I owned a ReplayTV, loved that it could be networked so easily - I never even cracked the case! But then I noticed that I couldn't record two things at once - single tuner sucked. Then I noted that I was suffering a double encoding loss with my SAT box - that sucked too. No Season Pass but yeah I could record a static time slot - bleah!
I now have a DirecTivo. Done right video transfer isn't too bad. Dual tuners. No double encoding. Support... Yeah, I don't miss my ReplayTV and am enjoying my DIRECTIVO
Ah, dual tuners is a definite bonus. But that's only on the DirectTV satalite system, right? Which I guess isn't that big of a deal since everything is on satalite now.
Holy shit you guys are talking in circles. What corporation are you employed as a manager for?
So does a standard Mac need more than 256MB of memory or not? That is if you plan to do anything with it? Most people will want to browse, email, IM, and listen to music at the same time.
OS 128 - 180 mail 20 - 50 web 20 - 100 IM 10 - 20 music 20 - 50
Total 198 - 400
So bare minimum? Maybe... But if you're ever going to stretch your legs, you better have 512. And that's not just "Mac" requirements. I can't believe Apple / Dell / HP / etc even sell computers with less than 512MB.
To the best of my knowledge the MPEG 2 standard has not changed in the last 10 years. Ten years ago we were using 133MHz Pentium MMX and 120 MHz 604. So, you are telling me that content creation cannot be achieved on a 1.25 GHz G4?
Yeah if you want to put a 10 year old operating system on it, go right ahead. But in case you hadn't noticed, OS X's minimum system requirements include a minimum of 128MB of memory. That's HALF the memory of a base Mac mini (as I stated in the first post of this stupid thread). Then you run whatever silly apps and configuration you like, add iMovie to the mix, then try to open that 200MB file you're going to EDIT.
How comforting to know that the two most dominant technology companies have yet to "set their minds" to making a superior product. Has it occurred to you that what you've seen thus far is actually the best they can do?
Has it occurred to you that what they've done so far is make the most money? BMW, Lotus, Ferrari, Porsche... they make the best cars. But Ford, GM, and Honda make the most money.
I have owned two Media Center PCs, and currently use two 5504 ReplayTV's as my main PVR units.
Looks as though you've not personally owned a TiVo box, but have you used one on a semi-regular basis (friend or relative's house)? I'm trying to decide between a TiVo and a ReplayTV. The prices are essentially the same at this point and people who have owned either one always tell me the other guy sucks, but inveriably have never used it. Kind of like the Mac and Windows battle (:
So how about it? Have you used a TiVo? What made you buy ReplayTV?
You're not seriously putting forward Dell as technologically innovative, are you? What do handheld computers have to do with desktops? Are you seriously thinking about editing movies on your PocketPC?
No, I'm saying that Intel can put a lot of computer power in a small space. Are you seriously thinking of editing movies with a base Mac mini? Ha ha ha...
What the fuck dude. Do you have nothing better to do with your time?
The standard "iPod" is stupid. It's not physically small enough and has an outrageous storage capacity. The iPod Mini is hot snot. Infact I've got one on the way (fo` free) (: The iPod Photo is rather stupid - other than storage capacity it offers no benefit that a digital camera can not do. A digital camera with an mp3 player built in would be cool...
By the way, it's green. I figure it's the least appealing of the colors and therefore the most rare.
Personally I love the Mac Mini, but I know it's not for me. What I really want is a single processor G5 cube with graphics on an AGP or PCI-E card. I'd pay $900 - $1200 for it.
They make a single G5 Mac with AGP video, it's called a Power Mac and it costs $1,500 and only comes with 256mb of memory - you need a minimum of 512mb to make OS X enjoyable. And why must you have a G5? OS X isn't even 64 bit (:
The same is true with the Mac mini - if you don't increase the ram you won't have a very good Mac. Not even for web and email use.
