+1 for HandBrake. G5 plus two 500 GB HDs (storage, purchased for $150 each) plus a Mac Mini (hooked to TV) plus the local public library = happiness. No more media shuffling, no more fucking FBI warnings in 3 languages, no more having to wait through retarded menu animations just to get to the fucking MENU where I can click to play the movie... just FrontRow -> Movies -> Title -> enjoy.
One of our colleagues in Asia, Kevin Chang, published a note discussing his expectations for a low-end, "Nano" version of the iPhone. We caution that the potential for a low-end, subsidized phone from Apple seems unlikely in the near term.
This article is worthless and the Slashdot headline is misleading. "Apple Plans Nano-Based iPhone"? Hardly. From TFA: "Apple Inc. plans to launch a cheaper version of the iPhone in the fourth quarter that could be based on the ultra-slim iPod Nano music player, according to a JP Morgan report [from] Kevin Chang, a JP Morgan analyst" (emphasis added.) He "cited people in the supply channel... and an application with the U.S Patent and Trademark office for his report... Apple filed a patent application document dated July 5 that refers to a multifunctional handheld device with a circular touch pad control, similar to the Nano's scroll wheel."
How many of these "Apple is buying parts/Apple filed an application" articles have there been? So many that it's a joke. (That page is several years old--it came out around the time of the first- or second-gen iPod.) Now that multitouch is "out there," Apple can start filing patents on all multitouch-related things without everyone wondering what they're up to.
Everything else is OBVIOUS. OF COURSE Apple will make a better/faster/smaller/cheaper iPhone with more features at some point in the future. Next from JP Morgan: the sky is blue, water is wet. Film at 11.
I stand by my prediction that there will NOT be ANY revs to the iPhone before Jan 2008; more likely late Spring or Summer. (Note that this doesn't count improvements to the current iPhone, like a software update that enables the camera to shoot video, for example.)
No sense mentioning one of my all-time favorite PCs, the Compaq Deskpro EN SFF. I've got a PII-350 which I think means it even predates Apple's Cube. (And, IIRC, they were available with classic (socket-7) Pentiums, which puts them even further in the past.) Tiny, with built-in 10-100 and two PCI slots. Very, very handy little boxes.
> Although rumour and conjecture about up-coming designs is really not worth debating.
But that's just the start! By posting this dopey Mac article--or ANY Mac article--we get to debate so many other things for the Nth time! There are already integegrated-graphics-suck posts, and if-Apple-doesn't-make-X-I'm-buying-a-PC posts, and Apple's-silence-about-future-products-is-annoying posts, and so many other things that MUST be rehashed every 3 days, lest anyone forget what they think! Articles like this are a public service for the Slashdot community as a whole--let this place go a week without Apple, RIAA, or MS Security stories and it'll turn into a ghost town.
Maybe we should have a bit more respect this time.
"Respect" != "being quiet." People joke about tragedies all the time--from the famine in Ethiopia to the Challenger disaster to the 9/11 attacks. It's what people do. Jay Leno's career got a huge boost by making jokes about O.J. (for a long time, Letterman didn't)--and we had a body in that case! I'm sure every slashdotter--even the ones posting the most tasteless jokes imaginable--respect Hans, the work he's done, and the contributions he's made.
Everyone is offended by something. Does that mean that no one should ever joke about anything? As it happens, this is one of the few places where a joke about this would be understood--can you imagine Leno going on the air with a filesystem joke?
No "compiling gentoo" jokes, either. Is everyone in line for the iPhone or what?
Please oh please oh please, DITCH STACKS!
on
The Roadmap to Leopard?
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
A coworker came back from WWDC with his copy. Unless I'm mistaken, stacks are HORRIBLE!!! They don't appear to be optional--if you drop a folder into the Dock now, this is what you get. They do exactly one of two things: if they have 8-9 items, they open up in that stupid fan shape. More than that, you get a dopey grid. (No text, nothing but icons. Yeah, *that's* useful.) THAT'S IT! Right-clicking does NOTHING! So it used to be that you had multiple functions: click to open the folder in the finder, or right-click to turn it into a (nice, neat) little menu of contents. Now it's this one almost-useless behavior. Plus, the "stack" takes the icon of one of the folder's contents, rather than the folder's own icon--so not only is it almost useless, it's hard to use since its icon is constantly changing. (Note that in the Stevenote, the "Applications" folder had the Address Book's icon. While I was using mine, it was changing depending on what I added and deleted.)
Dearest Apple, please ditch this pretty-but-useless "feature", or give us a way to turn it off an revert back to the good old behavior!!!!!
