Asked about his wealth he said once you reach a certin level, more money doesn't matter. Things only get so good and once you can afford the best that's it. In other words food only gets so good, cars only get so good, clothes can only be made so good and once you afford the best more money after that doesn't buy you anything better then what you can already afford.
That is the limit of physical wealth. Beyond that, you don't buy things, you make big events and buildings 'happen'. But for the actual cushy lifestyle there is no difference between a person with 100 Million and 1+ Billion.
The problem with the iPod-sized movie player is that people don't want to watch movies on a small screen. You can already watch DivX movies easily on a PocketPC. Now with CF Cards coming down in price, you can watch them at decent quality. I have been there and done that. Why didn't I like it? Well, it was small, and you can't watch a movie like you can listen to music. With a movie, you have to pay some attention, which pretty much rules it out as an on-the-go activity. What would be interesting is something like the iPod for movies, that plugs into an already existant screen.
You know I used to totally agree with this... but I think I have changed my mind. The logic is sound insofar as the Palm-style versions have been very lacking, both in acquisition of content and final experience (i.e. long tall screen on those devices for widescreen content).
However - I got a PSP for my birthday, and it works much better. I think the trick is, long-form content is only suitable for long-form travel (planes, trains, long car trips). Short-form content is much easier.
I'll give you an example - and I'll say up front, the elbow-grease part is about the same for PSP as it is for a PocketPC (i.e. you have to know what you are doing to get good results, currently... but hey this is Slashdot).
Right now I have a system whereby my computer (Mac) downloads highlight clips of the Daily Show each night into a folder. This folder has been fitted with a folder script made with Automator that compresses the clip into PSP-friendly format, then puts it in a PSPWare drop box (sync folder for the PSPWare application). So when I sync my PSP in the morning I have around 20 minutes of fresh content, which is perfect for my Toronto streetcar commute.
I've only watched one full-length movie on the thing so far and it was a pretty good experience once I found a way to prop the thing up (Logitech case).
Don't write off all 'passive' content as being unsuitable for portable purposes. It's just heavily time-dependant. Television fits this bill pretty well as your typical 30-minute show, with commercials removed (is that treason yet?), is about 22 minutes. Episodic stuff would work fantastically well.
Personally I am holding out hope for a PSP Flash Player that lets me throw a few dozen Strong Bads on the memory card.:)
Ask yourself one simple question: is this a feature that helps you? If the answer is no, then it is not a good thing to buy. Sometimes it really is black and white.
Now those of is in the here see that as nonsense, since filling up the hard drive with not-currently-executing code does not have any impact on memory usage or CPU usage.
I am not very knowledgeable in this area, but it was explained to me by one of the techs where I work that the Windows registry is the culprit for this. Being a binary file that is subject to fragmentation, the very act of installing software adds to the registry (of course), which then in turn causes an across-the-board speed hit every time some Windows function calls said registry... which is often. Educate me if I am wrong about this.
Tiny? It's 3-5W for my Mac mini. Doesn't sound like much, but it's yet another 26 kWh/year (2% of my power bill). Too much for my taste, especially when it's not the only device that has a large idle/off power draw. My VCRs consume 10W apiece doing nothing, etc.
Not sure what to tell you - I would still consider that tiny. Although do have a look at this. I have a G5 at home and it draws 2W while sleeping. "Less than a powered-down VCR" still sounds pretty good to me, all things considered. You could make up the savings using energy efficient light bulbs elsewhere in your house, for instance.
When the mini moves to a Pentium-M style proc it will probably improve again.
But why have we not seen hibernation on a Mac yet? That's the thing that really bugs me. I want to turn of my Mac, but at the same time keep my programs open. It seems like it wouldn't be terribly difficult to implement, especially for a power as big as Apple.
Not sure I understand...? When I sleep the Mac (I have both Mac and PC at work) it just comes up instantly, exactly in the state it was when I slept it, apps and all. The PC Hibernate seems to take about 20-30 seconds to come back up, with apps running but windows closed.
