Anyone whose taken apart their mini to upgrade has already seen how remarkably simple and elegant (the classic Mac elitist term, but it applies) the innards are. It's a tight fit, and yet the mini compares performance-wise with any other iBook G4 released last year. I use the 1.42Ghz model with 512MB of RAM, and it is speedier than my somewhat equivalent giant PC tower (the look of which suddenly became obsolete the very day the Mac mini was revealed...it's sad to see the tiny white Mac mini sitting on top of a giant, ugly gray tower from Gateway). I actually use the mini to do multitrack recording at 24-bit/96kHz through Logic Express, and it handles it fine. It's also a blast to program with, even for making UNIX apps if you want to.
You start to wrap your head around it more easily when you start realizing it's really an iBook without the keyboard and LCD, but the fact it's even smaller than a laptop blows your mind. Trying to put a PC in such a size failed--he couldn't even include the CD drive. The mini really is an entire home computer in a tiny box, but the real trick is that it actually doesn't suck. That's what seperates it from the rest--it's a real, usable computer that takes up less space than my laptop yet doesn't suck.
Here's what absolutely kills me here, folks. I think very few people at this point would argue that a one-button mouse is somehow more intuitive or user-friendly than a 2 button mouse.
And that is where your point falls apart, because you would be wrong. You're thinking too much like an experience computer user who posts on Slashdot. To everyone else, it's never obvious what left-clicking and right-clicking actually do.
Do you have multiple accelerator pedals on your car, one for each direction you can go? No, you have one, and when you need to turn you steer the wheel left or right.
There's no "madness" to it; you're just unable to see things outside your own perspective, something of an epidemic these days it seems. As for NeXT, of course it shipped with two-button mice, because NeXT was targetted to high-end enterprise and development users who would have a need for it. Ever looked at the price of a NeXT cube from that era?
Microsoft originally approached Sony with their DirectX/XNA platform for use in the Playstation 2. Sony turned them down. Microsoft also contacted Nintendo who wanted nothing to do with them. Microsoft wants to install their platform universally into everything, so they decided to slap together a PC and call it the "X-Box" and sell it as a console to compete. That's why Microsoft sells it at a loss--it's not about making a profit; it's about spreading the DirectX/XNA platform everywhere. That's also why we're seeing all these crappy cross-ported PC/X-Box simultaneous releases.
Michael's ranting about a "for-profit company" makes no sense when Slashdot is owned by OSTG, a for-profit company. Slashdot even sells banner ads and subscription services for profit. Malda, Michael, and the rest are OSTG employees, not volunteer rebels fighting the system. When you talk about Michael inciting interest in a story, what you really mean is baiting people with completely inaccurate articles (and there have been a ton lately) to get more page views for OSTG's ad clients.
You may not have been around then, but when iMacs had recently come out, everyone said they were goofy and sucked. They sold well and revived Apple for the first time in years.
The iPod came out in 2001. We all know Taco's editorializing--"No wireless. Less space then a nomad. Lame." It's a good thing Taco's not running a computer company.
When the iPod mini was announced, just about every single post in the article on Slashdot talked about how it was a failure and an inevitable flop. So, how many iPods were sold last quarter? OVER FOUR MILLION.
Somehow, based on current Slashdot opinion, I'm going to guess that the issue of a one-button mouse isn't going to kill off Apple any time soon. As for me, I prefer them because it hurts my hand to strain when clicking a right-mouse button. It feels so much nicer to use both fingers to click one big button, and any right-click functionality I need is a simple as Ctrl-click or click-hold. I don't get hte big deal. Everyone has described their tech support nightmares with two-button mice, and I have my own as well (including a guy who feels the need to right-click absolutely everything for no reason). The people who would need or want right-click functionality are the ones who would know to buy a cheap two button mouse anyway, so the issue is moot, and anyone still whining about "Apple and their one-button mice" quite seriously need to get a clue. It's a complete non-issue people use to troll with.
Don't know what you people are smoking who modded me down; everyone knows OS X is based on OpenStep. It's not exactly a secret. Try programming in Cocoa sometime; it's extremely similar even down to the naming scheme.
