I know that GimpPrint will make it into Panther, but I think it would be great if some version of Samba 3.0 could make its way into Mac OS X 10.3. The best reason being that Samba 3.0 is supposed to support the signed transmission security that Windows Server 2003 implements. Rock on!
Well, any digital communication device has to have a certain level of redundancy and error correction. An 802.11a device will do pretty much the same thing as a b or g device. However, when b compatibility is introduced, more hopping and use on the channels is done than before. So, if you've got b compatibility enabled, you're going to have more intereference compensation (even though data itself may not be transmitted), and things only get worse when you're using things like a 2.4 GHz cordless phone or Bluetooth. Anything RF on the same swath of the spectrum will screw things up.
Gigabit ethernet is supposed to be 100 times faster than good ol' 10BaseT. It is, at the root layer. Most devices can't push that much data through the pipe, and with wireless, there is MUCH more error correction that needs to be done in communicating back and forth. Wired networks (normally) don't have the kind of interference that 2.4 GHz-band devices now suffer from.
iDVD checks for a DVD-R connected to an ATA bus on a Macintosh. ATA is not an external standard (with a few notable hacks excluded) and therefore the idea of an external drive with iDVD is null. I have a Power Mac 9500, and to use iDVD with the machine, I would have to replace the ACARD-based ATA card with a Promise-based card. ACARD-connected drives identify themselves as SCSI to the system, whereas the system sees raw ATA devices when using the Promise cards.
If you install something like an A05 drive into a previously non-SuperDrive G4, you've got gold. The problem is, you have to LEGALLY obtain a copy of iDVD. That is solved easily by buying a copy of iLife and going to town. I know a TON of Apple resellers do it, even though it is not condoned by Apple. I think I've seen CompUSA do an install of that kind of drive on occasion. There is one BIG problem, though.
The drive itself is not covered under warranty, or under AppleCare. And on a PowerBook of this sort, you are _probably_ voiding the warranty in its entirety by doing this sort of upgrade. Anyone who has ever tried to do optical drive work on a TiBook knows that there are good reasons for this. I can't guarantee that this is the case, but you'll have a hard time finding a service provider who will touch it.
I'm by no means telling anyone which way to go. I have a Pismo 500 with 1024 MB of RAM and the new 80 GB TravelStar 80GN hard disk. Both of those are far beyond what the factory has rated, but they don't violate the warranty. Getting that 900 MHz G3 upgrade, though, definitely voids the few precious months of AppleCare I have left. When my 40GN died two weeks ago, I was out of luck when it came to AppleCare and had to go through Hitachi. Same case for the internal SuperDrive, Apple will tell you to go away.
Short story: Figure out what is more important, saving money or preserving your warranty. The internal options are attractive, but the status of your warranty is definitely questionable. Getting DVD Studio Pro, CaptyDVD or Devideon with an external burner is faster and preserves your warranty, but is more expensive and not portable.
My first real e-mail client was a little doodad written in HyperCard, and on my own machine, was Netscape 2.0 on an old Duo 270c. I used Netscape 3.0 when I had to, and then started using Outlook Express when Netscape 4.0 Standalone was introduced.
Since I moved to Outlook Express, I have tried many e-mail clients including newer versions of Netscape, Mozilla, and even Apple's Mail.app, but the utility of OE/Entourage has yet to be beat in my eyes. It is a pretty polished app, and it has been quite stable and usable with one notable exception (my own fault, however.)
I've tried every version of Mail.app just to make sure I'm not missing out on anything, and every time I've gone back to Entourage. I'll be happy to see what Panther/10.3 brings, as the competition is definitely welcome. I also want to see what MS does in regards to their Exchange server support in the next month or two.
Much as I hate Windows, Entourage is still my favorite client under OS X.
Yup. We know squat until the day of whatever the announcement is. We all got our news in January DURING the keynote. Not a moment before the rest of the world. It stinks, but at least we don't have to lie to folks.
At the Apple retail store I work at, we've been waiting for some sort of an announcement. People come in asking when new iPods with color screens and video players are supposed to ship, and we have to say "nothing has been announced." One guy even tried to say that we HAD announced a 970 version of the iPod, and wanted to know when he could pick it up. Hopefully this will quiet a lot of those folks.
I would like to see the new TravelStar 80GN in some sort of small iPod-ish MP3 player. Given, it's a 2.5" drive, but damn!