So yes, the Mac has no Hibernate insofar that you can turn it right off and boot from a saved memory image, but as I understand it this is an answer to the fact that PC power supplies do not lend themselves to the Apple-style Sleep. I could see it being an issue, but honestly even a completely battery-drained PowerBook will retain its memory for another day or two before bailing completely.
So why are we still forced to sit through full boot cycles?
Apple has really been pushing people to Sleep the machines instead of turning them off. Sleep mode uses a very tiny amount of power, and you get your instantaneous boot (with apps open and windows positioned...). I have been doing this with my Macs since OS X appeared and let me tell you it is the only way to go. Especially on laptops. In fact I am still using a CRT on my G5 and the computer 'boots' faster than the monitor (warm up).
I'd have to disagree, given the precondition that I find 'innovation' to be a pretty nebulous concept, and very much in the eye of the beholder.
Sure. It's very vague because its a marketing buzzword now.
I thought your example was interesting:
So, taking one of my main areas of interest, where I use Microsoft software, which is development, Microsoft had the following innovations...Incremental compilation, Incremental linking, Pre-compiled headers, A very strong visual debugger, with useful features like DataTips. Integrated source browser,
Integrated class browser, Remote debugging over tcp/ip, SQL debugger, Intellisense (auto-completion)
So what you are saying is, MS is an innovator in the area of developer tools. Which is probably true.
I think the crux is that these developer tools only shine in innovation to the developers, and this seldom seems to translate down to an end-user product. Therefore the end user does not see Microsoft 'innovation' very often.
A counter-example of Apple innovation I would offer would be the Dashboard component of their latest OS rev. Lots of people point to that and say 'so what, its tile windows/active desktop'. And in a bullet-point comparison on paper, you would not see much difference. To and end user however, they are worlds apart. Dashboard is useful and elegant, whereas Active Desktop is weird and confusing, and Tile Windows.. heck I don't know anyone who's ever used that (regularly anyways).
So its not really the tech per se; its the implementation that is key. Apple implements these things very astutely; the WiFi, the USB, etc. (or, doesn't implement them, as in the case of your missing floppy. Are you really wondering if that was a good move still? When's the last time you needed a floppy? Emergency bootstraps are not a reason to keep a whole media bay occupied.)
Now since MS is so market-driven, I think the strength in developer tools does not help them very much. After all if you read the MS ads, its all airy 'make music, be creative, soar like a little bird! fly around the room!' type fluff. Just doesn't match well with 'our incremental compilation feature will set you freeeeee...'
Re:I suppose it's too late, but
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use the 3d for something useful, like letting users run at 1280x1024 but have everything be sized as if it were 800x600.
Good points you made - but to the above, why can't yo just run at 800x600 in the first place? I know many older users who do this. Trust me if their eyesight is bad they will not know the difference between '3d interpolated 1280x1024' and 'LCD scaled 800x600'.
Re:Mystery of the computer industry
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Is it really that high-tech firms are full of dorks without any taste ? Is the difference with Apple the fact that Steve Jobs decides, and the guy actually has good taste ?
I agree with you (although to be fair I do think *some* of Sony's stuff looks really good.. some). And I don't know the real answer either. But here are some interesting points I have learned over the years about Apple's industrial design process that are worth noting:
Jonathan Ives used to design sinks and bathroom fixtures before he started designing computers. First product he worked on was the eMate (Newton variant for education).
They focus-group nothing. After a design is finished they do user testing, but otherwise Ives eschews any sort of groupthink or dilution of his team's designs. This can allow for the occasional bad choice, like the puck mouse on the original iMacs, but by and large the freedom to be really radical is there.
Jobs does not have a lot of input into the designs besides finding someone (Ives again) to be comfortable with, that he can talk high-level philosophy with (i.e. the iMac "sunflower" concept). He looks at stuff as it comes out, not going in. At that point I'm sure he tweaks whatever he wants, so that's another filter that you won't see from a place like Dell.
But honestly I can't really figure out how they do it so consistently. I rank computer industrial design like this: Apple is the best. Sony makes some notable things. Everything else is shit. (and yeah I'm looking at you, Alienware.)
Does this mean we will get a translucent "Screen of Death" superimposed over the crashed OS screen, instead of the solid-blue one? Just one step toward the "Invisible Screen of Death".
