First off is the boombox. I'm not too surprised they did this (it is a huge market afterall). That said, I'm... unimpressed. It's just a big speaker with a iPod dock on top. That's what it looks like at least. I am thoroughly unimpressed with it. (Note: I'm not in the market for anything like this).
I find the Minis more interesting. I like the decision to offer two speeds: one a core solo and one a core duo. I think it is sad that they only come with 512MB of RAM still (especially since they now use Intel graphics that use the system memory for video RAM). I'm a bit dissapointed at the price jump (from $500 and $600 to $600 and $800). I wouldn't mind it as much if they included that RAM (they want $90 to do that).
For the record, I checked out what my student discount would get me. $20 off the Minis. What a savings;)
Still, my sister is all hot under the collar to get one so I might get to play with one. They are cute.
That is apparently what the interviewer thought to, so when they clarrified if it was the DS or the Revolution, the EA guy said it was the Revolution and no the DS he was talking about.
Nintendo has said that there was still something up their sleeve.
I'm no wiz in this area, but here are my thoughts:
First, you say you can't change the ports that are used. But you can make it look like you changed the ports? Here is the idea: camera server must run on port 80 (or whatever). So you run a little program on the Windows box that takes any connections on port 8347 (just some random number) and forwards that connection (through the loopback) to port 80. Port 80 is never exposed outside of the the box (must be loopback to connect). I know this can be done on Unix, there must be a way on Windows.
As others have pointed out, how about a VPN? All networking gets done through the VPN, and the remote boxes (as part of startup) "dial home" to start the VPN connection. They simply never accept ANY incoming traffic. Even the Windows firewall must be able to do that.
The "unprofessional" solution. You can get little Linksys WAP11s (or something like that) and put Linux on them and set them up however you want cheap. There must be a wireless version you can do that with, or failing that just turn off the wireless functionality. You can use these little boxes as firewalls, configure them EXACTLY how you want, and they will sit there forever doing their jobs (no moving parts, after all). The only problem with this is it isn't exactly "professional". But it would work and would be cheap. Heck, you could get these to do the VPN part for you.
From your main question and a few of the posts in this thread you made, I don't blame you for wanting to ditch Windows (not that any of my solutions would help). It would be easier to guess if I knew what were going on better (security camera to video capture card? USB webcam based? what?).
I read that a week or two ago, and even commented on it here on/. (got a 4 or so on that comment).
I think it is a very intersting idea, and one that could work. That said, I think it is a long shot that it would do much better than the EyeToy. They would have to advertise it a lot. Everyone will be wanting a Revolution, not a PS2 + whatever.
Still, I think it is the best shot Sony or MS have at copying the Revolution until the next generation of consoles (not the current "Next Gen", whatever comes after that).
All of this assumes that the Revolution is worthwile, which I think it will be (Go Nintendo!). Everything I've read is that developers just love it and have a million ideas for it. Even if 99.9% are just, that leaves us with 1000 good ideas.
Frankly I don't care if everyone uses normal controlers as long as people make more lightgun games. Point Blank 7!
PS: EA seems to have let it slip that the Revolution will include some kind of touch sensitivity also.
No, you misunderstand. The US versions had the driver built in. The US version only needed a driver for the remote.
But the very first PS2s shipped in Japan did NOT have the DVD driver installed in the ROM. You HAD TO HAVE A MEMORY CARD to play a DVD (with the controller, the remote wasn't released until later). They put the driver in ROM with a later revision, but the first PS2s that were sold (which were only sold in Japan) needed that driver to play DVDs.
Why not just release it now/ontime without the Blu-Ray movie player functionality, and offer a free patch when that stuff gets finalized and update the firmware turning that feature back on? Why would that be so hard?
The DVD player part for the origional PS2 required a driver loaded off the memory card. How would this be any different?
Unless that isn't the real problem they are having and it just makes a convenient scape-goat.
Either way, from what I've seen (and I believe), the US launch date is unchanged (probably November) and if anything gets pushed back it is the Japanese launch date (the problem would be straightened out by the time the console was supposed to get to us in the US).
Bingo. What, exactly, is the difference between multicast on the 'net and DirecTV? Both broadcast to everyone, both are only supposed to be used by paying customers. DirecTV does it successfully, so does Dish Network. And there are satellite TV companies in other countries as well.
So why can't they do it with Multicast?
As for figuring out how many people are watching, another reply has it right: we don't know now, so worst case scenario, what changes there?
