I just had this though as to why large companies continue to stay with MS solutions when Linux and OO.o appear to cost less.
Wallstreet looks for quarter-to-quarter success from public companies. (Even private companies have VC firms or private inestors monitoring them closely.)
To switch computing platforms does, no question, cost upfront money to retrain end users and support staff as well as acquire and install the software.
Since Windows "training" is a sunk cost (already paid for), making the switch doesn't include these costs.
If a company make the switch, Linux training would become a 1 time, sunk cost too. But hiring staff that know it would still cost training where as most people know Windows. So there is that cost.
So when Wallstreet is looking for a company to make a certain earnings number, no company wants to take the "Training cost" hit, even if it is a one time thing, during the current quarter because it will cost them in their stock.
Man, you almost got me there. Good one! See, you came in, talking about financials like you knew something and I had to actually follow your like to find that you are totally full of crap.
From your own like, YHOO P/E is 54.5 while AAPL is 30. Certainly a premium for a company that makes nothing and got their asses handed to them by some kids from Berkley a few years back.
Secondly, shares outstanding for AAPL, 817 M compared to 1.385 B for YHOO - hmm, someone has been diluting the hell out of their company to get financed and retain employees. Now Apple does this too, but Apple controls itself.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, you start your flame with a discussion of market capitalization - a calculation of price per share times number of shares which just tells you how much the company could be worth if someone ever bought the company off eTRADE (hah!)
So it's no wonder YHOO has a 48B mcap vs. AAPL's 27B - YHOO trades at a 45% premium over AAPL because of the sky high P/E for a company that... well, you recall those kids from Berkley?
Look, all joking aside, take some sage wisdom here and sell YHOO while it is getting a good deal of attention. When YHOO disapoints on this Music Unlimited thing because it can't make any money with an all you can eat $5 buffett, Walstreet will destroy it. If that isn't good enough reason, know that the P/E can't go much higher - that's why when Napster and Harmony dropped 25% on YHOO news, Yahoo only moved inches. No where to go but down.
What to do with your money if not put it in YHOO? You can come join me over in the AAPL ownership circle. It's a great time to buy AAPL. (It may be a Mac news site, but they are quoting Pipper Jaffray's Gene Munster.
To compete with anybody, you have to create market advantage. Going it on Price alone is pretty tough unless you price is REALLY low.
Yahoo! has combined several elements that make this subscription service worth the price of two cups of Coffee at Starbucks: - Low price that undercuts competition by 50% + - $0.79 song burn ability. - Build your own/120 pre-built radio stations that stream commercial free music to your desktop (look out XM/Sirus?) - plugins for Instant Messenger and other applications that allow you to recommend songs to friends - Decent 1M song catalog to choose from (though 33% smaller than Apple's 1.5M - too bad)
Yahoo! obviously looked at the landscape and said "we can't be on the iPod and we have to use WMA DRM, so how can we offer something competetive based on what exists today?"
Now, I don't think Yahoo! is going to get the volumes to make this service profitable since $0.99 downloads don't leave much margin for, well, margin. But the service just might put pressure on Apple to release their own subscription service. And that would be a good thing.
If you look back at the history of non-security updates, it's not uncommon for some people to have the update show up while others get the "no updates available."
I would be interested to read about this. Do you have a link to more information?
For Windows users, iSync doesn't exist. On June 6, Steve Jobs is giving a keynote at WWDC2005 and will likely introduce the Apple/Motorola iTunes phone. This device will need to sync not only music but contacts and calendar entries too. So, they built the functionalty into iTunes.
You can still use iSync since you use a Mac. For Windows users, this functionality will prepare them for "one more thing(tm)".
It has been suggested in comments to previous posts that they are rolling out the SU selectively to different parts of the 'net to ease the load on their servers...
The process you suggest is not how Apple manages server load "bursting".
Instead, Apple is a customer of Akamai, pretty much the only vendor (now that they bought their closest competitor, Speedera) of distributed hosting for On Demand (burst) Management and Content Delivery (used for iTunes Music Store) for global enterprises. These folks handle sites like Major League Baseball who get flooded with traffic on opening day and during the World Series and don't need to invest millions in infrastructure to handle these high-traffic times.
