I find this kind of insulting. Bridges and software are equally difficult to design, just in completely different ways.
Try writing a program using ONLY the objects and calls given by Microsoft/Apple/whoever and not creating any of your own objects, functions, or GUI widgets. Have fun writing anything more complex than a non-GUI calculator.
Likewise, try building a bridge where instead of the limited set of member shape/sizes we currently have, you have an infinite number to select from, and your boss expects you to use the least amount of steel possible to save $$$. You'd be designing forever.
At my school, Electrical/Computer engineering is the hardest engineering major to get into, while civil engineering is the easiest. The programmers think that this is because they're so much smarter, when in reality its only because the job market wants programmers right now and pays more than civil engineering does. I've put assignments in front of programmers who think they're god's gift to MENSA and seen them be stumped by STATICS (i.e. high school physics problems, F_net = 0).
Bridges are just as unique as software programs. Every one must be uniquely designed for a loading pattern, soil profile, aesthetic requirements (something I almost NEVER see programs designed for), material limits (can't always use just anything), political maneuvering, earthquake probability, wind strength, and even geology.
Civil Engineers Sound Off Like You've Got a Pair! Don't take this garbage from programmers. We may make less money, but we're far more attractive and don't smell nearly as foul. Not to mention more modest;-)
The point of bridge design to use as little material as possible and make it as easy to construct as possible.
Contractors always get less time than they need to build it.
Bridges are often retrofitted to support more weight and new technologies.
*ALL* bridges are backwards compatible with older bridges, so take that software engineers!
Every bridge I design must be better than the bridge the competitor is submitting for the same bid.
Engineering is engineering, something many people don't seem the grasp. The building code may change (double entendre there), and so do the materials, but its all about figuring out the puzzle and optimization.
Actually...no. You're only entitled to making royalties off your music if someone else makes money from it. This is how bands like Less Than Jake, Guster, and your every-day crappy neighborhood garage band can play *very* entertaining covers of otherwise famous songs (in concerts, not on albums) without losing their shorts.
In short, there is nothing to stop me from doing my own cover of NIN's "Complications of the Flesh" (if I had that kind of talent) and saturating Limewire with it.
That said...I don't think I'd put my name and address on it. 8-)
Um, hello? This article is about connecting PC's to MACS! Why on earth would you want to transfer PC programs to your mac...where they wouldn't run.
The reason this cable doesn't transfer programs PC to PC is because Windows programs are inexorably tied to the registry and nearly IMPOSSIBLE to transplant (an easy matter of drag and drop on the mac). This is why windows has arcane uninstall procedures, instead of just deleting the damn thing.
I have to know...which fantasy world do you live in where you have to buy everything from Apple? The only people I know who pay that 100% markup are people who honestly have nothing better to do with their money and so much constraint on their time that they can't be troubled to search around.
Don't want 512 from Apple for $400? Fine, buy it elsewhere. Don't want to pay $1000 for an Apple LCD? Fine, buy one elsewhere. Suddenly your $3000 machine is $2500. And why do you need dual-GHz for OS X? It runs fine on my dual-800, and fine on my roommate's dual-500.
Switch to a base dual-867, and we're down to $1700 plus tax.
Well, for clarity, Apple never gave up on the GUI based PC. They're still selling many of them, and are one of the few profitable PC companies.
Second, I don't see Apple lowering the price of the iPod. Apple's pattern for the last few years has been to add features/power/speed as prices drop, while keeping prices more or less the same.
When no one buys their products (Newton, Cube), they have to stop selling it no matter how loyal the owners are. No profit = no product. They were also the first to market with a digital camera (QuickTake or something like that), but they knew they couldn't compete with actual camera companies and threw in the towel before the race even started.
For this major flaw, they've developed a core of very loyal users who use the products they sell, despite being slightly more expensive. And as prices drop, Apple makes more profit by keeping its prices the same, thus adding shareholder value.
Don't forget, Apple is in business to add shareholder value, not please loyal users or stay at the top of their product class (though these both tend to help).
Qualifiers: I switched to mac 3 years ago. Things have changed on both sides.
"Windows XP gives me more choices and flexibility"
-Yes, as long as your choices are Microsoft for your browser, email client, media player, and office suite. Any color as long as its white. Granted, you do have a much larger selection of peripherals to work with. The software choices I find lacking.
