My book mark jumps to the Edu store pricing - retail is $100 more than the iBook G4. Yeah, the graphics performace remains to be seen - do you suppose they took a step down from the iBook / PB G4 performance?
Compared to the iBook G4, this thing is amazing for $50 more. If the benchmarks on the product site are correct, this is a major leap forward. Audio in/out, camera, all Core Duos... hard to imagine they could have done this better. They've answered most if not all of the iBook critics' points - better res, MagSafe, audio in/out+optical, DVI, camera, the battery doesn't have times yet, but looks like it might be on the iBook curve. Personally I can't stand glossy displays, but what the heck. Of course I bought my iBook G4 three months ago... so I'll be drooling for two years and nine months... Ah! If anyone complains about the 0.3 lb weight gain, buy the low-end white one and I'll trade you so you can go back to the 4.9 lb...
... his issues were on getting a Linux distribution working as reliably and predictably as Windows would on a given box.
Unless I missed something in TFA, it wasn't a matter of pressing the right buttons that were in a different place or a different color - it was getting generally acceptable stuff (end user day in day out work) to go as expected.
I'm not sure "lazy" swould be the correct adjective - it looks like he exhausted a lot of things before he reached a frustration level. Everyone picks the frustration level they want, his looks like his is non-zero and possibly above average.
I took a couple of broadsides over this concerning the availability of apps on given operating systems. The gist of it all was if the Wintel world is so convoluted, why don't you just go use FOSS to do what you want. My original point was a comparison of the state of Apple and Wintel experiences, but the bottom line is it's the end result that counts. Can you be who you need to be and get the work you need done or not. It's about balancing htree dimensions of time, money and headaches.
Case in point. Astronomy software. I want to be able to head outside and decode the sky and use a scope. For a while I paid StarryNight because it was impressive and did everything. Once they jacked the price had to consider if I needed everything or if I could live with something less frilly. For a few dollars I can use shareware Equinox. It will always do what it does, it's way leaner than StarryNight and can control my scope. And for free, I can use Stellarium, which is OSS, beautiful, responsive, no scope, but everyone I know can use the same app across platforms.
However, if I had to involve everyone in builds, or an install so huge it should only be shipped on CDs, or requiring X11 or other layer(s) of techie stuff, it'd be back to Equinox and pay for the upgrade.
Blasphemy, I know, but when I want to go look at the stars I don't want to be the IT guy in order to get it done.
You can multiply that by a bunch if you subsitute millions of WalMart customers for me and everything plain old people need to do for "astronomy".
Glad I finished my coffee first, cuz doing a spit-take all over the monitor would NOT be covered under warranty...
First, if his machine was under warranty, just bring it back and have Apple replace it for free. Apple, like every other vendor, can't just hand out hardware cuz you swear there's a bad one twenty blocks away. 2000 is before they had Apple Stores so this must have been a reseller, but still...
Not just Apple, but anyone - RS, BestBuy, Walmart - ANYONE would want the old one back before they hand you a free one. Honestly, did he think they were just handing out spares on the word of anyone who walks thru the door?
Unless it's not gone bad but perhaps used as a coffee holder, donut holder, bookshelf or pet perch, in which case he's unfortuately out of luck. On the other hand, when I sent my iBook in for a screen failure that was under warranty, they also supplied me with a shiny new case top, palmrests and fresh Little Rubber Feet.
Someone got their signals crossed:
1. Apple doesn't have to send it back for testing - any Apple store will first bench test it with known-good parts and/or the standard hardware tests on the network or an external drive.
2. There is no $20,000 fine for violating any customer agreement. You just void your warranty, period.
3. If in the end he did what they wanted him to - brought it in to keep it under warrany - then why would they charge him $1,000 for a drive that supposedly went bad under warranty? In 2000 it had to be the original G4 tower - and there's no way a CD swap in a G4 tower is a $1,000 repair.