I agree. My PowerBook works fine for games now and then too. But if you want a real gaming box, then a Mini or the PowerBook G4s just were not gaming computers.
My local Microcenter was recently running a special where that $500 Mac Mini would come with an LCD (15", not Apple) and I think a memory upgrade for free. Personally I think they are trying to clear out stock for the Mac Mini Solo (or whatever it gets replaced with using the Intel chips) if Apple will annouce those next week (otherwise, maybe they just had the Minis sitting around and wanted to get them moving off the shelf again).
Either way, if you hunt around, you can get a Mini with LCD and such for around $500 (as the cutstom built Ars box did), but if you build your own you won't get iLife and some of the other great software out there for Macs (and if you say "Games", you shouldn't be buying a Mini in the first place).
Yeah, that's what I meant. I chose options that would allow it to last as long as possible if I decided to hang onto it for 3+ years like my last laptop.
At this point, you read like a troll so this is my last response.
And be honest for a minute. The day before Steve handed out the x86 Kool-Aid you would probably have been among the most rabid defenders of the inherent superiority of PPC.
That Mac I bought last year was the first one since 1992. I was on Windows until I bought that Mac. I knew about the switch before I bought my laptop (I put it off a while in case they delivered Intel Macs real early). I knew that the G4 was underpowered (compared to Intel) when I bought the laptop, but that wasn't much of a problem for me. It was still faster than my 700 MHz P3, was fast enough for everything I wanted to do and then some (and a few games). The G4 and G5 are nicer chips than Intel chips. I like 'em better. But they just can't compete with Intel's fabs. If Intel got the rights to put out G5s I'd prefer one of those (thought it will never happen). It has nothing to do with Kool-ade. It is common sense. It doesn't matter if if a 1GHz G5 is faster than a 1GHz P4. When a 3 GHz P4 wipes the floor with a top of the line 1.67 GHz G4, it's time to switch.
No, my argument is that it will creep up on folks when they start dual booting. And eventually many will start asking why they have such a small list of supported hardware when OS X is running on their 'PC'.
Again, I think this is wrong. First off, people won't dual boot. Some people will, but your average consumer is not going to dual boot. I help many people with their computers. For most of them, the concept of the filesystem takes a long time to get into their heads (how many computers have YOU seen where EVERYTHING is in My Documents with no subfolders). If that is how they respond to that, how do you think they'll comprehend Dual Booting. Especially when they either have to buy two of every program (one for Windows, one for "OS XI") or have to reboot constantly to use the correct OS for the program they want to use.
As for the "small list of supported hardware", I'm going to have to cry fowl again. I can go down to my local computer store and buy just about anything in there. Any monitor will work with my Mac. Any hard drive. Any thumb drive. Any digital camera (over $30). Any mouse. Any keyboard (even if the symbols on the keys are wrong). Video capture? Most of the major products on the market work with my Mac. Scanning? Again, most of the major products work with my Mac. Routers, NICs, cable modems, optical drives, MP3 players, etc all work with Macs. In the time I've had my Mac I've bought a hard drive, a drawing tablet, digital cameras, and many other things. I didn't have to check ONE of them to see if it would work with my Mac. I knew it would. It was never a problem of "I like that but I have to buy this because it works". They all work for all intents and purposes. Out of all the hardware I've tried there is only one thing I've found which doesn't work with my Mac: a Sony snapshot printer. And even then, the other ones on the market do, and I can print off a memory card so it wouldn't be a problem (plus I have VirutalPC).
You may have a few high end users like yourself who run into that, but 99% of users will never have that cross their mind.
And then factor in that a WinMac ends the game and other 3rd party app problem.
We've got WINE and Cedega. Cames won't be a problem. There was even a page on MS's site the other day (taken down, of course) where it listed "Macintosh" as one of the platforms you could download DirectX for. If that happened, that would just about cure it right there.
As for the 3rd party app problem, once again, what are you talking about. Photoshop? I've go it. Dreamweaver? I've got it. Mathematica? I can buy it. MS Office? I've got it. Flash? I've got it. DVD Player? I've got it. Google Earth? Games? Garage Band/iDVD/iPhoto/iMove? Got it. Maya? Got it. Quicken? QuickBooks? Got 'em.
There is no App problem.
I'm not on Mac Kool-ade. I always liked Macs but I avoided them for ov
Well, yes the CPU is a G5 replacement in that they used it instead of the G5, and will probably replace the G5 machines with Core Duo machines (as they did with the iMac).
