Encapsulating this vein of curmudgeonly natterings is a sign that appears annually along the road from Gate to Greeters: "Burning Man was better next year."
-- Making reasonable excuses for your behavior since 1996 (the bestest year on-playa ever):-)
If it's true that Apple's products seem less-tested these days, it's because they've tossed lots of seasoned customer quality-assurance testers to the wayside.
Many years ago, think System 7, Apple had this great Customer Quality Feedback (CQF) program. We tortured our systems between the alpha-testers and the great unwashed masses. There were Apple staff who (gasp) listened to our bug reports and got back to us reasonably quickly. It was grand.
Then someone got fired, or promoted, or whatever, and the CQF program got lost in the shuffle. Every few years I get an email from someone at Apple telling me that they're reconstituting it, but nothing ever comes of it, and - you know - it's hard to understand how they can ignore a free, highly-motivated bunch of fanboys.
Soooooooo agreed! I've played with the official BT client, Transmission (which is getting a lot of meme-time these days), Az., and Bits On Wheels (BoW).
I don't find a lot of real-world speed difference between the clients, nor does any of them really drag my machine down anymore in modern times, but I just love the 3D swarm graphics.
Mac users, try BoW. Even if you don't decide the GUI is just for you, the 3D will raise the bar for your satisfaction in other clients.
One thing I haven't noticed folks saying is this: eBay now has their toes into the inner workings of CL. They'll see how it's done. Then, one day, they'll announce a series of city-centered services that compete with CL. They'll undercut CL's prices in the three cities in which CL charges, and provide lots of bang for all the cities.
CL will then wither, over months or years. eBay has the cash to run a loss while CL dies (in a plausibly deniable way: "hey, we didn't kill it, we were a minority share-holder" and lost money too).
I'd rather this happened without this interim step. Having eBay touching CL is irritating, like sand in my bathing suit.
And I feel sorry for Craig. I suspect this is the beginning of the end for this chapter in his life.
To put another spin on MacAdam: they've been a smug, unhelpful shop with unconscionably high costs since I've known them (sometime in the mid-to-late-1980s). I've been a Macintosh owner since 1984, but was in Boston for the early 1980s.
MacAdam's niche was in a pre-Internet time, when comparison shopping was difficult. Plus the incredible hourly fees they charged businesses for set-up and basic administration. And the utter contempt and lack of attention to anyone not looking to purchase a complete system then and there. Plus shoddy sales and technical help, and miserable phone-side manners. Grrrr.
Now that we have the Internet, and we can find a better price-point, and businesses can find competent help at a better price, MacAdam has spent what's left of its karmic capital whining and suing Apple.
I'd have to say almost the same about the CompUSA on Market Street, a few blocks away from the new Apple Store. Great with a captive audience, obviously clueless and expensive when compared with other resources.
We have other ARs in San Francisco, some of whom STILL overcharge the elderly and uninformed in their neighborhoods. It rankles.
They may have been some extraordinary ARs, but in my twenty years of Macintosh ownership (and I've owned a few:-) I haven't come across any of them.
If MacAdam, or CompuTown or CompUSA, had been there for those of us trying to keep our Macs at home and our Mac networks of the office running, rather than focussing only on gouging us for every little thing along the way, we might be there for you.
I can't count the times I've been infuriated by how Apple Resellers have treated me or others. When MacAdam closes its doors it'll be of little detriment to anyone but the owners and employees.
Mac OS 8.6 (for which I was a alpha/beta tester) was renamed to Mac OS 9 because Apple's contractual obligation to third-party PowerPC platforms extended only to Mac OS 8.x.
I may still have an 8.6.* install CD lying around here somewhere.
When we (GO Corp.) released the PenPoint! operating system we had a big shindig for the public (in San Francisco, IIRC). We had some TechTV (or somesuch) filming, lots of reporters, venture capitalists, etc.
