Are you telling me that Apple (and everybody else) aren't allowed to add new features to their products? If everybody had to think twice before adding a new feature because it might step on somebody elses toes then we'd still be using commandline interfaces.
I do feel some sympathy for the guys, but this request is likely to have sprung forth from user requests as opposed to anything else.
Unless they had it patented (and even if they did... remember the "look and feel" lawsuits) it's all ripe to be plucked off.
Also; most of the people that would have paid for the utility have done so by now - they're not going to lose that much in $$$.
the premium, IMO, is especially justified for the 14 ibook vs the 15 PB. You get gigabit ethernet, widescreen, the fastest graphics card available in a laptop, backlit keyboard, faster CPU, more standard RAM/HD, Firewire 2, proper digital video (read: DVI) output and greater expandability.
The difference between the 12 ibooks and PBs are less, but then so too is the price. Key differentials are the better graphics card and the mini-DVI output.
It was only yesterday people were saying "why would you buy an iBook when you get get the extra grunt from the PBs for so little extra $$$?" How quickly things change.
Oh, and finally, RIP the G3 processor. You took us out in front of the Pentiums, until the G4 scarred your legacy.
I just sent this letter in to PC World. I think it pretty much covers all the mistakes they made in the cross-platform benchmarks.
>--
I have been a long time reader of PC World, and have much respect for your magazine. However, I am yet to see a more abject review than the "64-Bit Takes Off" what was presented in your November 2003 Edition.
Let's start with the choice of Microsoft Word. Undoubtedly a widely used piece of software, and Microsoft incredibly allowed Office v.X for the Mac to receive a number of features that the Windows version is yet to receive. There is, however, one thing that Microsoft will not allow Office for the Mac to achieve; and that is performance parity. To add to this, much of the codebase of Office v.X is left over from the good ol' days of MacOS 9 - reflected in the fact that Office is still a Carbon app. So, although Office on the Mac is extremely widely used, it's of dubious use as a means of comparing performance between processors. Unless, of course, all you do is Office and it's not presently running fast enough for you.
Next. Premiere. This is what stunned me. There is a reason that Premiere doesn't work very well on the Mac. This is because absolutely nobody who does video editing on a Mac uses it. Period. Final Cut Pro wipes to floor with it; not only in functionality, but performance also. Of all the ways you chose to benchmark the G5s, this surprised me the most.
In the Quake test, the Mac was hamstrung by the fact that it only had a 128MB video card in it. I also may be wrong in making the assertion, but doesn't the 256MB ATI 9800 Pro run at a faster clock rate than its 128MB cousin? This would account for quite a performance differential. Despite the fact that Macs aren't really known for games, no other computer with a 128MB graphics card beat it.
The next test was Photoshop. This is the one app you benchmarked in which some 64-bit optimisations have taken place for the Mac, and is also an app that many people use on the Apple platform. In this test, the G5 beat everything on offer from the x86 world by quite a handy margin.
What makes this even more impressive is that the G5 system you benchmarked is running on a stop-gap operating system release from Apple. OS X 10.3, codename Panther, has been specifically designed to take advantage of the G5's 64-bit CPU structure; it's out in barely a week.
I would certainly be interested to see a re-run of the tests, if you think that this feedback is valid. Cross-platform benchmarks are notorious for being difficult to standardise; I do, however, believe that if done properly they can be both useful and interesting.
It seems that the DoJ under Ashcroft is sneaking through all these hard-core bills because everyone thinks that it won't apply to them, only to find he's turned around and "broadened" the definitions a bit. He is actually encouraging LEAs to get common criminals classed as terrorists.
I'm not American, but from what I've seen, I really don't care much for John Ashcroft.
Pretty case on my desktop?
You have to be vision impaired to like a plain white box with no distinguishing features. In fact it's the ugliest thing in my room.
Well your plain white box wouldn't be if you bought a "Chenbro XSpider/Gaming Bomb" case. This new case would instead become the ugliest thing in your room.
