The author of the article is speculating too much and building a house of cards.
The real reason why Apple went to Intel is simple: Intel design processors for desktop and notebook computers and manufacture those processors in huge quantities. IBM doesn't. Digging deeper than that for an explanation isn't necessary.
Apple Macintosh, Atari ST and Amiga all did it first and did it better. (Atari and Amiga were both copying Apple, but they copied faster and better than Microsoft could!) Only in the world of Microsoft could you follow the lead of three other companies, with a product markedly inferior to all of them, and call it Pioneering.
Likewise, only Microsoft could follow the lead of three other companies with an inferior product and then be hugely successful selling it. That's what's so damn frustrating.
Of course that's a drop in the bucket compared to the long record of crimes and misdemeanors Microsoft have perpetrated. Yes, Microsoft is probably the most hated company in the world, but it didn't happen by accident. They earned their infamy.
You may find it kind of sad, but it's vindication for those of us who've argued for the last 20+ years that the Shuttle program was a disaster in progress. Finally, after the spilling of much blood and treasure, NASA have been forced to admit (tacitly, at least) that we were right all along.
The good news is, this gets us back to roughly where we were in the 1970s with our Saturn rockets. The bad news is, this gets us back to where we were in the 1970s. It's kind of like asking if the glass is half empty or half full.
Yes, now we can finally put the disastrous Shuttle program behind us -- after 25 years and countless billions of dollars wasted going in circles, it's about freakin' time. At last the long nightmare can end.
And now we can pick up again where we left off. And yet, one could have hoped for so much more. There are many innovative ideas sitting in dusty filing cabinets, but instead we are getting Apollo/Saturn retreads. There is no great leap forward being offered, only a grudging admission that NASA spent the last 25 years wandering down a dead end.
As for the design specifics. . . If you look at the proposed designs, they aren't what anybody would have created starting from a clean slate. The NYT article implies it's all about saving money, but the real reason for using recycled Shuttle components is all about politics and expedience.
I'm no fan of pork-barrel spending, but I guess something can be said for expedience. Even if it's basically 1970s technology, this plan can get us back into the space exploration game.
Some people talk about radical technologies like space elevators, aerospace planes, or nuclear rockets. I'm all for researching that kind of stuff. Most of these technologies have been buried because they were perceived as a threat to the shuttle, or else shuttle operations gobbled up most of NASA's budget so there wasn't much left for that R&D anyhow.
But those technologies right now exist on paper. Developing them into working systems would take time and money, both of which are in short supply. Using shuttle components may seem disappointing, but it can get us back into the space exploration game in a matter of a few years time -- and then research on more forward-looking stuff can, hopefully, pick up again.
In short: I hope these new systems will be only stopgaps to tide us over until newer technology. But sometimes a stopgap is really good to have.
If the poster could have fit those three words into the article, it would have saved me a fair bit of bother. And yes, this sort of thing does happen all the time on Slashdot.
Does anybody remember when Amiga was the premier platform for computer games? There was a stretch of several years when all the best games appeared first on Amiga, the Atari ST was often right there with it (or a close second), and then some of the games eventually trickled down to MS-DOS PCs. The PC in that era didn't have the graphics or audio capabilities to match Amiga, or even the main processor power for that matter (i.e. 68000 versus 8088).
Somebody told me a story about going to a computer show and seeing all the PCs struggling to run crummy CGA/EGA games. There were Amigas at the show. . . but they were forbidden from running games! Commodore thought if Amiga was seen running games, it would ruin their reputation with big business customers!
Amiga users got the first crack at classics like Shadow of the Beast, Populous, The Settlers, Lemmings, NY Warriors, Battle Squadron, Stunt Car Racer, Turrican II, Cannon Fodder and too many other great games to list.
As time went by, and Amiga hardware became more outdated without any meaningful upgrades, the PC gradually caught up. I think Wing Commander was the turning point. It was on the PC first, and your basic Amiga couldn't handle it. From that time on, the PC was the top dog of computer gaming, while Amiga and Atari ST faded away.
Re:Atari's Jackintosh was a weak copy
on
Happy Birthday, Amiga
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I used and programmed both the ST and Amiga extensively, and the comparison isn't as clear-cut as you make it sound. They both had their strengths.
The ST definitely got you a working computer for less money. The Atari monitors (at least the early ones) were high quality. The ST operating system was easy to use, easy to program. It also made efficient use of processor power -- my Amiga wasn't as responsive as my ST until after I dropped in a 68020 card, effectively quadrupling the main processor power. And the ST had great programming languages. My personal favorites were GFA Basic and Laser C. There was nothing as polished on Amiga, and one handy reference book was all you needed for most Atari ST application development.
By way of comparison. . . The Amiga had better and more flexible graphics, amazingly better audio, far better expandability on some models (like the A2000, but you paid a premium for it). Double-sided floppies were standard, so you could distribute software on them. Amiga OS right up through Workbench 1.3 was ugly and awkward. After that it got better for users, and it was more powerful and flexible than Atari TOS -- but Amiga OS remained brutally hard to program, and you needed about 15 pounds of reference manuals. There were lots of programming environments offered for the Amiga, but all of them had a half-baked quality (with the notable exception of CanDo, but it was too expensive for most people).