Robert Carr, my boss, took my IBM ThinkPad* tablet from my hands and tossed it across the room into a concrete wall. I got it, hit the power switch, and it was back running. Amazing.
*The name "ThinkPad" had just been thought up, and brand new labels with the name were overnighted to us to be slapped on each of our tablets.
Losing the argument you take a left turn into the Mazda-owners forum? I'll take it that we're finished talking about the appropriateness of car analogies to Apple software (which is what we were discussing).
I searched the 'net for the Xedos 6 (since I'm unfamiliar with it; must have a different name in the USA, where Mazda has been a niche player since poorly supporting the Wankel engine, several decades ago).
If you're happy with your Xedos 6, my congratulations to you. It doesn't please my sense of esthetics in the least, whereas my BMW does. (It strikes me as rather pedestrian, much as my Dad's Oldsmobile Alero.)
Unlike my refrigerator, I didn't buy my car for the warranty claims statistics. I wanted something that was a scream to drive, surrounded me with leather, felt rock-solid, and is safe. My BMW satisfies the criteria I had. If I wanted cheap-to-drive I could have bought a Honda.
I'm comparing a BMW 318is to three VW Rabbits and a VW Fox Sport.
The fit-and-finish on my newer VWs sucked, the engines weren't reliable, and the ride was barely sufficient at best. Price approx. US$15,000.
My 318is, cost about double that, has wonderful fit-and-finish, the engine (at 100,000 mi) has much better ride, feel, and power, and the car in general is much more pleasurable to drive.
They're similar in size, weight, and chassis style.
The money BMW has put into their car - which I paid - is directly represented by a better overall car.
If you can't tell the relative difference between a modern VW and BMW I suggest that car analogies might be better set aside.
If I understand the gist of your incredibly long, rambling post, it's that all cars are pretty much equal.
Bullshit.
My BMW is five times the car any of my VWs were. It cost me more, but it's faster, safer, and more fun to drive.
You get what you pay for, in cars and software development. I agree with a much earlier poster who suggested that having free iApps is a good selling point for switchers, but Apple does have to absorb the cost somewhere. (I think that's on the inflated hardware prices, which I happily pay, so I'll be ticked off if I have to pay it again...)
This is news. The discussion following an update is invaluable, not just (as you say) the news of an available update.
For example, 10.2.2 has under-the-hood changes in AppleEvents. These break Userland Frontier (and perhaps the add-ons like Manilla and Radio). No fix is yet available.
I read the discussions of updates exactly for news like this.
...and out of towners often pronounce it in the spanish "boh-Ka ra-Tahn", but it's actually pronounced "Book-a Rah-tone" and it doesn't mean mouth of the rat (other than literally)
It doesn't mean "mouth of the rat" literally or figuratively, it means mouth of the MOUSE.
And the out-of-towners are pronouncing it (historically) correctly, even if the in-towners would like to pretend it's a bit more tony than it really is.
(I traipsed through Florida last year, from Jupiter to Miami, and liked Palm Beach and Boca Raton. But the posturing! Ay!)
From this page: Boca Raton (Florida): from "boca de ratónes," a Spanish term applied to nearby inlets. It translates as "mouth of the mouse" (not "rat," which is "rata") and may refer to the jagged rocks at these inlets. It has also been suggested that "ratónes" was a term used for the pirates who might hide in such a place.
Had you bothered to do the most cursory investigation of Microsoft you would have found that this is one of their common business practices.
The funniest thing? This isn't the first time a company named GO has been Microsofted.
The.pdf document shows RealNames as Go Inc.
During my tenure at GO Corp (in the mid 90s) we developed the PenPoint gesture-based object-oriented operating system for handheld computers. Microsoft entered into a relationship with us, did a knowledge transfer, and then began to compete with us.
If you're too damn lazy to check up on Microsoft's past behaviors at least don't name your company GO (or so it seems).
New Jersey went to drivers licenses with pictures in the early eighties. Then it was discovered that there was some fraud built into the system (something like organized crime profiting from the contracts to supply some part of the process) and NJ went back to picture-less.
