> An iPad IS a computer in every CS sense (von Neumann, IPO(S)) and it is very personal. There is no reason to think of them as non-PCs.
There is a very big reason to view them as non-PCs.
PCs were originally a rebellion against centrally managed IT. The "curated" approach to managing computers was interfering with work. People wanted to get stuff done and the platform nazis were interfering.
The P in PC stands for PERSONAL.
That means it's fully in the user's control.
Any tablet that is based on a reprise of the centralized IT management mindset is no PC at all.
A mainframe is a Turing machine. That doesn't make it a PC though.
Anyone that decides to do something for which the device was not specifically designed. THAT is the purpose of a general purpose computing device after all. What happens when "the next thing" comes along and there isn't special silicon already dedicated to it?
Your illusion will evaporate.
Your phone "seems faster" because it's more like an 80s home computer than a modern workstation. It's crippled and prevented from doing anything that might make it look bad.
Thus the problem with real CPU benchmarks.
All of this becomes painfully obvious once you jailbreak one of these devices and make them do the unexpected.
> No, why would you want to? Geez, devs complain about 2560x1440 laptops not having enough screen real estate. WTF?
Why? So you have civilized PC features on your system rather than the sad hacks that fanboys would decry if they were associated to some other platform.
Freedom to do what you want is what allows killer apps to be created and propagated.
The new curation regime is like forever being stuck under the thumb of corporate IT.
> My iPhone can do everything I can do on my workstation.
No it can't. It can't even run CUPS. Never mind using any other interesting peripherals. It can't run anything but what Apple has already pre-approved for you. Any apps it does have are scaled back "starter" versions compared to what's available for a real PC.
Like any Apple definition of "works" it's only limited for a very small value of "works".
> I'm in the US and you couldn't pay me to take an iPhone... well, ok, if you paid me and it was a current model,
That would only work if you went straight to the Apple store. If you went to the store for your cellphone carrier, they would probably try and talk you out of it.
That happened to my spouse. Considered going back into the fold but the salesman discouraged it. Said that "there's no going back". People that try end up returning their iThings.
Windows still has most of it's old problems. It's a legacy platform that is slow to change because suddenly getting serious about things like security would break things.
Microsoft in particular is piss poor about setting a good example. Quite often the security problems associated with Windows aren't even the fault of the OS, they are the fault of (Microsoft) applications that do stupid things.
Apple is just tripe for people without any clue. Too few features and not enough flexibility and tools that don't really scale to serious use of any kind. Technical correctness is ignored, probably because they think they can get away with it.
Ease of use is defined as doing less.
Windows user culture is not nearly as bad as Apple user culture.
> Says the partisan neckbeard... Nobody cares what you think, neckbeard.
This is why people think that Apple needs to be burned to the ground. You have smug fanboys that think they are going to take over the world and disenfranchise anyone that doesn't meet their definition of trendy.
That's just fascist nonsense.
You are not special. Neither is your pet consumer brand.
> Because consumers and businesses have already found them to be semi-substitutable.
No. This is just butthurt fanboys trying to pretend that they have won the second round of the platform wars by defeating the platform that spanked them the first time around.
It's all self-delusion. Distorting the facts and changing definitions so finally Apple and it's users seem less like losers.
Except it's not the false dichotomy that you're trying to pretend is relevant. It's a wide spectrum of companies with your particular pet corporation's position being destroyed by competition.
This article is just more of the usual nonsense trying to create a marketing reality that doesn't really exist.
...perhaps that's the sampling problem here. The more hipsters you have the more likely you are to see a predominance of laptops. Prevailing corporate culture may be a factor as well. The kind of slave mentality that is common in Northern California is simply not tolerated in other places.
The beauty of a free market is that there isn't "the consumer".
This isn't some centrally planned economy we're talking about. Everyone is free to participate. No one is going to leave money on the table if they are able. Every niche will be pandered too.
There will be someone to cater to all of the choices you try to sneer at.
> Until I repurposed it, I was using my first generation G4 mac-mini + VLC for this just fine.
Then you weren't stressing it very hard. In fact, I am pretty sure you were going out of your way not to stress it at all as there's very little that such an old Mac will decode by itself.
Plex is inferior because it fails to correctly deal with certain types of media. All of the pretty cover art doesn't mean anything if it doesn't handle your media properly.
A client that can handle it's own decoding is not stuck with any bad decisions made by the media server.
As far as "metadata rich" goes. That was in XBMC before Plex was ever even started.
> My two cents: used Mac Minis are *really* good for an HTPC application such as this.
It depends on the hardware. You really have to know what you are buying. Otherwise, you will just end up with a doorstop. I still have one of those doorstops myself.
Anything with an nvidia GPU (ION) is your best option with AMD being a good alternative if you're running Windows.
Apple's version of Purevideo doesn't support everything the underlying hardware does.