However, there has never been a G5 Powerbook. They are comparing this to the fastest powerbook that was on the market (1.67 GHz or so) because that's what everyone wants to know. Is it faster than the machine it replaced or not.
From the benchmarks I've seen, the answer is an emphatic yes.
I bought one last January when they announced the new updates and I'm quite happy with it. I expect it to last me quite a while if I wait. I may buy the next iteration (I like games and haven't had a great gaming computer in quite a while), but my PowerBook is an excelent machine.
I'm glad I futureproofed it though. 1GB of ram, 1.67 GHz, extra graphics memory, etc.
No way. I switched to PPC to get OS X, and when I replace my current Mac I'll go to x86 for OS X.
The prediction that Davorak reported on was flat out wrong. Apple won't do that. So what if Vista will boot on a Mac. People don't buy Macs because they don't run Windows, they buy them because they do run OS X. Why would they switch? Your argument is that they will have to move OSes because of hardware support?
What hardware support? Everything I've plugged into my Mac from the last few years has worked just fine. I plug in a USB drive and it works just fine within a few seconds, compared to a Windows XP computer which either asks me to install the generic driver, or generates 5 little pop-up balloons telling me that it found this, that, mounted this, did that, and it is ready to use. Printers? Most printers in the last few years (and most all of the big names, Epson, HP, Canon, etc.) support OS X. CD burners and such? If they are USB they use the generic USB storage drivers. If they are FireWire they use the generic FireWire storage drivers. Same with cameras and camcorders. Mice work without drivers. With everything going USB/FireWire (fewer and fewer reasons to buy expansion cards these days) work. Major manufacturers of other things (Adaptec, for example) sell products for Macs.
I see no hardware driver problem. Mac hardware is supported now, and things will only get better if Apple's market share improves.
As for switching to Windows, that makes very little sense. They would have to rip out the Windows GUI and put in the OS X GUI. That means that they would only be using the NT kernel. Why would they do that? That would put 99% of the computer world in the hands of MS. They would be beholden to MS for updates to add new features, new kinds of hardware, etc that wasn't already supported. The idea of a using a subsystem of POSIX and NextStep to make "OS XI" and run it under Vista or whatever is insane.
Basically, you are saying that Apple will, because they moved over to x86, dump 5 years of having a great OS (this doesn't include NextStep) to make a desktop environment to run on top of Windows (ala MS Bob) because of hardware drivers?
Huh?
Apple won't ditch OS X. Everyone likes OS X. Even Dell said they would sell OS X if Apple wanted to let them (I don't think they should). Moving over to EFI doesn't change things (although I would have liked OF better). They can keep their OS tied to their computers (within reason).
The idea of Apple moving to Windows is idiotic. Sorry, but it is. That would put them in direct competition with Dell and Sony and HP and such. With the margins they are used to, they would be slaughtered out of the market.
I've got $5000 that says Apple will move to quad-Cell processor based iPods before they will port their OS over to Windows (yeah, I know, makes no sense).
Micro-controllers are cheap. While the EyeToy part may tax the CPU, you could easily put a rather powerful MCU into the controller to process things (or at least do the initial processing) leaving the PS2 CPU with little to nothing to do. Also, games don't have to be as complex as God of War or something like that. Something much simpler can still be fun and would leave a ton of CPU cycles to process the input of the different controllers. Even the more complex Mario Party mini-games would leave the CPU with PLENTY of time to figure the controller's positions out.
I don't care if their idea of an "open console" means "here is a virtual NES devkit, and you can download your creations to the Revolution". Giving hobbiests a REAL development platform on a real console, no matter how scaled back (within reason, like I said above, NES is enough, SNES would be great, PS/N64 would be fanstastic) would be a major boon for a large number of reasons. First of all there is NO hardware out there for people to make games for except the PC. Sure, you can try on the GBA or whatever (questionable legality, requires special hardware, etc). Or there is the XGameStation (interesting, powerful enough, but $200 compared to "free" if you already own the Rev.). The Net Yahorzee (or whatever) for the PS showed people wanted to be able to do this (I almost bought one). And if you could send your creations to freinds/relatives then all the better.
Nintedo could hold little development competitions (Sony did that once with the Yahorzee, I remember playing the games on a PlayStation Underground CD) which fosters talent, good will, etc.
I don't understand why these companies don't do this. Why not do it for the older consoles? Now that the PS3 is out (hypothetical), release a dev-kit for $100 that lets you make PS2 games (I know you can do it with the Linux kit, but they need better libraries instead of "here is the chip manual, figure it out" which is where I understand the Linux kit puts you).