Don't worry, we've only got aWhatever, oWhatever, and uWhatever to go, then it'll all be over. (Linux users will also have to wait got 'k' and 'g' to die out.)
It installed nicely for me under Parallels 3 on my company's MacBook Pro. However, once up and running, the display was set to 1280x1024 and would not change, which means I had to scroll just to see the whole desktop on my 1440x900 screen. I'd go to the control panel, set it to 1024x768, press OK or apply (I tried both) and it would bounce me out to the login screen, and when I logged back in, I was still at 1280x1024. I can't log into the GUI as root (not allowed) to see if that makes a difference, nor could I find an obviously relevant line to change in xorg.conf (which I would not have even known was the place to go were it not for the Ars article.)
"Talking on your cellphone while driving isn't a crime in most states, but it should be."
No it shouldn't. ANYTHING can distract a driver--the radio, passengers, kids yelling in the car, stupid fucking ads on the side of the road that are getting more and more brazen every day, etc etc etc. Should we just make all of that illegal?
Drunk driving is illegal for a reason--there's no good reason to drink and drive. There are, however, many good reasons to talk on the phone while driving. I agree that talking on the phone while driving can be dangerous, but that doesn't mean it should be totally banned.
I could talk about this all day but I'm not going to waste my time. Short version: word meaning comes FROM CONTEXT as much as anything else. Therefore, there is no single universally-accepted definition of what construes a PC any more than there is a single list of criteria which determines if a car is a "sports car" or not. It is a generally accepted convention that PC = a computer running DOS or Windows. I doubt anyone was confused by the article's title, and it seems like hardly anyone is getting worked up in a frenzy over the wording. Get over yourself.
I will mostly talk about the UI compared to Safri on OS X and other Windows apps, but I'll also point out a couple new Safri 3 features.
It requires XP or Vista, so I won't be using it at home, where I'm frozen on W2K.:-)
It doesn't have a Windows-style title bar--it uses the 'unified' look of iTunes. Also, the top left and right corners are slightly rounded. Clicking in the top-right corner of the screen when maximized does not close the window. There is not a clickable control in the top left corner. I would have preferred a standard Windows window--among other things, the menu items just seem to 'float' in a big sea of grey.
HTML form textareas can be resized. (Sweet!!!) Form elements have a somewhat OS X-y look. Radio buttons and checkboxes look like their OS X counterparts. Dropdown menus are rounded and shiny but are not quite Aqua-y. I can't compare to Safari 3 on OS X yet--the installer requires a reboot.:-(
The installer includes a Bonjour component for Windows.
Text controls work as they do on a Mac. For example, if you're in a text box, the 'up' arrow brings you to the beginning of the line and 'down' brings you to the end.
It rounds the edges of a text box and gives you an 'x' icon (for 'clear') if you specify input type="search", same as you'd get in Safri on OS X.
Tabs can be dragged around, just like Firefox (stock? or requires an extension?) or Safari with Saft, which I love for that reason and many others. (Hopefully, they can keep making Saft once 10.5 is out.)
Preferences are under the Edit menu. The Preferences window has rounded top corners, 1-pixel grey rules on the top and bottom and 2-pixel rules on the sides. So do other windows, like the 'Private browsing' warning. Those windows have 100% Aqua controls internally.
Don't use it for production work--I lost the first draft of this post to a crash.:-)
It has the menu option to spellcheck text areas but it doesn't seem to work.
The 'report a bug' icon is shown by default.
It has one feature that Safari for OS X will never have: a 'maximize' button. It also throws away other Windows features. For example, windows can only be resized by dragging the bottom-right corner. Grabbing the status bar (also off by default, grr) won't move the window like it does in OS X. Grabbing any metal in the bookmarks bar or above moves the window.
----------
Overall, I think other posters here are right--this is nothing more than an iPhone SDK for Windows. Despite what Steve said this morning (about browser share, etc.) I don't think he gives a shit if anyone uses Safari on Windows for any other purpose. Just like iTunes for Windows only exists to sell iPods and things from the iTunes store, Safari/Windows only exists to a) show people how pretty Mac apps are, resulting in hardware sales,* and b) building apps for the iPhone.
* and I'm sure the number of Macs sold due to "prettiness of Safari on Windows" will be countable with the fingers of one hand. This is nothing more than an iPhone SDK.
I live in Orlando, home of 4 Disney parks, 2 Universal parks, "only" 1 Sea World park (but there's a new one opening in 2008), and of course, the Holy Land Experience. Nothing would surprise me.
