Bear in mind that Yonah is a chip aimed at portables (and other low-power requirements e.g. Mac Mini), and represents an early re-jigging of the Pentium-M architecture. Merom/Conroe will be improved even further, and it appears that the things really will be very good performers.
Of course, there's a few months until these things are on the shelves, but with the roadmaps as they stand, and with these early Conroe benchmarks, you'd be hard pressed to convince anyone that Intel aren't going to have a very compelling piece of hardware.
It's not about the device it's about iTunes as much as anything else. The device is just one part of the equation - this is why this product and the countless ones before it (see Sony discontinuing the 'bean', Dell discontinuing hard-drive based players etc.) will fail.
I don't understand it sometimes... companies like Samsung have incredible resources, and could easily start to build an iTunes software competitor, which also works with PlaysForSure, rather than relying on WMP. It's just symptomatic of a 'me-too' technology industry culture that attempts to eat like a cancer at the few innovators left.
It's not just about the iPod. iPod has powerful friends in iTunes and iTMS. You might stand a chance if you can get two competent and competitive products out of the three in the music-chain (Device-Software-OnlineStore), but concentrating on the iPod is like shooting blanks... that's not how to attack the problem.
Dodgy Analogy: It's like in any number of old-time video games where you come up against a boss enemy, and you can expend all your ammo shooting him in the chest (iPod), but you have to go for the weakspot (eyes, exposed brain a la HL etc.) which is the rest of the chain.
A. Which April switch? The intel switch was announced in July 05 and the first Intel Macs introduced in Jan 06.
B. Where is this 'reasonable mobile G5' you speak of? There is no such thing.
Did Jobs know what was in the pipeline? Oh yes. Oh yes he did - and he saw another G5 - great big fast serverstyle chip that needs big heatsinks and fans and special cases to cool, without the slightest hope of getting it in a portable product, which makes up over 50% of Apple's sales (by computer).
WIth all this investment into fabbing, and a very big desktop-computer-pie on the other side of the fence, it might be interesting to contemplate the hurdles and oppotunities that IBM might face in developing a brand new x86 processor line.
I'd love to see them put their resources into x86 and see what comes out:) . Doubt they have any x86 experience though, and i'm not sure how transitive skills are from POWER logic to developing x86 logic.
The iPod kicks Creative's ass when it comes to ease of use - you might get them on functionality - but, having used both a lot, the iPod is easier to use.
But then, I'm not sure why I'm feeding a troll who can't even spell "superior".
The difference between the two was like the difference between a bicycle and a car... yeah sure they both have wheels and allow you to get from a to b in more comfort and faster than walking... but one is much more advanced and developed than the other.
They were allowed just a look in exchange fir XEROX being allowed to invest 1 million USD in Apple, which wsa, at the time, a privately held company, and was bound to see massive growth when it IPOd. Think of the situation you would be in if you owned 1 million dollars worth of Google BEFORE the big IPO... after it you would be minted beyond your wildest dreams.
Make no mistake, Xerox got paid for the two trips Apple made to their research labs... and they got paid *WELL*.
The gist of this writer's complaint is squarely focussed on the positioning of the 'Command' key (some call it the 'Apple' key) on the Mac keyboard. He goes as far as to say that 'Apple - and the zealotry - need to concede that this battle is lost..
I am both a Windows and OS X user (Windows mainly for games) and I can attest that the Mac keyboard command key layout is vastly superior to that of a standard PC keyboard because of the position that you must contort your hand into in order to use the latter.
For many PC users it is a case of simply not having experienced any better, so it's difficult to convince them to change their ways, but take an objective view of using both layouts with just one hand, and it's incredibly difficult to argue that the PC way is less strenuous. Perhaps this is responsible for much greater adoption of keyboard shortcuts among casual users on the Mac platform.
2. Save button on toolbars
Saving actively modifies a file on disk, perhaps overwriting or saving a 'bad' copy over what was originally a preferred version by accident. I am content not to have my toolbar filled with such items. However, this suggestion is not entirely devoid of merit (unlike the others, as we'll see).
3. A multi-button mouse
I don't understand why we still have this issue. You can plug practically any mouse into OS X, with any obscene number of buttons you desire and it will work. The writer continues: 'Why stop at two? Especially with things like Exposé, Dashboard and Spotlight.'. It would, frankly, be a nightmare for anyone but a poweruser to use. My mother does just fine with a one button mouse, she has enough trouble remembering what needs to be single clicked and what needs to be double clicked in the interface. This is truely a ridiculous idea. The preliferation of dozens of buttons of mice is a typical Windows thing - just look at how the Start menu itself has also grown from a simple and fairly useful applications menu (Win 95) to the default monstrosity of usability that it is today (Win XP).
