Exactly my point. How many Marketing students know the difference between RISC based PPC and CISC based Intel/AMD? (and I've read the ArsTechnica article regarding "post RISC era, hence the word "based)
How many Marketing professionals know the difference?
One that does my analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversions using 24-bit or better audio and runs outside the electronically noisy world of a computer case.
What you want (as you said) is a good Firewire solution...that's what in the hell it's designed to do -- get digital data into and out of the computer with some alacrity.
Frankly, I'm a little bit surprised that Firewire isn't already everywhere, from VCRs and home theater systems to pro-audio (even amateur audio) setups. As a hippie who'd like to get some live concerts into my iMac DV SE, I'm really itching for a digital audio recorder with Firewire similar to the current DAT and MD devices with their optical outs... Hell, even conversion equipment is way expensive still, not to mention the $4000 cost of a Firewire-equipped DVCR.
Or has Jobs taken the rejected NeXT cube and NEXTSTEP of yesteryear and reincarnated it under the brand name Apple. It looks like NeXT, it smells like NeXT (Mach, Dock, cube....), but they're not calling it NeXT. The system he said would change the world (it will probably be 10 years old when OS X gets released) is now back. Have people gotten smart, or is Jobs the best marketer on the planet?
Yes, NeXT has acquired Apple for the sum of -$400M. Amazing.
I think Jobs thinks ten years down the road but has now matured enough as a corporate visionary to allow people the time necessary to catch up with him before introducing the technology. At NeXT, he had no qualms about putting out a cubic bit of exotica with the best OS in existence (and a Complete Works of Shakespeare in the bargain) for $10K. He's still 10 years out in front, more than likely, he just knows it won't sell next week, even if it *could* be made.
For that matter, I saw nothing on the specs page about PCI slots. As an audio geek, this thing is useless to me if I can't drop a Layla DSP card into it.
Dood, it has a G4...what kind of DSP did you have in mind?
Clue me in. Why does Apple get all this loyalty? The products are good in a lot of ways, but they're not that good (be honest!). Is it the home of people who just like to be different from the mainstream, and that's the attraction?
I'll tell you why I'm a Machead.
My first computer was a TeleVideo TS803 which ran CP/M 2.2. I tinkered and toyed with that thing to no end, but the only thing I ever really got done was typing up papers in WordStar. I reassembled the OS, made patches, got dangerously close to learning Z80 assembly language and anguished over my inability to get software in my disk format (one of about 75 at the time). I finally got it working as a smart terminal, dialing into Clemson University's VAX Ultrix machine to use email and Usenet. Never did get it to function as a BBS...
When it came time to buy a new machine, I made the decision to go with the star-crossed Mac IIvx for one simple reason: It just worked. I was planning on going into a graphics/design/publishing-oriented field, and I had had experience with Macs doing the literary magazine at school. The user experience with the Mac was so superior to anything available from the Windoze side (3.1?), it was only natural. I had had plenty of experience with Ultrix, emacs and all that, and I still appreciate its power; but in reality, the software to do what I want to do is simply not there (still).
So maybe I'm a contrarian at heart, but there remain practical reasons why I've recently purchased my fifth Mac (an iMac DV SE). Obviously it isn't the ease of upgrading, the stability of the OS or anything of that nature. It's the fact that my Macs have become extensions of my thought processes. The software system feels natural. It stays out of my way and helps me at the same time instead of asking me one too many times if I'm sure that's what I want to do, or allowing me to hose my system when I've been awake too long trying to hold my eyes open long enough to finish a project.
Apple has long been a pioneer perfecting this systematic user experience. I don't begrudge them their protection of their intellectual property because I watched Microsoft build a world-dominating monster largely on the ideas which emerged from Apple R&D. It's as someone else said...suppose eMachines had announced their product ahead of the introduction of the iMac...the source of the innovative industrial design would have been in question. Apple, like NeXT had, has industrial design as a top priority, and any leaks that threaten their edge in this area of emerging importance should be plugged and fast.
No, Apple hasn't always been run well. Neither has it always been run by the same people. Under a more mature Jobs, Apple has fought back from the edge of oblivion with a focus on bringing computing out of the server closet, so to speak, and putting it in the hands of "the rest of us." The rest of us no longer want to tinker with hardware or recompile our OS (even if some of us know how)...we just want to put the system to work as a tool in the construction of our cultural future.