The whole poing of the Mac Mini is that it's a small affordable system that comes preinstalled with; an OS, a Photo Editor, Movie Editor, Music Player, DVD/VCD designer, and Music Composition software. Additionally most Macs comes pre-installed with Apple Works and World Book Encyclopedia.
Not to mention the splendor of no Adware or a major risk of viruses.
I think the whole point of the Mac Mini is to offer a cheap Mac to pursuade users to move from Windows / Intel to Macintosh / Apple.. But I'll argue against what you've said as if it were more accurate.
Windows XP comes with a photo editor (Microsoft Photo Editor), movie editor (Movie Maker), and music player (Windows Media Player). I honestly don't know if Movie Maker does DVD authoring and I'm pretty sure there arn't any music composition apps included.
Now look at the target market. People who want cheap ass computers. Are they even going to be doing any kind of content creation? If so they probably need a better computer anyway. The people buying these caliber computers are going to surf the web, send email, and play music.
Adware / spyware / viruses. Fair enough. But none of my computers have had any of that installed on them for the past six years. And I've seen Macs degrade into a metal whirring box because of software that the user [i]wanted[/i] installed.
I think the Mac mini is pretty cool. I think OS X is pretty cool. But I think Apple has more refinement to do, which they are constantly on the chase. However, Intel and Microsoft, if they were to set their minds to it, could crank out one hell of a little box. Look at the Dell Axim or the other (HP, Toshiba) hand held computers. Barely larger than a cell phone and more computing power than something from just five years ago. They just need to [i]get it right[/i] instead of doing it half assed (like they useually do...).
Turn off Flash - I've never found a convincing argument to have it other than the odd well made animation - and these are few and far between, turning flash on and off should be a lot easier but aprt from that -it works.
There needs to be a way to have certain plugins enabled based on the website you're at. Default would be all off. But for Homestar Runner it would be necessary to enable Flash. The browser should be configurable like that. Other sites that happen to use these damned annoying flash ads could have Flash disabled.
So the abacus, in use for centuries, comes in at #60 of all time, but the PowerBook 100, which was in production for a few short years is ranked #1?
The PowerBook 100 was a great machine and all, but let's be serious.
Actually the Powerbook 100 didn't even get produced for a full year, just 10 or 11 months (Oct 91 - Aug 92). And it had a predecessor, the Macintosh Portable. For the day it might have been cool, but it classifies as a luggable these days. And besides, It's not like Apple invented the laptop. Surely there were other better laptops at the time. Otherwise things would be different these days.
We go through all this trouble to block pop-up ads, and they come up with some way to cram them through our browsers anyway. What's the point? Do they really think I'm going to buy anything from them, when it was me who installed an alternate browser/pop-blocker add-on so I'd never ever have to come into contact them in the first place?
Right, but you're not the only person getting those popups. And if 1/10,000 of the individuals that receive the popups purchase the product, they've made money.
Advertising in general is fucking annoying. Even good advertising pisses me off. I'm not here to receive ads. I'm here to live my fucking life. Stop trying to sell me shit I don't need or want. If I want it bad enough I'll go looking for it.
I love it: IBM's putting $100 Million into Linux software, and their premier desktop groupware appliacation still doesn't have a Linux client. And the server still lags behind Windows and AIX for feature-completeness...
Note to IBM: MAKE YOUR OWN SOFTWARE WORK FIRST!!!
Kind of like Sony making mp3 devices and suing people for copyright infringement...
I tried to run Domino 6 on a Linux server and ran into a few snags. I find it really frustrating that they don't make all their servers equal.
Another thing I've found that seems a "no brainer" to me would be to distribute Domino on a CD with the Linux install included. It's not like it costs them money. The installer CD could boot the machine and give the same simple options that the Domino installer does - application, mail, or database server. Then it would configure and install the Linux OS tuned for Domino and install Domino. How hard can this possibly be?
I think there are LOTS of instances where this could be the case. Companies that produce server applications that require a dedicated machine generally require Windows. Some of them support Linux. None of them make a single install disk that takes a fresh machine and fully configures it. That is what we need.
