracks usage and imposes the caps, that recoups the costs spent on... wait.
Septuagenarian Grandmother: "Friends have been suggesting I get an iPad". "nerd" offspring: "Go right ahead. But I don't use any Apple products so don't come crying to me for support."
Father: "Grandma's dead." "nerd" offspring: "Did she leave me anything?" Father: "Her old will left you quite a bit, but she changed it soon after she got her iPad." "nerd" offspring: "So, what did she leave me?" Father: "Her iPad. and a note that says 'learn some fucking Apple products, you snotty little shit.'"
Glad I'm not the only one who wonders what's behind the curtain. Seriously. There are people at Microsoft, working very hard, who go to work, every day, thinking that doing this kind of shite and letting it loose on literally millions of consumers is a good idea.
disclaimer: i don't exactly have a dog in the fight, i'm a mac/unix guy.
If you wake up one morning and find YOUR Mac has been upgraded from "El Capitan" to "Death Valley", and some of YOUR apps have completely changed appearance, other apps don't work right anymore, still others (like your favorite media app) are just plain gone and can't be recovered, and YOU have a whole new flat ugly touch-based color scheme on some but not all of your applications, YOUR menu bar has been replaced with a ribbon, some older hardware doesn't have drivers anymore, and a bunch of ads are now rolling through YOUR dock, and the EULA now says Apple reserves the right to send info about YOU back to headquarters whenever it feels like it, my guess is you won't just smile and be happy because Apple's business model is not "insane".
it is insanity in this day and age to have to support multiple substantially different versions of an operating system for general population. its unjustifiably expensive and unsustainable.
You got it backward. Since when does the market (i.e., consumers... us) have to bear the burden for Microsoft's "insanity"? Let's see how YOU feel about the "insanity" when it's YOUR computer that's changed overnight into a platform for promoting tablets and phones that nobody wants to buy. If YOUR dad calls YOU in the middle of the night because he can no longer figure out how to view pictures of his grandkids, are YOU gonna tell him to be silent and act like a man and accept his duty to make sacrifices wherever necessary to support our Dear Corporate Overlords? "Gee, I know it's hard, dad, but think about (Microsoft CEO) Nadella... you and mom are doing it for the good of Microsoft and Nadella."
"Gosh, son, you're right. I guess I don't need those old picture anyhow. Hail Nadella."
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Pacific Northwest. Night. Ursus arctos horribilis. Cooper is fossilized bear droppings. The moldy money was spit out 'cause it taste bad.
Agreed that Apple's web site can be opaque, but 3d-party Apple sites like Macrumors, 9to5mac, ifixit and others will give you the specifics. and Apple seems to be rather agnostic between ATI/AMD and nVidia... their focus on thinner and lighter tends to favor lower power consumption, whereas their use of higher DPI screens requires them to grab as much performance as possible per watt. What you'll get in the Mac Pro or the iMac 5K is plenty of power to do video editing work and rendering, with video drivers tailored and tested to run well on that model in MacOS. If they're not using nVidia, my guess is there's some reason they didn't make the cut, like too much heat, doesn't play well with dynamic switching with the Intel GPU, AMD cut a better deal for chips in volume, something like that. and Gaming? It's clear that gaming is not Apple's priority. Microsoft invested a huge amount in developing and advancing DirectX. Apple has barely dipped it's toe in recently with Metal, relying historically on OpenGL, which in spite of its promise has been hit and miss at best.
Apple is what it is, nothing more, nothing less. They do what they do well, but for other things you're better of with a PC. They're great for travelers and your parents, because they're reliable e-mail and web-browsing machines that don't break, look good, and they can take them to the store if they break instead of bothering you to come over. I travel with my Macbook, because when I bought it PC laptops, even the Thinkpad, thanks to Lenovo, were creaky plastic overheating consumer-grade crapturds (they've gotten a LOT better recently). But at home I work and game on a PC I build from scratch from time to time. My only problem is what to do with my old rig when I feel the itch to upgrade.
....better yet, outsource. If something goes wrong, the consultants are to blame (but you can take credit for successes). Salaried employees are a liability on the banksheets, them with their sick days and office space and benefits. Can't be hired and fired easily, dead-weights on shareholder value, and since the 80's came along, the shareholder is LORD you tiny little worker man.
Ha ha, no. Apple and Intel are tight, and Apples tend to get the best, latest intel chips that will fit within the (ever thinner) machine they're building. Easy to look up.
