There is talk about Apple changing the algorithm used to calculate / display the signal strength (without any actual degradation in the strength). That could be what you are experiencing. It is just not certain right now. See this post.
As best as I can determine, a combination of (one or more) of the following causes the problem: 1) Airport Extreme network 2) ABS extreme not updated to 3.4 (only the mac updated to 3.4) 3) Using a network app such as Retrospect/LimeWare/MLdonkey etc. 4) Apple has changed the algorithm to the signal strength display.
It may be a good idea to hold off the upgrade till 3.4.x is released.
Having said that, I should add that I did upgrade without any problems (couldn't wait to play with the new apps:). My setup does not have the issues listed above. YMMV.
The new Airport Client Monitor is cool. It plots the signal and noise strengths, as well as the transmit rate (which I could also see on MenuMeter, but not as a plot over the last 60 seconds.) The Airport Management Utility seems to be a superset of the old Airport Admin Utility and would probably be most useful if you have more than one ABS to handing off roving clients to one another. It can also "see" all Rendezvous enabled devices.
Here is a link which I bookmarked from an Apple thread on/. a few days ago. PopMech had trouble running the benchmarks that Apple used to promote the G5, but they did do some of their own. Their conclusions, based on (a) HP dual 3.2-GHz processors, 2GB of RAM (b) Apple dual 2-GHz G5 processors, 2GB of RAM is provided below:
Not being able to run SPEC tests, we turned to BLAST and HMMer, which are DNA and genome-sequence matching tests, as well as to Bibble, a batch image-processing application. The problem is that these tests do not run on Windows XP. In frustration, after running the SPEC tests on the HP xw6000 workstation, we installed Linux on the HP, which allowed us to run the new tests. And we were surprised. The G5 was 59.5 percent faster than the HP at processing 85 high-resolution color photographs totaling 684.6MB of data. In the HMMer tests (61.3MB of data), Apple was 67 percent faster than the PC and under BLAST (32.8MB), Apple was 85.9 percent faster. These results are in line with those now published on Apple's Web site.
However, unless you plan to do extensive number crunching (a practice I indulge in from time to time:), throw all benchmark out of the window. You the user, is the "slowest" part of computer usage. Any thing that speeds that part up should be given top consideration. And as far as the overall user experience on a computer is concerned, and there is nothing that comes even close to OS X.
Resign yourself to compiling everything by hand and resolving dependencies by hand.
Hasn't happened yet. And even when it happens, shouldn't be a problem for any geek worth her salt.
Not having to deal with a set of curiously broken built in software especially on the server edition.
Set up a OS X server for a friend's business about 3 weeks ago (vanila dual 1.8 Ghz/1Gb G5). He is running the primay DNS, email, FTP, VPN, and Apache/Tomcat (~20 users, 8 sites). Showed him how to "administer", add accounts, add content etc. using the Apple server tools. Haven't got a call to trouble shoot yet. So what do you find "broken", as in Does Not Work For The User, or are you using a different definition of "broken"?
I can't remember what Baystar paid for the stock -- wasn't it around $16 a share? It's been floating at around $10 for the last few weeks, and there are strong indications that someone (probably SCO via their buyback programme) has been buying to keep the stockprice artificially high.
Baystar has 20,000 Series A Convertible Preferred Stock which is worth $1,000 each. This is different from the common stock traded in the market.
...indemnify the Indemnified Party against any liability incurred in any proceeding to which the Indemnified Party is made a party because he or she is or was a director or officer of the Company or is or was serving at the request of the Company as a director.
The subject tag deserves more attention than it is getting: why is Baystar doing it now?
Given the connections that Baystar has with MS/Paul Alen et al, There has to be an angle that makes it worthwhile for them. Also remember that it was SCO that issued a press release with this bit of info. When was the last time they issued a pr with any info that showed them in a bad light?
One possible scenario is that our friends at Canopy/MS have decided to pull the plug and bankrupt/kill SCO before IBM pierces the corporate veil and sends a bunch of execs to sing-sing (or at least gets a court to find them personally liable for SCO's misdeeds.)