If you want, take a look at the HTML source for apple's own websites. It used to be that all media (images, quicktime, etc) were served from an akamai URL but now apple has images.apple.com that must hide the Akamai relationship. Still, there are relecs like http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/apple/akamai/01 0500/keynote010500vod_300.mov as an example.
The iTunes Music Store uses Akamai to deliver those great download rates for the 160,000 songs per day they sell.
Our old software with weaker DRM may render your computer insecure! Upgrade to our new fancy DRMtacular software!
But TFAs don't say anything about this having to to with DRMed MP4s.
In fact, I don't see how one could "specially craft" (per the articles) a DRM protected MP4 and allow it to be played on any computer. Certainly Apple isn't going to sell DRM protected songs that crash the user's computer.
No, instead, this vulnerability would exist if people got a MP4 (AAC) song off a P2P fileshare where someone exploited the pre-4.8 iTunes.
From TFA: A vulnerability has been reported in iTunes, which potentially can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system [...] caused (by) a boundary error [...] and can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow via a specially crafted MPEG-4 file [...] (that could) allow execution of arbitrary code.
This is worrisome on one hand, but on the other, there is no description of what it takes to "specially craft" an MP4 to take advantage of the exploit.
I chalk it up as yet another reason to upgrade to iTunes 4.8
Other reasons to upgrade include: - support for video within iTunes (like that included in the $11.98 Dave Matthews Band album Stand Up - syncing of contacts/calendars to iPod
Hey, I'm sorry. I visited/. when I got home and re-read the posts and saw the moderations and I don't want you to think me a total ass. I did go a little "guns blazing" on you, and I'm sorry for taking it so far.
You made some really good points and I don't think they deserved to get moderated Flamebait. People on/. may be tired of the whole Ogg on iPod war, but that doesn't make your points less valid.
sethadam1, you are the one confusing "advertising" with "corporate decision making", and it's okay, but just recognize the differences.
I'll give you that the more a product appeals to use as individuals, the more friendly we may be to considering other solutions from the same company in our business lives. But many professionals (note: 1 those _may_ decide against an Apple soltuion in their corporate infrastructure because our consumer electronics device doesn't support these obscure formats."
With the release of iTunes 4.8 supporting video formats on the other hand, Apple can easily defend it's position that it opens the iPod and iTunes platforms up for further multimedia support in the future.
Don't underestimate the OS X/Apple hardware marketing that can be done with "consumer products" like the iPod. If you doubt me, go to ANY tech trade show - Citrix, Linux, VoIP, etc. Nearly every vendor is auctioning off an iPod. Gee, I wonder why?
Let me repeate, no IT manager in their right mind would base a Mac OS X vs. "Platform B" decision on wethere or not FLAC and OGG were supported on the iPod.
The logic that iPods are given away at trade shows as support of the assertion that FLAC/OGG support would sway these decision makers is illogical. iPods are given away because they are sought after consumer electronic devices, targeting a personal market. Do you think that the bouncy balls and T-shirts given away are to appeal to the corporate IT needs of the organization? Heck no! They are to appeal to the attendees! Show me the iPod givaway that includes some sort of business related use. They don't. iPods are music players given away because they bring crowd of people who want to win one for themselves or someone in their household!
As I said before, be logical, not emotional about this. FLAC and OGG support on the iPod does nothing to aid Apple's bottome line. It's like Panasonic supporting Betamax on their VCRs. It may be a format with some merits, but the masses have spoken, 90% of HD and 68% of flash players sold in March in the US wore the Apple logo. None of those played FLAC and OGG files and they continue to fly off the shelves!
The limited market for FLAC and OGG players does not concern Apple. Neither Apple nor any other manufacturer can build a player that appeals to 100% of the market, and Apple has no doubt considered and rejected FLAC/OGG support.
It isn't going to loose them any market share on consumer digital music player or with business hardware. Face it!
