I don't understand the point of this "expose" thing. Just hit the "show desktop" icon on Win98/2000/XP and you get what you need. If you want one particular app, just click it's icon in the taskbar.
No need for fancy eye-candy to achieve the same effect.
You've never tried it, have you?
Exposé is "undoable" and it enables really fancy drag-n-drop. Hit F11, grab hold of the file you want to drag, hit F11 again and drop it where you wanted it. Granted, the first couple of times it feels kind of wow-this-is-cool-but-sooo-useless, but after a while it starts getting useful. No more rearranging of windows just so you can drag-n-drop icons between them.
The fancy eye-candy window sliding is there to let the user follow the windows. If the windows were just snapped into a randomized order, it would take ages to find the right one.
The fact that the Mac is not a competitive gaming platform is not a bad thing. On the contrary; only the very best games are ported to the Mac, and when they arrive, 6-18 months after the PC version, they are largely bug-free too. Bottom line: the PC crowd are very good beta testers, weeding out the bad games and the bad bugs.
A good game is just as good tomorrow as it was yesterday. Write down your personal top-ten list of the all-time best games, and chances are seven of those games have been released for the Mac. Mine is: Tetris, Pirates, StarFlight, Civilization, Descent, Quake, Carmageddon, WarCraft, Halflife and Halo. (Of these, only Halflife is not available on the Mac.)
I play computer games to relax and get my thoughts off the daily grind, much like others watch TV and still others go to the gym. I spend around 2-6 hours a week on computer gaming. I have no reason at all to complain about the games available to me. The only people who complain about the state of gaming on the Mac are the 0-day dudes, and I think it's mostly because they want to induce envy in their (online) friends. You know who you are, and you're not even close to the middle of the Gauss curve.
Streaming itunes wirelessly is nice but you still need to go back to your computer to change a song. I would not recommend this for home use unless your ok with going back computer every time to change a song.
Breaking news! Couch potato advocates not using audio equipment which require physical interaction -- film at eleven!
So... what's your point, exactly? Lots of people still listen to one-hour CDs, for example, which require you to fall off the couch and crawl over to your stereo almost hourly. To many people, it's not proper listening to music unless you can choose between the albums on the shelf, look at the cover pictures, read the insert text, think about the songs.
Having my MP3 player show the cover art for the currently playing song is immensely satisfying, for some reason. Maybe because listening to music is such an aural experience that a related picture brings forward completely different thoughts and memories. It's almost the same as sitting and picking CD cases from the shelf... almost, but not entirely. (This is actually one of the few things that the RIAA could use, but haven't been able to formulate into propaganda yet. Luckily.)
It's another thing completely if you don't care about what's playing next. But then you're probably not keen at choosing between albums and songs, either.
There are many examples of standalone "pull" stereo components on the market right now. But what I've been missing all the time (since iTunes came out) is a "push" component that would let you control the audio stream while sitting at the computer, and I'm apparently not the only one. AirTunes seems to be the solution. It's wireless. It's simple. It's brilliant. So f-cking what if I have to use my computer to select what music I want to hear? My computer is my sound source these days!
And rest assured, within four months everyone and their little dog will have brought AirTunes clones to the market -- with remotes and whatnots.
I clicked on the installer file, and to my horror in 10 seconds the attachment had wiped my entire Home folder!
To summarize: trojans seem to be going strong on Mac OS X, presumably because viruses don't bite. And damage is limited to the files you can access anyway.
Let's find someone stupid enough to cheaply write a brand new program (but not too stupid of course, we don't want badly designed and buggy code now, do we?).
Then we take a not too expensive PC and stick a couple of USB expansion cards (not too expensive either) in it and hope it doesn't get unstable -- which isn't a problem really; seeing that we have a single point of failure here, if the system fails we know WHERE it failed, right?
Then we pull USB cables criss-cross over the whole room up to the maximum USB cable length of 5 meters. Then we solder ten push buttons and pull ten twisted-pair wires back to the central CeePeeYou, and plug them in somewhere -- determining the exact details are left as an exercise for the reader. (Hint: both the parallel port and the joystick port can detect electric potential.)
Now the only thing left to do is fire this system up and try to keep the supervision to a minimum for three months of constant use. QED.
Oh, by the way, I just applied for the patent, so that'll be $10k up front, thank you. Per listening station.
There's a document named Latex for Word Processor Users which I found incredibly helpful when I picked up LaTeX after a few years slack. It's structured according to the menus in a most word processors, which makes it easy to find the information you're looking for.
As others have already pointed out, "Project Gutenberg" is trademarked (at least in the US).
It's unlikely that anyone would start a business like PG2 without first establishing a licensing plan with PG, unless they are situated far off-shore or have less than three braincells.