"I can read my files, import e-mail addresses from my Palm* to the Microsoft Outlook® messaging and collaboration client, and keep my Web favorites"
-Which one of these was she having trouble with on her mac?
"I was up and running in less than one day"
-Bah! I was up and running in 12 minutes after a quick SCSI connection to my friend's powerbook (I admit it, I wanted M$ office 8-))
"I am a freelance writer; I demand the best in mobile computing"
-Obviously not. Nothing beats a sexy, ridiculously expensive titanium powerbook.
"My laptop came with 512 MB of RAM, a 15" screen, a DVD player, and Windows XP Home Edition preinstalled, for $450 less than a comparable iBook"
- I'm very curious to see exactly which model this was and compare it on a spec by spec basis. Did it have firewire? Video out? Video mirroring/extended desktop? Does it weigh less than 5 pounds? Does it get 5 hours of battery life? (all of these features apply to my iBook, btw).
"AppleWorks (previously called ClarisWorks) pales in comparison to Microsoft Office XP"
-Gee, 90% of the features for 20% of the price...seem like a fair trade to anyone else?
"There's no equivalent for the versatility of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint®"
-You mean like...Microsoft Office v.X, which is widely touted (even by the MacBU) as more feature/rich and less buggy than Office XP?
"I wouldn't know how to function without the Track Changes and Comments features of Word"
-I'd recommend the Track Changes and Comments features of Word. v.X.
"Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 does more for me than Netscape Navigator ever did"
-Did you try any of the other 5 popular browsers for Mac? Like IE 5.2, perhaps?
"Searches are faster"
-This I can't attack. Everyone with XP I know swears that their connection is magically faster.
" I can name and organize my Favorites any way I want"
-I can't do that!? I'd better tell myself that I've been delusional the past 3 years.
"I love that we can define completely different user experiences without messing with each other's settings"
- Two Words: OS X
"moved to accommodate my 5 foot 3 inches instead of his 6 feet"
-This just sounds dirty.
"New Connection Wizard then guided me through the setup of my Internet connection for browsing the Web"
- You mean like the setup at the beginning of the Mac OS X install? Or the internet connection assistant in the Utilities folder?
"I started with Outlook Express for e-mail, because it's included with Windows XP"
-Yeah, those bastards at Apple only ship three email clients with their machines (Netscape, Mail, Outlook). And what happened to choice/flexibility?
"The key to getting hardware to work with your computer is to have the correct drivers"
-That's funny, over here the key to getting hardware to work with my computer is making sure it has a little blue X on the box it ships in and plugging into the correct port.
1. People on slashdot will continue to complain about Apple mice shipping with one button, claiming that a $10 investment is all that stands between them and Mac OS X.
2. John Dvorak will continue to bash Apple for not shipping machines with floppy drives, failing to admit that he emails any file smaller than 1.5 MB anyway.
3. Some (self proclaimed) tech pundit will claim that despite Apple's insistence (and the agreement of 20 million users), process $FOO could not possibly be that easy. He will have no evidence to back this up, having never actually used a mac.
3. Mac OS X will continue to get rave reviews and many slashdotters will switch (some will hate it, in all fairness)...yet somehow the Mac-using percentage of the population will continue to drop.
4. People will still think Microsoft owns Apple.
5. Steve Jobs will finally give Bill Gates "The Birdie (TM)" on national TV.
6. Apple will flawlessly integrate bluetooth into its system ala Airport, finally proving that bluetooth enabled hard drives are STUPID.
If I were you, I'd spend a lot of time with one before buying. Go to stores and try them out (and by "stores", I mean Apple stores or mom-and-pop authorized apple retailers - CompUSA doesn't cut it). Really get a feel for the OS's quirks and bonuses. Otherwise you're gonna waste a buttload of money, get annoyed with something, and then rant on and on about how Apple sucks because they included or ignored some obscure feature (like most trolls).
Switching is a huge decision, and will cost a lot not just in money but in time. Its true that switching is usually pretty painless (I did it a few years back and it didn't take long), but invariably some program won't read some particular type of file perfectly and you'll have to manually go in and fix them. You'll have to steal or buy all your programs again.
The point of this document isn't to say "our interface is right and Windoze blowez". Notice that the url for the page includes the words "developer" and "switch". That means: THIS IS FOR DEVELOPERS WHO ARE STARTING TO DEVELOP FOR MAC.
