As long as the Mac can get your stuff done for you, buy what you want and more power to you. It seems that one of your main qualifications is that it has to be a Mac so pretty much all other requirements are overriden. Personally, I wouldn't buy a PowerBook. My officemate has one and while it is a nice laptop and tempting, things I get done on my laptop tend to take about 2X as long to do on his (yes, we've measured). His PowerBook also costs about 2X what my laptop lists for at the time he purchased his PowerBook even though most of the specs are similar (1G memory, 40G HDD, etc.) but my laptop has a 1600x1050 15.4" screen as opposed to his 12" (we both use them for desktop replacements).
Although, I would pay a nice premium for OmniGraffle. I even emailed OmniGraffle asking if they were going to do a Linux or Windows port and they said no:( That one tool is almost enough to persuade me to get a Mini.
PowerBooks are definitely nice to look at, but not worth the cost, IMO. They would have the advantage of at least running a Unix-type OS and I could do most of what I do on it.
The latest Shuttle case is for S939 Athlon64s. That's not even close in comparison to the 1.25GHz (or 1.42GHz) G4. You need to compare back a few models down to the Athlon XP cases, which are around $200 (without CPU/Memory/HDD/CDROM). You can easily put together a decent Shuttle Athlon XP box for $499 (CPU = $70, HDD = $70, DVD dual layer = $60, 512M DDR400 = $60) and built in video is about ATi 9200 quality, but for $45 more (to bring it up to about $500) you can get a much better AGP card.
And for me, I would get a lot more work done on that Shuttle box, since the type of work I do will run nicely on it (Linux and Windows).
My "pig" comparison is simply that looks doesn't get work done. You can have the most beautiful computer in the world but if it doesn't do what you need, then it is worthless. However, you can have the ugliest computer in the world but it gets your work done so it is useful. Given the choice of those two, I'd pick the ugly one every time.
Since having company secrets is not illegal, and that breaking an NDA just to "spill the beans" on company secrets does not fall into any whistle-blower law to protect those who unveil illegal activities, this case is simply about possibly encouraging others to violate contractual law (that is a crime in itself) and obstructing justice by not revealing the sources who did break contractual law. This is basically an "aiding and abetting" issue. It's not that complicated.
For comparison, if someone you know robbed a bank and stashed the loot in your apartment with your consent, you are guilty of aiding and abetting a bank robber and you should go to jail as well as the person you know who is the bank robber.
Yet you think the Shuttle is a good design, because it uses kludgy desktop components. I think running the cables through the frame is a horrible hack. The Mac Mini uses compact components that are well-suited to the task.
Well... PowerMacs use those same "kludgy" desktop components as do desktop PCs. Where the nicety comes in is that you don't have to pay for expensive miniaturized components (notebook components) and sacrifice performance and/or expandability to get a small machine you can carry around. My friends and I wanted *exactly* (and I mean *exactly*) something like a Shuttle SFF back in the late 1990s. We traveled a lot but we were unwilling to accept a performance hit by buying a set-top box. We wanted an AGP slot we could put the latest cards in and we wanted to be able to use desktop HDD because the performance and storage capability were far above notebook components. Unfortunately, nothing like that existed at the time so we had to just settle for laptops and be boring.
I see using the frame to help route cables as a novel use of otherwise wasted space.
Consider this: something that is fully functional but has poor form still performs its task fine. Something that has great form but lacks function is useless.
Sure, just like anything, priorities of such thing as form and function will vary from person to person. For me and many PC users, having a computer perform its task takes precedence over what it looks like. You can always dress a pig up to make it look better (form), but you can't make a pig solve systems of PDEs (function) no matter how pretty it looks.
The Shuttle aesthetics are acceptable, I suppose. However, working inside their cases is a nightmare. Therefore, I do not consider them well designed.
To pack in what all they pack in such a small space, they are well designed. Such things as using parts of the frame as channels to run cabling and such, for example. Open up a Mac Mini and see what you can get to in there... it's the same situation except that the Mac Mini is designed to use laptop parts and can get away with some things by using that. Shuttles are designed to use commodity desktop components so the design has to accomodate the size considerations for those. Shuttle does this remarkably well, in my opinion.
IBM servers and Dell servers might be reasonably well thought out on the interior, but their aesthetic design is pretty nondescript.
