Apple's bottom line has always depended on keeping tight control over the hardware to allow maximum integration with their own software. And it works.
The market share is still south of 5%, and you want to tell us that selling slow computers works?
Whatever else you think about Apple's computers, they are without a doubt the easiest PCs on the planet if you're a neophyte.
This would remain the case. Nobody posted to the effect that Macs should be made harder to use.
Targetting multiple architectures means that Apple's got to deal with unpredictable hardware configurations, cards, motherboards, drivers, all sorts of things that could cause inconvenient kernel panics, drive failures, or worse.
Not at all. Man, where do you get this stuff? Apple would still be making the computers. Apple would decide on the configurations, what cards can go in, what mobos to use, etc.
Controlling the hardware is the best way for Apple to do that.
This had little or nothing to do with the 68K processor, and everything to do with the Segment Loader.
That said, I would've made the same decision they did. Given the other complexities inherent in Mac development, organizing your code in segments was at best an annoyance.
Most users of Macs are in the graphics industry. Having BEEN there, I can tell you the 68k to PPC transition was a non-issue.
Not for developers it wasn't, and it was developers of whom I was speaking. And it wasn't even painless for users, who had to sort out all kinds of compatibility issues that were often only resolved by shelling out the bucks for an expensive upgrade.
The PPC ran the 68k code as fast as the old machines.
This wasn't true for some time.
The real transition was in restructuring applications...
Which was my point, thank you very much.
...since they no longer needed to work around the brain-deadedness of the 68k series.
The 68K was a beautiful architecture, and in and of itself had absolutely nothing to do with the migration issues.
Again, old apps were not affected.
Many apps were in fact affected.
You are wrong across the board here, but hey, it's a Mac topic.:)
Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future
on
More on the PowerPC 970
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· Score: 0, Insightful
C'mon! It should be abundantly clear now -- even to Steve -- that nobody else in the universe gives a damn if Macs are the slowest desktops on the planet.
Mac developers are used to heavy lifting to accommodate change. Witness the 680x0->PPC migration (which was incredibly painful), or Mac OS 9->OS X. Adopting a new processor would be a piece of cake at this point.
Take a page from GNU/Linux and the BSD's 1 2 & 3. Target multiple architectures. Let the users decide!
Excellent comments both, you're so right... both about being able to "go anywhere", and the HUD... and that map!
Mapping where I am in a game was fun for Wizardry, but got old quick. This was the first game I ever played where the map was both useful, always available and a pleasure to view as well.
Wireless gets broadcast and spreads itself all over the place, and you need to get a handful of it to get a usable signal.
Laser could operate at full capacity given only the tiniest aperture. And given the number of homes and the size of the land, it's hard to see how such apertures wouldn't exist.
Moreover, there's a huge geek factor here, and one that can be responsibly indulged since they're lookng at providing for infrastructure in the first place.
Relatively novel, hi-tech as in sci-fi, and providing abundant capacity down the road. If I were doing this I would seriously investigate the option.
On/. of all places we see people crying "Why would you want to do this?". Or, "What's wrong with the eMac?"
This is only the first (or one of the first) homebuilt Macs. If enough people jump on the bandwagon prices will eventually drop. As it is now, the price is competitive with a brand new eMac, the comparable version of which was only introduced days ago.
I want to see PowerPC chips on PriceWatch. I want to see different people competing to do motherboards that will run these chips. I want to see more and different case designs. Competition is good. Choice is good. Apple doesn't want us to have either of these things.
And then, there's the thrill of building your own PC. I'm a former Mac person who is now running on my first homebuilt -- which dual-boots XP and Linux -- and the level of satisfaction I have with this machine surpasses anything I've ever owned from Apple (save, perhaps my Pismo PowerBook.)
This can only be a good thing. And if Apple were smart, they'd put the resources in place up front to help them deal with the complexity of supporting what is sure to be the thousand different configurations or more of Macs that are yet to come. Turn your back on these people and you risk making the same mistake that Microsoft made and that is driving so many people to Linux.
This was a little after DOOM came out, so graphically it wasn't as involved as AvP for the PC.
