Sony's strategy is today and has always been to fuck their consumers over and convince them that they liked it.
How has the Sony fucked their customers over with the PSP? The device is great, plays movies (that you buy or rip), songs (that you rip), pictures, games, web browsing. There is DRM in there but for the most part it is non-heinous. The only thing I find objectionable about it is the reduced video quality for ripped movies. If (as was rumoured) the UMD video format dies, then Sony can get a lot of brownie points by opening up the rip quality in the next firmware they put out.
Cracking is inevitable. If you can see and hear something, then you can rip it. First efforts might be primitive, but it can't be long before some magic dongle appears that breaks HDCP. Then the content is going to fly all over the place. Even if the data is reencoded it's not going to be noticeable to most people. Soon after tools and rippers will appear that allow the menu & features of a standard DVD to be spliced with the ripped main movie data from the HD-DVD to produce a very acceptable pirate version. Perhaps the HD content will even play off a DVD. I wouldn't put it past Chinese / Taiwanese makers to produce players which will play HD content from a regular DVD.
Some DVD players will even upsample to HD if your TV supported it. Frankly neither format in my view is anything to write home about. Perhaps if you had a crazy-size home cinema system or computer with HD-DVD or Bluray it may justify itself but otherwise I don't see a great deal going for either format. Though personally I reckon Bluray will ultimately win simply because Sony will flood the market with players - the PS3.
I think early adoption of anything is rather silly (e.g. next gen consoles), but it seems more so with Bluray & HD-DVD players. What possible reason is there for buying a 1st generation player for $$$$ (which the reviewer admits doesn't even support their TV's best resolution) and play a handful of mostly meh titles?
While the actions of early adopters might shape the success of the platform, it seems a bit insane to be one. That is unless you have so much money that you are happy to toss your player and collection aside if by chance early adopters for the rival standard win.
While it would be nice if NVidia / ATI were to release technical specs, the fact is that I as a user really don't give a stuff about the source code. All I care about is that the drivers exist, preferably in the distribution I've just installed. I really, really hate the present situation where I must add drivers after installing Linux. I'm a savvy user and I know how to do it. You can bet that few novices would.
Just as bad is that few dists for whatever reason even offer to get the drivers afterwards. Okay, so you don't like proprietary drivers in your dist. But that's no reason not to offer to download them as part of the install.
Aside from being annoying, it also means that NVidia / ATI drivers are outside of the control of the package management system. I might update X and break NVidia. Or I might miss out on a critical bugfix altogether.
The lack of proper accelerated graphics drivers out of the box for most dists is a major disincentive. It means the games suck, the multimedia sucks and natty new OpenGL based desktops don't work.
I think it's very unlikely that NVidia or ATI would release source to their cutting edge hardware. Competition is cutthroat between the two. But I think there is little to lose from opening their older hardware up. On the flipside, dists have to make it easier to get proprietary stuff. While the Stallmans of the world might believe in some open source utopia, the reality is that proprietary games need high performance drivers and they're simply not there in most dists. Both sides should give some ground and give the user an experience which makes them turn away from Windows (and OS X).
I disagree. I very much doubt Nokia had a handful of Linux geeks in mind when they produced this. I expect they were thinking of a slick consumer oriented device where no one cares what operating system is underneath.
I know from experience with PDAs that I couldn't give a damned what OS is powering it. The important question is whether it works or not. Is the PIM software idiot proof, simple to use and reliable? Thus, I still think the old PalmOS was a better PIM that Windows CE / Pocket / Mobile, even though PalmOS is a piece of crap underneath. It's because the PIM software works great. Same for phones - my Sony Ericsson phone uses Symbian I think but really I don't care.
The mentality that Linux means "fix it yourself" has to be stamped out. Linux is just an OS and an extremely powerful one at that. It should be eminantly feasible to produce a fantastic handheld device which just so happens to be Linux underneath as well. That way every one is happy. Consumers for having decent device and geeks for something to play with. It's not like Nokia is new to this. They've been producing set top boxes around Linux for years. Perhaps they need to get someone from their design and QA groups to beat the engineers around the head with a clue bat if they still haven't got the message. No one is going to buy a tablet with broken software.