Its a set of guidelines to make the porting of a windows application smoother and better received on Mac OS X. Its not an easy thing. The fact is that most ports of Windows software to macs are quite annoying because they flatly refuse to follow the "standard" interface (okay yeah, the iApps don't really follow it either - and I find them annoying too).
Yes, Apple does somewhat ignore it. But that's not the point at all. Have you seen Matlab 6.5 for OS X? Developers who are thinking about porting their apps to OS X need to realize that Mac users will not be infinitely grateful to them just for doing it. We want our apps to look nice, and feel responsive and familiar when we use them. If you aren't interested in taking the time to put a decent interface on your app, then you should consider letting your competitor "have" the mac platform for your field.
I'm not saying its easy. But I don't think porting an application is easy at all. And interfaces are SOOOOO easy to build in OS X. Just drag and drop with the available buttons/widgets in Interface Builder. It needs to be done. Mac users have just enough choice in software that they can pick a competitor's product over yours given the same price range and feature set...just because one doesn't look as nice as the other.
"Remember Quicktime 4" is not a valid argument against this document. You should instead be considering the current version of Quicktime (6) before offering criticisms about how Apple does or does not follow their own GUI guidelines.
That said, you are absolutely right on the other points.
$1500 for a PC that doesn't copy or play digital media?
Anyone who thinks about buying one of these should be kicked in the head and sent flying in an Apple Store, since they've obviously got money to burn. $1500 buys you a nice iMac or iBook (or even a low-end tower if you've already got a monitor).
Slashdot Mirror
I find this kind of insulting. Bridges and software are equally difficult to design, just in completely different ways.
;-)
Try writing a program using ONLY the objects and calls given by Microsoft/Apple/whoever and not creating any of your own objects, functions, or GUI widgets. Have fun writing anything more complex than a non-GUI calculator.
Likewise, try building a bridge where instead of the limited set of member shape/sizes we currently have, you have an infinite number to select from, and your boss expects you to use the least amount of steel possible to save $$$. You'd be designing forever.
At my school, Electrical/Computer engineering is the hardest engineering major to get into, while civil engineering is the easiest. The programmers think that this is because they're so much smarter, when in reality its only because the job market wants programmers right now and pays more than civil engineering does. I've put assignments in front of programmers who think they're god's gift to MENSA and seen them be stumped by STATICS (i.e. high school physics problems, F_net = 0).
Bridges are just as unique as software programs. Every one must be uniquely designed for a loading pattern, soil profile, aesthetic requirements (something I almost NEVER see programs designed for), material limits (can't always use just anything), political maneuvering, earthquake probability, wind strength, and even geology.
Civil Engineers Sound Off Like You've Got a Pair! Don't take this garbage from programmers. We may make less money, but we're far more attractive and don't smell nearly as foul. Not to mention more modest
Um...
The point of bridge design to use as little material as possible and make it as easy to construct as possible.
Contractors always get less time than they need to build it.
Bridges are often retrofitted to support more weight and new technologies.
*ALL* bridges are backwards compatible with older bridges, so take that software engineers!
Every bridge I design must be better than the bridge the competitor is submitting for the same bid.
Engineering is engineering, something many people don't seem the grasp. The building code may change (double entendre there), and so do the materials, but its all about figuring out the puzzle and optimization.
So shut yer trap, smelly programmer!
Sort of like a skyscraper? Or a large jet airliner?
;-)
No. Like a BRIDGE.
Forget Celebrity Boxing...
what we need here is CELEBRITY DEATHMATCH!
Let me get this straight: *VICE* Admiral *POINDEXTER* wants to build a *supercomputer* to search, among other things, *porn databases*?
;-)
Sounds like a geeky, sinful venture to me.
(Quotes are patented by Dr. Evil and used without permission).
Look mom, flamebait!
Actually...no. You're only entitled to making royalties off your music if someone else makes money from it. This is how bands like Less Than Jake, Guster, and your every-day crappy neighborhood garage band can play *very* entertaining covers of otherwise famous songs (in concerts, not on albums) without losing their shorts.
In short, there is nothing to stop me from doing my own cover of NIN's "Complications of the Flesh" (if I had that kind of talent) and saturating Limewire with it.
That said...I don't think I'd put my name and address on it. 8-)
Try saying that ten times fast!
