Hmm. See this is how dumb it has gotten. I didn't even consider that it might be against the law to hyperlink. And I didn't even hyperlink, I just typed the URL, Slashdot turned it into a hyperlink!
2. As a UK citizen am I breaking any laws (inc. this proposed law) by having downloaded and stored material such as that from http://www.captivemale.com?
You're completely wrong in this assumption. Each app gets a directory, into which it can store whatever it wants, certain directories within this even get backed up automatically upon a sync. There appears to be no limit to local file storage, and Apple even has a sample app in the SDK which shows the use of a SQLite database on the iPhone. (Look for "SQLiteBooks.dmg").
You don't have to look very far to see how the cheaper Dell models are cheaper in build quality also.
My girlfriend's Dell laptop for example - the plastic feels cheaper, it's bigger and clunkier than more expensive systems, there is some kind of high-pitched inductor/capacitor chirp when you move the mouse around which is incredibly irritating, the screen has a very poor viewing angle, the speakers are too quiet to watch a DVD with when there's traffic on the road outside, etc. etc.
I'm not saying it's not worth the money that it costs, it was a very cheap model - but if you think you are somehow getting a no-compromise high quality product at the very cheap end then you're simply not looking hard enough at the products you're buying.
Look, just because you're familiar with HTML, and server technologies doesn't mean that you can extend yourself into graphic design. Ask yourself - would you let a typical graphic designer manage those Ethernet servers, etc. that you currently maintain on your network? No! It works both ways.
Decent graphic design - especially accessibility etc. that your boss wants is a studied art, it will cost you a lot less just to go to the professionals, even if doing it yourself seems like it might save money and time. It won't.
The art of winning battles is knowing which ones to participate in, and which ones to sit out.
Absolutely, and it appears that there's a good chance that in just 6 months Apple have managed to outsell all Windows mobile devices combined with the iPhone.
The technology market has turned, Microsoft had fumbled and is up against very strong competition in every one of its operating segments, every key product with the possible exception of Office has extremely tough competition. The 90's are long gone, Microsoft is simply not competing. In short, it is failing.
Now, Microsoft is the most ungodly massive balloon, and it's going to take an age to deflate - so long that many will claim it's not deflating at all - but like a slow puncture, there is an inevitable end at some point in the future. Microsoft will have to reorder itself, it will not disappear, it will be relegated much in the same way as IBM has been relegated. Still massive company, still important, but not dominating.
This guys only problem (that he really rails about) is a kernel panic caused by Azureus (and some Apple bug in the networking stack.
This is terrible, yes, but it's a single (bad) bug that he's seeing. He just doesn't know what's causing it so he attributes it to the general bugginess of Leopard. I kow this because this is the problem I had, and have spent onsiderable time chasing the Apple discussion forums and my friends to nail it down. Google 'Leopard Azureus Kernel Panic' for more info.
It's a serious and really annoying bug for sure, but it's **one** bug. Leopard != Vista.
I really cannot understand the whining of people who have been so vocal about this SDK, and now that all this gnashing of teeth has forced Apple to pre-announce, people like you come along claiming this is 'long overdue'.
The fact that Apple is a ~15k person company with a massive variety of products means that there must be focus. In part this slim headcount and focus is what allows Apple to produce really great products. (For comparison - Apple is now roughly worth the same, by market cap., as IBM, which employs around 300,000 people worldwide).
Think for a moment what a considerable development the iPhone is. Particularly the software, there is an ungodly amount of work and rework that has gone into producing the final product that you can pick up at the mall. The last thing that Apple was thinking about during the development phase was a clean documented publically available and stable API. No, you can bet that the iPhone API twisted and turned through the development cycle, massive rewritings, refactorings, and changes over a number of years. For Apple to release an SDK and API they have to be clean, stable, unlikely to change and break existing code - all of the things that during the development phase the internal API was not.