As for loyalty, few machines are apt to be described in such anthropomorphic terms. My Macs always have been loyal, so to speak. They're something other than computers, as I said...they're extensions of my thought processes. I value that, in spite of their limitations...my own limitations are more troubling.
Will MS Office for Mac work in the penalty box, or do users have to buy a new version of Office?
Office worked fine even in DP3, although it hadn' t been prettified. In other words, the fonts in the windowbar and stuff like that looked wrong running beside OS X-native apps...you could tell it was foreign somehow. I suspect they'll clean up Mac OS 9 so that when it runs under the "penalty box," as you call it, you won't be able to tell the difference.
On the UNIX side, how are the problems of UNIX system administration handled? Are all the text configuration files gone, or did Apple just put GUI wallpaper over them?
It's all XML.plist (property list) files. Very cool. The system admin stuff is all graphical, and nicely done. I dare say you won't need to touch any text files to administer an OS X box...you can do a whole network's admin tasks through NetInfo...legacy NeXT system that was tres cool. "GUI wallpaper" is a gross oversimplification.
For that matter, is it really BSD underneath? They don't mention Mach at all. Was the NeXT stuff dumped completely?
It's in the process of being synced with the most current BSD, though it is written as a user-mode process which runs on top of Mach. You could run several such processes simultaneously. In short, no, the NeXT stuff wasn't dumped at all...it's just totally revamped.
The free BSDs would almost certaintly been killed by AT&T performing a "Look and Feel" lawsuit against BSD. AT&T tried unscucesfully to destroy the free BSDs by claiming they had copyrighted UNIX code--imagine how much stronger a "look and feel" lawsuit would have been.
Clarification: BSD *did* have bits of AT&T Unix code when AT&T brought suit. At the same time, AT&T Unix had bits of Berkeley code, as well. I guess they felt pretty silly about that, so it wen't nowhere...
Ultimately, the argument about whether or not Napster will be allowed to survive in its current form is going to come down to whether or not it is illegal for them to facilitate the transfer of copyrighted materials.
This is a pointless argument. Napster simply facilitates file sharing. The fact that some people use this facility to share certain files illegally doesn't make any difference. If it isn't Napster, it's going to be Gnutella, or Hotline, or Usenet or the Web...
The funniest thing is hearing these tech-dullards talking about "Napster ought to take Metallica's songs off their system" without, apparently, the ability to grasp that those songs aren't *on* "Napster's system."
Peer-to-peer file sharing can scarcely be shut down...any decentralized system which facilitates this sharing (Gnutella...) renders Napster obsolete and Metallica ostensibly impoverished...
The "music industry" would do well to take a long, hard look at they way it does business and realize that if it has a problem, it lies in its inability to prevent the creation of digital copies of music in the first place. Since the chances of that situation changing is zilch, it desparately needs to investigate a new business model.
It strikes me that alienating its customer base is counter-productive, at a minimum...the backlash against Metallica is already hideous, as I understand it.
There was a piece on a show that was on NPR this afternoon (the show was "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me") about Sealand. They just lost a case in which they had attempted to purchase some heavy military weaponry. The "country" is an abandoned oil-platform off the coast or something like that...
To think that they're serious is, well...intriguing.
"'...lambda for wavelength, so lambda means color, really. One fiber can carry a number of colors -- there could be as many as a hundred, maybe even more. Each color might be transporting as much as a terabit of capacity'
I'm sorry, but did that give anyone else an erection, or is it just me?"
Heh heh...yeah. It's pretty amazing for someone like myself, without a background in the technology but with an interest in its future, to read about transmitting vast amounts of digital information via colored light. It sounds like high magic.
It strikes me, though, that a fiber carrying white light with information coded into portions of the total frequency bandwidth posesses the capability to carry a nearly infinite number (as opposed to "hundreds") of discrete channels depending on how the stream is color-modemed at each end. There are, after all, an infinite number of colors...
My question, for those familiar with the technology, is: Is there some ultimate limit to this? Some minimal range of color that may be distinguished from other colors? And what is the practical limit afforded by current technology? Some good references would be appreciated.
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Exactly my point. How many Marketing students know the difference between RISC based PPC and CISC based Intel/AMD? (and I've read the ArsTechnica article regarding "post RISC era, hence the word "based)
How many Marketing professionals know the difference?
P.