Yes... seems perfect. The servers are designed to be off in a server room. It was a wise choice to include things onto the front panel that are needed to determine the status of the machine at a glance without cluttering it up with needless things. It's also a good design decision to not spend money doing something useless. They *could* have made the face plate made of 24k gold... but that would be stupid. IBM and Dell servers are designed for their function and nothing more. They don't have to be "pretty" because there is no need for them to be "pretty". "Pretty" doesn't get a server's job done.
Design is form AND function.
I would say it is function, then form. Engineering isn't about putting as much stuff you can into something. The design is finished when you cannot remove anything else and still achieve the goal of the design.
But they also won't get my money.
Likewise, if I wanted something to look nice and display, I will buy a piece of artwork. If I want a computer, I will buy one that gets my work done. A beautiful box with a slow computer that lacks software I use is useless to me. An ugly box that is fast and has the software I use and need is useful to me. If the box is so ugly that I can't stand to look at it, I'll put it in a closet and xterm into it... maybe with a Mac Mini if I need to;)
I personally like Shuttle SFF boxes (I own two). I think they are well designed and meet their purpose well. As far as larger machines, IBM builds great servers. Even Dell server class machines are decent.
I really don't care who copies who. (Picasso: Good artists copy. Great artists steal.) I do care who sells well-designed hardware. Nobody but Apple does that.
Well, we agree on the first part but I guess we'll just have to disagree on the last statement as I think Apple is just one of the several companies that sells well-designed computer hardware.
I think you misunderstand "concept". Intel doesn't make them. They basically offer ideas for others to use, which others have evidently used. It just so happens in this case to have been Apple using them;)
You must not remember the different small cases that Intel has demonstrated in the past at IDFs. I distinctly remember one looking like a pyramid, one that was kind of like a wave look, and a few others. All of these were roughly the same footprint size of a Mac Mini but were taller. All of these were examples of more "artistic" looking cases that could be designed. This was in 1998 link Look for the "Aztec" and the "Twister".
Intel has been demonstrating concept form factors at IDF for a long time.
Revisionists... go look up "The Brick" which was reviewed in June 1990 by Byte Magazine. I swear... Steve Jobs has Maclots so blinded that it isn't even funny... it's quite scary.
Isn't that what IBM/Sony are propsing with the Cell architecture? Lots of seperate cores running dedicated chunks of code?
Yes, but Cell is even more complicated because it has asymmetric processing elements. Dual cores (as w.r.t. Intel and AMD) are symmetric. Either core can do anything any other core can do, and most likely will, during runtime. Either CPU can handle that interrupt, for example. Having asymmetric cores (on the order of Cell) is complicated in itself, and what is even more hard is that the "other" CPUs (the vector ones) are actually more like (well... they *are*) embedded processors each with very limited resources. Writing asymmetric code is tricky enough. Writing embedded code for resource limited systems is tricky enough. Combine the two, and you've got tricky^^2 enough.
In my experience, dual booting is a waste. Machines I build and use tend to spend 99.99% of their time in one OS or the other (when dual booting) and usallly leads me to sometimes use the wrong tool for what I'm doing simply because I don't want to wait for a reboot.
It's easier to just have a machine of each type... or to run VMWare (which I do a lot).
The 64bit portions of intel's CPUs are a kludge compared to AMD's. While they maintain almost perfect compatibility with the spec as per AMD's definition, intel CPUs cannot address >4GB RAM the same way. They use pointers to address this. Read Redhat's documentation on how they futzed with the kernel for intel's "64bit" CPUs so they could handle >4GB w/o all kinds of problems.
The problems are with the IOMMU, not with the rest of the processor. You can have a process > 4G just the same, however, you have to use those kludges if you attempt to do IO from up there (involves some copying). That is a serious problem, but it isn't "all kinds of problems".
Intel's CPUs run hotter (and while you think this does not matter
It does not matter to the consumer. For servers and the like, yes. For home PCs that Joe Sixpack is going to buy, he won't know or understand. AMD has not been marketing this at all, so it must not be an important thing for them to target else they would.
Nvidia Nforce4 Pro chipsets make AMD's Opteron line only more attractive.
Yup... it's hard for me not to buy a Tyan Thunder K8WE right now:) but I'm making myself wait for the dual core chips to be released.
