dont a lot of the mac desktops have internal firewire ports?
No. Only the generation of G4 Macs that appeared with the Cube. Apple's thought was that FireWire was going to replace SCSI and that native FireWire drives would appear shortly. To the best of my knowledge there still are no native FireWire drives. Apple eliminated the internal FireWire when they retired the Sawtooth G4's.
Interesting that they choose to show screenshots without many windows within each application. What happens when you have so many windows open that you can't read the text or that it is condensed to nonsense? Ah, the same problem the Exploer taskbar has and the same issue all tabbed interface come to.
It doesn't scale. You're right, it's completely different. You should read more about the technology behind Exposé. It's an amazing algorithm and such an elegant and simple solution to window management. Window placement is completely up to the user in Macintosh and always has been.
There is a definite difference in theory behind Mac OS that has created such rabid supporters of it. The user always knows best.
I wouldn't mention this but Sun has made so much of Project Looking Glass that it's kind of hard to not wonder if one of their primary targets here is not Apple and the users who are using it as their preferred UNIX OS.
Workstations are one of the few pieces of Unix kit that you can be assured will be replaced as quickly as you can get new tech out the door. In typical graphic and video shops they upgrade their kit every year if there is a speed boost. I have a friend that owns a local design firm and if he can shave 2 seconds off of a Photoshop filter or render video a few seconds faster that's enough reason to upgrade. When you are doing hundreds of image edits a day, it's a compelling reason.
Sun and SGI are beginning to lose workstation sales to Apple. With the advent of the G5 all of the hardware advantages of a Unix workstation over a desktop have basically disappeared. They have to do something to look or actually be competitive with Apple. A look at a recent Slashdot discussion reveals how many Unix/Linux users are finding Mac OS X an elegant sidegrade/upgrade.
With that extra spatial dimmension you will take what is already a cluttered desktop and make it mess in 3D. Now my computer can look more like my apartnemt.
This is exactly where things need to go.
I like the idea of being able to flip windows over and interact with the metadata in the file. In Tiger, Apple is debuting the ability to do this (it was actually in a Mac OS 8.5 beta but was removed) I just hope that it will be implemented at the Window Manager level and not require application updates.
You leave my file server out of this! Seriously it's named Saturn, I'm smart enough to put it on an exanet, has no connection to the internet and I lose my internet connection when I switch to that network.
I think it has to come down to what you are used to.
I feel equally ackward on OS X, Win 98, somewhat less on Linux, but I only use it infrequemtly etc compared to WinXP. It's just what I use.
I think what you are expressing is ability to adapt. I'd only ever used a mix of DOS and Windows (3.11/95) but when I finally got a Mac in 1997 I felt more at home than I ever did on DOS or Windows. I also thought PC GEOS was a nice little DOS extender and except for feeling limited, liked it. When I got my Indigo 2 in late 1998 I had no problem using IRIX, much to the surprise of an Oracle DBA I was living with.
I find most versions of Windows awkward at best, annoying most of the time. I think Gnome and KDE are good desktop environments but have no clear focus on who they are for (end users or power users). I liked OS/2 Warp a lot (there's still no true object oriented OS besides it) but I thought Merlin stunk. I think BeOS should have completely replaced Windows, if only it had come out AFTER the DOJ trial.
After all that I think I have been most productive on Mac OS 8.5. I created more digital works, designed more websites and created more scripts/workflows having used that version of the OS than anything else. I am looking forward to Tiger since it will finally implement all the functionality of Classic Mac OS.
I thought the point of Macs were they were supposed to make sense... it doesn't make sense to optimize the keyboard for least-used things does it?
The only reason they're on the keyboard at all is because of DOS compatibility. I've used Macs since 97 and I don't use any of the extra keys.
The great part about Text Edit commands is that I have a lot of control while using my left hand with the modifiers and my right hand on the arrow keys. If you are truly wanting to use the keyboard for navigation it's much more productive to have a suite of keyboard commands than it is to have 4 keys. There is no "next word" key, no "select text" key, there are Text Edit commands for it, though.
Interesting - no mention of OS X. I know the OS X port has now essentially been left to the excellent NeoOffice - I wonder if a beta 2.0 of that is now on the cards?
