I'd hate to see tax dollars getting funneled off to a bunch of religious schools.
Why? The whole point of vouchers is that parents make the decision - why does MY individual choice to send MY daughter to a religious school offend you? It seems those shouting "you can't impose your morality on me" the loudest are also the quickest to impose their morality on the people they were just yelling at.
Quick! copy and paste any amount of text without touching they keyboard.
Why should I not use the keyboard? That is where my left hand is resting, esp. if I am using an application where I am likely to copy and paste text. This particular complaint comes down to what you are used too, you probably find using your left (keyboard) hand for those functions awkward and I find using my right (mouse) hand equally as awkward for the same reason - we are just more comfortable with what we are used to.
or how about useing a photo editor like photoshop useing 2 or more buttons and tell me its not a major convienance.
I can't imagine using a mouse at all to use a photo editor - you are missing a huge percentage of the functionality if you are not using a pressure sensitive tablet. And I don't see how only two buttons can be enough if you are stuck with a mouse. I use all of the keyboard modifier keys when I use photoshop - shift (constrains tools to 45% angles, straight lines etc.), control (contextual menus), option (modifies tools) and command (switches to the often used "move" tool) and all of these (except control) in combination (i.e. using the command key to temporarily switch from your current tool to the move tool in combination with the option key to duplicate rather than just move and shift to constrain movement to 45% angles). I don't see how you could fit 4 or 5 buttons to get similar functionality onto a stylus (or a mouse for that matter) - well I suppose you could fit that many but it wouldn't be very usable. I can just see myself having to hold the thing in my fist like a two-year old with a crayon so I can hold down all three stylus keys at the same time.
... I mean, I have a friend who wants to get a mac to manipulate her photos... and she "just prefers a mac" -- can't really tell me why.
Her decision may not be rational or based on the facts but for her purposes it turns out to have been the correct choice. A Mac is the best solution for Photo manipulation work for a few reasons.
1) First off it is what all the other people doing the same thing and related things are using and she won't have to worry about any cross-platform compatibility issues when she sends her files off to be printed or used by a designer, etc. etc. etc.
2) For the same reason there are more applications for what she wants to do on the Mac than on Unix or even on Windoze. The apps that Windoze does have were all developed on the Mac first and ported to windoze. To be fair Windoze may be close to parity in graphics apps but I think that the Mac still has a very slight edge.
3) Apple is constantly abused for using Photoshop as a "misleading" benchmark that shows them in an unfairly favorable light - well that is what she is using so Apples unfair benchmarks will be the most accurate guide to the performance she could expect between different platforms.
4) Colorsync - Windoze just doesn't have real system wide color management. Linux hasn't even thought about it, but it is very important to someone doing color work. And it looks like Colorsyc will be getting even better as OS X moves forward.
5) Intangibles & details - Graphic artists are the target market for Macs and lots of the little details that Apple is so obsessive about are targetted at them as well. As Apple considers the little details they constantly keep in mind that graphic artists are their bread and butter. When they forget we remind them: "dammit those colored widgets in OSX are screwing up my color perception" "Oh sorry, we'll change that" Do you think Micro$oft would have made a change like that too please your friend? No, of course not. The result is that "without really being able to tell you why" most artists just prefer the Mac - It's not just great industrial design (though that is part of it) it is because a lot of that design had your friend in mind.
the consensus among Macheads is that you should probably get the dual G4/533 for $2,500 instead of the G4/733 for $3,500 unless you need the DVD burner - the cheaper system will be faster under X.
Unless you are doing work that heavily uses Altivec. the 733Mhz machine is using the PowerPC 7450 which from what I have heard dramatically improves Altivec performance so that the 733 will handily beat a dual processor 533 Mhz on Altivec instructions. Of course you are paying more too - But with the "superdrive," and considering the competing burners up to this point, it's been compared to buying a good DVD burner and getting the computer for free.
The graphical chaos you mention was pretty much the case in the early days of GUI program development on Windows or the
Mac too, and quite a few klinkers are still being produced for both platforms.
I have to disagree about the graphical chaos during the early days of the Mac. The Mac had a standardized gui and consistancy between apps from the very beginning. They had the advantage of using a GUI from the start and almost all of the software developed used the Apple User Interface Standards.