The problem with Apples they aren't very upgradeable. You're often stuck with what you get, and maxing it out at purchase time tends to cost a lot more than equivalent upgrades on the street... assuming those upgrades would fit, which they probably won't.
You buy a Mac because it has a warranty, will be sold in its same configuration for at least a year so getting support is easy, and will be repairable for as many as 5 years or more (my 2010 Macbook Pro just got cut off the list this year). Most other consumer electronics have the lifespan of a fruitfly. That Sony Vaio isn't a 2011 model, it's a VWETB236623626-ASD23423 that had a two-week production run and was replaced months before Sony cleared out a thousand of them for sale at Best Buy. Your Apple will be current for at least a year... but a year in, it'll still be sold with the same, now aging, CPU. Trade-off. That's why you check the Buyer's Guide at MacRumors.com before you buy.
But it's FUD that they're putting 2-year old crap in new models. Except, maybe, when you consider the GPU. It will be recent hardware, but it's mid-range performance compared to the best of what's out there. Because top-of-the-line desktop GPU's like the GTX Titan doesn't fit an iMac, and sure as shit not in a laptop or a Mini. Apple doesn't build an affordable desktop, and even if a funny-looking Mac Pro is on your radar, Apple does a frustratingly bad job of updating it as newer, faster chips come out.
So, there you have it. For most of what people buy Macs for, this isn't a problem. But nobody thinks of a Mac as a gaming rig. A recent Mac will play, Steam runs on it, but if you're serious about gaming you're serious enough to build a PC rig.
The Macbook comes with 8GB of memory built in. RAM is not upgradable in this model.
The Macbook has a 12-inch screen and weighs 2 pounds. And has one, single port for power and everything else. What knucklehead would consider that a gaming rig? It's a portable internet work machine for when a tablet won't cut it, for business people in airports and kids with 50-pound backpacks biking to class. You're paying for the thinnest, lightest... not gaming power or expandability. and the few comparable PC laptops are comparably spec'ed and priced. Games? Seriously? I use Macs, I won't game on a Mac.
Wait, you can game on a Mac. Build a decent PC rig based on, I dunno, Ars Technica, Toms Hardware, wherever, install Windows on PC, install Steam on PC, install Steam on Mac, use Steam client on Mac to stream game running on PC rig to Mac. There. Gaming on Mac. Using a PC. No worries.
Agreed. Pod planes are a pipe dream. Pod People, now that's an idea I can get behind.
The troller has a point... although it's buried in his vapid trolling. I like checking out the latest and greatest free desktop release and marvel over how far things have come, and remind myself of the old days when I spent countless, countless hours customizing and tweaking things until it was just right.
But then I need to get some work done. When my life revolved around an editor, an Apache server and a compiler, Linux was all good. Now that it revolves around a word processor, e-mail and a spreadsheet, and sharing everything with all sorts of people, not so much. Linux desktop is desperate for apps for every-day stuff, but even when I was hardcore linux, Konqueror just couldn't slide up to be my go-to browser. There's Firefox, but it's not built for KDE.
KDE seems to hold so much promise. But I just haven't seen anyone build anything with it except an IDE and a Desktop. Everything else in the linux desktop world seems to use GTK, so they look funny in KDE and don't always inter-operate well. Granted LibreOffice is already mature, so I guess there's no interest in KOffice except as a widget demo. Maybe KDE is evolving so quickly that developers don't feel confident building anything in it, in case the next release is going to blow them away.
I would LIKE to be told I'm wrong... but with examples. And not Krita, because I already have that one.
What? No mention of maximizing shareholder value?
So, does this necessarily cripple Firefox, forcing it to be dependent on Flash/Silverlight plug-ins?
Using an HTML5 player to stream video with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) requires that the browser support the appropriate codec, support Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), and have a Content Decryption Module (CDM) compatible with the flavor of DRM that the video provider uses. A web browser distributed as free software won't be able to support a lot of Hollywood-approved DRM flavors.
A web browser distributed as free software won't be able to support a lot of Hollywood-approved DRM flavors.
"New opportunities may be created for monetization through individual and organization subscriptions and targeted advertising if an hereto unforeseen creative spark strikes the Microsoft VP placed in charge, and the resulting flying pigs set to work and develop a killer app grander than the ribbon and Windows 8."