And if they don't sell the console at a loss (or sell a "developer" version for an extra $50 or something) then they will only make money off the people who buy the console to develop for it.
All I'm left with right now is waiting for Parallax's Propeller chip (read about it here) which looks like a great little console on a chip to me.
I saw a great post somewhere about how Sony was going it fight the Revolution, and it could be very intersting if it is true. It said that Sony has been working on a similar controller setup (copied after it was announced) along with the EyeToy. The plan would be to release PS2 games that used it. Because there is so much expiriance out there with the PS2 development would be cheap. They can get the price of the little slimline PS2s down to about $100 (which will undercut the Revolution price, whatever it is) and the system is already in however many million homes. They think that by doing this they could expand the life of the system 2 years or so by grabbing casual gamers, and maybe sell 50 million additional systems (I'm guessing world wide) with this plan.
Pure speculation, but very interesting.
On a side note, I saw that the Revolution development kits cost $2000 which is just a fraction of what most kits (PS2, etc) cost, especially the cost of "Next Gen" systems (PS3, XBox 360). They say this would reduce the financial risk of trying to make a game for the revolution (which makes sense). I just wish they'd open it up (somehow) so end users could program it (I'd LOVE to do that, even if it must be done in a locked-down-sandbox with an interpreted language). They could sell the best user created programs on their online service.
Video cards are always ahead because of the high bandwidth they need, and more importantly the lack of compatibility. Each time you release a new video chip, you can just change the pin out and add as many pins as you want. You don't have to keep using the same exact pin out for 5 years so that users can upgrade their processors.
Speaking of which, how many normal consumers actually DO upgrade their processors? Maybe we should move back to the soldered on processors of the past. No socket to be stuck to, no expensive ZIP socket to put on the board (you can't tell me that 940 pin ZIF sockets are cheap), not much downside (if your CPU dies, most people would just buy a new and faster computer today for the price to get the thing repaired).
That's nice, good for AMD. But where are the FB-DIMMs? I like that AMD moved the memory interface onto the processor die and I think it was a great step (Intel is supposed to do this in a few years) but the fact they had to change sockets for DDR2 really bugs me. I understand why, but still.
FB-DIMMs should be available by now. If I would go out and buy a socket M2 processor, I'd have to buy a new socket and processor when FB-DIMMs came out (or the switch to DDR3 or whatever). If we had FB-DIMMs then one processor would work with DDR/DDR2/DDR3/SD/whatever just by switching out the memory since the interface is serial and built onto the memory chips. It would allow the life of boards to be extended much longer. Look how long PCI lasted. If you bought a new motherboard in the PCI era and you could keep using it all the way up to now because the socket stayed the same and the memory modules just changed (even though the physical pin out stayed the same) you could do it. Now that PCI-Express is here, we could do that easily for the future.
FB-DIMM is supposed to simplify the board layout too since you don't have to run all those parallel data/address lines to each DIMM. This is supposed to make layout much less complicated. Imagine how many pins would be needed on an Opteron if they wanted to put 4 memory banks on the processor instead of the 2 they have now. That would be a few hundred extra pins. With FB-DIMM that might be one hundred extra pins.
The only need to update the socket would be to provide additional power pins (you could future proof this a bit by putting extra power pins on) or other features (I've heard of someone, Sun perhaps, trying to put Ethernet on the processor die).
I like AMD, but isn't it time we get past these custom memory interfaces for each standard?
My favorite watch I can never remember the name of. I saw it on Beyond 2000 years and years ago (either that or one of the other old shows on the Disovery Channel, like Next Step). The watch is shaped like a domino with four pips on each half (a 4:4 domino). The pips raise and lower based on the time, the combination of which are up and down telling you the exact time (note: the minutes were in 5 minute increments). I managed to find it online about 5 years ago (it was somewhere in Europe, Denmark?) and eventually managed to find out the price ($1500, at least).
Good luck finding it, but it has always been my favorite watch (from a decorative standpoint).
My favorite normal watch? I've got a Timex Datalink (early generation) that I can no longer use (I'm on Mac and use a laptop, so I don't have a CRT). I can't use it's data features, but that's OK, it's a great watch too. I've been wearing it for a LONG time now (7 years+) and I just love it. I'd might a new one, but they don't have the band style I like any more.
My understanding is that Xen does not require the guest OS to be changed if the hardware supports virtualization (Vanderpool or Pacifica, depending on your chip maker). That means that with the right chip (I'm not sure if Core Duo has it or not) you could run OS X as a guest OS (I assume the host OS still needs to have support, which may be done with a simple application running as root).