I have not come across any major apps I use on OS X that have a built-in "Spyware", much less have tried to hijack my browser (Safari). There are the occasional free/shareware games etc. that I have downloaded which try to call home when they are launched. Any thing that displays such behaviour is trashed immediately.
A suggestion to OS X users: get a copy of Little Snitch. Any time an "unauthorized" connection is innitiated from your Mac, Little Snitch will "blow the whistle" on the offending app. It is also vey easy to set up a list of un/authorized apps and the port(s) they are not/allowed to talk on.
After I started using it, I was a little surprised at how many junk/spam email I found calling home either to pull in some content or to log which email@address had actually clicked on the spam. Previously, I knew this was going on (email/web-bug), but I was just surprised at how prevalent it had become.
I too would strongly recommend a trackball. Back in 1990, I started to get wrist/elbow/hand problems. On the advice of a coworker, I tried a Kensington trackball. Problems disappeared!
Added bonus: Within a week, I found I had a much greater precision and control over the cursor with the trackball than I ever had with the mouse (at the time I switched, I had been using a mouse for ~4 years).
Since moving to PowerBooks as my primary platform about 5 years ago, I don't use a trackball much. But I still love it when I have the occasional need to do so (these days, it's mostly for vector-graphics).
You are correct. Apple had 31% of the market back in January. However, since the rollout of the mini (and its subsequent selling like the proverbial hot cakes), I'd be willing to bet that their market share is now close to 50%.
They are the only MP3-player manufacturer who are making 'em as fast as they can; however, if you order one today, there is still a 2-3 week backlog to get one. They even had to postpone its release outside the US by a month just to catch up with domestic demand. If the sales in Japan and the EU countries follow the US pattern....
We'll just have to wait till the next round of data is released by the market-droids to get an "official" estimate, but I'd be surprised if the iPod market-share (mini+maxi) isn't around 50% now.
and you can burn on CDs (depends on who you buy from and what rights you have
Isn't that what csoto is talking about - that you have more "rights" with Apple's ACC DRM as opposed to the other DRMs where you may or may not have the "right" to burn a CD? Once you have it on a CD, there is no DRM.
DRMs are bad, 'cos they are restrictive. Apple's DRM is a lot less restrictive than any other DRM out there. To say that Apple's ACC DRM is bad and WMP DRM is good, is not what the data sez.
To say that ACC DRM is "restrictive" because it can only play on an iPod is redefining "restrictive" in the context of DRM, and is simply not correct. Burn it on a CD - rip it into MP3/whatever. Play it on your fav CD/MP3 player whereever. Legally.
Besides, by your logic, it could just as easily be argued that WMA is "restrictive" because it does not allow me to play it on (by far) the most popular MP3 player which accounts for ~ 50% of the MP3 portable player market?
And if you really care about the fidelity of the music you listen to, buy an iPod and quit yer moaning.
Apple computers are created for, and solely used by people who know, and want to know nothing about computers, the "proudly ignorants".
You are either trolling, clueless, or a MS shill. By my count, about 50% of the tech-savy folks I know are using OS X for all their work. And by tech-savy, I don't mean someone who has coded some html page for his uncle's business; one of my Mac-using friend is probably one of the top 5 guys in his area in the world. Another is a scientist at NASA. And they are using OS X not because some PHB told them to - in fact the NASA guy had to fight a few battles to get his last G4 PowerBook approved.
Almost half the CS profs at my univ are on OS X. In my dept. (which is not CS!), the fraction is a lot lower (only 10%), but that 10% is probably 10x computer literate than the rest of the 90% WIndows group. It's the 10% group who are primarily into modelling/simulation etc.. And guess who the 90% Windows users come to when they are having trouble with their PCs!
So, if you haven't received your check from MS, You are getting ripped off. Heck, they even paid SCO for anti-Linux FUD, and you sound a lot more cogent than Darl.