Given how practically every female main character seems to attract 3rd-party nude patches, and their advertising campaign being entirely based around "Look, Girls!!!", it's hard to believe they didn't see it coming.
Or perhaps this was their plan all along... [dr evil] muhahhahaa... MUHHAHAHAHAAa... MUAHAH AHA HA HAH AHAH A HAH AHA HAAAA.[/dr evil]
Even so, how do you prove that they weren't running the appropriate software? I'm sure they'll claim they were doing everything they've been told to do.
And that really sucks for your fiance. If she did the work she should be compensated for it. If I get the oil changed in my car then go out and drive it over the red-line until the tank goes dry and burn up my engine, the mechanic won't refund my money. I hope that Occupational Therapists aren't bound by similar guildelines as my fiance would be in the same boat.
I know the point of this is to be available in developing countries, but I can see this being very popular in "first-world" countries as well. (heck, I'd buy one) They may have to control how they're sold/distributed to keep the developed world from snapping them all up.
Or they could sell the same thing here for double the price and be able to lower the price of the machine in "less fortunate" areas. The more you can make, and sell, the cheaper you can make, and sell, them for (:
I can't see a 3D Desktop ever becoming the way we use computers while we're still using a 2D screen. The image is distorted so much that it becomes useless. Navigation in a 3D relm with a 2D input and display is cumbersome, and really... the current desktop systems work pretty darn good. The modifications / enhancements that Apple have included in OS X are additionally helpful, though there are changes I would make.
The ability to put a window into the dock is pretty nice, though that section should be larger so the contents of the window are still recognizable, while shortcut icons are still small (16x16-ish).
To get more 'desktop space' we've tried bigger displays with higher resolution; multiple virtual desktops; multiple displays; parts of the desktop sliding in and out of view... what am I missing?
What we really want is the ability to see everything that's going on at the same time without having to turn our head or move anything on the screen.
I think if there were a system like Expose with a central area for displaying the current window, we'd be there. That way you could have all your windows displayed miniturized and your primary window large in the center of the screen. You could still get information from the rest of your windows without having to switch to them or stop whatever it is you're working on.
Multi-head is Matrox game now. They pretty much have it licked. NVidia is doing some interesting things with their cards and dual-head support, but nothing quite like what Matrox is pulling off.
Am I the only gamer that has finally grown tired of the hand-held controller input scheme? Isn't it time we dawn some sort of VR goggles or other similar display and perhaps a new input method? Or is the next generation of consoles going to be identical to the last (and the one before that!) with more ram, processing power, etc?
It's these damn keyboards that I'm sick of. Why don't they come up with something better? Perhaps because this is pretty damn good? Perhaps the game controllers are pretty damn good?
It's easy, intuitive, quick, and cheap. Try giving the gamers something different and they'll freak out and reject it. The standard appears to be two thumb-sticks, a directional pad on the left, four buttons on the right, and a pair of triggers. Other than that it's just variations on a theme. And for a reason. IT WORKS.
We've spent the past fifteen to twenty years working out that combination. Sony has been using it for quite some time with very little change. The Japanese gaming community is the biggest in the world and they've found nothing better. I believe that speaks volumes.
Imagine if there were an 'optimum speed' that the computer reccomended that everyone go to ensure smooth flow of traffic. It'd take a lot of processing power, but it could be done.
Now imagine this speed is broadcast out to cars and the speed could vary between lanes. So this pretty much eliminates unnecessary traffic jams and fixes the 'wave' effect of traffic.
I fear that that could only be effective if the computer system were allowed to actually enforce the speed as well. We all know good 'n well that no one is actually going to adhear to a number that shows up on their dash. Or at least, not enough people to make a difference. Though it does make a lot of sense (:
Do you ever feel silly for digging up comments over three years old?
Actually I didn't even realize that was mine until I finished reading it. Wow. Well they made a lot of changes from three years ago. It's actually something cool now even if it took three years to get there. Also, I believe they were $400 and $500 back in the day, where you can now get one 100x better for half the price. But yeah, I guess I should feel a bit silly about it. Products do develope over time. I just thought Apple would have canned it before it got anywhere.