Incidentally, the biggest thing I miss from Amiga is the screens system, and the custom screens. It bugs me that none of the other major operating systems -- not a one -- ever came up with anything similar, to this very day.
It hasn't been that long since we had articles about farming algae for vegetable oil, which can be made into biodiesel fuel. That sounded really promising to me.
The whole reason for going with algae was that it has the potential to be more efficient, as compared with bio-fuels from more conventional sources. (It was stated that some species of algae are up to 50% oil, by mass. How does that compare with peanut plants? Or corn? Yeah.)
And yet. . . algae isn't part of the wider discussion. People are still arguing about corn. Now, I realize the algae thing is all hypothetical -- looks good on paper, not yet proven practical. And yes, it takes time for new ideas to gain mindshare. But IMO we need to be pushing research into more ingenious, cutting-edge ideas like this. Many of them won't pan out, but some could, and it could make a huge difference.
I mean seriously. . . Transformers? What's next, a big-budget movie adaptation of HR Pufnstuf?
Yep, I can bet I'm gonna burn a lot of karma on this one. But I just don't get it. We're talking about a cheesy SatAM cartoon designed as a half-hour long toy advertisement. Right? On top of that, its heyday was 20 years ago.
Who told you "increased performance . . . is what the whole Intel switch is about"?
Oh yeah. Steve Jobs said that, I forgot.:)
The switch from 680x0 to PPC was about increased performance. The switch from Mac OS to Mac OS X was about increased performance. The switch from PPC to X86 is not, it's just a business decision. It's not necessarily a bad business decision, but it's not something Apple's engineers dreamed up as a great way of moving their platform into the future. It's not something the customers were crying out for. It's old fashioned deal-making.
I think it's an understandable move, and one that's likely to pay off in the long haul. But. . . I can't help feeling disappointed that every OS seems destined to someday grow up and become Unix running on a X86 instruction set. It's not the future we all hoped for.
The Itanium isn't making any headway in the marketplace for the same reason the PowerPC didn't. It doesn't run X86 code, not natively at full speed.
In the early years of PowerPC, the plan was for it to replace both the 680x0 (in Macs) and the 80x86 (in PC), thus bringing the platforms together on common hardware. The lure was better performance.
The PowerPC processors in that era cranked out roughly 80% better performance than X86. Apple went for it, but PC makers weren't interested. "What, you expect us to break compatibility for a measly 80% increase in performance? It is to laugh! HAHAHA!!"
Now they are laughing at Itanium for the same reason. I suspect if you could get Itanium to run 300% faster than X86 at the same price, then the PC makers would sit up and take notice. But they simply aren't going to be bothered with it unless the gain is really huge and dramatic.
What really gripes me is the themes -- they are so trite and sensationalistic. Seriously. . . I can't see how it costs that much more to make a movie with an intelligent premise, as compared with an ignorant one.
I can understand the limitations of a tight budget, and I can forgive a lot. I can forgive cheesy sets, cinematography, props, acting. . . But I have a hard time time watching movies that are just flat-out blindingly stupid. I also have trouble watching movies that are inferior knock-offs of other movies that were blindingly stupid.
If only they would dig through SF literature, I'm sure they could find a lot more original and plausible ideas to work with. But I think part of the problem is, these guys are fans of B-movies, they come from a B-movie making background, and the only experience they have to draw inspiration from is other B-movies. So we get the same tired, silly, often downright embarrassing stuff rehashed over and over. They're too inbred.
There's been a lot of talk making the rounds about how both Microsoft and Sony want their consoles to morph into home computers (or media centers, if you prefer). Once you've tacked on a hard drive, internet connectivity, and some kind of OS. . . It's practically like a computer, isn't it? Sony seem to favor Linux, while Microsoft are reputed to have some kind of OS they could get to run on theirs. And since the conventional computer market is now regarded as saturated or stagnant, this looks like an avenue for further growth.
Now, I could dredge up the ghosts of all those consoles in decades past that tried to become computers (Intellivision, ColecoVision/Adam), and computers that tried to become consoles (Atari 5200, Amiga CD^32, Apple Pippin), and I could point out the one thing they all have in common: They all flopped. (Incidentally, rumors said that the CD^32 was selling pretty well, right up until Commodore imploded underneath it.)
But here's the real issue. ..
It's about controlling the platform. It's about the natural conflict between the console business model and the computer business model. If Sony offer up a PS3 console with Linux, how are they going to prevent any random non-license-paying bozo from making games and selling them?
This is life-or-death for Sony. Their profits come from making sure nobody makes and sells the games without Sony getting a cut. They could put Linux on the system, but they'd have to somehow lock out parts of the hardware -- parts that are needed to get any kind of competitive game to work -- unless there's a license code to enable them.
The only other alternative would be to change their whole business model so they can make money selling consoles instead of game licenses. I don't see that happening, considering how profitable their current business is. (This should really be called the Nintendo business model, since they were first to make it work and everybody else followed.)