You know, being serious for a sec, I really think MS ought to implement this. With their OS being so ubiquitous, it certainly doesn't help the marketing department to see gigantic billboards, video walls, and huge LCD screens with the BSOD on them all the time. They should put in a feature to just dump the memory to a file and go black.
So CNN has an official policy of only providing cheesy headlines to Americans? That's a policy I can live with though.P.
Yes. That is their policy. If you watch CNN International sometime, it is like a totally different channel. It seems like... news.
"High production value" cut-scenes are bullshit. They aren't interactive, and they jar with the style of the rest of the game; but they let bloated-ego software developers Compare Themselves To Hollywood.
Your post is completely on the nose as far as I'm concerned - except for the point above, which I would categorically reject.
High-production-value cutscenes can add immensely to the storyline of the game. I would refer you (as an earlier poster did for a different point) to Ico on the PS2, to see cutscenes executed for the sake of the game's development and not wannabe-Scorsese grandstanding. "Cut-scenes" - we're really talking about filmic sequences after all; directed properly, they leverage all hundred years or so of editing language and cinematic presentation to the benefit of your interactive game (character development comes to mind). Cut-scenes simply need to be applied with the interactivity in mind - brief, to the point, not beleaguered in pacing or relevance, etc. There is a whole structure to how linear sequences fit within the interactive structure that you could write books about. I could go on but you get my point. There is no sense in banishing all of our learned language of filmed narrative just because some games suck at it.
As long as the interactive core of the game itself is held as the actual point, with cutscenes supporting that, then I do not see a conflict.
Menus belong in the window that owns them. If I am switching back and forth between windows in the near vertical and near horizontal center of the screen (say I'm cutting and pasting between a web browser and a terminal window), why is it better to select the text in the browser, move up to the menu bar (copy), move back down to the terminal (select it by clicking), move up to the menu bar (paste) and then back down to the terminal?
Because, for the purpose of mousing, the top and sides of the screen are 'infinite'. Your mouse bangs up against them and goes no further even if you massively overshoot. This way you do not need to bulls-eye a menu in the X and Y, but rather just the X (in the case of these menus). With the menu on an arbitrary part of the screen (i.e Windows MDI) you have to be a lot more accurate with your mousing, which adds to wrist stress, slows you down, etc.
IMNSHO, this is the ONLY aspect of the UI that Microsoft, Sun, and friends got right.
Humble or not, most of the interface design gurus that make a living in this sort of thing agree that MDI is an inferior design.
I didn't say they were "dead" anywhere in my post. I said they sucked and were sucking more every day. It still has a huge imprint on the industry, but go look at those job listing again - most will say 'Quark and InDesign'.
Everybody knows they suck. QuarkXPress was so cool a long time ago that it has had this incredible lingering effect, feeding the bloated and immovable corpse that was its corporate parent. The only thing I think I can ever recall them doing other than grinding out ever-crappier and protection-ridden versions of Quark was to reach out and squash mTropolis, which was the one bloody thing that could have freed me from another 2 years of Director purgatory. Now they are imploding because they hired a crappy outsourced team to do their Mac version for OS X, several years late, sucking in new and interesting ways, milking the print industry a little more before InDesign delivers the coup de grace.
I know that seems like a huge stream of venom, but honestly, can anyone disagree? They're as bad as Commodore was in the late stages.
How depressing it was to find that Apple users are still stuck with the oldest problem in software installation, and that is finding the software first. Windows users considering switching will find this to be as depressing as it was on win32, and similarly we hear Mac users that have moved to Linux cheer endlessly about the ease of software installation using a system such as apt.
So boring it is to spend countless hours trawling around websites looking for software, and there's so little on the machine out-of-the-box. OSX really doesn't push much further than the windows paradigm in this regard. There's this fink but last time I tried it was all a bit hacky and suffered issues worse than those in any Linux distribution I've used.
While I sort of agree with your general point, it is worth pointing out that the 3rd item of the Apple menu says 'Get Mac OS X Software' (right under About this Mac and Software Update). It goes to an Apple-run catalog site that links out to pretty much the gamut of Mac publishers. So your characterization could be considered a touch unfair.