One that does my analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversions using 24-bit or better audio and runs outside the electronically noisy world of a computer case.
What you want (as you said) is a good Firewire solution...that's what in the hell it's designed to do -- get digital data into and out of the computer with some alacrity.
Frankly, I'm a little bit surprised that Firewire isn't already everywhere, from VCRs and home theater systems to pro-audio (even amateur audio) setups. As a hippie who'd like to get some live concerts into my iMac DV SE, I'm really itching for a digital audio recorder with Firewire similar to the current DAT and MD devices with their optical outs... Hell, even conversion equipment is way expensive still, not to mention the $4000 cost of a Firewire-equipped DVCR.
Just on the horizon, I hope...
P.
Or has Jobs taken the rejected NeXT cube and NEXTSTEP of yesteryear and reincarnated it under the brand name Apple. It looks like NeXT, it smells like NeXT (Mach, Dock, cube....), but they're not calling it NeXT. The system he said would change the world (it will probably be 10 years old when OS X gets released) is now back. Have people gotten smart, or is Jobs the best marketer on the planet?
Yes, NeXT has acquired Apple for the sum of -$400M. Amazing.
I think Jobs thinks ten years down the road but has now matured enough as a corporate visionary to allow people the time necessary to catch up with him before introducing the technology. At NeXT, he had no qualms about putting out a cubic bit of exotica with the best OS in existence (and a Complete Works of Shakespeare in the bargain) for $10K. He's still 10 years out in front, more than likely, he just knows it won't sell next week, even if it *could* be made.
P.
For that matter, I saw nothing on the specs page about PCI slots. As an audio geek, this thing is useless to me if I can't drop a Layla DSP card into it.
Dood, it has a G4...what kind of DSP did you have in mind?
P.
Clue me in. Why does Apple get all this loyalty? The products are good in a lot of ways, but they're not that good (be honest!). Is it the home of people who just like to be different from the mainstream, and that's the attraction?
I'll tell you why I'm a Machead.
My first computer was a TeleVideo TS803 which ran CP/M 2.2. I tinkered and toyed with that thing to no end, but the only thing I ever really got done was typing up papers in WordStar. I reassembled the OS, made patches, got dangerously close to learning Z80 assembly language and anguished over my inability to get software in my disk format (one of about 75 at the time). I finally got it working as a smart terminal, dialing into Clemson University's VAX Ultrix machine to use email and Usenet. Never did get it to function as a BBS...
When it came time to buy a new machine, I made the decision to go with the star-crossed Mac IIvx for one simple reason: It just worked. I was planning on going into a graphics/design/publishing-oriented field, and I had had experience with Macs doing the literary magazine at school. The user experience with the Mac was so superior to anything available from the Windoze side (3.1?), it was only natural. I had had plenty of experience with Ultrix, emacs and all that, and I still appreciate its power; but in reality, the software to do what I want to do is simply not there (still).
So maybe I'm a contrarian at heart, but there remain practical reasons why I've recently purchased my fifth Mac (an iMac DV SE). Obviously it isn't the ease of upgrading, the stability of the OS or anything of that nature. It's the fact that my Macs have become extensions of my thought processes. The software system feels natural. It stays out of my way and helps me at the same time instead of asking me one too many times if I'm sure that's what I want to do, or allowing me to hose my system when I've been awake too long trying to hold my eyes open long enough to finish a project.
Apple has long been a pioneer perfecting this systematic user experience. I don't begrudge them their protection of their intellectual property because I watched Microsoft build a world-dominating monster largely on the ideas which emerged from Apple R&D. It's as someone else said...suppose eMachines had announced their product ahead of the introduction of the iMac...the source of the innovative industrial design would have been in question. Apple, like NeXT had, has industrial design as a top priority, and any leaks that threaten their edge in this area of emerging importance should be plugged and fast.
No, Apple hasn't always been run well. Neither has it always been run by the same people. Under a more mature Jobs, Apple has fought back from the edge of oblivion with a focus on bringing computing out of the server closet, so to speak, and putting it in the hands of "the rest of us." The rest of us no longer want to tinker with hardware or recompile our OS (even if some of us know how)...we just want to put the system to work as a tool in the construction of our cultural future.
As for loyalty, few machines are apt to be described in such anthropomorphic terms. My Macs always have been loyal, so to speak. They're something other than computers, as I said...they're extensions of my thought processes. I value that, in spite of their limitations...my own limitations are more troubling.