I still think the larger ones are stupid. First of all no one needs 20GB of music to carry around. You can't listen to 5% of that before it's time to recharge the battery - during which time you could sync to a new set of music. And even though it's incredibly small and lightweight for what it does, it's not small enough or light enough to be worth the money. The Mini iPod however is freaking awesome. I could go for cooler design and maybe black (:
When is Apple going to make a new PDA? Or how about a tablet PC? The latest iMac could be engineered to a tablet so easily! And I still think Apple is the one that will make the best tablet computers - their laptops rock and their 'presentation' (for lack of better term) is pretty dang good. They just need to partner with a TFT touch screen manufacturer and develope a hellatious product.
I know how silly it is to expect people to actually read the articles around here, but:
Sources familiar with the product cautioned that the low-end Mac will be marketed towards a totally different audience than those who traditionally buy even a $799 eMac. "This product is not going to be about performance," said a source close to Apple. "This is going to be the basics, but with just as much of a focus on software as any Mac could ever be."
Entry-level Computer: The new MyMac (or whatever) Workstation for Pros: The PowerMac G5
I don't see how hard it is to realize that they have two vastly different target markets that don't overlap that much; some people will want the experience of using Apple Mail and Safari while others need 8GB of RAM for Photoshop.
Just because they have two different target markets doesn't mean that a $500 Mac won't eat into the PowerMac's audience at all. Thinking that way is simply naive. However, I would assume that the number of people who would buy the cheap Mac instead of the work horse is fairly slim. Maybe a couple hundred freelance artists who don't have the startup cash, or a handful of ad agency with tightwad CFOs. But the ground they make up in new Mac owners would far outweight any loss in PowerMac sales.
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Shit, did I put Mormons in the subject? I meant MORONS.
I owned a ReplayTV, loved that it could be networked so easily - I never even cracked the case! But then I noticed that I couldn't record two things at once - single tuner sucked. Then I noted that I was suffering a double encoding loss with my SAT box - that sucked too. No Season Pass but yeah I could record a static time slot - bleah!
I now have a DirecTivo. Done right video transfer isn't too bad. Dual tuners. No double encoding. Support... Yeah, I don't miss my ReplayTV and am enjoying my DIRECTIVO
Ah, dual tuners is a definite bonus. But that's only on the DirectTV satalite system, right? Which I guess isn't that big of a deal since everything is on satalite now.
Holy shit you guys are talking in circles. What corporation are you employed as a manager for?
... But if you're ever going to stretch your legs, you better have 512. And that's not just "Mac" requirements. I can't believe Apple / Dell / HP / etc even sell computers with less than 512MB.
So does a standard Mac need more than 256MB of memory or not? That is if you plan to do anything with it? Most people will want to browse, email, IM, and listen to music at the same time.
OS 128 - 180
mail 20 - 50
web 20 - 100
IM 10 - 20
music 20 - 50
Total 198 - 400
So bare minimum? Maybe
To the best of my knowledge the MPEG 2 standard has not changed in the last 10 years. Ten years ago we were using 133MHz Pentium MMX and 120 MHz 604. So, you are telling me that content creation cannot be achieved on a 1.25 GHz G4?
Yeah if you want to put a 10 year old operating system on it, go right ahead. But in case you hadn't noticed, OS X's minimum system requirements include a minimum of 128MB of memory. That's HALF the memory of a base Mac mini (as I stated in the first post of this stupid thread). Then you run whatever silly apps and configuration you like, add iMovie to the mix, then try to open that 200MB file you're going to EDIT.
How comforting to know that the two most dominant technology companies have yet to "set their minds" to making a superior product. Has it occurred to you that what you've seen thus far is actually the best they can do?
... they make the best cars. But Ford, GM, and Honda make the most money.