One could argue that a horse is branded and therefore easily identifiable. Possibly the same could be argued for any item which you make visible by wearing or wielding it. Arguably, merchants should also purchase certain unidentifiable items. What annoys me is that if you steal something with no one around, your next interaction with a guard sees you arrested even though no one witnessed the arrest. Even interacting with on a door can see you arrested if it turned out to be locked when a guard was passing.
My opinion of Oblivion is that it is an amazing game but it also has some pretty in-your-face problems which are like a slap around the face every time.
The worst issue by far are the NPCs. Every NPC (including the one voiced by Patrick Stewart) speaks with the same monotonous drone as if its actors paid to read 1000 lines during a recording session. Perhaps they were, but that's no reason the game should sound like it. Worse is that the 1500 odd NPCs sound like a handful voice actors going through their repertoire. The voice for the same NPC sometimes leaps from one style to another between lines, e.g. old crone beggar voice one moment and posh the next. Even with all the NPCs, the cities and towns are virtually empty. I wonder if the game could have benefited from non-interactive NPCs who fill the scenes but don't do anything.
I hate the control system too. While the UI that controls maps, inventory, quests, character is an exercise in minimalism, it sure is a pain in the arse to use. I've also died more than once because "c" button to cast a spell hasn't done anything.
The gameworld is stunning and the amount of content is stunning too. The game is what Ultima would have been if it had continued. It's just too bad that some highly visible issues with the UI and NPCs let it down.
A quick search reveals people reporting 20fps max, dropping to 6fps in some zones of WoW using an Intel Mac Mini. That's after tuning. I think it's safe to say that the mini is a useless gaming platform even for the flagship Mac game. I think other Macs would offer a much better experience than that.
The top selling Amazon game today is, Sims 2, requiring 8Mb of video RAM and an 800Mhz CPU.
Wrong. "--With a T&L capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM (such as nvidia GeForce 2 or better or ATI Radeon 7000 or better):". So even a rather sedate 18 month old game requires double what you insist is what most people play games on. As for HL2, BIA or any other title... Now I know you're full of shit.
Unfortunately Microsoft does listen to its customers, and its biggest (and loudest) customers are corporate IT departments. Those customers have specifically demanded that patches be released on a regular schedule, to ease their own testing and rollout procedures.
There are probably a few issues to consider here. Whether a corporate wants a scheduled regular service you can sure as hell bet they want the option to receive critical patches as soon as humanly possible. They'll wait for the other things, but critical patches should be available out of band. Secondly, there would be nothing to stop MS releasing the hotfix in the meantime via Windows Update since most corporates don't use it anyway.
I think its extremely poor that MS takes so long to fix such an obvious problem. It's more reason if any were needed that a closed source product is no guarantee that it will be any more secure or better supported than an open source one.
You're completely wrong and only considering the latest big titles that only run on the newest machines. Most people don't buy games until they have been on the market for over a year and often not for as long as five years. But of course myself and all the people who actually make games must be wrong because you are an expert on the market somehow. How many game companies do you run again? You are such an ignorant twit.
Me ignorant? You're the one asserting most PCs used for gaming have a 16Mb graphics card. I doubt you could identify more than a handful of popular PC games from the last few years that would play with that configuration. Go on, amaze me with the stellar list of titles which will play well on that kind of PC. Oh wait, you probably spend your days playing Nethack, Bridge and Chessmaster right?
It's also obvious that you have no clue what "most people" do with regard to game purchases. If you have any evidence to suggest they wait a year let alone five years before purchasing, contrary to the accepted view that most sales occur when a title is released, I suggest you provide it. Otherwise I will conclude you are full of shit. Not that I need any confirmation.
