...how loud the Xserves are compared to the G5's? I can't imagine the decibels in a room full of them
SORRY -- I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF THE 3RD FASTEST CLUSTER IN THE WORLD.
Joking aside, who cares how loud it is when its this fast? I'm a very big fan of quiet personal computers, but when designing for raw power, I think I'd actually like it to sound like an earthquake when it runs. It's just more impressive that way.
Rio Karma supports Ogg-Vorbis and FLAC files already, is 20gig, and can be had for less than $250. Where's the justification for buying a 1.5gig player?
Because it's an iPod.
The reasons that I can just say that, and lots of people know what I mean, is the answer to your question.
If this is cheap enough, I'll definitely buy it.
The one thing still preventing me from buying a portable audio player is the price... I don't need 20GB of music in my pocket, 1,5GB is more than enough for me.
NO! Nonononono. Dude. Come on.
This is Slashdot. "I don't need 20 GB of music".. of course you don't need it. But you will demand it. As a... nerd, or something.
Now suck it up, and demand a 1 ounce 50GB overmediaplayer with a folding plasma screen and support for Ogg Stupidname. For $50. It is your goddammed right!
For those of us with small screens, having to leave "room" for a drawer to pop out visibly is a waste. If I make iCal the width of the screen without the drawer, the drawer will just pop out off the screen and I'll have to move the iCal window over just to see it, losing the left side in the process. This is annoying.
I agree, that is annoying. I have a 12" PB myself so I sympathize. Usually I go with the 'overlapping' approach but I find I need to constantly see the item info, in my daily work.
IMO, the popup window is much better because now I don't have to resize or move the iCal window whenI want to see the info. By the way, you can pop up and close it with Command-I, which is a lot easier than mousing over to a visible piece of it.... Unless you have the horizontal space to pop out the drawer without it going offscreen, I think detachable window is easier to use.
Interestingly they have changed the behaviour. I noticed that if you have a maximized iCal main window and you do a Cmd-I (with drawer mode on), it will resize the window for you to make room for the info. Cmd-I again removes the drawer but does not restore the window. A little easier than before.
I was wrong about the windoid though, in regards to clicking it forward - the windoid floats, it cannot be covered. This diminishes it somewhat, I think.
(Also I wish Apple would be more consistent with this. The iCal Info windoid vanishes when iCal isn't active, as it should. The Safari Download windoid always hangs around.)
Perception is integral to the use of any GUI....I believe the key is an individual's dependence (or lack thereof) on various perceived elements, that is really at work.
I completely agree with this statement. I only point out that one's impression of a certain UI implementation as wrong doesn't necessarily make it so. Sometimes a method is demonstrably inferior. In this case, there are strong points for both drawer and windoid methods, and a strong split amongst the userbase as to which is appropriate -- the correct thing for Apple to do is to offer a choice. Which is of course what they did.
I find that often a UI method is strongly preferred by a user if it is the first way they have been exposed to. Alt-tab switching is a good example, or the endless vi vs. emacs debates.
Even though it's 1024x768 that drawer was a serious waste of horizontal real estate.
It's your perception. I only point this out because this is the classic Macintosh interface tempest in a teapot.
The new detachable Info windoid is exactly 10 pixels smaller, in its smallest width, than the drawer was. It can get much shorter than the drawer, but that does not make it more functional, in this instance. Safe to say, both drawer and windoid constructs basically take up the same amount of room.
Now, you could make an argument that having the detachable window is better for screen 'real estate' as you can leave just a little piece of it visible, behind the iCal main window, and click it to bring it forward. But you could have also say there's nothing stopping you from just shoving the drawer portion off-screen as well.
For myself, I think I prefer the drawer. I'm used to being able to see my event Info (in month view) when iCal is in the background - now I can't, because an app not in the foreground on OS X will make its support windoids disappear. There are always trade-offs.
In the rare case where neither one is demonstrably better, a choice is good, and its nice that Apple is listening.
Well, an Xserve [apple.com] doesn't take that much space. Anyone ever attempt to install a rack-mount computer into an entertainment center?
As I'm sure others will point out, there's two big problems off the bat: the Xserve has a big ass, and it sounds like a Chinook helicopter when in operation.
But other than that, cool idea! No, seriously. I could certainly use a 'media processor' kind of PC for all those things that people tend to hack old PCs into - MP3 jukeboxes, TiVO replacement, general storage server, etc. It's really not so farfetched; I'm thinking of video codecs in particular... the reason you can't make a video-iPod is that you never know what codecs you are going to get, and they all need some CPU power to decode if they're modern. A small rack-style PC that fits a typical stereo footprint (but smaller/less goofy than an Xbox) would be a nice option, as long as it's quiet.