Don't forget, that Samsung has to make money on those players, where Sony can do the loss-leader thing with the PS3. That said, the Samsung unit needs to have processors to decode and play the video and do whatever else. It needs the output connectors, the HDMI encoder, etc. The PS3 already HAS all those things. The PS3 just needs the bare drive to read the data, all the other stuff in the Samsung player (the sound circuitry, the power supply, the video circuitry, etc) is already accounted for in the rest of the PS3 price.
Plus, everyone knows that the first people to buy something like that Samsung player is paying a large premium. I would be amazed if that player cost them over $500 to manufacture.
And of course, Sony will benefit from economies of scale on the PS3 faster than that Samsung player will.
The PS3 will be sold at a loss. But I bet it will be less than $200 per unit (I'm guessing at a $400 price point myself).
Can anyone point me to screenshots of that "Worms?" game. It sounds quite interesting, but I can't find screenshots anywhere on Google. In fact I can find next to nothing on it.
Yes, it's BSD with a fancy window mananger. And fantastic applications. Can you buy Photoshop for OpenBSD? How 'bout Dreamweaver? Office? Just wondering.
Macs are not cheap, but they are not that expensive either. I knew that going in. I was willing to pay for the quality. My Mac is much nicer hardware and build quality than any of the Dells that I've owned.
And I don't know what you're talking about with the OS crashing. The only time I've ever seen my Mac crash was when I gave it a couple of kernel pannics trying to write a driver to see if I could do it (apparently I couldn't). Otherwise, it has NEVER crashed. Something I could never say of the various Windows computers I use on a daily basis.
As for "style over substance", that's bull. Yes, Macs look great but that's not why I bought them (although I know people who have for that exact reason). I was fed up with all the Windows idiocy that I had to deal with so I jumped ship to a nicer OS. I didn't buy a Mac. I bought a computer that ran OS X. It just was a Mac. If it looked like my old Dell laptop I wouldn't have cared. The ultra thin, ultra light, very nice looking, well built, luxury feautred-ness of it was just a bonus.
But man, do you have a bone to pick for some reason.
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I find the Minis more interesting. I like the decision to offer two speeds: one a core solo and one a core duo. I think it is sad that they only come with 512MB of RAM still (especially since they now use Intel graphics that use the system memory for video RAM). I'm a bit dissapointed at the price jump (from $500 and $600 to $600 and $800). I wouldn't mind it as much if they included that RAM (they want $90 to do that).
For the record, I checked out what my student discount would get me. $20 off the Minis. What a savings ;)
Still, my sister is all hot under the collar to get one so I might get to play with one. They are cute.
Nintendo has said that there was still something up their sleeve.
First, you say you can't change the ports that are used. But you can make it look like you changed the ports? Here is the idea: camera server must run on port 80 (or whatever). So you run a little program on the Windows box that takes any connections on port 8347 (just some random number) and forwards that connection (through the loopback) to port 80. Port 80 is never exposed outside of the the box (must be loopback to connect). I know this can be done on Unix, there must be a way on Windows.
As others have pointed out, how about a VPN? All networking gets done through the VPN, and the remote boxes (as part of startup) "dial home" to start the VPN connection. They simply never accept ANY incoming traffic. Even the Windows firewall must be able to do that.
The "unprofessional" solution. You can get little Linksys WAP11s (or something like that) and put Linux on them and set them up however you want cheap. There must be a wireless version you can do that with, or failing that just turn off the wireless functionality. You can use these little boxes as firewalls, configure them EXACTLY how you want, and they will sit there forever doing their jobs (no moving parts, after all). The only problem with this is it isn't exactly "professional". But it would work and would be cheap. Heck, you could get these to do the VPN part for you.
From your main question and a few of the posts in this thread you made, I don't blame you for wanting to ditch Windows (not that any of my solutions would help). It would be easier to guess if I knew what were going on better (security camera to video capture card? USB webcam based? what?).
Good luck though.
I think it is a very intersting idea, and one that could work. That said, I think it is a long shot that it would do much better than the EyeToy. They would have to advertise it a lot. Everyone will be wanting a Revolution, not a PS2 + whatever.
Still, I think it is the best shot Sony or MS have at copying the Revolution until the next generation of consoles (not the current "Next Gen", whatever comes after that).
All of this assumes that the Revolution is worthwile, which I think it will be (Go Nintendo!). Everything I've read is that developers just love it and have a million ideas for it. Even if 99.9% are just, that leaves us with 1000 good ideas.