It looks like it went up against a markedly superior paintball side and had it's ass handed to it.
Tell me tho, Is there any truth to the suggestion you can bake these notes in a slow oven to shrink them to make key-fobs? Or were you Aussies just pulling my leg?
What, Australians trying to pull a fast one on an American?
So, tell me, if I'm a counterfitter, why wouldn't I just copy the older bills and 'age' them in the washing machine?
The US government has promised to honour them. Not necessarily Joe Blogs on the street corner.
What normally happens is that the country's central bank draws a line underneath a certain date, and says "from this day forth, only the new currency is legal tender. If you want to exchange the old currency for new currency, bring it to us or a big private bank".
Normally, the outlets that accept the old notes have some pretty sophisticated devices for checking whether the currency is legitimate or not, regardless of how old it is. I know my bank took a very long time to check a whole lot of foreign notes I wanted exchanged when I got back. The teller had to take them out back and run them through a variety of tests. This would be no different.
No surprise there. The only time I've ever seen a goverment 'watchdog' group do anything was when they took the franchise away from a region rail operator in the UK. By and large all they seem to do is go 'Stoppit. Or we'll cry.'
Maybe that's how it works in the UK, but here in Australia businesses are often complaining about how sharp the teeth are of our ACCC.
Google search for ACCC blocks searching Australian sites turns up a bit over 2000 hits. The last big one I remember was when it stopped QANTAS from buying a stake in Air NZ.
I had the chance to preview Panther on a friend's PowerBook (1Ghz Ti/w SuperDrive) recently. I was very impressed to see the speed improvements Panther brings to "older" machines. Imagine that, and operating system that removes bloat and performs better after subsiquent releases! While 10.2 was what I finally considered a 1.0 release of Mac OS X, Panther is a huge leap in usability.
Expose is so amazing, expect Microsoft to "borrow" it in their next OS release.
Well, they might try. It'll probably be a pale imitation, just like with everything else that Microsoft has copied of Apple's.
Regardless, there's a precedent that Apple has set, that MS hasn't been able to follow (and, IMO, won't ever be able to): that is, with every new OS release, your computer gets faster.
Flash aside, this is one important update for Mac users and shows how much code optimization can get you in terms of performance
Absolutely! I'm not the biggest fan of XBench, but these numbers do paint a very impressive picture.
Regardless, don't forget the cool stuff Apple's adding - Expose is cool, I got a chance to play with a pre-release version of Panther and it's one of those things that you'll begin to wonder how the hell you ever lived without it. The other thing that I'm looking forward to is the on-the-fly, user-friend 128-bit AES encryption. Your computer goes walkies? Least the pricks don't get all your stuff.
Basically: Sun should give up trying to win the desktop wars; if they want a good, non-MS desktop, they should back OS X and focus on the stuff that they've always done well. This is just a diversion for Sun, it's going to sap their resources and when it doesn't work it's just going to be another feather in the cap for the "Sun is dying" camp.
... the RIAA's attempts to cut down on (music) file sharing are slow to show any effect, as much of the public still considers the activity to be useful and/or acceptable. P2P filesharing activity has decreased very little since they began their end-user legal campaign."
You know what statistics would be interesting to see?
How much CD sales have dropped off in the period since all these lawsuits started targeting RIAA customers.
It's hit all the newspapers, even Senators are getting in on the act. I wonder if that's had an effect on the public.
And one of the hallmarks of IBM design is that it is purposeful. It is sort of a timeless approach to design. It's modernism at its ultimate. It doesn't really go in or out of style. It's always there.
Hmm. Yeah. Kind of like a brick.
Which is appropriate, because that's what comes to mind whenever someone mentions the work "ThinkPad" to me.
They are. It's just a very clever bit of PR sleight of hand (either by the parents or by the news outlet) to shift attention onto the kid. People are going to be relatively indifferent to another adult being sued.
A kid on the other hand? The shock-jocks will go wild.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude... you're getting a dud!