As for the death of game rental, this commentary is largely applicable to PC games, not so much console games. Console games will continue to be distributed in physical form for some time to come, and it will be a long while until every home in america has the broadband internet access necessary to download games, which are only getting larger. Playstation 2 games are typically on DVD these days, even on broadband it takes a while to download a full DVD. Not only that, but I got the "official" word from Comcast that I'm only allowed to download 80-90 GB/month. (Yes, I finally got a AUP violation letter.) Just a few games and movie trailers, and you're over your limit. So, it's going to be a while before the death of physical media.
Good post - I wanted to add to this point you made above. I think people are underestimating both the political influence of Blockbuster, and the nature of disc-based media.
Blockbuster predicts that half of their revenue will come from game rentals in the next 3 years. They are moving accordingly to allocate 50% of each location's shelf space to console games. Blockbuster has an absolutely huge influence on the movie industry (much in the same way that WalMart does on the music industry). They are probably the reason we can rent games at all - renting video games was made illegal in the 80s, and still applies to PC games, but I believe the proviso to exclude console games from this came from a Blockbuster lobby (another reason PC games are in decline comparatively.)
The disc thing. We will always have fixed and removable discs (or whatever) that will hold more than you can download in a reasonable amount of time. It is pretty much an inescapable fact of media storage technology. Hell, I bet it'll be cheaper to sell games on bloody hard drives than it will be to download them soon. With consumer broadband costs tending up... and hard drives at $1/gig (Canadian!)... and HD-DVDs on the way...
I don't see this working out for a gamer that wants to perform well. Obviously you can twitch your thumbs a lot faster than you can push whatever weighted system they have implemented.
Now on the other hand... I've always been surprised that no one had implemented a stationary-bike kind of setup for a PC workstation (that I've seen anyways - feel free to add links). It wouldn't even been that hard; off the top of my head, you could hook the mouse wheel to a sensor on the bike wheel, so you had to pedal to scroll while browsing. Backwards and forwards. Imagine you'd burn a few calories that way...
Anyways, the invention is a compelling idea, but they should have bundled specific games with it... a MechWarrior kind of thing would be neat...
Yeah, they are. That is why it is called the bitrate. Think about it.
I realize what you are saying, is that some codecs can sound better at a lower bitrate than others; I find, in reality, everyone encodes at between 128-256 kbps now matter what codec. So files are the same size.
As the parent (or grandfather) says, this is a war of two monopolies....
Saying Apple has a monopoly on Apple hardware is a tautology. Apple's supposed 'monopoly' and Microsoft's actual monopoly are not the same thing.
DRM may be considered a necessary evil for these companies but it also means that all of these formats are proprietary....Stick DRM on a Vorbis or MP3 file and that renders it proprietary as well...
Actually FairPlay is owned by VeriDisc and any company can buy a certificate to support it. I do agree its unfortunate that this extra step has to be taken, but with the iTunes Store's critical mass, how long do you think it'll be before your N-Gage or whatever will get an update?
There's no way to stop a playing song. Only pause it.... Syncing music is not intutitive....Navigating through the tracks on the DJ takes FOREVER.
Sorry - I had a laugh out of this... I mean, aren't playing/stopping, syncing, and navigating basically the only things you do with an MP3 player?
I tell you, if Apple had this deal in the works for awhile, they must have been laughing their asses off when the Dell DJ was announced... 'oh if they only knew'...
Before more of you go off on a flamewar against poor old Paul - who is a paragon of virtue, by the way - I have taken the time to paste the definition of 'superior' here, and I have highlighted in italics the particular usage that I believe was intended, for the WMP format.
Once you all read this I'm sure it will all make sense.
superior
\Su*pe"ri*or\, a. [L., compar. of superus being above, fr. super above, over: cf. F. sup['e]rieur. See Super-, and cf. Supreme.] 1. More elevated in place or position; higher; upper; as, the superior limb of the sun; the superior part of an image.
2. Higher in rank or office; more exalted in dignity; as, a superior officer; a superior degree of nobility.
3. Higher or greater in excellence; surpassing others in the greatness, or value of any quality; greater in quality or degree; as, a man of superior merit; or of superior bravery.