The developer of selfQuit has decided to stop development of their "possible" killer app for OS X because someone said their friend who knows a guy who works at an Apple store made fun of the program.
I had 4 checks coming to me. One was the $30 Toast rebate I got through the Apple Retail Store, one was the $30 rebate for buying TurboTax State, $70 or something was from CA state, and $370 from the Federal Government. I have recieved 3 of them. Which one took the longest?
Hint: it wasn't the feds.
Yup, Intuit takes longer to process a $30 rebate than the Federal Government takes to process my income taxes. Man, how would you like to have "Slower than the Feds" on your feature list...
It's down right now because of some as-yet unresolved OS update issues with 10.2.5, but I have to say that I love CPU upgrades.
I would not pay that much money for one, personally, but there are a lot of people who would. I know a guy who runs Final Cut 1.2.5 or so on a B/W G3 that could certainly benefit from the G4 upgrade (although I don't believe FCP 1 is AltiVec-friendly.) His system is rock-solid and he will not move to another machine for a while. It has worked perfectly for years, and even though he is putting his new DP G4 tower through trials, a speedup in his current setup makes a lot of financial sense.
It is definitely not for everyone, but that doesn't mean it is totally useless. Although, I know a lot of people will buy them just to say "Yeah, I've got a blue Mac that tops 1 GHz." Hehe.
I think that should fusion become viable for providing energy to the masses, then fuel cells could also be practical soon thereafter.
Due to the laws of the conservation of energy, one can electrolyze (is that the proper word?) as much water as they need to get the hydrogen for fuel cells, but you still have to use energy to do it. That energy would have to be provided by some other means, such as coal and natural gas, et. al, solar, wind, or nuclear.
Solar and wind are great ideas and there are many inroads being made. Nuclear works now, but it's dirty and no new plants have been built for ~25 years. We're trying to move away from fossil fuels, so boo on them.
Fusion, while having many prominent failures, would be a wonderful adjunct to solar and wind. Powering the hydrolysis plants to make cleaner fuels for the masses would kick ass!
I think that getting a (hopefully) well made and complete version of Windows Media working on Linux devices could be a good thing, but if it is not open-sourced (and it likely would not be) it will have few benefits on other open OSes. It is all in the implementation.
More software with real-world uses is a good thing, when it is good. More crapware floating around makes the world that much worse.
Is that it uses Rendevous to automatically discover local nodes on the network to use as a sort of self-discovering render farm. This is great for folks who would like to get a few cheap G4s rather than pay for an SGI and pay for the IRIX version of the software.
And if folks want a smaller cluster for rendering, they can always get xServe cluster nodes to free up that valuable desk space.
I've heard that a good amount of the base code in their products is in Pascal. While I don't know if this is true, it would also imply a helluva lot of 68k code still lurking about in their software. Going through both 68k emulation as well as another compatibility API is just bad. I hope this is not the case.
Also, could one think that they are not optimizing their new PPC Carbon/Cocoa code as much for the platform? Surely the difference between a coder and a good coder could be measured in application performance, at least somewhat. While I hate math, getting better performance takes finding the time-consuming calculations and reducing it all to the easiest possible operations.
Why not put some thought into making performance better rather than making gee-whiz features that most folks never asked for.
And that Apple has been able to tweak MUCH better performance and features out of products like the Final Cut series shows that it CAN be done. Is Adobe really wanting to spend the time and effort it needs to in order to get performance to an acceptable level?
God forbid, someone might have to write some stuff in ASM to get results. Blasphemy!
As Vince Lombardi once said: "You can't make a chicken sandwich out of chicken shit."
Hey, I work for Apple, but am a Republican and voted for GWB. I'm not going to let the dynamic Algore (hehe) sway me away from a superior mesh of hardware and software. While I don't agree with his politics, I use and promote the best products out there.
I can feel the difference in xMahJongg. Now if I could only get my ASCII porn stuff to look better under hardware acceleration, I'd be set. Oh well, something for the next update. Hehehe.
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I know that GimpPrint will make it into Panther, but I think it would be great if some version of Samba 3.0 could make its way into Mac OS X 10.3. The best reason being that Samba 3.0 is supposed to support the signed transmission security that Windows Server 2003 implements. Rock on!
For generating random numbers: A quarter in my pocket and a lot of free time.