As for you other remarks, I am quite able to read comparative benchmarks of the new Intel Macs to know they are utterly hopeless as gaming platforms. The iMac turns out results which wouldn't look out of place in 2002. The Mac Mini is so utterly hopeless that it is a waste of time even trying to play the relatively undemanding World of Warcraft on it.
I think consoles are pretty good for certain kinds of games such as platformers, racing games and multiplayer games featuring small groups. I don't think they are much good for first person shooters, "god" games (e.g. Civ 4, Age of Empires etc.) or MMPORGs. I haven't seen a controller yet than can beat a mouse and keyboard for those kinds of games.
You're an idiot. If I'm running OS X, and have 15 applications open it is a huge pain in the ass to shutdown all my apps and reboot into Windows to play a game. If you actually bothered to read my previous post you'd see I wasn't talking about running Windows all the time on an Apple machine because basically no one wants to do that. Installing a second OS in dual boot configuration, even with bootcamp is beyond the abilities of the average user, who can't even install Windows in the first place. Thus, the number of people who will be using it, compared to the total market is insignificant.
The point is no gamer is going to buy a Mac. You're now twisting it to explain why you as an existing Mac owner won't boot into Windows. It seems you can't comprehend a simple point. No prospective owner interested in playing games is going to buy a Mac as they currently stand because a) the performance stinks even if XP were installed and b) native OS X games are a small fraction of those on XP c) the performance would still stink even in OS X. They'll simply ignore the Mac altogether.
You're still an idiot. People who want to play games generally buy a console. People who buy a mac want to do general purpose computing. They may want to play games as part of that, but to claim a significant portion of the market would buy any sort of computer just to play games is absurd.
More nonsense. Lots of people buy PCs to play games or use their machines predominantly for that purpose. Internet cafes are filled with PCs expressly for that purpose. Brands like Dell, Compaq, Alienware et al sell computers expressly for games. Even systems aimed at non-gamers often sell with 128-256Mb accelerated graphics cards.
I'd say you're full of shit. The average PC used to play games today has a 1.2 Ghz processor and a 16 mb graphics card.
And I'd say you're a zealot whose worked his panties in a bunch because someone dared be critical about their machine. The current crop of Intel Macs are lousy games machines. The original poster claimed that now they'd be able to run Battlefield 2. Yeah right - perhaps if they have an iMac, but certainly not on a MacBook or Mini. The iMac would just scrape the minimum system requirements for that game which means they'll spend the game waiting to spawn after being shot so many times. Maybe Apple will produce a desktop system which kicks ass, but the current lineup is hopeless. That's a fact.
As for your "average PC used to play games today" comment, you are simply ignorant. Very few games produced in the last 3-4 years would play at all, let alone acceptably on such an underpowered system even with the resolution and settings turned down to their minimum values.
Hmm, lets see, I can buy the Windows version, plus a copy of Windows, plus go through a complex install process, and shut down the 15 applications I always have running and reboot to play a game, or I can buy the mac version and just run it. Yeah, I certainly see no reason to go with the latter.
Utter bullshit. By complex install process you mean, hit setup, choose a folder and hit next a few times. Without reboots. Most games run just fine with other apps going, assuming you have the memory for doing that. My system runs games just fine even with apps like Azureus running in the background.
Whooosh! That was the sound of the previous poster's point whizzing over your head. Will the market demand more games on OS X? Your reasoning, no because there aren't enough games on OS X.
Actually I'm well aware of the point and it is specious. People don't buy systems hoping that some day at some unspecified point in the future, the platform will become popular enough to make it useful for the reason they bought it for in the first place. Well perhaps some people do, but then they'd be idiots.
And what percentage of regular PC users that buy games have "cutting edge" graphics cards? My guess is somewhere around.5%. Sorry, but as much as you'd like to think otherwise, hardcore gamers are not a big market segment.
I said hardly cutting edge. A polite way to say they have lousy GPUs. As for most PCs, I'd say anyone intent on even casual gaming would choose something considerably more powerful than anything you'd see in a MacBook or Mini. Even the iMac has a pretty mediocre GPU.