> Ah, very helpful. Use a computer. I bet he never thought of that.
Since he's trying to use Plex, that's actually a very good guess.
That didn't work out so well. So building a proper CLIENT box is probably the next logical step.. Once he does that, the "server" side of things can be ridiculously trivial.
Any old PC with a big disk shared over CIFS would do.
My aging MythTV setup seems to do well enough. It's not exactly "cheap" though. It requires real PCs as clients. They are not hefty boxes, but they at least have enough muscle to handle the things you are likely to see.
A real PC with the client software of your choice is a far better option than trying to shoehorn this onto some weak ass ARM appliance or some random bit of AV kit with DLNA support.
Plex is not a bad starting point but it has it's own quirks (as the OP has discovered).
A proper copy of XBMC is probably what this guy needs.
Battery is still battery and is a felony even if you think it's trivial.
Your very attitude is why we have the criminal code. People need "adult supervision" and consequences or else they will completely run amok and things will escalate to manslaughter.
> Welcome to Florida. Concealed carry, Stand Your Ground. Even in a movie theater over a cell phone / popcorn dispute.
Except in the ghetto people are going to carry anyway regardless of what the law says. Making the terrified old white man feel empowered won't impact anyone else that's already running amok.
> Why the fuck would they want to port Solaris' better aspects to their competitor, when Solaris is still a billion dollar business for Oracle?
Linux is even bigger business for Oracle. Even 10 years ago, companies were trying to figure out how to ditch the large boxes that you are trying to drool over so hard.
Slashdot Mirror
> An iPad IS a computer in every CS sense (von Neumann, IPO(S)) and it is very personal. There is no reason to think of them as non-PCs.
There is a very big reason to view them as non-PCs.
PCs were originally a rebellion against centrally managed IT. The "curated" approach to managing computers was interfering with work. People wanted to get stuff done and the platform nazis were interfering.
The P in PC stands for PERSONAL.
That means it's fully in the user's control.
Any tablet that is based on a reprise of the centralized IT management mindset is no PC at all.
A mainframe is a Turing machine. That doesn't make it a PC though.
> Who cares how you get the performance?
Anyone that decides to do something for which the device was not specifically designed. THAT is the purpose of a general purpose computing device after all. What happens when "the next thing" comes along and there isn't special silicon already dedicated to it?
Your illusion will evaporate.
Your phone "seems faster" because it's more like an 80s home computer than a modern workstation. It's crippled and prevented from doing anything that might make it look bad.
Thus the problem with real CPU benchmarks.
All of this becomes painfully obvious once you jailbreak one of these devices and make them do the unexpected.
Something like h265 decoding...
> No, why would you want to? Geez, devs complain about 2560x1440 laptops not having enough screen real estate. WTF?
Why? So you have civilized PC features on your system rather than the sad hacks that fanboys would decry if they were associated to some other platform.
Freedom to do what you want is what allows killer apps to be created and propagated.
The new curation regime is like forever being stuck under the thumb of corporate IT.
> My iPhone can do everything I can do on my workstation.
No it can't. It can't even run CUPS. Never mind using any other interesting peripherals. It can't run anything but what Apple has already pre-approved for you. Any apps it does have are scaled back "starter" versions compared to what's available for a real PC.
Like any Apple definition of "works" it's only limited for a very small value of "works".
> I'm in the US and you couldn't pay me to take an iPhone... well, ok, if you paid me and it was a current model,
That would only work if you went straight to the Apple store. If you went to the store for your cellphone carrier, they would probably try and talk you out of it.
That happened to my spouse. Considered going back into the fold but the salesman discouraged it. Said that "there's no going back". People that try end up returning their iThings.
> As long as it all runs the same version, or you're willing to take the time to make it work. Let's keep this real.
Yes. Lets.
You are the one spreading the bullshit.
Windows still has most of it's old problems. It's a legacy platform that is slow to change because suddenly getting serious about things like security would break things.
Microsoft in particular is piss poor about setting a good example. Quite often the security problems associated with Windows aren't even the fault of the OS, they are the fault of (Microsoft) applications that do stupid things.
Apple is just tripe for people without any clue. Too few features and not enough flexibility and tools that don't really scale to serious use of any kind. Technical correctness is ignored, probably because they think they can get away with it.
Ease of use is defined as doing less.
Windows user culture is not nearly as bad as Apple user culture.
> Says the partisan neckbeard... Nobody cares what you think, neckbeard.
This is why people think that Apple needs to be burned to the ground. You have smug fanboys that think they are going to take over the world and disenfranchise anyone that doesn't meet their definition of trendy.
That's just fascist nonsense.
You are not special. Neither is your pet consumer brand.
> Because consumers and businesses have already found them to be semi-substitutable.
No. This is just butthurt fanboys trying to pretend that they have won the second round of the platform wars by defeating the platform that spanked them the first time around.