Well, any digital communication device has to have a certain level of redundancy and error correction. An 802.11a device will do pretty much the same thing as a b or g device. However, when b compatibility is introduced, more hopping and use on the channels is done than before. So, if you've got b compatibility enabled, you're going to have more intereference compensation (even though data itself may not be transmitted), and things only get worse when you're using things like a 2.4 GHz cordless phone or Bluetooth. Anything RF on the same swath of the spectrum will screw things up.
Gigabit ethernet is supposed to be 100 times faster than good ol' 10BaseT. It is, at the root layer. Most devices can't push that much data through the pipe, and with wireless, there is MUCH more error correction that needs to be done in communicating back and forth. Wired networks (normally) don't have the kind of interference that 2.4 GHz-band devices now suffer from.
Mr. Felcher, I'd appreciate it if you keep the profanity from where children can see it.
Imagine the UT2003 framerate on that sucker!
iDVD checks for a DVD-R connected to an ATA bus on a Macintosh. ATA is not an external standard (with a few notable hacks excluded) and therefore the idea of an external drive with iDVD is null. I have a Power Mac 9500, and to use iDVD with the machine, I would have to replace the ACARD-based ATA card with a Promise-based card. ACARD-connected drives identify themselves as SCSI to the system, whereas the system sees raw ATA devices when using the Promise cards.
If you install something like an A05 drive into a previously non-SuperDrive G4, you've got gold. The problem is, you have to LEGALLY obtain a copy of iDVD. That is solved easily by buying a copy of iLife and going to town. I know a TON of Apple resellers do it, even though it is not condoned by Apple. I think I've seen CompUSA do an install of that kind of drive on occasion. There is one BIG problem, though.
The drive itself is not covered under warranty, or under AppleCare. And on a PowerBook of this sort, you are _probably_ voiding the warranty in its entirety by doing this sort of upgrade. Anyone who has ever tried to do optical drive work on a TiBook knows that there are good reasons for this. I can't guarantee that this is the case, but you'll have a hard time finding a service provider who will touch it.
I'm by no means telling anyone which way to go. I have a Pismo 500 with 1024 MB of RAM and the new 80 GB TravelStar 80GN hard disk. Both of those are far beyond what the factory has rated, but they don't violate the warranty. Getting that 900 MHz G3 upgrade, though, definitely voids the few precious months of AppleCare I have left. When my 40GN died two weeks ago, I was out of luck when it came to AppleCare and had to go through Hitachi. Same case for the internal SuperDrive, Apple will tell you to go away.
Short story: Figure out what is more important, saving money or preserving your warranty. The internal options are attractive, but the status of your warranty is definitely questionable. Getting DVD Studio Pro, CaptyDVD or Devideon with an external burner is faster and preserves your warranty, but is more expensive and not portable.
I still use Microsoft Entourage in Mac OS X.
My first real e-mail client was a little doodad written in HyperCard, and on my own machine, was Netscape 2.0 on an old Duo 270c. I used Netscape 3.0 when I had to, and then started using Outlook Express when Netscape 4.0 Standalone was introduced.
Since I moved to Outlook Express, I have tried many e-mail clients including newer versions of Netscape, Mozilla, and even Apple's Mail.app, but the utility of OE/Entourage has yet to be beat in my eyes. It is a pretty polished app, and it has been quite stable and usable with one notable exception (my own fault, however.)
I've tried every version of Mail.app just to make sure I'm not missing out on anything, and every time I've gone back to Entourage. I'll be happy to see what Panther/10.3 brings, as the competition is definitely welcome. I also want to see what MS does in regards to their Exchange server support in the next month or two.
Much as I hate Windows, Entourage is still my favorite client under OS X.
I'm looking right now, and short of a soldering iron and God's good graces, it is definitely a no go.
Nobody is allowed to tell you that that is basically how things happen. ;)
Yup. We know squat until the day of whatever the announcement is. We all got our news in January DURING the keynote. Not a moment before the rest of the world. It stinks, but at least we don't have to lie to folks.
That would be nice, just as long as they don't make you sync over Bluetooth as well.
At the Apple retail store I work at, we've been waiting for some sort of an announcement. People come in asking when new iPods with color screens and video players are supposed to ship, and we have to say "nothing has been announced." One guy even tried to say that we HAD announced a 970 version of the iPod, and wanted to know when he could pick it up. Hopefully this will quiet a lot of those folks.
I would like to see the new TravelStar 80GN in some sort of small iPod-ish MP3 player. Given, it's a 2.5" drive, but damn!
