I actually took the cat pictures from another site. The link is in the graphic itself. Supposedly it's something about the guy's girlfriend asking for a "line cut" and the pet shop guy understanding "lion cut". He looks so angry...:)
I took a few screenshots of iTunes for Windows (bvy now there must be tons out there):
[ http://www.ciateq.net.mx/~eduo/gallery/view_albu m. php?set_albumName=Misc-200310
The screenshots are at the bottom of the album. I thought of making an album for them but posted the link to other sites before, so please ignore most of the pics there.
I took a few screenshots of iTunes for Windows (bvy now there must be tons out there):
http://www.ciateq.net.mx/~eduo/gallery/view_albu m. php?set_albumName=Misc-200310
The screenshots are at the bottom of the album. I thought of making an album for them but posted the link to other sites before, so please ignore most of the pics there.
It's even easier to do "sudo killall -HUP kextd" where you don't have to pay attention to the PID of it.
Of course, the actual reason for the reboot is that Apple can't give the option of rebooting or not because most users would choose not to and then might afterwards have problems with their computers.
N00b users have already ingrained in their heads that it's normal to restart the computer after installations (even minor ones). The ones I've seen like to reboot the machine after an installation even if it was not required.
I wish MacOSX had somewhere an option where you can tell it you're a "power user" and then it should leave the reboot decisions to you, giving you just the recommendation that you reboot when it's actually appliccable.
What I don't forgive are installers like the newer Virtual PC (which was a useless update made only so the graphics displayed "Microsoft" in the windows (and check the "Microsoft" name in the installation screen, it's not even properly aligned!)) but ask you to quit all other running applications. What's that? That's SO OS8..:)
I found it strange nobody had mentioned Sketchup yet. Sketchup is a great, native program (not a port, but made from scratch for the Mac) which uses OpenGL to do 3D rendering on-the-fly (and works as well for 2D) and has lots of tools that ease the layout of floorplans or buildings.
http://www.sketchup.com/ has several demos and tutorials to try out. The thing has automatic scaling, several libraries of objects and materials, a bustling community and the people behind it must be some of the nicest businessmen still out there..:)
I think we can argue and say whatever we want, but the fact stays that a lot of people outside the US can't buy good from US online stores.
It has been said to get local resellers and it has been said to find alternatives for the goods. Sadly sometimes the US online stores are the only viable option (getting ThinkGeek's products may be harder if you try to hunt them down in a local online store in your country, and thinkgeek may not ship to your country or the specific product may not be exportable by the store. Apple has resellers in countries outside the US, so you can't buy in their webstore if you're outside the US, but your local webstore may be weeks or months behind the US store and may only sell localized products, not US or International versiones, etc.)
There are, nonetheless, options for people buying goods from online stores which act as intermediaries and buffers between the US online store and the foreign (to the US) customers.
I will try to summarize here the ones I know about, I ask of you to please share the ones you know, as I'm moving to Spain soon and the ones I use in Mexico will not work.
I have found three kinds of company that have these services:
1.-The forwarding postal address: These sites let you create a "real" postal address in a US city that you can use in your orders from any store. This will allow it to work for most checks for "locality" and even allows you to subscribe to magazines (which don't usually even send to postal boxes). They have their warehouses and charge you for the handling and the customs applying to your packages. They also let you group all your month's packages and send them over at month's end in one larger package to save on shipping. This is, to me, the best option.
I know of one site that uses this method which I use frequently and after using all the other methods I outline in this post I feel is the best approach:
Merkalink (works only for Mexico and I won't be able to use it in Spain when I move)
Skybox. I haven't used this service as I currently don't have use for it and to my knowledge is the only one that works with Europe in this category.
2.-The "proxy" store. A store will let you buy stuff which, in turn, they're buying from online stores. They give you a price quote and let you give them URLs for other products which in turn they include in their webstores, they usually have no warehouse of their own as they're just intermediaries.