If Apple were to gain even more popular with the crowd that implements hardware in corporations, maybe they'd sell more hardware to them. They can start that goodwill with some simple mods in iTunes.
What a load of crap. There are no IT managers who would support a platform change to Mac OS X if only Apple would support FLAC and OGG on the iPod. No, not one. Apple has created tons of goodwill to the OSS community - embracing OSS with contributions like Bonjour and using FreeBSD in OS X. Want proof of the good will? just checkout a website known as/. where OSS geeks fall all over themselves praising Apple daily.
The iPod is for consumers. Be rational, not emotional, about these facts.
And if the iPod itself supported [FLAC and OGG], I wonder how many more they'd sell to this crowd? (This crowd, by the way, being the ones who provide recommendations to the people who sign the checks to buy IT equipment for corporations worldwide.)
The parent post doesn't even make sense in the Real World (tm). What corporate IT infrastructure is the target market for the iPod? And in that small subset of the global market, what group requires FLAC and OGG and can't "make due" with Apple Lossless, MP3 and AAC?
As to your question about "how many more would they sell?" All I can say is that Apple sells 90% of HD based players and 68% of Flash based players according the March numbers from IDC. If the 10% and 32% non-Apple players being purchased are being purchased because of their FLAC and OGG support, then we are living in some wierd ass/. fantasy land!
Does dual core have to mean 2 of the SAME processor?
I recall reading a/. comment on a previous news day that suggested using dual core to allow the OS and anti-virus software run on one proc, while applications share another, thus improving stability/security/performance.
But does a vendor HAVE to make a dual core chip with two of the same processor? Perhaps gains could be made using a less powerful, commodity chip core and pairing it to a top of the line core.
Costs would be lower and they could sell more of this hybrid dual core because they would only need 1 top of the line cores.
glad to have you in this thread, it was a post by you on/. that originally alterted me to the existance of NeoOffice/J.
I find the insight you provide into OO.o's organization interesting. I also find it interesting that OO.o's license seems more geared towards servicing closed systems than NeoOffice's GPL license. Why is it you think OO.o chose not to use GPL?
In addition, can you give any insight into the delay between OO.o releases and NeoOffice/J? I just downloaded the April 1.1 release of NeoOffice/J, which is based of OO.o 1.1. Is there any plan to bring release times closer?
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. According to Wikipedia, StarOffice began development in 1994. This is 11 years by my math. It's like saying that Windows-NT is old and mature but Linux is brand new.
I'm not trying to get bogged down in the details of the age of MS Office over StarOffice, OO.o, Etc. Sufficed to say that since MS Word, the "core" MS Office app in my opinion, was introduced in the 80's, the office suite is the grandmother to all office suites.
What I was getting at is that regardless of age, MS has poured the resources into MS Office to make it a very mature application. OO.o does not come even close to that maturity, as is evident by it's verison number.
I see a danger in building up OO.o to get people to review it, then underdeliver because it doesn't live up to the expectations that come from years of using a mature office suite.
I enjoy NeoOffice/J on my Mac, but I fear these types of reviews that have people comparing a mature, decade old Office Suite to a FOSS project still so very immature.
By drawing attention to it, it incites review. A good thing. But if CIOs and CTOs have a team review these early versions of OO.o for deployment in their enterprises, and the teams recommend against them, it will be that much harder to have a further review at a later date. "We already looked at OO.o, we didn't want to use it. Move on" they might say.
Timing is crucial in marketing and the FOSS community has made great strides with Linux, but only when Linux got to a maturity level somewhat past what I see from NeoOffice/J and OO.o
These ID cards look like a great way of making it difficult to travel to/from the US. No because of teh technology perhaps. More likely because it makes it so "expensive" to one's privacy.
Further, by continuing to pissoff the rest of the world, making coming to the US difficult or leaving just as hard, we will end up with an effective "closed" border. Nobody in, Nobody out.
I understand more and more why Paul Allen would spend $200 Million on a yatch!