Frankly I don't care if everyone uses normal controlers as long as people make more lightgun games. Point Blank 7!
PS: EA seems to have let it slip that the Revolution will include some kind of touch sensitivity also.
But the very first PS2s shipped in Japan did NOT have the DVD driver installed in the ROM. You HAD TO HAVE A MEMORY CARD to play a DVD (with the controller, the remote wasn't released until later). They put the driver in ROM with a later revision, but the first PS2s that were sold (which were only sold in Japan) needed that driver to play DVDs.
The DVD player part for the origional PS2 required a driver loaded off the memory card. How would this be any different?
Unless that isn't the real problem they are having and it just makes a convenient scape-goat.
Either way, from what I've seen (and I believe), the US launch date is unchanged (probably November) and if anything gets pushed back it is the Japanese launch date (the problem would be straightened out by the time the console was supposed to get to us in the US).
No Macs.
Sorry, lost a customer.
So why can't they do it with Multicast?
As for figuring out how many people are watching, another reply has it right: we don't know now, so worst case scenario, what changes there?
I agree. My PowerBook works fine for games now and then too. But if you want a real gaming box, then a Mini or the PowerBook G4s just were not gaming computers.
Either way, if you hunt around, you can get a Mini with LCD and such for around $500 (as the cutstom built Ars box did), but if you build your own you won't get iLife and some of the other great software out there for Macs (and if you say "Games", you shouldn't be buying a Mini in the first place).
Yeah, that's what I meant. I chose options that would allow it to last as long as possible if I decided to hang onto it for 3+ years like my last laptop.
And be honest for a minute. The day before Steve handed out the x86 Kool-Aid you would probably have been among the most rabid defenders of the inherent superiority of PPC.
That Mac I bought last year was the first one since 1992. I was on Windows until I bought that Mac. I knew about the switch before I bought my laptop (I put it off a while in case they delivered Intel Macs real early). I knew that the G4 was underpowered (compared to Intel) when I bought the laptop, but that wasn't much of a problem for me. It was still faster than my 700 MHz P3, was fast enough for everything I wanted to do and then some (and a few games). The G4 and G5 are nicer chips than Intel chips. I like 'em better. But they just can't compete with Intel's fabs. If Intel got the rights to put out G5s I'd prefer one of those (thought it will never happen). It has nothing to do with Kool-ade. It is common sense. It doesn't matter if if a 1GHz G5 is faster than a 1GHz P4. When a 3 GHz P4 wipes the floor with a top of the line 1.67 GHz G4, it's time to switch.
No, my argument is that it will creep up on folks when they start dual booting. And eventually many will start asking why they have such a small list of supported hardware when OS X is running on their 'PC'.
Again, I think this is wrong. First off, people won't dual boot. Some people will, but your average consumer is not going to dual boot. I help many people with their computers. For most of them, the concept of the filesystem takes a long time to get into their heads (how many computers have YOU seen where EVERYTHING is in My Documents with no subfolders). If that is how they respond to that, how do you think they'll comprehend Dual Booting. Especially when they either have to buy two of every program (one for Windows, one for "OS XI") or have to reboot constantly to use the correct OS for the program they want to use.
As for the "small list of supported hardware", I'm going to have to cry fowl again. I can go down to my local computer store and buy just about anything in there. Any monitor will work with my Mac. Any hard drive. Any thumb drive. Any digital camera (over $30). Any mouse. Any keyboard (even if the symbols on the keys are wrong). Video capture? Most of the major products on the market work with my Mac. Scanning? Again, most of the major products work with my Mac. Routers, NICs, cable modems, optical drives, MP3 players, etc all work with Macs. In the time I've had my Mac I've bought a hard drive, a drawing tablet, digital cameras, and many other things. I didn't have to check ONE of them to see if it would work with my Mac. I knew it would. It was never a problem of "I like that but I have to buy this because it works". They all work for all intents and purposes. Out of all the hardware I've tried there is only one thing I've found which doesn't work with my Mac: a Sony snapshot printer. And even then, the other ones on the market do, and I can print off a memory card so it wouldn't be a problem (plus I have VirutalPC).
You may have a few high end users like yourself who run into that, but 99% of users will never have that cross their mind.
And then factor in that a WinMac ends the game and other 3rd party app problem.
We've got WINE and Cedega. Cames won't be a problem. There was even a page on MS's site the other day (taken down, of course) where it listed "Macintosh" as one of the platforms you could download DirectX for. If that happened, that would just about cure it right there.