When releasing an SDK and an API, massive resources must be put into considering flexibility and change 2, 5, 10 years down the line. These things take time. Apple decided, rightly, to release a finished device this Summer. All the whining in the world (and I believe we got close to that) could not push Apple's internal API into a publicly usable stable state at that time. I think, considering that this is a brand new phone platform (not something like Symbian etc. which has been around a long time), waiting 9 months for an SDK is nothing, in fact, I'm amazed they've done it in less than a year. Mark though - Apple would have been mad never to have provided one, and personally I expected this announcement for WWDC'08, but I have found it astoundingly ridiculous how people have cried and whined about the lack of an SDK without thinking for a single minute. For crying out loud, it's been only three months. The only thing 'long overdue' will, hopefully, be the shutting of the mouths of all the incessant whining.
I found the shots on the Ars webpage pretty useless - surely a side-on shot would be better? Anyone want to link a better photo of these slabs of dead tree?
The key point you make here is that the PIN is encrypted. There are hardware failsafes too, that prevent people with sophisticated electronics gadgetry from trying to discern a PIN's location in memory on the chip, although people have tried to hack the cards using latent backchannels such as measuring tiny tiny power changes in consumption across the chip when it operates.
In short - don't worry too much about the PIN number being on the card. You have other things to worry about if your card is in someone elses hands than them getting your PIN.
It might, according to Microsoft, conveniently stand for 'New Technology' now that it's 2007, but the original poster was entirely right, this wasn't what 'NT' originally stood for. Lookup: "Backronym".
It's kinda glaring that you don't really know what you're talking about regarding merging a CPU and a GPU. The two technologies are pretty much mutually exclusive. So "roll[ing] out a Cell-like processor with 2 or 4 improved x86-64 cores" is non-sensical and impossible. Putting the GPU and the CPU into one package, yes, this is exactly what AMD wants to do, but the two processing units will always be separate individual things, no matter how integrated they are on the silicon. You can't just put a CPU and a GPU in a magical blender and get a homogenised super-chip.
Delicious Library
Comic Life
Grid Computing out of the box
Handbrake (although I hear there's a Windows beta now)
MacTheRipper
iLife (iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, GarageBand, iWeb)
Shake
Logic, and Logic Express
Final Cut Pro
This list of Mac-only software was written from my memory in less than 30 seconds. I'm of the very strong belief that tides have turned, and now OS X has the strongest line-up of software available on any platform at any price. Sure, there may be 10x more contenders for various tools (like DVD rippers, editing software, etc.) but the best in class is on the Mac. And it keeps getting better all the time due to technologies like Core Data, and Core Image, (and now Core Animation) that means that one person developing for the Mac can produce something that would take ten people to do the same on Windows.
Vista will NOT have resolution independence. Please don't spread phantom features about this OS, people will be even more disappointed than necessary. If youdo want an OS with resolution independence, pick up a copy of OS X at the time Vista is shipping. But I repeat - it will *not* be in Vista. You gotta wait another 8 years or so for that I guess...
The PowerMac G5s and the new MacPros do have USB, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800 on the front of the box.
On your iMac, why not plug your USB drive into the USB port on the Apple keyboard that came with it. For the typical home user, this is all they need, and should cover you fine too.
ALL processors ship with a long list of minor bugs and low-level workarounds. Take a look at the Opteron release errata papers. Next time do some research before coming straight from some Digg-esque site.
Quartz2DExtreme was shown only to developers, at a developer's conference, and is accessible only through Apple's development tools.
It is coming for end users, but no promises have ever been made by Apple, no public or consumer oriented showing or demonstration of the technology has been made, about its timeliness.
Most of these things that you mention are fixes to sub-par elements of the OS. These aren't new innovative things to be excited about, these are basic functions that any OS would be embarrassingly incapable without, in short, the things you mention are the ante to just keep playing in the next-gen OS game:
- The new start menu is not an enhancement, just more functionality glummed into an 11-year old UI device stretched way beyond breaking-point.
- Sleep mode is something Windows should have had half a decade or more ago, it's practically a goddamn necessity with a portable.
- "Everybody's a user" security - a huge flaw with Windows that is finally seeing some action, unfortunately looks like there's plenty of tuning to be done before it actually works.
- The sidebar - seriously, you're excited about a technology you can already have (Dashboard, Konfabulator etc.) and implemented in a boring, unimaginative and sceen-hogging way?
- Print system - I'm not qualified to comment
- Bindle of included apps - such as...... Windows Movie Maker? Windows Mail? You can't say that with a straight face surely!?
- WiFi networking which remembers the settings of each wifi network you connect to - um... come on, 6 years wait for THIS?