I don't see what's to prefer about OS X if you're already familiar or prepared to use XP for playing games. OS X is a nice OS and has some pretty applications, but it blows for gaming if for no other reason than the dearth of titles compared to Windows. Doubly so because a lot of older titles will be PPC and must be emulated.
But more importantly, anyone intent on playing games would never buy the current Intel Macs. Both the MacBook and the Mac Mini (the only Intel based systems thus far) have low-end / mobile GPUs and the CPUs are hardly cutting edge. The iMac is slightly better, but a ATI 128Mb X1600 is hardly compelling either. Perhaps when a workstation / desktop Intel Mac appears the issue may be less clear, but the current line-up are obviously poor gaming platforms.
The article says that the crank is gone. That was the coolest thing about the device! I guess some kind of foot pump thing might do as well but there was something intrinsically appealing about a device that was self-contained without any dangling doohickeys.
I have OS X on a Mac and it's a reasonably nice environment to work in. Personally I think it's not as nice as XP but there may be occasions where I'd like to fire it up, even if just for a change of scenery.
It's not rabid hatred. It's recognition of the fact that Sony has become the most fucked up, schizophrenic, self-destructive company on the corporate landscape. Assuming they get a clue and stop spiking their own (and otherwise high quality) products with intrustive DRM and proprietary formats, there is no reason to assume they will be hated any more. The funny thing is Sony stuff is excellent and attractive, but clueful people aren't going to buy a system which has been crippled when plenty of other manufacturers also make excellent, unencumbered and often cheaper gear.
An example of how they could get a clue and repair some of the damage they've done to their reputation. A slashdot article a week or so back suggested UMD (for Video) might be on its last legs. This would be a defeat for Sony but they can gain a lot of kudos and a lot sales if they did something when it went bye-bye. That thing is simple - uncripple the PSP. The PSP is already excellent at playing movies, but uncripple it so rippers can use the full display resolution. For extra points Sony could give away something akin to iTunes that helps people rip / convert music & clips but also buy titles online.
Sadly though, the video is funny. Quite hilarious in fact. I'm sorry for the consequences for the kid, but the moral of the story is don't leave embarrassing tapes of yourself lying around for other people to find.
The thing that bothers me about your post is you do not attempt to answer his questions but you attack him for asking such questions. First off good science is done not by trying to always prove a theory but by trying to disprove it. Much like a good programmer will always look for bugs and do unit testing.
Creationists ask idiotic questions in rotation. How could the eye be formed, where is the transitional between X & Y, how can you reduce ? etc. Each idiotic question has been answered multiple times, often with copious, detailed, cross-referenced essays. These can be found in books, on the web and even at a single source - talkorigins.org.
I guess as to why the GP chose to answer the way he did is perhaps because it is pointless providing links to these sources since creationists don't listen. They are immune to reason. They are so convinced of their own beliefs that they're not going to let piffling trifles like overwhelming evidence change their minds. Sometimes you just have to say it and say it in such a forceful way that no one is in any doubt otherwise.
The big difference here is that this capability sells Apple-branded hardware, just as the iTunes Music Store sells iPods.
The flip side is that Apple hardware is now virtually indistinguishable from Compaq, Dell, HP, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Toshiba, Sony, Gateway et al branded hardware. They're all PCs, they all run Windows. Of course the Apple branded kit is less capable of running Windows in a number of ways, not least the requirement to burn a patched XP to do so.
What compelling reason does someone have for using Apple branded kit now?
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How has the Sony fucked their customers over with the PSP? The device is great, plays movies (that you buy or rip), songs (that you rip), pictures, games, web browsing. There is DRM in there but for the most part it is non-heinous. The only thing I find objectionable about it is the reduced video quality for ripped movies. If (as was rumoured) the UMD video format dies, then Sony can get a lot of brownie points by opening up the rip quality in the next firmware they put out.