As for the 3rd party app problem, once again, what are you talking about. Photoshop? I've go it. Dreamweaver? I've got it. Mathematica? I can buy it. MS Office? I've got it. Flash? I've got it. DVD Player? I've got it. Google Earth? Games? Garage Band/iDVD/iPhoto/iMove? Got it. Maya? Got it. Quicken? QuickBooks? Got 'em.
There is no App problem.
I'm not on Mac Kool-ade. I always liked Macs but I avoided them for ov
However, there has never been a G5 Powerbook. They are comparing this to the fastest powerbook that was on the market (1.67 GHz or so) because that's what everyone wants to know. Is it faster than the machine it replaced or not.
From the benchmarks I've seen, the answer is an emphatic yes.
I bought one last January when they announced the new updates and I'm quite happy with it. I expect it to last me quite a while if I wait. I may buy the next iteration (I like games and haven't had a great gaming computer in quite a while), but my PowerBook is an excelent machine.
I'm glad I futureproofed it though. 1GB of ram, 1.67 GHz, extra graphics memory, etc.
The prediction that Davorak reported on was flat out wrong. Apple won't do that. So what if Vista will boot on a Mac. People don't buy Macs because they don't run Windows, they buy them because they do run OS X. Why would they switch? Your argument is that they will have to move OSes because of hardware support?
What hardware support? Everything I've plugged into my Mac from the last few years has worked just fine. I plug in a USB drive and it works just fine within a few seconds, compared to a Windows XP computer which either asks me to install the generic driver, or generates 5 little pop-up balloons telling me that it found this, that, mounted this, did that, and it is ready to use. Printers? Most printers in the last few years (and most all of the big names, Epson, HP, Canon, etc.) support OS X. CD burners and such? If they are USB they use the generic USB storage drivers. If they are FireWire they use the generic FireWire storage drivers. Same with cameras and camcorders. Mice work without drivers. With everything going USB/FireWire (fewer and fewer reasons to buy expansion cards these days) work. Major manufacturers of other things (Adaptec, for example) sell products for Macs.
I see no hardware driver problem. Mac hardware is supported now, and things will only get better if Apple's market share improves.
As for switching to Windows, that makes very little sense. They would have to rip out the Windows GUI and put in the OS X GUI. That means that they would only be using the NT kernel. Why would they do that? That would put 99% of the computer world in the hands of MS. They would be beholden to MS for updates to add new features, new kinds of hardware, etc that wasn't already supported. The idea of a using a subsystem of POSIX and NextStep to make "OS XI" and run it under Vista or whatever is insane.
Basically, you are saying that Apple will, because they moved over to x86, dump 5 years of having a great OS (this doesn't include NextStep) to make a desktop environment to run on top of Windows (ala MS Bob) because of hardware drivers?
Huh?
Apple won't ditch OS X. Everyone likes OS X. Even Dell said they would sell OS X if Apple wanted to let them (I don't think they should). Moving over to EFI doesn't change things (although I would have liked OF better). They can keep their OS tied to their computers (within reason).
The idea of Apple moving to Windows is idiotic. Sorry, but it is. That would put them in direct competition with Dell and Sony and HP and such. With the margins they are used to, they would be slaughtered out of the market.
I've got $5000 that says Apple will move to quad-Cell processor based iPods before they will port their OS over to Windows (yeah, I know, makes no sense).
Micro-controllers are cheap. While the EyeToy part may tax the CPU, you could easily put a rather powerful MCU into the controller to process things (or at least do the initial processing) leaving the PS2 CPU with little to nothing to do. Also, games don't have to be as complex as God of War or something like that. Something much simpler can still be fun and would leave a ton of CPU cycles to process the input of the different controllers. Even the more complex Mario Party mini-games would leave the CPU with PLENTY of time to figure the controller's positions out.
Nintedo could hold little development competitions (Sony did that once with the Yahorzee, I remember playing the games on a PlayStation Underground CD) which fosters talent, good will, etc.
I don't understand why these companies don't do this. Why not do it for the older consoles? Now that the PS3 is out (hypothetical), release a dev-kit for $100 that lets you make PS2 games (I know you can do it with the Linux kit, but they need better libraries instead of "here is the chip manual, figure it out" which is where I understand the Linux kit puts you).
And if they don't sell the console at a loss (or sell a "developer" version for an extra $50 or something) then they will only make money off the people who buy the console to develop for it.
