Why would the reviewer hope this is "Apple's software equivalent of the G4 Cube"? Why not hope it gets *better*?
That said, it's quite different from the Cube. The Cube was overpriced to begin with ($200 *more* than a comparably-specced, and expandable, G4 tower) and had no hope for success other than the price to be dropped. Software, on the other hand, can be improved and expanded in many directions. If Aperture is as bad as he says (and I'm sure for many it isn't) it can be improved. The Cube, on the other hand, had nothing to offer except "Ooh! Pretty! Small!" and unless Apple would have pushed it in the home-media-hub direction, there's not much that could have been done with a product like that.
One way they do it is, of course, by increasing security. And the other way -- by having employees (mostly managers) to pay for stolen items out of their own pay checks (so they do at Fry's -- I don't know about other stores).
Um, isn't that illegal? When I worked in retail, I asked about that--not about missing product, but if I'd be liable if my register came up short. The answer I got was no, it is illegal to force an employee to give the company money when his register comes up short. I never pursued it and I could be wrong, but it makes sense for several reasons: - the manager is the one who counts. who's to say *he* won't take some money and make the employee cover the shortage? - if employees had to pay when they were short, then the opposite should be also--that an employee gets to keep the extra money if he's over. this would encourage employees to short-change customers.
FYI, in case you were being literal: to help an image that is a little dark or dull, try one or both of these things: control/command-L to bring up levels, then move the middle slider left to lighten overall but not wash out highlights. bring the left slider a bit to the right to punch up the darks. control/command-M to bring up curves. Move the cursor to the top-right corner of the grid. now come in and down one segment, so you're in the lower-left corner of the top-right square. grab the line and drag it a bit up and to the left. now go to the bottom left corner, and up and over one segment (to the top-right corner of the lower-left square) and drag that a bit down and to the right. Now the diagonal line should look like a very gentle S-curve. That move will "suck the grey" right out of the image and really helps the images that come out of certain digital cameras.
I think IM clients are like cars: there's enough going on that no single one will ever be perfect for everyone. I use chat pretty lightly and iChat suits my needs just fine. I'm totally happy with it and I think it does a lot of nice things, not the least of which is awesome quality video conferencing (though audio quality, especially with an iSight, leaves something to be desired.)
However, many Mac message boards have people talking about how weak iChat is and the first thing they do on a Mac is install Adium or Fire or something. Well, I was recently at a job where iChat wasn't installed, so I tried a few of those, and I couldn't stand any of them.
That said, I think a lot can be done on the server side--if you have friends on different networks, you shouldn't *need* to have one chat clients installed for each of them--AIM, MSN, etc. I figure there's probably a 50-50 chance that there will someday be One Protocol to Rule Them All--I don't think they gain anything by not sharing, but that never stopped companies from being selfish before. It's no longer on their front page, but openh323.org used to have a great quote along the lines of "let's quit worrying about how to format the bits on the wire and solve some *interesting* problems."
You might find some vaguely useful thin books, but a "thick" book? No fucking way. You CAN NOT talk about image editing in detail without getting application-specific. Just like programming: what's the thickest "how to program" book you've ever seen that didn't talk about one language? You can only get so far with generic statements like "Make two arrays, then loop through one, and for each value, loop through all the values in the other array and see if any match."
Having used Photoshop for a few years (at the time) it was very easy for me to pick up The Gimp. A friend asked me some pretty hard questions once and I was able to do everything I needed with just a bit of poking. "Vendor lock-in" is not a big problem here. Yes, everything is slightly different, but the concepts are the same. A good Photoshop book *is* a good generic text on image editing because a) there are only so many tasks and b) everyone who makes "an image editing program" is going to more or less do things the Photoshop way, anyway. (For example, my friend was trying to select a weird thing, and I showed him how it was easier to select the things he didn't want and then invert the selection. Worked in PS, worked in the Gimp.) Yes, a Photoshop book will have a section on Photoshop's "healing brush" and no, the Gimp doesn't have it, but the sections on how to adjust color, do blurs, crop, resize, etc., will apply anywhere.
