Why isn't Premiere in your cost when the 'equivalent' Mac has bundled iMovie and iDVD?
My $1500 933MHz G4 comes with iMovie, iDVD, and DVD-R. I don't have a DV-Analog converter in the system, but I do use my camcorder for that purpose.
For the 'average' joe who wants to buy a computer, buy a camcorder, make a movie, then burn a DVD, the iMac/eMac/PowerMac is still a great deal, in terms of learning curve, cost, effort, and ease of use.
What's wrong with Illustrator being a dictionary word?
If Adobe had used the word 'Vextroc' for their vector based graphics program, how would it change the fact that they probably would have named their open source graphics program KVextroc?
There's three issues here: The idea of trademark. Arguably names have power and value. I tend to think trademark is okay.
The idea of 'common' names. Arguably it's stupid to trademark common words, like 'Word' or 'Office' or 'Illustrator'. On the other hand, they are just words, and the value is not in how common they are, but in how important they are. So the value of 'Coca Cola' or 'Adobe' or 'Illustrator' isn't in how common they are, but in the product/service/good they are attached too.
The idea of infringement. It's obviously stupid to infringe by copying someone's name. KOffice, KIllustrator, KPhotoShop, KQuake2, KCiv, KWingCommander, KFinal Fantasy, all are *stupid* names because someone else already created the value of the brand. 'Riding coattails' by borrowing someone else's name is just dishonorable, lame, and disrespectful.
Now, the issue of Phoenix is that Phoenix *does* ship an integrated web browser/server as one of their products.
Just like Adobe happens to ship a vector based graphic illustration program, named Illustrator.
Wasn't Killustrator an obvious case of infringement?
Where Adobe has a vector based graphics program called Illustrator.
Where Killustrator is an open source vector based graphics program.
They could have called it Kill, and there would be no case for infringement.
Or they could have called it KVector. Or KPotato. Or Kantor. But they chose to call it Killustrator, which, remove the K, is a *trademarked* name. Now, if Killustrator was an open sourced Ogg Vorbis jukebox, there wouldn't be a problem because there's no way to confuse Killustrator Jukebox with Adobe Illustrator...
It's as if the browser was named PInternet Pexplorer. Hmmm.
Or if Microsoft made a game console called the Microsoft XPlayStation.
Mom and pop are exactly using the computer as the tool it was meant to be, and are quite satisfied. It's up to Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Gateway, and IBM to add new functionality (movie making, DVD burning, etc) that would prompt mom and pop to upgrade.
You sound more like a marketing tool, about 'needing' to upgrade.
Let them enjoy their computers, they'll let you enjoy yours.
Once Intel sells everyone a P4, they need to convince everyone to buy a second P4.
Then they have to invent some reason to replace the P4; and the second P4, and buy a new P4+.
Intel has to compete with itself.
That's why Macs have such high resale values, as a corrollary; they only have to compete with themselves, and the way Apple has structured the G3 and G4 lines, they don't cannibalize and compete with each other, and thus maintain a high initial price and a high resale price.
All because Apple only has to compete with itself. If, like AMD, Apple competed against Intel, Apple would be forced to compete on price-since it doesn't, though, Apple can price according to other features, such as Altivec, OS X, iDVD/iMovie/iPhoto/iTunes, iCal/iSynch/iChat, long battery life, appearance, etc.
Time is perception relative
on
Is Mac OS X Slow?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
For people who want to bash and criticise OS X, then of course it's TOO SLOW.
For people who enjoy and love OS X, then it's not all that slow.
There is definitely a class of people who need or want speed but don't have it, and they think OS X is slow. The hard part is figuring out whether their views and circumstances resemble yours so that you know whether to accept or discard their perception.
My view: OS X on a 400MHz G4 is fine. Applications my have a performance constraint due to slow CPU speed, but actual navigation of the OS is not a problem.
I also run OS X on a 933MHz G4. With a GeForce2, 768MB ram. Runs fine.