She doesn't use her PC for anything more than occasional emails and online purchases and her cell phone has pretty much made her landline obsolete. She emails me asking if there is a handheld that could replace these devices. I don't own one, don't need one (my SE616 and Powerbook is plenty), and really never bothered to research one. A quick search for anything decent reveals prices close to, or over, a low end notebook. As for access, unless she searches for open wifi points, I can't imagine mobile service being anymore competitive than a cable/DSL line coming into a house.
I think a notebook is the right choice here, for many many reasons:
As you said, a high-end PDA is more expensive than a low-end notebook.
Text entry is a major pain when using a PDA. Her e-mails will become extremely terse. Unless you splurge another $100 on an external keyboard, which will probably not be as good as a notebook keyboard anyway.
The second big problem with PDAs is the small screen size. Even if you manage to write fast enough to write a longer document, it's very hard to get a proper overview of the document. Any e-mails that are not terse will get badly fragmented.
A notebook allows you to do many more things than a PDA, including printing webpages and memorable e-mails, writing and printing letters and invitations, doing digital photography (grandchildren coming up?), etc.
A notebook can be used anywhere in the house; e.g. on the sofa or (if you need a bigger workspace) on the dinner table. She can then get rid of the office table housing the desktop computer, or at least cut it down to nothing more than a charging station and a shelf for the printer.
If she buys a PDA, she'll still need to keep the PC for backups and archiving.
The "notebook vs PDA" question doesn't change the connectivity question.
Wireless data can be more difficult to set up properly on a PDA than on a notebook. If you don't have the experience to help her out, this could quickly become a problem.
The only thing speaking for a PDA is that it's more portable and the battery life is perhaps double compared to a notebook. However, if she's been using a desktop computer this is probably not important. The geek factor is probably not important either...
Since you yourself use a PowerBook and a Sony-Ericsson cellphone, you should consider getting her a similar but cheaper setup: possibly an iBook with built-in Bluetooth and a CDRW drive. If the iBook has built-in Bluetooth, it will work with many more cellphones and she can probably also use iSync to keep the address book up to date. Also the CDRW lets her (you?) make backups and copy music.
"If the car says nothing, then everything is fine," said Ms Temm optimistically.
Cool. This is really a good idea from a user interface point of view, and one which makes the UNIX shell so nice to work with. If you get no response from the shell command, it means that things went just fine.
Speaking of welded-shut motor hoods... you know, I'd hate to cruise down the highway and see the warning message on the panel: "You have shifted into fifth gear. The change will take effect after you have restarted the motor. Restart now? [Yes] [No]"...
you're either trolling or ignorant, or you can't read. He said "flexible and powerful". iCal does not fit that description. I love my Mac at work, but iCal & iSync just doesn't cut it for calendaring.
1. The palm conduit for iSync is slooooooooooooow. About 10 times as slow, by my estimation. 2. iCal does not support categories for tasks on your to do list. With Palm software you can sort your tasks by categories such as by customer or, separate your sysadmin tasks from other work.
The fact that you personally had some issues with iSync/iCal/AddressBook does not imply that it's not flexible and powerful. It's arguably the best synchronization software available at the moment, although not in common use because it requires a certain not-so-very-widespread operating system.
Palm OS "categories" are replaced by "calendars" in iCal. Each todo in iCal is attached to a calendar and you can group the tasks exactly as you wish. Granted, it doesn't affect the Palm category (at least I've never noticed).
The iSync conduit itself is just as fast as the Palm Desktop conduit. It's not in itself ten times as slow as... some other unspecified synchronization thingy. However, the iSync application does a lot more things than the Palm Desktop application during a HotSync, e.g. shuffling data to additional devices like iPods and cellphones, and connecting over the network to.Mac. Yes, it's slow --- so what! Relative slowness is the price you pay for more functionality. And network transfer always introduces a certain latency.
These "problems" are not showstoppers in any way. They are mere inconveniences. The real showstopper (which you neglected to mention) is that calendars on.Mac are read-only, which makes them almost useless as personal on-line calendars.
If Java compilation speed is a problem, try the Jikes compiler by IBM. In ProjectBuilder on Jaguar you could choose between javac and jikes just from a pulldown menu, and I assume the same holds true with Xcode on Panther. At least/usr/bin/jikes is present on my PowerBook running 10.3.2.
I don't have any quantitative information about the speed and compatibility of jikes vs. javac, but in my experience jikes may well have been five times faster than javac, and I never had any problems with the bytecode. if bytecode quality is a concern, or you simply *MUST* use javac for some reason, you can always configure the default target to use jikes and then compile deliverables with another target using javac.
[...] when the user CHOOSES to run Windows and CHOOSES to run Internet Explorer and CHOOSES to have their default mail client to be Outlook Express, for some reason they're immune to this barrage of RTFM and instead it is Microsoft who gets the blame. [...] when is the end user going to take responsibility for their actions?
But hello there! Welcome out of the cave you've been living in for the last ten years! Here's a cup of coffee, now smell it.
Running Windows is not normally a choice. It's what you get when you buy a "PC", it's the default and 99% of the users don't have the energy, knowledge and/or permissions to change it.
