Why don't they just teach the kids to not go online, and hope for the best, instead of teaching them to do it in a safe manner? That seems to have worked out wonderfully when applied elsewhere.
If Mr. Fusion could provide drive power to the car, BTTF III would have been a mighty short movie.
When Marty goes back to 1885 he's got Mr. Fusion, but they can't return to 1985 right away because he ripped a fuel line when he arrived-- so all the gasoline leaks out of the car and there's no way to replace it in 1885 Hill Valley.
Actually, that was from a headline from the first post-9/11 issue of the Onion.
More correctly, it was a headline they thought went a little too far, and was not actually used. If memory serves it was something like "America Stronger Than Ever, Say Quadragon Officials."
No, but I've spent 15 years supporting non-Microsoft systems on Microsoft-based networks.
Face it, you want XPS to die because M$ is behind it.
That's right, I do, because I don't trust them based on their prior behavior. It was never enough for their standards to compete on technical merit-- as soon as they were in a position to do so they always felt compelled to use them as a weapon to punish anyone who didn't use their stuff. Any time they act in an altruistic manner I get highly suspicious of what their ulterior motive might be.
Nobody with any sense is going to believe any cross-platform claims made by Microsoft anymore. The Windows platform is their lifeblood, and they'll do whatever they have to to artificially bind people to it. That's why they're fighting and delaying all attempts to truly open up their connection protocols and file formats. On a level playing field, people would desert Windows in droves, and Microsoft knows it.
Honestly, I don't see how this is even still open for debate in 2007-- Microsoft showed their true colors w/r/t portability after they added Windows-only extensions to Java. And that's if you ignore their prior attempt to balkanize the web and cause pain for anyone not running Windows IE.
Their "Flash-killer" and their "PDF-killer" and any other allegedly-open standards they try to foist off on us should be ignored and allowed to die. If we allow them to get a foothold, we deserve everything we get.
Yes, to completely clone the image, you'd have to either be booted from a CD, an install of OS X on another external drive, or a network volume. An external drive with an install of OS X on it is a damned handy troubleshooting tool.
There is another alternative... if the replacement machine is running OS X 10.4 and already has a standard system build or anything on it, you can run Migration Assistant on it with the broken machine connected in target mode. If you're not familiar with Migration Assistant, it's sort of like Files and Settings Transfer Wizard on XP, but much better. It will pull over non-Apple applications and all user data, nearly seamlessly. I use it all the time when I roll out replacement machines to people, and it has made my life much easier. The only issues I see are occasionally some applications that require activation will need to be reactivated on the replacement machine. You can find Migration Assistant in/Applications/Utilities.
The only way I can think to do this is to make an image of the user's hard drive over the network somewhere. Then restore it back to another laptop (that's in a spare MBP, that I do have), and ensure the user's data, etc is all there. Then nuke the broken laptop's hard drive, reinstall with a base OS and send off to Apple.
You can try to put the broken Mac into target mode and directly connect it to another machine via Firewire to image it. To put it into target mode, power it on and hold down the T key until you see the Firewire logo appear on the screen. Connect it to another Mac and it will appear as an external disk on that Mac. If you boot the second Mac from something other than its internal HDD, you can clone directly to the drive of the replacement machine. I usually use an app called Carbon Copy Cloner, but I think you can do it with Apple's own Disk Utility as well.
FYI, the MacBooks have easily-removed hard drives.... remove the battery, 2 screws and out. Hopefully the next generation of MacBook Pros will incorporate that feature into their design as well. The MacBook Pros we have now are more or less last-generation PowerBook case designs, where the MacBook is a new design.
Inkjets are crap, you should always go for a laser. The initial outlay is more, but you'll buy consumables less frequently. As usual, people are idiots who only focus on the purchase price without thinking about long term TCO. If you need to do color printing often, then save your pennies and buy a decent color laser if you don't want to be running to Kinko's all the time or don't have access to a color printer at work.
I haven't used an inkjet since the early 90s. In January 1994 I plunked down ~$1400 for an Apple LaserWriter Select 360, and that's still my printer today. I'm only on my second ~$90 toner cartridge-- it took me YEARS to use up the one that was included in the box with the printer, not like the bullshit, half-full "starter" cartridges that come with inkjets.
In November of last year my Select 360 died, but I got my hands on another one (for free) that didn't print well and was headed to the dumpster, swapped out the mainboard and power supply from it into mine, and I'm back in business again. I'm gonna keep using this puppy until it is beyond repair.