"It would be an understatement to say that OS X is derived from NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. I many respects, it's not just similar, it's the same. One can think of it as OpenStep 5 or 6, say. This is not a bad thing at all - rather than create an operating system from scratch, Apple tried to do the smart thing, and used what they already had to a great extent. However, the similarities should not mislead you: Mac OS X is evolved enough that what you can do with it is far above and beyond NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP."
And just where do you think Cocoa came from? Cocoa is an evolved OpenStep, complete with NIBs, NSObject, and so on. Hint--the "NS" in those object names stands for NeXTStep...
Rhapsody was a reworked OPENSTEP for the Mac, and formed the start of the process that resulted in Mac OS X. It is OPENSTEP with the "Classic" interface and could be regarded as OPENSTEP 5. Two versions of Rhapsody were released to developers. The first, Developer Preview 1, ran only on Intel hardware. The second revision, DP2, was the first version to include support for limited set of Mac hardware.
Mac OS X
Since Apple has merged with NeXT, OPENSTEP has became the basis for their new operating system, Mac OS X. Mac OS X's new programming environment is essentially OpenStep (with certain additions such as XML property lists and URL classes for Internet connections) with Mac OS X ports of the development libraries and tools -- this became Cocoa. Mac OS X is essentially OPENSTEP 5 or 6. As Mac OS X, OPENSTEP managed to become the most used Unix in the world.
Re:Online authentication unavailable for one night
on
Steam Users Steamed
·
· Score: 1
To be fair:
1.) If you don't like Steam's "copy protection bullshit," you shouldn't have bought the game. The system requirements list an active Internet connection.
2.) These measures wouldn't be necessary if people were honest. It's shocking just how prevalent piracy really is.
Having said that, I haven't played Half-Life 2 in a while due to stuttering issues. Since then, they've apparently released updates to address them with varying success, but I wouldn't know since I recently bought a Mac and haven't been able to justify booting up the PC since. I'll give them a few more patches before I bother again.
That was one of the more random DMCA references I've seen. What DRM in this file are you referring to? Seriously, what does DRM or the DMCA have to do at all with this story or this video file?
Oh, well, it got you a pointless upmod, as intended.
The technology behind OS X is going on almost two decades.:)
The only thing immature about OS X coming out of the gate was the Aqua interface, which they finally patched up around 10.2.
On an unrelated note, on Panther, and with Tiger upcoming, the interface is so polished that everything else feels six years behind. I can't help wondering what Apple will offer to compete with Microsoft in the update after Tiger, which might be coming out the year Longhorn ships if Longhorn doesn't delay again. Longhorn sounds like they're ripping off a ton of OS X technology, like a new display technology, hardware-accelerated window drawing, and so on. And what new apps will take advantage of.NET? Adobe, Macromedia, id Software, and so on aren't going to rewrite their apps in unmanaged C++.NET code just to fit in. At least on OS X, Apple offered the Carbon APIs to allow old apps to compile with few changes and suddenly take advantage of the new environment.
Honestly, though, it would be nice of more of the major OS X apps took advantage of Cocoa instead of hanging onto Carbon for dear life. Dreamweaver MX 2004 runs like a dog, and Photoshop CS is little better.
NextStep in 1989 was an endless series of brilliant concepts and ideas that are just now coming into mainstream operating systems. Truly ahead of its time. As someone else mentioned, the foundations of OS X are a lot more mature than people realize. Cocoa is truly a fantastic way to develop apps. Even simple things like menu item enable/disable becomes automatic due to the way messaging works (i.e., if no methods are found to handle the Print message, then Print gets grayed out automatically).
Microsoft is going the way of declarative interface programming with languages like XAML, which I disagree with. I take issue with not knowing about the interface objects until run-time which can cause all sorts of issues, particularly display issues. NextStep/Cocoa, on the other hand, actually stores the object graph into a "freeze-dried" file in Interface Builder (the famous NIB files), serializing all the objects and bringing them up in a flash when the application runs.