All I'm left with right now is waiting for Parallax's Propeller chip (read about it here) which looks like a great little console on a chip to me.
Pure speculation, but very interesting.
On a side note, I saw that the Revolution development kits cost $2000 which is just a fraction of what most kits (PS2, etc) cost, especially the cost of "Next Gen" systems (PS3, XBox 360). They say this would reduce the financial risk of trying to make a game for the revolution (which makes sense). I just wish they'd open it up (somehow) so end users could program it (I'd LOVE to do that, even if it must be done in a locked-down-sandbox with an interpreted language). They could sell the best user created programs on their online service.
Speaking of which, how many normal consumers actually DO upgrade their processors? Maybe we should move back to the soldered on processors of the past. No socket to be stuck to, no expensive ZIP socket to put on the board (you can't tell me that 940 pin ZIF sockets are cheap), not much downside (if your CPU dies, most people would just buy a new and faster computer today for the price to get the thing repaired).
FB-DIMMs should be available by now. If I would go out and buy a socket M2 processor, I'd have to buy a new socket and processor when FB-DIMMs came out (or the switch to DDR3 or whatever). If we had FB-DIMMs then one processor would work with DDR/DDR2/DDR3/SD/whatever just by switching out the memory since the interface is serial and built onto the memory chips. It would allow the life of boards to be extended much longer. Look how long PCI lasted. If you bought a new motherboard in the PCI era and you could keep using it all the way up to now because the socket stayed the same and the memory modules just changed (even though the physical pin out stayed the same) you could do it. Now that PCI-Express is here, we could do that easily for the future.
FB-DIMM is supposed to simplify the board layout too since you don't have to run all those parallel data/address lines to each DIMM. This is supposed to make layout much less complicated. Imagine how many pins would be needed on an Opteron if they wanted to put 4 memory banks on the processor instead of the 2 they have now. That would be a few hundred extra pins. With FB-DIMM that might be one hundred extra pins.
The only need to update the socket would be to provide additional power pins (you could future proof this a bit by putting extra power pins on) or other features (I've heard of someone, Sun perhaps, trying to put Ethernet on the processor die).
I like AMD, but isn't it time we get past these custom memory interfaces for each standard?
Good luck finding it, but it has always been my favorite watch (from a decorative standpoint).
My favorite normal watch? I've got a Timex Datalink (early generation) that I can no longer use (I'm on Mac and use a laptop, so I don't have a CRT). I can't use it's data features, but that's OK, it's a great watch too. I've been wearing it for a LONG time now (7 years+) and I just love it. I'd might a new one, but they don't have the band style I like any more.
My understanding is that Xen does not require the guest OS to be changed if the hardware supports virtualization (Vanderpool or Pacifica, depending on your chip maker). That means that with the right chip (I'm not sure if Core Duo has it or not) you could run OS X as a guest OS (I assume the host OS still needs to have support, which may be done with a simple application running as root).
Plus, everyone knows that the first people to buy something like that Samsung player is paying a large premium. I would be amazed if that player cost them over $500 to manufacture.
And of course, Sony will benefit from economies of scale on the PS3 faster than that Samsung player will.
The PS3 will be sold at a loss. But I bet it will be less than $200 per unit (I'm guessing at a $400 price point myself).
Can anyone point me to screenshots of that "Worms?" game. It sounds quite interesting, but I can't find screenshots anywhere on Google. In fact I can find next to nothing on it.
Yes, it's BSD with a fancy window mananger. And fantastic applications. Can you buy Photoshop for OpenBSD? How 'bout Dreamweaver? Office? Just wondering.
Macs are not cheap, but they are not that expensive either. I knew that going in. I was willing to pay for the quality. My Mac is much nicer hardware and build quality than any of the Dells that I've owned.
And I don't know what you're talking about with the OS crashing. The only time I've ever seen my Mac crash was when I gave it a couple of kernel pannics trying to write a driver to see if I could do it (apparently I couldn't). Otherwise, it has NEVER crashed. Something I could never say of the various Windows computers I use on a daily basis.
As for "style over substance", that's bull. Yes, Macs look great but that's not why I bought them (although I know people who have for that exact reason). I was fed up with all the Windows idiocy that I had to deal with so I jumped ship to a nicer OS. I didn't buy a Mac. I bought a computer that ran OS X. It just was a Mac. If it looked like my old Dell laptop I wouldn't have cared. The ultra thin, ultra light, very nice looking, well built, luxury feautred-ness of it was just a bonus.
But man, do you have a bone to pick for some reason.