By way of comparison. . . A Mac Mini from Apple comes with a complete -- and excellent -- development system. You can program whatever you want, and not have to pay license fees or ask Apple (or anybody else) for permission. From that standpoint, the Mac is a far more interesting system, and qualifies as a "real computer" in a sense that the PS3 can't.
First I configured the "mid-range" iMac with the 17-inch display in the Apple Store. It came to $1,499.
Next I configured at Dell Dimension 4700 with options as similar as I could to the iMac. According to Dell the price is "From $1,744", but currently marked down to $1,308. (And that's exactly the kind of huckster salesmanship that Apple would never pull.)
So. . . The iMac is 1.15 times the cost of the Dell. Not twice as high, not three times as high. And what does your extra $291 buy you? It gets you the iMac's all-in-one design (the Dell is a conventional boxy CPU + monitor), it gets you Mac OS X, and the whole iLife software bundle. And no viruses. And a 64-bit processor, let us not forget. (I can't believe I almost forgot that.)
I had a hard time finding detailed specs, but I'm fairly sure the Dell doesn't come with Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire ports, or an internal bay for a 802.11g card either.
To me, the iMac is worth the money.
It varies from product to product. Last time I tried pricing Power Mac G5 systems against PCs with dual 64-bit processors, and I found the PCs were all considerably more expensive.
I'll vote for that. I remember the last computer I had with basically the whole OS in ROM chips. . . It was my Atari 520ST. Booting was fast, and you could even boot it without any disk.
I would love to see a future Mac with something like 2GB to 4GB (depending where you put bundled apps, for example) of flash memory to use as the boot disk, with Mac OS X installed on it, and then all the user accounts (and swap) placed on the hard drive. It would be faster, more efficient, neater.
Cost is the biggest obstacle. No matter how much the price of flash memory falls, a hard drive plus flash is going to be more costly than just a hard drive. And when cranking out millions of units, a few bucks per unit really adds up.
Comparing prices between Apples and Dells is frustrating, because the standard of comparison keeps shifting. Here's how it usually goes, step by step:
1. Somebody starts by ranting about how they have to pay "twice as much" or "three times the price" for a Macintosh. Which is obviously ridiculous, but it keeps being said time after time.
2. Examples are brought forward showing currently available Macintosh models selling for roughly the same price as comparably configured Dells. Sometimes the Apple is slightly less than the Dell. Sometimes the Apple is a fair bit higher -- but never anything like the 2X or 3X that anti-Apple trolls keep shouting out.
3. PC fanatics jump all over the proffered examples, ridiculing them because they could "build a system for a third that much". Never mind that we were talking about Dell versus Apple when the debate started, not home-built systems. When this is pointed out, someone on the anti-Apple side will chime in that only morons buy Dells anyhow, and the smart people always build their own computers.
And that's where it ends. As soon as you show that Macs don't, in fact, cost 2X or 3X as much as a Dell, then suddenly it doesn't matter because Dell is no longer the standard for comparison. (They're only the #1 computer maker in the world, sheesh.) Instead it's now computers cobbled together from components that you have to compete against on price.
Other amusing things sometimes pop up during the argument. . . Some PC fans seem to believe that Quake frame rates are the only meaningful measure of a computer's performance or value. Others are stubbornly oblivious to the typically long lifespan of a Mac, or how well used Macs hold their value (check eBay!), or how much time (and money, if you value your time at all) can be saved from reduced troubleshooting when running a Mac.
I suspect many of the complainers also are school kids who aren't accustomed to working with an adult budget. They're the same class of people who got a C64 or an Atari ST back when the rest of the world was going to PC clones, just because they could save some bucks. They're the same class of people who were too cheap to shell out for a monitor or a hard drive for their Amiga 500 -- blurry TV sets and floppy swapping was fine for playing games, anyow.
That was than. Nowadays PC clones are the cheapo systems.
So where does this whole myth of an Apple for "three times the price" come from? Here's my hypothesis. ..
1. In years gone by -- in the 1980s especially -- Apple sold a lot of systems that were outrageously overpriced. Anybody remember when a Commodore C64 was $250 and an Apple II was $1600? Or when the Mac II was $8000? Yeah, people tend to remember that kind of sticker shock.
2. Apple don't sell very stripped-down models, or compete at the very lowest end of the market. (Though the Mac Mini got them quite a bit closer to it than they ever have been before.)
3. What many of the complainers really want is to run Mac OS X on the PC hardware they've already got. You can't get any cheaper than something you've already got. That's free! And current Mac users have a hard time seeing this, because a Macintosh is what they've already got. They're looking at it from the other side of the river.
I expect I'll buy a new "Macintel" system . . . . eventually.
I'm sitting here with a Power Mac G5 right now, and I expect it to last me A While. By the time it's due for replacement, Apple should have completed their whole move to X86. Assuming they haven't screwed it up somehow, then I'll go for one.
But, buying the first X86-based Mac that comes out is something I'd be wary of -- even if it fit into my schedule for a new computer, which it doesn't.