Slow always depends on how you define fast. Web browsing rendering is a tad slower and less optimized than under Windows, but on the flip side the HTML engine isn't integrated into the OS either.
And you really can't trust Microsoft to create a better browsing experience under OS X than under Windows XP, can you?
I'm not advocating the death of Office, but you're saying that increased competition in the Office Suite arena in Macland is a bad thing?
I imagine having two competent office suites would drive down costs for the consumer, increase features and support for the consumer, and in general increase the capability of OS X fitting into a business environment with the added application support.
You're saying it's better for Apple to bend over for Microsoft than to invite Corel to play in the sandbox?
In the real world it's expensive to do fantastic things and easy to do mundane things.
In the CG world, it's incredibly expensive to do mundane things, and only slightly less expensive to do fantastic things; because it will cost as much to stage a battle in space as it will in water as in plasma, because the render time is dictated by scene complexity and not by any hard limits of physics, like survivability.
So all of these advances in *mundane* things like light, shadow, hair, and water, make the fantastic things even more fantastic, like the monsters or the ships or the fish or the whatever.
If you want photorealistic realism, you may as well use real people doing real things with real objects, like other films.
If you want photorealistic unrealism, then that's where CG has an advantage over conventional film, so there's no reason not to go full tilt with the unrealism, sorta like Anime does, or sorta like stop motion film.
Adding an electric motor to a conventional gas engine should help tremendously, though I'm not an enthusiast as you seem to be.
The point is that each drivetrain has different strengths. The electric motor's greatest asset is low RPM torque, which can be of great use during starts and accelerations. IIRC, gas engines have a power curve and a threshold during which their peak HP and torque is achieved.
Electric engines (for performance reasons, not gas saving) have a completely opposite power curve. High torque and maximum HP at low RPM, but a lower cap.
So if you got yourself a hybrid electric sportscar and tuned it, you'd have something that could out accelerate anything else on the road, get reasonably good gas mileage, and good performance.
Of course.. I just realized one problem is if you've got several PCs with different music libraries that *aren't* networked...
Then the only feasible solution I can come up with is to copy all the music to the iPod (Hah! DRM that!) in order to consolidate it, and then use that as a basis for your music library.
Hrm, and I do believe that iTunes will even allow you to store your music library on your iPod, though this is a horrendous waste of drive space.
Even better is that if you've got music on CDs and other machines, you're either going to have to network them or mount the CDs for the music to be available to the iPod...
And once you do that, that means the music is available to iTunes, and if it's available to iTunes, then it's available to the iPod, which means his principle argument, that the iPod has a shortcoming...
As such, it's designed to make listening to MP3s easy. That means it's trivial to update, synch, and upload music to the device.
I did not use the word 'copy'.
It's also trivial to copy music with an iPod. It is an external firewire drive, and you only need to enable that option within iTunes.
If you're bitching because iTunes itself does not allow you to synch from an iPod->iTunes, then you're complaining that Apple didn't design music offload capabilities into an MP3 player, which isn't strictly a requirement of an MP3 player. Clearly it's useful for an MP3 player to be able to synch; iTunes->iPod is trivial, just plug and forget.
Synching from iPod->iTunes is not a function of an MP3 player any more than allowing an MP3 player to open your garage door. However, the capability to copy music, as I mentioned above, exists.
Drag files from computer->iPod. Drag files from iPod->computer.
Were you looking for something else, perhaps? Apple including a checkbox on iTunes, 'Download music from iPod'?
I'm actually wondering if it's an mpeg4 video, or a sorenson3 video, myself:D
I suppose my thought on the Mac as a true 'digital rights management' platform is that so long as the Mac targets creative endeavors such as video, music, print, and graphics... digital restrictions management have to take low priority. Being able to encode, manipulate, share, distribute, decode, edit, etc, is very crucial to the whole concept of... content creation.
Still, it would be nice if Apple could make a public comment to that effect. In case you're wondering, now, I haven't been able to download the video yet! In the process, as we speak.
It could be true, though, if you 'trust' the author's choice of words.