There's a story in "Chariots for Apollo" about the potential problem of hitting the descent stage engine bell on a uncharted rock. They had to consider that landing on a rock could damage the bell, push the bell into the ascent stage, etc... But they had neither the time nor the money to design and execute a test + spare LM to see what would happen. One day as they were moving the LM on a crane, the rig slipped, and the whole thing landed, engine bell down, on a pile of crates. No significant damage. One of the managers turned to the team and said someting like "You just got your million dollar test for free."
OK maybe 'eat' was a bit much. but 12 LEDs? they certainly use more battery power than the equivalent pixels on my osx screen. nobody claimed to be a wizard, we can operate a pretty wide range of apps. I'm pointing out the contrast between the mac experience and the pc experience. we don't want to come home and solve all the little things we have to work on all day. we want it to work. i have plenty of oss stuff. some of it's pretty cool, some well done, there are some keepers. show me the ilife suite done as oss and approach the integration i get with something like.mac BTW since you paid at least twice as much for the xps, i'd certainly expect it to have much better performance than the iBook. i'm comparing two $800 laptops.
Cause the PC laptop offerings have heads spinning? Please. Or because there's no tablet (hint- they won't do it until they get it right - after two PC stumbles, who can blame them)? Or because the Apple market has held its own and continues to build eas of use and value? Count me in.
Case in point. My wife just bought the latest Acer which has the touted features of: - brightview screen (a shiny piece of plastic that produces glare and fingerprints at an astounding rate) - constant light for the bluetooth status (thanks - eats batteries) - constant light for the wifi status (ditto batteries) - constant light for the battery, num lock, cap lock (all of which are mirrored in the taskbar anyway) - three USB ports Woohoo! One more than an iBook! - a four cell battery which is an eight cell battery with four cells torn out. Honestly, you can squeeze the case and feel where the missing cells are supposed to be. - 2.5 hour battery life if you spring for the 8 cell battery separately. - Speed. It's a 2.something, if I turn off all the fancy XP graphics under system performance, it can almost keep up with my 1.33 iBook for general use with a few apps open. - software. none. after loading her up with picasa and itunes, whenever something mildly novel comes up, she shuts the lid and asks me to do it on the iBook. And she knows how to work a PC - she does it all day at her job. She's a wiz at office + access, but for real world stuff, the integration just isn't there - they made this point in one of the new apple ads - and it's about time.
I'd rather spend my time getting the work done than figuring out the workaround or forking over the license fee for getting it done on a PC.
So do I get my AARP card that much sooner?
on
One Big Bang, Or Many?
·
· Score: 1, Funny
I can leapfrog the next 7 years of angst I was planning for this event.
How long did we wait for the third installment of DK Strikes Again - all the time hearing that the delay had nothing to do with the concurrent events following September 11 - all to bizarre effect - something that could have been bigger and better than DK Returns and fell to the earth with a muffled thud.
Wow. Smooth, fast, works on OSX, little to complain about. Beats Google video by a mile. Well done. This is hands down the best no-direct-cost online video experience to date. Maybe now I can comprehend Lost, which I didn't find out about until it was too late to backfill.
It's number one on our underfunded TO DO list...
on
OpenBSD 3.9 Released
·
· Score: 2, Funny
"help to continue the devlopment of this great opeating system."
1. Spel checkr. 2. Full LRF support. 3. There is no third thing. 4. Universal Binary.
As I understood it, music videos were (originally, maybe not today) free in order to get people to buy your album, and albums were OK money that drove people to your concert, where you made the big money. And they have always charged whatever they think we'll pay - and this excuse^H^H^H^H^H^H theory sounds better than "cuz". Springsteen won't be a bargain at $200, but then again it wasn't a bargain at $100 either. Ever see what they have to haul around in trucks and buses to do a tour? Ya think maybe the fuel prices are also to blame?