The place is the freaking dark ages; so glad I left, never to look back. Sigh.
For the exceedingly lazy among us:-) the DVD about which you're speaking is called The Incredible Adventures of Wallace and Gromit and may be ordered here.
Whoa! I'll have to check out the fine print. This one completely flew under the wire. Of course, given today's political climate, I'm not surprised that encryption isn't top of "to publicize" list...
It's a good article, and answers the obvious question ("Why?") with the different ways this makes SBC come inbetween you and your ISP (err, "add value").
Dissapointing, even so. How about adding value, SBC, by actually adding value? Like keeping your servers up and running? (My in-laws are SBC aDSL PPPoE customers and not terribly happy with it. My tiny San Francisco-based ISP is a thousand times more reliable, and not only because a geek actually answers the phone.)
It *is* that bad here in San Francisco. I had a six month hiatus (from Dec to May). Luckily my mortgage is small, no credit load (when I hear that my peers owe an average of $15K), and lots of savings.
I can understand how someone with high rent or mortgage, lots owed the credit card companies, and with a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle could be on the edge.
It scares the hell out of me.
Now that I'm working (consulting; Java/JSPs) I'm squirrelling away every damn cent (and earning just less than ONE-THIRD of what I got last year). This is a cold, cold market.
It's going to get much uglier before it gets better, and the tide of incredibly cheap H-1Bs and two-years-at-a-dot-com folks are making it uglier.
I worked at GO for almost four years. Our PenPoint operating system was gesture-centric, and used a pen directly on the screen. For desktop development we used Wacom tablets. I found pens much easier to use than mice.
If memory serves there was even a Wacom tablet with an LCD screen behind it, so you could have an external monitor with pen input.
Slashdot Mirror
Encapsulating this vein of curmudgeonly natterings is a sign that appears annually along the road from Gate to Greeters: "Burning Man was better next year."
-- Making reasonable excuses for your behavior since 1996 (the bestest year on-playa ever) :-)
So you're suggesting this was merely a management issue? Total Quality Management or somesuch?
If it's true that Apple's products seem less-tested these days, it's because they've tossed lots of seasoned customer quality-assurance testers to the wayside.
Many years ago, think System 7, Apple had this great Customer Quality Feedback (CQF) program. We tortured our systems between the alpha-testers and the great unwashed masses. There were Apple staff who (gasp) listened to our bug reports and got back to us reasonably quickly. It was grand.
Then someone got fired, or promoted, or whatever, and the CQF program got lost in the shuffle. Every few years I get an email from someone at Apple telling me that they're reconstituting it, but nothing ever comes of it, and - you know - it's hard to understand how they can ignore a free, highly-motivated bunch of fanboys.
Soooooooo agreed! I've played with the official BT client, Transmission (which is getting a lot of meme-time these days), Az., and Bits On Wheels (BoW).
I don't find a lot of real-world speed difference between the clients, nor does any of them really drag my machine down anymore in modern times, but I just love the 3D swarm graphics.
Mac users, try BoW. Even if you don't decide the GUI is just for you, the 3D will raise the bar for your satisfaction in other clients.
One thing I haven't noticed folks saying is this: eBay now has their toes into the inner workings of CL. They'll see how it's done. Then, one day, they'll announce a series of city-centered services that compete with CL. They'll undercut CL's prices in the three cities in which CL charges, and provide lots of bang for all the cities.
CL will then wither, over months or years. eBay has the cash to run a loss while CL dies (in a plausibly deniable way: "hey, we didn't kill it, we were a minority share-holder" and lost money too).
I'd rather this happened without this interim step. Having eBay touching CL is irritating, like sand in my bathing suit.
And I feel sorry for Craig. I suspect this is the beginning of the end for this chapter in his life.
To put another spin on MacAdam: they've been a smug, unhelpful shop with unconscionably high costs since I've known them (sometime in the mid-to-late-1980s). I've been a Macintosh owner since 1984, but was in Boston for the early 1980s.