Xerox invested $1 million in Apple by purchasing 100,000 shares at $10 each. Furthermore, Xerox signed an agreement with Apple to never purchase more than 5 percent of Apple's shares. Within a year, these shares split into 800,000 worth $17.6 million when Apple went public.
Gates saw the Mac interface, not the Xerox interface (which, btw was quite different from the Mac interface.
Here is the story as recounted by Andy Hertzfeld (one of the original "software wizards" to work on the Mac OS).
This story by Bruce Horn (who worked at Xerox, and later was hired by Apple to join the Mac team) is a good recount of how the Mac interface came about.
The folk at Apple contribute an insanely small amount to Linux development overall (they contribute, not saying they don't, but spitting in the ocean doesn't add that much water overall).
If by Linux, you mean the kernel, AFAIK, Apple has not contributed anything (since MKLinux 7+ years ago?) But they do contribute significantly to other OSS projects.
Everyone looks at bang-per-buck. Opterons on Linux are cheaper and a lot more bang-per-buck.
Don't know how you can make that assertion, but the VaTech cluster proves that G5s are the biggest bang-per-buck.
The other issue is that Linux is OSS. Need a change? Fix it to meet your needs. Can you do that as easily with OSX? No. You have to tell a mac developer who may or may not make the change you need to best suit your needs.
This sounds like a parrot repeating sounds ("Linux is OSS") it has heard many times, but knows not what it mean. No common user needs to change Linux (the os/kernel) to "meet their needs". And if you do have such a "need" and are knowledgeable enough to get under the hood to do so in Linux, then you should also be perfectly capable of doing the same to Darwin. For apps, just as you are at the mercy of a "Mac developer", you are also at the mercy of a "Linux developer".
Darwin, the core component of OS X already exists for x86. Further, as many have pointed out, Darwin is open-source. Quartz, Aqua etc. are not open-source; but they are not the operating system (more like a glitzzy eye-candy). Heck, if you looked for it, you can also find non-GPLed binary files in commercial Linux distros (which, admittedly do not have any thing to do with the OS).
Your assumed definition of monoploy is also incorrect. Monopoly does not apply to brands (like GM, Ford etc.) - it applies to the entire market for that comodity (like cars, trucks etc.) Just because you cannot buy a Ford Escort from Diemler-Chrysler or GM, does not make Ford a monoply.
Back in '96, the power supply on a Power Computing clone got fried. This machine was hosting our dept. webserver. We just took out the HD, and swapped it into another Mac (forget what, but it was one of the '94 AV models from Apple). Installing the HD was a pain (poor internal layout), but once it was in, booted the Mac and the server was back on-line with zero system reconfig. The Windows folks just couldn't believe their eyes (one of them had helped swap the HD).
And: why put the "Close" window button in the upper left corner?
I believe the left corner was considered better than the right corner because that's the direction to go to find the Apple menu (with all the Desk Accesories) and the File menu (with Quit). MS started the buttons on the right (probably just to show that they were not coppying every thing from the Mac). The Maximize button on the right did not show up till 7.x (I think).
IMHO, neither Scully nor Amelio had a vision of where to take a company like Apple. All they did was produce 15 different desktop models, each different from the other in trivial ways. I.e., they treated Apple as a hardware company, and let software development go down the drain. Weren't they stuck on OS7 for 6 years? (they did dabble in Copelan/Talligent etc. but for whatever reason seemed to lack focus in getting it to market)
OpenDoc was perhaps the only thing I'd consider worthwhile that was happening those days. However, it too was canned due to a lack of developer's confidence in Apple's ability to pull it off. There were also rumblings of MS (behind the scenes) killing OpenDoc because it was going to compete with OLE (the great-grandpapa of AvtiveX)
Given that Apple's strength has always been software (plus making some cool expensive hardware to run said software), it is not difficult to figure out why Apple started to flounder under JS and GA.
Jobs may be a megalomanic and an egotist (and ten other things that you may care to add), but not giving him credit for having a vision for Apple is letting personal biases get in the way of an objective analysis of the data.