4. Beyond the power or influence of; too great or firm to be subdued or affected by; -- with to.
5. More comprehensive; as a term in classification; as, a genus is superior to a species.
6. (Bot.) (a) Above the ovary; -- said of parts of the flower which, although normally below the ovary, adhere to it, and so appear to originate from its upper part; also of an ovary when the other floral organs are plainly below it in position, and free from it. (b) Belonging to the part of an axillary flower which is toward the main stem; posterior. (c) Pointing toward the apex of the fruit; ascending; -- said of the radicle.
See? Very clear - the WMP format is an ovary attached to the AAC format, or something, and is just kind of generally flower-like.
I do know one way in which WMA is superior to both MP3 and AAC. There's support for lossless compression in WMA.
That's true, although its worth pointing out that any iPod can play uncompressed AIFF files just fine.
Of course, it kills your battery and you lose most of the skip buffer, but I don't see how that wouldn't be true of an uncompressed file with a WMP wrapper, either.
But not enough... not enough for Apple to throw away their (core) hardware business.
One other eventuality of OS X for x86 would be Microsoft going berserk, which would be fun to watch for a bit, but would probably leave Apple crushed in the dirt.
Blowing up the wrong buildings could seriously screw with missions, and actually would be an easy way to cheat. Don't want cops? Blow up the stations!
Okay.. but, what if that is the game I want to play? Blow Up The Stations? See thats part of the beauty of GTA - its like an amusement park city. You run around and do what you want.
Though, technically, the reason you won't see deformable terrain in GTA is because the series is PS2-centric, and the PS2 doesn't have a hard drive (yet) to store the city data in addition to the 500K of game data. Because what good is deformable terrain if all you have to do is drive around the block, and the building's back?
This technical limitation didn't seem to stop the guys who developed PS2 Red Faction...?
Basically, the DV video format has broken the prosumer market wide open. This will introduce people to decent video editing that wouldn't have had a chance before. Some of those people will start playing around and feel the need for more power.
DV format = FireWire has allowed this revolution to happen. You have to have the hardware side to support the bridge... much like CD-ROMs allowed us to just start sticking albums right into the computer. Or Desktop Publishing for that matter; that revolution required both the WYSIWYG software and the laser printer to happen at the same time (roughly).
Now this is different than the original poster mentioned, however it is still an Apple branded mini to RCA cable.
I have that iBook, and that cable. You're right - although is the minijack end of that cable really called a '3 channel mini' ? I thought it was just a nonstandard minijack, but I'm curious to know if its an actual 'standard'. (and that cable is also not cheap, $35 CDN I believe I paid. Grumbling.)
The helicopters - not planes - that Saddam used to gas the Kurds were from Bell Helicopter Textron and Hughes, which are both US companies. Any planes Saddam had have been grounded (and indeed, literally buried) since the No-Fly Zone was established after Gulf War 1...
Saddam gassed the Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war, well before Gulf War I which resulted in the no-fly zones. Your statement here shows you know absolutely nothing about that incident.
Sorry, I can see where you got that idea - I was responding to this: People forget that France was making the planes that Iraq used to gas its own people.
I merely meant, 1) Saddam used US helicopters against the Kurds, and 2) any pathetic air force that Iraq might have had has been gone entirely since GW1. On reflection the second point was extraneous, but not incorrect - they are two separate statements.
FUD! Lets get some numbers down. According to SIPRI USSR, France, China, and Czechoslovakia were the largest traders of conventional arms during the period you describe. In fact a nice table summarizes this and shows that the US contributed to about 1% of the arms trade to Iraq from 1973-1990. Looks like the certainly, far and away, worst offender is the USSR.
I have seen that 1% stat before, and I don't believe it tells the whole story. The US has had a longtime policy of not selling any military equipment to Iraq; however this was a very tongue-in-cheek policy as often things like the aforementioned helicopters would be sold, sans guns, which were readily available from the Russians or whatever. So Iraq got things like helicopter gunships that did not technically have the guns - but with the gun mounts left intact - from the US, and this did not count as a military sale.
I'm sorry I don't have links with me right now so take this as you will. I readily admit that I can't prove it.
Slashdot Mirror
SORRY -- I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF THE 3RD FASTEST CLUSTER IN THE WORLD.
Joking aside, who cares how loud it is when its this fast? I'm a very big fan of quiet personal computers, but when designing for raw power, I think I'd actually like it to sound like an earthquake when it runs. It's just more impressive that way.
The inherent lickability of OS X remains unchanged - therefore this is one that can wait.
They put in another throbbing button or drawer though, man, I'm there.
I'm Canadian, so I have to assume that 'proble' is the... imperial spelling... of problem?
"I get five rods to the hog's head!"