C'mon. Tell me you wouldn't love to see this. Three vertically integrated 'computer companies' (very loose here) all vying with their own integrated approaches to hardware and software on a specific platform. I've always though the problem with Apple is that there are not more Apples to compete with it. This is not to say that Apple actually needed more competition from a market-share point; rather, they have not realized their potential (which is huge). Microsoft, either. The AMD thing less likely since they are exhibiting some (very early Apple-like) behaviour and going it alone with a single pc-in-drag called the Xbox 360. But in response to something like what Cringely guesses, I could see them picking up AMD in a panic. They've certainly bought crazier things, for more money, and less payoff. Finally IBM with its new lax dress code and hippy Linux ties - they have seen the writing on the wall with the direction the Cell is going. Those things are going to be fucking everywhere, you just watch. The Cell will be THE answer to streamed digital media. It is like a DSP on crack, turned up to 11. And it will be sooo cheap with the economies of scale that Sony can bring to the table, because everyone and their dog knows that they will bang off 75 million of those puppies without even doing anything different. Combine that with a truly forward-thinking symbiosis with Linux and good lord you just might have the final chapter of the computer revolution written by some truly idealistic guys. Linux+Cell makes me drool in ways I haven't since I saw a running Amiga - ways that actually move beyond the technical and into the political, for me personally.
Ah, but what do I know, I'm high. Interesting times are definitely afoot in the computer world again, that's for sure, if we don't run out of power first.
The thing that you can find in Control Panel > Software. It's far from perfect, but at least it lets me see all the installed software on a system and remove it with a single mouse click. It's not as nice as Linux package managers, but it's a whole lot nicer than Macintosh, where I have to go hunting around the file system and can never be sure whether dragging the application into the trash will actually remove all traces of it (in fact, it won't).
Now that is truly a heroic reach.
You mean to tell me, that dragging the application's icon to the trash is somehow less logical to you than locating a Control Panel that will 'teleport' it off your system?
'Single-click' = click icon, drag to trash.
'many-click' = click Start, click Control Panels, click Add/Remove Applications, click down scroll arrow to desired app, click app, click Remove.
Look, the Add/Remove thing is stupid. There is no good reason in this day and age that the OS cannot figure out what I want to do when I drag an app to the trash/bin.
And you are wrong about 'traces' of an app - the only thing left behind is the.plist file, which is all of 4k.
There are good things to pick on in OS X, but application installing/de-installing is not one of them.
Over the years, I've made a ton of bets with Mac fans who swore up and down that Apple would never, ever switch to Intel processors... I am now owed several kegs of beer and some free fancy dinners. A couple people owe me a million bucks.
And you've been dead wrong, over the years, until today. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Besides, if you put "I'll probably get modded down for this", it's like an instant bonus as they normally get modded up. Of course this post will be the exception to the rule.
Of course it won't>, you've effectively said 'this will be modded down twice. Which means your post gets modded up.
However this post will not get modded up. Nope, no mod points here. Nothin'.
If 1 hack hits 90% of the market, spending more money to get a hack for the rest may not be worth the effort even if Firefox has as many holes as IE. Simple economics.
Dude, either you don't have children, or you are one of those parents whose children do no wrong. You know the type, no matter what the child does, it's not their fault. These are the kids that grow up, start a war, and then never admit they screwed up.
MPAA President and CEO Dan Glickman: 'There is no better example of how theft dims the magic of the movies for everyone than this report today regarding BitTorrent providing users with illegal copies of Revenge of the Sith.
MPAA President Dan Glickman has an excellent point. In light of the fact that Revenge of the Sith just pulled in $50 million dollars in one day, an all-time record for an opening day film, we must view the illegal copies of Sith floating around on Bittorrent as an abject failure. Bittorrent distribution, in this case, failed to make even a tangible dent in the viewership of Sith.
Hollywood's stars shine just a little dimmer this evening in the face of this crushing development.