FTFY
and as long as you're investing money so wisely, Nadella, toss me a round-off fraction of that $26 billion and I'll pay off my mortgage. At least that way, something tangible will result from this investment.
Apples and Oranges, my friend. MPAA/RIAA is copyright (and some trademark). This Fed thing is Patent, and the purpose for the award is, based on the jury's decision on the evidence, to get justice for Samsung making (huge) profits off stolen idea(s). Apple being a big company, the issue may get a little fuzzy. So, imagine if Apple were a tiny company of a few guys in a garage, making a few phones with their parents' money, and a year later Samsung is making billions of them that look and act just like them. The Patent system exists to give the garage guys a chance at some justice, so they and every other inventor don't just say fuck-it and hit the pipe.
If the jury finds that Samsung did steal, then the penalty is supposed to be severe, and the damages are hooked to the profits made off the theft. The theft concerned technologies associated with a mobile phone, and went into building and marketing a phone. So, the jury based their award based on profits made off Samsung's phones.
The Justice Department, for some reason, now wants the jury to split hairs and somehow figure out how much more Samsung's profits would be equipped with Apple's inventions vs. what Samsung would have earned if they had just done without. Given that juries in patent cases are typically in way over their heads in the first place... good luck with that!!!
Samsung's business practice has often been to unapologetically copy stuff and use their deep, deep pockets to out litigate patent holders, at least until they attain dominant market share, and then, mission accomplished, maybe settle. Apple's one of the few players big enough to fight back. I think the jury did the right thing, and $400 mil might be enough of a bite to deter Samsung from keeping it up. What the Justice Department hopes to accomplish here completely escapes me, except it will make it even harder for honest patent holders to ever see a dime out of well-financed thieves.
Admittedly, trolls might benefit, too, if they hold a patent that actually sticks. Most of them don't, and defendants like Newegg who don't fall for that shit have been shutting them down way before there's a question of damages. So, this is not about trolls. This is about a mega-rich vertically-integrated conglomerate stealing other people's R&D to become the dominant player in a market, and using every legal trick money can buy to weasel their way out of being held accountable.
Yep, you know, it's a thing. A business has got to make money, no problems. But smaller businesses that rely at least in part on the goodwill of their customers make exceptions on proper occasions. To make those exceptions, however, somebody with authority has to sign off on it. Finding someone with that kind of authority is easier in a small organization than a big one, let alone a huge one. And in a huge one, there is a magnified fear that any fuck-up, taking of responsibility, or bending of a rule will be used by some snot-nosed rival to take your job in the next restructuring... because the value of the deed is not easily measurable for being graphed in a PowerPoint chart.
But on the consumer-end, the same rules apply as for the small business. Make a fella feel good, he'll come back with a smile. McDonald's gets your order wrong, gave you a Big Mac instead of a Royale with Cheese, screw it... you can have the Big Mac for free. Turns out your date loves Big Macs. Well, hot damn! Next week at 3AM when you're out with your girl with the munchies, you'll remember this small act of kindness, swing by those golden arches.
So many Microsoft employees and shills want to dismiss it all as just a business. But like it or not, Microsoft is in the faces of everyone in the Western World and then some. Even the most avid FOSS-head has to bow to the Bill Gates empire every so often, when he takes money out of an XP-driven ATM or has to mount a FAT-formatted thumb-drive. And further like it or not, there just isn't a viable alternative, because having plural incompatible standards is a pain in the ass and, at least in the office (doctor's offices, law offices, banks, retail, media, government) nobody wants to step up. IBM used to have alternative products to Microsoft's Exchange and Office, they were called Notes and Symphony. For one reason or another, IBM threw in the towel and gave up, years ago. Apple seems to avoid the workplace altogether... I'm sure in Cupertino they got a BSD/Mac OS X paradise, but damn if they want to take responsibility for supporting it for anybody else. Linux? Does Red Hat offer products or support for anything outside the server room?
Yeah, there's Google Docs and it's online ilk, but businesses have to consider customer privacy and, oh, damn, the Internet's flaky again, somebody get on the phone and call Comcast (business-class internet... yeah right).
Microsoft has squished all its competition on the desktop (OS/2, Notes, 1-2-3, Word Perfect) until it really has no incentive to compete anymore. But the old Microsoft magic doesn't seem to be working with the Console, and mobile has been nothing short of a train-wreck.