Have you been in a cave on the dark side of the moon since 2000?
During the last five years, Apple released major versions of OS X about every 1-1.5 years while all Microsoft had was XP. Third party developers were actually complaining because of the rapid pace of change of OS X. Before Tiger was released, Apple announced they would be slowing down the pace of their OS X releases.
I'm disappointed that I have to wait longer than expected for Leopard, but I'd rather they ship it when it's ready-- besides, it's not like they had to scrap it midstream and start over, and then chop all the compelling features to make an already embarassingly late ship date.
It does make sense to focus on the iPhone right now, because the mobile phone market is much larger than the personal computer market. If Apple gets a nice foothold in it, it will mean more money for them to pour into expanding their presence in the computer market.
It appears not to work well with the iCal application that ships with Tiger.
Stands to reason that they'll release an updated, iCal Server-friendly version of iCal via Software Update for Tiger and maybe even Panther once Leopard Server ships. Even for Apple I think it would be a bit much for them to require Leopard clients for all this stuff to work-- if the idea is for Leopard Server to take a bite out of Windows Small Business Server's market share, they'll need to make it fairly painless to migrate. And that means working with Mac mail and calendar software that shipped before Leopard, plus Outlook back to version 2000 or 2003 on the Windows side.
I've been a customer of Speakeasy's for about 4 years now, and I love them. The emailed announcement hit me like a slap in the face.
They have been a fantastic ISP compared to Comcast, who they replaced. I have static IPs, I can run servers, and I get advance notice of planned downtime for maintenance when it will affect my service. I think I've only experienced three unplanned outages since I've been their customer, and the longest was maybe 6 hours. When I've needed to call about outages, their support people have been friendly and recognize that I know what I'm doing, and don't force me to go through the script anyway. The topper was this weekend, though-- I submitted a couple tickets for changes to my service at 11:30pm Eastern on this past Saturday, and both were taken care of before the email confirmation that the ticket had been created hit my inbox, less than 10 minutes later.
I really, really hope Best Buy doesn't ruin Speakeasy like they ruined Geek Squad, because my only other options are Comcast and Verizon.
It was a direct port of the Windows version and released in 1994. As such, it did not behave or look like a Mac application. By 1997 the age of the program and its poor reputation contributed to poor sales.
Just wanted to add that Office 4.2.1 contained Word 6.0-- which was such a bloated piece of shit compared to its predecessor, Word 5.1, that Microsoft actually responded to customer outrage by resuming sales of 5.1. I worked at a university bookstore at the time, and 5.1 seriously outsold 6.0.
The Word 6.0 debacle more or less directly led to the formation of the Mac Business Unit, which gave us Office 98 and every Microsoft product for the Mac since.
Apple would be in serious trouble if Microsoft gave even less support to Office on the Mac
This is not as big a threat as it once was. Apple is only a spreadsheet application away from having their own office suite. Furthermore, you can just run Windows Office in a virtual machine or via Crossover-- then you don't even need to worry about differences between the Mac and Windows versions.
The Windows version of Outlook running in a VM is already the best Exchange client for the Mac*, since Entourage's Exchange capabilities suck shit and probably won't be getting any better in Office 2008.
*The Intel-based Macs. For PPC-based Macs, Outlook 2001 in Classic is better than Entourage.
I have never figured out why it took Apple so long to integrate a decent shared and managed calendar in OS X (a la Outlook and Exchange
Maybe they were waiting for Microsoft to create a version of Entourage that doesn't completely blow goats as an Exchange client, and finally gave up and decided to roll their own solution? It's a shame, because Entourage is a great application otherwise. I've got mine at home Applescripted out the wazoo and it does all kinds of nifty stuff. But the best Exchange client for the Mac right now is a copy of Outlook running in a VM on Parallels. I don't hold out any hope for Office 2008 to change that, either. Everything I've seen so far about it concentrates on "Oooooh, SHINY!" aspects of it, and says nothing about them fixing everything that's wrong with Entourage's Exchange client capabilities.
If Apple had rolled out groupware features in Panther or Tiger Server, they would have already put a hell of a dent in the SMB market. Since about 2004, my company has seen a LOT of interest in Xserves and OS X Server, but the dealbreaker that made those clients all go with Microsoft Small Business Server was ALWAYS the lack of included groupware in Apple's offering. Sure, you can get Kerio or Zimbra, but having to spend extra takes a good bit of the shine off getting unlimited CALs for $1000.