Has it occurred to you that what they've done so far is make the most money? BMW, Lotus, Ferrari, Porsche
I have owned two Media Center PCs, and currently use two 5504 ReplayTV's as my main PVR units.
Looks as though you've not personally owned a TiVo box, but have you used one on a semi-regular basis (friend or relative's house)? I'm trying to decide between a TiVo and a ReplayTV. The prices are essentially the same at this point and people who have owned either one always tell me the other guy sucks, but inveriably have never used it. Kind of like the Mac and Windows battle (:
So how about it? Have you used a TiVo? What made you buy ReplayTV?
You're not seriously putting forward Dell as technologically innovative, are you? What do handheld computers have to do with desktops? Are you seriously thinking about editing movies on your PocketPC?
...
No, I'm saying that Intel can put a lot of computer power in a small space. Are you seriously thinking of editing movies with a base Mac mini? Ha ha ha
What the fuck dude. Do you have nothing better to do with your time?
...
The standard "iPod" is stupid. It's not physically small enough and has an outrageous storage capacity. The iPod Mini is hot snot. Infact I've got one on the way (fo` free) (: The iPod Photo is rather stupid - other than storage capacity it offers no benefit that a digital camera can not do. A digital camera with an mp3 player built in would be cool
By the way, it's green. I figure it's the least appealing of the colors and therefore the most rare.
Personally I love the Mac Mini, but I know it's not for me. What I really want is a single processor G5 cube with graphics on an AGP or PCI-E card. I'd pay $900 - $1200 for it.
They make a single G5 Mac with AGP video, it's called a Power Mac and it costs $1,500 and only comes with 256mb of memory - you need a minimum of 512mb to make OS X enjoyable. And why must you have a G5? OS X isn't even 64 bit (:
The same is true with the Mac mini - if you don't increase the ram you won't have a very good Mac. Not even for web and email use.
The whole poing of the Mac Mini is that it's a small affordable system that comes preinstalled with; an OS, a Photo Editor, Movie Editor, Music Player, DVD/VCD designer, and Music Composition software. Additionally most Macs comes pre-installed with Apple Works and World Book Encyclopedia.
...).
Not to mention the splendor of no Adware or a major risk of viruses.
I think the whole point of the Mac Mini is to offer a cheap Mac to pursuade users to move from Windows / Intel to Macintosh / Apple.. But I'll argue against what you've said as if it were more accurate.
Windows XP comes with a photo editor (Microsoft Photo Editor), movie editor (Movie Maker), and music player (Windows Media Player). I honestly don't know if Movie Maker does DVD authoring and I'm pretty sure there arn't any music composition apps included.
Now look at the target market. People who want cheap ass computers. Are they even going to be doing any kind of content creation? If so they probably need a better computer anyway. The people buying these caliber computers are going to surf the web, send email, and play music.
Adware / spyware / viruses. Fair enough. But none of my computers have had any of that installed on them for the past six years. And I've seen Macs degrade into a metal whirring box because of software that the user [i]wanted[/i] installed.
I think the Mac mini is pretty cool. I think OS X is pretty cool. But I think Apple has more refinement to do, which they are constantly on the chase. However, Intel and Microsoft, if they were to set their minds to it, could crank out one hell of a little box. Look at the Dell Axim or the other (HP, Toshiba) hand held computers. Barely larger than a cell phone and more computing power than something from just five years ago. They just need to [i]get it right[/i] instead of doing it half assed (like they useually do
Turn off Flash - I've never found a convincing argument to have it other than the odd well made animation - and these are few and far between, turning flash on and off should be a lot easier but aprt from that -it works.
There needs to be a way to have certain plugins enabled based on the website you're at. Default would be all off. But for Homestar Runner it would be necessary to enable Flash. The browser should be configurable like that. Other sites that happen to use these damned annoying flash ads could have Flash disabled.
Someone please tell me this exists.
So the abacus, in use for centuries, comes in at #60 of all time, but the PowerBook 100, which was in production for a few short years is ranked #1?
The PowerBook 100 was a great machine and all, but let's be serious.
