During the last year, I've been removing the floppy drives from my beige Macs so that I'll have room for another hard drive. Even when I need to install Debian or NetBSD from a floppy, I just use a disk image to install onto another drive. Fun!
Can anyone give me some hard facts about whether or not its true that they rely on their hardware markups to drive the development of their kick-ass software?
From the start, Apple has been a hardware company but geared towards the synergy of hardware/software computing experience. The Apple ][ was a masterful use of off-the-shelf components that would provide a relatively easy to use computer.
The Lisa and the Macintosh were built around the total computing experience. Apple looked at what was state of the art/bleeding edge at the time (Xerox-PARC), bought into it and then took the ball and ran. Lisa didn't quite pan out but the original Macintosh was amazing. There was no fan, it just started up from a 'hard' floppy and wham!; in your face computer.
The money comes from the sale of hardware (around 90% according to their filings) but if all they wanted was to sell expensive hardware, they could save a few bucks shipping YellowDog Linux. Instead, they pay their own MacOS tax by doing a butt-load of research and design.
The iPod is a great example of this. By itself, it's pretty cool to use. When you start using it with OSX/iTunes, it really gets fun. The smoothness of how it all relates and works with you seems very cool and James Bondish.
A counter example would be in the Austin Powers movies. In the '60's, the little tv comes on in the car and it's a perfect transmission. In the 90's, it's AOL and look how junky it looks. The windows are cluttered, the image is jercky, etc. I know that they didn't have car video phones in the '60's (Tomorrowland video phones were cool) but guess which user experience Apple's going after.
While they could incorporate Intel/x86 chips into their mix, it would still be an Apple mix and not a commodity PC at all.
I always thought that a first person building game would be cool. Picture legos the size of cars and trucks but 'you'd' be able to pick them up, jump up high and build things. Give it a Bryce interface or a way to bounce real high so you can get an over view of your project and then get back to work on it. Got this idea as a kid, with my face down on the ground, looking close at my legos, wishing I could shrink down to build with them.
For some good "literature" that still interesting and thought provoking, try Virginia Woolf's "Orlando, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "100 Years of Solitude". Mark Helprin's "Winter's Tale". Ok, the last's not great literature but it's still pretty good. For character studies, I have to agree on W. S. Maugham. "The Razor's Edge" is great as is "Of Human Bondage". It's not what you might think (though there are some racy parts in there) but refers to how people tie themselves in knots, going through life. Maugham has a great selection of short stories too.
It's just a B-side compliation that's been lauded be the press for being just like his previous work. We're not talking Brandenburg Variations here; this album is just sub-par. I suppose it'd be fine as background music at some event but nothing on it has really gotten me hooked to where I'd want to buy it or even keep it on my hard drive.
Back in the 80's and early 90's, I was buying 5 or 6 cd's a month. Part of it was replacing my album collection but the majority was riding the new music explosion. By the late 70's, pop music was really dead, except for the indie stuff (punk, new wave, blues, etc). By the mid 90's, again, music is dead. Yes, there are personalities on stage but where are the musicians? Where are the guitar gods, the self-imolating drummers, the deep bass players (pun)?
Now, they're lucky if I pick up that many new cd's in a year (and most of those are soundtracks). Once radio stopped playing progressive music (other than community radio) I stopped paying attention. It totally pisses me off that the local "Classic Rock" station can promo the new Stone's tour but they haven't played a new Stones album since 1989. Go figure. 'ClearChannel' won't let them.
I support small touring groups now that haven't made it big and probably never will. Who cares?! I have their music, they have my cash, and it's real interesting sitting down these folk and having a beer between sets. Doesn't get much better than that.
I got married a couple of years ago. My wife made her dress and my suit (fabric cost about $500 for both), my sister and her husband provided food for about 100 folks and we had the ceremony done by a friend who's a Notary. This all took place at an SCA event and was a blast. All told, about $1000. Contrast this to my sister's $20k wedding in downtown Seattle where they're already divorced. Makes you wonder.
Now that we have a kid (20 months of sleepless joy) I can't wait until she's old enough for me to rationalize getting a console system 'for her'.
...and take something totally non-tech like art or history. You'll have fun and it'll be a nice break from all your programming electives. Also, make sure you get a job in the school IT shop. And don't hurry. I'm 16 years into my BA and let me say that Freshman time was the best 6 years of my life.
Working as an Apple Certified Tech, Let me say that setting up Win2000 Server so that it'll handle Macs is not as easy as OSX Server, and it does not work as fast. Linux is cool with macs, but it's not that easy for non-geeks to get up and running. If you're an ad agency or a video production department, you should be able to throw one of these pups into a rack, plug it in, fire it up and have people online seeing it in less than 20 minutes. This'll be great for schools, where most of the servers are maintained by Media Center "Tech" Specialists who usually have an office or closet full of G4 cases on the floor running Apple's school management software (at least in Pinellas county).