Encante(mexico only)
3.-The spyware approach: These are questionable products that sit on top of your web browser and actually hijack it in some cases, rewriting HTML on the fly and taking over your shopping experience. They're very close to spyware in their intrusiveness but, to my knowledge, they are not malicious nor is their intent to be. These actually sit in memory, on top of your web-shopping habits and when they detect you're in a store they support (say, amazon) you can see their buttons and banners in that page, which in turn pop-up their S&H + custom calculators and whatnot. Although original I don't like this approach very much (also because this approach means it only works in Windows, which I don't use)
DoUWantIt (Irony: DoUWantIt only supports Windows, it says so in their help-desk FAQ page, in the paragraph that says they won't support macs -or Linux- right below the picture of the PowerMacintosh LC 5215 )
Now. I am sure there are others out there. I'm looking for gathering info like this (which I'm personally interested in, as I'd like to keep buying things when I move to Spain from the sites I'm buying things now). If you know of sites that do this not included here or categories I haven't thoug
Apple doesn't ship to Mexico. This is because of internal policies between apple and its resellers in Mexico (which is the same reason there aren't any direct Apple sales in Mexico).
There are several things here that seem to not be important to anyone, but I have found to be critical in these problems:
1.-Taxes: No matter how you see it, a lot of people may not know they have to pay taxes when they receive their packages. They might not even imagine what those taxes are (in Mexico the custom taxes for Asian goods like clothes and toys STARTS at 300% over the sold-at price). Taxes may mean the customer just returns the product which may mean the original sender has to return the money because of its internal policy. I know of people who received a little plastic toy as a gift inside orders from Asia and they were surprised that even if the toy hadn't cost him he still had to pay full customs over its nominal price, so he was supposed to pay 5 times the street price of a toy he didn't want in the first place.
2.-We are not normal average users, the average user takes advantage of cashback warranties in credit cards, returns goods, demands things not specified in the order ("I didn't get the manuals/keyboard/Operating System in the language I wanted!"), takes advantage of mail services not being traceable overseas and e-mails the webstore saying he didn't receive the package, so please either send it again or refund the full cost (I know of several people who do this routinely). Average users also do not want to be charged because they didn't gather all information beforehand. They want their money back if the shipment takes more than three days to arrive, or if he has to pay unexpected customs taxes, or if it was mistreated in transit and all these complaints will go to the original webstore.
3.-Local agreements: Some companies have stores and dealers overseas and part of the agreements may mean the company can't sell directly there (for example, in Spain Apple can't sell directly their goods, it has to go through the authorized dealers, which is terrible because they're usually overpriced, don't have any stock and will never sell you the latest-and-greatest because Apple itself may take up to half a year more to adopt the new products in countries other than the US).
Halo worked under OpenGL, it was even shown running in a Mac under the (then-unoptimized) OpenGL layer in OSX.
Porting from DirectctX to OpenGL is a pain, but MS has made a lot of effort to lure developers to DirectX from OpenGL and it's easier to port to DirectX from OpenGL than the other way around.
Hence lots of OpenGL games get ported to DirectX (like Jedi Knight II) whereas not nearly as many get ported to OpenGL from DirectX (which, as a mac user, is a sadly well-known fact).
I wouldn't dismiss the feasibility of this just because ID uses OpenGL, it has happened already once (Again, Halo, a company also famous for staunchly defending the Mac-ideas the way ID supports non-microsoft ideas).
This is not true. As much as I am an Apple and mac advicate (and I like to believe I am) the truth is that font antialiasing was available in the Windows 95 Plus Pack, which I had to install for a customer some 6 or 7 years ago, WAY before the MacOS did (the Plus Pack was an add-on for Windows 95 around since it was a beta and called Chicago which included themes with sounds, colors and icons and the antialiasing feature).
No, on topic: There are indeed two kinds of antialiasing in the MacOS, and with Quartz Extreme there will probably be three, if I am correct. And all three of them are better than the ones available in Windows because of the calculations involved in making it work. That's also the reason it is so intensive and it slows the display so much. It even uses altivec.
I remember a mod Andy Ihnatko did for his Apple Powerbook way back in 1995 or so. Using paint and posting the mods on MacWorld. This may be evenn from before 1995 since it was one of the earliest PowerBooks and the Web didn't have today's presence.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually took the cat pictures from another site. The link is in the graphic itself. Supposedly it's something about the guy's girlfriend asking for a "line cut" and the pet shop guy understanding "lion cut". He looks so angry...:)
I took a few screenshots of iTunes for Windows (bvy now there must be tons out there):
u m. php?set_albumName=Misc-200310
[
http://www.ciateq.net.mx/~eduo/gallery/view_alb
The screenshots are at the bottom of the album. I thought of making an album for them but posted the link to other sites before, so please ignore most of the pics there.