He didn't say 'The Windows technicians, however, managed an average of 10 machines each...'
He decided to stick the word 'only 10 managed an average of 10 machines eacn...'
If you don't believe the author was being truthful or clear, then it's difficult to hold a discussion since base assumptions cannot be verified. Me, I tend to believe, running a Windows and Linux home network, that a competent Linux admin can probably manage 10x as many machines as a competent Windows admin, if nothing else because of XWindows, ssh, and scripts.
The analog in Windows would be... VNC, ???, and batch files?
If you really want to talk misleading...
What versions of Windows were they using? Trying to administer 100 boxes of Windows 95 != Windows NT != Windows 2k
On the other hand, the sun has been called Sol for much longer than it has the sun, and as such is the reason why we name them solar eclipses, solar systems, solarized films, etc.
Language is *flexible*.
For the same reason that 'Photoshopping' is a verb, 'Sol' is the name of our sun. People use it, and the term sticks.
In a similar vein:
Sol Luna boxen unices Linux (over GNU/Linux) Doh phat slashdotted owned/0wnz3d
Doesn't that mean Malaysian piracy efforts (selling Word for 7 ringgit) undermine Malaysian software development growth?
Who in Malay would want to write and develop any software when you could steal it down the street for 7 ringgit?
Isn't that reason enough for Malay to try to curb software piracy, in order to strengthen it's own IT industry? It's akin to the US trying to put tariffs on Japanese cars in order to make US cars more competitive. In this case, it would be Malay govt placing a 200% tax on non-native software, so that instead of 7 ringgit, it now costs 21 ringgit, with the extra income being funneled into software infrastructure and schools, or something.
Cause even if ogg is free, ogg support is not; the engineers to implement, test, and QA the ogg support on the iPod as well as the engineers, doc writers, and testers to update iTunes with ogg support.
Hey, I never argued for Apple to switch uprocessors here.
I was just explaining how, financially, switching processor architectures made more sense than porting OS X to x86, if you understand the distinction.
As far as I can tell, it's all about the FSB that limits the Mac right now, so the only benefit of switching architectures is to get DDR FSB; but in a similar move, Apple could attach single proc CPUs using the backside bus, which is already DDR at 1/4 CPU speed...
So on a GHz G4, Apple could attach DDR500 (if memory even ramps that high), or at least DDR400.
Would this be useful? In some configurations, I'm sure.
I'm not sure you understand what the previous poster, your parent, was talking about.
Apple sells $2k machine, gets 22% margin, or about $440 out of the machine.
Apple sells $130 box, gets 60% margin (wildly generous guess), or about $80.
So instead of selling 2 million Macs, they have to sell 11 million boxes of OS X to make the same amount. That's a significant amount to make it worthwhile.
That's what *your* post seems to suggest should happen.
The parent poster, however, was talking about Apple making a AMD or Intel powered PowerMac; Apple would *still* sell 2 million Macs, and they would *still* cost $2k, but instead of a $440 margin, they get a $480 margin cause the chips are *cheaper*, and they also get *faster* CPUs (by about, 600MHz, and an innumerable amount of IPC).
So, not measuring the transition costs, Apple could get an additional $80 million out of switching.
Your *only* benefit would be a 1.8GHz AMD powered Mac at $2k, instead of a dual 867MHz G4 at $2k.
Slashdot Mirror
Why isn't Premiere in your cost when the 'equivalent' Mac has bundled iMovie and iDVD?
My $1500 933MHz G4 comes with iMovie, iDVD, and DVD-R. I don't have a DV-Analog converter in the system, but I do use my camcorder for that purpose.
For the 'average' joe who wants to buy a computer, buy a camcorder, make a movie, then burn a DVD, the iMac/eMac/PowerMac is still a great deal, in terms of learning curve, cost, effort, and ease of use.
What's wrong with Illustrator being a dictionary word?
If Adobe had used the word 'Vextroc' for their vector based graphics program, how would it change the fact that they probably would have named their open source graphics program KVextroc?