Please. Pretty please? Characters that have somewhere to go - rather than simply fulfilling our expectations of personalities long since drained of any originality. We know exactly how TOS characters will act, and we know that 15, 30, 45, 60 and 75 minutes into this film there'll be an excruciatingly obvious bone mercilessly tossed to us in the form of a promordial "Dammit Jim", "Highly illogical", "Must... not... give... in... to...", or "She kenna' take much more, Cap'n!" that'll just tickle those clever writers. Every character in Serenity did something previously unseen but that moved their character forward and thus the story too.
So in your world, "traditional journalists" - let's say the editor of the New York Times or the Washington Post - would just as readily publish what they reasonably expected was a trade secret covered in an NDA so they can scoop some blogger? They wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole. They'll report on your reports and let you dance.
And let's stop arguing over the "chilling effect" this case could have on people who are already bound by contract to shut the hell up about whatever it is they're keen to tell you.
I've signed Apple NDAs, and there's nothing worth breaking to the world that I'd risk going up against lawyers who work for a company with so much cash they invented a brand new investment firm to handle it.
I also manage a campus with 40 macs and 20 windows machines - and after a week of forgotten passwords, blue screens, hunting rogue networks, unpatched xp, 98, me, 95, and requests to reboot the occasional etch-a-sketch, the only words left for the ibook / tiger experience are all in that neighborhood. it's the contrast between using computers to solv what's wring with the computers vs. using them to get my life and work actually done!
... of HW and SW that really makes it. I get an iBook for $800 that just works. No parts to stick out and snap, stock ports to support 90% of the work I'll need, a lid and sleep controls that actually listen to each other, instant wake from sleep, foolproof wireless HW and SW... in short, clean and effective HW, clean and effective SW. The two together are bliss.
Slashdot Mirror
... that maybe it's Microsoft office that's too FAST! Huh? Did they? Ha!
This is just another typical rabid dog attack on the part of Redmond.
They're banking on the world-beating success of the other music services that lock out the iPod and rent you your music.
>
Read the ars technica review - MP / GMA holds its own with the MBP / dedicated GPU.
Glad to see the Hekawi tribe has entered the space age.
My book mark jumps to the Edu store pricing - retail is $100 more than the iBook G4.
Yeah, the graphics performace remains to be seen - do you suppose they took a step down from the iBook / PB G4 performance?
Compared to the iBook G4, this thing is amazing for $50 more.
If the benchmarks on the product site are correct, this is a major leap forward.
Audio in/out, camera, all Core Duos... hard to imagine they could have done this better.
They've answered most if not all of the iBook critics' points - better res, MagSafe, audio in/out+optical, DVI, camera, the battery doesn't have times yet, but looks like it might be on the iBook curve.
Personally I can't stand glossy displays, but what the heck.
Of course I bought my iBook G4 three months ago... so I'll be drooling for two years and nine months...
Ah! If anyone complains about the 0.3 lb weight gain, buy the low-end white one and I'll trade you so you can go back to the 4.9 lb...
... his issues were on getting a Linux distribution working as reliably and predictably as Windows would on a given box.
Unless I missed something in TFA, it wasn't a matter of pressing the right buttons that were in a different place or a different color - it was getting generally acceptable stuff (end user day in day out work) to go as expected.
I'm not sure "lazy" swould be the correct adjective - it looks like he exhausted a lot of things before he reached a frustration level. Everyone picks the frustration level they want, his looks like his is non-zero and possibly above average.
I took a couple of broadsides over this concerning the availability of apps on given operating systems. The gist of it all was if the Wintel world is so convoluted, why don't you just go use FOSS to do what you want. My original point was a comparison of the state of Apple and Wintel experiences, but the bottom line is it's the end result that counts. Can you be who you need to be and get the work you need done or not. It's about balancing htree dimensions of time, money and headaches.