I don't see this move to X86 as being a big deal for me. I'm over on the sidelines watching with amused interest, but the direct, practical impact on me looks to be quite small.
You're not supposed to be moved by this system. The whole move from PowerPC to X86 isn't about progress, it isn't about making a better system, it isn't about excitement. It's a business decision, that's all.
That really sets it apart from the earlier transition from 680x0 to PowerPC, and the transition from Mac OS to Mac OS X. Those were both about progress, they were about making a better machine. Developers were crying out fro Mac OS X, or something like it. Nobody was crying out for X86.
After skimming over the manifesto. . . Most of it exactly mirrors the discussions I've had with my hard-SF loving friends. Most of that document is remarkably accurate in describing what I've felt about SF for several years.
Yes, it's time to put aside the Buck Rogers and Star Trek stories that go all the way back to the 1920s and 1930s. Yes it's time to focus on new technologies like robotics and AI, virtual reality, genetic engineering, nanotechnology. Surely we can craft interesting stories around those things.
Incidentally, I believe it takes about 30 years for a new idea in science fiction to make its way into the mainstream, mass consciousness. Please note that Engines of Creation was published in 1985. So I expect to see movies about nanotechnology appearing around 2015.
Another example: The End of the Dream was published in 1972. The Day After Tomorrow hit theaters in 2004. That's 32 years.
But here's what drives me up the wall. . . I agree with everything in their manifesto except their rejection of interstellar travel. Slower-than-light travel has been the subject of much speculation, and many of the schemes proposed have been thought through with care. If you rule out interstellar travel, then you've got to come up with some explanation of what will prevent us from doing it. I just can't see anything standing in the way.
Likewise, their statement that Earth-like planets must be vanishingly rare is. . . strange. It's especially strange coming in today's red-hot climate of astronomy, with exoplanetary discoveries coming rapid fire. Fact is, nobody knows whether planets like Earth are common or rare. We get an answer to that question sometime in the next 20 years or so, and that is exciting to me.
I think on these points the "mundanes" are just being reactionary. They're railing against a Star Trek view of the universe, which is fine with me, but they're also arbitrarily rejecting any idea that has even the slightest superficial resemblance to it.
Terraforming a planet like Mars would be a brutally long, slow, expensive process -- and a pointless one. Mars can be colonized by AI robots.
Humans need to explore Mars, because robots capable of doing the job properly may still be 50 years away. But when it comes to colonization and settlement in the longer term, robots will do it. Simply put, we can adapt ourselves -- or our descendants -- to Mars much quicker and easier than we can adapt Mars to us.
Do you still have to program it with C++?
on
Zeta Goes Gold
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· Score: 1
BeOS always sounded great to me, until I got to the part about C++. Apparently the APIs are all implemented through C++ objects, which makes it impractical to program with most other languages.
And you know. . . I really detest C++. It's like somebody saying: "Hey, we've got this great, efficient, modern OS! The only catch is that you have to program it with COBOL." Yeargh!
By way of comparison. . . I recently got into Mac OS X programming with Objective-C and Cocoa, and I'm falling in love with the language and the environment. Everything is turning out to be so easy, it's ridiculous. (That after a pretty steep learning curve right up front, I'll admit.)
My first "serious" computer, if you could call it that, was an Atari 800XL that I got for $250 in 1982. However. . . It didn't come with such luxuries as a disk drive or a monitor. Basically you could connect it to your TV set, plug in a cartridge and a joystick, and play a game on it, as shipped. You couldn't use it as a computer in the usual sense that we now expect to.
I got a floppy drive for $400. I don't remember what my old MJ10 monitor cost, but it wasn't trivial -- in 1982 dollars, mind you.
One thing that frustrated me several years later when I was in college was, the expense of notebook computers. I would have loved a simple, inexpensive, 8-bit portable, with a text display, that could be adequate for taking notes or running small BASIC programs. But instead, all the portables I saw for sale were full-house PClones selling for $2500+. (I suppose there are PDAs today, though I was imagining something with a keyboard.)
For a long time it seemed like Moore's Law was only good for making computers faster, never cheaper. Now there are cheap PCs available, and although I personally wouldn't buy one (I'm no longer on a student's budget), I think there's a place for them in the industry.
I do think it's frustrating when bean counters cripple a computer with the "million widgets" argument. In other words: "We're going to sell a million of these widgets, so if we can make them fifty cents cheaper by leaving out this part, we can save half a million dollars!" And then they leave out a fifty cent part that comes back to bite you in the buttocks.
(One urban legend tells that the original Amiga was going to have memory management hardware, but somebody decided they could be built a dollar cheaper without it. I fantasize about tracking down the person who made that decision and doing something terrible to him. With a forklift.)
Anyhow, I think the natural floor of the PC market is determined by things like. . . The cost of manufacturing cases, power supplies, keyboards, packaging, shipping and distribution, marketing, markup, etc. It's the overhead, you know. Advances in integrated circuit technology can only drop the cost so far, and no further.
Slashdot Mirror
The author of the article is speculating too much and building a house of cards.
The real reason why Apple went to Intel is simple: Intel design processors for desktop and notebook computers and manufacture those processors in huge quantities. IBM doesn't. Digging deeper than that for an explanation isn't necessary.