Cracking is inevitable. If you can see and hear something, then you can rip it. First efforts might be primitive, but it can't be long before some magic dongle appears that breaks HDCP. Then the content is going to fly all over the place. Even if the data is reencoded it's not going to be noticeable to most people. Soon after tools and rippers will appear that allow the menu & features of a standard DVD to be spliced with the ripped main movie data from the HD-DVD to produce a very acceptable pirate version. Perhaps the HD content will even play off a DVD. I wouldn't put it past Chinese / Taiwanese makers to produce players which will play HD content from a regular DVD.
Some DVD players will even upsample to HD if your TV supported it. Frankly neither format in my view is anything to write home about. Perhaps if you had a crazy-size home cinema system or computer with HD-DVD or Bluray it may justify itself but otherwise I don't see a great deal going for either format. Though personally I reckon Bluray will ultimately win simply because Sony will flood the market with players - the PS3.
While the actions of early adopters might shape the success of the platform, it seems a bit insane to be one. That is unless you have so much money that you are happy to toss your player and collection aside if by chance early adopters for the rival standard win.
Just as bad is that few dists for whatever reason even offer to get the drivers afterwards. Okay, so you don't like proprietary drivers in your dist. But that's no reason not to offer to download them as part of the install.
Aside from being annoying, it also means that NVidia / ATI drivers are outside of the control of the package management system. I might update X and break NVidia. Or I might miss out on a critical bugfix altogether.
The lack of proper accelerated graphics drivers out of the box for most dists is a major disincentive. It means the games suck, the multimedia sucks and natty new OpenGL based desktops don't work.
I think it's very unlikely that NVidia or ATI would release source to their cutting edge hardware. Competition is cutthroat between the two. But I think there is little to lose from opening their older hardware up. On the flipside, dists have to make it easier to get proprietary stuff. While the Stallmans of the world might believe in some open source utopia, the reality is that proprietary games need high performance drivers and they're simply not there in most dists. Both sides should give some ground and give the user an experience which makes them turn away from Windows (and OS X).
I know from experience with PDAs that I couldn't give a damned what OS is powering it. The important question is whether it works or not. Is the PIM software idiot proof, simple to use and reliable? Thus, I still think the old PalmOS was a better PIM that Windows CE / Pocket / Mobile, even though PalmOS is a piece of crap underneath. It's because the PIM software works great. Same for phones - my Sony Ericsson phone uses Symbian I think but really I don't care.
The mentality that Linux means "fix it yourself" has to be stamped out. Linux is just an OS and an extremely powerful one at that. It should be eminantly feasible to produce a fantastic handheld device which just so happens to be Linux underneath as well. That way every one is happy. Consumers for having decent device and geeks for something to play with. It's not like Nokia is new to this. They've been producing set top boxes around Linux for years. Perhaps they need to get someone from their design and QA groups to beat the engineers around the head with a clue bat if they still haven't got the message. No one is going to buy a tablet with broken software.
According to Something Awful, it's asshole physics engine is also lacking. i.e. you can be a total asshole in the game and no one cares.
One could argue that a horse is branded and therefore easily identifiable. Possibly the same could be argued for any item which you make visible by wearing or wielding it. Arguably, merchants should also purchase certain unidentifiable items. What annoys me is that if you steal something with no one around, your next interaction with a guard sees you arrested even though no one witnessed the arrest. Even interacting with on a door can see you arrested if it turned out to be locked when a guard was passing.
The worst issue by far are the NPCs. Every NPC (including the one voiced by Patrick Stewart) speaks with the same monotonous drone as if its actors paid to read 1000 lines during a recording session. Perhaps they were, but that's no reason the game should sound like it. Worse is that the 1500 odd NPCs sound like a handful voice actors going through their repertoire. The voice for the same NPC sometimes leaps from one style to another between lines, e.g. old crone beggar voice one moment and posh the next. Even with all the NPCs, the cities and towns are virtually empty. I wonder if the game could have benefited from non-interactive NPCs who fill the scenes but don't do anything.
I hate the control system too. While the UI that controls maps, inventory, quests, character is an exercise in minimalism, it sure is a pain in the arse to use. I've also died more than once because "c" button to cast a spell hasn't done anything.