However...
This was the first FPS I ever played that made really good use of ambient sound. Somehow they managed to convey that sense of truly being alone, and so when wandering around the ship and suddenly being confronted with an Alien (yeah it was just a sprite, but still) it was terrifying.
Then I was on some level and there weren't as many Aliens. I should have known what was coming... I forgot that the Predator could cloak... then I heard him whisper into my ear as if he was standing right there next to me and I swear to God I pooped in my pants.
The opening music for that game was instrumental in setting the tone too.
that's keeping them from coming up with the cure/vaccine, too.
Downloading all that pr0n can really bite into the schedule, and it's hard to stay focused when your favorite multiplayer FPS is only a mouse-click away.
Soundproofing board is now a commodity, inexpensive to purchase, easy to work with. This stuff is basically cellulose; it will absorb stray ambient sounds well enough, at least for today's music.
Yes, you still need to build it. And you'd need some nice microphones, but again, for today's music, $20K seems overkill. Even if it weren't, you could rent/lease or affiliate with other bands and split the cost.
The point is that the studio alone is hardly the kind of barrier to entry that justifies the enormous profits the labels are making. For instance, I wouldn't make this argument about movies, not yet. The production of a movie requires some genuine capital. I don't see that with music today.
And yes, if we adopt your definition of the word advertising then it does matter a good deal, but I would consider more like airplay. The label doesn't have to spend any money for this kind of advertising, so it isn't a capital expenditure, which means, that it isn't something a band needs a label to do.
If I were a kid who was inclined towards this industry, and I had a garage, I would make it my calling to turn that garage into a recording studio. Recruit the family iMac; get a good deal on some microphones... do some real damage in this world, and have a lot of fun in the doing.
Do you seriously believe the bands are going to see $.10 out of that buck we send Apple for that song?
And yes, I do know something about the technology involved in a professional recording studio. I know that it is all being replaced big-time by computers, and that the recording studio itself is easily built out of soundproofing board that goes for $5 per eight-by-four panel.
Advertising? Fuck that. I never once bought an album because of the advertising. In case you haven't noticed, the tracks that are making the rounds on the p2p systems are doing very well without it.
No, I've had you on my enemies list for a *long* time dealing with another argument we had.
Yes, I see from your post history that you're a Mac zealot. As thin-skinned a bunch as I've ever encountered (and I used to be one so I know.)
...life without a major label will be a more viable option for new bands...
Yes. There is a difference between how I (someone in his 40's) will see this service and how a kid will. The songs I grew up with are all owned outright by the studios labels and never to be found on an mp3.com or any of its successors, whereas new listeners can much more readily sate their tastes through the many indy or low-rent music sites out there.
So while apple.com/music might appeal to me if they had a better selection (no Beatles, no AC/DC, no Led Zeppelin, etc.) I fail to see how they are going to capture the younger audiences unless they do exactly what you're talking about.
But then they piss off the labels, right? Apple has a great tradition of innovation, but when it comes to playing nice with the other companies they fall short.
Either way I'm afraid it means we're forever stuck with having to ply different sites/sources for all the music we want to listen to. Which sucks.
I should have said "recording industry" or "label" rather than studio. My bad.
That said, the studios are due for a little democratization as well, what with all of this new technology we have access to today.
Finally, let me just point out that your grasp of economics is even more frightening than mine! If you price the song for a dime, more people end up buying it. And given the target audience for most bands today -- an audience that isn't exactly swimming in disposable income -- that can more than make up for the reduced price.
Especially today, when the industry should be trying to wean kids off of downloading tracks for free. A dime a song had a chance of doing that. I doubt a buck a song will.
And selling 1437143 songs on an Internet where there are a billion downloaders or more isn't the mean feat you portray it to be.
(So I get on your enemies list for this post? Talk about a thin skin.)
Dark Side of the Moon for instance goes for $15. "Aha!" you say, "I'll just buy the single tracks separately!"
No.
You can't. They deliberately prevent you from buying two tracks from the album, just to get you to pay an inflated price.