There are more klinkers being produced now for the mac now than there was then. The apps and the gui have gotten more complex and every acid tripping UI 'artist' (read: Kai Krauss or the UI team for QuickTime) thinks that the standards that made everything so easy and consistant are just so passe and don't give the users a chance to appreciate their artistic flair which we all know is more important than mere usablity.
I suppose the real question is "if it's undergone professional usability testing, what professionals tested it who didn't kick and
scream about the single-mouse-button issue?" These "professionals" obviously don't have the same ideas I do.
ARGGH!! Why do people insist on pointless bitching about the single-mouse-button "issue". Those professional UI designers designed a UI that did not *require* a second mouse button. I have never felt the need for a second mouse button and am frustrated by them when I use a PeeCee. The usablity testing suggests that if the OS doesn't require extra mouse buttons to compensate for poor UI decisions then a single button is easier and better.
I understand that once people have become accustomed to using two or three button mice they want to continue using them. If you want to use the Mac with a multi-button mouse just buy one. The OS works very nicely with them. But please don't force me to change what I prefer and have grown accustomed to. I can't stand using two button mice, I don't see the point, I'm not used to it, "why doesn't the contextual menu come up when I hold the button down, Oh damn, I'm supposed to push the 'other' button" I'm just not used to it - I just don't like it. And when I need to modify mouse behavior in a variety of ways is two or three mouse buttons really enough? It hasn't been my experience that a second or even third mouse button on a PeeCee is a satisfactory replacement for the various modifications of mouse behaviour you get with the shift, control, option and command keys. That would be the equivelant of 4 mouse buttons and in image manipulation, drawing and design programs I need all of them and I don't think they would fit in a usable way on my Wacom stylus.
the art department at a company my friend works for recently bought a dual-proc G4. No, wait, stop laughing, I haven't reached the punchline yet. The joke is that it's running... wait for it... MacOS 9! Yep, all the second CPU s doing is keeping the first warm and cozy.:-) The machine cost $4k
Perhaps I am just missing the joke but why is that funny? Since they are the art department I would imagine that the second processor has been quite busy running Photoshop. Most of the Mac applications that really need the extra processing power, especially those used in art departments (image, audio and video apps, 3D renderers etc.), use the second processor quite nicely. Which is why Apple has had MP machines for design professionals for several years. (well, off and on for several years.)
And $4K is a bargain when you take into account the increased productivity of your typical graphics guy using a Mac (esp. a dual processor Mac, even with OS 9) as opposed to a PeeCee. Some of that increased productivity is just due to famililarity, but some of it really is the result of a better and more consistent UI and that Photoshop really is faster on the PowerPC than on "faster" Intel chips.
Have you ever
looked at the fine print in PPC benchmarking from apple? 98% of the time it's photoshop. Why? Because there is a special
instruction set (Altivec) that speeds up some operations significantly...
No matter how much Apple benchmarks Photoshop, it's still not a significant metric of overall system performance.
So What? PhotoShop and other apps that use AltiVec acceleration are the applications most likely to use and need a lot of processing power. They are also the applications that Mac Users make there money on and are most sensitive about the performance of. Office productivity apps and text editors hardly need to be run on high performance applications but FinalCut Pro, Photoshop, Premiere, Avid, etc. etc. etc. do - it is perfectly valid to use applications of that type, the ones Mac users most care about, as the best benchmarks of system performance.
They don't quote industry-standard SPEC numbers. STREAM?
And I have never billed a client for running SPEC or STREAM benchmarks on my computer. My computers performance on those benchmarks is only tenuously related to my computing needs - Photoshop benchmarks on the other hand have a direct 1:1 relationship to my productivity and is perhaps the ONLY benchmark that really matters to the target market for the PowerMac G4.
The only benchmark I saw during the demo was the only one that is *not* deceptive; the actual application mac users need processing speed for. Now the demo could have been rigged and I am sure on most other applications a PeeCee would bury the mac. But Photoshop is the main reason Mac users upgrade and if photoshop is the "deceptive" benchmark that Macs are designed to "cheat" on - more power to 'em!