They may be partially evil--trying to keep the prices up--but mainly, it's all about keeping it simple. Yes, there's always a few fringe people would REALLY want Option A but don't need (and REALLY don't want to pay for) options B, C, and D., but that's the distant minority. As nice as it would be for Apple to make all people happy all the time, they'd rather make 99% of the people REALLY happy and live without that last 1%. If they made their lineup as confusing as Dell's or HP's*, they'd lose more customers than they'd gain. With Apple, it comes down to... - if you *really* need something--Santa Rosa, matte screen, 1920x1200--then you'll take what they give you. - what size screen do you want? Are you happy with the (aluminum/plastic) case that comes with that option? Then you're done. - how much do you want to pay? - you want a Santa Rosa with discreet graphics and a 1680x1050 13" LED matte screen? Sorry.
And the budget-minded, not-in-a-hurry consumer can always look at the refurbished/discontinued page. (Big 'save' tag in the right column.) When the MBPs went from Core Duo to Core 2 Duo, the price of the 15" Core 2s dropped from $1999 to $1399 overnight. The savings usually aren't *that* drastic but they're usually quite good. (Unfortunately, you lose the BTO-ness, so you can't order a refurbished model *and* inexpensively upgrade the RAM.)
* I still get print catalogs from Dell and HP in the mail. They both have a baffling array of notebooks. Literally. It makes no sense at all. And they market them so they're *all* superior at *something*--"This one is great for games. This one is great for media. This one is great for..." WTF?!?? Fast is fast. Please just QUANTIFY how THIS one is better than THAT one. You know what I tell people who ask me for advice? (Note that these are not techy types.) "Just pick the size you want, with the CD/DVD drive you want, and get the cheapest one you find with those features." Seriously, Apple has the right idea. Let someone else fight to the death on no-margin, infinitely-customizable systems.
Slashdot Mirror
+1 for HandBrake. G5 plus two 500 GB HDs (storage, purchased for $150 each) plus a Mac Mini (hooked to TV) plus the local public library = happiness. No more media shuffling, no more fucking FBI warnings in 3 languages, no more having to wait through retarded menu animations just to get to the fucking MENU where I can click to play the movie... just FrontRow -> Movies -> Title -> enjoy.
Now things are changing, and I welcome it.
:-)
So you're saying you, for one, welcome our new software-cloud overlords?
This article is worthless and the Slashdot headline is misleading. "Apple Plans Nano-Based iPhone"? Hardly. From TFA: "Apple Inc. plans to launch a cheaper version of the iPhone in the fourth quarter that could be based on the ultra-slim iPod Nano music player, according to a JP Morgan report [from] Kevin Chang, a JP Morgan analyst " (emphasis added.) He "cited people in the supply channel... and an application with the U.S Patent and Trademark office for his report... Apple filed a patent application document dated July 5 that refers to a multifunctional handheld device with a circular touch pad control, similar to the Nano's scroll wheel."
How many of these "Apple is buying parts/Apple filed an application" articles have there been? So many that it's a joke. (That page is several years old--it came out around the time of the first- or second-gen iPod.) Now that multitouch is "out there," Apple can start filing patents on all multitouch-related things without everyone wondering what they're up to.
Everything else is OBVIOUS. OF COURSE Apple will make a better/faster/smaller/cheaper iPhone with more features at some point in the future. Next from JP Morgan: the sky is blue, water is wet. Film at 11.
I stand by my prediction that there will NOT be ANY revs to the iPhone before Jan 2008; more likely late Spring or Summer. (Note that this doesn't count improvements to the current iPhone, like a software update that enables the camera to shoot video, for example.)
The nightlife is cool, but people are jaded and cold and it's a bit of a superficial existence.
Thanks for reminding me that I haven't read one of my favorite blogs in a while. Dig through for the older stuff.
No sense mentioning one of my all-time favorite PCs, the Compaq Deskpro EN SFF. I've got a PII-350 which I think means it even predates Apple's Cube. (And, IIRC, they were available with classic (socket-7) Pentiums, which puts them even further in the past.) Tiny, with built-in 10-100 and two PCI slots. Very, very handy little boxes.
> Although rumour and conjecture about up-coming designs is really not worth debating.
But that's just the start! By posting this dopey Mac article--or ANY Mac article--we get to debate so many other things for the Nth time! There are already integegrated-graphics-suck posts, and if-Apple-doesn't-make-X-I'm-buying-a-PC posts, and Apple's-silence-about-future-products-is-annoying posts, and so many other things that MUST be rehashed every 3 days, lest anyone forget what they think! Articles like this are a public service for the Slashdot community as a whole--let this place go a week without Apple, RIAA, or MS Security stories and it'll turn into a ghost town.