So. . . MS Windows was a pioneering effort?
Apple Macintosh, Atari ST and Amiga all did it first and did it better. (Atari and Amiga were both copying Apple, but they copied faster and better than Microsoft could!) Only in the world of Microsoft could you follow the lead of three other companies, with a product markedly inferior to all of them, and call it Pioneering.
Likewise, only Microsoft could follow the lead of three other companies with an inferior product and then be hugely successful selling it. That's what's so damn frustrating.
Of course that's a drop in the bucket compared to the long record of crimes and misdemeanors Microsoft have perpetrated. Yes, Microsoft is probably the most hated company in the world, but it didn't happen by accident. They earned their infamy.
You may find it kind of sad, but it's vindication for those of us who've argued for the last 20+ years that the Shuttle program was a disaster in progress. Finally, after the spilling of much blood and treasure, NASA have been forced to admit (tacitly, at least) that we were right all along.
The good news is, this gets us back to roughly where we were in the 1970s with our Saturn rockets. The bad news is, this gets us back to where we were in the 1970s. It's kind of like asking if the glass is half empty or half full.
Yes, now we can finally put the disastrous Shuttle program behind us -- after 25 years and countless billions of dollars wasted going in circles, it's about freakin' time. At last the long nightmare can end.
And now we can pick up again where we left off. And yet, one could have hoped for so much more. There are many innovative ideas sitting in dusty filing cabinets, but instead we are getting Apollo/Saturn retreads. There is no great leap forward being offered, only a grudging admission that NASA spent the last 25 years wandering down a dead end.
As for the design specifics. . . If you look at the proposed designs, they aren't what anybody would have created starting from a clean slate. The NYT article implies it's all about saving money, but the real reason for using recycled Shuttle components is all about politics and expedience.
I'm no fan of pork-barrel spending, but I guess something can be said for expedience. Even if it's basically 1970s technology, this plan can get us back into the space exploration game.
Some people talk about radical technologies like space elevators, aerospace planes, or nuclear rockets. I'm all for researching that kind of stuff. Most of these technologies have been buried because they were perceived as a threat to the shuttle, or else shuttle operations gobbled up most of NASA's budget so there wasn't much left for that R&D anyhow.
But those technologies right now exist on paper. Developing them into working systems would take time and money, both of which are in short supply. Using shuttle components may seem disappointing, but it can get us back into the space exploration game in a matter of a few years time -- and then research on more forward-looking stuff can, hopefully, pick up again.
In short: I hope these new systems will be only stopgaps to tide us over until newer technology. But sometimes a stopgap is really good to have.
Well, it wouldn't have been enough for me, since I've never heard of the SVG file format before today.
All it would have taken was three more words.
"vector drawing program"
If the poster could have fit those three words into the article, it would have saved me a fair bit of bother. And yes, this sort of thing does happen all the time on Slashdot.
Does anybody remember when Amiga was the premier platform for computer games? There was a stretch of several years when all the best games appeared first on Amiga, the Atari ST was often right there with it (or a close second), and then some of the games eventually trickled down to MS-DOS PCs. The PC in that era didn't have the graphics or audio capabilities to match Amiga, or even the main processor power for that matter (i.e. 68000 versus 8088).
Somebody told me a story about going to a computer show and seeing all the PCs struggling to run crummy CGA/EGA games. There were Amigas at the show. . . but they were forbidden from running games! Commodore thought if Amiga was seen running games, it would ruin their reputation with big business customers!
Amiga users got the first crack at classics like Shadow of the Beast, Populous, The Settlers, Lemmings, NY Warriors, Battle Squadron, Stunt Car Racer, Turrican II, Cannon Fodder and too many other great games to list.
As time went by, and Amiga hardware became more outdated without any meaningful upgrades, the PC gradually caught up. I think Wing Commander was the turning point. It was on the PC first, and your basic Amiga couldn't handle it. From that time on, the PC was the top dog of computer gaming, while Amiga and Atari ST faded away.
I used and programmed both the ST and Amiga extensively, and the comparison isn't as clear-cut as you make it sound. They both had their strengths.
The ST definitely got you a working computer for less money. The Atari monitors (at least the early ones) were high quality. The ST operating system was easy to use, easy to program. It also made efficient use of processor power -- my Amiga wasn't as responsive as my ST until after I dropped in a 68020 card, effectively quadrupling the main processor power. And the ST had great programming languages. My personal favorites were GFA Basic and Laser C. There was nothing as polished on Amiga, and one handy reference book was all you needed for most Atari ST application development.
By way of comparison. . . The Amiga had better and more flexible graphics, amazingly better audio, far better expandability on some models (like the A2000, but you paid a premium for it). Double-sided floppies were standard, so you could distribute software on them. Amiga OS right up through Workbench 1.3 was ugly and awkward. After that it got better for users, and it was more powerful and flexible than Atari TOS -- but Amiga OS remained brutally hard to program, and you needed about 15 pounds of reference manuals. There were lots of programming environments offered for the Amiga, but all of them had a half-baked quality (with the notable exception of CanDo, but it was too expensive for most people).