Slashdot Mirror
I suddenly feel much better about purchasing their stock at $19.00 per share.
I'd hate to see tax dollars getting funneled off to a bunch of religious schools.
Why? The whole point of vouchers is that parents make the decision - why does MY individual choice to send MY daughter to a religious school offend you? It seems those shouting "you can't impose your morality on me" the loudest are also the quickest to impose their morality on the people they were just yelling at.
Quick! copy and paste any amount of text without touching they keyboard.
Why should I not use the keyboard? That is where my left hand is resting, esp. if I am using an application where I am likely to copy and paste text. This particular complaint comes down to what you are used too, you probably find using your left (keyboard) hand for those functions awkward and I find using my right (mouse) hand equally as awkward for the same reason - we are just more comfortable with what we are used to.
or how about useing a photo editor like photoshop useing 2 or more buttons and tell me its not a major convienance.
I can't imagine using a mouse at all to use a photo editor - you are missing a huge percentage of the functionality if you are not using a pressure sensitive tablet. And I don't see how only two buttons can be enough if you are stuck with a mouse. I use all of the keyboard modifier keys when I use photoshop - shift (constrains tools to 45% angles, straight lines etc.), control (contextual menus), option (modifies tools) and command (switches to the often used "move" tool) and all of these (except control) in combination (i.e. using the command key to temporarily switch from your current tool to the move tool in combination with the option key to duplicate rather than just move and shift to constrain movement to 45% angles). I don't see how you could fit 4 or 5 buttons to get similar functionality onto a stylus (or a mouse for that matter) - well I suppose you could fit that many but it wouldn't be very usable. I can just see myself having to hold the thing in my fist like a two-year old with a crayon so I can hold down all three stylus keys at the same time.
Her decision may not be rational or based on the facts but for her purposes it turns out to have been the correct choice. A Mac is the best solution for Photo manipulation work for a few reasons.
1) First off it is what all the other people doing the same thing and related things are using and she won't have to worry about any cross-platform compatibility issues when she sends her files off to be printed or used by a designer, etc. etc. etc.
2) For the same reason there are more applications for what she wants to do on the Mac than on Unix or even on Windoze. The apps that Windoze does have were all developed on the Mac first and ported to windoze. To be fair Windoze may be close to parity in graphics apps but I think that the Mac still has a very slight edge.
3) Apple is constantly abused for using Photoshop as a "misleading" benchmark that shows them in an unfairly favorable light - well that is what she is using so Apples unfair benchmarks will be the most accurate guide to the performance she could expect between different platforms.
4) Colorsync - Windoze just doesn't have real system wide color management. Linux hasn't even thought about it, but it is very important to someone doing color work. And it looks like Colorsyc will be getting even better as OS X moves forward.
5) Intangibles & details - Graphic artists are the target market for Macs and lots of the little details that Apple is so obsessive about are targetted at them as well. As Apple considers the little details they constantly keep in mind that graphic artists are their bread and butter. When they forget we remind them: "dammit those colored widgets in OSX are screwing up my color perception" "Oh sorry, we'll change that" Do you think Micro$oft would have made a change like that too please your friend? No, of course not. The result is that "without really being able to tell you why" most artists just prefer the Mac - It's not just great industrial design (though that is part of it) it is because a lot of that design had your friend in mind.
the consensus among Macheads is that you should probably get the dual G4/533 for $2,500 instead of the G4/733 for $3,500 unless you need the DVD burner - the cheaper system will be faster under X.
Unless you are doing work that heavily uses Altivec. the 733Mhz machine is using the PowerPC 7450 which from what I have heard dramatically improves Altivec performance so that the 733 will handily beat a dual processor 533 Mhz on Altivec instructions. Of course you are paying more too - But with the "superdrive," and considering the competing burners up to this point, it's been compared to buying a good DVD burner and getting the computer for free.
The graphical chaos you mention was pretty much the case in the early days of GUI program development on Windows or the Mac too, and quite a few klinkers are still being produced for both platforms.
I have to disagree about the graphical chaos during the early days of the Mac. The Mac had a standardized gui and consistancy between apps from the very beginning. They had the advantage of using a GUI from the start and almost all of the software developed used the Apple User Interface Standards.