But even if it is Core Image and not Q2DE doing the "splash", what's with the system specs?
an ATI Radeon 9600 is not the same as an ATI Radeon 9600 XT, but Apple doesn't even make the XT cards and option for PowerMacs and ships the 9600 with the iMac. Why does Apple make only their top of the line computer support Core Image that they have been promoting?
You should check your facts before you accuse other people of spreading FUD. If you read the very article you link (at ArsTechnica), you will see confirmation that Quartz 2D Extreme is disabled in Tiger.
I was totally wrong. My appologies to Winterblink. Clearly staed on parargaph 43 of the 46 paragraph, 1 table, and 3 figure Ars coverage of Quartz Extreme in Tiger, it does state that the only way to use Q2DE (if you have the proper graphics card) is to use it in debug mode.
I am totally perplexed by this and wonder why, when Jobs demoed Q2DE in action during a dashboard demo where Q3DE "splashed" the widgets on the desktop, Apple made the decision to disable the technology.
I am further confused by the system requirements. Apple states that Core Image requires a "ATI Mobility Radeon 9700, Radeon 9600 XT, 9800 XT, or X800 XT." But the only system I see Apple shipping with an ATI Radeon 9600 XT is a BTO option for the single proc 1.8 PowerMac. The Dual 2.0 and 2.3 PowerMacs and the iMac G5 come with the ATI Radeon 9600, not the XT.
Other things, like Quartz 2D Extreme which is desigend to offload almost all the UI work to the GPU, was buggy enough to be disabled in the Tiger release.
Slashdot Mirror
I just had this though as to why large companies continue to stay with MS solutions when Linux and OO.o appear to cost less.
Wallstreet looks for quarter-to-quarter success from public companies. (Even private companies have VC firms or private inestors monitoring them closely.)
To switch computing platforms does, no question, cost upfront money to retrain end users and support staff as well as acquire and install the software.
Since Windows "training" is a sunk cost (already paid for), making the switch doesn't include these costs.
If a company make the switch, Linux training would become a 1 time, sunk cost too. But hiring staff that know it would still cost training where as most people know Windows. So there is that cost.
So when Wallstreet is looking for a company to make a certain earnings number, no company wants to take the "Training cost" hit, even if it is a one time thing, during the current quarter because it will cost them in their stock.
...FireFox downloads double to 100 Million!
Man, you almost got me there. Good one! See, you came in, talking about financials like you knew something and I had to actually follow your like to find that you are totally full of crap.
... well, you recall those kids from Berkley?
From your own like, YHOO P/E is 54.5 while AAPL is 30. Certainly a premium for a company that makes nothing and got their asses handed to them by some kids from Berkley a few years back.
Secondly, shares outstanding for AAPL, 817 M compared to 1.385 B for YHOO - hmm, someone has been diluting the hell out of their company to get financed and retain employees. Now Apple does this too, but Apple controls itself.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, you start your flame with a discussion of market capitalization - a calculation of price per share times number of shares which just tells you how much the company could be worth if someone ever bought the company off eTRADE (hah!)
So it's no wonder YHOO has a 48B mcap vs. AAPL's 27B - YHOO trades at a 45% premium over AAPL because of the sky high P/E for a company that
Look, all joking aside, take some sage wisdom here and sell YHOO while it is getting a good deal of attention. When YHOO disapoints on this Music Unlimited thing because it can't make any money with an all you can eat $5 buffett, Walstreet will destroy it. If that isn't good enough reason, know that the P/E can't go much higher - that's why when Napster and Harmony dropped 25% on YHOO news, Yahoo only moved inches. No where to go but down.
What to do with your money if not put it in YHOO? You can come join me over in the AAPL ownership circle. It's a great time to buy AAPL. (It may be a Mac news site, but they are quoting Pipper Jaffray's Gene Munster.
To compete with anybody, you have to create market advantage. Going it on Price alone is pretty tough unless you price is REALLY low.
Yahoo! has combined several elements that make this subscription service worth the price of two cups of Coffee at Starbucks:
- Low price that undercuts competition by 50% +
- $0.79 song burn ability.