All I'm sayin', it woudn't hurt if they were a little less dickish. Not holding my breath, but it would be nice. Cause if you work, you probably have to deal one way or another with Microsoft.
I think Microsoft could afford it. and wouldn't it be swell if mean old Microsoft said, "our bad you lucky freaks can keep your game and thanks for buying Xbox over that Sony thing" (and somewhere in Puget Sound, the body of a careless Microsoft employee is slowly picked-apart by the fishes). There, all's well, the universe made right. Would sure make me feel better about buying an Xbox. Instead, Microsoft exercises its DRM muscle to claw back those game licenses that it, entirely by its own mistake, let loose for a few hours. and next time, they'll take your little dog, too.
In other words, the $0.00 price was entirely their problem, their fault. They should man up and eat it. Instead, it becomes everyone else's problem because, you know, fuck those consumers we don't owe them anything fuck 'em. Well, thanks for nothing, Microsoft. Didn't I read something somewhere about a new 4K Playstation?
I think you mean 2003, but in all other ways yes. 2003 was the last version before they decided to ditch the menu bar for their precious "ribbon". I think it's because OpenOffice was reaching a point of being a reasonable replacement, almost indistinguishable on the surface, so Microsoft felt like they had to make Office... different.
The sad thing is they took away some really useful advanced features from 2003... like being able to create your own custom buttons with a little pixel editor and assign them to macros you write for automating repetitive tasks. Gone with the coming of the wretched, unbidden ribbon, the solution for a problem that didn't exist. There are some improvements and bug-fixes that come along with 2007 and 2010, but at the cost of having to train employees on a custom ribbon with the collection of buttons they used to rely on on a toolbar (because with the ribbon, you only get one toolbar... just because). If this included a custom button, you're out of luck.
I just can't think of how dumb this is, because all the customization capability of 2003 was effective product lock-in for Microsoft, making OpenOffice a less-than-ideal alternative for shops with a lot of time-saving macros (no, not the kind of macros that travel with documents as malware). Microsoft traded this for a fucking ribbon, because... I don't know, pick one:
1. unless it looks different, nobody will buy it
2. all the pre-ribbon developers were either retired or promoted to management, and new-hire young developers didn't want to read old code
3. some VP wanted to make her mark, droning: out with the old, in with the new, change is good, you see that? I did that! Promote me!
4. some focus group mistook OpenOffice for Microsoft Office, and that's got to stop
5. copyright/trademark the ribbon, thereby put a stop to free software coming up with same-looking turnkey replacements
None of the above have anything to do with creating a better, more useful or productive product for the customer, but with proper focus groups Microsoft can astro-turf their way into promoting the ribbon as an improvement. If there weren't a stack of less-visible but important features in Microsoft Office that Open/LibreOffice still haven't replicated (here's an incomplete list), my organization would have shimmied out of Microsoft's shackles long ago.
So, Microsoft is headed full circle, with the cloud as the new mainframe? In the day, they nearly wiped out the IBM model (and IBM with it); now they're aiming to be the next IBM.
Amazing.
IBM wasn't too good at the consumer end, because they figured out which side of the bread got buttered. Will Microsoft do better? or is the X-Box doomed and desktop Windows 10 going to more and more resemble a thin-client X terminal (and Scott McNealy goes, "dammit, that was my idea!")
OS X El Capitan builds and runs as a guest under Virtual Box, although the "additions" don't work and you don't get sound (I've tried it, it works).
OS X as a guest is also fully supported by commercial products like Parallels Desktop 11 and VMware Fusion (for Mac).
The steady work on Hyper-V seems impressive with each release... M$ seems to be giving this product a lot of love, but does M$ permit you to run another M$ OS in it, or am I right they expect you to buy another license?
It kinda feels like a rip to pay full-price for a license for an OS that's only gonna run in a virtual machine. Running as a guest, you'll never realize the full benefits of many of the OS' features (e.g., Direct X). So, why pay full price?
Windows 7 Pro gave you a free licensed copy of XP, back when XP was still a supported OS. Apple let's you run as many instances of virtualized OS X as you like (so long as your host is Apple hardware, if you're reading the fine print). Linux, of course, is free. But having a virtualized M$ OS is just convenient to have, for testing, rolling back an undo drive, true virtual workspaces, all sorts of stuff. If M$ packaged a canned version of 10 with Hyper-V, that could get interesting.