This is one of the funniest things I've ever read on Slashdot.
Because it's an iPod.
The reasons that I can just say that, and lots of people know what I mean, is the answer to your question.
NO! Nonononono. Dude. Come on.
This is Slashdot. "I don't need 20 GB of music".. of course you don't need it. But you will demand it. As a... nerd, or something.
Now suck it up, and demand a 1 ounce 50GB overmediaplayer with a folding plasma screen and support for Ogg Stupidname. For $50. It is your goddammed right!
I agree, that is annoying. I have a 12" PB myself so I sympathize. Usually I go with the 'overlapping' approach but I find I need to constantly see the item info, in my daily work.
IMO, the popup window is much better because now I don't have to resize or move the iCal window whenI want to see the info. By the way, you can pop up and close it with Command-I, which is a lot easier than mousing over to a visible piece of it.... Unless you have the horizontal space to pop out the drawer without it going offscreen, I think detachable window is easier to use.
Interestingly they have changed the behaviour. I noticed that if you have a maximized iCal main window and you do a Cmd-I (with drawer mode on), it will resize the window for you to make room for the info. Cmd-I again removes the drawer but does not restore the window. A little easier than before.
I was wrong about the windoid though, in regards to clicking it forward - the windoid floats, it cannot be covered. This diminishes it somewhat, I think.
(Also I wish Apple would be more consistent with this. The iCal Info windoid vanishes when iCal isn't active, as it should. The Safari Download windoid always hangs around.)
I completely agree with this statement. I only point out that one's impression of a certain UI implementation as wrong doesn't necessarily make it so. Sometimes a method is demonstrably inferior. In this case, there are strong points for both drawer and windoid methods, and a strong split amongst the userbase as to which is appropriate -- the correct thing for Apple to do is to offer a choice. Which is of course what they did.
I find that often a UI method is strongly preferred by a user if it is the first way they have been exposed to. Alt-tab switching is a good example, or the endless vi vs. emacs debates.
It's your perception. I only point this out because this is the classic Macintosh interface tempest in a teapot.
The new detachable Info windoid is exactly 10 pixels smaller, in its smallest width, than the drawer was. It can get much shorter than the drawer, but that does not make it more functional, in this instance. Safe to say, both drawer and windoid constructs basically take up the same amount of room.
Now, you could make an argument that having the detachable window is better for screen 'real estate' as you can leave just a little piece of it visible, behind the iCal main window, and click it to bring it forward. But you could have also say there's nothing stopping you from just shoving the drawer portion off-screen as well.
For myself, I think I prefer the drawer. I'm used to being able to see my event Info (in month view) when iCal is in the background - now I can't, because an app not in the foreground on OS X will make its support windoids disappear. There are always trade-offs.
In the rare case where neither one is demonstrably better, a choice is good, and its nice that Apple is listening.
As I'm sure others will point out, there's two big problems off the bat: the Xserve has a big ass, and it sounds like a Chinook helicopter when in operation.
But other than that, cool idea! No, seriously. I could certainly use a 'media processor' kind of PC for all those things that people tend to hack old PCs into - MP3 jukeboxes, TiVO replacement, general storage server, etc. It's really not so farfetched; I'm thinking of video codecs in particular... the reason you can't make a video-iPod is that you never know what codecs you are going to get, and they all need some CPU power to decode if they're modern. A small rack-style PC that fits a typical stereo footprint (but smaller/less goofy than an Xbox) would be a nice option, as long as it's quiet.
Good post - I wanted to add to this point you made above. I think people are underestimating both the political influence of Blockbuster, and the nature of disc-based media.
Blockbuster predicts that half of their revenue will come from game rentals in the next 3 years. They are moving accordingly to allocate 50% of each location's shelf space to console games. Blockbuster has an absolutely huge influence on the movie industry (much in the same way that WalMart does on the music industry). They are probably the reason we can rent games at all - renting video games was made illegal in the 80s, and still applies to PC games, but I believe the proviso to exclude console games from this came from a Blockbuster lobby (another reason PC games are in decline comparatively.)
The disc thing. We will always have fixed and removable discs (or whatever) that will hold more than you can download in a reasonable amount of time. It is pretty much an inescapable fact of media storage technology. Hell, I bet it'll be cheaper to sell games on bloody hard drives than it will be to download them soon. With consumer broadband costs tending up... and hard drives at $1/gig (Canadian!)... and HD-DVDs on the way...