There's three issues here:
The idea of trademark. Arguably names have power and value. I tend to think trademark is okay.
The idea of 'common' names. Arguably it's stupid to trademark common words, like 'Word' or 'Office' or 'Illustrator'. On the other hand, they are just words, and the value is not in how common they are, but in how important they are. So the value of 'Coca Cola' or 'Adobe' or 'Illustrator' isn't in how common they are, but in the product/service/good they are attached too.
The idea of infringement. It's obviously stupid to infringe by copying someone's name. KOffice, KIllustrator, KPhotoShop, KQuake2, KCiv, KWingCommander, KFinal Fantasy, all are *stupid* names because someone else already created the value of the brand. 'Riding coattails' by borrowing someone else's name is just dishonorable, lame, and disrespectful.
Now, the issue of Phoenix is that Phoenix *does* ship an integrated web browser/server as one of their products.
Just like Adobe happens to ship a vector based graphic illustration program, named Illustrator.
Wasn't Killustrator an obvious case of infringement?
Where Adobe has a vector based graphics program called Illustrator.
Where Killustrator is an open source vector based graphics program.
They could have called it Kill, and there would be no case for infringement.
Or they could have called it KVector. Or KPotato. Or Kantor. But they chose to call it Killustrator, which, remove the K, is a *trademarked* name. Now, if Killustrator was an open sourced Ogg Vorbis jukebox, there wouldn't be a problem because there's no way to confuse Killustrator Jukebox with Adobe Illustrator...
It's as if the browser was named PInternet Pexplorer. Hmmm.
Or if Microsoft made a game console called the Microsoft XPlayStation.
Hmmm.
That's awfully arrogant of you.
Mom and pop are exactly using the computer as the tool it was meant to be, and are quite satisfied. It's up to Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Gateway, and IBM to add new functionality (movie making, DVD burning, etc) that would prompt mom and pop to upgrade.
You sound more like a marketing tool, about 'needing' to upgrade.
Let them enjoy their computers, they'll let you enjoy yours.
Once Intel sells everyone a P4, they need to convince everyone to buy a second P4.
Then they have to invent some reason to replace the P4; and the second P4, and buy a new P4+.
Intel has to compete with itself.
That's why Macs have such high resale values, as a corrollary; they only have to compete with themselves, and the way Apple has structured the G3 and G4 lines, they don't cannibalize and compete with each other, and thus maintain a high initial price and a high resale price.
All because Apple only has to compete with itself. If, like AMD, Apple competed against Intel, Apple would be forced to compete on price-since it doesn't, though, Apple can price according to other features, such as Altivec, OS X, iDVD/iMovie/iPhoto/iTunes, iCal/iSynch/iChat, long battery life, appearance, etc.
For people who want to bash and criticise OS X, then of course it's TOO SLOW.
For people who enjoy and love OS X, then it's not all that slow.
There is definitely a class of people who need or want speed but don't have it, and they think OS X is slow. The hard part is figuring out whether their views and circumstances resemble yours so that you know whether to accept or discard their perception.
My view: OS X on a 400MHz G4 is fine. Applications my have a performance constraint due to slow CPU speed, but actual navigation of the OS is not a problem.
I also run OS X on a 933MHz G4. With a GeForce2, 768MB ram. Runs fine.
Slow always depends on how you define fast. Web browsing rendering is a tad slower and less optimized than under Windows, but on the flip side the HTML engine isn't integrated into the OS either.
And you really can't trust Microsoft to create a better browsing experience under OS X than under Windows XP, can you?
I use Mozilla just fine, though.
I'm not advocating the death of Office, but you're saying that increased competition in the Office Suite arena in Macland is a bad thing?
I imagine having two competent office suites would drive down costs for the consumer, increase features and support for the consumer, and in general increase the capability of OS X fitting into a business environment with the added application support.
You're saying it's better for Apple to bend over for Microsoft than to invite Corel to play in the sandbox?