Yes! Edge HAS Adblock Plus, starting with Insider Build 14342. Testing it in Virtual Box, working as advertised. Not quite enough for me to switch from Chrome, but this puts Edge ahead of mobile Safari or mobile Chrome, which to my knowledge still do not support extensions (if Google permits AdBlocking extensions on Android, I'd like to know about it).
The government can't keep you safe from hackers or terrorists... Not only that, but if you look at history you are far more likely to be killed by a government than a terrorist.
But the government DOES keep you safe from thieves, gangs, swindlers, home-invaders, pick-pockets, kidnappers, extortionists, burglars, muggers, con-artists, drunks driving the wrong way down the road, your crazy homicidal ex who swears the baby's yours, and even corporations who once enjoyed putting lead in your gasoline and in the paint on your kid's toys (but now they can't, because government).
And most important, if any of those unfortunate things actually happen to you, you can call 911 and (holy shit) they actually listen to you, review whatever evidence you have, and begin an investigation!
If you would like to experience what it's like where the police and government have no authority, or just don't give a fuck, there are many, many places in South America, the Middle East, Africa, even Eastern Europe you can visit where you'll learn just how good we got it. Get beat up and robbed? Not connected with a powerful local family? That's tough luck, Westerner... maybe you got relatives who might pay American currency for your release?
The only thing half-way true is the unlikelihood of being killed by a terrorist... on U.S. soil. But try and explain that to the people who had their legs blown off in the Boston bombing. Our government found those fucks, greased one of 'em and is now set to send the other one into solitary until he goes completely insane. 100% safety is a lie, sure, but shit's good enough, we don't have to shut down every public event forever because some misguided adolescent who's been convinced that life cheated him because some girl gave him the blue-balls wants to show "the world" what a MAN he is by blowing shit up.
The only things worse and more corrupt than our "government" is.... every other fucking one of them. I'll take my chances here.
Operating Systems, as much as they are supposed to just bootstrap your PC, are nonetheless expected to be like Santa Claus, bringing all kinds of goodies along for the ride. Apple has Garage Band, iLife (photos, messaging, facetime, a dictionary, etc.), and now iWord, all gratis. Linux distros come with billions of stuff... arcade-style games, office-like apps, math apps, astronomy apps, card games, puzzle games, wacky screensavers, and a lot of them actually work! There's hours of fun going through a new Linux distro, before you realize you're missing a proprietary 3-D driver.
But Microsoft has forgotten all this. Everything in Windows 10 is for THEIR benefit, not ours. They have Skype to Apple's facetime, but Skype is a tease to upgrade to a paid account. Same for Office. Instead, they've TAKEN AWAY the stuff people liked about Windows 7. Media Center. Solitaire. Plus! Minesweeper. TweakUI. Cool screensavers. Aero. Gadgets (ok, maybe they were a security mess - get rainmeter). The Start menu (ok, they put that one back). Even 3-D Pinball has been binned. Sure, go to our Store, they say. But that's just a tease for us to buy stuff. Hello? Santy Clause doesn't charge subscription fees, ask you for your credit card number, or force you to take lessons in touch-interfaces so you can jones for a tablet that nobody wants.
So, how bout it, Micro$osft, are you willing to throw in some candy in some near-future release? Or are you so stuck in this monetizing-everything shtick that you're determined to suck all the fun out of having a computer?
Well said, sir. But I respectfully point out that the key to your analysis is "if".
IF all the infrastructure for monitoring, enforcing, and monetizing data caps results in an angered, unsatisfied customer,
and IF that angered consumer has choice to go elsewhere where caps and their operating costs are absent (admittedly, in the U.S., that's a big "if"),
and IF the company finds itself abandoning this cost structure as being too unpopular with its customers,
THEN the marginal profit is never realized - instead you just have sunk costs in equipment and complexity, and billing staff to lay off.
But I suppose, the accountants can spin that into a win as a write-down. Not sure. Not a tax attorney.
Then again, IF the ambitious VP who came up with this scheme in the first place can keep the fiasco going long enough to get himself hired somewhere else at a higher salary before things go south for the company, then, well, mission accomplished.
I really, really, want to see more management and owners considering the points of view of their customers, and seeking first to provide the best product or service as a means to accomplishing the end of greater profit and market-share.
But unfortunately, another model can be successful as well. I call it "Fuck the customer, any which way you can." and it begins with the question, "can we corner the market?"