It's truly a neat technology to play with. Too bad most of the major apps on OS X are sticking with the Carbon route to avoid rewriting their codebases. Cocoa gives you so many things for free, you even get automatic spellcheck available for any input fields if you want it.
What did Microsoft have to do with this thread, which was about sendmail? Justifying any flaws in OSS software with "at least it's not Microsoft" isn't a valid response.
I can't help thinking Michael posted this so that we could get up in arms, but that's how the system (and life in general) works. It's not always flawless and perfect, and legal investigations can sometimes lead to other areas that turn out to be incorrect. It's likely the authorities would have figured it out eventually. Not that I don't feel for the guy, getting wrongly arrested. But if it happened to me, and it was because of the kind of "evidence" described here, I wouldn't feel wronged in any way. I would understand that it was a valid mistake.
EA is evil. EA represents the suit-and-tie, corporate-owned, mainstream conversion of the gaming industry. They represent cheesy CEOs coming over from other failed companies who are only getting into the game industry because they see massive annual revenues from this thing, not because they're into games. Merely ten years ago, we had a sort of Silver Age of gaming, from Doom to Descent to Command & Conquer to Myst to Simcity 2000 to...well, you were there. It all spanned multiple genres. Where is it now? The good games are far and few between. Now, it's the yearly update of the new Tony Hawk game, complete with skateboard fat clowns that spray graffiti, and the "underground racing" games where morons who think neon lights are a good investment tell each other how "sick" their "tricked out" cars are as obnoxious, over-compressed, repetitive rap music blasts while you race down wet, nighttime city streets. Because that's "underground!" Meanwhile, the PC industry purposely speeds itself up faster and faster to increase the yearly bullshit upgrade cycle. If you don't have a video card with two fans taking up two slots in your translucent, neon-lit PC case, your penis just isn't big enough to play the latest id Software game made up of approximately 90% pitch black darkness on-screen. Innovation? Fuck it, let's fuck up Deus Ex so we can get on the console in time while we destroy Fallout 3. After that, we'll suck the teat of the latest Microsoft DirectX release, focus-group tested with a new name ("DirectNext! Because it's the NEXT one!") guaranteed to generate 87% profit margins on new graphics card updates. And that blazing fast PC you custom-built last year? Fuck it, better ditch that because your goddamn RAM chips aren't operating at a fast enough speed to melt the paint off the wall and generate enough electromagnetic fields to shrivel the balls off your legs as you read the latest paid-for review in a dying game magazine.
I don't have a choice, as a friend accidentally forgot to request my memory upgrade at the retail Apple store.:) From what I've seen, all you need is a putty knife and a little bit of firm prying. I've taken apart an entire NES just to clean it, so I think I can handle prying off some plastic case held down with snaps. Clearly, it's not impossible.
Apple says the warranty is only void if you damage any parts of the mini in the upgrade process. It would be illegal for them to void your warranty just because you upgraded your system. Think of installing a new oil filter in a car.
The shipped RAM of the mini uses no registered memory. I don't know the effects of using registered memory, but I imagine random kernel panics. Apple's spec page for the mini is very clear about the specs of the RAM.
On the Apple forums, several people have described random kernel panics and general operating unpleasantness after going with cheap RAM.
The only place I would get Mac RAM from would be Crucial.com, and they're more or less the price of the Apple RAM, though the 1GB is a hundred less. Crucial is a division of Micron and thoroughly tests their RAM.
The problem is that some people report issues with using PC2700 RAM in the mini, some report overheating (you need quality RAM because of that cramped airflow in the casing), and so on.
Make sure you people manually upgrading your minis get high-quality RAM that is up to spec!
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone whose taken apart their mini to upgrade has already seen how remarkably simple and elegant (the classic Mac elitist term, but it applies) the innards are. It's a tight fit, and yet the mini compares performance-wise with any other iBook G4 released last year. I use the 1.42Ghz model with 512MB of RAM, and it is speedier than my somewhat equivalent giant PC tower (the look of which suddenly became obsolete the very day the Mac mini was revealed...it's sad to see the tiny white Mac mini sitting on top of a giant, ugly gray tower from Gateway). I actually use the mini to do multitrack recording at 24-bit/96kHz through Logic Express, and it handles it fine. It's also a blast to program with, even for making UNIX apps if you want to.