Slashdot Mirror
100 Million dollars.
That is the limit of physical wealth. Beyond that, you don't buy things, you make big events and buildings 'happen'. But for the actual cushy lifestyle there is no difference between a person with 100 Million and 1+ Billion.
You know I used to totally agree with this... but I think I have changed my mind. The logic is sound insofar as the Palm-style versions have been very lacking, both in acquisition of content and final experience (i.e. long tall screen on those devices for widescreen content).
However - I got a PSP for my birthday, and it works much better. I think the trick is, long-form content is only suitable for long-form travel (planes, trains, long car trips). Short-form content is much easier.
I'll give you an example - and I'll say up front, the elbow-grease part is about the same for PSP as it is for a PocketPC (i.e. you have to know what you are doing to get good results, currently... but hey this is Slashdot).
Right now I have a system whereby my computer (Mac) downloads highlight clips of the Daily Show each night into a folder. This folder has been fitted with a folder script made with Automator that compresses the clip into PSP-friendly format, then puts it in a PSPWare drop box (sync folder for the PSPWare application). So when I sync my PSP in the morning I have around 20 minutes of fresh content, which is perfect for my Toronto streetcar commute.
I've only watched one full-length movie on the thing so far and it was a pretty good experience once I found a way to prop the thing up (Logitech case). Don't write off all 'passive' content as being unsuitable for portable purposes. It's just heavily time-dependant. Television fits this bill pretty well as your typical 30-minute show, with commercials removed (is that treason yet?), is about 22 minutes. Episodic stuff would work fantastically well.
Personally I am holding out hope for a PSP Flash Player that lets me throw a few dozen Strong Bads on the memory card. :)
It is exactly as evil as it seems.
Ask yourself one simple question: is this a feature that helps you? If the answer is no, then it is not a good thing to buy. Sometimes it really is black and white.
I am not very knowledgeable in this area, but it was explained to me by one of the techs where I work that the Windows registry is the culprit for this. Being a binary file that is subject to fragmentation, the very act of installing software adds to the registry (of course), which then in turn causes an across-the-board speed hit every time some Windows function calls said registry... which is often. Educate me if I am wrong about this.
Not sure what to tell you - I would still consider that tiny. Although do have a look at this. I have a G5 at home and it draws 2W while sleeping. "Less than a powered-down VCR" still sounds pretty good to me, all things considered. You could make up the savings using energy efficient light bulbs elsewhere in your house, for instance.
When the mini moves to a Pentium-M style proc it will probably improve again.
Not sure I understand...? When I sleep the Mac (I have both Mac and PC at work) it just comes up instantly, exactly in the state it was when I slept it, apps and all. The PC Hibernate seems to take about 20-30 seconds to come back up, with apps running but windows closed.
So yes, the Mac has no Hibernate insofar that you can turn it right off and boot from a saved memory image, but as I understand it this is an answer to the fact that PC power supplies do not lend themselves to the Apple-style Sleep. I could see it being an issue, but honestly even a completely battery-drained PowerBook will retain its memory for another day or two before bailing completely.
Apple has really been pushing people to Sleep the machines instead of turning them off. Sleep mode uses a very tiny amount of power, and you get your instantaneous boot (with apps open and windows positioned...). I have been doing this with my Macs since OS X appeared and let me tell you it is the only way to go. Especially on laptops. In fact I am still using a CRT on my G5 and the computer 'boots' faster than the monitor (warm up).
Sure. It's very vague because its a marketing buzzword now.
I thought your example was interesting:
So, taking one of my main areas of interest, where I use Microsoft software, which is development, Microsoft had the following innovations...Incremental compilation, Incremental linking, Pre-compiled headers, A very strong visual debugger, with useful features like DataTips. Integrated source browser, Integrated class browser, Remote debugging over tcp/ip, SQL debugger, Intellisense (auto-completion)
So what you are saying is, MS is an innovator in the area of developer tools. Which is probably true.
I think the crux is that these developer tools only shine in innovation to the developers, and this seldom seems to translate down to an end-user product. Therefore the end user does not see Microsoft 'innovation' very often.
