You just said you're switching to Mac... right off the bat, that gets you iMovie and iDVD. $30 gets you the "Pro" version of QuickTime which can handle lots of format conversions and stuff. Then you can get Final Cut Express for a few hundred bucks... of course the high-end stuff (Final Cut Pro, the pro DVD app that I can't even remember the name of, etc.) still costs like a grand each.:(
I'm on a Mac too, and... hmm. I guess I'd feel a lot more compelled to go to the trouble of going out and finding OSS video apps and getting them to work on my machine if it hadn't come bundled with software that pretty much covers every capability the original poster is looking for (and then some).:)
Adobe continues to make Mac versions of most of its apps. The buzz at the time was that Premiere was dropped simply because it simply couldn't even come close to competing with Final Cut Pro.
Not sure what planet you're on, but here on Earth, people buy things, and some people take back what they've bought. For whatever reason. Clashes with the decor, or whatever. Doesn't matter whether they've ever turned it on - if the packaging is open, it's either sold as "open box," or goes back to the mothership for a refurb process and is properly repackaged.
I... think you'll get significantly better results from a refurb than from an "open box."
And to muddle us all even more, Apple's finally got refurb G5's in stock at, oh, about $500 below the cost of a new one. (Go to store.apple.com and click on the big red "SAVE" tag.)
1.6GHz/256MB/80GB/SuperDrive - $1499
1.8GHz/512MB/160GB/SuperDrive - $1799
DUAL 2GHz/512MB/160GB/SuperDrive - $2499
Those come with the same warranty as new ones (which can be extended to 3 years, just like on the new ones), and obviously can't possibly be terribly old units.
So now it becomes:
64-bit good, but e-machines = poo. Apple != poo, but Apple costs more than e-machines...
I briefly considered whinging about how I could've gotten two 1.6GHz G5's refurb for what my dual 2GHz cost new... then I realized that wait, two of those would still be slower than my dual 2GHz...
For my first 35mm SLR, I bought an Elan (specifically an Elan 7). Yes, you can get any Rebel for less than an Elan, but the Elans are better-built and more capable (faster, etc), so you won't find yourself saying "gee, I wish this camera could..." until you've gotten very serious (and hopefully very good).
A few jobs back, I was the longest-employed member of a development group, and as such had to be on all the interviews. Our standard question was "What do you think of VI?" (pronounced "vee eye"). Needless to say, any answers involving Visual InterDev resulted in immediate disqualification...
I already chimed in on the Blackbox thread, as a longtime user of it, but I was thinking about it since I too have an iBook...
Mac OS X's Aqua UI seems pretty minimal. The menu bar at the top of the screen obviously takes some space all the time, but it seems pretty proportional to what Blackbox would use - and because of how it works, that's one less menu bar that has to be in each application window. The dock can be set to totally auto-hide. And with Expose' in Panther... well, let's just say that's it's a great UI for those of us who tend to clutter our desktops!
But... he's not using Mac OS X on his iBook, so he misses out on some of these features.;)
I'd definitely agree with Blackbox being a good choice. When I got my first Linux laptop in 1997, 'twas a NEC Versa 2000C, 486DX4-75, with a 640x480 screen. (Of course, that was a 640x480 TFT, not one of those lame "passive matrix" screens, and it had enough VRAM to run in 16-bit color!) Blackbox was my standard WM on it, and on everything else I used (other Linux boxen, SGI's and Suns) 'til I got OS X.
I wouldn't say it's "unfortunate" that the PalmOS version of Frodo doesn't run on Symbian Series 60 devices like his 7650 (and my 3650). After all, we've had Frodo for several months now (Q-Bert is fun on a cell phone, even one like mine with the buttons in a circle) and you guys are just now getting it?;)
I wonder whether this reinforces what some pundits have been saying of late - "smartphones are going to kill the PDA sector." I never thought to look at "who's getting the games first" though. And PDA's probably have a lot more in the way of "serious" software.