-- james
I do feel some sympathy for the guys, but this request is likely to have sprung forth from user requests as opposed to anything else.
Unless they had it patented (and even if they did... remember the "look and feel" lawsuits) it's all ripe to be plucked off.
Also; most of the people that would have paid for the utility have done so by now - they're not going to lose that much in $$$.
-- james
the premium, IMO, is especially justified for the 14 ibook vs the 15 PB. You get gigabit ethernet, widescreen, the fastest graphics card available in a laptop, backlit keyboard, faster CPU, more standard RAM/HD, Firewire 2, proper digital video (read: DVI) output and greater expandability.
The difference between the 12 ibooks and PBs are less, but then so too is the price. Key differentials are the better graphics card and the mini-DVI output.
It was only yesterday people were saying "why would you buy an iBook when you get get the extra grunt from the PBs for so little extra $$$?" How quickly things change.
Oh, and finally, RIP the G3 processor. You took us out in front of the Pentiums, until the G4 scarred your legacy.
-- james
I just sent this letter in to PC World. I think it pretty much covers all the mistakes they made in the cross-platform benchmarks.
>--
I have been a long time reader of PC World, and have much respect for your magazine. However, I am yet to see a more abject review than the "64-Bit Takes Off" what was presented in your November 2003 Edition.
Let's start with the choice of Microsoft Word. Undoubtedly a widely used piece of software, and Microsoft incredibly allowed Office v.X for the Mac to receive a number of features that the Windows version is yet to receive. There is, however, one thing that Microsoft will not allow Office for the Mac to achieve; and that is performance parity. To add to this, much of the codebase of Office v.X is left over from the good ol' days of MacOS 9 - reflected in the fact that Office is still a Carbon app. So, although Office on the Mac is extremely widely used, it's of dubious use as a means of comparing performance between processors. Unless, of course, all you do is Office and it's not presently running fast enough for you.
Next. Premiere. This is what stunned me. There is a reason that Premiere doesn't work very well on the Mac. This is because absolutely nobody who does video editing on a Mac uses it. Period. Final Cut Pro wipes to floor with it; not only in functionality, but performance also. Of all the ways you chose to benchmark the G5s, this surprised me the most.
In the Quake test, the Mac was hamstrung by the fact that it only had a 128MB video card in it. I also may be wrong in making the assertion, but doesn't the 256MB ATI 9800 Pro run at a faster clock rate than its 128MB cousin? This would account for quite a performance differential. Despite the fact that Macs aren't really known for games, no other computer with a 128MB graphics card beat it.
The next test was Photoshop. This is the one app you benchmarked in which some 64-bit optimisations have taken place for the Mac, and is also an app that many people use on the Apple platform. In this test, the G5 beat everything on offer from the x86 world by quite a handy margin.
What makes this even more impressive is that the G5 system you benchmarked is running on a stop-gap operating system release from Apple. OS X 10.3, codename Panther, has been specifically designed to take advantage of the G5's 64-bit CPU structure; it's out in barely a week.
I would certainly be interested to see a re-run of the tests, if you think that this feedback is valid. Cross-platform benchmarks are notorious for being difficult to standardise; I do, however, believe that if done properly they can be both useful and interesting.
-- james
It's always the homophobic ones that are gay.
woops.
I assumed (mistakenly) that the article link was to the original interview. It is not, instead to the Reg's follow up.
So instead here is the original interview over on CNet which the Reg article is based on.
I think you're spot on.
There's an exceptional counter-argument to Sculley's regret over at El Reg, entitled "Sculley explains how he missed the chance to trash Apple". I think that pretty much sums it up.
-- james
It seems that the DoJ under Ashcroft is sneaking through all these hard-core bills because everyone thinks that it won't apply to them, only to find he's turned around and "broadened" the definitions a bit. He is actually encouraging LEAs to get common criminals classed as terrorists.
I'm not American, but from what I've seen, I really don't care much for John Ashcroft.
-- james
Well your plain white box wouldn't be if you bought a "Chenbro XSpider/Gaming Bomb" case. This new case would instead become the ugliest thing in your room.