You might hit the used book stores and buy a book that was written for Photoshop 3 or 4--that'll cover all the bases but won't go into a ton of detail on the millions of new features that have been added since. Hell, the manual that came with Photoshop 2.5 will cover all the true image editing concepts, at least as far as photography goes--saturation, levels, etc. Newer versions added layers and masks for compositing, followed by tons of effects--shadows, bevels, effects, etc.
In this day an age, a "general editing concepts" book that doesn't talk about a program is nearly worthless. It'd be about as useful as a computer book that wasn't tied to any operating system--you can only talk about "manipulating files" for so long before you need to ask "do I use `mv` or a mouse?!?!?" to get some actual work done. Same here--talking about hue and saturation is great, but you need to be in the editor of your choice, WITH the hue/saturation dialog open, to *really* see what's happening. And you're not going to find that dialog without a) trial and error or b) an appropriate book. And if your friend wanted trial and error, they wouldn't be asking for a book.
All that said, if your friend asked for a Photoshop book, buy them a damn Photoshop book. Preferably one for the version they have. Have a Photoshop-savvy friend come with you to help you pick what looks like a good one. There are millions, from basic stuff, to every-feature-Photoshop-has, to ones that just cover all kinds of crazy effects (the WOW! books.) Get something good, but not *too* thick that it will be intimidating. In fact, too-thick books are just hard to deal with, physically. 8.5x11", 1 inch think, should be about right.
Wow, great numbers! Sounds like 2006 will be the year of linux on the desktop!;-)
Re:Disappointed by Mac Mini as entertainment cente
on
Mac mini, Apple DVR?
·
· Score: 1
"Software -- By far the worst offender. CenterStage just plain didn't work with my ripped DVDs (a series of VIDEO_TS folders on a share)."
Check out MediaCentral. It'll play VIDEO_TS folders, though I haven't played with it enough to see if it works with (or can be tricked into working with--i.e., aliases?) files on a share. I've only had it for a couple weeks--hell, it's only been out a month and it's at 0.1--but it's already way better than the does-everything-and-will-be-great-someday CenterStage. It's great so far and I think it has a lot of potential. The Mini is not for everyone, but it's great for me--I don't have (or care much about) 5.1, I'm using a projector instead of a widescreen plasma, and my TiVo handles TV duties.
...I'm a huge fan of MediaCentral. It does just a few things and does them very well. Amazing that it's just a 0.1 release, unlike CenterStage, which--as neat as it will surely be, someday--has been in development since February and is currently at a semi-functional 0.4. It's also very simple to use. Key features: - plays movies - plays DVDs - plays DVDs ripped to a VIDEO_TS folder and the parent folder name is what shows up in the menu It also works with EyeTV products, but I don't have or care about that--being a happy DirecTiVo owner, I was just looking for something that does everything the TiVo doesn't. Works with some ATI remotes, according to the site, and it also works with my $30 Keyspan DMR remote control. Just set '*" to be 'quit' and 'stop' to be 'eject' (in addition to the regular keys--left, right, up, down, enter=middle, space=play/pause, escape=menu) and you're in business. Runs fine on my base (1.25 GHz, 256 MB) Mini.
The disclaimer is only to avoid confusion. The Mac was named after the Macintosh apple, "America's favorite apple."
On the other hand, who in the industry should we look to for originality--Microsoft with "Media Center"? Fucking Windows?!?!? "Windows" in a GUI were called "windows" long before MS came along and co-opted the word for their whole stupid OS.
Then again, Apple and MS have one product that infuriates me--both of them call their remote-control app "RemoteDesktop."
My friend had an ancient Compaq laptop (like the kind we used to sell at a place I used to work, so it was very recognizable and just screams OLD!!! to me) and I'd always do a double-take at the "Designed for Windows XP" sticker he put on it. ("Wait... Compaq is making laptops with trackballs again? Oh, right...") So a few months ago I pulled a "Pentium 4 HT" sticker off a machine at work (it was kinda coming off anyway) and stuck it neatly on my G3 iBook's wrist rest.
First it was just a joke, but now that Apple has made their announcement, I tell people it's a prototype.:-)
If playback on the Mac is good, and it's in the same room as the TV, all you'll need is a $30 (IIRC) Keyspan DMR remote, a longish video cable (how does the Mac connect to the TV?), and MediaCentral. MediaCentral is a new OS X media player app but it's awesome, easy to use, light on resources, and is great at playing back stored media. Runs great on a base Mini with 256 MB RAM.