Personally, I don't know how much interest there is in Open Office for Mac OS X period. The interface by Mac standards makes me want to claw my eyes out. Contrary to what I am sure most Windows users assume, Macintosh versions of PC software are usually different aesthetically (and typically have more functionality).
I'm sure most Mac users are either not interested in using Office or an Office clone or would rather pay for the real deal to get the interface (I know I did).
why not establish one standard and let people choose which client to use.
Because people will use the free/open version instead of the adware version. I stopped using IM clients when it became too difficult to strip out the adware, then started using it again when Apple integrated AIM into iChat. I would like to see a shift to P2P IM clients where there is no server.
Over on Windows - and I'm not sure if this is the same on an Apple - it took about fifteen minutes of copying software from CD, signing up online, agreeing to several licenses, entering the serial number at least two times in different places...
Uh, what? Serial number?
Well, so you know, on a Mac you just plug in the iPod and iTunes asks if you want to associate the iPod with the current library, click yes and it feeds the iPod.
You have to agree to iTunes license the first time you use iTunes, just like every application on any operating system you have to agree to the license whether it presents itself or not.
I had no idea that Windows complicated even the most banal task of connecting an iPod.
Companies like Intel and ATi are examples of how the hardware manufacturers are realizing that Linux users want to use their hardware too.
ATI and Intel are just running good hardware businesses. When you are selling hardware you do whatever it takes to sell the most amount of hardware, sadly a lot of companies *cough* nVidia *cough* apparently don't want all the money Linux and Mac users will throw at hardware (Mac versions of nVidia cards suck).
Is this the same Dvorak who's predicted the Mac's death more than once?
Dvorak is a pundit, his job is to create sensationalism. When he was on ZDTV with his roundtable show he always talked about (certainly not at length) being a Mac user.
The man is bizarre, at least tabloids have an agenda.
Apple is trying to save money and drop prices at the same time. Sure it sucks for us FireWire users. I have several FireWire peripherals and will probably spend the extra $20 getting the FireWire cable when I get my next iPod (hopefully soon). But it's a luxury, because I have USB 2.0 anyway.
I already have an iPod and I really don't want to pay for another Dock, carry case or FireWire cable when I upgrade my 30GB 3G.
I think Apple is just responding to the current upgrade situation. With millions of iPods sold, a lot of their sales are going to be to upgraders in the future who will not want to pay for extras they already possess while still supplying the lowest common denominator (USB 2). I've never used USB 2 for data transfer but I have read it never gets near the 400 mbps mark, as opposed to FireWire which quite often saturates the line (that I do have experience with).
Once the initial music transfer is completed, speed is not a huge issue but the fact that I can and do use my iPod as a FireWire disk continues to be a huge plus for it.
Not fundamentalist Christians, perhaps. But for other religions--well, just look at Saudi Arabia, for one.
Tell me about Saudi Arabia, tell me one thing that you personally know to be true about Saudi Arabia that can be applied to a large scale. Again you reinforce my assertion of a US-centric view of the world: "Everyone is like us and everyone who isn't is exactly like we stereotype them to be."
If religious leaders condemn it they could advocate open violence against anyone spreading the knowledge or believing it. Since there are a LOT of people who fall into the Fundamentalist category or are influenced by them this could have really nasty ramifications.
I think you're speaking from a very US-centric view. There are very few people outside the US that fall into the sort of "fundamentalist" category that you are describing. There's nothing in the Torah or Koran that says that there's only life on Earth and that Earth is special. To the best of my knowledge there's nothing in the Bible to that effect, either.
Man, his "SeatSale: Seating Made Simple" piece is incredible. Seriously that's really awesome Modern Art. I can't believe it's not on display at the MOMA. Political art is some of my favourite and I live in Cincinnati where all art is political. Recently at the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Arts there was a terrific piece about Mapplethorpe where text descriptions of photographs (the ones made famous by Simon Lease) were on display. These were actually postcards sent to different church congregations. The point of the exhibit was actually to posit the question, why is something obscene when it is the image but not when it is a description of the image?
I think SeatSale is right along these lines. Why is something a grotesque concept when it has physical repercussions but not when they are legal?