Incidentally, the biggest thing I miss from Amiga is the screens system, and the custom screens. It bugs me that none of the other major operating systems -- not a one -- ever came up with anything similar, to this very day.
I thought BeOS required programming in C++. Has that changed? Because IMO nothing that requires C++ can possibly be called easy.
It hasn't been that long since we had articles about farming algae for vegetable oil, which can be made into biodiesel fuel. That sounded really promising to me.
The whole reason for going with algae was that it has the potential to be more efficient, as compared with bio-fuels from more conventional sources. (It was stated that some species of algae are up to 50% oil, by mass. How does that compare with peanut plants? Or corn? Yeah.)
And yet. . . algae isn't part of the wider discussion. People are still arguing about corn. Now, I realize the algae thing is all hypothetical -- looks good on paper, not yet proven practical. And yes, it takes time for new ideas to gain mindshare. But IMO we need to be pushing research into more ingenious, cutting-edge ideas like this. Many of them won't pan out, but some could, and it could make a huge difference.
Isn't it a bit late for April Fool hoaxes?
I mean seriously. . . Transformers? What's next, a big-budget movie adaptation of HR Pufnstuf?
Yep, I can bet I'm gonna burn a lot of karma on this one. But I just don't get it. We're talking about a cheesy SatAM cartoon designed as a half-hour long toy advertisement. Right? On top of that, its heyday was 20 years ago.
Here's the most important word that didn't appear anywhere in that article: OpenGL
Who told you "increased performance . . . is what the whole Intel switch is about"?
:)
Oh yeah. Steve Jobs said that, I forgot.
The switch from 680x0 to PPC was about increased performance. The switch from Mac OS to Mac OS X was about increased performance. The switch from PPC to X86 is not, it's just a business decision. It's not necessarily a bad business decision, but it's not something Apple's engineers dreamed up as a great way of moving their platform into the future. It's not something the customers were crying out for. It's old fashioned deal-making.
I think it's an understandable move, and one that's likely to pay off in the long haul. But. . . I can't help feeling disappointed that every OS seems destined to someday grow up and become Unix running on a X86 instruction set. It's not the future we all hoped for.
The Itanium isn't making any headway in the marketplace for the same reason the PowerPC didn't. It doesn't run X86 code, not natively at full speed.
In the early years of PowerPC, the plan was for it to replace both the 680x0 (in Macs) and the 80x86 (in PC), thus bringing the platforms together on common hardware. The lure was better performance.
The PowerPC processors in that era cranked out roughly 80% better performance than X86. Apple went for it, but PC makers weren't interested. "What, you expect us to break compatibility for a measly 80% increase in performance? It is to laugh! HAHAHA!!"
Now they are laughing at Itanium for the same reason. I suspect if you could get Itanium to run 300% faster than X86 at the same price, then the PC makers would sit up and take notice. But they simply aren't going to be bothered with it unless the gain is really huge and dramatic.
What really gripes me is the themes -- they are so trite and sensationalistic. Seriously. . . I can't see how it costs that much more to make a movie with an intelligent premise, as compared with an ignorant one.
I can understand the limitations of a tight budget, and I can forgive a lot. I can forgive cheesy sets, cinematography, props, acting. . . But I have a hard time time watching movies that are just flat-out blindingly stupid. I also have trouble watching movies that are inferior knock-offs of other movies that were blindingly stupid.
If only they would dig through SF literature, I'm sure they could find a lot more original and plausible ideas to work with. But I think part of the problem is, these guys are fans of B-movies, they come from a B-movie making background, and the only experience they have to draw inspiration from is other B-movies. So we get the same tired, silly, often downright embarrassing stuff rehashed over and over. They're too inbred.
There's been a lot of talk making the rounds about how both Microsoft and Sony want their consoles to morph into home computers (or media centers, if you prefer). Once you've tacked on a hard drive, internet connectivity, and some kind of OS. . . It's practically like a computer, isn't it? Sony seem to favor Linux, while Microsoft are reputed to have some kind of OS they could get to run on theirs. And since the conventional computer market is now regarded as saturated or stagnant, this looks like an avenue for further growth.
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Now, I could dredge up the ghosts of all those consoles in decades past that tried to become computers (Intellivision, ColecoVision/Adam), and computers that tried to become consoles (Atari 5200, Amiga CD^32, Apple Pippin), and I could point out the one thing they all have in common: They all flopped. (Incidentally, rumors said that the CD^32 was selling pretty well, right up until Commodore imploded underneath it.)
But here's the real issue. .
It's about controlling the platform. It's about the natural conflict between the console business model and the computer business model. If Sony offer up a PS3 console with Linux, how are they going to prevent any random non-license-paying bozo from making games and selling them?
This is life-or-death for Sony. Their profits come from making sure nobody makes and sells the games without Sony getting a cut. They could put Linux on the system, but they'd have to somehow lock out parts of the hardware -- parts that are needed to get any kind of competitive game to work -- unless there's a license code to enable them.