- "Performance Statistcits" - god, go download one of the dozens of benchmarking apps... why does this make you want to buy Vista at all?
- 64-bit support - seriously, it needs this to even be in the game, it's not some special feature to trumpet above any other OS, it's an absolutely basic necessity.
The only thing you mention which IS slightly exciting to those watching Vista is the new compositing system, Aero. Which will allow some nice effects and finally decent non-flickery, back-buffered drawing to sceen.
Talk about scraping the barrel, these things that you seem so excited about - they're nothing but the absolute basic necessity to even have the OS worth considering in 2007 when it may be released. Where are the things that make you really excited about the OS, the things that make it special? The things that elevate the experience of using the OS rather than a tick-box driven nightmare of minimum-level-of-attention-to-detail copy-cat features.
Apple has a greater market capitalisation (worth) than Dell. (finance.google.com)
This erroneous concept that Apple is, in some way, a 'smalltime' player, an equal to the likes of, say Atari, Acorn, etc. deviates hugely from the truth.
UK education prices are: £643 with VAT (£548 without).
What a great deal for a Core Duo 1.83GHz CPU, decent other specs, software etc. plus the little Front Row remote.
From the Dell UK website, for £802(the link page here says £649, when you go to the configure page, the price jumps to £802, wtf?) for the Inspiron M, you can get a slower CPU (1.66GHz Core Duo), same memory, same HDD, inferior Graphics (Intel GMA 900 vs GMA 950 in the Macbook). Same optical drive, except the Macbook is slot loading (nice). Both have 802.11g networking, but the Macbook also comes with Bluetooth 2.0EDR, the Dell has no Bluetooth capability.
The Dell does have an extra inch on the screen than the Macbook, but is not widescreen.
The Dell lacks:
- Bluetooth
- Remote
- iLife
- OS X
The Dell is also bigger in every dimension. Heavier too. Whichever of the two prices Dell.co.uk give you (£649 or £802) it's clear that the Macbook is very competitive price-wise if you're a student. (We are comparing prices for students here, but I believe the price compares well without the student discount too.)
Looks like a great little machine at a really affordable price. Very impressed, I was worried we'd see some price hikes.
(Ah just figured out the pricing difference on the Dell site, they 'automatically' select the highest service-level when you go to the configure screen... great.)
Your post betrays the fact that you indeed are somewhat blinded by 'the Windows way', and haven't even asked why some things are different. The Dock is designed so that it doesn't matter whether an application is running or not, and when you think about it, it shouldn't matter to the user whether an application is running. Just that they want to use it. The Dock downplays the distinction very well, and gets to the real core of what the user is intending to do - use an application. They shouldn't have to know or care whether it is running already or not.
As for the start menu. In Windows 95 it was a decent application menu. Nice. In XP it's hideous, a mess of command and concepts. Can you describe what it does in one short coherent sentence? No! It's a settings altering, document listing, search capable shutdown/restart/sleep/application menu with a "Run..." command bolted on. Seriously... why are there so many things in there? Because MS didn't want to rock the boat, won't or can't innovate and add these things in more descrete intuitive places. And in Vista, I simply cannot believe my eyes when they see this: Vista Menu
The Start menu in Vista is absolutely ridiculous, I use OS X mostly, but also have a PC, and EVERY time I open that thing I have to stare at it for 2-3 seconds before the information overload is over. It is crazy
Well, it may catch the eye at first, but that is not necessarily a sign of beneficial ergonomics.
Two things that are noticeable within the first second:
- The base is exceptionally shiny, bear in mind that this is something that you are designed to stare at for hours on end, shiny is a big no-no. There are consumer reports of people patching up the tiny little chrome Apple symbol on Apple's screens because they reflect light and distract. This thing will likely be much worse.
- The bezel around the screen is amazingly thick - it may be because it houses speakers - but considering these are only 19" screens, and all of the noise being made recently about dual monitors ("30% Performance increase" etc. etc.), these look like very poor performers when it comes to using more than one together. That bezel x 2 must be over a couple inches thick.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm. See this is how dumb it has gotten. I didn't even consider that it might be against the law to hyperlink. And I didn't even hyperlink, I just typed the URL, Slashdot turned it into a hyperlink!