Case in point. Astronomy software. I want to be able to head outside and decode the sky and use a scope. For a while I paid StarryNight because it was impressive and did everything. Once they jacked the price had to consider if I needed everything or if I could live with something less frilly. For a few dollars I can use shareware Equinox. It will always do what it does, it's way leaner than StarryNight and can control my scope. And for free, I can use Stellarium, which is OSS, beautiful, responsive, no scope, but everyone I know can use the same app across platforms.
However, if I had to involve everyone in builds, or an install so huge it should only be shipped on CDs, or requiring X11 or other layer(s) of techie stuff, it'd be back to Equinox and pay for the upgrade.
Blasphemy, I know, but when I want to go look at the stars I don't want to be the IT guy in order to get it done.
You can multiply that by a bunch if you subsitute millions of WalMart customers for me and everything plain old people need to do for "astronomy".
... oh, you know the rest.
Glad I finished my coffee first, cuz doing a spit-take all over the monitor would NOT be covered under warranty...
First, if his machine was under warranty, just bring it back and have Apple replace it for free. Apple, like every other vendor, can't just hand out hardware cuz you swear there's a bad one twenty blocks away. 2000 is before they had Apple Stores so this must have been a reseller, but still...
Not just Apple, but anyone - RS, BestBuy, Walmart - ANYONE would want the old one back before they hand you a free one. Honestly, did he think they were just handing out spares on the word of anyone who walks thru the door?
Unless it's not gone bad but perhaps used as a coffee holder, donut holder, bookshelf or pet perch, in which case he's unfortuately out of luck. On the other hand, when I sent my iBook in for a screen failure that was under warranty, they also supplied me with a shiny new case top, palmrests and fresh Little Rubber Feet.
Someone got their signals crossed:
1. Apple doesn't have to send it back for testing - any Apple store will first bench test it with known-good parts and/or the standard hardware tests on the network or an external drive.
2. There is no $20,000 fine for violating any customer agreement. You just void your warranty, period.
3. If in the end he did what they wanted him to - brought it in to keep it under warrany - then why would they charge him $1,000 for a drive that supposedly went bad under warranty? In 2000 it had to be the original G4 tower - and there's no way a CD swap in a G4 tower is a $1,000 repair.
There's a story in "Chariots for Apollo" about the potential problem of hitting the descent stage engine bell on a uncharted rock. They had to consider that landing on a rock could damage the bell, push the bell into the ascent stage, etc... But they had neither the time nor the money to design and execute a test + spare LM to see what would happen. One day as they were moving the LM on a crane, the rig slipped, and the whole thing landed, engine bell down, on a pile of crates. No significant damage. One of the managers turned to the team and said someting like "You just got your million dollar test for free."
OK maybe 'eat' was a bit much. but 12 LEDs? they certainly use more battery power than the equivalent pixels on my osx screen. .mac
nobody claimed to be a wizard, we can operate a pretty wide range of apps.
I'm pointing out the contrast between the mac experience and the pc experience.
we don't want to come home and solve all the little things we have to work on all day. we want it to work.
i have plenty of oss stuff. some of it's pretty cool, some well done, there are some keepers.
show me the ilife suite done as oss and approach the integration i get with something like
BTW since you paid at least twice as much for the xps, i'd certainly expect it to have much better performance than the iBook.
i'm comparing two $800 laptops.
Cause the PC laptop offerings have heads spinning? Please.
Or because there's no tablet (hint- they won't do it until they get it right - after two PC stumbles, who can blame them)?
Or because the Apple market has held its own and continues to build eas of use and value? Count me in.
Case in point. My wife just bought the latest Acer which has the touted features of:
- brightview screen (a shiny piece of plastic that produces glare and fingerprints at an astounding rate)
- constant light for the bluetooth status (thanks - eats batteries)
- constant light for the wifi status (ditto batteries)
- constant light for the battery, num lock, cap lock (all of which are mirrored in the taskbar anyway)
- three USB ports Woohoo! One more than an iBook!
- a four cell battery which is an eight cell battery with four cells torn out. Honestly, you can squeeze the case and feel where the missing cells are supposed to be.