What does this mean? It means the camel's nose is already under the tent with respect to playing with the prices. Soon we'll see certain singles going for $1.50. Then we'll see certain singles you'll have to buy in combination with other singles. Then finally we'll see singles you have to buy the whole album before you get to listen, and we'll have come full circle.
No, the answer to the problem of music and computers is clear. Fuck the studios. The Internet has made them obsolete. We don't need them. The bands don't need them either. Let the bands sell their music direct on the Internet, let other web sites serve as portals to those band sites, and then let's do this dance again, this time without the fucking studios.
Charge a dime per song. The artist sees the whole dime, and not only that, more people would pay.
The artist wins. The listeners win.
And the rat fuck studio execs can go get themselves a real job.
No at all, it just means that it's merely illegal in those states...
I don't believe you. Show me.
You have got to be kidding me. 19th Century coercion was obvious, but 21st Century coercion can be subtle and backed by documents that appear to show the victim is responsible for their own problems.
Totally unsubstantiated. To do that you'd need to cite an example of coercion in this century not available a hundred years ago.
I have a problem with anyone buying the vote of my representative.
So do I. Read for comprehension.
Where's your support for this claim?
Um, well, if the abused can venture into a public place with the abuser and be intimidated enough not to cry for help, then it stands to reason she'd be intimidated enough to vote according to the abusers wishes.
You're still fired, and will have no meaningful recourse.
Of course you do. Get another job.
BTW, any company that allows this kind of nonsense to go on isn't going to stay in business very long. The problem solves itself.
Did it hurt when you fell off the turnip truck?
I wouldn't be insulting the intelligence of others if I were you.
Religious groups are notorious for both being difficult to leave and fostering groupthink...
Ergo, nothing is lost by voting electronically... the disciple would likely vote the way the church would have him vote anyways.
It's not your decision.
Never said it was. I was merely expressing my opinion, as was obvious to anyone reading my message.
Slashdot Mirror
Probaby get a better decision that way.
The market share is still south of 5%, and you want to tell us that selling slow computers works?
This would remain the case. Nobody posted to the effect that Macs should be made harder to use.
Not at all. Man, where do you get this stuff? Apple would still be making the computers. Apple would decide on the configurations, what cards can go in, what mobos to use, etc.
Nobody suggested otherwise.
This had little or nothing to do with the 68K processor, and everything to do with the Segment Loader.
That said, I would've made the same decision they did. Given the other complexities inherent in Mac development, organizing your code in segments was at best an annoyance.
The 680x0 was a truly *great* processor.
Not for developers it wasn't, and it was developers of whom I was speaking. And it wasn't even painless for users, who had to sort out all kinds of compatibility issues that were often only resolved by shelling out the bucks for an expensive upgrade.
This wasn't true for some time.
Which was my point, thank you very much.
The 68K was a beautiful architecture, and in and of itself had absolutely nothing to do with the migration issues.
Many apps were in fact affected.
You are wrong across the board here, but hey, it's a Mac topic.
C'mon! It should be abundantly clear now -- even to Steve -- that nobody else in the universe gives a damn if Macs are the slowest desktops on the planet.
Mac developers are used to heavy lifting to accommodate change. Witness the 680x0->PPC migration (which was incredibly painful), or Mac OS 9->OS X. Adopting a new processor would be a piece of cake at this point.
Take a page from GNU/Linux and the BSD's 1 2 & 3. Target multiple architectures. Let the users decide!
Excellent comments both, you're so right... both about being able to "go anywhere", and the HUD... and that map!
Mapping where I am in a game was fun for Wizardry, but got old quick. This was the first game I ever played where the map was both useful, always available and a pleasure to view as well.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Yes, that's why I suggested using laser light.
Wireless gets broadcast and spreads itself all over the place, and you need to get a handful of it to get a usable signal.
Laser could operate at full capacity given only the tiniest aperture. And given the number of homes and the size of the land, it's hard to see how such apertures wouldn't exist.
Moreover, there's a huge geek factor here, and one that can be responsibly indulged since they're lookng at providing for infrastructure in the first place.
Relatively novel, hi-tech as in sci-fi, and providing abundant capacity down the road. If I were doing this I would seriously investigate the option.