Um, hello? This article is about connecting PC's to MACS! Why on earth would you want to transfer PC programs to your mac...where they wouldn't run.
The reason this cable doesn't transfer programs PC to PC is because Windows programs are inexorably tied to the registry and nearly IMPOSSIBLE to transplant (an easy matter of drag and drop on the mac). This is why windows has arcane uninstall procedures, instead of just deleting the damn thing.
I could swear we already did that.
They say this like there are only two
Ah, that would explain this "linux" thing I keep seeing mentioned on this site. Always wondered about that...
I have to know...which fantasy world do you live in where you have to buy everything from Apple? The only people I know who pay that 100% markup are people who honestly have nothing better to do with their money and so much constraint on their time that they can't be troubled to search around.
Don't want 512 from Apple for $400? Fine, buy it elsewhere. Don't want to pay $1000 for an Apple LCD? Fine, buy one elsewhere. Suddenly your $3000 machine is $2500. And why do you need dual-GHz for OS X? It runs fine on my dual-800, and fine on my roommate's dual-500.
Switch to a base dual-867, and we're down to $1700 plus tax.
Quit yer bitchin and do your research.
Well, for clarity, Apple never gave up on the GUI based PC. They're still selling many of them, and are one of the few profitable PC companies.
Second, I don't see Apple lowering the price of the iPod. Apple's pattern for the last few years has been to add features/power/speed as prices drop, while keeping prices more or less the same.
When no one buys their products (Newton, Cube), they have to stop selling it no matter how loyal the owners are. No profit = no product. They were also the first to market with a digital camera (QuickTake or something like that), but they knew they couldn't compete with actual camera companies and threw in the towel before the race even started.
For this major flaw, they've developed a core of very loyal users who use the products they sell, despite being slightly more expensive. And as prices drop, Apple makes more profit by keeping its prices the same, thus adding shareholder value.
Don't forget, Apple is in business to add shareholder value, not please loyal users or stay at the top of their product class (though these both tend to help).
I was thinking something along the lines of... ...
IT SUCKS!
That is all.
Qualifiers: I switched to mac 3 years ago. Things have changed on both sides.
"Windows XP gives me more choices and flexibility"
-Yes, as long as your choices are Microsoft for your browser, email client, media player, and office suite. Any color as long as its white. Granted, you do have a much larger selection of peripherals to work with. The software choices I find lacking.
"I can read my files, import e-mail addresses from my Palm* to the Microsoft Outlook® messaging and collaboration client, and keep my Web favorites"
-Which one of these was she having trouble with on her mac?
"I was up and running in less than one day"
-Bah! I was up and running in 12 minutes after a quick SCSI connection to my friend's powerbook (I admit it, I wanted M$ office 8-))
"I am a freelance writer; I demand the best in mobile computing"
-Obviously not. Nothing beats a sexy, ridiculously expensive titanium powerbook.
"My laptop came with 512 MB of RAM, a 15" screen, a DVD player, and Windows XP Home Edition preinstalled, for $450 less than a comparable iBook"
- I'm very curious to see exactly which model this was and compare it on a spec by spec basis. Did it have firewire? Video out? Video mirroring/extended desktop? Does it weigh less than 5 pounds? Does it get 5 hours of battery life? (all of these features apply to my iBook, btw).
"AppleWorks (previously called ClarisWorks) pales in comparison to Microsoft Office XP"
-Gee, 90% of the features for 20% of the price...seem like a fair trade to anyone else?
"There's no equivalent for the versatility of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint®"
-You mean like...Microsoft Office v.X, which is widely touted (even by the MacBU) as more feature/rich and less buggy than Office XP?
"I wouldn't know how to function without the Track Changes and Comments features of Word"
-I'd recommend the Track Changes and Comments features of Word. v.X.
"Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 does more for me than Netscape Navigator ever did"
-Did you try any of the other 5 popular browsers for Mac? Like IE 5.2, perhaps?
"Searches are faster"
-This I can't attack. Everyone with XP I know swears that their connection is magically faster.
" I can name and organize my Favorites any way I want"
-I can't do that!? I'd better tell myself that I've been delusional the past 3 years.
"I love that we can define completely different user experiences without messing with each other's settings"
- Two Words: OS X
"moved to accommodate my 5 foot 3 inches instead of his 6 feet"
-This just sounds dirty.