"...the four 'W's' being who, when, what and where, and how..."
For very large values of 4.
Maybe we should have a bit more respect this time.
"Respect" != "being quiet." People joke about tragedies all the time--from the famine in Ethiopia to the Challenger disaster to the 9/11 attacks. It's what people do. Jay Leno's career got a huge boost by making jokes about O.J. (for a long time, Letterman didn't)--and we had a body in that case! I'm sure every slashdotter--even the ones posting the most tasteless jokes imaginable--respect Hans, the work he's done, and the contributions he's made.
Everyone is offended by something. Does that mean that no one should ever joke about anything? As it happens, this is one of the few places where a joke about this would be understood--can you imagine Leno going on the air with a filesystem joke?
If you don't use it, I'll be so pissed off, I'll start my own news site just to see it happen
With hookers and blackjack! In fact, forget the news site.
Imagine swallowing a beowulf cluster of these!
No "compiling gentoo" jokes, either. Is everyone in line for the iPhone or what?
A coworker came back from WWDC with his copy. Unless I'm mistaken, stacks are HORRIBLE!!! They don't appear to be optional--if you drop a folder into the Dock now, this is what you get. They do exactly one of two things: if they have 8-9 items, they open up in that stupid fan shape. More than that, you get a dopey grid. (No text, nothing but icons. Yeah, *that's* useful.) THAT'S IT! Right-clicking does NOTHING! So it used to be that you had multiple functions: click to open the folder in the finder, or right-click to turn it into a (nice, neat) little menu of contents. Now it's this one almost-useless behavior. Plus, the "stack" takes the icon of one of the folder's contents, rather than the folder's own icon--so not only is it almost useless, it's hard to use since its icon is constantly changing. (Note that in the Stevenote, the "Applications" folder had the Address Book's icon. While I was using mine, it was changing depending on what I added and deleted.)
Dearest Apple, please ditch this pretty-but-useless "feature", or give us a way to turn it off an revert back to the good old behavior!!!!!
Don't worry, we've only got aWhatever, oWhatever, and uWhatever to go, then it'll all be over. (Linux users will also have to wait got 'k' and 'g' to die out.)
It installed nicely for me under Parallels 3 on my company's MacBook Pro. However, once up and running, the display was set to 1280x1024 and would not change, which means I had to scroll just to see the whole desktop on my 1440x900 screen. I'd go to the control panel, set it to 1024x768, press OK or apply (I tried both) and it would bounce me out to the login screen, and when I logged back in, I was still at 1280x1024. I can't log into the GUI as root (not allowed) to see if that makes a difference, nor could I find an obviously relevant line to change in xorg.conf (which I would not have even known was the place to go were it not for the Ars article.)
Where is my 15 year, interest free $5 million loan? I want a piece of that action.
You could try starting here: 1-800-IBM-4YOU
"Talking on your cellphone while driving isn't a crime in most states, but it should be."
No it shouldn't. ANYTHING can distract a driver--the radio, passengers, kids yelling in the car, stupid fucking ads on the side of the road that are getting more and more brazen every day, etc etc etc. Should we just make all of that illegal?
Drunk driving is illegal for a reason--there's no good reason to drink and drive. There are, however, many good reasons to talk on the phone while driving. I agree that talking on the phone while driving can be dangerous, but that doesn't mean it should be totally banned.
I could talk about this all day but I'm not going to waste my time. Short version: word meaning comes FROM CONTEXT as much as anything else. Therefore, there is no single universally-accepted definition of what construes a PC any more than there is a single list of criteria which determines if a car is a "sports car" or not. It is a generally accepted convention that PC = a computer running DOS or Windows. I doubt anyone was confused by the article's title, and it seems like hardly anyone is getting worked up in a frenzy over the wording. Get over yourself.
Yeah. Those stupid jerks don't list ANY tools to manage my Apple ][, Commodore PET, or TRS-80. "Personal Computer" my ass.
Seriously, you're the one stuck in the past. "PC" hasn't been a generic term for "Personal Computer" for 20 years. Language changes. Accept it.
The first rule of ZFS is... you do not talk about ZFS!
From my blog:
:-)
:-(
:-)
----------
I will mostly talk about the UI compared to Safri on OS X and other Windows apps, but I'll also point out a couple new Safri 3 features.
It requires XP or Vista, so I won't be using it at home, where I'm frozen on W2K.