How about one CPU being at least as 'fast' (in real world terms) as another mfger's CPU
This puts them equal.
even though running at a lower clocks speed,
Irrelevant. Most users don't even know what a Megahurtz is. If the two chips are comparably as fast as each other, that's all that matters.
and running significantly cooler
Most don't care.
and using a lot less power?
This is a reasonable argument if you market it as such. However, I haven't seen any such marketing from AMD.
AND it's less expensive than that rival mfger's CPU.
Actually, comparative speed processors are similarly priced.
Oh and it's 64 bit as opposed to the other mfger's CPU which is 32 bit.
Simply a false statement. Intel has had EM64T (x86-64) for a while in Xeons and just last week started shipping P4s with that as well (the 6x0 line). Odds are, they don't know what 64-bit gets them over 32-bit or why they would want it. Odds are, if this is just a check box on your list, you don't either.
I have 8 computers at home. Only my two laptops have Intel parts in them. I have three Athlon64s and three Athlon XPs. I've been using 64-bit machines since around 1989. I'm *not* an Intel fanboi.
What compiler are you using that doesn't issue a warning for the '=' used in an if statement?
This assumes the programmer is actually paying attention to the output of the compiler. Many I know simply compile and if the 'make' succeeds, it must be good. Personally, I don't like to have any warning or error output in my code.
The BBC and ZDNet are reporting on an RSA poll of 1,000 users about failing confidence in ecommerce. 43% of respondents were reluctant to give details to online sites and 70% said that firms were not doing enough to keep their data secure.
This means that the populace is getting edumacated about online activities over time.
Back in the Day (tm), we all knew that the 'net was filled with wierdos and perverts and knew what not to do. Then came this wave of n00bs who hadn't a clue and we see all the scams and stuff. This just means the n00bs are getting more informed.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple is run by ego-centered millionaires who want to model the world in their image.
I would have thought this was obvious by now... I can even give you his name... Steve Jobs.
As long as the Mac can get your stuff done for you, buy what you want and more power to you. It seems that one of your main qualifications is that it has to be a Mac so pretty much all other requirements are overriden. Personally, I wouldn't buy a PowerBook. My officemate has one and while it is a nice laptop and tempting, things I get done on my laptop tend to take about 2X as long to do on his (yes, we've measured). His PowerBook also costs about 2X what my laptop lists for at the time he purchased his PowerBook even though most of the specs are similar (1G memory, 40G HDD, etc.) but my laptop has a 1600x1050 15.4" screen as opposed to his 12" (we both use them for desktop replacements).
:( That one tool is almost enough to persuade me to get a Mini.
Although, I would pay a nice premium for OmniGraffle. I even emailed OmniGraffle asking if they were going to do a Linux or Windows port and they said no
PowerBooks are definitely nice to look at, but not worth the cost, IMO. They would have the advantage of at least running a Unix-type OS and I could do most of what I do on it.
The latest Shuttle case is for S939 Athlon64s. That's not even close in comparison to the 1.25GHz (or 1.42GHz) G4. You need to compare back a few models down to the Athlon XP cases, which are around $200 (without CPU/Memory/HDD/CDROM). You can easily put together a decent Shuttle Athlon XP box for $499 (CPU = $70, HDD = $70, DVD dual layer = $60, 512M DDR400 = $60) and built in video is about ATi 9200 quality, but for $45 more (to bring it up to about $500) you can get a much better AGP card.
And for me, I would get a lot more work done on that Shuttle box, since the type of work I do will run nicely on it (Linux and Windows).
My "pig" comparison is simply that looks doesn't get work done. You can have the most beautiful computer in the world but if it doesn't do what you need, then it is worthless. However, you can have the ugliest computer in the world but it gets your work done so it is useful. Given the choice of those two, I'd pick the ugly one every time.
Since having company secrets is not illegal, and that breaking an NDA just to "spill the beans" on company secrets does not fall into any whistle-blower law to protect those who unveil illegal activities, this case is simply about possibly encouraging others to violate contractual law (that is a crime in itself) and obstructing justice by not revealing the sources who did break contractual law. This is basically an "aiding and abetting" issue. It's not that complicated.
For comparison, if someone you know robbed a bank and stashed the loot in your apartment with your consent, you are guilty of aiding and abetting a bank robber and you should go to jail as well as the person you know who is the bank robber.