"New Connection Wizard then guided me through the setup of my Internet connection for browsing the Web"
- You mean like the setup at the beginning of the Mac OS X install? Or the internet connection assistant in the Utilities folder?
"I started with Outlook Express for e-mail, because it's included with Windows XP"
-Yeah, those bastards at Apple only ship three email clients with their machines (Netscape, Mail, Outlook). And what happened to choice/flexibility?
"The key to getting hardware to work with your computer is to have the correct drivers"
-That's funny, over here the key to getting hardware to work with my computer is making sure it has a little blue X on the box it ships in and plugging into the correct port.
1. People on slashdot will continue to complain about Apple mice shipping with one button, claiming that a $10 investment is all that stands between them and Mac OS X.
2. John Dvorak will continue to bash Apple for not shipping machines with floppy drives, failing to admit that he emails any file smaller than 1.5 MB anyway.
3. Some (self proclaimed) tech pundit will claim that despite Apple's insistence (and the agreement of 20 million users), process $FOO could not possibly be that easy. He will have no evidence to back this up, having never actually used a mac.
3. Mac OS X will continue to get rave reviews and many slashdotters will switch (some will hate it, in all fairness)...yet somehow the Mac-using percentage of the population will continue to drop.
4. People will still think Microsoft owns Apple.
5. Steve Jobs will finally give Bill Gates "The Birdie (TM)" on national TV.
6. Apple will flawlessly integrate bluetooth into its system ala Airport, finally proving that bluetooth enabled hard drives are STUPID.
Someone already tried that.
They got nuked.
This is not impressive at all. With enough disk space, you could install every build of Mac OS versions 8 through X.2.1. On separate partitions.
Then add virtual PC to get the same 37 OS's this guy had.
Behold the glory of emulation!
If I were you, I'd spend a lot of time with one before buying. Go to stores and try them out (and by "stores", I mean Apple stores or mom-and-pop authorized apple retailers - CompUSA doesn't cut it). Really get a feel for the OS's quirks and bonuses. Otherwise you're gonna waste a buttload of money, get annoyed with something, and then rant on and on about how Apple sucks because they included or ignored some obscure feature (like most trolls).
Switching is a huge decision, and will cost a lot not just in money but in time. Its true that switching is usually pretty painless (I did it a few years back and it didn't take long), but invariably some program won't read some particular type of file perfectly and you'll have to manually go in and fix them. You'll have to steal or buy all your programs again.
But once everything is converted...its great.
The point of this document isn't to say "our interface is right and Windoze blowez". Notice that the url for the page includes the words "developer" and "switch". That means: THIS IS FOR DEVELOPERS WHO ARE STARTING TO DEVELOP FOR MAC.
Its a set of guidelines to make the porting of a windows application smoother and better received on Mac OS X. Its not an easy thing. The fact is that most ports of Windows software to macs are quite annoying because they flatly refuse to follow the "standard" interface (okay yeah, the iApps don't really follow it either - and I find them annoying too).
Yes, Apple does somewhat ignore it. But that's not the point at all. Have you seen Matlab 6.5 for OS X? Developers who are thinking about porting their apps to OS X need to realize that Mac users will not be infinitely grateful to them just for doing it. We want our apps to look nice, and feel responsive and familiar when we use them. If you aren't interested in taking the time to put a decent interface on your app, then you should consider letting your competitor "have" the mac platform for your field.
I'm not saying its easy. But I don't think porting an application is easy at all. And interfaces are SOOOOO easy to build in OS X. Just drag and drop with the available buttons/widgets in Interface Builder. It needs to be done. Mac users have just enough choice in software that they can pick a competitor's product over yours given the same price range and feature set...just because one doesn't look as nice as the other.
"Remember Quicktime 4" is not a valid argument against this document. You should instead be considering the current version of Quicktime (6) before offering criticisms about how Apple does or does not follow their own GUI guidelines.
That said, you are absolutely right on the other points.
Now there are THREE products that work with Apple's $50 bluetooth adapter.
Oh, the choices! The individual consumer power!
$1500 for a PC that doesn't copy or play digital media?
Anyone who thinks about buying one of these should be kicked in the head and sent flying in an Apple Store, since they've obviously got money to burn. $1500 buys you a nice iMac or iBook (or even a low-end tower if you've already got a monitor).
What will I read while I'm at work? The onion is already blocked!
If there were an emergency, which is the point of this exercise, she might not be breathing.