:-) I haven't come across any of them.
MacAdam's niche was in a pre-Internet time, when comparison shopping was difficult. Plus the incredible hourly fees they charged businesses for set-up and basic administration. And the utter contempt and lack of attention to anyone not looking to purchase a complete system then and there. Plus shoddy sales and technical help, and miserable phone-side manners. Grrrr.
Now that we have the Internet, and we can find a better price-point, and businesses can find competent help at a better price, MacAdam has spent what's left of its karmic capital whining and suing Apple.
I'd have to say almost the same about the CompUSA on Market Street, a few blocks away from the new Apple Store. Great with a captive audience, obviously clueless and expensive when compared with other resources.
We have other ARs in San Francisco, some of whom STILL overcharge the elderly and uninformed in their neighborhoods. It rankles.
They may have been some extraordinary ARs, but in my twenty years of Macintosh ownership (and I've owned a few
If MacAdam, or CompuTown or CompUSA, had been there for those of us trying to keep our Macs at home and our Mac networks of the office running, rather than focussing only on gouging us for every little thing along the way, we might be there for you.
I can't count the times I've been infuriated by how Apple Resellers have treated me or others. When MacAdam closes its doors it'll be of little detriment to anyone but the owners and employees.
Mac OS 8.6 (for which I was a alpha/beta tester) was renamed to Mac OS 9 because Apple's contractual obligation to third-party PowerPC platforms extended only to Mac OS 8.x.
I may still have an 8.6.* install CD lying around here somewhere.
When I switched to using Dvorak, many years ago, I printed out the Key Caps showing where the layout, and left the physical keys alone.
Just another way of being a better touch typist. I don't actually have to look at the keys...
Have you actually called Apple and asked what they'll charge you for a few key-caps? That'd be step no. one for me...
When we (GO Corp.) released the PenPoint! operating system we had a big shindig for the public (in San Francisco, IIRC). We had some TechTV (or somesuch) filming, lots of reporters, venture capitalists, etc.
Robert Carr, my boss, took my IBM ThinkPad* tablet from my hands and tossed it across the room into a concrete wall. I got it, hit the power switch, and it was back running. Amazing.
*The name "ThinkPad" had just been thought up, and brand new labels with the name were overnighted to us to be slapped on each of our tablets.
Losing the argument you take a left turn into the Mazda-owners forum? I'll take it that we're finished talking about the appropriateness of car analogies to Apple software (which is what we were discussing).
I searched the 'net for the Xedos 6 (since I'm unfamiliar with it; must have a different name in the USA, where Mazda has been a niche player since poorly supporting the Wankel engine, several decades ago).
If you're happy with your Xedos 6, my congratulations to you. It doesn't please my sense of esthetics in the least, whereas my BMW does. (It strikes me as rather pedestrian, much as my Dad's Oldsmobile Alero.)
Unlike my refrigerator, I didn't buy my car for the warranty claims statistics. I wanted something that was a scream to drive, surrounded me with leather, felt rock-solid, and is safe. My BMW satisfies the criteria I had. If I wanted cheap-to-drive I could have bought a Honda.
Happy Motoring.
Au contraire.
I'm comparing a BMW 318is to three VW Rabbits and a VW Fox Sport.
The fit-and-finish on my newer VWs sucked, the engines weren't reliable, and the ride was barely sufficient at best. Price approx. US$15,000.
My 318is, cost about double that, has wonderful fit-and-finish, the engine (at 100,000 mi) has much better ride, feel, and power, and the car in general is much more pleasurable to drive.
They're similar in size, weight, and chassis style.
The money BMW has put into their car - which I paid - is directly represented by a better overall car.
If you can't tell the relative difference between a modern VW and BMW I suggest that car analogies might be better set aside.
If I understand the gist of your incredibly long, rambling post, it's that all cars are pretty much equal.
Bullshit.