Fact is, home users are afraid of new things. They are like lemmings, everyone thinking that "This here Apple thing can't be that good, can it? Cuz if it was everyone would be using it, but they ain't, so it isn't." And then they go off buying a cheap PC which, incidentally, has Windows on it.
Another fact is, Windows is built on bad security premises. For example, Microsoft took a look at Java and decided that the virtual machine was too slow and the security restrictions were too limiting, and that the world needed a faster and more convenient way of reusing modules. They came up with COM. Cool! Now welcome to the wonderful world of IE embedded in Outlook Express.
So what makes you think the user would be responsible for a) using MS Windows and b) the security decisions built into MS Windows?
Oh, now I get it, you're a troll. Stupid me for stepping into the trap.
Nope, Okokrim is a state-owned unit prosecuting economic, computer and environmental crimes. At least in theory, they are pursuing lawbreakers on behalf of the Norwegian state (i.e. the Norwegian people).
RIAA is a trade association, an interest group for lobbying lawmakers and protecting the interests of publishers of recorded music. They are purely interested in squeezing the most amount of money out of music artists and consumers.
In this context, "rock-steady" should be appended with "...compared to anything else on the market."
As a rule, if a device does not pair properly with the T68i, or has problems discovering it, or can't connect reliably or simply loses the connection, it usually exhibits the same problems also with other devices.
Many times in the past, Ericsson has gone to the extreme to get all features in a device up to par, even if the device is delayed or even killed off before it reaches production. Nokia simply decides to skip features in order to get devices out on time, i.e. their first J2ME and Bluetooth implementations really sucked. Ericsson shipped the first commercial-quality Bluetooth chips in their T39 and R520 devices, and at the time they were the most standards-compliant devices on the market. The T68i is even better, I guess it has an upgraded chip.
Funny, I've just been looking for a replacement for my T39m... let's see what this discussion can bring up. Here's some highlights of my "research" to date.
If you're on a budget, look at the T68i and the Nokia N-Gage. I think they are listed at around EUR 250.
The T68i has a rock-steady Bluetooth implementation. It's what other phones are compared to. I've heard a lot of positive things about this phone, but on the other hand it's getting older (and cheaper!) all the time. If you feel you can survive with the limited (?) feature set, the T68i provides a lot of bang for the buck.
The nGage is interesting mostly because it's the cheapest Symbian-enabled phone on the market and it's got built-in audio capabilities (FM radio, MP3 playback) and official iSync support. You don't have to be a gaming addict to use it. It'll have that coolness factor for a year or so, and then it'll be very uncool for two years more until it breaks... You'll need to buy a SD-card reader because beaming dozens of MP3 files over Bluetooth is a pain.
If money isn't an issue, the T630, the Z600 or the Nokia 6600 will fit your requirements. These are listed at around EUR 600.
The T630 and Z600 are supposed to fix the shortcomings in the T610 (washed-out screen, bad antenna, loudspeaker not loud enough etc etc). They've just been released and are currently expensive, possibly getting a price reduction in early 2004. I would say that these phones are the logical upgrade path for T39m and T68i owners. There's a very positive Z600 review over at Mobileburn.
The Nokia 6600 is a fairly good phone. We have three at my workplace. If you're fed up with the oh-so-limited 7650, or the round-keyboard 3650, or the GPRS-disabled 9210, this is probably the phone for you. Third-party software is abundant. Getting the 6600 to work with iSync currently requires some h4x0ring, but no doubt it'll be officially supported with OS X 10.3.2
Current mobile phones are built for a three-year life span. They are not supposed to last much longer than that. Regardless of what you buy today, it's 50-50 that you're going Christmas shopping for a new phone again in 2006.
It could be a good idea to stick with your current brand, unless you're deeply unsatisfied with the menu layout or the physical quality or something. I've been using Ericssons for a while and have difficulties adapting to Nokia's Symbian UI: the N-Gage is compelling but the UI kind of rules it out.
The author of teh article is talking through his hat on that one. WiFi chipsets will not appear in handsets, at least not on the mass market.
Sure, it's technically possible to implement hybrid phones. There will be mobile VoIP phones from Cisco and others, but they'll be VoIP/WiFi only. And some PDA makers could probably extend their product set with a WiFi/GSM "smartphone" for fringe users and tech freaks. Battery life would be terrible, though. Nokia sells a GPRS/WiFi PCMCIA card, the D211, but it's only for data.
A proper cell phone + WiFi hybrid would let the end user bypass his service provider, which would eat a huge chunk of income from the wireless service providers. No sane service provider will ever support such a phone. There is no incentive for Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, Motorola and the others to sell such phones. Another thing is that their network equipment sales are dependent on the good-will of the service providers -- start making phones which allow end users to use free network time and service providers will probably boycot your network equipment too.
Bluetooth has support from all parts of the market; service providers, cell phone makers, network equipment makers, and end users. It's not going to die anytime soon.