I simply had to make a blog entry commemorating all the wonderful remarks. (A disproportionately large amount of the "bashing" actually came from people who are, or were, or at least claimed to be, fans of Apple.) I wonder how many of the people named therein have since gotten iPods?
What a great idea! You've just managed to get your site back on-line (mind you, I don't remember why it was off-line to begin with), and in a fit of nihilism, you post to Slashdot about it. That's a great way to ensure that it doesn't, say, get... knocked offline by the hordes of Slashdotting barbarians.
Galileo.com is, despite the image on its homepage that looks for all the world like a GPS mesh, a Central Reservation System in the travel industry. (It competes with best-known SABRE and also with WorldSpan and possibly others - it's been a little while since I worked for a division of the folks who own Galileo, so my memory's fading.)
What? Are you implying that Microsoft would exhume and copy a years-old Apple technology?! Shocking, simply shocking!:)
And a third-party iPod battery costs... $50.
on
"iPod's Dirty Secret"
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Quite honestly, if someone insists upon Authentic Apple Parts for everything, when there are commodity parts available -- this goes especially for RAM, and now also apparently for iPod batteries -- I don't see how they've got a leg to stand on whilst griping and moaning about how unfair life is.
Ouch. Here in Hawaii we have black and banded long-spined venomous urchins, probably pretty similar to what's in Bali. They're pretty visible (if you're watching where you're going) and easily avoided (thank goodness they haven't evolved the ability to launch venomous spines like torpedoes at swimmers!) but yeah, stepping on one would be nasty. I once stepped on a non-venomous collector urchin, and that hurt enough, so I give the venomous ones a wide berth unless I'm taking pictures of them.
AppleCare for iPod is only $59, and extends the phone/mail-in-repair warranty from 90 days/1 year to 2 years/2 years. It covers the battery, as well as the rest of the iPod and all the stuff that comes with it in the box. So if you've got an iPod less than a year old, you can pick that up now. Nicely cheaper than the battery replacement service. I'll probably be getting it for my wife's 10GB iPod - didn't even know the headphones that died were still under warranty.
As soon as the nuts who take shark cartilege and all manner of other stuff in hopes of living past 120 hear about this, they'll wipe out the sea urchins...
Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't that $2.2m over four years be better spent on books and teachers?
Um, no. We've had 2 or 3 decades of the mantra of "we need more money for books and teachers," and has it helped? Not really.
Why? Well, I'm not an academic, but I think they forget that learning is something you do, not something that's done to you. You can't teach someone who doesn't want to learn, isn't ready to learn, or whatever. Conversely, you can't stop someone from learning who really wants to. Teachers are all well and good for the middle third of kids, I suppose... but give a kid a computer and odds are they'll learn something without you having to tell them to do so.
basically, Microsoft is working on making the system extremely easy to use for people who have absolutely no clue what they're doing
They've always done this. That's their only achievement: dumbing it all down (and increasing their control).
I have just two words for you. Two words that strike fear and confusion into the hearts of people who use Microsoft products every day -- let alone people who have no clue what they're doing.
Paul in particular is an interesting case. He runs his Windows site, which includes an occasional dig at the Mac -- but he also runs his blog, which comes very close to being 24/7 Mac gloom and doom. And he appears to actually have a 500MHz iBook and a 1GHz iMac...
Paul is a big fan of what he calls an "iterative," "task-based" operating system. This sort of an OS has a lot of functionality built into it, rather than in applications. For example, you wouldn't open a discrete app to print a document. You wouldn't open a discrete app to pull images off a digital camera. And so on.
