When my chick roommate first saw my iPod, she was blown away. After a few preliminary questions, the first thing she said was, "I've got to get one for going to the gym." The second thing: "What colours does it come in?"
She seemed surprisingly disappointed when I said it only came in white.
Apple's done their market research on this one, folks.
Hah. That's funny. It occurred to me a few weeks ago when I watched 'Empire' again and saw a parallel between Luke's and Neo's 'Hero's Journeys.' Cheers.
Trust me, we Canadians are plenty sick of spam too!
(Though I must say I find Eudora 6's junk mail filtering to be extremely effective, and responsive to 'training.')
This is exactly what I used to do with my groovy Logitech multi-button mouse. Used to, that is, until Panther and Expose' came along, and now I use those two buttons for Expose'. So now would be a very good time for Safari to incorporate context-menu navigation.
As long as they don't incorporate a browser pet peeve of mine - 'Help' as the topmost item in the context-menu. How annoying!
The article vectors the now-debunked "great iPod battery scandal":
"And the controversy over batteries for iPods - which seem to fail irreplaceably just after the warranty expires - may briefly rally the popularity of CDs."
I sent an e-mail to correct the author.
Just got a new 20 GB model yesterday. It's incredible.
Here's a list of the portable MP3 players you can use with iTunes. Apple doesn't go out of their way to promote this functionality on the iTunes areas of their site, because they obviously would rather promote the iPod.
Well you're misrepresenting his argument. His propsed alternative to the current way the OS X Finder is organized -- he wants to 'separate' the browser and the 'spatial Finder' -- would sacrifice none of the functionality or advantages that the OS X Finder provides. But it would allow for a more consistent and productive user experience, regardless of whether the user is aware of the advantages of the OS 9 'spatial Finder' approach. His proposal is dead-on, and I hope Apple sees fit to adopt it.
I don't hate this program as much as some of you, but it's a big disappointment. No wonder there's no mention at all of its release on the Microsoft Mac site. Strangely, some of my files which version 6.3 final (for Classic OS) can play just fine, are a no-go with this new version. According to the discussion on MacRumors.com, OS X lacks support for a particular audio codec used in a lot of WM files, which is causing some of the incompatibilities.
However I'm not complaining too much, because some WMV files which VLC could not play for me, run fine. (I haven't tried MPlayer for OS X so I can't comment on that.) And on my 1 GHz G4, it's reasonably fast, and not crash-y. Ugly interface by Apple standards, but actually better than I might have expected. Much less ugly than the Windows version of the player.
I know that some scenes for that movie, including the tongue-stuck-on-flagpole scene, were shot in some town in Ontario. The director is a Canadian. The IMDB could perhaps shed some more light on this....
I could reasonably be described as a 'Mac fanatic' I guess, but I won't flame you. I will point out that if your dual G5 is that slow at copying a mere 17 meg file, there must be something wrong. My new 1 GHz G4 eMac is blindingly instantaneous when copying files. Check out Mac OS X Hints or Macfixit for some tips on speeding up your machine. Or get one of the many excellent O'Reilly Mac books.
Perhaps Morpheus meant that the EMP is "the only weapon we (we, as in the Nebuchadezzar ship) have against the machines." As in, the Neb is not equipped with big honkin' guns.
Until Ogg Tarkin (with which I am not very familiar) is 'ready for prime time,' Apple understandably wants to use a format that shows off Macs' video ability to the utmost, for the best compression. Sorensen fills the bill. The video-editing community is an important market for Apple, not to mention the entertainment 'industry,' and whatever makes Mac hardware look most capable and slick is going to have the advantage. If indeed there's an exclusivity deal going on, don't discount the fact that Sorensen can make.mov files look so much better than Real and WM files (at least, arguably, until WM9).
As for Ogg Vorbis audio, an important consideration is that MP3 is still very much the de facto standard for 'portable' (i.e. small) sound files. And AAC has the advantages you mention.
Unfortunately for open-source purists, a commercial company will very often have good reasons to 'sully' themselves with closed solutions. If that's what it takes to maximize Apple's marketshare and coolness factor, I'm all for it. Arguably Apple should nurture things like Ogg, and I expect they will at least somewhat, but heck, how many companies of its size have embraced open source to the same extent (Darwin, QTSS, etc.)?
Sorensen adds nothing to the end-user experience? It's one of the best quality video codec thingies going. Apple may 'encourage' its use, but you're still free to use QuickTime Pro to author other formats, such as MPEG4.
Yes I agree that ogg should be better supported by Apple products. I'd be surprised if it isn't playable by QuickTime, and therefore iTunes and the iPod, before very long, since QuickTime plays just about everything else. Maybe Apple sees it as too 'niche' for the time being, so it's not yet a priority. I trust you have expressed your concern through Apple feedback?
Er, OK. Modify my above comment as follows: replace 'QT player' with 'a player that uses the QuickTime library.' The main thrust of my point still stands.
When he said 'QuickTime codec,' he meant 'Sorensen codec.' (In this case Sorensen 3.) That this codec is not open, and that you need QT player to view.mov files encoded with it, is due to licensing restrictions from Sorensen, not from Apple.
Every freakin' time a Sorensen-encoded QuickTime movie trailer is posted on Slashdot, this point has to be re-hashed a jillion times.
I'm a Canuck; here's something I've heard about this issue.
I worked in record stores for a while, and I began to notice that the CD-R's designated by the manufacturer (eg. Maxell) as being expressly for copying music were much more expensive than CD-R's intended for data storage. Even if the brand is the same. I asked why this should be, and a co-worker pointed out that the infamous Canadian anti-copying tax only applied to the former, not the latter.