Daimler-Chrysler is a 15% shareholder in Deutsche Bank which provided the propup funds to SCO which is suing Daimler-Chrysler.
Novell has 20(?)% of its shares under the Norda Trust which is a majority (?) stakeholder in The Canopy Group which owns 37% of SCO (common stock) which is suing Novell.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes they have. According to this article, Sony has already coughed up some hush-money.
cheers- raga
There is talk about Apple changing the algorithm used to calculate / display the signal strength (without any actual degradation in the strength). That could be what you are experiencing. It is just not certain right now. See this post.
cheers- raga
If you are having problems with the 3.4 update, revert back to 3.3.1. Here's a tutorial on how to do it.
:). My setup does not have the issues listed above. YMMV.
As best as I can determine, a combination of (one or more) of the following causes the problem:
1) Airport Extreme network
2) ABS extreme not updated to 3.4 (only the mac updated to 3.4)
3) Using a network app such as Retrospect/LimeWare/MLdonkey etc.
4) Apple has changed the algorithm to the signal strength display.
It may be a good idea to hold off the upgrade till 3.4.x is released.
Having said that, I should add that I did upgrade without any problems (couldn't wait to play with the new apps
The new Airport Client Monitor is cool. It plots the signal and noise strengths, as well as the transmit rate (which I could also see on MenuMeter, but not as a plot over the last 60 seconds.) The Airport Management Utility seems to be a superset of the old Airport Admin Utility and would probably be most useful if you have more than one ABS to handing off roving clients to one another. It can also "see" all Rendezvous enabled devices.
cheers- raga
Signal strength seems fine for me.
TiBook867 (10.3.3)+802.11b Airport card on
(a) ABS(Snow) at home
(b) Netgear at work
(Both are 802.11b)
Are there any 802.11b folks having a problem?
cheers- raga
(a) HP dual 3.2-GHz processors, 2GB of RAM
(b) Apple dual 2-GHz G5 processors, 2GB of RAM
is provided below:
However, unless you plan to do extensive number crunching (a practice I indulge in from time to time:), throw all benchmark out of the window. You the user, is the "slowest" part of computer usage. Any thing that speeds that part up should be given top consideration. And as far as the overall user experience on a computer is concerned, and there is nothing that comes even close to OS X.
cheers- raga
Resign yourself to compiling everything by hand and resolving dependencies by hand.
Hasn't happened yet. And even when it happens, shouldn't be a problem for any geek worth her salt.
Not having to deal with a set of curiously broken built in software especially on the server edition.
Set up a OS X server for a friend's business about 3 weeks ago (vanila dual 1.8 Ghz/1Gb G5). He is running the primay DNS, email, FTP, VPN, and Apache/Tomcat (~20 users, 8 sites). Showed him how to "administer", add accounts, add content etc. using the Apple server tools. Haven't got a call to trouble shoot yet. So what do you find "broken", as in Does Not Work For The User, or are you using a different definition of "broken"?
cheers- raga
As bad as Microsoft may be at least they don't control much outside of the OS and Office.
Like it or not, but for 90% + of desktop users, there is nothing "much outside of the OS and Office".
cheers- raga
I can't remember what Baystar paid for the stock -- wasn't it around $16 a share? It's been floating at around $10 for the last few weeks, and there are strong indications that someone (probably SCO via their buyback programme) has been buying to keep the stockprice artificially high.
Baystar has 20,000 Series A Convertible Preferred Stock which is worth $1,000 each. This is different from the common stock traded in the market.
cheers- raga
If it is established that the investment was done as part of a criminal conspiracy, then yes, they would be responsible.
BTW, Darl has a free "get-out-of-jail" card in the shape of an indemnification contract:
AFAIK, none of the other guys do.
cheers- raga
The subject tag deserves more attention than it is getting: why is Baystar doing it now?