It's all self-delusion. Distorting the facts and changing definitions so finally Apple and it's users seem less like losers.
"We're on the winning team. Really we are."
It's just consumerism run amok.
Except it's not the false dichotomy that you're trying to pretend is relevant. It's a wide spectrum of companies with your particular pet corporation's position being destroyed by competition.
This article is just more of the usual nonsense trying to create a marketing reality that doesn't really exist.
...perhaps that's the sampling problem here. The more hipsters you have the more likely you are to see a predominance of laptops. Prevailing corporate culture may be a factor as well. The kind of slave mentality that is common in Northern California is simply not tolerated in other places.
The beauty of a free market is that there isn't "the consumer".
This isn't some centrally planned economy we're talking about. Everyone is free to participate. No one is going to leave money on the table if they are able. Every niche will be pandered too.
There will be someone to cater to all of the choices you try to sneer at.
> Units sold. Of course, it only takes about 3-4 years of equalling sales to be equal in the latter stat too.
Assuming you actually keep any of those old tablets. Do you want to use an iPad 1? Really. Be honest now.
Mobile devices today see the kind of churn PCs had in the 90s. A device that is from last year may seem woefully out of date. Never mind 4 years ago.
ARM devices go through multiple generations of hardware and still can't manage to outdo a trailing edge PC that is older than all of them.
> Until I repurposed it, I was using my first generation G4 mac-mini + VLC for this just fine.
Then you weren't stressing it very hard. In fact, I am pretty sure you were going out of your way not to stress it at all as there's very little that such an old Mac will decode by itself.
At that point, you might as well just use a Roku.
Plex is inferior because it fails to correctly deal with certain types of media. All of the pretty cover art doesn't mean anything if it doesn't handle your media properly.
A client that can handle it's own decoding is not stuck with any bad decisions made by the media server.
As far as "metadata rich" goes. That was in XBMC before Plex was ever even started.
> Only that XBMC will burn 100+ watts; whereas my Synology media server uses 10 watts and is dead silent; the upgrade pays for itself over time.
No it won't. That's just ignorant trolling from someone with an axe to grind and blinders.
> since that's the container all the pirates seem to use for movies (I have no idea why, and I've not bothered to look into it).
It doesn't have any arbitrary limits imposed upon it unlike "legitimate" video containers.
Got a DVD? Just want a "compressed" version of that? MKV will handle it. The "anointed" file format will not.
MKV isn't about "piracy". It's about doing creative things that get you accused of piracy by the iCult crowd.
> My two cents: used Mac Minis are *really* good for an HTPC application such as this.
It depends on the hardware. You really have to know what you are buying. Otherwise, you will just end up with a doorstop. I still have one of those doorstops myself.
Anything with an nvidia GPU (ION) is your best option with AMD being a good alternative if you're running Windows.
Apple's version of Purevideo doesn't support everything the underlying hardware does.
> Ah, very helpful. Use a computer. I bet he never thought of that.
Since he's trying to use Plex, that's actually a very good guess.
That didn't work out so well. So building a proper CLIENT box is probably the next logical step.. Once he does that, the "server" side of things can be ridiculously trivial.
Any old PC with a big disk shared over CIFS would do.
My aging MythTV setup seems to do well enough. It's not exactly "cheap" though. It requires real PCs as clients. They are not hefty boxes, but they at least have enough muscle to handle the things you are likely to see.
A real PC with the client software of your choice is a far better option than trying to shoehorn this onto some weak ass ARM appliance or some random bit of AV kit with DLNA support.
Plex is not a bad starting point but it has it's own quirks (as the OP has discovered).
A proper copy of XBMC is probably what this guy needs.
Battery is still battery and is a felony even if you think it's trivial.
Your very attitude is why we have the criminal code. People need "adult supervision" and consequences or else they will completely run amok and things will escalate to manslaughter.
> Welcome to Florida. Concealed carry, Stand Your Ground. Even in a movie theater over a cell phone / popcorn dispute.
Except in the ghetto people are going to carry anyway regardless of what the law says. Making the terrified old white man feel empowered won't impact anyone else that's already running amok.
> At least it shows how full of crap the NRA's argument is, that guns are safe as long as they're in the hands of well-trained "good guys".
This was a retired COP. Even under the most fascist gun control regime, this is the kind of guy that's going to STILL be armed.
Your biggest gun grabbing wet dream would not have prevented this incident.
> Why the fuck would they want to port Solaris' better aspects to their competitor, when Solaris is still a billion dollar business for Oracle?
Linux is even bigger business for Oracle. Even 10 years ago, companies were trying to figure out how to ditch the large boxes that you are trying to drool over so hard.
Oracle helped quite a bit in that regard.
> If your server handles anything worth actual money, OpenBSD on Sparc64 is the way to go.
You're funny.