The only other alternative would be to change their whole business model so they can make money selling consoles instead of game licenses. I don't see that happening, considering how profitable their current business is. (This should really be called the Nintendo business model, since they were first to make it work and everybody else followed.)
By way of comparison. . . A Mac Mini from Apple comes with a complete -- and excellent -- development system. You can program whatever you want, and not have to pay license fees or ask Apple (or anybody else) for permission. From that standpoint, the Mac is a far more interesting system, and qualifies as a "real computer" in a sense that the PS3 can't.
Where am I shopping?
http://www.apple.com/
http://www.dell.com/
So let's do a little comparison.
First I configured the "mid-range" iMac with the 17-inch display in the Apple Store. It came to $1,499.
Next I configured at Dell Dimension 4700 with options as similar as I could to the iMac. According to Dell the price is "From $1,744", but currently marked down to $1,308. (And that's exactly the kind of huckster salesmanship that Apple would never pull.)
So. . . The iMac is 1.15 times the cost of the Dell. Not twice as high, not three times as high. And what does your extra $291 buy you? It gets you the iMac's all-in-one design (the Dell is a conventional boxy CPU + monitor), it gets you Mac OS X, and the whole iLife software bundle. And no viruses. And a 64-bit processor, let us not forget. (I can't believe I almost forgot that.)
I had a hard time finding detailed specs, but I'm fairly sure the Dell doesn't come with Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire ports, or an internal bay for a 802.11g card either.
To me, the iMac is worth the money.
It varies from product to product. Last time I tried pricing Power Mac G5 systems against PCs with dual 64-bit processors, and I found the PCs were all considerably more expensive.
I'll vote for that. I remember the last computer I had with basically the whole OS in ROM chips. . . It was my Atari 520ST. Booting was fast, and you could even boot it without any disk.
I would love to see a future Mac with something like 2GB to 4GB (depending where you put bundled apps, for example) of flash memory to use as the boot disk, with Mac OS X installed on it, and then all the user accounts (and swap) placed on the hard drive. It would be faster, more efficient, neater.
Cost is the biggest obstacle. No matter how much the price of flash memory falls, a hard drive plus flash is going to be more costly than just a hard drive. And when cranking out millions of units, a few bucks per unit really adds up.
Comparing prices between Apples and Dells is frustrating, because the standard of comparison keeps shifting. Here's how it usually goes, step by step:
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1. Somebody starts by ranting about how they have to pay "twice as much" or "three times the price" for a Macintosh. Which is obviously ridiculous, but it keeps being said time after time.
2. Examples are brought forward showing currently available Macintosh models selling for roughly the same price as comparably configured Dells. Sometimes the Apple is slightly less than the Dell. Sometimes the Apple is a fair bit higher -- but never anything like the 2X or 3X that anti-Apple trolls keep shouting out.
3. PC fanatics jump all over the proffered examples, ridiculing them because they could "build a system for a third that much". Never mind that we were talking about Dell versus Apple when the debate started, not home-built systems. When this is pointed out, someone on the anti-Apple side will chime in that only morons buy Dells anyhow, and the smart people always build their own computers.
And that's where it ends. As soon as you show that Macs don't, in fact, cost 2X or 3X as much as a Dell, then suddenly it doesn't matter because Dell is no longer the standard for comparison. (They're only the #1 computer maker in the world, sheesh.) Instead it's now computers cobbled together from components that you have to compete against on price.
Other amusing things sometimes pop up during the argument. . . Some PC fans seem to believe that Quake frame rates are the only meaningful measure of a computer's performance or value. Others are stubbornly oblivious to the typically long lifespan of a Mac, or how well used Macs hold their value (check eBay!), or how much time (and money, if you value your time at all) can be saved from reduced troubleshooting when running a Mac.
I suspect many of the complainers also are school kids who aren't accustomed to working with an adult budget. They're the same class of people who got a C64 or an Atari ST back when the rest of the world was going to PC clones, just because they could save some bucks. They're the same class of people who were too cheap to shell out for a monitor or a hard drive for their Amiga 500 -- blurry TV sets and floppy swapping was fine for playing games, anyow.
That was than. Nowadays PC clones are the cheapo systems.
So where does this whole myth of an Apple for "three times the price" come from? Here's my hypothesis. .
1. In years gone by -- in the 1980s especially -- Apple sold a lot of systems that were outrageously overpriced. Anybody remember when a Commodore C64 was $250 and an Apple II was $1600? Or when the Mac II was $8000? Yeah, people tend to remember that kind of sticker shock.
2. Apple don't sell very stripped-down models, or compete at the very lowest end of the market. (Though the Mac Mini got them quite a bit closer to it than they ever have been before.)
3. What many of the complainers really want is to run Mac OS X on the PC hardware they've already got. You can't get any cheaper than something you've already got. That's free! And current Mac users have a hard time seeing this, because a Macintosh is what they've already got. They're looking at it from the other side of the river.
I expect I'll buy a new "Macintel" system . . . . eventually.
I'm sitting here with a Power Mac G5 right now, and I expect it to last me A While. By the time it's due for replacement, Apple should have completed their whole move to X86. Assuming they haven't screwed it up somehow, then I'll go for one.