Yet you think the Shuttle is a good design, because it uses kludgy desktop components. I think running the cables through the frame is a horrible hack. The Mac Mini uses compact components that are well-suited to the task.
Well... PowerMacs use those same "kludgy" desktop components as do desktop PCs. Where the nicety comes in is that you don't have to pay for expensive miniaturized components (notebook components) and sacrifice performance and/or expandability to get a small machine you can carry around. My friends and I wanted *exactly* (and I mean *exactly*) something like a Shuttle SFF back in the late 1990s. We traveled a lot but we were unwilling to accept a performance hit by buying a set-top box. We wanted an AGP slot we could put the latest cards in and we wanted to be able to use desktop HDD because the performance and storage capability were far above notebook components. Unfortunately, nothing like that existed at the time so we had to just settle for laptops and be boring.
I see using the frame to help route cables as a novel use of otherwise wasted space.
Consider this: something that is fully functional but has poor form still performs its task fine. Something that has great form but lacks function is useless.
Sure, just like anything, priorities of such thing as form and function will vary from person to person. For me and many PC users, having a computer perform its task takes precedence over what it looks like. You can always dress a pig up to make it look better (form), but you can't make a pig solve systems of PDEs (function) no matter how pretty it looks.
The Shuttle aesthetics are acceptable, I suppose. However, working inside their cases is a nightmare. Therefore, I do not consider them well designed.
;)
To pack in what all they pack in such a small space, they are well designed. Such things as using parts of the frame as channels to run cabling and such, for example. Open up a Mac Mini and see what you can get to in there... it's the same situation except that the Mac Mini is designed to use laptop parts and can get away with some things by using that. Shuttles are designed to use commodity desktop components so the design has to accomodate the size considerations for those. Shuttle does this remarkably well, in my opinion.
IBM servers and Dell servers might be reasonably well thought out on the interior, but their aesthetic design is pretty nondescript.
Yes... seems perfect. The servers are designed to be off in a server room. It was a wise choice to include things onto the front panel that are needed to determine the status of the machine at a glance without cluttering it up with needless things. It's also a good design decision to not spend money doing something useless. They *could* have made the face plate made of 24k gold... but that would be stupid. IBM and Dell servers are designed for their function and nothing more. They don't have to be "pretty" because there is no need for them to be "pretty". "Pretty" doesn't get a server's job done.
Design is form AND function.
I would say it is function, then form. Engineering isn't about putting as much stuff you can into something. The design is finished when you cannot remove anything else and still achieve the goal of the design.
But they also won't get my money.
Likewise, if I wanted something to look nice and display, I will buy a piece of artwork. If I want a computer, I will buy one that gets my work done. A beautiful box with a slow computer that lacks software I use is useless to me. An ugly box that is fast and has the software I use and need is useful to me. If the box is so ugly that I can't stand to look at it, I'll put it in a closet and xterm into it... maybe with a Mac Mini if I need to
I personally like Shuttle SFF boxes (I own two). I think they are well designed and meet their purpose well. As far as larger machines, IBM builds great servers. Even Dell server class machines are decent.
It's useless to discuss this any farther. When you have Apple in your eyes and Steve in your heart, there isn't room for anything else.
I really don't care who copies who. (Picasso: Good artists copy. Great artists steal.) I do care who sells well-designed hardware. Nobody but Apple does that.
Well, we agree on the first part but I guess we'll just have to disagree on the last statement as I think Apple is just one of the several companies that sells well-designed computer hardware.
I think you misunderstand "concept". Intel doesn't make them. They basically offer ideas for others to use, which others have evidently used. It just so happens in this case to have been Apple using them ;)
And "Groom Lake"...
Also, the "eXo" looks like the XBox might have been inspired by it.
Well.... look at the "Deep Forest" concept PC from IDF 2000......
Well... the G5 iMac introduced in 2004 looks similar to the concept "Polaris" that Intel had at IDF 1999 (on the link above), for example.
You must not remember the different small cases that Intel has demonstrated in the past at IDFs. I distinctly remember one looking like a pyramid, one that was kind of like a wave look, and a few others. All of these were roughly the same footprint size of a Mac Mini but were taller. All of these were examples of more "artistic" looking cases that could be designed. This was in 1998 link Look for the "Aztec" and the "Twister".
Intel has been demonstrating concept form factors at IDF for a long time.