It's also worth mentioning that the usability of software on the Mac platform benefits hugely by forcing developers to come up with more elegant ways with which to allow control of the app - rather than (as is all too often the case in Windows) relying on the context menu to shuffle all the little commands into.
4) Only show relevant file types in open and save dialogs.
This has the effect of confusing users by making it look as though some of their stuff may be missing. It also does not allow for the identification of a folder via its contents (looking for a folder: "It's the folder with the Picture of Mom in it" for example). The OS X way gives you the best of both worlds. If anything, it should be Windows changing to the OS X way here for these important usability reasons.
5) Sort folders to top of directory listings
Not without merit.
6) More context sensitive help.
God... please no. Tooltips should, in the perfect interface NEVER be necessary. They are analogous to sticky tape holding together the interface... 'what's that? I've designed a crap interface and no-one can tell what this button is supposed to do from it's placement and icon? Well I could go and redesign the interface, or I could 'fix' it by adding a tooltip, and leaving it up to the user to figure it all out."
I am running Tiger on an 867Mhz Powerbook with 640MB RAM. And I have none of the problems that some people here are seemingly very upset and vocal about.
Spotlight instantly begins refining the search every time I press a new key, and new results start coming back instantly. The entire search is completed in less than three seconds.
I suggest that those experiencing the issues with Spotlight that have been described here run all the basic housekeeping (repair permissions blah blah blah etc.). Other than that, there may be a bug that causes this errant behaviour, giving poor performance on machines that should be many times faster than mine.
A few notes I have| noticed about Spotlight's performance: It seems to be memory hungry (like a lot of OS X) have a lot of apps and folders open, (or event worse - opening) and I have noticed the results list is unresponsive, not responding to a click on an item for a few seconds. In this state it can also take much longer to show the 'Show all...' window.
But most infuriatingly, when system resources are low, I find myself pressing Apple-Space (open Spotlight field) and begin typing immediately - however, the first few letters I type are ignored as Spotlight wakes up and is popped into memory, and the search field becomes the focussed one. This is very annoying, and something should be put in place to catch keystrokes after the Apple-Space command, before the actual search field has focus.
Apart from these niggles, Spotlight is simply amazing, and I rely on it more and more, as I grow out of my previous ways of working - e.g. no more application folder, just Spotlight for the app etc. There are minor issues with it, sure, but it is a new technology, and pretty far reaching under-the-hood too, so niggles are to be expected. I certainly can't understand some claims I've read here about downgrading to Panther to get rid of Spotlight however. IMO I can't see that as being in any way superior.
On the topic of Dashboard - great idea, but made almost entirely useless by the frustrating amount of time to get all the widgets awake when I invoke it. That needs to be rectified in some way for sure. I get a lot of crashing widgets, and dashboard needing to restart everything quite often too - worrying. Also, even with the new widget manager in 10.4.2 the overall Dashboard UI is pretty hopeless.
Apple had a lot to say about usability and 'Universal Access' for people who are blind (or have other disability) and Dashboard is entirely a mouse driven interface, breaking a lot of the things Apple themselves were preaching about. Dashboard needs refinement for sure, but it's still very promising, and a welcome addition to the OS.
The new payment method doesn't require a customer signature, making it more convenient and time-saving for consumers
In Europe we have the chip & pin way of using credit and debit cards at Point of Sale. No signature required, but there's not really a time saving involved. When it comes to RFID credit cards though... well, the US can keep them IMO - there's no way i'd be willing to carry one of these, no matter how confident or assuring the bank tried to be.
The XBox has made a profit for one quarter. This was solely due to the success of Halo. No other quarter has ever seen profit for XBox.
What's more, Microsoft has publicly admitted that this is a one-off financial blip, the Home and Entertainments division will not maintain this performance - by their own admission.
As part of my CS degree we also have some introductory asm programming, and under winXP these things could certainly freeze and entire box in very strange ways.
Slashdot Mirror
Having watched the video, and listened to Steve's description of the land they intend to build on, I'm pretty certain it's here.
Bear in mind that Yonah is a chip aimed at portables (and other low-power requirements e.g. Mac Mini), and represents an early re-jigging of the Pentium-M architecture. Merom/Conroe will be improved even further, and it appears that the things really will be very good performers.
Of course, there's a few months until these things are on the shelves, but with the roadmaps as they stand, and with these early Conroe benchmarks, you'd be hard pressed to convince anyone that Intel aren't going to have a very compelling piece of hardware.