So, please can someone tell me, so as not to fall foul of the law and be branded some kind of sex offender:
1. As a UK citizen am I breaking any laws (inc. this proposed law) when visiting http://www.captivemale.com./
2. As a UK citizen am I breaking any laws (inc. this proposed law) by having downloaded and stored material such as that from http://www.captivemale.com?
Please. This is a serious question.
You're completely wrong in this assumption. Each app gets a directory, into which it can store whatever it wants, certain directories within this even get backed up automatically upon a sync. There appears to be no limit to local file storage, and Apple even has a sample app in the SDK which shows the use of a SQLite database on the iPhone. (Look for "SQLiteBooks.dmg").
You don't have to look very far to see how the cheaper Dell models are cheaper in build quality also.
My girlfriend's Dell laptop for example - the plastic feels cheaper, it's bigger and clunkier than more expensive systems, there is some kind of high-pitched inductor/capacitor chirp when you move the mouse around which is incredibly irritating, the screen has a very poor viewing angle, the speakers are too quiet to watch a DVD with when there's traffic on the road outside, etc. etc. I'm not saying it's not worth the money that it costs, it was a very cheap model - but if you think you are somehow getting a no-compromise high quality product at the very cheap end then you're simply not looking hard enough at the products you're buying.
Look, just because you're familiar with HTML, and server technologies doesn't mean that you can extend yourself into graphic design. Ask yourself - would you let a typical graphic designer manage those Ethernet servers, etc. that you currently maintain on your network? No! It works both ways.
Decent graphic design - especially accessibility etc. that your boss wants is a studied art, it will cost you a lot less just to go to the professionals, even if doing it yourself seems like it might save money and time. It won't.
The art of winning battles is knowing which ones to participate in, and which ones to sit out.
Absolutely, and it appears that there's a good chance that in just 6 months Apple have managed to outsell all Windows mobile devices combined with the iPhone. The technology market has turned, Microsoft had fumbled and is up against very strong competition in every one of its operating segments, every key product with the possible exception of Office has extremely tough competition. The 90's are long gone, Microsoft is simply not competing. In short, it is failing. Now, Microsoft is the most ungodly massive balloon, and it's going to take an age to deflate - so long that many will claim it's not deflating at all - but like a slow puncture, there is an inevitable end at some point in the future. Microsoft will have to reorder itself, it will not disappear, it will be relegated much in the same way as IBM has been relegated. Still massive company, still important, but not dominating.
This guys only problem (that he really rails about) is a kernel panic caused by Azureus (and some Apple bug in the networking stack. This is terrible, yes, but it's a single (bad) bug that he's seeing. He just doesn't know what's causing it so he attributes it to the general bugginess of Leopard. I kow this because this is the problem I had, and have spent onsiderable time chasing the Apple discussion forums and my friends to nail it down. Google 'Leopard Azureus Kernel Panic' for more info. It's a serious and really annoying bug for sure, but it's **one** bug. Leopard != Vista.
I really cannot understand the whining of people who have been so vocal about this SDK, and now that all this gnashing of teeth has forced Apple to pre-announce, people like you come along claiming this is 'long overdue'.
The fact that Apple is a ~15k person company with a massive variety of products means that there must be focus. In part this slim headcount and focus is what allows Apple to produce really great products. (For comparison - Apple is now roughly worth the same, by market cap., as IBM, which employs around 300,000 people worldwide).
Think for a moment what a considerable development the iPhone is. Particularly the software, there is an ungodly amount of work and rework that has gone into producing the final product that you can pick up at the mall. The last thing that Apple was thinking about during the development phase was a clean documented publically available and stable API. No, you can bet that the iPhone API twisted and turned through the development cycle, massive rewritings, refactorings, and changes over a number of years. For Apple to release an SDK and API they have to be clean, stable, unlikely to change and break existing code - all of the things that during the development phase the internal API was not.