Don't worry about MS. You can already find tons of used XBoxen (heh) on craigslist. Even here in Orlando I've seen a few in the last week for less than $100.
"Next January is the January that is coming up next, ie. January 2006."
NO! "Next" does NOT mean "the next one coming up." That's THIS January. "Next" january is the one AFTER that! Arrgh!
(No, I'm not really that mad. But this is the same discussion I have every so often with various people. The fact is, either is acceptable. It just depends what you are used to.)
I'm surprised that there's only a few comments so far and most of them say "Eh, just delete them." Isn't that what spammers say we should do about spam? "Eh, if you don't like it, just delete it." Yeah. Great idea. I don't get enough exercise deleting spams and configuring filters all day long, now I get to do it with my buddy list too. Fucking beautiful.
Barely. I said "Palm" but should have said "PDA." Cheaper than some, more expensive than others. At least in PDA land, you've got a zillion choices.
from dell.com/axim/ ; click on 'home and home office' Dell Axim X51v, $399 Intel® XScale at 624MHz 640x480 resolution Integrated 802.11b and Bluetooth 64MB SDRAM and 256MB Flash ROM Integrated CompactFlash Type II and Secure Digital / SDIO Now! / MMC card slots 3.5mm Headphone / Headset Jack for Headsets to support VoIP and voice recognition applications Built-in microphone and speaker
So: costs a bit more, slightly smaller screen, but smaller overall; more memory, more CPU, better expansion, plus mic and speaker *and* headset jack, presumably for Skype, which seems to be a popular topic in this thread. Of course, it runs Windows, which requires you to sell your soul, according to what I read here on Slashdot, so pick accordingly.:-) You can get PalmOS on a number of Sony CLIEs. Oops, wait, we're boycotting them this week, too. Never mind.
You're correct. Tablet PCs are basically equivalent to last years' laptop, plus handwriting recognition, plus Win XP Tablet edition, which is XP Pro plus the tablet features and minus nothing. If you swing out the keyboard and ignore the tablet features, it's a full laptop with a full version of Windows. Typical specs--1 GHz+, 1024x768, 512 MB, 40 GB--are closer to a laptop. This thing--220 MHz, 128 MB, no disk, less than 800x480--is closer to a PDA. Why they called it a "Tablet" is beyond me.
As I said elsewhere: this is not a tablet-PC, this is an internet-tablet... Just because it has the word "tablet" in it does not mean that it's a tablet-PC.
Which is annoying as fuck. Tablets have been around for, what, 3 years? They couldn't think of another name for this overblown PDA? (Like "Audrey"?) They're depending on confusion to generate interest: "Ooh, look, a tablet for 1/4 the price of other Tablet PCs! Oh, I see, it runs Linux! Wow, that M$ tax must really be something!"
That said, it looks cool. I'll be happy to buy one in 6 months when Tiger Direct is getting rid of the last of them for $100.
"how can they make something this sophisticated for that much money?"
Look closely at the specs--it's a glorified Palm, that's how. Not putting it down, but seriously--check'em out: 220 MHz, 128 MB, 65k color screen, less than 800x600... I mean, yeah, it looks nifty, but it's not like they're somehow selling a 1.5 GHz, 512 MB, 40 GB, 1024x768x16.7M tablet for 1/4 the going rate.
sounds more like a 3Com Audrey. And looks about as useful. Having used a Tablet PC and other small devices to surf wirelessly, I have to ask: am I the only one who needs a keyboard to enter URLs?
Snakes ruled. How else would I have learned what a rhombicuboctahedron was? Which led me to other shapes, including the granddaddy of them all: the rhombitruncatedicosododecahedron.. (Warning: audio.)
Pyramynx was also fun and much easier to solve. I could never wrap my head around the cube.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would the reviewer hope this is "Apple's software equivalent of the G4 Cube"? Why not hope it gets *better*?