- Build your own/120 pre-built radio stations that stream commercial free music to your desktop (look out XM/Sirus?)
- plugins for Instant Messenger and other applications that allow you to recommend songs to friends
- Decent 1M song catalog to choose from (though 33% smaller than Apple's 1.5M - too bad)
Yahoo! obviously looked at the landscape and said "we can't be on the iPod and we have to use WMA DRM, so how can we offer something competetive based on what exists today?"
Now, I don't think Yahoo! is going to get the volumes to make this service profitable since $0.99 downloads don't leave much margin for, well, margin. But the service just might put pressure on Apple to release their own subscription service. And that would be a good thing.
If you look back at the history of non-security updates, it's not uncommon for some people to have the update show up while others get the "no updates available."
I would be interested to read about this. Do you have a link to more information?
Let me help clarify...
For Windows users, iSync doesn't exist. On June 6, Steve Jobs is giving a keynote at WWDC2005 and will likely introduce the Apple/Motorola iTunes phone. This device will need to sync not only music but contacts and calendar entries too. So, they built the functionalty into iTunes.
You can still use iSync since you use a Mac. For Windows users, this functionality will prepare them for "one more thing(tm)".
It has been suggested in comments to previous posts that they are rolling out the SU selectively to different parts of the 'net to ease the load on their servers...
1 0500/keynote010500vod_300.mov
The process you suggest is not how Apple manages server load "bursting".
Instead, Apple is a customer of Akamai, pretty much the only vendor (now that they bought their closest competitor, Speedera) of distributed hosting for On Demand (burst) Management and Content Delivery (used for iTunes Music Store) for global enterprises. These folks handle sites like Major League Baseball who get flooded with traffic on opening day and during the World Series and don't need to invest millions in infrastructure to handle these high-traffic times.
If you want, take a look at the HTML source for apple's own websites. It used to be that all media (images, quicktime, etc) were served from an akamai URL but now apple has images.apple.com that must hide the Akamai relationship. Still, there are relecs like
http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/apple/akamai/0
as an example.
The iTunes Music Store uses Akamai to deliver those great download rates for the 160,000 songs per day they sell.
Our old software with weaker DRM may render your computer insecure! Upgrade to our new fancy DRMtacular software!
But TFAs don't say anything about this having to to with DRMed MP4s.
In fact, I don't see how one could "specially craft" (per the articles) a DRM protected MP4 and allow it to be played on any computer. Certainly Apple isn't going to sell DRM protected songs that crash the user's computer.
No, instead, this vulnerability would exist if people got a MP4 (AAC) song off a P2P fileshare where someone exploited the pre-4.8 iTunes.
Again, your FUD is appreciated.
From TFA: A vulnerability has been reported in iTunes, which potentially can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system [...] caused (by) a boundary error [...] and can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow via a specially crafted MPEG-4 file [...] (that could) allow execution of arbitrary code.
This is worrisome on one hand, but on the other, there is no description of what it takes to "specially craft" an MP4 to take advantage of the exploit.
I chalk it up as yet another reason to upgrade to iTunes 4.8
Other reasons to upgrade include:
- support for video within iTunes (like that included in the $11.98 Dave Matthews Band album Stand Up
- syncing of contacts/calendars to iPod
Disclaimer: This is not an ad
... a processor powerful enough to playback HDTV
... a video card able to decode MPEG-4
... an OS that includes a H.264 client
... a BTO option for a 400 GB, 7200 RPM internal hard drive
... a double-layer DVD burner capable of archiving large movies
... a VESA mount for dramatic installations
... and a 17" or 20" 16:10 aspect ratio screen built in?
Give up?
Now that's what I call an Apple PVR!
Oh my. You are relentless.
/. when I got home and re-read the posts and saw the moderations and I don't want you to think me a total ass. I did go a little "guns blazing" on you, and I'm sorry for taking it so far.
/. may be tired of the whole Ogg on iPod war, but that doesn't make your points less valid.
Hey, I'm sorry. I visited
You made some really good points and I don't think they deserved to get moderated Flamebait. People on
So again, sorry to go so hard on you.