It looks like it went up against a markedly superior paintball side and had it's ass handed to it.
-- james
What, Australians trying to pull a fast one on an American?
Never!
-- james
And the counterfeiters will still keep winning! You know why?
.
Because there are so many dumb people out there
-- james
The US government has promised to honour them. Not necessarily Joe Blogs on the street corner.
What normally happens is that the country's central bank draws a line underneath a certain date, and says "from this day forth, only the new currency is legal tender. If you want to exchange the old currency for new currency, bring it to us or a big private bank".
Normally, the outlets that accept the old notes have some pretty sophisticated devices for checking whether the currency is legitimate or not, regardless of how old it is. I know my bank took a very long time to check a whole lot of foreign notes I wanted exchanged when I got back. The teller had to take them out back and run them through a variety of tests. This would be no different.
-- james
The Aussie notes are amongst the best in the world, IMO.
Different colours for different values.
Different sizes for different values.
They're based on Polymer. Put one through the wash, it comes out looking like new. Well, almost.
Some extremely sophisticated anti-counterfeiting techniques.
Our Reserve Bank has even been thoughtful enough to worry about those with vision impairment.
And, they just look cool.
Maybe that's how it works in the UK, but here in Australia businesses are often complaining about how sharp the teeth are of our ACCC.
Google search for ACCC blocks searching Australian sites turns up a bit over 2000 hits. The last big one I remember was when it stopped QANTAS from buying a stake in Air NZ.
-- james
Well, they might try. It'll probably be a pale imitation, just like with everything else that Microsoft has copied of Apple's.
Regardless, there's a precedent that Apple has set, that MS hasn't been able to follow (and, IMO, won't ever be able to): that is, with every new OS release, your computer gets faster.
-- james
Absolutely! I'm not the biggest fan of XBench, but these numbers do paint a very impressive picture.
Regardless, don't forget the cool stuff Apple's adding - Expose is cool, I got a chance to play with a pre-release version of Panther and it's one of those things that you'll begin to wonder how the hell you ever lived without it. The other thing that I'm looking forward to is the on-the-fly, user-friend 128-bit AES encryption. Your computer goes walkies? Least the pricks don't get all your stuff.
-- james
on the subject, there's a great article over at InternetWeek.com by David Strom, entitled Java On The Desktop: An Idea Whose Time Has Come ... And Gone.
Basically: Sun should give up trying to win the desktop wars; if they want a good, non-MS desktop, they should back OS X and focus on the stuff that they've always done well. This is just a diversion for Sun, it's going to sap their resources and when it doesn't work it's just going to be another feather in the cap for the "Sun is dying" camp.
-- james
slashdot pr0n = taking the casing off an Apple Powerbook
You know what statistics would be interesting to see?
How much CD sales have dropped off in the period since all these lawsuits started targeting RIAA customers.
It's hit all the newspapers, even Senators are getting in on the act. I wonder if that's had an effect on the public.
-- james
Hmm. Yeah. Kind of like a brick.
Which is appropriate, because that's what comes to mind whenever someone mentions the work "ThinkPad" to me.
-- james
Go ahead, show me another vendor that has a wireless, one-button mouse.
Can't find one? A-ha! That's right! Apple innovates again!
(How's that for spin
-- james
Ahhh, the sweet irony.
Who better to get a Porsche to crash than Bill Gates?
-- james
there's going to be at least one of Steve's "oh, and one more thing" surprises:
http://99mac.com/nyhetsbilder/appleexpo2003/
In my experience stuff like that has only been covered up for new hardware...
-- james
Oh come on. The interview is with a guy named Havoc Pennington. I'm sure there'll be at least a few original (+5, Funny)'s in the stampede.
-- james
They are. It's just a very clever bit of PR sleight of hand (either by the parents or by the news outlet) to shift attention onto the kid. People are going to be relatively indifferent to another adult being sued.
A kid on the other hand? The shock-jocks will go wild.
-- james