Quoting the designtechnica article: the PCG-TR1A screams style and has a great "Wow!" factor.
My take on this is: screaming never got you anywhere.
Frankly, this notebook doesn't measure up to "good style". The proportions are all wrong, the bulbous underside looks odd, and there are small buttons and connectors all over it just shouting "this is a gadget". There are some stylish Vaios in the Sony product portfolio (e.g. the Z1), but this one is clearly targeted towards those who care more about having camcorders in their subnotebooks.
Besides, does this Vaio run Mac OS X? No? Ooooohhh... the viability factor just fell off the cliff...:-)
Don't even think about it. Virtual PC feels like an old Pentium on even the fastest Macs. It's OK for doing stuff once in a while, but as an independent developer you simply can't afford wasting hours every day waiting for your project to compile.
For a while, I developed Windows software using VMWare under Linux/i386. VMWare is impressively fast, lagging perhaps 25% from native Windows on the same machine. It integrates nicely into Linux and X11. In short, it's really usable in day-to-day use. Virtual PC runs like molasses on a comparable Mac, and I wouldn't even consider using it for Windows development.
I'm currently using a TiBook 667 for e-mail, surfing, PIM, writing docs, ssh sessions and coding in Java and C. The Windows PC runs Windows natively (who needs Linux when you can have Mac OS X?) and is dedicated to compiling, debugging and testing native code.
FWIW, I also tried using the Windows PC remotely from the Mac through VNC and MS Remote Desktop, but it didn't work out. UI feedback lags, the PC bluescreens every now and then and non-US keyboard support is abysmal.
What is the advantage to gnu-darwin over FreeBSD or GNU/Linux?
The kernel and base OS is not very spectacular. There's no advantage, really. GNU-Darwin just happens to be the best-selling UNIX on the market today mostly because of the Mac OS X GUI layer running on top of it.
The good stuff is that you can essentially run the same OS on your desktop workstation as on your headless web server or computing cluster.
* 45% of all songs have been bought as an album. In other words: don't worry about the death of the album format. 45% of people prefer to buy as an album anyway, even though they always have the option to only buy per-song.
No, it means that 4,5% of all people prefer to buy as an album, assuming that albums have ten songs on average.
There are quite a few people who dont agree with you on the "The Mac OS X UI is a joy to use because of the underlying consistency, not because of the overlay of lickable buttons."
These people compare OS X to the clear usability winner of all time, OS 9. And in that light OS X is worse. There are lots of inconsistencies, mostly smallish. For example, the keyboard shortcut for the Preferences... command varies between applications. In Mail.app it'ss [cmd-alt-;] but in Safari it's [cmd-,] and TextEdit has no keyboard shortcut at all. But these are minor problems and are probably visible only to old-timer Mac users.
However, Apple has brought over many of the good things from OS 9 -- getting started from a solid basis, so to speak -- and they are improving OS X in the right direction all the time.
Compare this to the MS Windows user interface, which tends to change without any clear goal or even direction. Case in point: Windows XP, which is basically Windows NT 5.1 with skins and a rearranged Start menu. They say that Microsoft spends hundreds of millions on usability research but it must be an urban legend because we haven't ever seen any results.
One of the problems with KDE is that every developer goes in the direction he personally happens to prefer. It's completely OK that one of the best-known skin designers defends skinning as a concept -- fair enough, more choices for everyone, good for you, etc etc. But skinning does not increase usability and it's wrong to say that it does. Skinning decreases usability and user efficiency, mostly because the user doesn't learn UI elements by heart. In Mac OS 9, every on-screen control in the user interface is completely predictable. After a while, the UI becomes natural; you don't ever have to stop and think about controls on the screen. This leaves valuable brain cycles for other things, like whatever you're actually working on right now.
Programmers and software developers talk about being "in the flow" or "in the zone" . (See Joel Spolsky's article). On a Mac, you can stay in the flow for a longer time, because you're not interrupted by petty UI details. There was an interesting article on Slashdot a while ago -- go read it, it's cool! -- about the Mac OS 9 -based GoodEasy computing environment. Now only was it an extremely cool example of how you can ANTI-CONFIGURE your computing environment to remove all distractions, I also find it very refreshing that some people have the intelligence to create such an environment, and the guts to document it.
I have no doubt that OS X 10.3 or 10.4 will be an excellent work environment. It won't beat OS 9 in its heyday, but it will be good enough to beat everything else.
After owning an iBook for a month I really have to question the wisdom of all those who bow to the alter of OS X usability.
Mac OS X has one of the most usable user interfaces I've seen, second only to OS 9. It also happens to be the least configurable. That shouldn't be a problem, because usability and configurability are unrelated. Neither implies the other.
It is not up to a Sun usability expert [to decide] what the best user interface is. It is up to the user.
No NO no NO NO! Users do not know anything about what makes an interface tick!
Painting your car in stripes, adding fake exhaust pipes, Wunderbaums and antennae does NOT make it faster or easier to drive. Yet some people believe it does. They are called Rice Boys.