You start to wrap your head around it more easily when you start realizing it's really an iBook without the keyboard and LCD, but the fact it's even smaller than a laptop blows your mind. Trying to put a PC in such a size failed--he couldn't even include the CD drive. The mini really is an entire home computer in a tiny box, but the real trick is that it actually doesn't suck. That's what seperates it from the rest--it's a real, usable computer that takes up less space than my laptop yet doesn't suck.
Here's what absolutely kills me here, folks. I think very few people at this point would argue that a one-button mouse is somehow more intuitive or user-friendly than a 2 button mouse.
And that is where your point falls apart, because you would be wrong. You're thinking too much like an experience computer user who posts on Slashdot. To everyone else, it's never obvious what left-clicking and right-clicking actually do.
Do you have multiple accelerator pedals on your car, one for each direction you can go? No, you have one, and when you need to turn you steer the wheel left or right.
There's no "madness" to it; you're just unable to see things outside your own perspective, something of an epidemic these days it seems. As for NeXT, of course it shipped with two-button mice, because NeXT was targetted to high-end enterprise and development users who would have a need for it. Ever looked at the price of a NeXT cube from that era?
Have you ever actually looked at an Office 2003-produced XML file? It looks nothing like that, and there is no binary-encoded content.
Microsoft originally approached Sony with their DirectX/XNA platform for use in the Playstation 2. Sony turned them down. Microsoft also contacted Nintendo who wanted nothing to do with them. Microsoft wants to install their platform universally into everything, so they decided to slap together a PC and call it the "X-Box" and sell it as a console to compete. That's why Microsoft sells it at a loss--it's not about making a profit; it's about spreading the DirectX/XNA platform everywhere. That's also why we're seeing all these crappy cross-ported PC/X-Box simultaneous releases.
Michael's ranting about a "for-profit company" makes no sense when Slashdot is owned by OSTG, a for-profit company. Slashdot even sells banner ads and subscription services for profit. Malda, Michael, and the rest are OSTG employees, not volunteer rebels fighting the system. When you talk about Michael inciting interest in a story, what you really mean is baiting people with completely inaccurate articles (and there have been a ton lately) to get more page views for OSTG's ad clients.
Give us a break, Michael.
You may not have been around then, but when iMacs had recently come out, everyone said they were goofy and sucked. They sold well and revived Apple for the first time in years.
The iPod came out in 2001. We all know Taco's editorializing--"No wireless. Less space then a nomad. Lame." It's a good thing Taco's not running a computer company.
When the iPod mini was announced, just about every single post in the article on Slashdot talked about how it was a failure and an inevitable flop. So, how many iPods were sold last quarter? OVER FOUR MILLION.
Somehow, based on current Slashdot opinion, I'm going to guess that the issue of a one-button mouse isn't going to kill off Apple any time soon. As for me, I prefer them because it hurts my hand to strain when clicking a right-mouse button. It feels so much nicer to use both fingers to click one big button, and any right-click functionality I need is a simple as Ctrl-click or click-hold. I don't get hte big deal. Everyone has described their tech support nightmares with two-button mice, and I have my own as well (including a guy who feels the need to right-click absolutely everything for no reason). The people who would need or want right-click functionality are the ones who would know to buy a cheap two button mouse anyway, so the issue is moot, and anyone still whining about "Apple and their one-button mice" quite seriously need to get a clue. It's a complete non-issue people use to troll with.
Don't know what you people are smoking who modded me down; everyone knows OS X is based on OpenStep. It's not exactly a secret. Try programming in Cocoa sometime; it's extremely similar even down to the naming scheme.
