Several articles on this story have pointed out "In addition, the company will continue to offer Windows XP Starter Edition in emerging markets where it is currently available for the rapidly growing class of hardware-constrained ultra-low cost PCs until June 30, 2010." So it looks like third world countries will be able to buy for an additional 2 years.
* nedit for syntax highlighting (yeah, it requires LessTif or OpenMotif, still lighter than GTK) * gcc is my compiler * Xaw3D is my gui widget library (yeah, I know we know have FTLK, GTK, etc...)
I, for one, am very happy Apple chose not to compete with Parallels / VMware. Apple and MS have already stomped on the toes of too many app developers in the past.
I would love to see an option on those sites to delete my personal data. Then again, they could just use that button to trigger some sort of permanent data rentention, because, after all, only bad people want privacy.
In 1988 or 1989 I was able to try a Macintosh II (big desktop form factor with about 6 expansion slots). Thing had a pretty serious graphics card driving a 17" monitor at full color (or what looked like full color, it certainly was more than 256) and had a flatbed scanner connected to its SCSI port. This was way above and beyond any of the newer PCs I had used at that time. And, IIRC, the Mac II came out in 1987, although I don't know what graphic card options were available for it at release. Oh, those were the good old days... a 17" monitor was generally a huge cube of a beast, those old Macs ran Aldus PageMaker and Aldus Digital Darkroom. I didn't actually even hear of Photoshop until about 1993.
> The screen died after two months. > The backlight wouldn't turn on anymore.
What about the warranty? Didn't Apple honor it? You should have at least had Apple fix the iPod under warranty so you could sell it on eBay. The semi-recent iPod Video models fetch a good amount of money on eBay!
Heck, I'll take your dead iPod if you don't want it.
From what I understand, and I may be very wrong, the MOS 6502 CPU was very similar to the Motorla 6800 (the 6800, NOT the 68000), it was also 1/6 the price of 6800 or the Intel 8080. I think I also read that MOS was selling these CPUs out of a punch bowl at some electronics conference. Woz was estatic, bought one or two, and started to develop a very simple computer around it (the original Apple I). There was no evaulation board from MOS, there was no "chipset", it was just a simple CPU that was easy to understand and easy to implement.
As far as outside help, I know Woz had a friend design the switching power supply (a first for a home/hobbyist computer... most used linear power supplies). I hadn't heard the story about the RF adapter though.
As for BASIC, Woz created an integer basic for the Apple II and put it in ROM. Apple later had Microsoft create an enhanced BASIC for the Apple II. Back in those days, most of MS's business came from porting to BASIC to various platforms.
I want to see somebody make a USB2 TV tuner dongle for the Apple TV, or, failing that, an entire mini-DVR that provides its video to the Apple TV over a USB2 mass storage interface.
Apple TV is neat and all, but I still want to record most of my shows myself.
To illustrate my point: when the studios started selling TV series episodes on DVD, I didn't throw out my VCR and Tivo! I do continue to buy new movies and TV series on DVD, but I also still do a lot of recording of my own. One of my TVs has a built-in VCR that still gets a lot of use, as does my Tivo, especially for timeshifting 1 - 48 hours until I have time to watch my favorite shows... many of which I enjoy, but wouldn't want to buy on a commerical full season DVD.
Does that make any sense? Or am I the only one who still records?
Here, Apple is only supporting formats THEY own, so they can spend the money on the hardware. Hacking it only drives up their market share, and to the complaint that people are watching all these unlicensed formats on it Apple can say "Hey, we didn't do it." But you still bought a box from them.
According to the specs, the Apple TV supports AAC, MP3, AIFF, Apple Lossless, WAV, MPEG-4, H.264, JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG.
The only format Apple owns is Apple Lossless audio. The others are industry standards. AAC, Advanced Audio Coding, is part of the MPEG-4 specfication although I belive it doesn't need to be licensed (unlike MP3 which requires a per-machine license). MPEG-4 (aka MPEG-4 part 2) and H.264 (aka AVC: Advanced Video Coding aka MPEG-4 part 10) also require licenses.
I'm not sure if JPEG requires a license, probably depends on the lawsuit of the day.