Got line-of-sight?
But if enough people express interest in building their own Macs, surely the boys in Taiwan will start punching our their own mobos.
Then the prices *will* drop.
I mean, really, look at some of these responses.
/. of all places we see people crying "Why would you want to do this?". Or, "What's wrong with the eMac?"
On
This is only the first (or one of the first) homebuilt Macs. If enough people jump on the bandwagon prices will eventually drop. As it is now, the price is competitive with a brand new eMac, the comparable version of which was only introduced days ago.
I want to see PowerPC chips on PriceWatch. I want to see different people competing to do motherboards that will run these chips. I want to see more and different case designs. Competition is good. Choice is good. Apple doesn't want us to have either of these things.
And then, there's the thrill of building your own PC. I'm a former Mac person who is now running on my first homebuilt -- which dual-boots XP and Linux -- and the level of satisfaction I have with this machine surpasses anything I've ever owned from Apple (save, perhaps my Pismo PowerBook.)
This can only be a good thing. And if Apple were smart, they'd put the resources in place up front to help them deal with the complexity of supporting what is sure to be the thousand different configurations or more of Macs that are yet to come. Turn your back on these people and you risk making the same mistake that Microsoft made and that is driving so many people to Linux.
I liked their idea better. Choke all of the complexity at a single point.
Many times I have been concerned that so many here just don't understand how perilous a time this is in America.
This discussion appears to have brought the patriots out.
It's a sight I really needed to see. Thank you.
This was a little after DOOM came out, so graphically it wasn't as involved as AvP for the PC.
However...
This was the first FPS I ever played that made really good use of ambient sound. Somehow they managed to convey that sense of truly being alone, and so when wandering around the ship and suddenly being confronted with an Alien (yeah it was just a sprite, but still) it was terrifying.
Then I was on some level and there weren't as many Aliens. I should have known what was coming... I forgot that the Predator could cloak... then I heard him whisper into my ear as if he was standing right there next to me and I swear to God I pooped in my pants.
The opening music for that game was instrumental in setting the tone too.
What a great fucking game.
Since dogs traditionally chase mailmen, I think this would be more fitting.
Just replace the people who deliver mail with the people who spam us with e-mail, and you have a smash hit!
You'd need to give Aibo some teeth though, and I've got some old and rusty Exacto-knife blades that would fit the bill perfectly.
that's keeping them from coming up with the cure/vaccine, too.
Downloading all that pr0n can really bite into the schedule, and it's hard to stay focused when your favorite multiplayer FPS is only a mouse-click away.
I think I've made my point.
That's right. Zero times. As in, not once.
Troll, feed thyself.
Soundproofing board is now a commodity, inexpensive to purchase, easy to work with. This stuff is basically cellulose; it will absorb stray ambient sounds well enough, at least for today's music.
Yes, you still need to build it. And you'd need some nice microphones, but again, for today's music, $20K seems overkill. Even if it weren't, you could rent/lease or affiliate with other bands and split the cost.
The point is that the studio alone is hardly the kind of barrier to entry that justifies the enormous profits the labels are making. For instance, I wouldn't make this argument about movies, not yet. The production of a movie requires some genuine capital. I don't see that with music today.
And yes, if we adopt your definition of the word advertising then it does matter a good deal, but I would consider more like airplay. The label doesn't have to spend any money for this kind of advertising, so it isn't a capital expenditure, which means, that it isn't something a band needs a label to do.
I'm sure you've read this already.
If I were a kid who was inclined towards this industry, and I had a garage, I would make it my calling to turn that garage into a recording studio. Recruit the family iMac; get a good deal on some microphones... do some real damage in this world, and have a lot of fun in the doing.
And yes, I do know something about the technology involved in a professional recording studio. I know that it is all being replaced big-time by computers, and that the recording studio itself is easily built out of soundproofing board that goes for $5 per eight-by-four panel.
Advertising? Fuck that. I never once bought an album because of the advertising. In case you haven't noticed, the tracks that are making the rounds on the p2p systems are doing very well without it.