A counter-example of Apple innovation I would offer would be the Dashboard component of their latest OS rev. Lots of people point to that and say 'so what, its tile windows/active desktop'. And in a bullet-point comparison on paper, you would not see much difference. To and end user however, they are worlds apart. Dashboard is useful and elegant, whereas Active Desktop is weird and confusing, and Tile Windows.. heck I don't know anyone who's ever used that (regularly anyways).
So its not really the tech per se; its the implementation that is key. Apple implements these things very astutely; the WiFi, the USB, etc. (or, doesn't implement them, as in the case of your missing floppy. Are you really wondering if that was a good move still? When's the last time you needed a floppy? Emergency bootstraps are not a reason to keep a whole media bay occupied.)
Now since MS is so market-driven, I think the strength in developer tools does not help them very much. After all if you read the MS ads, its all airy 'make music, be creative, soar like a little bird! fly around the room!' type fluff. Just doesn't match well with 'our incremental compilation feature will set you freeeeee...'
Good points you made - but to the above, why can't yo just run at 800x600 in the first place? I know many older users who do this. Trust me if their eyesight is bad they will not know the difference between '3d interpolated 1280x1024' and 'LCD scaled 800x600'.
I agree with you (although to be fair I do think *some* of Sony's stuff looks really good.. some). And I don't know the real answer either. But here are some interesting points I have learned over the years about Apple's industrial design process that are worth noting:
Jonathan Ives used to design sinks and bathroom fixtures before he started designing computers. First product he worked on was the eMate (Newton variant for education).
They focus-group nothing. After a design is finished they do user testing, but otherwise Ives eschews any sort of groupthink or dilution of his team's designs. This can allow for the occasional bad choice, like the puck mouse on the original iMacs, but by and large the freedom to be really radical is there.
Jobs does not have a lot of input into the designs besides finding someone (Ives again) to be comfortable with, that he can talk high-level philosophy with (i.e. the iMac "sunflower" concept). He looks at stuff as it comes out, not going in. At that point I'm sure he tweaks whatever he wants, so that's another filter that you won't see from a place like Dell. But honestly I can't really figure out how they do it so consistently. I rank computer industrial design like this: Apple is the best. Sony makes some notable things. Everything else is shit. (and yeah I'm looking at you, Alienware.)
You know, being serious for a sec, I really think MS ought to implement this. With their OS being so ubiquitous, it certainly doesn't help the marketing department to see gigantic billboards, video walls, and huge LCD screens with the BSOD on them all the time. They should put in a feature to just dump the memory to a file and go black.
So CNN has an official policy of only providing cheesy headlines to Americans? That's a policy I can live with though.P. Yes. That is their policy. If you watch CNN International sometime, it is like a totally different channel. It seems like... news.
Your post is completely on the nose as far as I'm concerned - except for the point above, which I would categorically reject.
High-production-value cutscenes can add immensely to the storyline of the game. I would refer you (as an earlier poster did for a different point) to Ico on the PS2, to see cutscenes executed for the sake of the game's development and not wannabe-Scorsese grandstanding. "Cut-scenes" - we're really talking about filmic sequences after all; directed properly, they leverage all hundred years or so of editing language and cinematic presentation to the benefit of your interactive game (character development comes to mind). Cut-scenes simply need to be applied with the interactivity in mind - brief, to the point, not beleaguered in pacing or relevance, etc. There is a whole structure to how linear sequences fit within the interactive structure that you could write books about. I could go on but you get my point. There is no sense in banishing all of our learned language of filmed narrative just because some games suck at it.
As long as the interactive core of the game itself is held as the actual point, with cutscenes supporting that, then I do not see a conflict.
Because, for the purpose of mousing, the top and sides of the screen are 'infinite'. Your mouse bangs up against them and goes no further even if you massively overshoot. This way you do not need to bulls-eye a menu in the X and Y, but rather just the X (in the case of these menus). With the menu on an arbitrary part of the screen (i.e Windows MDI) you have to be a lot more accurate with your mousing, which adds to wrist stress, slows you down, etc.
IMNSHO, this is the ONLY aspect of the UI that Microsoft, Sun, and friends got right.
Humble or not, most of the interface design gurus that make a living in this sort of thing agree that MDI is an inferior design.