All in all, I really can't see why iPod is so successful, given all the alternatives...
This insightful article will answer all of your questions about the iPod and it's current position.
Although I do think you are not really Apple's target market for the iPod, being the
7. The 2GB apple nano is actually HUGE, despite the name.
No you're seriously trolling...
Um, Apple has not chosen anything of the sort.
"I have a Phd, Masters, and 2 bachelors degrees."
And they haven't taught you <br> yet?
It's not about the device it's about iTunes as much as anything else. The device is just one part of the equation - this is why this product and the countless ones before it (see Sony discontinuing the 'bean', Dell discontinuing hard-drive based players etc.) will fail.
I don't understand it sometimes... companies like Samsung have incredible resources, and could easily start to build an iTunes software competitor, which also works with PlaysForSure, rather than relying on WMP. It's just symptomatic of a 'me-too' technology industry culture that attempts to eat like a cancer at the few innovators left.
It's not just about the iPod. iPod has powerful friends in iTunes and iTMS. You might stand a chance if you can get two competent and competitive products out of the three in the music-chain (Device-Software-OnlineStore), but concentrating on the iPod is like shooting blanks... that's not how to attack the problem.
Dodgy Analogy: It's like in any number of old-time video games where you come up against a boss enemy, and you can expend all your ammo shooting him in the chest (iPod), but you have to go for the weakspot (eyes, exposed brain a la HL etc.) which is the rest of the chain.
Er -
A. Which April switch? The intel switch was announced in July 05 and the first Intel Macs introduced in Jan 06.
B. Where is this 'reasonable mobile G5' you speak of? There is no such thing.
Did Jobs know what was in the pipeline? Oh yes. Oh yes he did - and he saw another G5 - great big fast serverstyle chip that needs big heatsinks and fans and special cases to cool, without the slightest hope of getting it in a portable product, which makes up over 50% of Apple's sales (by computer).
WIth all this investment into fabbing, and a very big desktop-computer-pie on the other side of the fence, it might be interesting to contemplate the hurdles and oppotunities that IBM might face in developing a brand new x86 processor line.
:) . Doubt they have any x86 experience though, and i'm not sure how transitive skills are from POWER logic to developing x86 logic.
I'd love to see them put their resources into x86 and see what comes out
The point of encryption is that the encrypted stream looks genuinely random - noise if you will.
Yeah, your post was poorly written. And your reply totally out of order, courtesy costs nothing :)
Er, no. You're completely wrong here I'm afraid.
http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/
The iPod kicks Creative's ass when it comes to ease of use - you might get them on functionality - but, having used both a lot, the iPod is easier to use.
But then, I'm not sure why I'm feeding a troll who can't even spell "superior".
The difference between the two was like the difference between a bicycle and a car... yeah sure they both have wheels and allow you to get from a to b in more comfort and faster than walking... but one is much more advanced and developed than the other.
They were allowed just a look in exchange fir XEROX being allowed to invest 1 million USD in Apple, which wsa, at the time, a privately held company, and was bound to see massive growth when it IPOd. Think of the situation you would be in if you owned 1 million dollars worth of Google BEFORE the big IPO... after it you would be minted beyond your wildest dreams.
Make no mistake, Xerox got paid for the two trips Apple made to their research labs... and they got paid *WELL*.
... there's nothing so bright as selling a console where some users have different capabilities than others.
Potential to fragment and confuse the XBox 360 market.
6. (copied from Safari) 2 In 1 Cancel/Refresh button.
Note please: Market Share != Customer Base.
As you imply in your post.
1. Compatible control keys
The gist of this writer's complaint is squarely focussed on the positioning of the 'Command' key (some call it the 'Apple' key) on the Mac keyboard. He goes as far as to say that 'Apple - and the zealotry - need to concede that this battle is lost..
I am both a Windows and OS X user (Windows mainly for games) and I can attest that the Mac keyboard command key layout is vastly superior to that of a standard PC keyboard because of the position that you must contort your hand into in order to use the latter.
For many PC users it is a case of simply not having experienced any better, so it's difficult to convince them to change their ways, but take an objective view of using both layouts with just one hand, and it's incredibly difficult to argue that the PC way is less strenuous. Perhaps this is responsible for much greater adoption of keyboard shortcuts among casual users on the Mac platform.
2. Save button on toolbars
Saving actively modifies a file on disk, perhaps overwriting or saving a 'bad' copy over what was originally a preferred version by accident. I am content not to have my toolbar filled with such items. However, this suggestion is not entirely devoid of merit (unlike the others, as we'll see).
