Many companies try to enforce upgrade licensing by requiring you to actually install over a previous version of the product, but I don't see how that's relevant to this discussion. Upgrade vs. Full is a licensing issue, not a technical issue. With 10.2, you're being charged for an upgrade. Read the license. You can only install on systems that shipped with Mac OS.
You've got it backwards. You are paying $129 for an upgrade. Apple doesn't sell full versions. Pretty much everyone who buys a retail copy of Mac OS has already paid for a previous version; it came bundled with the hardware. In other words, 10.0 was an upgrade, and 10.2 is an upgrade, so it's very unsurprising that they're the same price.
Motorola doesn't seem to care about anything but the embedded market lately, and there are persistent rumors lately that Motorola's desktop G5 efforts are totally dead. Of course, nobody seems to really know anything solid.
It's impossible to be sure, of course, but it's probably AltiVec. The phrase in the article is "over 160 specialized vector instructions". AltiVec has 162.
It might not be as bad as it sounds. Cocoa can be programmed from Java. They talk about Quartz, which I don't think is accessible from pure-Java apps, so that's probably what they're doing. A Java/Cocoa app is totally indistinguishable from a "fully native" app (Objective-C/Cocoa). Except that it's a bit slower and uses more RAM, of course.
Apple is doing it anyway. Did you see the Rendezvous-enabled iTunes demo during the keynote? Phil was standing there with a TiBook containing an AirPort card. Jobs was at one of the desktop machines. Phil opens the TiBook, and his MP3 library instantly shows up in the iTunes window Jobs has open. Jobs starts playing a song from it. Phil closes the TiBook. The song stops and the library disappears. He opens it again. The library reappears.
Would you want to buy a car that would come away from a head-on collision with only minor damage to the vehicle itself, but that would leave the driver splattered all over the interior?
I believe all Mac models made in the last few years will automatically switch themselves off if they overheat. This dates back to the Blue & White G3, where you could invoke thermal shutdown by running too long with the case door open (which prevents proper airflow over the processor).
Nobody seems to have mentioned Amtrak's Acela Express trains yet. They're already up and running along several major routes. At just 150 mph this system hasn't got anything on the European high-speed rail, but it's nice to see the US at least taking some interest.
The README says it requires X Windows on OS X. If they ever hope to get a serious number of Mac users using it, they're going to have to fix that. And they're going to need to wrap it up in a nice OS X application bundle, so you can just download, decompress, drag to/Applications, and double-click to run.
The CD format is a very well-defined standard, and Apple created a device that works perfectly with it. How is it Apple's fault if a malicious 3rd party intentionally creates a disc that violates the standard?
It's not trying to boot from the disc, it's trying to read the disc to find out what it is, and the boot process hangs, presumably waiting for the drive to come back with a coherent response.
PostScript is actually an executable language. That's what they're talking about; Quartz provides drawing instructions that work something like some of those included with PostScript. This doesn't mean it's PostScript-based. The end result of executing those instructions is PDF data (PDF isn't an executable language).
LightWave rendering (which is what all the benchmarks I've seen have been measuring) doesn't use OpenGL at all. It's pretty much pure floating point.
Similarly, applying filters in Photoshop doesn't use 2D graphics accelleration at all -- it's all raw FP or integer (or AltiVec) depending on the filter.
The Photoshop speed difference is almost certainly the result of OS X not allowing apps to completely monopolize the CPU -- IOW, it doesn't demonstrated any OS X inefficiency whatsoever, it's just the cost of modern multitasking.
PDF, not PostScript. This is the cause of some of the GUI performance problems some people see. But remember, the OS X architecture is going to probably be around for another 15 years. It's hard to switch graphics engines at a later date, so it made sense to go with something really capable from the beginning, since the hardware that will be on sale for most of OS X's lifespan will have no problem handling it. Try OS X on a dual 1 GHz machine. "Snappy" is a good word for it.
Does anyone else think that $129 is an absurd price for this? I thought the entire idea of Bluetooth was that it was going to be so cheap it could just be integrated into everything. Looks like we're still going to have to wait a while for that.
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Please explain what's wrong with it. Or can't you actually come up with a substantive reply?
Many companies try to enforce upgrade licensing by requiring you to actually install over a previous version of the product, but I don't see how that's relevant to this discussion. Upgrade vs. Full is a licensing issue, not a technical issue. With 10.2, you're being charged for an upgrade. Read the license. You can only install on systems that shipped with Mac OS.