That said, it's quite different from the Cube. The Cube was overpriced to begin with ($200 *more* than a comparably-specced, and expandable, G4 tower) and had no hope for success other than the price to be dropped. Software, on the other hand, can be improved and expanded in many directions. If Aperture is as bad as he says (and I'm sure for many it isn't) it can be improved. The Cube, on the other hand, had nothing to offer except "Ooh! Pretty! Small!" and unless Apple would have pushed it in the home-media-hub direction, there's not much that could have been done with a product like that.
For those who are wondering "How is this different from iPhoto, Photoshop, Picassa, etc.?" check out these 5 videos from Apple.
One way they do it is, of course, by increasing security. And the other way -- by having employees (mostly managers) to pay for stolen items out of their own pay checks (so they do at Fry's -- I don't know about other stores).
Um, isn't that illegal? When I worked in retail, I asked about that--not about missing product, but if I'd be liable if my register came up short. The answer I got was no, it is illegal to force an employee to give the company money when his register comes up short. I never pursued it and I could be wrong, but it makes sense for several reasons:
- the manager is the one who counts. who's to say *he* won't take some money and make the employee cover the shortage?
- if employees had to pay when they were short, then the opposite should be also--that an employee gets to keep the extra money if he's over. this would encourage employees to short-change customers.
Not prophet... PROFIT! He's probably got more money than you, me, and 99% of the people on this board... *and* having a great time doing it.
You were saying?
FYI, in case you were being literal:
to help an image that is a little dark or dull, try one or both of these things:
control/command-L to bring up levels, then move the middle slider left to lighten overall but not wash out highlights. bring the left slider a bit to the right to punch up the darks.
control/command-M to bring up curves. Move the cursor to the top-right corner of the grid. now come in and down one segment, so you're in the lower-left corner of the top-right square. grab the line and drag it a bit up and to the left. now go to the bottom left corner, and up and over one segment (to the top-right corner of the lower-left square) and drag that a bit down and to the right. Now the diagonal line should look like a very gentle S-curve. That move will "suck the grey" right out of the image and really helps the images that come out of certain digital cameras.
2007 will be the year of Linux on the Desktop! :-)
I think IM clients are like cars: there's enough going on that no single one will ever be perfect for everyone. I use chat pretty lightly and iChat suits my needs just fine. I'm totally happy with it and I think it does a lot of nice things, not the least of which is awesome quality video conferencing (though audio quality, especially with an iSight, leaves something to be desired.)
However, many Mac message boards have people talking about how weak iChat is and the first thing they do on a Mac is install Adium or Fire or something. Well, I was recently at a job where iChat wasn't installed, so I tried a few of those, and I couldn't stand any of them.
That said, I think a lot can be done on the server side--if you have friends on different networks, you shouldn't *need* to have one chat clients installed for each of them--AIM, MSN, etc. I figure there's probably a 50-50 chance that there will someday be One Protocol to Rule Them All--I don't think they gain anything by not sharing, but that never stopped companies from being selfish before. It's no longer on their front page, but openh323.org used to have a great quote along the lines of "let's quit worrying about how to format the bits on the wire and solve some *interesting* problems."
You might find some vaguely useful thin books, but a "thick" book? No fucking way. You CAN NOT talk about image editing in detail without getting application-specific. Just like programming: what's the thickest "how to program" book you've ever seen that didn't talk about one language? You can only get so far with generic statements like "Make two arrays, then loop through one, and for each value, loop through all the values in the other array and see if any match."
Having used Photoshop for a few years (at the time) it was very easy for me to pick up The Gimp. A friend asked me some pretty hard questions once and I was able to do everything I needed with just a bit of poking. "Vendor lock-in" is not a big problem here. Yes, everything is slightly different, but the concepts are the same. A good Photoshop book *is* a good generic text on image editing because a) there are only so many tasks and b) everyone who makes "an image editing program" is going to more or less do things the Photoshop way, anyway. (For example, my friend was trying to select a weird thing, and I showed him how it was easier to select the things he didn't want and then invert the selection. Worked in PS, worked in the Gimp.) Yes, a Photoshop book will have a section on Photoshop's "healing brush" and no, the Gimp doesn't have it, but the sections on how to adjust color, do blurs, crop, resize, etc., will apply anywhere.