Revisionists... go look up "The Brick" which was reviewed in June 1990 by Byte Magazine. I swear... Steve Jobs has Maclots so blinded that it isn't even funny... it's quite scary.
Yep... A guy I know bought a "The Brick" machine way back when. It was pretty nice.
Isn't that what IBM/Sony are propsing with the Cell architecture? Lots of seperate cores running dedicated chunks of code?
Yes, but Cell is even more complicated because it has asymmetric processing elements. Dual cores (as w.r.t. Intel and AMD) are symmetric. Either core can do anything any other core can do, and most likely will, during runtime. Either CPU can handle that interrupt, for example. Having asymmetric cores (on the order of Cell) is complicated in itself, and what is even more hard is that the "other" CPUs (the vector ones) are actually more like (well... they *are*) embedded processors each with very limited resources. Writing asymmetric code is tricky enough. Writing embedded code for resource limited systems is tricky enough. Combine the two, and you've got tricky^^2 enough.
In my experience, dual booting is a waste. Machines I build and use tend to spend 99.99% of their time in one OS or the other (when dual booting) and usallly leads me to sometimes use the wrong tool for what I'm doing simply because I don't want to wait for a reboot.
It's easier to just have a machine of each type... or to run VMWare (which I do a lot).
The 64bit portions of intel's CPUs are a kludge compared to AMD's. While they maintain almost perfect compatibility with the spec as per AMD's definition, intel CPUs cannot address >4GB RAM the same way. They use pointers to address this. Read Redhat's documentation on how they futzed with the kernel for intel's "64bit" CPUs so they could handle >4GB w/o all kinds of problems.
:) but I'm making myself wait for the dual core chips to be released.
The problems are with the IOMMU, not with the rest of the processor. You can have a process > 4G just the same, however, you have to use those kludges if you attempt to do IO from up there (involves some copying). That is a serious problem, but it isn't "all kinds of problems".
Intel's CPUs run hotter (and while you think this does not matter
It does not matter to the consumer. For servers and the like, yes. For home PCs that Joe Sixpack is going to buy, he won't know or understand. AMD has not been marketing this at all, so it must not be an important thing for them to target else they would.
Nvidia Nforce4 Pro chipsets make AMD's Opteron line only more attractive.
Yup... it's hard for me not to buy a Tyan Thunder K8WE right now
How about one CPU being at least as 'fast' (in real world terms) as another mfger's CPU
This puts them equal.
even though running at a lower clocks speed,
Irrelevant. Most users don't even know what a Megahurtz is. If the two chips are comparably as fast as each other, that's all that matters.
and running significantly cooler
Most don't care.
and using a lot less power?
This is a reasonable argument if you market it as such. However, I haven't seen any such marketing from AMD.
AND it's less expensive than that rival mfger's CPU.
Actually, comparative speed processors are similarly priced.
Oh and it's 64 bit as opposed to the other mfger's CPU which is 32 bit.
Simply a false statement. Intel has had EM64T (x86-64) for a while in Xeons and just last week started shipping P4s with that as well (the 6x0 line). Odds are, they don't know what 64-bit gets them over 32-bit or why they would want it. Odds are, if this is just a check box on your list, you don't either.
I have 8 computers at home. Only my two laptops have Intel parts in them. I have three Athlon64s and three Athlon XPs. I've been using 64-bit machines since around 1989. I'm *not* an Intel fanboi.
NO YUO!!1
What compiler are you using that doesn't issue a warning for the '=' used in an if statement?
This assumes the programmer is actually paying attention to the output of the compiler. Many I know simply compile and if the 'make' succeeds, it must be good. Personally, I don't like to have any warning or error output in my code.
I think it'll run faster if you remove all the unnecessary white space in the source as well...
The BBC and ZDNet are reporting on an RSA poll of 1,000 users about failing confidence in ecommerce. 43% of respondents were reluctant to give details to online sites and 70% said that firms were not doing enough to keep their data secure.
This means that the populace is getting edumacated about online activities over time.
Back in the Day (tm), we all knew that the 'net was filled with wierdos and perverts and knew what not to do. Then came this wave of n00bs who hadn't a clue and we see all the scams and stuff. This just means the n00bs are getting more informed.
I dunno what they are thinking... how are they going to handle 100M calls to activate each time they release something new?
OK... it doesn't happen often but I got taken on that one... The above link is evidently a joke.