The developer of selfQuit has decided to stop development of their "possible" killer app for OS X because someone said their friend who knows a guy who works at an Apple store made fun of the program.
I had 4 checks coming to me. One was the $30 Toast rebate I got through the Apple Retail Store, one was the $30 rebate for buying TurboTax State, $70 or something was from CA state, and $370 from the Federal Government. I have recieved 3 of them. Which one took the longest?
Hint: it wasn't the feds.
Yup, Intuit takes longer to process a $30 rebate than the Federal Government takes to process my income taxes. Man, how would you like to have "Slower than the Feds" on your feature list...
Would email be capable of being forwarded once. Oh, how I wish that were the case.
It's down right now because of some as-yet unresolved OS update issues with 10.2.5, but I have to say that I love CPU upgrades.
I would not pay that much money for one, personally, but there are a lot of people who would. I know a guy who runs Final Cut 1.2.5 or so on a B/W G3 that could certainly benefit from the G4 upgrade (although I don't believe FCP 1 is AltiVec-friendly.) His system is rock-solid and he will not move to another machine for a while. It has worked perfectly for years, and even though he is putting his new DP G4 tower through trials, a speedup in his current setup makes a lot of financial sense.
It is definitely not for everyone, but that doesn't mean it is totally useless. Although, I know a lot of people will buy them just to say "Yeah, I've got a blue Mac that tops 1 GHz." Hehe.
I think that should fusion become viable for providing energy to the masses, then fuel cells could also be practical soon thereafter.
Due to the laws of the conservation of energy, one can electrolyze (is that the proper word?) as much water as they need to get the hydrogen for fuel cells, but you still have to use energy to do it. That energy would have to be provided by some other means, such as coal and natural gas, et. al, solar, wind, or nuclear.
Solar and wind are great ideas and there are many inroads being made. Nuclear works now, but it's dirty and no new plants have been built for ~25 years. We're trying to move away from fossil fuels, so boo on them.
Fusion, while having many prominent failures, would be a wonderful adjunct to solar and wind. Powering the hydrolysis plants to make cleaner fuels for the masses would kick ass!
More ways for me to crash my car while wardriving and endanger pedestrian warchalkers...
I think that getting a (hopefully) well made and complete version of Windows Media working on Linux devices could be a good thing, but if it is not open-sourced (and it likely would not be) it will have few benefits on other open OSes. It is all in the implementation.
More software with real-world uses is a good thing, when it is good. More crapware floating around makes the world that much worse.
Much as I my girlfriend and I are geeks, I think she'd kick my ass if I got her an engagement CPU.
;)
Now, the 17" PowerBook is another story...
Is that it uses Rendevous to automatically discover local nodes on the network to use as a sort of self-discovering render farm. This is great for folks who would like to get a few cheap G4s rather than pay for an SGI and pay for the IRIX version of the software.
And if folks want a smaller cluster for rendering, they can always get xServe cluster nodes to free up that valuable desk space.
Incredible!
I think that Adobe is quite lazy. Why you ask?
I've heard that a good amount of the base code in their products is in Pascal. While I don't know if this is true, it would also imply a helluva lot of 68k code still lurking about in their software. Going through both 68k emulation as well as another compatibility API is just bad. I hope this is not the case.
Also, could one think that they are not optimizing their new PPC Carbon/Cocoa code as much for the platform? Surely the difference between a coder and a good coder could be measured in application performance, at least somewhat. While I hate math, getting better performance takes finding the time-consuming calculations and reducing it all to the easiest possible operations.
Why not put some thought into making performance better rather than making gee-whiz features that most folks never asked for.
And that Apple has been able to tweak MUCH better performance and features out of products like the Final Cut series shows that it CAN be done. Is Adobe really wanting to spend the time and effort it needs to in order to get performance to an acceptable level?
God forbid, someone might have to write some stuff in ASM to get results. Blasphemy!
As Vince Lombardi once said:
"You can't make a chicken sandwich out of chicken shit."
Hey, I work for Apple, but am a Republican and voted for GWB. I'm not going to let the dynamic Algore (hehe) sway me away from a superior mesh of hardware and software. While I don't agree with his politics, I use and promote the best products out there.
I can feel the difference in xMahJongg. Now if I could only get my ASCII porn stuff to look better under hardware acceleration, I'd be set. Oh well, something for the next update. Hehehe.