They've probably been fleshing out the feature list for Vista's successor since the first day a developer copy of OS X 10.5 reached the grubby mitts of a Microsoft employee. Don't expect the real work to start until spring, though, when it's released with its 'top secret' features.
Go ahead and mod me down, bitches, but after this tasty tidbit you know I'm probably right. And they did the same thing to Go Corp, BTW.
Apple should still offer a beta version that works on PC as a way to undermine Microsoft. It wouldn't be perfectly stable, but it would work good enough that most people would want it.
Except people are, for the most part, morons. No matter what Apple did, most non-techie people would not grok "OS X works MUCH better on genuine Apple hardware"-- they would try it on a generic machine, have problems, and say, "Hey, this isn't as great as everyone said it was, so I'm going to just keep using Windows."
The best you "I don't want to buy Apple hardware" people will ever be able to hope for is that Apple decides to support a small subset of generic hardware, like NeXT did back in the NeXTStep days. Build your PC with components on that list, and you're golden.
But don't hold your breath waiting for that, because Apple won't easily give up the income they make from hardware-- at least not until the revenue from the iPod and iPhone and other non-computer products is able to fill the gap.
'We're fairly certain that if our competitors in Canada haven't launched it, they will soon. Same in the US.'
Yeah, right, buddy. Maybe the population as a whole is a little more liberal up there in America Junior, but if AT&T, Verizon or any other U.S. cell provider even floats that idea in a meeting, the Bible-thumpers will start up the boycotts and letter-writing campaigns and raise all kinds of hell to make sure it never comes to fruition.
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Why don't they just teach the kids to not go online, and hope for the best, instead of teaching them to do it in a safe manner? That seems to have worked out wonderfully when applied elsewhere.
If Mr. Fusion could provide drive power to the car, BTTF III would have been a mighty short movie.
When Marty goes back to 1885 he's got Mr. Fusion, but they can't return to 1985 right away because he ripped a fuel line when he arrived-- so all the gasoline leaks out of the car and there's no way to replace it in 1885 Hill Valley.
Hence the whole 'stealing the train' bit.
~Philly
"Altiris: Now Part of Symantec"
No thanks! After seeing how Symantec acquired, ruined and then discontinued other good products that at one time supported the Mac, I'll pass.
~Philly
"MSVCR80.dll" failed to initialize.
Clearly the MSVCR is VHS, and is therefore incompatible with the Safari application, which is beta.
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all night.
~Philly
Actually, that was from a headline from the first post-9/11 issue of the Onion.
More correctly, it was a headline they thought went a little too far, and was not actually used. If memory serves it was something like "America Stronger Than Ever, Say Quadragon Officials."
~Philly
Have you ever tried to develop with PDF?
No, but I've spent 15 years supporting non-Microsoft systems on Microsoft-based networks.
Face it, you want XPS to die because M$ is behind it.
That's right, I do, because I don't trust them based on their prior behavior. It was never enough for their standards to compete on technical merit-- as soon as they were in a position to do so they always felt compelled to use them as a weapon to punish anyone who didn't use their stuff. Any time they act in an altruistic manner I get highly suspicious of what their ulterior motive might be.
~Philly
Nobody with any sense is going to believe any cross-platform claims made by Microsoft anymore. The Windows platform is their lifeblood, and they'll do whatever they have to to artificially bind people to it. That's why they're fighting and delaying all attempts to truly open up their connection protocols and file formats. On a level playing field, people would desert Windows in droves, and Microsoft knows it.
Honestly, I don't see how this is even still open for debate in 2007-- Microsoft showed their true colors w/r/t portability after they added Windows-only extensions to Java. And that's if you ignore their prior attempt to balkanize the web and cause pain for anyone not running Windows IE.
Their "Flash-killer" and their "PDF-killer" and any other allegedly-open standards they try to foist off on us should be ignored and allowed to die. If we allow them to get a foothold, we deserve everything we get.
~Philly
Yes, to completely clone the image, you'd have to either be booted from a CD, an install of OS X on another external drive, or a network volume. An external drive with an install of OS X on it is a damned handy troubleshooting tool.
/Applications/Utilities.