It has a db9 serial port. Break out your old Wyse terminal. At my last gig, we had 3 Novell servers, several Suns, some Linux boxen and one PowerMac 7200 running PPCLinux all hooked up through one Rose box KVM. Sweeet.
I would just like to say Shakespeare sucks the only reason he is so popular is because he is old and people think it makes them sophisticated because they read that crap...
While knowledge is power, it isn't a finite resource that has to be misered away in just a few people. Besides the actual "knowledge", there are the skills involved. The knowledge is already out there but most people don't have the mindset or problem solving abilities to succeed in the tech fields. Also, for most people, thinking is really difficult.
I'm not going to lose my job and starve so someone lesser than me can have knowledge.
It appears that you are really unsure of yourself if you're all-fired worried that if others get any knowledge about tech, you'll be out of a job. For myself, no matter how many other people learn about computers or technology, I know that I'll be out ahead of the pack. Why? Because I'm damn good. I also command my own salery when I take a new job. So far, I haven't been turned down. Yeah me!
Actually, Apple has had all-in-one Macs from the early 90's. These include the Mac TV (black case w/Quadra and TV tuner built in), performa 5xx series on up through the G3 AIO (giant tooth). These were mostly sold to schools so they may not be that well known.
What allows some things to pass light waves through them others to reflect light waves. I understand how reflection and color works. Photons hit the atoms of a substance and the substance obsorbs photons of some wavelengths while other bounce back. The wavelengths of the photons bouncing back are the color that we see. I just don't see how photons can pass all the way through some fairly dense substances. Any one, any one? Buhler?
Wearable computers. The article mentioned flexi-displays. Just didn't put it together with the GHz handheld.
Solid State storage. I'm tired of these Victorian style moving platters and arms. Almost steam punkish. Check out the USB based Piccolo storage keys w/o drivers. They're up to 128MB. Prices should be dropping for GB size stuff, I hope.
Real Firewire hard drives, not these IDE drives with adapter cards on them. Again, it's a serial style cable connection that will feed the beast faster and help neated up the case internals. Serial ATA would do the trick too. Now if only we could connect these cables up to the solid state storage.
I knew a guy of Indian decent who'd been born in Kenya. When he heard of the African-American group on campus, he went to join up. He was surprised to find that he was the only one there from Africa.
Linux is a development of a port of Minix, initially by one student (Linus). It has since become one of the largest open source OS's, and has a large developer base that ensures rapid development and growth.
The various varieties of BSD grew out of work at UC Berkley. They received a copy of AT&T unix and were allowed to develop their own version from it and distribute it (hence Berkley System Distribution). During the '90's BSD fragmented into several varieties. The best know are FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. Due to this fragmentation and the pull of Linux, development of the various branches of BSD is slower. Because the various BSD communities are smaller, you can get a little more personal attention from people actually developing it.
BSD, being a true Unix is generally considered to be more stable and able to scale better for enterprise use. Linux is generally used for midsize servers.
Had *BSD failed? Sure, Linux is the 'Hot' alternative, but does that mean that because Linux is in, that BSD is out? Is there a magic number of users of an OS for it to be considered viable? By what standards does an OS pass or fail?
If you look at from the view that 95% of Open Source machines are Linux and 5% are BSD and BSD is dead, then, by the same argument, you can argue that because Macs only make up 5% of the desktop base, Macs are dead.
For what it's worth, I think that BSD will be around for a long time. Just consider the fact that every year, hundreds of thousands of computers are being shipped with BSD on them (cough-Apple-cough!). Who's to say that this won't spark a resurgence of people growing up with BSD. Think of all the kids out there that are playing with their parent's Macs. Isn't it likely that a few of them will start poking around behind the scenes and getting their fingers dirty with BSD. Once they realize that they can also install similar BSD software on their PC (I've seen a lot of Mac users who's kid has a PC for games/Macs aren't cool, etc.) they'll get things going again. It'll take a few years for this seeding to bear fruit but it should bring up a very interesting crop.
Who uses just one interface? Think about it. The web is orginized in a different way than the desktop. MS was afraid that they'd be shut out by Netscape with this new metephor. And how about everyone with access to a CLI? Don't you switch to that for some things and use a desktop for others? With OSX, there's the CLI, the desktop (which they really wanted to kill off) and the NeXT styled Column View. I use a mix of these to get things done. I don't think there can be one master interface that will bring all the data and in the darkness bind them, using current technology.
People still get dizzy. I started out with the original Castle Wolfenstein and it didn't bother me at all. Same for flight sims. Marathon would give me a headache after a few hours, but that could just be eyestrain. QIII really did it for me. Unreal acually was better. I could go an hour before wanting to ralph. Go figure.