The gameworld is stunning and the amount of content is stunning too. The game is what Ultima would have been if it had continued. It's just too bad that some highly visible issues with the UI and NPCs let it down.
A quick search reveals people reporting 20fps max, dropping to 6fps in some zones of WoW using an Intel Mac Mini. That's after tuning. I think it's safe to say that the mini is a useless gaming platform even for the flagship Mac game. I think other Macs would offer a much better experience than that.
Wrong. "--With a T&L capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM (such as nvidia GeForce 2 or better or ATI Radeon 7000 or better):". So even a rather sedate 18 month old game requires double what you insist is what most people play games on. As for HL2, BIA or any other title... Now I know you're full of shit.
The rest of your comments are equally specious.
There are probably a few issues to consider here. Whether a corporate wants a scheduled regular service you can sure as hell bet they want the option to receive critical patches as soon as humanly possible. They'll wait for the other things, but critical patches should be available out of band. Secondly, there would be nothing to stop MS releasing the hotfix in the meantime via Windows Update since most corporates don't use it anyway.
I think its extremely poor that MS takes so long to fix such an obvious problem. It's more reason if any were needed that a closed source product is no guarantee that it will be any more secure or better supported than an open source one.
Me ignorant? You're the one asserting most PCs used for gaming have a 16Mb graphics card. I doubt you could identify more than a handful of popular PC games from the last few years that would play with that configuration. Go on, amaze me with the stellar list of titles which will play well on that kind of PC. Oh wait, you probably spend your days playing Nethack, Bridge and Chessmaster right?
It's also obvious that you have no clue what "most people" do with regard to game purchases. If you have any evidence to suggest they wait a year let alone five years before purchasing, contrary to the accepted view that most sales occur when a title is released, I suggest you provide it. Otherwise I will conclude you are full of shit. Not that I need any confirmation.
As for you other remarks, I am quite able to read comparative benchmarks of the new Intel Macs to know they are utterly hopeless as gaming platforms. The iMac turns out results which wouldn't look out of place in 2002. The Mac Mini is so utterly hopeless that it is a waste of time even trying to play the relatively undemanding World of Warcraft on it.
I think consoles are pretty good for certain kinds of games such as platformers, racing games and multiplayer games featuring small groups. I don't think they are much good for first person shooters, "god" games (e.g. Civ 4, Age of Empires etc.) or MMPORGs. I haven't seen a controller yet than can beat a mouse and keyboard for those kinds of games.
The point is no gamer is going to buy a Mac. You're now twisting it to explain why you as an existing Mac owner won't boot into Windows. It seems you can't comprehend a simple point. No prospective owner interested in playing games is going to buy a Mac as they currently stand because a) the performance stinks even if XP were installed and b) native OS X games are a small fraction of those on XP c) the performance would still stink even in OS X. They'll simply ignore the Mac altogether.
You're still an idiot. People who want to play games generally buy a console. People who buy a mac want to do general purpose computing. They may want to play games as part of that, but to claim a significant portion of the market would buy any sort of computer just to play games is absurd.
More nonsense. Lots of people buy PCs to play games or use their machines predominantly for that purpose. Internet cafes are filled with PCs expressly for that purpose. Brands like Dell, Compaq, Alienware et al sell computers expressly for games. Even systems aimed at non-gamers often sell with 128-256Mb accelerated graphics cards.
I'd say you're full of shit. The average PC used to play games today has a 1.2 Ghz processor and a 16 mb graphics card.
And I'd say you're a zealot whose worked his panties in a bunch because someone dared be critical about their machine. The current crop of Intel Macs are lousy games machines. The original poster claimed that now they'd be able to run Battlefield 2. Yeah right - perhaps if they have an iMac, but certainly not on a MacBook or Mini. The iMac would just scrape the minimum system requirements for that game which means they'll spend the game waiting to spawn after being shot so many times. Maybe Apple will produce a desktop system which kicks ass, but the current lineup is hopeless. That's a fact.