Now, I am sure that both kinds of CDs work equally well for copying data or music. But some CD-Rs put out by the 'non-white-label' manufacturers explicitly specify on the package that they are only 'for music.' Apparently the levy only applies to these kinds of CD-Rs.
So, if my co-worker is correct, it sounds like you can easily avoid paying this tax.
Can anyone confirm/deny?
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the product page for this keyboard: link.
She seemed surprisingly disappointed when I said it only came in white.
Apple's done their market research on this one, folks.
Seems like a no-brainer decision to me, except that the iPod minis look waaay (more than 3x) cooler than the standard model.
Hah. That's funny. It occurred to me a few weeks ago when I watched 'Empire' again and saw a parallel between Luke's and Neo's 'Hero's Journeys.' Cheers.
There's nothing in the article that says the DRM 'add-on' only applies to MP3's encoded with the Fraunhofer codec.
Aaagh! I meant 'hobbyist'! Sorry again....
It's 'hoobyist.' Sorry....
Trust me, we Canadians are plenty sick of spam too! (Though I must say I find Eudora 6's junk mail filtering to be extremely effective, and responsive to 'training.')
No true jury of his peers would convict him, since chances are they're sick of spam too! :)
As long as they don't incorporate a browser pet peeve of mine - 'Help' as the topmost item in the context-menu. How annoying!
I sent an e-mail to correct the author.
Just got a new 20 GB model yesterday. It's incredible.
Here's a list of the portable MP3 players you can use with iTunes. Apple doesn't go out of their way to promote this functionality on the iTunes areas of their site, because they obviously would rather promote the iPod.
Well you're misrepresenting his argument. His propsed alternative to the current way the OS X Finder is organized -- he wants to 'separate' the browser and the 'spatial Finder' -- would sacrifice none of the functionality or advantages that the OS X Finder provides. But it would allow for a more consistent and productive user experience, regardless of whether the user is aware of the advantages of the OS 9 'spatial Finder' approach. His proposal is dead-on, and I hope Apple sees fit to adopt it.
However I'm not complaining too much, because some WMV files which VLC could not play for me, run fine. (I haven't tried MPlayer for OS X so I can't comment on that.) And on my 1 GHz G4, it's reasonably fast, and not crash-y. Ugly interface by Apple standards, but actually better than I might have expected. Much less ugly than the Windows version of the player.
I know that some scenes for that movie, including the tongue-stuck-on-flagpole scene, were shot in some town in Ontario. The director is a Canadian. The IMDB could perhaps shed some more light on this....
I could reasonably be described as a 'Mac fanatic' I guess, but I won't flame you. I will point out that if your dual G5 is that slow at copying a mere 17 meg file, there must be something wrong. My new 1 GHz G4 eMac is blindingly instantaneous when copying files. Check out Mac OS X Hints or Macfixit for some tips on speeding up your machine. Or get one of the many excellent O'Reilly Mac books.
Wow, they're letting anyone into Mensa these days I guess. Any way to moderate someone "-1, Looney Tunes"?
Perhaps Morpheus meant that the EMP is "the only weapon we (we, as in the Nebuchadezzar ship) have against the machines." As in, the Neb is not equipped with big honkin' guns.
As for Ogg Vorbis audio, an important consideration is that MP3 is still very much the de facto standard for 'portable' (i.e. small) sound files. And AAC has the advantages you mention.
Unfortunately for open-source purists, a commercial company will very often have good reasons to 'sully' themselves with closed solutions. If that's what it takes to maximize Apple's marketshare and coolness factor, I'm all for it. Arguably Apple should nurture things like Ogg, and I expect they will at least somewhat, but heck, how many companies of its size have embraced open source to the same extent (Darwin, QTSS, etc.)?
Yes I agree that ogg should be better supported by Apple products. I'd be surprised if it isn't playable by QuickTime, and therefore iTunes and the iPod, before very long, since QuickTime plays just about everything else. Maybe Apple sees it as too 'niche' for the time being, so it's not yet a priority. I trust you have expressed your concern through Apple feedback?
Er, OK. Modify my above comment as follows: replace 'QT player' with 'a player that uses the QuickTime library.' The main thrust of my point still stands.
When he said 'QuickTime codec,' he meant 'Sorensen codec.' (In this case Sorensen 3.) That this codec is not open, and that you need QT player to view .mov files encoded with it, is due to licensing restrictions from Sorensen, not from Apple.
Every freakin' time a Sorensen-encoded QuickTime movie trailer is posted on Slashdot, this point has to be re-hashed a jillion times.
Of course, you should realize that it's really the Sorensen codec that you are complaining about, not Quicktime, per se.
I tried that URL, and it's just a 404 Not Found type page.
I worked in record stores for a while, and I began to notice that the CD-R's designated by the manufacturer (eg. Maxell) as being expressly for copying music were much more expensive than CD-R's intended for data storage. Even if the brand is the same. I asked why this should be, and a co-worker pointed out that the infamous Canadian anti-copying tax only applied to the former, not the latter.
Now, I am sure that both kinds of CDs work equally well for copying data or music. But some CD-Rs put out by the 'non-white-label' manufacturers explicitly specify on the package that they are only 'for music.' Apparently the levy only applies to these kinds of CD-Rs.
So, if my co-worker is correct, it sounds like you can easily avoid paying this tax. Can anyone confirm/deny?