In my experience, cars that have been designed by engineers and usability people (from Lexus, Mercedes, what have you) are actually easier, safer and more enjoyable to drive than a Rice Boy Honda. These designers have spent decades on studying users and their habits. They are paid well for ensuring that all the buttons and controls you need are within an inch of your fingertips, and those you don't need are further away, but still within reach. These cars are also more expensive, but you get what you pay for. If your job is to drive a car for eight hours a day, you'd better get the most well-designed car you can afford; the choice between a Rice Boy Honda and a Mercedes should not be hard.
In the same way, if your job is to work with a computer for eight, ten or twelve hours a day, I'd expect you to get the best user interface you can afford. Anything else is plain stupid. How can you seriously believe that painting your user interface in stripes and adding blinken lichts and tons of eye candy would make it any faster, easier or more enjoyable to use?
Several years ago, Steve Jobs was heavily criticized for his decision to make the Mac OS X "Aqua" user interface look nice. Mac users thought that if Apple engineers spend their time on creating lickable buttons, they will forget about the usability. Their doubts were well founded, but luckily turned out to be unnecessary. The Mac OS X UI is a joy to use because of the underlying consistency, not because of the overlay of lickable buttons.
Until the KDE developers grasp that, there will be no Linux on the desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand the point of this "expose" thing. Just hit the "show desktop" icon on Win98/2000/XP and you get what you need. If you want one particular app, just click it's icon in the taskbar.
No need for fancy eye-candy to achieve the same effect.
You've never tried it, have you?
Exposé is "undoable" and it enables really fancy drag-n-drop. Hit F11, grab hold of the file you want to drag, hit F11 again and drop it where you wanted it. Granted, the first couple of times it feels kind of wow-this-is-cool-but-sooo-useless, but after a while it starts getting useful. No more rearranging of windows just so you can drag-n-drop icons between them.
The fancy eye-candy window sliding is there to let the user follow the windows. If the windows were just snapped into a randomized order, it would take ages to find the right one.
--Bud
The fact that the Mac is not a competitive gaming platform is not a bad thing. On the contrary; only the very best games are ported to the Mac, and when they arrive, 6-18 months after the PC version, they are largely bug-free too. Bottom line: the PC crowd are very good beta testers, weeding out the bad games and the bad bugs.
A good game is just as good tomorrow as it was yesterday. Write down your personal top-ten list of the all-time best games, and chances are seven of those games have been released for the Mac. Mine is: Tetris, Pirates, StarFlight, Civilization, Descent, Quake, Carmageddon, WarCraft, Halflife and Halo. (Of these, only Halflife is not available on the Mac.)
I play computer games to relax and get my thoughts off the daily grind, much like others watch TV and still others go to the gym. I spend around 2-6 hours a week on computer gaming. I have no reason at all to complain about the games available to me. The only people who complain about the state of gaming on the Mac are the 0-day dudes, and I think it's mostly because they want to induce envy in their (online) friends. You know who you are, and you're not even close to the middle of the Gauss curve.
--Bud
Streaming itunes wirelessly is nice but you still need to go back to your computer to change a song. I would not recommend this for home use unless your ok with going back computer every time to change a song.
Breaking news! Couch potato advocates not using audio equipment which require physical interaction -- film at eleven!
So... what's your point, exactly? Lots of people still listen to one-hour CDs, for example, which require you to fall off the couch and crawl over to your stereo almost hourly. To many people, it's not proper listening to music unless you can choose between the albums on the shelf, look at the cover pictures, read the insert text, think about the songs.
Having my MP3 player show the cover art for the currently playing song is immensely satisfying, for some reason. Maybe because listening to music is such an aural experience that a related picture brings forward completely different thoughts and memories. It's almost the same as sitting and picking CD cases from the shelf... almost, but not entirely. (This is actually one of the few things that the RIAA could use, but haven't been able to formulate into propaganda yet. Luckily.)
It's another thing completely if you don't care about what's playing next. But then you're probably not keen at choosing between albums and songs, either.
There are many examples of standalone "pull" stereo components on the market right now. But what I've been missing all the time (since iTunes came out) is a "push" component that would let you control the audio stream while sitting at the computer, and I'm apparently not the only one. AirTunes seems to be the solution. It's wireless. It's simple. It's brilliant. So f-cking what if I have to use my computer to select what music I want to hear? My computer is my sound source these days!
And rest assured, within four months everyone and their little dog will have brought AirTunes clones to the market -- with remotes and whatnots.
--Bud
To summarize: trojans seem to be going strong on Mac OS X, presumably because viruses don't bite. And damage is limited to the files you can access anyway.
--Bud
Hell, yeah!
Let's find someone stupid enough to cheaply write a brand new program (but not too stupid of course, we don't want badly designed and buggy code now, do we?).