You've got it backwards. You are paying $129 for an upgrade. Apple doesn't sell full versions. Pretty much everyone who buys a retail copy of Mac OS has already paid for a previous version; it came bundled with the hardware. In other words, 10.0 was an upgrade, and 10.2 is an upgrade, so it's very unsurprising that they're the same price.
Motorola doesn't seem to care about anything but the embedded market lately, and there are persistent rumors lately that Motorola's desktop G5 efforts are totally dead. Of course, nobody seems to really know anything solid.
It's impossible to be sure, of course, but it's probably AltiVec. The phrase in the article is "over 160 specialized vector instructions". AltiVec has 162.
It might not be as bad as it sounds. Cocoa can be programmed from Java. They talk about Quartz, which I don't think is accessible from pure-Java apps, so that's probably what they're doing. A Java/Cocoa app is totally indistinguishable from a "fully native" app (Objective-C/Cocoa). Except that it's a bit slower and uses more RAM, of course.
Apple is doing it anyway. Did you see the Rendezvous-enabled iTunes demo during the keynote? Phil was standing there with a TiBook containing an AirPort card. Jobs was at one of the desktop machines. Phil opens the TiBook, and his MP3 library instantly shows up in the iTunes window Jobs has open. Jobs starts playing a song from it. Phil closes the TiBook. The song stops and the library disappears. He opens it again. The library reappears.
This is supposedly shipping early next year.
Yes, but this was in 1993 -- many years before anyone else (to my knowledge) was doing this sort of thing.
That's not totally clear. You might still be able to use iChat with your AIM screen name without paying Apple anything.
This update also adds the command-line updating tool that comes with Xserve. See 'man softwareupdate'.
Would you want to buy a car that would come away from a head-on collision with only minor damage to the vehicle itself, but that would leave the driver splattered all over the interior?
Sell it to rental agencies....
You can disable this in OS X, or you can point it at a differnt time server. Network time sync was added in Mac OS 8.5.
I believe all Mac models made in the last few years will automatically switch themselves off if they overheat. This dates back to the Blue & White G3, where you could invoke thermal shutdown by running too long with the case door open (which prevents proper airflow over the processor).
Two minute install, no reboot required. Nice.
Nobody seems to have mentioned Amtrak's Acela Express trains yet. They're already up and running along several major routes. At just 150 mph this system hasn't got anything on the European high-speed rail, but it's nice to see the US at least taking some interest.
They should do something like they did on the outside of the iBook. That's actually painted magnesium under clear plastic, I believe.
The README says it requires X Windows on OS X. If they ever hope to get a serious number of Mac users using it, they're going to have to fix that. And they're going to need to wrap it up in a nice OS X application bundle, so you can just download, decompress, drag to /Applications, and double-click to run.
The CD format is a very well-defined standard, and Apple created a device that works perfectly with it. How is it Apple's fault if a malicious 3rd party intentionally creates a disc that violates the standard?
It's not trying to boot from the disc, it's trying to read the disc to find out what it is, and the boot process hangs, presumably waiting for the drive to come back with a coherent response.
Why should Apple pay if Sony breaks your computer?
PostScript is actually an executable language. That's what they're talking about; Quartz provides drawing instructions that work something like some of those included with PostScript. This doesn't mean it's PostScript-based. The end result of executing those instructions is PDF data (PDF isn't an executable language).
LightWave rendering (which is what all the benchmarks I've seen have been measuring) doesn't use OpenGL at all. It's pretty much pure floating point.
Similarly, applying filters in Photoshop doesn't use 2D graphics accelleration at all -- it's all raw FP or integer (or AltiVec) depending on the filter.
The Photoshop speed difference is almost certainly the result of OS X not allowing apps to completely monopolize the CPU -- IOW, it doesn't demonstrated any OS X inefficiency whatsoever, it's just the cost of modern multitasking.
PDF, not PostScript. This is the cause of some of the GUI performance problems some people see. But remember, the OS X architecture is going to probably be around for another 15 years. It's hard to switch graphics engines at a later date, so it made sense to go with something really capable from the beginning, since the hardware that will be on sale for most of OS X's lifespan will have no problem handling it. Try OS X on a dual 1 GHz machine. "Snappy" is a good word for it.
If it's the OS, why is Photoshop only a couple of percent slower on OS X? Why is LightWave faster on OS X?
Does anyone else think that $129 is an absurd price for this? I thought the entire idea of Bluetooth was that it was going to be so cheap it could just be integrated into everything. Looks like we're still going to have to wait a while for that.