You might hit the used book stores and buy a book that was written for Photoshop 3 or 4--that'll cover all the bases but won't go into a ton of detail on the millions of new features that have been added since. Hell, the manual that came with Photoshop 2.5 will cover all the true image editing concepts, at least as far as photography goes--saturation, levels, etc. Newer versions added layers and masks for compositing, followed by tons of effects--shadows, bevels, effects, etc.
In this day an age, a "general editing concepts" book that doesn't talk about a program is nearly worthless. It'd be about as useful as a computer book that wasn't tied to any operating system--you can only talk about "manipulating files" for so long before you need to ask "do I use `mv` or a mouse?!?!?" to get some actual work done. Same here--talking about hue and saturation is great, but you need to be in the editor of your choice, WITH the hue/saturation dialog open, to *really* see what's happening. And you're not going to find that dialog without a) trial and error or b) an appropriate book. And if your friend wanted trial and error, they wouldn't be asking for a book.
All that said, if your friend asked for a Photoshop book, buy them a damn Photoshop book. Preferably one for the version they have. Have a Photoshop-savvy friend come with you to help you pick what looks like a good one. There are millions, from basic stuff, to every-feature-Photoshop-has, to ones that just cover all kinds of crazy effects (the WOW! books.) Get something good, but not *too* thick that it will be intimidating. In fact, too-thick books are just hard to deal with, physically. 8.5x11", 1 inch think, should be about right.
Wow, great numbers! Sounds like 2006 will be the year of linux on the desktop! ;-)
"Software -- By far the worst offender. CenterStage just plain didn't work with my ripped DVDs (a series of VIDEO_TS folders on a share)."
Check out MediaCentral. It'll play VIDEO_TS folders, though I haven't played with it enough to see if it works with (or can be tricked into working with--i.e., aliases?) files on a share. I've only had it for a couple weeks--hell, it's only been out a month and it's at 0.1--but it's already way better than the does-everything-and-will-be-great-someday CenterStage. It's great so far and I think it has a lot of potential. The Mini is not for everyone, but it's great for me--I don't have (or care much about) 5.1, I'm using a projector instead of a widescreen plasma, and my TiVo handles TV duties.
...I'm a huge fan of MediaCentral. It does just a few things and does them very well. Amazing that it's just a 0.1 release, unlike CenterStage, which--as neat as it will surely be, someday--has been in development since February and is currently at a semi-functional 0.4. It's also very simple to use. Key features:
- plays movies
- plays DVDs
- plays DVDs ripped to a VIDEO_TS folder and the parent folder name is what shows up in the menu
It also works with EyeTV products, but I don't have or care about that--being a happy DirecTiVo owner, I was just looking for something that does everything the TiVo doesn't. Works with some ATI remotes, according to the site, and it also works with my $30 Keyspan DMR remote control. Just set '*" to be 'quit' and 'stop' to be 'eject' (in addition to the regular keys--left, right, up, down, enter=middle, space=play/pause, escape=menu) and you're in business. Runs fine on my base (1.25 GHz, 256 MB) Mini.
The disclaimer is only to avoid confusion. The Mac was named after the Macintosh apple, "America's favorite apple."
On the other hand, who in the industry should we look to for originality--Microsoft with "Media Center"? Fucking Windows?!?!? "Windows" in a GUI were called "windows" long before MS came along and co-opted the word for their whole stupid OS.
Then again, Apple and MS have one product that infuriates me--both of them call their remote-control app "Remote Desktop."
My friend had an ancient Compaq laptop (like the kind we used to sell at a place I used to work, so it was very recognizable and just screams OLD!!! to me) and I'd always do a double-take at the "Designed for Windows XP" sticker he put on it. ("Wait... Compaq is making laptops with trackballs again? Oh, right...") So a few months ago I pulled a "Pentium 4 HT" sticker off a machine at work (it was kinda coming off anyway) and stuck it neatly on my G3 iBook's wrist rest.
:-)
First it was just a joke, but now that Apple has made their announcement, I tell people it's a prototype.
If playback on the Mac is good, and it's in the same room as the TV, all you'll need is a $30 (IIRC) Keyspan DMR remote, a longish video cable (how does the Mac connect to the TV?), and MediaCentral. MediaCentral is a new OS X media player app but it's awesome, easy to use, light on resources, and is great at playing back stored media. Runs great on a base Mini with 256 MB RAM.