The local cupcake store probably cannot - they had better make consumer satisfaction their top priority.
But telecommunications, for example, BEGINS with arranging a contract with a local municipality for a de-facto monopoly, because of all that nonsense of telephone poles and rights-of-way and hundreds of miles of wires going through people's neighborhoods.
There's nothing preventing your local cable company from putting customer satisfaction as their top priority, even at the expense of some profit distributions to shareholders, but somewhere in some exclusive, expensive country club where they still permit smoking in the bar, some member of the board asks over his 12-year-old Scotch, "why bother?"
That is, IF the company has achieved the un-holy grail of market capture (kind of like achieving "air superiority" in war),
THEN, the Board has to ask itself a question: re-invest profits into customer satisfaction for customers who don't have any alternative anyway, OR take a bigger cut for themselves and re-invest the rest into protecting their market-lock position, say, with lobbyists, lawsuits, press campaigns, all of which might impress Wall Street to raise the value of the stock because stock analysts love companies who have achieved market capture.
Particularly IF the Board bows down to the Milton Friedman principle, THEN there will simply be no question to which course or action to take, and any dissenters will be politely asked to take their "Blowin' in the Wind" hippie let's-get-along wasteful leave-good-money-on-the-ground goody-goody-two-shoes asses elsewhere. This ain't no charity we're running here. This is Business, only (grizzled, one-track, money-worshipping crush-your-enemies dead-on-the-inside greed-is-good kneel-before-the-glory-of-Ayn-Rand) grown-ups allowed.
Not that I'm getting all long-winded here. And there's absolutely NOTHING wrong with making money, particularly in return for providing excellent goods and services for your customers. A little "marginal profit"? Why not? We all gotta eat, feed the kids, take some time off so we don't go insane.
But there is a mechanism available in our "free market" that permits shit to happen. And it starts where there's an opportunity to either work without competition, or else where the competition can be made to disappear. Then your customers become your captives. And then, you can fuck them. Because they're captives
... spent on all the equipment and staff directed to data measurement and billing that tracks usage and imposes the caps, that recoups the costs spent on... wait.
Septuagenarian Grandmother: "Friends have been suggesting I get an iPad".
"nerd" offspring: "Go right ahead. But I don't use any Apple products so don't come crying to me for support."
Father: "Grandma's dead."
"nerd" offspring: "Did she leave me anything?"
Father: "Her old will left you quite a bit, but she changed it soon after she got her iPad."
"nerd" offspring: "So, what did she leave me?"
Father: "Her iPad. and a note that says 'learn some fucking Apple products, you snotty little shit.'"
Glad I'm not the only one who wonders what's behind the curtain. Seriously. There are people at Microsoft, working very hard, who go to work, every day, thinking that doing this kind of shite and letting it loose on literally millions of consumers is a good idea.
Should I, you-know-what?
Yes, yes I think you should!
disclaimer: i don't exactly have a dog in the fight, i'm a mac/unix guy.
If you wake up one morning and find YOUR Mac has been upgraded from "El Capitan" to "Death Valley", and some of YOUR apps have completely changed appearance, other apps don't work right anymore, still others (like your favorite media app) are just plain gone and can't be recovered, and YOU have a whole new flat ugly touch-based color scheme on some but not all of your applications, YOUR menu bar has been replaced with a ribbon, some older hardware doesn't have drivers anymore, and a bunch of ads are now rolling through YOUR dock, and the EULA now says Apple reserves the right to send info about YOU back to headquarters whenever it feels like it, my guess is you won't just smile and be happy because Apple's business model is not "insane".
it is insanity in this day and age to have to support multiple substantially different versions of an operating system for general population. its unjustifiably expensive and unsustainable.
You got it backward. Since when does the market (i.e., consumers... us) have to bear the burden for Microsoft's "insanity"? Let's see how YOU feel about the "insanity" when it's YOUR computer that's changed overnight into a platform for promoting tablets and phones that nobody wants to buy. If YOUR dad calls YOU in the middle of the night because he can no longer figure out how to view pictures of his grandkids, are YOU gonna tell him to be silent and act like a man and accept his duty to make sacrifices wherever necessary to support our Dear Corporate Overlords? "Gee, I know it's hard, dad, but think about (Microsoft CEO) Nadella... you and mom are doing it for the good of Microsoft and Nadella."
"Gosh, son, you're right. I guess I don't need those old picture anyhow. Hail Nadella."