In many (most? all?) cases, Microsoft is providing university student Windows Live Mail hosing *For Free*. Outsourcing email to Microsoft is a no-brainer to the bean counters and overworked IT departments. Let MS take over the email hosting to free up university resources. Also, having no POP or IMAP support greatly reduces the number of tech support calls to the campus IT helpdesk. "Install IE7, go to the webmail site" vs "here's how to configure eudora/outlook/mail.app/etc for your specific OS version".
My former university moved all 20,000+ student email accounts to Windows Live Mail as well. The reason? Microsoft offered *free* email and web hosting. Everything from the hosting to the migration to advertising the "great new features" of Windows Live Mail across campus were done at Microsoft's expense. There were lots of complaints, but in the end our IT department was able to free up resources (both servers and employees) thanks to Microsoft's new found generosity. How long this will continue, and how long it will remain free, is yet to be seen. For now it seems to be well supported by MS ads and the whole MS Live marketing campaign.
Didn't Apple used to give deep discounts to schools to get the kids hooked to become paying users later in life?
Apple's education discounts are generally about 30% off list price, sometimes lower for certain promotions or bulk discounts. I remember Apple selling a "six pack" of Macintosh Classic computers for something like $600 each, when the regular retail list price was $999 (or about $799 when Wal-Mart was selling them just before the Classic II came out). The deepest education discount I've ever seen was for the Macintosh LC, LC II, LC III, and LC 475 aka Quadra 605 machines from Apple's low-cost-color line. You've probably seen them, very slim machines, about 2 inches tall, usually with a matching low-profile 12" - 15" monitor sitting on top. The original LC was list price for about $2300 without montior, the education price was closer to $1000. By the time the LC 475 came out the retail list price was $900, education price was $800. Too bad most schools spent their budgets buying the original LCs, as the LC 475 was a really good deal with its 25/50 MHz 68040 CPU and fairly fast graphics (for 1993).
I had to laugh when I heard about the whole "midnight release" thing. I mean, I can sort of see the excitement of getting the hottest new console or game like that, but even if Vista were every bit as good as it's cracked up to be, it's still just an operating system.
You haven't been to a CompUSA or an Apple Store when an update to Mac OS was about to be released, have you? There was even a line for Mac OS 8.5 at CompUSA in 1998! The longest lines I ever saw were for Mac OS X 10.3 (and rightfully so, IMHO).
1) Mac Office 2008 will most likely match or even exceed Win Word/Excel/PowerPoint 2007. From the screenshots I saw from the Macworld Expo, it seems that the Mac version has both a traditional menu bar *and* a Mac-styled "ribbon" tabbed tool bar. For some users, the combination of UI elements will be a plus over Win Office 2007. But that's where it ends. Mac Office does not have Access, Visio, or a fully-featured Outlook application. These are major shortcomings.
2) I would like to see someone add on these features to VLC or MPlayer so Mac/Linux/BSD users can enjoy these features too. And being based on VLC, there would be even more codecs supported. A man can dream. For now there are some Front Row bolt-ons from El Gato to add DVR features and I've seen some other Quicktime layer & Frontrow application plugins that are slowly adding features. Maybe Apple will get back to its multimedia roots and give us an awesome Front Row 2.0 in the near future. A man can dream
3) MS will own the Gaming world for many years to come. I don't see this changing anytime soon unless more gaming studios move to OpenGL, which just isn't going to happen anytime soon.
4) Windows Enterprise integration is very lacking in the Mac world, even with the awesome DAVE package. There are some open source packages to improve some of these limitiations, but they're still huge stumbling points. I too wish Apple would throw a small group of talented enterprise programming gurus after this problem. Parallels + Windows + Outlook running on top of Mac OS X is NOT the answer.
I certainly see the value in web-based "Web 2.0" AJAX" applications. I use gmail on a daily basis and I've tinkered with the online office suites. But there is just no way a web-based application is going to be able to deliver the power needed to video editing, 3D game playing, or even serious photo manipulation. An online version of Photoshop might be interesting, but imagine the back-end server horsepower required to apply filters to 12+ Mpixel images to hundreds of users at the same time, wowzers!