"It would be an understatement to say that OS X is derived from NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. I many respects, it's not just similar, it's the same. One can think of it as OpenStep 5 or 6, say. This is not a bad thing at all - rather than create an operating system from scratch, Apple tried to do the smart thing, and used what they already had to a great extent. However, the similarities should not mislead you: Mac OS X is evolved enough that what you can do with it is far above and beyond NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP."
--from A Brief History of OS X
And just where do you think Cocoa came from? Cocoa is an evolved OpenStep, complete with NIBs, NSObject, and so on. Hint--the "NS" in those object names stands for NeXTStep...
Nope, sorry. OpenStep was given the MacOS interface with Rhapsody, and the dev libraries were made into Cocoa for OS X.
Where do you think all those NS* classes came from? Why do you think OS X still has NeXT's "Services" submenu in every application menu?
Next.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep:
Rhapsody
Rhapsody was a reworked OPENSTEP for the Mac, and formed the start of the process that resulted in Mac OS X. It is OPENSTEP with the "Classic" interface and could be regarded as OPENSTEP 5. Two versions of Rhapsody were released to developers. The first, Developer Preview 1, ran only on Intel hardware. The second revision, DP2, was the first version to include support for limited set of Mac hardware.
Mac OS X
Since Apple has merged with NeXT, OPENSTEP has became the basis for their new operating system, Mac OS X. Mac OS X's new programming environment is essentially OpenStep (with certain additions such as XML property lists and URL classes for Internet connections) with Mac OS X ports of the development libraries and tools -- this became Cocoa. Mac OS X is essentially OPENSTEP 5 or 6. As Mac OS X, OPENSTEP managed to become the most used Unix in the world.
To be fair:
1.) If you don't like Steam's "copy protection bullshit," you shouldn't have bought the game. The system requirements list an active Internet connection.
2.) These measures wouldn't be necessary if people were honest. It's shocking just how prevalent piracy really is.
Having said that, I haven't played Half-Life 2 in a while due to stuttering issues. Since then, they've apparently released updates to address them with varying success, but I wouldn't know since I recently bought a Mac and haven't been able to justify booting up the PC since. I'll give them a few more patches before I bother again.
All two of them?
That was one of the more random DMCA references I've seen. What DRM in this file are you referring to? Seriously, what does DRM or the DMCA have to do at all with this story or this video file?
Oh, well, it got you a pointless upmod, as intended.
OS X is essentially OpenStep 5 or 6 with a Mac-alike interface.
:)
Hell, go to System Preferences and set the clock to float as a window. Look familiar?
The technology behind OS X is going on almost two decades. :)
.NET? Adobe, Macromedia, id Software, and so on aren't going to rewrite their apps in unmanaged C++ .NET code just to fit in. At least on OS X, Apple offered the Carbon APIs to allow old apps to compile with few changes and suddenly take advantage of the new environment.
The only thing immature about OS X coming out of the gate was the Aqua interface, which they finally patched up around 10.2.
On an unrelated note, on Panther, and with Tiger upcoming, the interface is so polished that everything else feels six years behind. I can't help wondering what Apple will offer to compete with Microsoft in the update after Tiger, which might be coming out the year Longhorn ships if Longhorn doesn't delay again. Longhorn sounds like they're ripping off a ton of OS X technology, like a new display technology, hardware-accelerated window drawing, and so on. And what new apps will take advantage of
Honestly, though, it would be nice of more of the major OS X apps took advantage of Cocoa instead of hanging onto Carbon for dear life. Dreamweaver MX 2004 runs like a dog, and Photoshop CS is little better.
NextStep in 1989 was an endless series of brilliant concepts and ideas that are just now coming into mainstream operating systems. Truly ahead of its time. As someone else mentioned, the foundations of OS X are a lot more mature than people realize. Cocoa is truly a fantastic way to develop apps. Even simple things like menu item enable/disable becomes automatic due to the way messaging works (i.e., if no methods are found to handle the Print message, then Print gets grayed out automatically).