Infuse, say, $20M into the company with a promise for Corel WordPerfect for OS X, and maybe stronger ties between Corel's graphic products and OS X...
There's also another explanation.
In the real world it's expensive to do fantastic things and easy to do mundane things.
In the CG world, it's incredibly expensive to do mundane things, and only slightly less expensive to do fantastic things; because it will cost as much to stage a battle in space as it will in water as in plasma, because the render time is dictated by scene complexity and not by any hard limits of physics, like survivability.
So all of these advances in *mundane* things like light, shadow, hair, and water, make the fantastic things even more fantastic, like the monsters or the ships or the fish or the whatever.
If you want photorealistic realism, you may as well use real people doing real things with real objects, like other films.
If you want photorealistic unrealism, then that's where CG has an advantage over conventional film, so there's no reason not to go full tilt with the unrealism, sorta like Anime does, or sorta like stop motion film.
Adding an electric motor to a conventional gas engine should help tremendously, though I'm not an enthusiast as you seem to be.
The point is that each drivetrain has different strengths. The electric motor's greatest asset is low RPM torque, which can be of great use during starts and accelerations. IIRC, gas engines have a power curve and a threshold during which their peak HP and torque is achieved.
Electric engines (for performance reasons, not gas saving) have a completely opposite power curve. High torque and maximum HP at low RPM, but a lower cap.
So if you got yourself a hybrid electric sportscar and tuned it, you'd have something that could out accelerate anything else on the road, get reasonably good gas mileage, and good performance.
This kernel has been fine tuned since 1988.
:)
Apple's only been playing with this kernel since 1997, I think.
I don't think Linux was around in 1988
A week with a Mac laptop, running OS X?
We are all doomed! Once you go Mac, you never go back!
Next he'll be dressing up in black, sporting a goatee, and drinking pretentious coffee drinks...
Like him!
Of course.. I just realized one problem is if you've got several PCs with different music libraries that *aren't* networked...
Then the only feasible solution I can come up with is to copy all the music to the iPod (Hah! DRM that!) in order to consolidate it, and then use that as a basis for your music library.
Hrm, and I do believe that iTunes will even allow you to store your music library on your iPod, though this is a horrendous waste of drive space.
Even better is that if you've got music on CDs and other machines, you're either going to have to network them or mount the CDs for the music to be available to the iPod...
And once you do that, that means the music is available to iTunes, and if it's available to iTunes, then it's available to the iPod, which means his principle argument, that the iPod has a shortcoming...
Alright, I'm being careful with my use of words.
I own an iPod.
As such, it's designed to make listening to MP3s easy. That means it's trivial to update, synch, and upload music to the device.
I did not use the word 'copy'.
It's also trivial to copy music with an iPod. It is an external firewire drive, and you only need to enable that option within iTunes.
If you're bitching because iTunes itself does not allow you to synch from an iPod->iTunes, then you're complaining that Apple didn't design music offload capabilities into an MP3 player, which isn't strictly a requirement of an MP3 player. Clearly it's useful for an MP3 player to be able to synch; iTunes->iPod is trivial, just plug and forget.
Synching from iPod->iTunes is not a function of an MP3 player any more than allowing an MP3 player to open your garage door. However, the capability to copy music, as I mentioned above, exists.
Drag files from computer->iPod.
Drag files from iPod->computer.
Were you looking for something else, perhaps? Apple including a checkbox on iTunes, 'Download music from iPod'?
Are we surprised it's in Quicktime?
:D
I'm actually wondering if it's an mpeg4 video, or a sorenson3 video, myself
I suppose my thought on the Mac as a true 'digital rights management' platform is that so long as the Mac targets creative endeavors such as video, music, print, and graphics... digital restrictions management have to take low priority. Being able to encode, manipulate, share, distribute, decode, edit, etc, is very crucial to the whole concept of... content creation.
Still, it would be nice if Apple could make a public comment to that effect. In case you're wondering, now, I haven't been able to download the video yet! In the process, as we speak.