I didn't say they were "dead" anywhere in my post. I said they sucked and were sucking more every day. It still has a huge imprint on the industry, but go look at those job listing again - most will say 'Quark and InDesign'.
I know that seems like a huge stream of venom, but honestly, can anyone disagree? They're as bad as Commodore was in the late stages.
So boring it is to spend countless hours trawling around websites looking for software, and there's so little on the machine out-of-the-box. OSX really doesn't push much further than the windows paradigm in this regard. There's this fink but last time I tried it was all a bit hacky and suffered issues worse than those in any Linux distribution I've used.
While I sort of agree with your general point, it is worth pointing out that the 3rd item of the Apple menu says 'Get Mac OS X Software' (right under About this Mac and Software Update). It goes to an Apple-run catalog site that links out to pretty much the gamut of Mac publishers. So your characterization could be considered a touch unfair.
Microsoft acquires AMD
IBM releases Linux-Cell Platform
And then we'll have a real fuckin' fight.
C'mon. Tell me you wouldn't love to see this. Three vertically integrated 'computer companies' (very loose here) all vying with their own integrated approaches to hardware and software on a specific platform. I've always though the problem with Apple is that there are not more Apples to compete with it. This is not to say that Apple actually needed more competition from a market-share point; rather, they have not realized their potential (which is huge). Microsoft, either. The AMD thing less likely since they are exhibiting some (very early Apple-like) behaviour and going it alone with a single pc-in-drag called the Xbox 360. But in response to something like what Cringely guesses, I could see them picking up AMD in a panic. They've certainly bought crazier things, for more money, and less payoff. Finally IBM with its new lax dress code and hippy Linux ties - they have seen the writing on the wall with the direction the Cell is going. Those things are going to be fucking everywhere, you just watch. The Cell will be THE answer to streamed digital media. It is like a DSP on crack, turned up to 11. And it will be sooo cheap with the economies of scale that Sony can bring to the table, because everyone and their dog knows that they will bang off 75 million of those puppies without even doing anything different. Combine that with a truly forward-thinking symbiosis with Linux and good lord you just might have the final chapter of the computer revolution written by some truly idealistic guys. Linux+Cell makes me drool in ways I haven't since I saw a running Amiga - ways that actually move beyond the technical and into the political, for me personally.
Ah, but what do I know, I'm high. Interesting times are definitely afoot in the computer world again, that's for sure, if we don't run out of power first.
No kidding. Totally unimpressive, I agree.
But putting a PC motherboard in a pretty standard case that just happens to have been made by Apple?
A rhetorical question; just don't jinx it by saying...
Lame.
*winces* Nooooo! Now you've done it. It'll be a runaway success, it's been called 'lame' by Slashdot.
Way to go. :)
Now that is truly a heroic reach.
You mean to tell me, that dragging the application's icon to the trash is somehow less logical to you than locating a Control Panel that will 'teleport' it off your system?
'Single-click' = click icon, drag to trash.
'many-click' = click Start, click Control Panels, click Add/Remove Applications, click down scroll arrow to desired app, click app, click Remove.
Look, the Add/Remove thing is stupid. There is no good reason in this day and age that the OS cannot figure out what I want to do when I drag an app to the trash/bin.
And you are wrong about 'traces' of an app - the only thing left behind is the .plist file, which is all of 4k.
There are good things to pick on in OS X, but application installing/de-installing is not one of them.
And you've been dead wrong, over the years, until today. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Of course it won't>, you've effectively said 'this will be modded down twice. Which means your post gets modded up.
However this post will not get modded up. Nope, no mod points here. Nothin'.
(nods, pats trusty G5 PowerMac)
Funniest Bush troll ever.
MPAA President Dan Glickman has an excellent point. In light of the fact that Revenge of the Sith just pulled in $50 million dollars in one day, an all-time record for an opening day film, we must view the illegal copies of Sith floating around on Bittorrent as an abject failure. Bittorrent distribution, in this case, failed to make even a tangible dent in the viewership of Sith.
Hollywood's stars shine just a little dimmer this evening in the face of this crushing development.