Don't worry about MS. You can already find tons of used XBoxen (heh) on craigslist. Even here in Orlando I've seen a few in the last week for less than $100.
"you can detect lies with an MRI machine, for example. How you would integrate that into an airport, I don't know."
Easy. Just show up 2 days early for domestic flights, 4 days for international.
Digital sales go from 0% to 2.1% to 4.9% in about 2 years... yup, it's time to kill this golden goose.
"Next January is the January that is coming up next, ie. January 2006."
NO! "Next" does NOT mean "the next one coming up." That's THIS January. "Next" january is the one AFTER that! Arrgh!
(No, I'm not really that mad. But this is the same discussion I have every so often with various people. The fact is, either is acceptable. It just depends what you are used to.)
I'm surprised that there's only a few comments so far and most of them say "Eh, just delete them." Isn't that what spammers say we should do about spam? "Eh, if you don't like it, just delete it." Yeah. Great idea. I don't get enough exercise deleting spams and configuring filters all day long, now I get to do it with my buddy list too. Fucking beautiful.
Barely. I said "Palm" but should have said "PDA." Cheaper than some, more expensive than others. At least in PDA land, you've got a zillion choices.
:-) You can get PalmOS on a number of Sony CLIEs. Oops, wait, we're boycotting them this week, too. Never mind.
from dell.com/axim/ ; click on 'home and home office'
Dell Axim X51v, $399
Intel® XScale at 624MHz
640x480 resolution
Integrated 802.11b and Bluetooth
64MB SDRAM and 256MB Flash ROM
Integrated CompactFlash Type II and Secure Digital / SDIO Now! / MMC card slots
3.5mm Headphone / Headset Jack for Headsets to support VoIP and voice recognition applications
Built-in microphone and speaker
So: costs a bit more, slightly smaller screen, but smaller overall; more memory, more CPU, better expansion, plus mic and speaker *and* headset jack, presumably for Skype, which seems to be a popular topic in this thread. Of course, it runs Windows, which requires you to sell your soul, according to what I read here on Slashdot, so pick accordingly.
You're correct. Tablet PCs are basically equivalent to last years' laptop, plus handwriting recognition, plus Win XP Tablet edition, which is XP Pro plus the tablet features and minus nothing. If you swing out the keyboard and ignore the tablet features, it's a full laptop with a full version of Windows. Typical specs--1 GHz+, 1024x768, 512 MB, 40 GB--are closer to a laptop. This thing--220 MHz, 128 MB, no disk, less than 800x480--is closer to a PDA. Why they called it a "Tablet" is beyond me.
As I said elsewhere: this is not a tablet-PC, this is an internet-tablet... Just because it has the word "tablet" in it does not mean that it's a tablet-PC.
Which is annoying as fuck. Tablets have been around for, what, 3 years? They couldn't think of another name for this overblown PDA? (Like "Audrey"?) They're depending on confusion to generate interest: "Ooh, look, a tablet for 1/4 the price of other Tablet PCs! Oh, I see, it runs Linux! Wow, that M$ tax must really be something!"
That said, it looks cool. I'll be happy to buy one in 6 months when Tiger Direct is getting rid of the last of them for $100.
"how can they make something this sophisticated for that much money?"
Look closely at the specs--it's a glorified Palm, that's how. Not putting it down, but seriously--check'em out: 220 MHz, 128 MB, 65k color screen, less than 800x600... I mean, yeah, it looks nifty, but it's not like they're somehow selling a 1.5 GHz, 512 MB, 40 GB, 1024x768x16.7M tablet for 1/4 the going rate.
sounds more like a 3Com Audrey. And looks about as useful. Having used a Tablet PC and other small devices to surf wirelessly, I have to ask: am I the only one who needs a keyboard to enter URLs?
Snakes ruled. How else would I have learned what a rhombicuboctahedron was? Which led me to other shapes, including the granddaddy of them all: the rhombitruncatedicosododecahedron.. (Warning: audio.)
Pyramynx was also fun and much easier to solve. I could never wrap my head around the cube.