*my* fanatic need?
sethadam1, you are the one confusing "advertising" with "corporate decision making", and it's okay, but just recognize the differences.
I'll give you that the more a product appeals to use as individuals, the more friendly we may be to considering other solutions from the same company in our business lives. But many professionals (note: 1 those _may_ decide against an Apple soltuion in their corporate infrastructure because our consumer electronics device doesn't support these obscure formats."
With the release of iTunes 4.8 supporting video formats on the other hand, Apple can easily defend it's position that it opens the iPod and iTunes platforms up for further multimedia support in the future.
Don't underestimate the OS X/Apple hardware marketing that can be done with "consumer products" like the iPod. If you doubt me, go to ANY tech trade show - Citrix, Linux, VoIP, etc. Nearly every vendor is auctioning off an iPod. Gee, I wonder why?
Let me repeate, no IT manager in their right mind would base a Mac OS X vs. "Platform B" decision on wethere or not FLAC and OGG were supported on the iPod.
The logic that iPods are given away at trade shows as support of the assertion that FLAC/OGG support would sway these decision makers is illogical. iPods are given away because they are sought after consumer electronic devices, targeting a personal market. Do you think that the bouncy balls and T-shirts given away are to appeal to the corporate IT needs of the organization? Heck no! They are to appeal to the attendees! Show me the iPod givaway that includes some sort of business related use. They don't. iPods are music players given away because they bring crowd of people who want to win one for themselves or someone in their household!
As I said before, be logical, not emotional about this. FLAC and OGG support on the iPod does nothing to aid Apple's bottome line. It's like Panasonic supporting Betamax on their VCRs. It may be a format with some merits, but the masses have spoken, 90% of HD and 68% of flash players sold in March in the US wore the Apple logo. None of those played FLAC and OGG files and they continue to fly off the shelves!
The limited market for FLAC and OGG players does not concern Apple. Neither Apple nor any other manufacturer can build a player that appeals to 100% of the market, and Apple has no doubt considered and rejected FLAC/OGG support.
It isn't going to loose them any market share on consumer digital music player or with business hardware. Face it!
If Apple were to gain even more popular with the crowd that implements hardware in corporations, maybe they'd sell more hardware to them. They can start that goodwill with some simple mods in iTunes.
/. where OSS geeks fall all over themselves praising Apple daily.
What a load of crap. There are no IT managers who would support a platform change to Mac OS X if only Apple would support FLAC and OGG on the iPod. No, not one. Apple has created tons of goodwill to the OSS community - embracing OSS with contributions like Bonjour and using FreeBSD in OS X. Want proof of the good will? just checkout a website known as
The iPod is for consumers. Be rational, not emotional, about these facts.
And if the iPod itself supported [FLAC and OGG], I wonder how many more they'd sell to this crowd? (This crowd, by the way, being the ones who provide recommendations to the people who sign the checks to buy IT equipment for corporations worldwide.)
/. fantasy land!
The parent post doesn't even make sense in the Real World (tm). What corporate IT infrastructure is the target market for the iPod? And in that small subset of the global market, what group requires FLAC and OGG and can't "make due" with Apple Lossless, MP3 and AAC?
As to your question about "how many more would they sell?" All I can say is that Apple sells 90% of HD based players and 68% of Flash based players according the March numbers from IDC. If the 10% and 32% non-Apple players being purchased are being purchased because of their FLAC and OGG support, then we are living in some wierd ass
Does dual core have to mean 2 of the SAME processor?
/. comment on a previous news day that suggested using dual core to allow the OS and anti-virus software run on one proc, while applications share another, thus improving stability/security/performance.
I recall reading a
But does a vendor HAVE to make a dual core chip with two of the same processor? Perhaps gains could be made using a less powerful, commodity chip core and pairing it to a top of the line core.
Costs would be lower and they could sell more of this hybrid dual core because they would only need 1 top of the line cores.
Oh, you get what I am saying.