When will the GPU companies have to start playing tricks when the clock speeds finally give way to things like, oh, trying to cool a damn computer on a card without sounding like a jet plane is in your room becomes an issue. Like, well, now?
PCI express will have a cable connector that will be introduced soon that will allow manufacturers to move the devices that create heat away from the mainboard. This will increase cooling options at both ends.
l4m3r> lets play quake 1!
l0zr> yeah, th4ts sooooo 0ldsk00l!
Actually, using ATI Displays you can override OpenGL settings and actually have better quality visuals than what the programmer was able to offer at the time. It doesn't affect every game but I see noticable differences with American McGee's Alice and with Harry Potter, both on my Mac.
I can't wait until I can load entire games into the graphics RAM. I was holding off on an x800 because a quarter of the price of my G5 for a graphics card was a bit much, hopefully this will drive down the price of the 256MB version.
Slashdot Mirror
No. Only the generation of G4 Macs that appeared with the Cube. Apple's thought was that FireWire was going to replace SCSI and that native FireWire drives would appear shortly. To the best of my knowledge there still are no native FireWire drives. Apple eliminated the internal FireWire when they retired the Sawtooth G4's.
It doesn't scale. You're right, it's completely different. You should read more about the technology behind Exposé. It's an amazing algorithm and such an elegant and simple solution to window management. Window placement is completely up to the user in Macintosh and always has been.
There is a definite difference in theory behind Mac OS that has created such rabid supporters of it. The user always knows best.
It's already been done.
Workstations are one of the few pieces of Unix kit that you can be assured will be replaced as quickly as you can get new tech out the door. In typical graphic and video shops they upgrade their kit every year if there is a speed boost. I have a friend that owns a local design firm and if he can shave 2 seconds off of a Photoshop filter or render video a few seconds faster that's enough reason to upgrade. When you are doing hundreds of image edits a day, it's a compelling reason.
Sun and SGI are beginning to lose workstation sales to Apple. With the advent of the G5 all of the hardware advantages of a Unix workstation over a desktop have basically disappeared. They have to do something to look or actually be competitive with Apple. A look at a recent Slashdot discussion reveals how many Unix/Linux users are finding Mac OS X an elegant sidegrade/upgrade.
This is exactly where things need to go.
I like the idea of being able to flip windows over and interact with the metadata in the file. In Tiger, Apple is debuting the ability to do this (it was actually in a Mac OS 8.5 beta but was removed) I just hope that it will be implemented at the Window Manager level and not require application updates.
You leave my file server out of this! Seriously it's named Saturn, I'm smart enough to put it on an exanet, has no connection to the internet and I lose my internet connection when I switch to that network.
Kidneys man, kidneys.
I think what you are expressing is ability to adapt. I'd only ever used a mix of DOS and Windows (3.11/95) but when I finally got a Mac in 1997 I felt more at home than I ever did on DOS or Windows. I also thought PC GEOS was a nice little DOS extender and except for feeling limited, liked it. When I got my Indigo 2 in late 1998 I had no problem using IRIX, much to the surprise of an Oracle DBA I was living with.
I find most versions of Windows awkward at best, annoying most of the time. I think Gnome and KDE are good desktop environments but have no clear focus on who they are for (end users or power users). I liked OS/2 Warp a lot (there's still no true object oriented OS besides it) but I thought Merlin stunk. I think BeOS should have completely replaced Windows, if only it had come out AFTER the DOJ trial.
After all that I think I have been most productive on Mac OS 8.5. I created more digital works, designed more websites and created more scripts/workflows having used that version of the OS than anything else. I am looking forward to Tiger since it will finally implement all the functionality of Classic Mac OS.
The only reason they're on the keyboard at all is because of DOS compatibility. I've used Macs since 97 and I don't use any of the extra keys.
The great part about Text Edit commands is that I have a lot of control while using my left hand with the modifiers and my right hand on the arrow keys. If you are truly wanting to use the keyboard for navigation it's much more productive to have a suite of keyboard commands than it is to have 4 keys. There is no "next word" key, no "select text" key, there are Text Edit commands for it, though.