Microsoft is going the way of declarative interface programming with languages like XAML, which I disagree with. I take issue with not knowing about the interface objects until run-time which can cause all sorts of issues, particularly display issues. NextStep/Cocoa, on the other hand, actually stores the object graph into a "freeze-dried" file in Interface Builder (the famous NIB files), serializing all the objects and bringing them up in a flash when the application runs.
It's truly a neat technology to play with. Too bad most of the major apps on OS X are sticking with the Carbon route to avoid rewriting their codebases. Cocoa gives you so many things for free, you even get automatic spellcheck available for any input fields if you want it.
Is it just me or is relying on hardware to protect your application heaps seem to be a bad idea.
.NET runtime. :)
Welcome to part of the reason for the
www.apple.com/switch :)
What did Microsoft have to do with this thread, which was about sendmail? Justifying any flaws in OSS software with "at least it's not Microsoft" isn't a valid response.
I can't help thinking Michael posted this so that we could get up in arms, but that's how the system (and life in general) works. It's not always flawless and perfect, and legal investigations can sometimes lead to other areas that turn out to be incorrect. It's likely the authorities would have figured it out eventually. Not that I don't feel for the guy, getting wrongly arrested. But if it happened to me, and it was because of the kind of "evidence" described here, I wouldn't feel wronged in any way. I would understand that it was a valid mistake.
EA is evil. EA represents the suit-and-tie, corporate-owned, mainstream conversion of the gaming industry. They represent cheesy CEOs coming over from other failed companies who are only getting into the game industry because they see massive annual revenues from this thing, not because they're into games. Merely ten years ago, we had a sort of Silver Age of gaming, from Doom to Descent to Command & Conquer to Myst to Simcity 2000 to...well, you were there. It all spanned multiple genres. Where is it now? The good games are far and few between. Now, it's the yearly update of the new Tony Hawk game, complete with skateboard fat clowns that spray graffiti, and the "underground racing" games where morons who think neon lights are a good investment tell each other how "sick" their "tricked out" cars are as obnoxious, over-compressed, repetitive rap music blasts while you race down wet, nighttime city streets. Because that's "underground!" Meanwhile, the PC industry purposely speeds itself up faster and faster to increase the yearly bullshit upgrade cycle. If you don't have a video card with two fans taking up two slots in your translucent, neon-lit PC case, your penis just isn't big enough to play the latest id Software game made up of approximately 90% pitch black darkness on-screen. Innovation? Fuck it, let's fuck up Deus Ex so we can get on the console in time while we destroy Fallout 3. After that, we'll suck the teat of the latest Microsoft DirectX release, focus-group tested with a new name ("DirectNext! Because it's the NEXT one!") guaranteed to generate 87% profit margins on new graphics card updates. And that blazing fast PC you custom-built last year? Fuck it, better ditch that because your goddamn RAM chips aren't operating at a fast enough speed to melt the paint off the wall and generate enough electromagnetic fields to shrivel the balls off your legs as you read the latest paid-for review in a dying game magazine.
I'm bitter about today's PC gaming.
I don't have a choice, as a friend accidentally forgot to request my memory upgrade at the retail Apple store. :) From what I've seen, all you need is a putty knife and a little bit of firm prying. I've taken apart an entire NES just to clean it, so I think I can handle prying off some plastic case held down with snaps. Clearly, it's not impossible.
Apple says the warranty is only void if you damage any parts of the mini in the upgrade process. It would be illegal for them to void your warranty just because you upgraded your system. Think of installing a new oil filter in a car.
The shipped RAM of the mini uses no registered memory. I don't know the effects of using registered memory, but I imagine random kernel panics. Apple's spec page for the mini is very clear about the specs of the RAM.
On the Apple forums, several people have described random kernel panics and general operating unpleasantness after going with cheap RAM.
The only place I would get Mac RAM from would be Crucial.com, and they're more or less the price of the Apple RAM, though the 1GB is a hundred less. Crucial is a division of Micron and thoroughly tests their RAM.
The problem is that some people report issues with using PC2700 RAM in the mini, some report overheating (you need quality RAM because of that cramped airflow in the casing), and so on.
Make sure you people manually upgrading your minis get high-quality RAM that is up to spec!