Actually the Powerbook 100 didn't even get produced for a full year, just 10 or 11 months (Oct 91 - Aug 92). And it had a predecessor, the Macintosh Portable. For the day it might have been cool, but it classifies as a luggable these days. And besides, It's not like Apple invented the laptop. Surely there were other better laptops at the time. Otherwise things would be different these days.
We go through all this trouble to block pop-up ads, and they come up with some way to cram them through our browsers anyway. What's the point? Do they really think I'm going to buy anything from them, when it was me who installed an alternate browser/pop-blocker add-on so I'd never ever have to come into contact them in the first place?
Right, but you're not the only person getting those popups. And if 1/10,000 of the individuals that receive the popups purchase the product, they've made money.
Advertising in general is fucking annoying. Even good advertising pisses me off. I'm not here to receive ads. I'm here to live my fucking life. Stop trying to sell me shit I don't need or want. If I want it bad enough I'll go looking for it.
I love it: IBM's putting $100 Million into Linux software, and their premier desktop groupware appliacation still doesn't have a Linux client. And the server still lags behind Windows and AIX for feature-completeness...
...
Note to IBM: MAKE YOUR OWN SOFTWARE WORK FIRST!!!
Kind of like Sony making mp3 devices and suing people for copyright infringement
I tried to run Domino 6 on a Linux server and ran into a few snags. I find it really frustrating that they don't make all their servers equal.
Another thing I've found that seems a "no brainer" to me would be to distribute Domino on a CD with the Linux install included. It's not like it costs them money. The installer CD could boot the machine and give the same simple options that the Domino installer does - application, mail, or database server. Then it would configure and install the Linux OS tuned for Domino and install Domino. How hard can this possibly be?
I think there are LOTS of instances where this could be the case. Companies that produce server applications that require a dedicated machine generally require Windows. Some of them support Linux. None of them make a single install disk that takes a fresh machine and fully configures it. That is what we need.
The market only exists because of their crappy software. Is it against the law to create a market and then to destroy it?
Given how practically every female main character seems to attract 3rd-party nude patches, and their advertising campaign being entirely based around "Look, Girls!!!", it's hard to believe they didn't see it coming.
... [dr evil] muhahhahaa ... MUHHAHAHAHAAa ... MUAHAH AHA HA HAH AHAH A HAH AHA HAAAA.[/dr evil]
Or perhaps this was their plan all along
Even so, how do you prove that they weren't running the appropriate software? I'm sure they'll claim they were doing everything they've been told to do.
And that really sucks for your fiance. If she did the work she should be compensated for it. If I get the oil changed in my car then go out and drive it over the red-line until the tank goes dry and burn up my engine, the mechanic won't refund my money. I hope that Occupational Therapists aren't bound by similar guildelines as my fiance would be in the same boat.
I know the point of this is to be available in developing countries, but I can see this being very popular in "first-world" countries as well. (heck, I'd buy one) They may have to control how they're sold/distributed to keep the developed world from snapping them all up.
Or they could sell the same thing here for double the price and be able to lower the price of the machine in "less fortunate" areas. The more you can make, and sell, the cheaper you can make, and sell, them for (:
I can't see a 3D Desktop ever becoming the way we use computers while we're still using a 2D screen. The image is distorted so much that it becomes useless. Navigation in a 3D relm with a 2D input and display is cumbersome, and really ... the current desktop systems work pretty darn good. The modifications / enhancements that Apple have included in OS X are additionally helpful, though there are changes I would make.
... what am I missing?
The ability to put a window into the dock is pretty nice, though that section should be larger so the contents of the window are still recognizable, while shortcut icons are still small (16x16-ish).
To get more 'desktop space' we've tried bigger displays with higher resolution; multiple virtual desktops; multiple displays; parts of the desktop sliding in and out of view
What we really want is the ability to see everything that's going on at the same time without having to turn our head or move anything on the screen.