It doesn't have a Windows-style title bar--it uses the 'unified' look of iTunes. Also, the top left and right corners are slightly rounded. Clicking in the top-right corner of the screen when maximized does not close the window. There is not a clickable control in the top left corner. I would have preferred a standard Windows window--among other things, the menu items just seem to 'float' in a big sea of grey.
HTML form textareas can be resized. (Sweet!!!) Form elements have a somewhat OS X-y look. Radio buttons and checkboxes look like their OS X counterparts. Dropdown menus are rounded and shiny but are not quite Aqua-y. I can't compare to Safari 3 on OS X yet--the installer requires a reboot.
The installer includes a Bonjour component for Windows.
Text controls work as they do on a Mac. For example, if you're in a text box, the 'up' arrow brings you to the beginning of the line and 'down' brings you to the end.
It rounds the edges of a text box and gives you an 'x' icon (for 'clear') if you specify input type="search", same as you'd get in Safri on OS X.
Tabs can be dragged around, just like Firefox (stock? or requires an extension?) or Safari with Saft, which I love for that reason and many others. (Hopefully, they can keep making Saft once 10.5 is out.)
Preferences are under the Edit menu. The Preferences window has rounded top corners, 1-pixel grey rules on the top and bottom and 2-pixel rules on the sides. So do other windows, like the 'Private browsing' warning. Those windows have 100% Aqua controls internally.
Don't use it for production work--I lost the first draft of this post to a crash.
It has the menu option to spellcheck text areas but it doesn't seem to work.
The 'report a bug' icon is shown by default.
It has one feature that Safari for OS X will never have: a 'maximize' button. It also throws away other Windows features. For example, windows can only be resized by dragging the bottom-right corner. Grabbing the status bar (also off by default, grr) won't move the window like it does in OS X. Grabbing any metal in the bookmarks bar or above moves the window.
----------
Overall, I think other posters here are right--this is nothing more than an iPhone SDK for Windows. Despite what Steve said this morning (about browser share, etc.) I don't think he gives a shit if anyone uses Safari on Windows for any other purpose. Just like iTunes for Windows only exists to sell iPods and things from the iTunes store, Safari/Windows only exists to a) show people how pretty Mac apps are, resulting in hardware sales,* and b) building apps for the iPhone.
* and I'm sure the number of Macs sold due to "prettiness of Safari on Windows" will be countable with the fingers of one hand. This is nothing more than an iPhone SDK.
How could the selection tool be improved?
I live in Orlando, home of 4 Disney parks, 2 Universal parks, "only" 1 Sea World park (but there's a new one opening in 2008), and of course, the Holy Land Experience. Nothing would surprise me.
They may be partially evil--trying to keep the prices up--but mainly, it's all about keeping it simple. Yes, there's always a few fringe people would REALLY want Option A but don't need (and REALLY don't want to pay for) options B, C, and D., but that's the distant minority. As nice as it would be for Apple to make all people happy all the time, they'd rather make 99% of the people REALLY happy and live without that last 1%. If they made their lineup as confusing as Dell's or HP's*, they'd lose more customers than they'd gain. With Apple, it comes down to...
- if you *really* need something--Santa Rosa, matte screen, 1920x1200--then you'll take what they give you.
- what size screen do you want? Are you happy with the (aluminum/plastic) case that comes with that option? Then you're done.
- how much do you want to pay?
- you want a Santa Rosa with discreet graphics and a 1680x1050 13" LED matte screen? Sorry.
And the budget-minded, not-in-a-hurry consumer can always look at the refurbished/discontinued page. (Big 'save' tag in the right column.) When the MBPs went from Core Duo to Core 2 Duo, the price of the 15" Core 2s dropped from $1999 to $1399 overnight. The savings usually aren't *that* drastic but they're usually quite good. (Unfortunately, you lose the BTO-ness, so you can't order a refurbished model *and* inexpensively upgrade the RAM.)
* I still get print catalogs from Dell and HP in the mail. They both have a baffling array of notebooks. Literally. It makes no sense at all. And they market them so they're *all* superior at *something*--"This one is great for games. This one is great for media. This one is great for..." WTF?!?? Fast is fast. Please just QUANTIFY how THIS one is better than THAT one. You know what I tell people who ask me for advice? (Note that these are not techy types.) "Just pick the size you want, with the CD/DVD drive you want, and get the cheapest one you find with those features." Seriously, Apple has the right idea. Let someone else fight to the death on no-margin, infinitely-customizable systems.
Doesn't Skype already work on Windows phones? I know it works on my Axim PDA.