Then we take a not too expensive PC and stick a couple of USB expansion cards (not too expensive either) in it and hope it doesn't get unstable -- which isn't a problem really; seeing that we have a single point of failure here, if the system fails we know WHERE it failed, right?
Then we pull USB cables criss-cross over the whole room up to the maximum USB cable length of 5 meters. Then we solder ten push buttons and pull ten twisted-pair wires back to the central CeePeeYou, and plug them in somewhere -- determining the exact details are left as an exercise for the reader. (Hint: both the parallel port and the joystick port can detect electric potential.)
Now the only thing left to do is fire this system up and try to keep the supervision to a minimum for three months of constant use. QED.
Oh, by the way, I just applied for the patent, so that'll be $10k up front, thank you. Per listening station.
--Bud
There's a document named Latex for Word Processor Users which I found incredibly helpful when I picked up LaTeX after a few years slack. It's structured according to the menus in a most word processors, which makes it easy to find the information you're looking for.
--Bud
A couple of things:
It's unlikely that anyone would start a business like PG2 without first establishing a licensing plan with PG, unless they are situated far off-shore or have less than three braincells.
--Bud
She doesn't use her PC for anything more than occasional emails and online purchases and her cell phone has pretty much made her landline obsolete. She emails me asking if there is a handheld that could replace these devices. I don't own one, don't need one (my SE616 and Powerbook is plenty), and really never bothered to research one. A quick search for anything decent reveals prices close to, or over, a low end notebook. As for access, unless she searches for open wifi points, I can't imagine mobile service being anymore competitive than a cable/DSL line coming into a house.
I think a notebook is the right choice here, for many many reasons:
Since you yourself use a PowerBook and a Sony-Ericsson cellphone, you should consider getting her a similar but cheaper setup: possibly an iBook with built-in Bluetooth and a CDRW drive. If the iBook has built-in Bluetooth, it will work with many more cellphones and she can probably also use iSync to keep the address book up to date. Also the CDRW lets her (you?) make backups and copy music.
--Bud
"If the car says nothing, then everything is fine," said Ms Temm optimistically.
Cool. This is really a good idea from a user interface point of view, and one which makes the UNIX shell so nice to work with. If you get no response from the shell command, it means that things went just fine.
Speaking of welded-shut motor hoods... you know, I'd hate to cruise down the highway and see the warning message on the panel: "You have shifted into fifth gear. The change will take effect after you have restarted the motor. Restart now? [Yes] [No]"...
--Bud
you're either trolling or ignorant, or you can't read. He said "flexible and powerful". iCal does not fit that description. I love my Mac at work, but iCal & iSync just doesn't cut it for calendaring.
1. The palm conduit for iSync is slooooooooooooow. About 10 times as slow, by my estimation.
2. iCal does not support categories for tasks on your to do list. With Palm software you can sort your tasks by categories such as by customer or, separate your sysadmin tasks from other work.
The fact that you personally had some issues with iSync/iCal/AddressBook does not imply that it's not flexible and powerful. It's arguably the best synchronization software available at the moment, although not in common use because it requires a certain not-so-very-widespread operating system.
Palm OS "categories" are replaced by "calendars" in iCal. Each todo in iCal is attached to a calendar and you can group the tasks exactly as you wish. Granted, it doesn't affect the Palm category (at least I've never noticed).
The iSync conduit itself is just as fast as the Palm Desktop conduit. It's not in itself ten times as slow as... some other unspecified synchronization thingy. However, the iSync application does a lot more things than the Palm Desktop application during a HotSync, e.g. shuffling data to additional devices like iPods and cellphones, and connecting over the network to .Mac. Yes, it's slow --- so what! Relative slowness is the price you pay for more functionality. And network transfer always introduces a certain latency.
These "problems" are not showstoppers in any way. They are mere inconveniences. The real showstopper (which you neglected to mention) is that calendars on .Mac are read-only, which makes them almost useless as personal on-line calendars.
--Bud
If Java compilation speed is a problem, try the Jikes compiler by IBM. In ProjectBuilder on Jaguar you could choose between javac and jikes just from a pulldown menu, and I assume the same holds true with Xcode on Panther. At least /usr/bin/jikes is present on my PowerBook running 10.3.2.
I don't have any quantitative information about the speed and compatibility of jikes vs. javac, but in my experience jikes may well have been five times faster than javac, and I never had any problems with the bytecode. if bytecode quality is a concern, or you simply *MUST* use javac for some reason, you can always configure the default target to use jikes and then compile deliverables with another target using javac.
--Bud
[...] when the user CHOOSES to run Windows and CHOOSES to run Internet Explorer and CHOOSES to have their default mail client to be Outlook Express, for some reason they're immune to this barrage of RTFM and instead it is Microsoft who gets the blame. [...] when is the end user going to take responsibility for their actions?
But hello there! Welcome out of the cave you've been living in for the last ten years! Here's a cup of coffee, now smell it.
Running Windows is not normally a choice. It's what you get when you buy a "PC", it's the default and 99% of the users don't have the energy, knowledge and/or permissions to change it.