I'm a tech in a Mac repair shop. We've seen a lot of Firewire dirve usage in the last year or so. One thing you need to know is that inside the firewire case is most likely an IDE drive. Make sure that it's a fairly fast drive. I saw a user with a 5400 rpm drive get pissed when they realized what they had bought.
The other problem I've seen with firewire drives is that the seem t o stop showing up after awhile. Popping the case, most drives are set as master. By setting them to cable select they show up again. You can then set them back as master and they seem to work. I've seen this only on MacOS9/10.1, FWIW.
I'll be glad when they come out with 'native' firewire drives. Those should really fly.
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the Bolivia Approxmatron. Offered to me down in Miami by a guy with a rather heavily loaded coat.
During the last year, I've been removing the floppy drives from my beige Macs so that I'll have room for another hard drive. Even when I need to install Debian or NetBSD from a floppy, I just use a disk image to install onto another drive. Fun!
Can anyone give me some hard facts about whether or not its true that they rely on their hardware markups to drive the development of their kick-ass software?
From the start, Apple has been a hardware company but geared towards the synergy of hardware/software computing experience. The Apple ][ was a masterful use of off-the-shelf components that would provide a relatively easy to use computer.
The Lisa and the Macintosh were built around the total computing experience. Apple looked at what was state of the art/bleeding edge at the time (Xerox-PARC), bought into it and then took the ball and ran. Lisa didn't quite pan out but the original Macintosh was amazing. There was no fan, it just started up from a 'hard' floppy and wham!; in your face computer.
The money comes from the sale of hardware (around 90% according to their filings) but if all they wanted was to sell expensive hardware, they could save a few bucks shipping YellowDog Linux. Instead, they pay their own MacOS tax by doing a butt-load of research and design.
The iPod is a great example of this. By itself, it's pretty cool to use. When you start using it with OSX/iTunes, it really gets fun. The smoothness of how it all relates and works with you seems very cool and James Bondish.
A counter example would be in the Austin Powers movies. In the '60's, the little tv comes on in the car and it's a perfect transmission. In the 90's, it's AOL and look how junky it looks. The windows are cluttered, the image is jercky, etc. I know that they didn't have car video phones in the '60's (Tomorrowland video phones were cool) but guess which user experience Apple's going after.
While they could incorporate Intel/x86 chips into their mix, it would still be an Apple mix and not a commodity PC at all.
I always thought that a first person building game would be cool. Picture legos the size of cars and trucks but 'you'd' be able to pick them up, jump up high and build things. Give it a Bryce interface or a way to bounce real high so you can get an over view of your project and then get back to work on it. Got this idea as a kid, with my face down on the ground, looking close at my legos, wishing I could shrink down to build with them.
For some good "literature" that still interesting and thought provoking, try Virginia Woolf's "Orlando, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "100 Years of Solitude". Mark Helprin's "Winter's Tale". Ok, the last's not great literature but it's still pretty good. For character studies, I have to agree on W. S. Maugham. "The Razor's Edge" is great as is "Of Human Bondage". It's not what you might think (though there are some racy parts in there) but refers to how people tie themselves in knots, going through life. Maugham has a great selection of short stories too.
It's just a B-side compliation that's been lauded be the press for being just like his previous work. We're not talking Brandenburg Variations here; this album is just sub-par. I suppose it'd be fine as background music at some event but nothing on it has really gotten me hooked to where I'd want to buy it or even keep it on my hard drive.
Now, they're lucky if I pick up that many new cd's in a year (and most of those are soundtracks). Once radio stopped playing progressive music (other than community radio) I stopped paying attention. It totally pisses me off that the local "Classic Rock" station can promo the new Stone's tour but they haven't played a new Stones album since 1989. Go figure. 'ClearChannel' won't let them.
I support small touring groups now that haven't made it big and probably never will. Who cares?! I have their music, they have my cash, and it's real interesting sitting down these folk and having a beer between sets. Doesn't get much better than that.
Now that we have a kid (20 months of sleepless joy) I can't wait until she's old enough for me to rationalize getting a console system 'for her'.
"No really, honey, she'll like GTA3."
Looks like they left it open ended.
...and take something totally non-tech like art or history. You'll have fun and it'll be a nice break from all your programming electives. Also, make sure you get a job in the school IT shop. And don't hurry. I'm 16 years into my BA and let me say that Freshman time was the best 6 years of my life.
Working as an Apple Certified Tech, Let me say that setting up Win2000 Server so that it'll handle Macs is not as easy as OSX Server, and it does not work as fast. Linux is cool with macs, but it's not that easy for non-geeks to get up and running. If you're an ad agency or a video production department, you should be able to throw one of these pups into a rack, plug it in, fire it up and have people online seeing it in less than 20 minutes. This'll be great for schools, where most of the servers are maintained by Media Center "Tech" Specialists who usually have an office or closet full of G4 cases on the floor running Apple's school management software (at least in Pinellas county).