I think there will be a split in the computer world.... small, dirt-cheap devices with integrated graphics running lots of web-based applications.... and traditional motherboard+video card+fast local storage PC for more CPU/Graphics intensive applications.
Side note: if MS sees the future as web-based applications, then why does Vista prefer to have a DX10 graphics card?? Why didn't they start with XP and then slim it down into more of a web-deliverable package? Maybe move the traditional XP desktop & taskbar into an AJAX platform, make the whole desktop a single fullscreen IE7 window so it could be accessed literally anywhere. I think MS is facing the same split I mentioned above.
My former dial-up ISP of many years ran the entire shop (authentication, proxy, web, email, billing, etc) on a single Sun SPARCstation 5. IIRC, their website bragged for many years that said machine featured a pair of 2 GB drives!
When most everyone else was busy playing with their PS2 and XBOX systems, my buddies and I discovered River City Ransom for the NES. This was several years before the game was re-announced and re-released for the GBA. We must have spent entire man-weeks in that game! Just because you are tired of the old games, doesn't mean that other people won't find them a lot of fun.
Over the years I have bought an internal video cable, hinge parts, rubber feet, backlight inverter, and a DC-DC power converter board, for about 5 different out-of-warranty PowerBook models. I've been successful at buying parts from Apple dealers, even Best Buy. Watch out, though, some dealers add a huge mark-up to parts and others will try to sell you on overnight shipping for a part that isn't really that crucial. Some dealers have even printed out portions of the official repair manuals (although I found most of the data I needed online, hehe). Some dealers will only sell you the parts after you can verbally prove that you're not going to destroy your Macintosh in the process. YMMV. There are several online Apple Parts dealers, some specialize in used or cheaper-than-Apple replacement parts.
Slashdot Mirror
Several articles on this story have pointed out "In addition, the company will continue to offer Windows XP Starter Edition in emerging markets where it is currently available for the rapidly growing class of hardware-constrained ultra-low cost PCs until June 30, 2010." So it looks like third world countries will be able to buy for an additional 2 years.
* nedit for syntax highlighting (yeah, it requires LessTif or OpenMotif, still lighter than GTK)
* gcc is my compiler
* Xaw3D is my gui widget library (yeah, I know we know have FTLK, GTK, etc...)
>> Not an Apple-branded virtualisation solution?
I, for one, am very happy Apple chose not to compete with Parallels / VMware. Apple and MS have already stomped on the toes of too many app developers in the past.
I would love to see an option on those sites to delete my personal data. Then again, they could just use that button to trigger some sort of permanent data rentention, because, after all, only bad people want privacy.
Good enough for ramdom google usage, but Google still has your IP address and your search habits with which to track you.
I think the answer can be found by looking at Adobe's 3 beautiful office towers in San Jose, California...4 /Adobe_HQ.jpg
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/6/6
In 1988 or 1989 I was able to try a Macintosh II (big desktop form factor with about 6 expansion slots). Thing had a pretty serious graphics card driving a 17" monitor at full color (or what looked like full color, it certainly was more than 256) and had a flatbed scanner connected to its SCSI port. This was way above and beyond any of the newer PCs I had used at that time. And, IIRC, the Mac II came out in 1987, although I don't know what graphic card options were available for it at release. Oh, those were the good old days... a 17" monitor was generally a huge cube of a beast, those old Macs ran Aldus PageMaker and Aldus Digital Darkroom. I didn't actually even hear of Photoshop until about 1993.
So you're the one who bought the Zune!
> The screen died after two months.
> The backlight wouldn't turn on anymore.
What about the warranty? Didn't Apple honor it? You should have at least had Apple fix the iPod under warranty so you could sell it on eBay. The semi-recent iPod Video models fetch a good amount of money on eBay!
Heck, I'll take your dead iPod if you don't want it.
From what I understand, and I may be very wrong, the MOS 6502 CPU was very similar to the Motorla 6800 (the 6800, NOT the 68000), it was also 1/6 the price of 6800 or the Intel 8080. I think I also read that MOS was selling these CPUs out of a punch bowl at some electronics conference. Woz was estatic, bought one or two, and started to develop a very simple computer around it (the original Apple I). There was no evaulation board from MOS, there was no "chipset", it was just a simple CPU that was easy to understand and easy to implement.