Given the connections that Baystar has with MS/Paul Alen et al, There has to be an angle that makes it worthwhile for them. Also remember that it was SCO that issued a press release with this bit of info. When was the last time they issued a pr with any info that showed them in a bad light?
One possible scenario is that our friends at Canopy/MS have decided to pull the plug and bankrupt/kill SCO before IBM pierces the corporate veil and sends a bunch of execs to sing-sing (or at least gets a court to find them personally liable for SCO's misdeeds.)
cheers- raga
I have not come across any major apps I use on OS X that have a built-in "Spyware", much less have tried to hijack my browser (Safari). There are the occasional free/shareware games etc. that I have downloaded which try to call home when they are launched. Any thing that displays such behaviour is trashed immediately.
A suggestion to OS X users: get a copy of Little Snitch. Any time an "unauthorized" connection is innitiated from your Mac, Little Snitch will "blow the whistle" on the offending app. It is also vey easy to set up a list of un/authorized apps and the port(s) they are not/allowed to talk on.
After I started using it, I was a little surprised at how many junk/spam email I found calling home either to pull in some content or to log which email@address had actually clicked on the spam. Previously, I knew this was going on (email/web-bug), but I was just surprised at how prevalent it had become.
cheers- raga
I too would strongly recommend a trackball. Back in 1990, I started to get wrist/elbow/hand problems. On the advice of a coworker, I tried a Kensington trackball. Problems disappeared!
Added bonus: Within a week, I found I had a much greater precision and control over the cursor with the trackball than I ever had with the mouse (at the time I switched, I had been using a mouse for ~4 years).
Since moving to PowerBooks as my primary platform about 5 years ago, I don't use a trackball much. But I still love it when I have the occasional need to do so (these days, it's mostly for vector-graphics).
cheers- raga
You are correct. Apple had 31% of the market back in January. However, since the rollout of the mini (and its subsequent selling like the proverbial hot cakes), I'd be willing to bet that their market share is now close to 50%.
They are the only MP3-player manufacturer who are making 'em as fast as they can; however, if you order one today, there is still a 2-3 week backlog to get one. They even had to postpone its release outside the US by a month just to catch up with domestic demand. If the sales in Japan and the EU countries follow the US pattern....
We'll just have to wait till the next round of data is released by the market-droids to get an "official" estimate, but I'd be surprised if the iPod market-share (mini+maxi) isn't around 50% now.
cheers- raga
Isn't that what csoto is talking about - that you have more "rights" with Apple's ACC DRM as opposed to the other DRMs where you may or may not have the "right" to burn a CD? Once you have it on a CD, there is no DRM.
DRMs are bad, 'cos they are restrictive. Apple's DRM is a lot less restrictive than any other DRM out there. To say that Apple's ACC DRM is bad and WMP DRM is good, is not what the data sez.
To say that ACC DRM is "restrictive" because it can only play on an iPod is redefining "restrictive" in the context of DRM, and is simply not correct. Burn it on a CD - rip it into MP3/whatever. Play it on your fav CD/MP3 player whereever. Legally.
Besides, by your logic, it could just as easily be argued that WMA is "restrictive" because it does not allow me to play it on (by far) the most popular MP3 player which accounts for ~ 50% of the MP3 portable player market?
And if you really care about the fidelity of the music you listen to, buy an iPod and quit yer moaning.
cheers- raga
Almost half the CS profs at my univ are on OS X. In my dept. (which is not CS!), the fraction is a lot lower (only 10%), but that 10% is probably 10x computer literate than the rest of the 90% WIndows group. It's the 10% group who are primarily into modelling/simulation etc.. And guess who the 90% Windows users come to when they are having trouble with their PCs!
So, if you haven't received your check from MS, You are getting ripped off. Heck, they even paid SCO for anti-Linux FUD, and you sound a lot more cogent than Darl.
cheers- raga
cheers- raga
Everything you wanted to know about Mac development by the guys who did.
cheers- raga
Here is the story as recounted by Andy Hertzfeld (one of the original "software wizards" to work on the Mac OS).