The "iterative" and "task-based" nature of things gets to be kind of interesting. Rather than opening an app, you might pick (from a "start" menu that takes up a third of the screen), for example, a "photo" section (or "activity center," as Microsoft was calling them back in the late '90s). What's that get you? A UI (quite possibly full-screen) that looks a little like a website, with a list of places you might Want To Go Today[tm]. Maybe you want to import photos, maybe you want to print photos, maybe you want to organize photos, etc. Thus the "task-based" part. You click on what you want, and it gives you step-by-step "iterative" stuff, like a "wizard." Or... well... DOS.:)
So... basically, Microsoft is working on making the system extremely easy to use for people who have absolutely no clue what they're doing. They're aiming at folks who are going to do one thing at a time, more or less. Perhaps they'll still have a "classic" interface available for people who've actually used a computer for more than a week, since a "task-based" "iterative" interface would be absolutely maddening for many of us.:)
Historically, there's been this zeitgeist of "Windows is somewhat hard to use, but it's cheap, and you can do so much with it!" First UNIX-like OSes became cheaper than Windows, then Macs became price-competitive, and now Microsoft wants Longhorn to be the OS of choice for clueless newbies. Earth's magnetic poles should be flippingany day now...
Slashdot Mirror
Going to the trouble of a dictionary attack for just an AOL account? That's lame. ;)
I'm on a Mac too, and... hmm. I guess I'd feel a lot more compelled to go to the trouble of going out and finding OSS video apps and getting them to work on my machine if it hadn't come bundled with software that pretty much covers every capability the original poster is looking for (and then some). :)
Adobe continues to make Mac versions of most of its apps. The buzz at the time was that Premiere was dropped simply because it simply couldn't even come close to competing with Final Cut Pro.
I... think you'll get significantly better results from a refurb than from an "open box."
- 1.6GHz/256MB/80GB/SuperDrive - $1499
- 1.8GHz/512MB/160GB/SuperDrive - $1799
- DUAL 2GHz/512MB/160GB/SuperDrive - $2499
Those come with the same warranty as new ones (which can be extended to 3 years, just like on the new ones), and obviously can't possibly be terribly old units.So now it becomes:
64-bit good, but e-machines = poo. Apple != poo, but Apple costs more than e-machines...
I briefly considered whinging about how I could've gotten two 1.6GHz G5's refurb for what my dual 2GHz cost new... then I realized that wait, two of those would still be slower than my dual 2GHz...
For my first 35mm SLR, I bought an Elan (specifically an Elan 7). Yes, you can get any Rebel for less than an Elan, but the Elans are better-built and more capable (faster, etc), so you won't find yourself saying "gee, I wish this camera could..." until you've gotten very serious (and hopefully very good).
A few jobs back, I was the longest-employed member of a development group, and as such had to be on all the interviews. Our standard question was "What do you think of VI?" (pronounced "vee eye"). Needless to say, any answers involving Visual InterDev resulted in immediate disqualification...
I already chimed in on the Blackbox thread, as a longtime user of it, but I was thinking about it since I too have an iBook... Mac OS X's Aqua UI seems pretty minimal. The menu bar at the top of the screen obviously takes some space all the time, but it seems pretty proportional to what Blackbox would use - and because of how it works, that's one less menu bar that has to be in each application window. The dock can be set to totally auto-hide. And with Expose' in Panther... well, let's just say that's it's a great UI for those of us who tend to clutter our desktops! But... he's not using Mac OS X on his iBook, so he misses out on some of these features. ;)
I'd definitely agree with Blackbox being a good choice. When I got my first Linux laptop in 1997, 'twas a NEC Versa 2000C, 486DX4-75, with a 640x480 screen. (Of course, that was a 640x480 TFT, not one of those lame "passive matrix" screens, and it had enough VRAM to run in 16-bit color!) Blackbox was my standard WM on it, and on everything else I used (other Linux boxen, SGI's and Suns) 'til I got OS X.
I wonder whether this reinforces what some pundits have been saying of late - "smartphones are going to kill the PDA sector." I never thought to look at "who's getting the games first" though. And PDA's probably have a lot more in the way of "serious" software.
I simply had to make a blog entry commemorating all the wonderful remarks. (A disproportionately large amount of the "bashing" actually came from people who are, or were, or at least claimed to be, fans of Apple.) I wonder how many of the people named therein have since gotten iPods?
And not in your dorm room.
And now... I'll actually go look at it.