Fact is, home users are afraid of new things. They are like lemmings, everyone thinking that "This here Apple thing can't be that good, can it? Cuz if it was everyone would be using it, but they ain't, so it isn't." And then they go off buying a cheap PC which, incidentally, has Windows on it.
Another fact is, Windows is built on bad security premises. For example, Microsoft took a look at Java and decided that the virtual machine was too slow and the security restrictions were too limiting, and that the world needed a faster and more convenient way of reusing modules. They came up with COM. Cool! Now welcome to the wonderful world of IE embedded in Outlook Express.
So what makes you think the user would be responsible for a) using MS Windows and b) the security decisions built into MS Windows?
Oh, now I get it, you're a troll. Stupid me for stepping into the trap.
--Bud
Nope, Okokrim is a state-owned unit prosecuting economic, computer and environmental crimes. At least in theory, they are pursuing lawbreakers on behalf of the Norwegian state (i.e. the Norwegian people).
RIAA is a trade association, an interest group for lobbying lawmakers and protecting the interests of publishers of recorded music. They are purely interested in squeezing the most amount of money out of music artists and consumers.
--Martin
So what devices did you use it with?
In this context, "rock-steady" should be appended with "...compared to anything else on the market."
As a rule, if a device does not pair properly with the T68i, or has problems discovering it, or can't connect reliably or simply loses the connection, it usually exhibits the same problems also with other devices.
Many times in the past, Ericsson has gone to the extreme to get all features in a device up to par, even if the device is delayed or even killed off before it reaches production. Nokia simply decides to skip features in order to get devices out on time, i.e. their first J2ME and Bluetooth implementations really sucked. Ericsson shipped the first commercial-quality Bluetooth chips in their T39 and R520 devices, and at the time they were the most standards-compliant devices on the market. The T68i is even better, I guess it has an upgraded chip.
--Bud
Funny, I've just been looking for a replacement for my T39m... let's see what this discussion can bring up. Here's some highlights of my "research" to date.
If you're on a budget, look at the T68i and the Nokia N-Gage. I think they are listed at around EUR 250.
If money isn't an issue, the T630, the Z600 or the Nokia 6600 will fit your requirements. These are listed at around EUR 600.
Current mobile phones are built for a three-year life span. They are not supposed to last much longer than that. Regardless of what you buy today, it's 50-50 that you're going Christmas shopping for a new phone again in 2006.
It could be a good idea to stick with your current brand, unless you're deeply unsatisfied with the menu layout or the physical quality or something. I've been using Ericssons for a while and have difficulties adapting to Nokia's Symbian UI: the N-Gage is compelling but the UI kind of rules it out.
--Bud
The author of teh article is talking through his hat on that one. WiFi chipsets will not appear in handsets, at least not on the mass market.
Sure, it's technically possible to implement hybrid phones. There will be mobile VoIP phones from Cisco and others, but they'll be VoIP/WiFi only. And some PDA makers could probably extend their product set with a WiFi/GSM "smartphone" for fringe users and tech freaks. Battery life would be terrible, though. Nokia sells a GPRS/WiFi PCMCIA card, the D211, but it's only for data.
A proper cell phone + WiFi hybrid would let the end user bypass his service provider, which would eat a huge chunk of income from the wireless service providers. No sane service provider will ever support such a phone. There is no incentive for Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, Motorola and the others to sell such phones. Another thing is that their network equipment sales are dependent on the good-will of the service providers -- start making phones which allow end users to use free network time and service providers will probably boycot your network equipment too.
Bluetooth has support from all parts of the market; service providers, cell phone makers, network equipment makers, and end users. It's not going to die anytime soon.
--Bud
Quoting the designtechnica article: the PCG-TR1A screams style and has a great "Wow!" factor.
My take on this is: screaming never got you anywhere.
Frankly, this notebook doesn't measure up to "good style". The proportions are all wrong, the bulbous underside looks odd, and there are small buttons and connectors all over it just shouting "this is a gadget". There are some stylish Vaios in the Sony product portfolio (e.g. the Z1), but this one is clearly targeted towards those who care more about having camcorders in their subnotebooks.
Besides, does this Vaio run Mac OS X? No? Ooooohhh... the viability factor just fell off the cliff... :-)
--Bud
For a while, I developed Windows software using VMWare under Linux/i386. VMWare is impressively fast, lagging perhaps 25% from native Windows on the same machine. It integrates nicely into Linux and X11. In short, it's really usable in day-to-day use. Virtual PC runs like molasses on a comparable Mac, and I wouldn't even consider using it for Windows development.
I'm currently using a TiBook 667 for e-mail, surfing, PIM, writing docs, ssh sessions and coding in Java and C. The Windows PC runs Windows natively (who needs Linux when you can have Mac OS X?) and is dedicated to compiling, debugging and testing native code.