My BMW is five times the car any of my VWs were. It cost me more, but it's faster, safer, and more fun to drive.
You get what you pay for, in cars and software development. I agree with a much earlier poster who suggested that having free iApps is a good selling point for switchers, but Apple does have to absorb the cost somewhere. (I think that's on the inflated hardware prices, which I happily pay, so I'll be ticked off if I have to pay it again...)
This is news. The discussion following an update is invaluable, not just (as you say) the news of an available update.
For example, 10.2.2 has under-the-hood changes in AppleEvents. These break Userland Frontier (and perhaps the add-ons like Manilla and Radio). No fix is yet available.
I read the discussions of updates exactly for news like this.
...and out of towners often pronounce it in the spanish "boh-Ka ra-Tahn", but it's actually pronounced "Book-a Rah-tone" and it doesn't mean mouth of the rat (other than literally)
It doesn't mean "mouth of the rat" literally or figuratively, it means mouth of the MOUSE.
And the out-of-towners are pronouncing it (historically) correctly, even if the in-towners would like to pretend it's a bit more tony than it really is.
(I traipsed through Florida last year, from Jupiter to Miami, and liked Palm Beach and Boca Raton. But the posturing! Ay!)
From this page: Boca Raton (Florida): from "boca de ratónes," a Spanish term applied to nearby inlets. It translates as "mouth of the mouse" (not "rat," which is "rata") and may refer to the jagged rocks at these inlets. It has also been suggested that "ratónes" was a term used for the pirates who might hide in such a place.
Had you bothered to do the most cursory investigation of Microsoft you would
.pdf document shows RealNames as Go Inc.
have found that this is one of their common business practices.
The funniest thing? This isn't the first time a company named GO has been Microsofted.
The
During my tenure at GO Corp (in the mid 90s) we developed the PenPoint gesture-based object-oriented operating system for handheld computers. Microsoft entered into a relationship with us, did a knowledge transfer, and then began to compete with us.
If you're too damn lazy to check up on Microsoft's past behaviors at least don't name your company GO (or so it seems).
New Jersey went to drivers licenses with pictures in the early eighties. Then it was discovered that there was some fraud built into the system (something like organized crime profiting from the contracts to supply some part of the process) and NJ went back to picture-less.
The place is the freaking dark ages; so glad I left, never to look back. Sigh.
For the exceedingly lazy among us :-) the DVD about which you're speaking is called The Incredible Adventures of Wallace and Gromit and may be ordered here.
Whoa! I'll have to check out the fine print. This one completely flew under the wire. Of course, given today's political climate, I'm not surprised that encryption isn't top of "to publicize" list...
to ask him when PGPdisk for Mac OS X was going to come out.
:-(
This certainly puts a wrinkle in my undies
Dissapointing, even so. How about adding value, SBC, by actually adding value? Like keeping your servers up and running? (My in-laws are SBC aDSL PPPoE customers and not terribly happy with it. My tiny San Francisco-based ISP is a thousand times more reliable, and not only because a geek actually answers the phone.)
Grrrrr.
It *is* that bad here in San Francisco. I had a six month hiatus (from Dec to May). Luckily my mortgage is small, no credit load (when I hear that my peers owe an average of $15K), and lots of savings. I can understand how someone with high rent or mortgage, lots owed the credit card companies, and with a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle could be on the edge. It scares the hell out of me. Now that I'm working (consulting; Java/JSPs) I'm squirrelling away every damn cent (and earning just less than ONE-THIRD of what I got last year). This is a cold, cold market. It's going to get much uglier before it gets better, and the tide of incredibly cheap H-1Bs and two-years-at-a-dot-com folks are making it uglier.
I worked at GO for almost four years. Our PenPoint operating system was gesture-centric, and used a pen directly on the screen. For desktop development we used Wacom tablets. I found pens much easier to use than mice. If memory serves there was even a Wacom tablet with an LCD screen behind it, so you could have an external monitor with pen input.