There is another alternative... if the replacement machine is running OS X 10.4 and already has a standard system build or anything on it, you can run Migration Assistant on it with the broken machine connected in target mode. If you're not familiar with Migration Assistant, it's sort of like Files and Settings Transfer Wizard on XP, but much better. It will pull over non-Apple applications and all user data, nearly seamlessly. I use it all the time when I roll out replacement machines to people, and it has made my life much easier. The only issues I see are occasionally some applications that require activation will need to be reactivated on the replacement machine. You can find Migration Assistant in
~Philly
The only way I can think to do this is to make an image of the user's hard drive over the network somewhere. Then restore it back to another laptop (that's in a spare MBP, that I do have), and ensure the user's data, etc is all there. Then nuke the broken laptop's hard drive, reinstall with a base OS and send off to Apple.
You can try to put the broken Mac into target mode and directly connect it to another machine via Firewire to image it. To put it into target mode, power it on and hold down the T key until you see the Firewire logo appear on the screen. Connect it to another Mac and it will appear as an external disk on that Mac. If you boot the second Mac from something other than its internal HDD, you can clone directly to the drive of the replacement machine. I usually use an app called Carbon Copy Cloner, but I think you can do it with Apple's own Disk Utility as well.
FYI, the MacBooks have easily-removed hard drives.... remove the battery, 2 screws and out. Hopefully the next generation of MacBook Pros will incorporate that feature into their design as well. The MacBook Pros we have now are more or less last-generation PowerBook case designs, where the MacBook is a new design.
~Philly
~Philly
Alienware, of course!
~Philly
Inkjets are crap, you should always go for a laser. The initial outlay is more, but you'll buy consumables less frequently. As usual, people are idiots who only focus on the purchase price without thinking about long term TCO. If you need to do color printing often, then save your pennies and buy a decent color laser if you don't want to be running to Kinko's all the time or don't have access to a color printer at work.
I haven't used an inkjet since the early 90s. In January 1994 I plunked down ~$1400 for an Apple LaserWriter Select 360, and that's still my printer today. I'm only on my second ~$90 toner cartridge-- it took me YEARS to use up the one that was included in the box with the printer, not like the bullshit, half-full "starter" cartridges that come with inkjets.
In November of last year my Select 360 died, but I got my hands on another one (for free) that didn't print well and was headed to the dumpster, swapped out the mainboard and power supply from it into mine, and I'm back in business again. I'm gonna keep using this puppy until it is beyond repair.
~Philly
Have you been in a cave on the dark side of the moon since 2000?
During the last five years, Apple released major versions of OS X about every 1-1.5 years while all Microsoft had was XP. Third party developers were actually complaining because of the rapid pace of change of OS X. Before Tiger was released, Apple announced they would be slowing down the pace of their OS X releases.
I'm disappointed that I have to wait longer than expected for Leopard, but I'd rather they ship it when it's ready-- besides, it's not like they had to scrap it midstream and start over, and then chop all the compelling features to make an already embarassingly late ship date.
It does make sense to focus on the iPhone right now, because the mobile phone market is much larger than the personal computer market. If Apple gets a nice foothold in it, it will mean more money for them to pour into expanding their presence in the computer market.
~Philly
It appears not to work well with the iCal application that ships with Tiger.
Stands to reason that they'll release an updated, iCal Server-friendly version of iCal via Software Update for Tiger and maybe even Panther once Leopard Server ships. Even for Apple I think it would be a bit much for them to require Leopard clients for all this stuff to work-- if the idea is for Leopard Server to take a bite out of Windows Small Business Server's market share, they'll need to make it fairly painless to migrate. And that means working with Mac mail and calendar software that shipped before Leopard, plus Outlook back to version 2000 or 2003 on the Windows side.
~Philly
I've been a customer of Speakeasy's for about 4 years now, and I love them. The emailed announcement hit me like a slap in the face.
They have been a fantastic ISP compared to Comcast, who they replaced. I have static IPs, I can run servers, and I get advance notice of planned downtime for maintenance when it will affect my service. I think I've only experienced three unplanned outages since I've been their customer, and the longest was maybe 6 hours. When I've needed to call about outages, their support people have been friendly and recognize that I know what I'm doing, and don't force me to go through the script anyway. The topper was this weekend, though-- I submitted a couple tickets for changes to my service at 11:30pm Eastern on this past Saturday, and both were taken care of before the email confirmation that the ticket had been created hit my inbox, less than 10 minutes later.
I really, really hope Best Buy doesn't ruin Speakeasy like they ruined Geek Squad, because my only other options are Comcast and Verizon.
~Philly
I'm sure the RIAA and MPAA won't try to force some kind of low-level piracy-monitoring/reporting mechanism into it. No, not at all.