3. A multi-button mouse
I don't understand why we still have this issue. You can plug practically any mouse into OS X, with any obscene number of buttons you desire and it will work. The writer continues: 'Why stop at two? Especially with things like Exposé, Dashboard and Spotlight.'. It would, frankly, be a nightmare for anyone but a poweruser to use. My mother does just fine with a one button mouse, she has enough trouble remembering what needs to be single clicked and what needs to be double clicked in the interface. This is truely a ridiculous idea. The preliferation of dozens of buttons of mice is a typical Windows thing - just look at how the Start menu itself has also grown from a simple and fairly useful applications menu (Win 95) to the default monstrosity of usability that it is today (Win XP).
It's also worth mentioning that the usability of software on the Mac platform benefits hugely by forcing developers to come up with more elegant ways with which to allow control of the app - rather than (as is all too often the case in Windows) relying on the context menu to shuffle all the little commands into.
4) Only show relevant file types in open and save dialogs.
This has the effect of confusing users by making it look as though some of their stuff may be missing. It also does not allow for the identification of a folder via its contents (looking for a folder: "It's the folder with the Picture of Mom in it" for example). The OS X way gives you the best of both worlds. If anything, it should be Windows changing to the OS X way here for these important usability reasons.
5) Sort folders to top of directory listings
Not without merit.
6) More context sensitive help.
God... please no. Tooltips should, in the perfect interface NEVER be necessary. They are analogous to sticky tape holding together the interface... 'what's that? I've designed a crap interface and no-one can tell what this button is supposed to do from it's placement and icon? Well I could go and redesign the interface, or I could 'fix' it by adding a tooltip, and leaving it up to the user to figure it all out."
I second this experience.
I am running Tiger on an 867Mhz Powerbook with 640MB RAM. And I have none of the problems that some people here are seemingly very upset and vocal about.
Spotlight instantly begins refining the search every time I press a new key, and new results start coming back instantly. The entire search is completed in less than three seconds.
I suggest that those experiencing the issues with Spotlight that have been described here run all the basic housekeeping (repair permissions blah blah blah etc.). Other than that, there may be a bug that causes this errant behaviour, giving poor performance on machines that should be many times faster than mine.
A few notes I have| noticed about Spotlight's performance: It seems to be memory hungry (like a lot of OS X) have a lot of apps and folders open, (or event worse - opening) and I have noticed the results list is unresponsive, not responding to a click on an item for a few seconds. In this state it can also take much longer to show the 'Show all...' window.
But most infuriatingly, when system resources are low, I find myself pressing Apple-Space (open Spotlight field) and begin typing immediately - however, the first few letters I type are ignored as Spotlight wakes up and is popped into memory, and the search field becomes the focussed one. This is very annoying, and something should be put in place to catch keystrokes after the Apple-Space command, before the actual search field has focus.
Apart from these niggles, Spotlight is simply amazing, and I rely on it more and more, as I grow out of my previous ways of working - e.g. no more application folder, just Spotlight for the app etc. There are minor issues with it, sure, but it is a new technology, and pretty far reaching under-the-hood too, so niggles are to be expected. I certainly can't understand some claims I've read here about downgrading to Panther to get rid of Spotlight however. IMO I can't see that as being in any way superior.
On the topic of Dashboard - great idea, but made almost entirely useless by the frustrating amount of time to get all the widgets awake when I invoke it. That needs to be rectified in some way for sure. I get a lot of crashing widgets, and dashboard needing to restart everything quite often too - worrying. Also, even with the new widget manager in 10.4.2 the overall Dashboard UI is pretty hopeless.
Apple had a lot to say about usability and 'Universal Access' for people who are blind (or have other disability) and Dashboard is entirely a mouse driven interface, breaking a lot of the things Apple themselves were preaching about. Dashboard needs refinement for sure, but it's still very promising, and a welcome addition to the OS.
The new payment method doesn't require a customer signature, making it more convenient and time-saving for consumers
In Europe we have the chip & pin way of using credit and debit cards at Point of Sale. No signature required, but there's not really a time saving involved. When it comes to RFID credit cards though... well, the US can keep them IMO - there's no way i'd be willing to carry one of these, no matter how confident or assuring the bank tried to be.
Sigh... no.
Does it install properly on all SATA drives now?!
Woz is not a billionaire.
The XBox has made a profit for one quarter. This was solely due to the success of Halo. No other quarter has ever seen profit for XBox.
What's more, Microsoft has publicly admitted that this is a one-off financial blip, the Home and Entertainments division will not maintain this performance - by their own admission.
As part of my CS degree we also have some introductory asm programming, and under winXP these things could certainly freeze and entire box in very strange ways.