P.
steve jobs is a computer guy. not the chairman of a prestigious company which is known for it's artistic works.
You mean like Pixar??!
P.
Well then, maybe you can explain to me why it is that the open source community gives Apple such an easy ride
That's a joke, right?
P.
Will MS Office for Mac work in the penalty box, or do users have to buy a new version of Office?
Office worked fine even in DP3, although it hadn' t been prettified. In other words, the fonts in the windowbar and stuff like that looked wrong running beside OS X-native apps...you could tell it was foreign somehow. I suspect they'll clean up Mac OS 9 so that when it runs under the "penalty box," as you call it, you won't be able to tell the difference.
On the UNIX side, how are the problems of UNIX system administration handled? Are all the text configuration files gone, or did Apple just put GUI wallpaper over them?
It's all XML .plist (property list) files. Very cool. The system admin stuff is all graphical, and nicely done. I dare say you won't need to touch any text files to administer an OS X box...you can do a whole network's admin tasks through NetInfo...legacy NeXT system that was tres cool. "GUI wallpaper" is a gross oversimplification.
For that matter, is it really BSD underneath? They don't mention Mach at all. Was the NeXT stuff dumped completely?
It's in the process of being synced with the most current BSD, though it is written as a user-mode process which runs on top of Mach. You could run several such processes simultaneously. In short, no, the NeXT stuff wasn't dumped at all...it's just totally revamped.
P.
The free BSDs would almost certaintly been killed by AT&T performing a "Look and Feel" lawsuit against BSD. AT&T tried unscucesfully to destroy the free BSDs by claiming they had copyrighted UNIX code--imagine how much stronger a "look and feel" lawsuit would have been.
Clarification: BSD *did* have bits of AT&T Unix code when AT&T brought suit. At the same time, AT&T Unix had bits of Berkeley code, as well. I guess they felt pretty silly about that, so it wen't nowhere...
P.
Ultimately, the argument about whether or not Napster will be allowed to survive in its current form is going to come down to whether or not it is illegal for them to facilitate the transfer of copyrighted materials.
This is a pointless argument. Napster simply facilitates file sharing. The fact that some people use this facility to share certain files illegally doesn't make any difference. If it isn't Napster, it's going to be Gnutella, or Hotline, or Usenet or the Web...
The funniest thing is hearing these tech-dullards talking about "Napster ought to take Metallica's songs off their system" without, apparently, the ability to grasp that those songs aren't *on* "Napster's system."
Peer-to-peer file sharing can scarcely be shut down...any decentralized system which facilitates this sharing (Gnutella...) renders Napster obsolete and Metallica ostensibly impoverished...
The "music industry" would do well to take a long, hard look at they way it does business and realize that if it has a problem, it lies in its inability to prevent the creation of digital copies of music in the first place. Since the chances of that situation changing is zilch, it desparately needs to investigate a new business model.
It strikes me that alienating its customer base is counter-productive, at a minimum...the backlash against Metallica is already hideous, as I understand it.
P.
There was a piece on a show that was on NPR this afternoon (the show was "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me") about Sealand. They just lost a case in which they had attempted to purchase some heavy military weaponry. The "country" is an abandoned oil-platform off the coast or something like that...
To think that they're serious is, well...intriguing.
P.
Think about it. What OS is able to run on the largest number of hardware platforms these days? If linux isn't on top, it's #$%@^ close.
FORTH, baybee.
P.
...it wouldn't make his theories wrong. P.
"'...lambda for wavelength, so lambda means color, really. One fiber can carry a number of colors -- there could be as many as a hundred, maybe even more. Each color might be transporting as much as a terabit of capacity'
I'm sorry, but did that give anyone else an erection, or is it just me?"
Heh heh...yeah. It's pretty amazing for someone like myself, without a background in the technology but with an interest in its future, to read about transmitting vast amounts of digital information via colored light. It sounds like high magic.
It strikes me, though, that a fiber carrying white light with information coded into portions of the total frequency bandwidth posesses the capability to carry a nearly infinite number (as opposed to "hundreds") of discrete channels depending on how the stream is color-modemed at each end. There are, after all, an infinite number of colors...
My question, for those familiar with the technology, is: Is there some ultimate limit to this? Some minimal range of color that may be distinguished from other colors? And what is the practical limit afforded by current technology? Some good references would be appreciated.
P.