- 2.5 hour battery life if you spring for the 8 cell battery separately.
- Speed. It's a 2.something, if I turn off all the fancy XP graphics under system performance, it can almost keep up with my 1.33 iBook for general use with a few apps open.
- software. none. after loading her up with picasa and itunes, whenever something mildly novel comes up, she shuts the lid and asks me to do it on the iBook. And she knows how to work a PC - she does it all day at her job. She's a wiz at office + access, but for real world stuff, the integration just isn't there - they made this point in one of the new apple ads - and it's about time.
I'd rather spend my time getting the work done than figuring out the workaround or forking over the license fee for getting it done on a PC.
I can leapfrog the next 7 years of angst I was planning for this event.
How long did we wait for the third installment of DK Strikes Again - all the time hearing that the delay had nothing to do with the concurrent events following September 11 - all to bizarre effect - something that could have been bigger and better than DK Returns and fell to the earth with a muffled thud.
...where Jon Westhues cloned an implanted VeriChip (the only FDA approved chip on the market) in 10 minutes with a homebrew device, NO CHIP FOR ME!
Wow. Smooth, fast, works on OSX, little to complain about.
Beats Google video by a mile. Well done.
This is hands down the best no-direct-cost online video experience to date.
Maybe now I can comprehend Lost, which I didn't find out about until it was too late to backfill.
"help to continue the devlopment of this great opeating system."
1. Spel checkr.
2. Full LRF support.
3. There is no third thing.
4. Universal Binary.
.. when I say to Conor Lastowka,
Go kiss a duck.
d-r-i-n-k-m-o-r-e-o-v-a-l-t-i-n-e !
As I understood it, music videos were (originally, maybe not today) free in order to get people to buy your album, and albums were OK money that drove people to your concert, where you made the big money. And they have always charged whatever they think we'll pay - and this excuse^H^H^H^H^H^H theory sounds better than "cuz". Springsteen won't be a bargain at $200, but then again it wasn't a bargain at $100 either. Ever see what they have to haul around in trucks and buses to do a tour? Ya think maybe the fuel prices are also to blame?
Please. Pretty please? Characters that have somewhere to go - rather than simply fulfilling our expectations of personalities long since drained of any originality. We know exactly how TOS characters will act, and we know that 15, 30, 45, 60 and 75 minutes into this film there'll be an excruciatingly obvious bone mercilessly tossed to us in the form of a promordial "Dammit Jim", "Highly illogical", "Must... not... give... in... to...", or "She kenna' take much more, Cap'n!" that'll just tickle those clever writers. Every character in Serenity did something previously unseen but that moved their character forward and thus the story too.
So in your world, "traditional journalists" - let's say the editor of the New York Times or the Washington Post - would just as readily publish what they reasonably expected was a trade secret covered in an NDA so they can scoop some blogger? They wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole. They'll report on your reports and let you dance.
And let's stop arguing over the "chilling effect" this case could have on people who are already bound by contract to shut the hell up about whatever it is they're keen to tell you.
I've signed Apple NDAs, and there's nothing worth breaking to the world that I'd risk going up against lawyers who work for a company with so much cash they invented a brand new investment firm to handle it.
I also manage a campus with 40 macs and 20 windows machines - and after a week of forgotten passwords, blue screens, hunting rogue networks, unpatched xp, 98, me, 95, and requests to reboot the occasional etch-a-sketch, the only words left for the ibook / tiger experience are all in that neighborhood. it's the contrast between using computers to solv what's wring with the computers vs. using them to get my life and work actually done!
... of HW and SW that really makes it. I get an iBook for $800 that just works. No parts to stick out and snap, stock ports to support 90% of the work I'll need, a lid and sleep controls that actually listen to each other, instant wake from sleep, foolproof wireless HW and SW... in short, clean and effective HW, clean and effective SW. The two together are bliss.