I see the New Internet joining New Coke in the dustbin of history.
Wow. A Microsoft alum has reinvented the Newton 2000, 10 years later. How revolutionary.
~Philly
It was a direct port of the Windows version and released in 1994. As such, it did not behave or look like a Mac application. By 1997 the age of the program and its poor reputation contributed to poor sales.
Just wanted to add that Office 4.2.1 contained Word 6.0-- which was such a bloated piece of shit compared to its predecessor, Word 5.1, that Microsoft actually responded to customer outrage by resuming sales of 5.1. I worked at a university bookstore at the time, and 5.1 seriously outsold 6.0.
The Word 6.0 debacle more or less directly led to the formation of the Mac Business Unit, which gave us Office 98 and every Microsoft product for the Mac since.
~Philly
Apple would be in serious trouble if Microsoft gave even less support to Office on the Mac
This is not as big a threat as it once was. Apple is only a spreadsheet application away from having their own office suite. Furthermore, you can just run Windows Office in a virtual machine or via Crossover-- then you don't even need to worry about differences between the Mac and Windows versions.
The Windows version of Outlook running in a VM is already the best Exchange client for the Mac*, since Entourage's Exchange capabilities suck shit and probably won't be getting any better in Office 2008.
*The Intel-based Macs. For PPC-based Macs, Outlook 2001 in Classic is better than Entourage.
~Philly
I have never figured out why it took Apple so long to integrate a decent shared and managed calendar in OS X (a la Outlook and Exchange
Maybe they were waiting for Microsoft to create a version of Entourage that doesn't completely blow goats as an Exchange client, and finally gave up and decided to roll their own solution? It's a shame, because Entourage is a great application otherwise. I've got mine at home Applescripted out the wazoo and it does all kinds of nifty stuff. But the best Exchange client for the Mac right now is a copy of Outlook running in a VM on Parallels. I don't hold out any hope for Office 2008 to change that, either. Everything I've seen so far about it concentrates on "Oooooh, SHINY!" aspects of it, and says nothing about them fixing everything that's wrong with Entourage's Exchange client capabilities.
If Apple had rolled out groupware features in Panther or Tiger Server, they would have already put a hell of a dent in the SMB market. Since about 2004, my company has seen a LOT of interest in Xserves and OS X Server, but the dealbreaker that made those clients all go with Microsoft Small Business Server was ALWAYS the lack of included groupware in Apple's offering. Sure, you can get Kerio or Zimbra, but having to spend extra takes a good bit of the shine off getting unlimited CALs for $1000.
~Philly
If you want that kind of control it requires a third-party solution, but it is doable.
~Philly
Sure! At this stage of development (the "promise the sun, moon and stars" phase), every version of Windows since NT or so has had WinFS!
~Philly
They've probably been fleshing out the feature list for Vista's successor since the first day a developer copy of OS X 10.5 reached the grubby mitts of a Microsoft employee. Don't expect the real work to start until spring, though, when it's released with its 'top secret' features.
Go ahead and mod me down, bitches, but after this tasty tidbit you know I'm probably right. And they did the same thing to Go Corp, BTW.
~Philly
I'm guessing Spencer F. Katt, who manned PC Week's industry gossip page back then and apparently still writes for eWeek.
~Philly
Apple should still offer a beta version that works on PC as a way to undermine Microsoft. It wouldn't be perfectly stable, but it would work good enough that most people would want it.
Except people are, for the most part, morons. No matter what Apple did, most non-techie people would not grok "OS X works MUCH better on genuine Apple hardware"-- they would try it on a generic machine, have problems, and say, "Hey, this isn't as great as everyone said it was, so I'm going to just keep using Windows."
The best you "I don't want to buy Apple hardware" people will ever be able to hope for is that Apple decides to support a small subset of generic hardware, like NeXT did back in the NeXTStep days. Build your PC with components on that list, and you're golden.
But don't hold your breath waiting for that, because Apple won't easily give up the income they make from hardware-- at least not until the revenue from the iPod and iPhone and other non-computer products is able to fill the gap.
~Philly
'We're fairly certain that if our competitors in Canada haven't launched it, they will soon. Same in the US.'
Yeah, right, buddy. Maybe the population as a whole is a little more liberal up there in America Junior, but if AT&T, Verizon or any other U.S. cell provider even floats that idea in a meeting, the Bible-thumpers will start up the boycotts and letter-writing campaigns and raise all kinds of hell to make sure it never comes to fruition.
~Philly