Personally, I don't know how much interest there is in Open Office for Mac OS X period. The interface by Mac standards makes me want to claw my eyes out. Contrary to what I am sure most Windows users assume, Macintosh versions of PC software are usually different aesthetically (and typically have more functionality).
I'm sure most Mac users are either not interested in using Office or an Office clone or would rather pay for the real deal to get the interface (I know I did).
Because people will use the free/open version instead of the adware version. I stopped using IM clients when it became too difficult to strip out the adware, then started using it again when Apple integrated AIM into iChat. I would like to see a shift to P2P IM clients where there is no server.
Yeah, I wish I could enable Javascript for only certain websites. Does Opera or Firefox have this yet?
I ask myself that after every published disaster that operating system inflicts on the technology community.
Uh, what? Serial number?
Well, so you know, on a Mac you just plug in the iPod and iTunes asks if you want to associate the iPod with the current library, click yes and it feeds the iPod.
You have to agree to iTunes license the first time you use iTunes, just like every application on any operating system you have to agree to the license whether it presents itself or not.
I had no idea that Windows complicated even the most banal task of connecting an iPod.
ATI and Intel are just running good hardware businesses. When you are selling hardware you do whatever it takes to sell the most amount of hardware, sadly a lot of companies *cough* nVidia *cough* apparently don't want all the money Linux and Mac users will throw at hardware (Mac versions of nVidia cards suck).
Dvorak is a pundit, his job is to create sensationalism. When he was on ZDTV with his roundtable show he always talked about (certainly not at length) being a Mac user.
The man is bizarre, at least tabloids have an agenda.
I already have an iPod and I really don't want to pay for another Dock, carry case or FireWire cable when I upgrade my 30GB 3G.
I think Apple is just responding to the current upgrade situation. With millions of iPods sold, a lot of their sales are going to be to upgraders in the future who will not want to pay for extras they already possess while still supplying the lowest common denominator (USB 2). I've never used USB 2 for data transfer but I have read it never gets near the 400 mbps mark, as opposed to FireWire which quite often saturates the line (that I do have experience with).
Once the initial music transfer is completed, speed is not a huge issue but the fact that I can and do use my iPod as a FireWire disk continues to be a huge plus for it.
Tell me about Saudi Arabia, tell me one thing that you personally know to be true about Saudi Arabia that can be applied to a large scale. Again you reinforce my assertion of a US-centric view of the world: "Everyone is like us and everyone who isn't is exactly like we stereotype them to be."
It says "new type" not "type of new".
I think you're speaking from a very US-centric view. There are very few people outside the US that fall into the sort of "fundamentalist" category that you are describing. There's nothing in the Torah or Koran that says that there's only life on Earth and that Earth is special. To the best of my knowledge there's nothing in the Bible to that effect, either.
Man, his "SeatSale: Seating Made Simple" piece is incredible. Seriously that's really awesome Modern Art. I can't believe it's not on display at the MOMA. Political art is some of my favourite and I live in Cincinnati where all art is political. Recently at the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Arts there was a terrific piece about Mapplethorpe where text descriptions of photographs (the ones made famous by Simon Lease) were on display. These were actually postcards sent to different church congregations. The point of the exhibit was actually to posit the question, why is something obscene when it is the image but not when it is a description of the image?
I think SeatSale is right along these lines. Why is something a grotesque concept when it has physical repercussions but not when they are legal?
PCI express will have a cable connector that will be introduced soon that will allow manufacturers to move the devices that create heat away from the mainboard. This will increase cooling options at both ends.
Compositing and texturing my windows and desktop.
I'm sure it wasn't over NuBus at 10MHz though.
I remember when my Macintosh used main system RAM (about 128k) as part of the graphics and my PC had 256K on the Graphics card.
Circa 96.
Actually, using ATI Displays you can override OpenGL settings and actually have better quality visuals than what the programmer was able to offer at the time. It doesn't affect every game but I see noticable differences with American McGee's Alice and with Harry Potter, both on my Mac.
I can't wait until I can load entire games into the graphics RAM. I was holding off on an x800 because a quarter of the price of my G5 for a graphics card was a bit much, hopefully this will drive down the price of the 256MB version.