It has a db9 serial port. Break out your old Wyse terminal. At my last gig, we had 3 Novell servers, several Suns, some Linux boxen and one PowerMac 7200 running PPCLinux all hooked up through one Rose box KVM. Sweeet.
I would just like to say Shakespeare sucks the only reason he is so popular is because he is old and people think it makes them sophisticated because they read that crap ...
Oh yeah, and his stuff is good.
as opposed to expensive idiots?
I'm not going to lose my job and starve so someone lesser than me can have knowledge.
It appears that you are really unsure of yourself if you're all-fired worried that if others get any knowledge about tech, you'll be out of a job. For myself, no matter how many other people learn about computers or technology, I know that I'll be out ahead of the pack. Why? Because I'm damn good. I also command my own salery when I take a new job. So far, I haven't been turned down. Yeah me!
Actually, Apple has had all-in-one Macs from the early 90's. These include the Mac TV (black case w/Quadra and TV tuner built in), performa 5xx series on up through the G3 AIO (giant tooth). These were mostly sold to schools so they may not be that well known.
What allows some things to pass light waves through them others to reflect light waves. I understand how reflection and color works. Photons hit the atoms of a substance and the substance obsorbs photons of some wavelengths while other bounce back. The wavelengths of the photons bouncing back are the color that we see. I just don't see how photons can pass all the way through some fairly dense substances. Any one, any one? Buhler?
There's another wannabe monoply out there in the Mac world. It's known as Adobe.
Solid State storage. I'm tired of these Victorian style moving platters and arms. Almost steam punkish. Check out the USB based Piccolo storage keys w/o drivers. They're up to 128MB. Prices should be dropping for GB size stuff, I hope.
Real Firewire hard drives, not these IDE drives with adapter cards on them. Again, it's a serial style cable connection that will feed the beast faster and help neated up the case internals. Serial ATA would do the trick too. Now if only we could connect these cables up to the solid state storage.
I knew a guy of Indian decent who'd been born in Kenya. When he heard of the African-American group on campus, he went to join up. He was surprised to find that he was the only one there from Africa.
The various varieties of BSD grew out of work at UC Berkley. They received a copy of AT&T unix and were allowed to develop their own version from it and distribute it (hence Berkley System Distribution). During the '90's BSD fragmented into several varieties. The best know are FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. Due to this fragmentation and the pull of Linux, development of the various branches of BSD is slower. Because the various BSD communities are smaller, you can get a little more personal attention from people actually developing it.
BSD, being a true Unix is generally considered to be more stable and able to scale better for enterprise use. Linux is generally used for midsize servers.
For more info on BSD check out NetBSD.
If you look at from the view that 95% of Open Source machines are Linux and 5% are BSD and BSD is dead, then, by the same argument, you can argue that because Macs only make up 5% of the desktop base, Macs are dead.
For what it's worth, I think that BSD will be around for a long time. Just consider the fact that every year, hundreds of thousands of computers are being shipped with BSD on them (cough-Apple-cough!). Who's to say that this won't spark a resurgence of people growing up with BSD. Think of all the kids out there that are playing with their parent's Macs. Isn't it likely that a few of them will start poking around behind the scenes and getting their fingers dirty with BSD. Once they realize that they can also install similar BSD software on their PC (I've seen a lot of Mac users who's kid has a PC for games/Macs aren't cool, etc.) they'll get things going again. It'll take a few years for this seeding to bear fruit but it should bring up a very interesting crop.
Who uses just one interface? Think about it. The web is orginized in a different way than the desktop. MS was afraid that they'd be shut out by Netscape with this new metephor. And how about everyone with access to a CLI? Don't you switch to that for some things and use a desktop for others? With OSX, there's the CLI, the desktop (which they really wanted to kill off) and the NeXT styled Column View. I use a mix of these to get things done. I don't think there can be one master interface that will bring all the data and in the darkness bind them, using current technology.
People still get dizzy. I started out with the original Castle Wolfenstein and it didn't bother me at all. Same for flight sims. Marathon would give me a headache after a few hours, but that could just be eyestrain. QIII really did it for me. Unreal acually was better. I could go an hour before wanting to ralph. Go figure.
The other problem I've seen with firewire drives is that the seem t o stop showing up after awhile. Popping the case, most drives are set as master. By setting them to cable select they show up again. You can then set them back as master and they seem to work. I've seen this only on MacOS9/10.1, FWIW.
I'll be glad when they come out with 'native' firewire drives. Those should really fly.