As far as outside help, I know Woz had a friend design the switching power supply (a first for a home/hobbyist computer... most used linear power supplies). I hadn't heard the story about the RF adapter though.
As for BASIC, Woz created an integer basic for the Apple II and put it in ROM. Apple later had Microsoft create an enhanced BASIC for the Apple II. Back in those days, most of MS's business came from porting to BASIC to various platforms.
I want to see somebody make a USB2 TV tuner dongle for the Apple TV, or, failing that, an entire mini-DVR that provides its video to the Apple TV over a USB2 mass storage interface.
Apple TV is neat and all, but I still want to record most of my shows myself.
To illustrate my point: when the studios started selling TV series episodes on DVD, I didn't throw out my VCR and Tivo! I do continue to buy new movies and TV series on DVD, but I also still do a lot of recording of my own. One of my TVs has a built-in VCR that still gets a lot of use, as does my Tivo, especially for timeshifting 1 - 48 hours until I have time to watch my favorite shows... many of which I enjoy, but wouldn't want to buy on a commerical full season DVD.
Does that make any sense? Or am I the only one who still records?
Here, Apple is only supporting formats THEY own, so they can spend the money on the hardware. Hacking it only drives up their market share, and to the complaint that people are watching all these unlicensed formats on it Apple can say "Hey, we didn't do it." But you still bought a box from them.
According to the specs, the Apple TV supports AAC, MP3, AIFF, Apple Lossless, WAV, MPEG-4, H.264, JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG.
The only format Apple owns is Apple Lossless audio. The others are industry standards. AAC, Advanced Audio Coding, is part of the MPEG-4 specfication although I belive it doesn't need to be licensed (unlike MP3 which requires a per-machine license). MPEG-4 (aka MPEG-4 part 2) and H.264 (aka AVC: Advanced Video Coding aka MPEG-4 part 10) also require licenses.
I'm not sure if JPEG requires a license, probably depends on the lawsuit of the day.
In many (most? all?) cases, Microsoft is providing university student Windows Live Mail hosing *For Free*. Outsourcing email to Microsoft is a no-brainer to the bean counters and overworked IT departments. Let MS take over the email hosting to free up university resources. Also, having no POP or IMAP support greatly reduces the number of tech support calls to the campus IT helpdesk. "Install IE7, go to the webmail site" vs "here's how to configure eudora/outlook/mail.app/etc for your specific OS version".
My former university moved all 20,000+ student email accounts to Windows Live Mail as well. The reason? Microsoft offered *free* email and web hosting. Everything from the hosting to the migration to advertising the "great new features" of Windows Live Mail across campus were done at Microsoft's expense. There were lots of complaints, but in the end our IT department was able to free up resources (both servers and employees) thanks to Microsoft's new found generosity. How long this will continue, and how long it will remain free, is yet to be seen. For now it seems to be well supported by MS ads and the whole MS Live marketing campaign.
Didn't Apple used to give deep discounts to schools to get the kids hooked to become paying users later in life?
Apple's education discounts are generally about 30% off list price, sometimes lower for certain promotions or bulk discounts. I remember Apple selling a "six pack" of Macintosh Classic computers for something like $600 each, when the regular retail list price was $999 (or about $799 when Wal-Mart was selling them just before the Classic II came out). The deepest education discount I've ever seen was for the Macintosh LC, LC II, LC III, and LC 475 aka Quadra 605 machines from Apple's low-cost-color line. You've probably seen them, very slim machines, about 2 inches tall, usually with a matching low-profile 12" - 15" monitor sitting on top. The original LC was list price for about $2300 without montior, the education price was closer to $1000. By the time the LC 475 came out the retail list price was $900, education price was $800. Too bad most schools spent their budgets buying the original LCs, as the LC 475 was a really good deal with its 25/50 MHz 68040 CPU and fairly fast graphics (for 1993).
I had to laugh when I heard about the whole "midnight release" thing. I mean, I can sort of see the excitement of getting the hottest new console or game like that, but even if Vista were every bit as good as it's cracked up to be, it's still just an operating system.