FWIW, I also tried using the Windows PC remotely from the Mac through VNC and MS Remote Desktop, but it didn't work out. UI feedback lags, the PC bluescreens every now and then and non-US keyboard support is abysmal.
--Bud
Apparently "disabled phone line" has a different meaning on the west side of the Atlantic. I thought it meant that no phone calls are allowed through.
--Bud
The kernel and base OS is not very spectacular. There's no advantage, really. GNU-Darwin just happens to be the best-selling UNIX on the market today mostly because of the Mac OS X GUI layer running on top of it.
The good stuff is that you can essentially run the same OS on your desktop workstation as on your headless web server or computing cluster.
--Bud
No, it means that 4,5% of all people prefer to buy as an album, assuming that albums have ten songs on average.
--Bud
I didn't know iPods came in black.
Well, a black iPod would certainly match the style of Steve Jobs.
--Bud
There are quite a few people who dont agree with you on the "The Mac OS X UI is a joy to use because of the underlying consistency, not because of the overlay of lickable buttons."
These people compare OS X to the clear usability winner of all time, OS 9. And in that light OS X is worse. There are lots of inconsistencies, mostly smallish. For example, the keyboard shortcut for the Preferences... command varies between applications. In Mail.app it'ss [cmd-alt-;] but in Safari it's [cmd-,] and TextEdit has no keyboard shortcut at all. But these are minor problems and are probably visible only to old-timer Mac users.
However, Apple has brought over many of the good things from OS 9 -- getting started from a solid basis, so to speak -- and they are improving OS X in the right direction all the time.
Compare this to the MS Windows user interface, which tends to change without any clear goal or even direction. Case in point: Windows XP, which is basically Windows NT 5.1 with skins and a rearranged Start menu. They say that Microsoft spends hundreds of millions on usability research but it must be an urban legend because we haven't ever seen any results.
One of the problems with KDE is that every developer goes in the direction he personally happens to prefer. It's completely OK that one of the best-known skin designers defends skinning as a concept -- fair enough, more choices for everyone, good for you, etc etc. But skinning does not increase usability and it's wrong to say that it does. Skinning decreases usability and user efficiency, mostly because the user doesn't learn UI elements by heart. In Mac OS 9, every on-screen control in the user interface is completely predictable. After a while, the UI becomes natural; you don't ever have to stop and think about controls on the screen. This leaves valuable brain cycles for other things, like whatever you're actually working on right now.
Programmers and software developers talk about being "in the flow" or "in the zone" . (See Joel Spolsky's article). On a Mac, you can stay in the flow for a longer time, because you're not interrupted by petty UI details. There was an interesting article on Slashdot a while ago -- go read it, it's cool! -- about the Mac OS 9 -based GoodEasy computing environment. Now only was it an extremely cool example of how you can ANTI-CONFIGURE your computing environment to remove all distractions, I also find it very refreshing that some people have the intelligence to create such an environment, and the guts to document it.
I have no doubt that OS X 10.3 or 10.4 will be an excellent work environment. It won't beat OS 9 in its heyday, but it will be good enough to beat everything else.
--Bud
After owning an iBook for a month I really have to question the wisdom of all those who bow to the alter of OS X usability.
Mac OS X has one of the most usable user interfaces I've seen, second only to OS 9. It also happens to be the least configurable. That shouldn't be a problem, because usability and configurability are unrelated. Neither implies the other.
--Bud
It is not up to a Sun usability expert [to decide] what the best user interface is. It is up to the user.
No NO no NO NO ! Users do not know anything about what makes an interface tick!
Painting your car in stripes, adding fake exhaust pipes, Wunderbaums and antennae does NOT make it faster or easier to drive. Yet some people believe it does. They are called Rice Boys.
In my experience, cars that have been designed by engineers and usability people (from Lexus, Mercedes, what have you) are actually easier, safer and more enjoyable to drive than a Rice Boy Honda. These designers have spent decades on studying users and their habits. They are paid well for ensuring that all the buttons and controls you need are within an inch of your fingertips, and those you don't need are further away, but still within reach. These cars are also more expensive, but you get what you pay for. If your job is to drive a car for eight hours a day, you'd better get the most well-designed car you can afford; the choice between a Rice Boy Honda and a Mercedes should not be hard.
In the same way, if your job is to work with a computer for eight, ten or twelve hours a day, I'd expect you to get the best user interface you can afford. Anything else is plain stupid. How can you seriously believe that painting your user interface in stripes and adding blinken lichts and tons of eye candy would make it any faster, easier or more enjoyable to use?
Several years ago, Steve Jobs was heavily criticized for his decision to make the Mac OS X "Aqua" user interface look nice. Mac users thought that if Apple engineers spend their time on creating lickable buttons, they will forget about the usability. Their doubts were well founded, but luckily turned out to be unnecessary. The Mac OS X UI is a joy to use because of the underlying consistency, not because of the overlay of lickable buttons.
Until the KDE developers grasp that, there will be no Linux on the desktop.
--Bud