LOL, well, 'compete' doesn't mean 'beat'!
We've got Apple (OS, software), we've got Corel (Office productivity), we've got Blizzard (video games), we've got Palm (PDAs), we've got ID software (3d graphics APIs), etc.
Yes, it *could* be misleading.
It could be true, though, if you 'trust' the author's choice of words.
He didn't say 'The Windows technicians, however, managed an average of 10 machines each...'
He decided to stick the word 'only 10 managed an average of 10 machines eacn...'
If you don't believe the author was being truthful or clear, then it's difficult to hold a discussion since base assumptions cannot be verified. Me, I tend to believe, running a Windows and Linux home network, that a competent Linux admin can probably manage 10x as many machines as a competent Windows admin, if nothing else because of XWindows, ssh, and scripts.
The analog in Windows would be... VNC, ???, and batch files?
If you really want to talk misleading...
What versions of Windows were they using? Trying to administer 100 boxes of Windows 95 != Windows NT != Windows 2k
On the other hand, the sun has been called Sol for much longer than it has the sun, and as such is the reason why we name them solar eclipses, solar systems, solarized films, etc.
Language is *flexible*.
For the same reason that 'Photoshopping' is a verb, 'Sol' is the name of our sun. People use it, and the term sticks.
In a similar vein:
Sol
Luna
boxen
unices
Linux (over GNU/Linux)
Doh
phat
slashdotted
owned/0wnz3d
Doesn't that mean Malaysian piracy efforts (selling Word for 7 ringgit) undermine Malaysian software development growth?
Who in Malay would want to write and develop any software when you could steal it down the street for 7 ringgit?
Isn't that reason enough for Malay to try to curb software piracy, in order to strengthen it's own IT industry? It's akin to the US trying to put tariffs on Japanese cars in order to make US cars more competitive. In this case, it would be Malay govt placing a 200% tax on non-native software, so that instead of 7 ringgit, it now costs 21 ringgit, with the extra income being funneled into software infrastructure and schools, or something.
Even if it costs you $$?
Cause even if ogg is free, ogg support is not; the engineers to implement, test, and QA the ogg support on the iPod as well as the engineers, doc writers, and testers to update iTunes with ogg support.
You could install Linux on it.
No DRM on Motorola CPUs (yet), or IBM CPUs (yet).
No need to wait on vapor CPUs to satisfy your need for 'free' CPUs.
Hey, I never argued for Apple to switch uprocessors here.
I was just explaining how, financially, switching processor architectures made more sense than porting OS X to x86, if you understand the distinction.
As far as I can tell, it's all about the FSB that limits the Mac right now, so the only benefit of switching architectures is to get DDR FSB; but in a similar move, Apple could attach single proc CPUs using the backside bus, which is already DDR at 1/4 CPU speed...
So on a GHz G4, Apple could attach DDR500 (if memory even ramps that high), or at least DDR400.
Would this be useful? In some configurations, I'm sure.
I'm not sure you understand what the previous poster, your parent, was talking about.
Apple sells $2k machine, gets 22% margin, or about $440 out of the machine.
Apple sells $130 box, gets 60% margin (wildly generous guess), or about $80.
So instead of selling 2 million Macs, they have to sell 11 million boxes of OS X to make the same amount. That's a significant amount to make it worthwhile.
That's what *your* post seems to suggest should happen.
The parent poster, however, was talking about Apple making a AMD or Intel powered PowerMac; Apple would *still* sell 2 million Macs, and they would *still* cost $2k, but instead of a $440 margin, they get a $480 margin cause the chips are *cheaper*, and they also get *faster* CPUs (by about, 600MHz, and an innumerable amount of IPC).
So, not measuring the transition costs, Apple could get an additional $80 million out of switching.
Your *only* benefit would be a 1.8GHz AMD powered Mac at $2k, instead of a dual 867MHz G4 at $2k.
True enough.
Watching Nausicaa the movie was like reading the first half of the first graphic novel with bits made up to close the story, for me.