When releasing an SDK and an API, massive resources must be put into considering flexibility and change 2, 5, 10 years down the line. These things take time. Apple decided, rightly, to release a finished device this Summer. All the whining in the world (and I believe we got close to that) could not push Apple's internal API into a publicly usable stable state at that time. I think, considering that this is a brand new phone platform (not something like Symbian etc. which has been around a long time), waiting 9 months for an SDK is nothing, in fact, I'm amazed they've done it in less than a year. Mark though - Apple would have been mad never to have provided one, and personally I expected this announcement for WWDC'08, but I have found it astoundingly ridiculous how people have cried and whined about the lack of an SDK without thinking for a single minute. For crying out loud, it's been only three months. The only thing 'long overdue' will, hopefully, be the shutting of the mouths of all the incessant whining.
I found the shots on the Ars webpage pretty useless - surely a side-on shot would be better? Anyone want to link a better photo of these slabs of dead tree?
The key point you make here is that the PIN is encrypted. There are hardware failsafes too, that prevent people with sophisticated electronics gadgetry from trying to discern a PIN's location in memory on the chip, although people have tried to hack the cards using latent backchannels such as measuring tiny tiny power changes in consumption across the chip when it operates.
In short - don't worry too much about the PIN number being on the card. You have other things to worry about if your card is in someone elses hands than them getting your PIN.
Queen Elizabeth II... is that you?
It might, according to Microsoft, conveniently stand for 'New Technology' now that it's 2007, but the original poster was entirely right, this wasn't what 'NT' originally stood for. Lookup: "Backronym".
It's kinda glaring that you don't really know what you're talking about regarding merging a CPU and a GPU. The two technologies are pretty much mutually exclusive. So "roll[ing] out a Cell-like processor with 2 or 4 improved x86-64 cores" is non-sensical and impossible. Putting the GPU and the CPU into one package, yes, this is exactly what AMD wants to do, but the two processing units will always be separate individual things, no matter how integrated they are on the silicon. You can't just put a CPU and a GPU in a magical blender and get a homogenised super-chip.
Something Mac only:
Delicious Library
Comic Life
Grid Computing out of the box
Handbrake (although I hear there's a Windows beta now)
MacTheRipper
iLife (iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, GarageBand, iWeb)
Shake
Logic, and Logic Express
Final Cut Pro
This list of Mac-only software was written from my memory in less than 30 seconds. I'm of the very strong belief that tides have turned, and now OS X has the strongest line-up of software available on any platform at any price. Sure, there may be 10x more contenders for various tools (like DVD rippers, editing software, etc.) but the best in class is on the Mac. And it keeps getting better all the time due to technologies like Core Data, and Core Image, (and now Core Animation) that means that one person developing for the Mac can produce something that would take ten people to do the same on Windows.
Enough said
:)
Now go buy
Vista will NOT have resolution independence. Please don't spread phantom features about this OS, people will be even more disappointed than necessary. If youdo want an OS with resolution independence, pick up a copy of OS X at the time Vista is shipping. But I repeat - it will *not* be in Vista. You gotta wait another 8 years or so for that I guess...
The PowerMac G5s and the new MacPros do have USB, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800 on the front of the box.
On your iMac, why not plug your USB drive into the USB port on the Apple keyboard that came with it. For the typical home user, this is all they need, and should cover you fine too.
"Do not flush iPod Shuffle"
ALL processors ship with a long list of minor bugs and low-level workarounds. Take a look at the Opteron release errata papers. Next time do some research before coming straight from some Digg-esque site.
Quartz2DExtreme was shown only to developers, at a developer's conference, and is accessible only through Apple's development tools.
It is coming for end users, but no promises have ever been made by Apple, no public or consumer oriented showing or demonstration of the technology has been made, about its timeliness.
Contrast WinFS.
Most of these things that you mention are fixes to sub-par elements of the OS. These aren't new innovative things to be excited about, these are basic functions that any OS would be embarrassingly incapable without, in short, the things you mention are the ante to just keep playing in the next-gen OS game:
... Windows Movie Maker? Windows Mail? You can't say that with a straight face surely!?
- The new start menu is not an enhancement, just more functionality glummed into an 11-year old UI device stretched way beyond breaking-point.
- Sleep mode is something Windows should have had half a decade or more ago, it's practically a goddamn necessity with a portable.
- "Everybody's a user" security - a huge flaw with Windows that is finally seeing some action, unfortunately looks like there's plenty of tuning to be done before it actually works.
- The sidebar - seriously, you're excited about a technology you can already have (Dashboard, Konfabulator etc.) and implemented in a boring, unimaginative and sceen-hogging way?