I took a few screenshots of iTunes for Windows (bvy now there must be tons out there):
u m. php?set_albumName=Misc-200310
http://www.ciateq.net.mx/~eduo/gallery/view_alb
The screenshots are at the bottom of the album. I thought of making an album for them but posted the link to other sites before, so please ignore most of the pics there.
I took a few screenshots of iTunes for Windows and thought of posting them here:
u m. php?set_albumName=Misc-200310
. php?set_albumName=Misc-200310
http://www.ciateq.net.mx/~eduo/gallery/view_alb
No idea if Slashdot converts those to Links.
http://www.ciateq.net.mx/~eduo/gallery/view_album
The screenshots are at the bottom of the album.
(cross-posted with MacSlash)
I was about to create a new album for those, but I had already posted the links, so please ignore the rest of the photos..:)
It's even easier to do "sudo killall -HUP kextd" where you don't have to pay attention to the PID of it.
Of course, the actual reason for the reboot is that Apple can't give the option of rebooting or not because most users would choose not to and then might afterwards have problems with their computers.
N00b users have already ingrained in their heads that it's normal to restart the computer after installations (even minor ones). The ones I've seen like to reboot the machine after an installation even if it was not required.
I wish MacOSX had somewhere an option where you can tell it you're a "power user" and then it should leave the reboot decisions to you, giving you just the recommendation that you reboot when it's actually appliccable.
What I don't forgive are installers like the newer Virtual PC (which was a useless update made only so the graphics displayed "Microsoft" in the windows (and check the "Microsoft" name in the installation screen, it's not even properly aligned!)) but ask you to quit all other running applications. What's that? That's SO OS8..:)
Eduo
I found it strange nobody had mentioned Sketchup yet. Sketchup is a great, native program (not a port, but made from scratch for the Mac) which uses OpenGL to do 3D rendering on-the-fly (and works as well for 2D) and has lots of tools that ease the layout of floorplans or buildings.
http://www.sketchup.com/ has several demos and tutorials to try out. The thing has automatic scaling, several libraries of objects and materials, a bustling community and the people behind it must be some of the nicest businessmen still out there..:)
Eduo
I think we can argue and say whatever we want, but the fact stays that a lot of people outside the US can't buy good from US online stores.
It has been said to get local resellers and it has been said to find alternatives for the goods. Sadly sometimes the US online stores are the only viable option (getting ThinkGeek's products may be harder if you try to hunt them down in a local online store in your country, and thinkgeek may not ship to your country or the specific product may not be exportable by the store. Apple has resellers in countries outside the US, so you can't buy in their webstore if you're outside the US, but your local webstore may be weeks or months behind the US store and may only sell localized products, not US or International versiones, etc.)
There are, nonetheless, options for people buying goods from online stores which act as intermediaries and buffers between the US online store and the foreign (to the US) customers.
I will try to summarize here the ones I know about, I ask of you to please share the ones you know, as I'm moving to Spain soon and the ones I use in Mexico will not work.
I have found three kinds of company that have these services:
1.-The forwarding postal address: These sites let you create a "real" postal address in a US city that you can use in your orders from any store. This will allow it to work for most checks for "locality" and even allows you to subscribe to magazines (which don't usually even send to postal boxes). They have their warehouses and charge you for the handling and the customs applying to your packages. They also let you group all your month's packages and send them over at month's end in one larger package to save on shipping. This is, to me, the best option.
I know of one site that uses this method which I use frequently and after using all the other methods I outline in this post I feel is the best approach:
Merkalink (works only for Mexico and I won't be able to use it in Spain when I move)
Skybox. I haven't used this service as I currently don't have use for it and to my knowledge is the only one that works with Europe in this category.
2.-The "proxy" store. A store will let you buy stuff which, in turn, they're buying from online stores. They give you a price quote and let you give them URLs for other products which in turn they include in their webstores, they usually have no warehouse of their own as they're just intermediaries. Encante (mexico only)
Dynamism
3.-The spyware approach: These are questionable products that sit on top of your web browser and actually hijack it in some cases, rewriting HTML on the fly and taking over your shopping experience. They're very close to spyware in their intrusiveness but, to my knowledge, they are not malicious nor is their intent to be. These actually sit in memory, on top of your web-shopping habits and when they detect you're in a store they support (say, amazon) you can see their buttons and banners in that page, which in turn pop-up their S&H + custom calculators and whatnot. Although original I don't like this approach very much (also because this approach means it only works in Windows, which I don't use)
DoUWantIt
(Irony: DoUWantIt only supports Windows, it says so in their help-desk FAQ page, in the paragraph that says they won't support macs -or Linux- right below the picture of the PowerMacintosh LC 5215 )
Now. I am sure there are others out there. I'm looking for gathering info like this (which I'm personally interested in, as I'd like to keep buying things when I move to Spain from the sites I'm buying things now). If you know of sites that do this not included here or categories I haven't thoug
Apple doesn't ship to Mexico. This is because of internal policies between apple and its resellers in Mexico (which is the same reason there aren't any direct Apple sales in Mexico).