You haven't been to a CompUSA or an Apple Store when an update to Mac OS was about to be released, have you? There was even a line for Mac OS 8.5 at CompUSA in 1998! The longest lines I ever saw were for Mac OS X 10.3 (and rightfully so, IMHO).
1) Mac Office 2008 will most likely match or even exceed Win Word/Excel/PowerPoint 2007. From the screenshots I saw from the Macworld Expo, it seems that the Mac version has both a traditional menu bar *and* a Mac-styled "ribbon" tabbed tool bar. For some users, the combination of UI elements will be a plus over Win Office 2007. But that's where it ends. Mac Office does not have Access, Visio, or a fully-featured Outlook application. These are major shortcomings.
2) I would like to see someone add on these features to VLC or MPlayer so Mac/Linux/BSD users can enjoy these features too. And being based on VLC, there would be even more codecs supported. A man can dream. For now there are some Front Row bolt-ons from El Gato to add DVR features and I've seen some other Quicktime layer & Frontrow application plugins that are slowly adding features. Maybe Apple will get back to its multimedia roots and give us an awesome Front Row 2.0 in the near future. A man can dream
3) MS will own the Gaming world for many years to come. I don't see this changing anytime soon unless more gaming studios move to OpenGL, which just isn't going to happen anytime soon.
4) Windows Enterprise integration is very lacking in the Mac world, even with the awesome DAVE package. There are some open source packages to improve some of these limitiations, but they're still huge stumbling points. I too wish Apple would throw a small group of talented enterprise programming gurus after this problem. Parallels + Windows + Outlook running on top of Mac OS X is NOT the answer.
I certainly see the value in web-based "Web 2.0" AJAX" applications. I use gmail on a daily basis and I've tinkered with the online office suites. But there is just no way a web-based application is going to be able to deliver the power needed to video editing, 3D game playing, or even serious photo manipulation. An online version of Photoshop might be interesting, but imagine the back-end server horsepower required to apply filters to 12+ Mpixel images to hundreds of users at the same time, wowzers!
I think there will be a split in the computer world.... small, dirt-cheap devices with integrated graphics running lots of web-based applications.... and traditional motherboard+video card+fast local storage PC for more CPU/Graphics intensive applications.
Side note: if MS sees the future as web-based applications, then why does Vista prefer to have a DX10 graphics card?? Why didn't they start with XP and then slim it down into more of a web-deliverable package? Maybe move the traditional XP desktop & taskbar into an AJAX platform, make the whole desktop a single fullscreen IE7 window so it could be accessed literally anywhere. I think MS is facing the same split I mentioned above.
I was at my local Wal*Mart last night around midnight and I didn't see anyone waiting for the electronics department to cart out the Vista display.
My deadman's switch is programmed to create a series of new deadmen's switches, each more complex than the last.
My former dial-up ISP of many years ran the entire shop (authentication, proxy, web, email, billing, etc) on a single Sun SPARCstation 5. IIRC, their website bragged for many years that said machine featured a pair of 2 GB drives!
Are shift keys optional on the Mac? I'm just wondering after seeing replies to the parent.
Like two button mice, shift keys are available to Mac users, but most haven't figured them out.
I use iChat because the video quality is beautiful even with home-grade DSL.
When most everyone else was busy playing with their PS2 and XBOX systems, my buddies and I discovered River City Ransom for the NES. This was several years before the game was re-announced and re-released for the GBA. We must have spent entire man-weeks in that game! Just because you are tired of the old games, doesn't mean that other people won't find them a lot of fun.
Over the years I have bought an internal video cable, hinge parts, rubber feet, backlight inverter, and a DC-DC power converter board, for about 5 different out-of-warranty PowerBook models. I've been successful at buying parts from Apple dealers, even Best Buy. Watch out, though, some dealers add a huge mark-up to parts and others will try to sell you on overnight shipping for a part that isn't really that crucial. Some dealers have even printed out portions of the official repair manuals (although I found most of the data I needed online, hehe). Some dealers will only sell you the parts after you can verbally prove that you're not going to destroy your Macintosh in the process. YMMV. There are several online Apple Parts dealers, some specialize in used or cheaper-than-Apple replacement parts.