- Print system - I'm not qualified to comment
- Bindle of included apps - such as...
- WiFi networking which remembers the settings of each wifi network you connect to - um... come on, 6 years wait for THIS?
- "Performance Statistcits" - god, go download one of the dozens of benchmarking apps... why does this make you want to buy Vista at all?
- 64-bit support - seriously, it needs this to even be in the game, it's not some special feature to trumpet above any other OS, it's an absolutely basic necessity.
The only thing you mention which IS slightly exciting to those watching Vista is the new compositing system, Aero. Which will allow some nice effects and finally decent non-flickery, back-buffered drawing to sceen.
Talk about scraping the barrel, these things that you seem so excited about - they're nothing but the absolute basic necessity to even have the OS worth considering in 2007 when it may be released. Where are the things that make you really excited about the OS, the things that make it special? The things that elevate the experience of using the OS rather than a tick-box driven nightmare of minimum-level-of-attention-to-detail copy-cat features.
Apple has a greater market capitalisation (worth) than Dell. (finance.google.com)
This erroneous concept that Apple is, in some way, a 'smalltime' player, an equal to the likes of, say Atari, Acorn, etc. deviates hugely from the truth.
UK education prices are: £643 with VAT (£548 without).
What a great deal for a Core Duo 1.83GHz CPU, decent other specs, software etc. plus the little Front Row remote.
From the Dell UK website, for £802(the link page here says £649, when you go to the configure page, the price jumps to £802, wtf?) for the Inspiron M, you can get a slower CPU (1.66GHz Core Duo), same memory, same HDD, inferior Graphics (Intel GMA 900 vs GMA 950 in the Macbook). Same optical drive, except the Macbook is slot loading (nice). Both have 802.11g networking, but the Macbook also comes with Bluetooth 2.0EDR, the Dell has no Bluetooth capability.
The Dell does have an extra inch on the screen than the Macbook, but is not widescreen.
The Dell lacks:
- Bluetooth
- Remote
- iLife
- OS X
The Dell is also bigger in every dimension. Heavier too. Whichever of the two prices Dell.co.uk give you (£649 or £802) it's clear that the Macbook is very competitive price-wise if you're a student. (We are comparing prices for students here, but I believe the price compares well without the student discount too.)
Looks like a great little machine at a really affordable price. Very impressed, I was worried we'd see some price hikes.
(Ah just figured out the pricing difference on the Dell site, they 'automatically' select the highest service-level when you go to the configure screen... great.)
Your post betrays the fact that you indeed are somewhat blinded by 'the Windows way', and haven't even asked why some things are different. The Dock is designed so that it doesn't matter whether an application is running or not, and when you think about it, it shouldn't matter to the user whether an application is running. Just that they want to use it. The Dock downplays the distinction very well, and gets to the real core of what the user is intending to do - use an application. They shouldn't have to know or care whether it is running already or not.
As for the start menu. In Windows 95 it was a decent application menu. Nice. In XP it's hideous, a mess of command and concepts. Can you describe what it does in one short coherent sentence? No! It's a settings altering, document listing, search capable shutdown/restart/sleep/application menu with a "Run..." command bolted on. Seriously... why are there so many things in there? Because MS didn't want to rock the boat, won't or can't innovate and add these things in more descrete intuitive places. And in Vista, I simply cannot believe my eyes when they see this: Vista Menu
The Start menu in Vista is absolutely ridiculous, I use OS X mostly, but also have a PC, and EVERY time I open that thing I have to stare at it for 2-3 seconds before the information overload is over. It is crazy
Well, it may catch the eye at first, but that is not necessarily a sign of beneficial ergonomics.
Two things that are noticeable within the first second:
- The base is exceptionally shiny, bear in mind that this is something that you are designed to stare at for hours on end, shiny is a big no-no. There are consumer reports of people patching up the tiny little chrome Apple symbol on Apple's screens because they reflect light and distract. This thing will likely be much worse.
- The bezel around the screen is amazingly thick - it may be because it houses speakers - but considering these are only 19" screens, and all of the noise being made recently about dual monitors ("30% Performance increase" etc. etc.), these look like very poor performers when it comes to using more than one together. That bezel x 2 must be over a couple inches thick.