There are several things here that seem to not be important to anyone, but I have found to be critical in these problems:
1.-Taxes: No matter how you see it, a lot of people may not know they have to pay taxes when they receive their packages. They might not even imagine what those taxes are (in Mexico the custom taxes for Asian goods like clothes and toys STARTS at 300% over the sold-at price). Taxes may mean the customer just returns the product which may mean the original sender has to return the money because of its internal policy. I know of people who received a little plastic toy as a gift inside orders from Asia and they were surprised that even if the toy hadn't cost him he still had to pay full customs over its nominal price, so he was supposed to pay 5 times the street price of a toy he didn't want in the first place.
2.-We are not normal average users, the average user takes advantage of cashback warranties in credit cards, returns goods, demands things not specified in the order ("I didn't get the manuals/keyboard/Operating System in the language I wanted!"), takes advantage of mail services not being traceable overseas and e-mails the webstore saying he didn't receive the package, so please either send it again or refund the full cost (I know of several people who do this routinely). Average users also do not want to be charged because they didn't gather all information beforehand. They want their money back if the shipment takes more than three days to arrive, or if he has to pay unexpected customs taxes, or if it was mistreated in transit and all these complaints will go to the original webstore.
3.-Local agreements: Some companies have stores and dealers overseas and part of the agreements may mean the company can't sell directly there (for example, in Spain Apple can't sell directly their goods, it has to go through the authorized dealers, which is terrible because they're usually overpriced, don't have any stock and will never sell you the latest-and-greatest because Apple itself may take up to half a year more to adopt the new products in countries other than the US).
"Until then, is there even a MMORPG that even has a Mac client?"
Hmm. There is, indeed. There is the Neverwinter Nights client, Lineage Client, most Open source Linux ones, Clanlord.
There are probably more, I don't play them so I wouldn't know. These are the ones I have caught without noticing.
Eduo
Ehrm...
Halo worked under OpenGL, it was even shown running in a Mac under the (then-unoptimized) OpenGL layer in OSX.
Porting from DirectctX to OpenGL is a pain, but MS has made a lot of effort to lure developers to DirectX from OpenGL and it's easier to port to DirectX from OpenGL than the other way around.
Hence lots of OpenGL games get ported to DirectX (like Jedi Knight II) whereas not nearly as many get ported to OpenGL from DirectX (which, as a mac user, is a sadly well-known fact).
I wouldn't dismiss the feasibility of this just because ID uses OpenGL, it has happened already once (Again, Halo, a company also famous for staunchly defending the Mac-ideas the way ID supports non-microsoft ideas).
Eduo
This is not true. As much as I am an Apple and mac advicate (and I like to believe I am) the truth is that font antialiasing was available in the Windows 95 Plus Pack, which I had to install for a customer some 6 or 7 years ago, WAY before the MacOS did (the Plus Pack was an add-on for Windows 95 around since it was a beta and called Chicago which included themes with sounds, colors and icons and the antialiasing feature).
No, on topic: There are indeed two kinds of antialiasing in the MacOS, and with Quartz Extreme there will probably be three, if I am correct. And all three of them are better than the ones available in Windows because of the calculations involved in making it work. That's also the reason it is so intensive and it slows the display so much. It even uses altivec.
Eduo
Eduo
Ok. I don't mean to bash anyone, but Windows 95 Plus pack included antialiasing of fonts some 6 or 7 years ago. WAY before MacOS did.
I don't like it, but it's true.
eduo
I remember a mod Andy Ihnatko did for his Apple Powerbook way back in 1995 or so. Using paint and posting the mods on MacWorld. This may be evenn from before 1995 since it was one of the earliest PowerBooks and the Web didn't have today's presence.
I Can't find a link for it, tho'
Eduo