The PBS Triumph of the Nerds specials have additional information on the early years of the Personal Computer.
glad to have you in this thread, it was a post by you on /. that originally alterted me to the existance of NeoOffice/J.
I find the insight you provide into OO.o's organization interesting. I also find it interesting that OO.o's license seems more geared towards servicing closed systems than NeoOffice's GPL license. Why is it you think OO.o chose not to use GPL?
In addition, can you give any insight into the delay between OO.o releases and NeoOffice/J? I just downloaded the April 1.1 release of NeoOffice/J, which is based of OO.o 1.1. Is there any plan to bring release times closer?
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. According to Wikipedia, StarOffice began development in 1994. This is 11 years by my math. It's like saying that Windows-NT is old and mature but Linux is brand new.
I'm not trying to get bogged down in the details of the age of MS Office over StarOffice, OO.o, Etc. Sufficed to say that since MS Word, the "core" MS Office app in my opinion, was introduced in the 80's, the office suite is the grandmother to all office suites.
What I was getting at is that regardless of age, MS has poured the resources into MS Office to make it a very mature application. OO.o does not come even close to that maturity, as is evident by it's verison number.
I see a danger in building up OO.o to get people to review it, then underdeliver because it doesn't live up to the expectations that come from years of using a mature office suite.
I enjoy NeoOffice/J on my Mac, but I fear these types of reviews that have people comparing a mature, decade old Office Suite to a FOSS project still so very immature.
By drawing attention to it, it incites review. A good thing. But if CIOs and CTOs have a team review these early versions of OO.o for deployment in their enterprises, and the teams recommend against them, it will be that much harder to have a further review at a later date. "We already looked at OO.o, we didn't want to use it. Move on" they might say.
Timing is crucial in marketing and the FOSS community has made great strides with Linux, but only when Linux got to a maturity level somewhat past what I see from NeoOffice/J and OO.o
These ID cards look like a great way of making it difficult to travel to/from the US. No because of teh technology perhaps. More likely because it makes it so "expensive" to one's privacy.
Further, by continuing to pissoff the rest of the world, making coming to the US difficult or leaving just as hard, we will end up with an effective "closed" border. Nobody in, Nobody out.
I understand more and more why Paul Allen would spend $200 Million on a yatch!
But even if it is Core Image and not Q2DE doing the "splash", what's with the system specs?
an ATI Radeon 9600 is not the same as an ATI Radeon 9600 XT, but Apple doesn't even make the XT cards and option for PowerMacs and ships the 9600 with the iMac. Why does Apple make only their top of the line computer support Core Image that they have been promoting?
You should check your facts before you accuse other people of spreading FUD. If you read the very article you link (at ArsTechnica), you will see confirmation that Quartz 2D Extreme is disabled in Tiger.
I was totally wrong. My appologies to Winterblink. Clearly staed on parargaph 43 of the 46 paragraph, 1 table, and 3 figure Ars coverage of Quartz Extreme in Tiger, it does state that the only way to use Q2DE (if you have the proper graphics card) is to use it in debug mode.
I am totally perplexed by this and wonder why, when Jobs demoed Q2DE in action during a dashboard demo where Q3DE "splashed" the widgets on the desktop, Apple made the decision to disable the technology.
I am further confused by the system requirements. Apple states that Core Image requires a "ATI Mobility Radeon 9700, Radeon 9600 XT, 9800 XT, or X800 XT." But the only system I see Apple shipping with an ATI Radeon 9600 XT is a BTO option for the single proc 1.8 PowerMac. The Dual 2.0 and 2.3 PowerMacs and the iMac G5 come with the ATI Radeon 9600, not the XT.
What the heck is going on in California?
Other things, like Quartz 2D Extreme which is desigend to offload almost all the UI work to the GPU, was buggy enough to be disabled in the Tiger release.
According to Apple Tiger's Quartz Extreme page, this is not the case. Perhaps you need to take a look at the Quartz Extreme Requirements.
For a balanced evaluation of Quartz 2D Extreme, check out this April 28th review by Ars Technica.
When did 10.3.9 come out? Just asking.
I don't know