There are more klinkers being produced now for the mac now than there was then. The apps and the gui have gotten more complex and every acid tripping UI 'artist' (read: Kai Krauss or the UI team for QuickTime) thinks that the standards that made everything so easy and consistant are just so passe and don't give the users a chance to appreciate their artistic flair which we all know is more important than mere usablity.
I suppose the real question is "if it's undergone professional usability testing, what professionals tested it who didn't kick and scream about the single-mouse-button issue?" These "professionals" obviously don't have the same ideas I do.
ARGGH!! Why do people insist on pointless bitching about the single-mouse-button "issue". Those professional UI designers designed a UI that did not *require* a second mouse button. I have never felt the need for a second mouse button and am frustrated by them when I use a PeeCee. The usablity testing suggests that if the OS doesn't require extra mouse buttons to compensate for poor UI decisions then a single button is easier and better.
I understand that once people have become accustomed to using two or three button mice they want to continue using them. If you want to use the Mac with a multi-button mouse just buy one. The OS works very nicely with them. But please don't force me to change what I prefer and have grown accustomed to. I can't stand using two button mice, I don't see the point, I'm not used to it, "why doesn't the contextual menu come up when I hold the button down, Oh damn, I'm supposed to push the 'other' button" I'm just not used to it - I just don't like it. And when I need to modify mouse behavior in a variety of ways is two or three mouse buttons really enough? It hasn't been my experience that a second or even third mouse button on a PeeCee is a satisfactory replacement for the various modifications of mouse behaviour you get with the shift, control, option and command keys. That would be the equivelant of 4 mouse buttons and in image manipulation, drawing and design programs I need all of them and I don't think they would fit in a usable way on my Wacom stylus.
the art department at a company my friend works for recently bought a dual-proc G4. No, wait, stop laughing, I haven't reached the punchline yet. The joke is that it's running... wait for it... MacOS 9! Yep, all the second CPU s doing is keeping the first warm and cozy. :-) The machine cost $4k
Perhaps I am just missing the joke but why is that funny? Since they are the art department I would imagine that the second processor has been quite busy running Photoshop. Most of the Mac applications that really need the extra processing power, especially those used in art departments (image, audio and video apps, 3D renderers etc.), use the second processor quite nicely. Which is why Apple has had MP machines for design professionals for several years. (well, off and on for several years.)
And $4K is a bargain when you take into account the increased productivity of your typical graphics guy using a Mac (esp. a dual processor Mac, even with OS 9) as opposed to a PeeCee. Some of that increased productivity is just due to famililarity, but some of it really is the result of a better and more consistent UI and that Photoshop really is faster on the PowerPC than on "faster" Intel chips.
Have you ever looked at the fine print in PPC benchmarking from apple? 98% of the time it's photoshop. Why? Because there is a special instruction set (Altivec) that speeds up some operations significantly... No matter how much Apple benchmarks Photoshop, it's still not a significant metric of overall system performance.
So What? PhotoShop and other apps that use AltiVec acceleration are the applications most likely to use and need a lot of processing power. They are also the applications that Mac Users make there money on and are most sensitive about the performance of. Office productivity apps and text editors hardly need to be run on high performance applications but FinalCut Pro, Photoshop, Premiere, Avid, etc. etc. etc. do - it is perfectly valid to use applications of that type, the ones Mac users most care about, as the best benchmarks of system performance.
They don't quote industry-standard SPEC numbers. STREAM?
And I have never billed a client for running SPEC or STREAM benchmarks on my computer. My computers performance on those benchmarks is only tenuously related to my computing needs - Photoshop benchmarks on the other hand have a direct 1:1 relationship to my productivity and is perhaps the ONLY benchmark that really matters to the target market for the PowerMac G4.
The only benchmark I saw during the demo was the only one that is *not* deceptive; the actual application mac users need processing speed for. Now the demo could have been rigged and I am sure on most other applications a PeeCee would bury the mac. But Photoshop is the main reason Mac users upgrade and if photoshop is the "deceptive" benchmark that Macs are designed to "cheat" on - more power to 'em!