I think if there were a system like Expose with a central area for displaying the current window, we'd be there. That way you could have all your windows displayed miniturized and your primary window large in the center of the screen. You could still get information from the rest of your windows without having to switch to them or stop whatever it is you're working on.
Multi-head is Matrox game now. They pretty much have it licked. NVidia is doing some interesting things with their cards and dual-head support, but nothing quite like what Matrox is pulling off.
Am I the only gamer that has finally grown tired of the hand-held controller input scheme? Isn't it time we dawn some sort of VR goggles or other similar display and perhaps a new input method? Or is the next generation of consoles going to be identical to the last (and the one before that!) with more ram, processing power, etc?
It's these damn keyboards that I'm sick of. Why don't they come up with something better? Perhaps because this is pretty damn good? Perhaps the game controllers are pretty damn good?
It's easy, intuitive, quick, and cheap. Try giving the gamers something different and they'll freak out and reject it. The standard appears to be two thumb-sticks, a directional pad on the left, four buttons on the right, and a pair of triggers. Other than that it's just variations on a theme. And for a reason. IT WORKS.
We've spent the past fifteen to twenty years working out that combination. Sony has been using it for quite some time with very little change. The Japanese gaming community is the biggest in the world and they've found nothing better. I believe that speaks volumes.
All this time it was Morse Code ... and I tried buying girls beer to switch their jeans off.
Imagine if there were an 'optimum speed' that the computer reccomended that everyone go to ensure smooth flow of traffic. It'd take a lot of processing power, but it could be done.
Now imagine this speed is broadcast out to cars and the speed could vary between lanes. So this pretty much eliminates unnecessary traffic jams and fixes the 'wave' effect of traffic.
I fear that that could only be effective if the computer system were allowed to actually enforce the speed as well. We all know good 'n well that no one is actually going to adhear to a number that shows up on their dash. Or at least, not enough people to make a difference. Though it does make a lot of sense (:
Do you ever feel silly for saying this?
Do you ever feel silly for digging up comments over three years old?
Actually I didn't even realize that was mine until I finished reading it. Wow. Well they made a lot of changes from three years ago. It's actually something cool now even if it took three years to get there. Also, I believe they were $400 and $500 back in the day, where you can now get one 100x better for half the price. But yeah, I guess I should feel a bit silly about it. Products do develope over time. I just thought Apple would have canned it before it got anywhere.
I still think the larger ones are stupid. First of all no one needs 20GB of music to carry around. You can't listen to 5% of that before it's time to recharge the battery - during which time you could sync to a new set of music. And even though it's incredibly small and lightweight for what it does, it's not small enough or light enough to be worth the money. The Mini iPod however is freaking awesome. I could go for cooler design and maybe black (:
When is Apple going to make a new PDA? Or how about a tablet PC? The latest iMac could be engineered to a tablet so easily! And I still think Apple is the one that will make the best tablet computers - their laptops rock and their 'presentation' (for lack of better term) is pretty dang good. They just need to partner with a TFT touch screen manufacturer and develope a hellatious product.
I know how silly it is to expect people to actually read the articles around here, but:
Sources familiar with the product cautioned that the low-end Mac will be marketed towards a totally different audience than those who traditionally buy even a $799 eMac. "This product is not going to be about performance," said a source close to Apple. "This is going to be the basics, but with just as much of a focus on software as any Mac could ever be."
Entry-level Computer: The new MyMac (or whatever)
Workstation for Pros: The PowerMac G5
I don't see how hard it is to realize that they have two vastly different target markets that don't overlap that much; some people will want the experience of using Apple Mail and Safari while others need 8GB of RAM for Photoshop.
Just because they have two different target markets doesn't mean that a $500 Mac won't eat into the PowerMac's audience at all. Thinking that way is simply naive. However, I would assume that the number of people who would buy the cheap Mac instead of the work horse is fairly slim. Maybe a couple hundred freelance artists who don't have the startup cash, or a handful of ad agency with tightwad CFOs. But the ground they make up in new Mac owners would far outweight any loss in PowerMac sales.