Yes, I see from your post history that you're a Mac zealot. As thin-skinned a bunch as I've ever encountered (and I used to be one so I know.)
Yes. There is a difference between how I (someone in his 40's) will see this service and how a kid will. The songs I grew up with are all owned outright by the studios labels and never to be found on an mp3.com or any of its successors, whereas new listeners can much more readily sate their tastes through the many indy or low-rent music sites out there.
So while apple.com/music might appeal to me if they had a better selection (no Beatles, no AC/DC, no Led Zeppelin, etc.) I fail to see how they are going to capture the younger audiences unless they do exactly what you're talking about.
But then they piss off the labels, right? Apple has a great tradition of innovation, but when it comes to playing nice with the other companies they fall short.
Either way I'm afraid it means we're forever stuck with having to ply different sites/sources for all the music we want to listen to. Which sucks.
I should have said "recording industry" or "label" rather than studio. My bad.
That said, the studios are due for a little democratization as well, what with all of this new technology we have access to today.
Finally, let me just point out that your grasp of economics is even more frightening than mine! If you price the song for a dime, more people end up buying it. And given the target audience for most bands today -- an audience that isn't exactly swimming in disposable income -- that can more than make up for the reduced price.
Especially today, when the industry should be trying to wean kids off of downloading tracks for free. A dime a song had a chance of doing that. I doubt a buck a song will.
And selling 1437143 songs on an Internet where there are a billion downloaders or more isn't the mean feat you portray it to be.
(So I get on your enemies list for this post? Talk about a thin skin.)
Depends on the album.
Dark Side of the Moon for instance goes for $15. "Aha!" you say, "I'll just buy the single tracks separately!"
No.
You can't. They deliberately prevent you from buying two tracks from the album, just to get you to pay an inflated price.
What does this mean? It means the camel's nose is already under the tent with respect to playing with the prices. Soon we'll see certain singles going for $1.50. Then we'll see certain singles you'll have to buy in combination with other singles. Then finally we'll see singles you have to buy the whole album before you get to listen, and we'll have come full circle.
No, the answer to the problem of music and computers is clear. Fuck the studios. The Internet has made them obsolete. We don't need them. The bands don't need them either. Let the bands sell their music direct on the Internet, let other web sites serve as portals to those band sites, and then let's do this dance again, this time without the fucking studios.
Charge a dime per song. The artist sees the whole dime, and not only that, more people would pay.
The artist wins. The listeners win.
And the rat fuck studio execs can go get themselves a real job.
I don't believe you. Show me.
Totally unsubstantiated. To do that you'd need to cite an example of coercion in this century not available a hundred years ago.
So do I. Read for comprehension.
Um, well, if the abused can venture into a public place with the abuser and be intimidated enough not to cry for help, then it stands to reason she'd be intimidated enough to vote according to the abusers wishes.
Of course you do. Get another job.
BTW, any company that allows this kind of nonsense to go on isn't going to stay in business very long. The problem solves itself.
I wouldn't be insulting the intelligence of others if I were you.
Ergo, nothing is lost by voting electronically... the disciple would likely vote the way the church would have him vote anyways.
Never said it was. I was merely expressing my opinion, as was obvious to anyone reading my message.
Any election system which allows a voter to prove how he voted is unconstitutional in many states.
The implication here is that it *is* constitutional in some states and we don't appear to see the problems you outline.
If you can't prove how you voted, there's no point in buying votes or attempting to coerce voters.
In this day and age any attempt to coerce a voter is liable to be picked up on somebody's camcorder and backfire spectacularly.
And I have less of a problem with the rich buying my vote than I do the vote of my representative.
- a battered woman can be forced to vote "the right way" by her abusive husband. (or use "spouse" all around, since there are some battered husbands)
The battered woman is so terrified she will probably vote the way her husband wants, regardless of the system.
- an employee can be forced to vote in his boss's office.
The employee can blow the whistle on the employer, sue for damages, etc.
- a church group can get together to pray and then "Witness" each other voting the right way.
A person can choose to leave that group.
I'd gladly risk all of the scenarios you've described if in return I can have confidence that the vote is being rigged "behing the scenes."