This story by Bruce Horn (who worked at Xerox, and later was hired by Apple to join the Mac team) is a good recount of how the Mac interface came about.
cheers- raga
Poor analogy. You can run an OS without a GUI (some preffer to do so anyways for performance etc.). Not so for an auto without a steering wheel.
cheers- raga
If by Linux, you mean the kernel, AFAIK, Apple has not contributed anything (since MKLinux 7+ years ago?) But they do contribute significantly to other OSS projects.
Umm,,, are you sure they haven't ported it to Linux? From the Apple website:
Shake 3 is also available for Linux for a suggested retail price of $9,900 (US)
Don't know how you can make that assertion, but the VaTech cluster proves that G5s are the biggest bang-per-buck.
This sounds like a parrot repeating sounds ("Linux is OSS") it has heard many times, but knows not what it mean. No common user needs to change Linux (the os/kernel) to "meet their needs". And if you do have such a "need" and are knowledgeable enough to get under the hood to do so in Linux, then you should also be perfectly capable of doing the same to Darwin. For apps, just as you are at the mercy of a "Mac developer", you are also at the mercy of a "Linux developer".
OK, I promise not to feed the trolls again.
cheers- raga
Darwin, the core component of OS X already exists for x86. Further, as many have pointed out, Darwin is open-source. Quartz, Aqua etc. are not open-source; but they are not the operating system (more like a glitzzy eye-candy). Heck, if you looked for it, you can also find non-GPLed binary files in commercial Linux distros (which, admittedly do not have any thing to do with the OS).
Your assumed definition of monoploy is also incorrect. Monopoly does not apply to brands (like GM, Ford etc.) - it applies to the entire market for that comodity (like cars, trucks etc.) Just because you cannot buy a Ford Escort from Diemler-Chrysler or GM, does not make Ford a monoply.
cheers- raga
Back in '96, the power supply on a Power Computing clone got fried. This machine was hosting our dept. webserver. We just took out the HD, and swapped it into another Mac (forget what, but it was one of the '94 AV models from Apple). Installing the HD was a pain (poor internal layout), but once it was in, booted the Mac and the server was back on-line with zero system reconfig. The Windows folks just couldn't believe their eyes (one of them had helped swap the HD).
cheers- raga
And: why put the "Close" window button in the upper left corner?
I believe the left corner was considered better than the right corner because that's the direction to go to find the Apple menu (with all the Desk Accesories) and the File menu (with Quit). MS started the buttons on the right (probably just to show that they were not coppying every thing from the Mac). The Maximize button on the right did not show up till 7.x (I think).
cheers- raga
IMHO, neither Scully nor Amelio had a vision of where to take a company like Apple. All they did was produce 15 different desktop models, each different from the other in trivial ways. I.e., they treated Apple as a hardware company, and let software development go down the drain. Weren't they stuck on OS7 for 6 years? (they did dabble in Copelan/Talligent etc. but for whatever reason seemed to lack focus in getting it to market)
OpenDoc was perhaps the only thing I'd consider worthwhile that was happening those days. However, it too was canned due to a lack of developer's confidence in Apple's ability to pull it off. There were also rumblings of MS (behind the scenes) killing OpenDoc because it was going to compete with OLE (the great-grandpapa of AvtiveX)
Given that Apple's strength has always been software (plus making some cool expensive hardware to run said software), it is not difficult to figure out why Apple started to flounder under JS and GA.
Jobs may be a megalomanic and an egotist (and ten other things that you may care to add), but not giving him credit for having a vision for Apple is letting personal biases get in the way of an objective analysis of the data.
cheers- raga
Well, think again. Reportedly...
Daimler-Chrysler is a 15% shareholder in Deutsche Bank which provided the propup funds to SCO which is suing Daimler-Chrysler.
Novell has 20(?)% of its shares under the Norda Trust which is a majority (?) stakeholder in The Canopy Group which owns 37% of SCO (common stock) which is suing Novell.
My head hurts. I have to go get a drink.
cheers- raga