But, buying the first X86-based Mac that comes out is something I'd be wary of -- even if it fit into my schedule for a new computer, which it doesn't.
I don't see this move to X86 as being a big deal for me. I'm over on the sidelines watching with amused interest, but the direct, practical impact on me looks to be quite small.
You're not supposed to be moved by this system. The whole move from PowerPC to X86 isn't about progress, it isn't about making a better system, it isn't about excitement. It's a business decision, that's all.
That really sets it apart from the earlier transition from 680x0 to PowerPC, and the transition from Mac OS to Mac OS X. Those were both about progress, they were about making a better machine. Developers were crying out fro Mac OS X, or something like it. Nobody was crying out for X86.
After skimming over the manifesto. . . Most of it exactly mirrors the discussions I've had with my hard-SF loving friends. Most of that document is remarkably accurate in describing what I've felt about SF for several years.
Yes, it's time to put aside the Buck Rogers and Star Trek stories that go all the way back to the 1920s and 1930s. Yes it's time to focus on new technologies like robotics and AI, virtual reality, genetic engineering, nanotechnology. Surely we can craft interesting stories around those things.
Incidentally, I believe it takes about 30 years for a new idea in science fiction to make its way into the mainstream, mass consciousness. Please note that Engines of Creation was published in 1985. So I expect to see movies about nanotechnology appearing around 2015.
Another example: The End of the Dream was published in 1972. The Day After Tomorrow hit theaters in 2004. That's 32 years.
But here's what drives me up the wall. . . I agree with everything in their manifesto except their rejection of interstellar travel. Slower-than-light travel has been the subject of much speculation, and many of the schemes proposed have been thought through with care. If you rule out interstellar travel, then you've got to come up with some explanation of what will prevent us from doing it. I just can't see anything standing in the way.
Likewise, their statement that Earth-like planets must be vanishingly rare is. . . strange. It's especially strange coming in today's red-hot climate of astronomy, with exoplanetary discoveries coming rapid fire. Fact is, nobody knows whether planets like Earth are common or rare. We get an answer to that question sometime in the next 20 years or so, and that is exciting to me.
I think on these points the "mundanes" are just being reactionary. They're railing against a Star Trek view of the universe, which is fine with me, but they're also arbitrarily rejecting any idea that has even the slightest superficial resemblance to it.
Terraforming a planet like Mars would be a brutally long, slow, expensive process -- and a pointless one. Mars can be colonized by AI robots.
Humans need to explore Mars, because robots capable of doing the job properly may still be 50 years away. But when it comes to colonization and settlement in the longer term, robots will do it. Simply put, we can adapt ourselves -- or our descendants -- to Mars much quicker and easier than we can adapt Mars to us.
BeOS always sounded great to me, until I got to the part about C++. Apparently the APIs are all implemented through C++ objects, which makes it impractical to program with most other languages.
And you know. . . I really detest C++. It's like somebody saying: "Hey, we've got this great, efficient, modern OS! The only catch is that you have to program it with COBOL." Yeargh!
By way of comparison. . . I recently got into Mac OS X programming with Objective-C and Cocoa, and I'm falling in love with the language and the environment. Everything is turning out to be so easy, it's ridiculous. (That after a pretty steep learning curve right up front, I'll admit.)
My first "serious" computer, if you could call it that, was an Atari 800XL that I got for $250 in 1982. However. . . It didn't come with such luxuries as a disk drive or a monitor. Basically you could connect it to your TV set, plug in a cartridge and a joystick, and play a game on it, as shipped. You couldn't use it as a computer in the usual sense that we now expect to.
I got a floppy drive for $400. I don't remember what my old MJ10 monitor cost, but it wasn't trivial -- in 1982 dollars, mind you.
One thing that frustrated me several years later when I was in college was, the expense of notebook computers. I would have loved a simple, inexpensive, 8-bit portable, with a text display, that could be adequate for taking notes or running small BASIC programs. But instead, all the portables I saw for sale were full-house PClones selling for $2500+. (I suppose there are PDAs today, though I was imagining something with a keyboard.)
For a long time it seemed like Moore's Law was only good for making computers faster, never cheaper. Now there are cheap PCs available, and although I personally wouldn't buy one (I'm no longer on a student's budget), I think there's a place for them in the industry.
I do think it's frustrating when bean counters cripple a computer with the "million widgets" argument. In other words: "We're going to sell a million of these widgets, so if we can make them fifty cents cheaper by leaving out this part, we can save half a million dollars!" And then they leave out a fifty cent part that comes back to bite you in the buttocks.
(One urban legend tells that the original Amiga was going to have memory management hardware, but somebody decided they could be built a dollar cheaper without it. I fantasize about tracking down the person who made that decision and doing something terrible to him. With a forklift.)
Anyhow, I think the natural floor of the PC market is determined by things like. . . The cost of manufacturing cases, power supplies, keyboards, packaging, shipping and distribution, marketing, markup, etc. It's the overhead, you know. Advances in integrated circuit technology can only drop the cost so far, and no further.