-Dan (Horde member 191xxx)The European satellite navigation project Galileo is at http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/energy_transport/gal ileo/index_en.htm.
That's what India and China are getting involved with. Airlines, not nations, get involved with Galileo.com.
Something to view on Apple's Cinema 23 HD! All the fooferaw over Pixlet and whatnot, and they only put up a quarter-size (960x540) sample. :(
What? Are you implying that Microsoft would exhume and copy a years-old Apple technology?! Shocking, simply shocking! :)
Quite honestly, if someone insists upon Authentic Apple Parts for everything, when there are commodity parts available -- this goes especially for RAM, and now also apparently for iPod batteries -- I don't see how they've got a leg to stand on whilst griping and moaning about how unfair life is.
Ouch. Here in Hawaii we have black and banded long-spined venomous urchins, probably pretty similar to what's in Bali. They're pretty visible (if you're watching where you're going) and easily avoided (thank goodness they haven't evolved the ability to launch venomous spines like torpedoes at swimmers!) but yeah, stepping on one would be nasty. I once stepped on a non-venomous collector urchin, and that hurt enough, so I give the venomous ones a wide berth unless I'm taking pictures of them.
AppleCare for iPod is only $59, and extends the phone/mail-in-repair warranty from 90 days/1 year to 2 years/2 years. It covers the battery, as well as the rest of the iPod and all the stuff that comes with it in the box. So if you've got an iPod less than a year old, you can pick that up now. Nicely cheaper than the battery replacement service. I'll probably be getting it for my wife's 10GB iPod - didn't even know the headphones that died were still under warranty.
As soon as the nuts who take shark cartilege and all manner of other stuff in hopes of living past 120 hear about this, they'll wipe out the sea urchins...
Why? Well, I'm not an academic, but I think they forget that learning is something you do, not something that's done to you. You can't teach someone who doesn't want to learn, isn't ready to learn, or whatever. Conversely, you can't stop someone from learning who really wants to. Teachers are all well and good for the middle third of kids, I suppose... but give a kid a computer and odds are they'll learn something without you having to tell them to do so.
They've always done this. That's their only achievement: dumbing it all down (and increasing their control).
I have just two words for you. Two words that strike fear and confusion into the hearts of people who use Microsoft products every day -- let alone people who have no clue what they're doing.
Pivot Table.
I rest my case. (And if you're so fortunate as to not know what Pivot Table is... try to stay that way.)
Paul in particular is an interesting case. He runs his Windows site, which includes an occasional dig at the Mac -- but he also runs his blog, which comes very close to being 24/7 Mac gloom and doom. And he appears to actually have a 500MHz iBook and a 1GHz iMac...
The "iterative" and "task-based" nature of things gets to be kind of interesting. Rather than opening an app, you might pick (from a "start" menu that takes up a third of the screen), for example, a "photo" section (or "activity center," as Microsoft was calling them back in the late '90s). What's that get you? A UI (quite possibly full-screen) that looks a little like a website, with a list of places you might Want To Go Today[tm]. Maybe you want to import photos, maybe you want to print photos, maybe you want to organize photos, etc. Thus the "task-based" part. You click on what you want, and it gives you step-by-step "iterative" stuff, like a "wizard." Or... well... DOS. :)
So... basically, Microsoft is working on making the system extremely easy to use for people who have absolutely no clue what they're doing. They're aiming at folks who are going to do one thing at a time, more or less. Perhaps they'll still have a "classic" interface available for people who've actually used a computer for more than a week, since a "task-based" "iterative" interface would be absolutely maddening for many of us. :)
Historically, there's been this zeitgeist of "Windows is somewhat hard to use, but it's cheap, and you can do so much with it!" First UNIX-like OSes became cheaper than Windows, then Macs became price-competitive, and now Microsoft wants Longhorn to be the OS of choice for clueless newbies. Earth's magnetic poles should be flipping any day now...
Late 2004? Hmm, Microsoft bigwigs have been saying it's 3 years away...