As for your "average PC used to play games today" comment, you are simply ignorant. Very few games produced in the last 3-4 years would play at all, let alone acceptably on such an underpowered system even with the resolution and settings turned down to their minimum values.
Utter bullshit. By complex install process you mean, hit setup, choose a folder and hit next a few times. Without reboots. Most games run just fine with other apps going, assuming you have the memory for doing that. My system runs games just fine even with apps like Azureus running in the background.
Whooosh! That was the sound of the previous poster's point whizzing over your head. Will the market demand more games on OS X? Your reasoning, no because there aren't enough games on OS X.
Actually I'm well aware of the point and it is specious. People don't buy systems hoping that some day at some unspecified point in the future, the platform will become popular enough to make it useful for the reason they bought it for in the first place. Well perhaps some people do, but then they'd be idiots.
And what percentage of regular PC users that buy games have "cutting edge" graphics cards? My guess is somewhere around .5%. Sorry, but as much as you'd like to think otherwise, hardcore gamers are not a big market segment.
I said hardly cutting edge. A polite way to say they have lousy GPUs. As for most PCs, I'd say anyone intent on even casual gaming would choose something considerably more powerful than anything you'd see in a MacBook or Mini. Even the iMac has a pretty mediocre GPU.
But more importantly, anyone intent on playing games would never buy the current Intel Macs. Both the MacBook and the Mac Mini (the only Intel based systems thus far) have low-end / mobile GPUs and the CPUs are hardly cutting edge. The iMac is slightly better, but a ATI 128Mb X1600 is hardly compelling either. Perhaps when a workstation / desktop Intel Mac appears the issue may be less clear, but the current line-up are obviously poor gaming platforms.
The article says that the crank is gone. That was the coolest thing about the device! I guess some kind of foot pump thing might do as well but there was something intrinsically appealing about a device that was self-contained without any dangling doohickeys.
I have OS X on a Mac and it's a reasonably nice environment to work in. Personally I think it's not as nice as XP but there may be occasions where I'd like to fire it up, even if just for a change of scenery.
An example of how they could get a clue and repair some of the damage they've done to their reputation. A slashdot article a week or so back suggested UMD (for Video) might be on its last legs. This would be a defeat for Sony but they can gain a lot of kudos and a lot sales if they did something when it went bye-bye. That thing is simple - uncripple the PSP. The PSP is already excellent at playing movies, but uncripple it so rippers can use the full display resolution. For extra points Sony could give away something akin to iTunes that helps people rip / convert music & clips but also buy titles online.
Sadly though, the video is funny. Quite hilarious in fact. I'm sorry for the consequences for the kid, but the moral of the story is don't leave embarrassing tapes of yourself lying around for other people to find.
Creationists ask idiotic questions in rotation. How could the eye be formed, where is the transitional between X & Y, how can you reduce ? etc. Each idiotic question has been answered multiple times, often with copious, detailed, cross-referenced essays. These can be found in books, on the web and even at a single source - talkorigins.org.
I guess as to why the GP chose to answer the way he did is perhaps because it is pointless providing links to these sources since creationists don't listen. They are immune to reason. They are so convinced of their own beliefs that they're not going to let piffling trifles like overwhelming evidence change their minds. Sometimes you just have to say it and say it in such a forceful way that no one is in any doubt otherwise.
Yes they can and some people have done just that. Not that OS X is a compelling reason to buy one brand of PC over another anyway.
They are selling Macs and they want Windows users to switch to Mac OS X. This breaks down some barriers to doing that.
It certainly does. The next logical step is to shitcan OS X altogether.
The flip side is that Apple hardware is now virtually indistinguishable from Compaq, Dell, HP, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Toshiba, Sony, Gateway et al branded hardware. They're all PCs, they all run Windows. Of course the Apple branded kit is less capable of running Windows in a number of ways, not least the requirement to burn a patched XP to do so.
What compelling reason does someone have for using Apple branded kit now?
That let you easily boot into Windows too. Look what happened to that...