Now on the other hand... I've always been surprised that no one had implemented a stationary-bike kind of setup for a PC workstation (that I've seen anyways - feel free to add links). It wouldn't even been that hard; off the top of my head, you could hook the mouse wheel to a sensor on the bike wheel, so you had to pedal to scroll while browsing. Backwards and forwards. Imagine you'd burn a few calories that way...
Anyways, the invention is a compelling idea, but they should have bundled specific games with it... a MechWarrior kind of thing would be neat...
Yeah, they are. That is why it is called the bitrate. Think about it.
I realize what you are saying, is that some codecs can sound better at a lower bitrate than others; I find, in reality, everyone encodes at between 128-256 kbps now matter what codec. So files are the same size.
Saying Apple has a monopoly on Apple hardware is a tautology. Apple's supposed 'monopoly' and Microsoft's actual monopoly are not the same thing.
DRM may be considered a necessary evil for these companies but it also means that all of these formats are proprietary....Stick DRM on a Vorbis or MP3 file and that renders it proprietary as well...
Actually FairPlay is owned by VeriDisc and any company can buy a certificate to support it. I do agree its unfortunate that this extra step has to be taken, but with the iTunes Store's critical mass, how long do you think it'll be before your N-Gage or whatever will get an update?
Sorry - I had a laugh out of this... I mean, aren't playing/stopping, syncing, and navigating basically the only things you do with an MP3 player?
I tell you, if Apple had this deal in the works for awhile, they must have been laughing their asses off when the Dell DJ was announced... 'oh if they only knew'...
You forgot: he looks like a giant talking paper clip.
Before more of you go off on a flamewar against poor old Paul - who is a paragon of virtue, by the way - I have taken the time to paste the definition of 'superior' here, and I have highlighted in italics the particular usage that I believe was intended, for the WMP format.
Once you all read this I'm sure it will all make sense.
superior
\Su*pe"ri*or\, a. [L., compar. of superus being above, fr. super above, over: cf. F. sup['e]rieur. See Super-, and cf. Supreme.] 1. More elevated in place or position; higher; upper; as, the superior limb of the sun; the superior part of an image.
2. Higher in rank or office; more exalted in dignity; as, a superior officer; a superior degree of nobility.
3. Higher or greater in excellence; surpassing others in the greatness, or value of any quality; greater in quality or degree; as, a man of superior merit; or of superior bravery.
4. Beyond the power or influence of; too great or firm to be subdued or affected by; -- with to.
5. More comprehensive; as a term in classification; as, a genus is superior to a species.
6. (Bot.) (a) Above the ovary; -- said of parts of the flower which, although normally below the ovary, adhere to it, and so appear to originate from its upper part; also of an ovary when the other floral organs are plainly below it in position, and free from it. (b) Belonging to the part of an axillary flower which is toward the main stem; posterior. (c) Pointing toward the apex of the fruit; ascending; -- said of the radicle.
See? Very clear - the WMP format is an ovary attached to the AAC format, or something, and is just kind of generally flower-like.
That's true, although its worth pointing out that any iPod can play uncompressed AIFF files just fine.
Of course, it kills your battery and you lose most of the skip buffer, but I don't see how that wouldn't be true of an uncompressed file with a WMP wrapper, either.
But not enough... not enough for Apple to throw away their (core) hardware business.
One other eventuality of OS X for x86 would be Microsoft going berserk, which would be fun to watch for a bit, but would probably leave Apple crushed in the dirt.
Okay.. but, what if that is the game I want to play? Blow Up The Stations? See thats part of the beauty of GTA - its like an amusement park city. You run around and do what you want.
Though, technically, the reason you won't see deformable terrain in GTA is because the series is PS2-centric, and the PS2 doesn't have a hard drive (yet) to store the city data in addition to the 500K of game data. Because what good is deformable terrain if all you have to do is drive around the block, and the building's back?
This technical limitation didn't seem to stop the guys who developed PS2 Red Faction...?
Basically, the DV video format has broken the prosumer market wide open. This will introduce people to decent video editing that wouldn't have had a chance before. Some of those people will start playing around and feel the need for more power.
DV format = FireWire has allowed this revolution to happen. You have to have the hardware side to support the bridge... much like CD-ROMs allowed us to just start sticking albums right into the computer. Or Desktop Publishing for that matter; that revolution required both the WYSIWYG software and the laser printer to happen at the same time (roughly).
I have that iBook, and that cable. You're right - although is the minijack end of that cable really called a '3 channel mini' ? I thought it was just a nonstandard minijack, but I'm curious to know if its an actual 'standard'. (and that cable is also not cheap, $35 CDN I believe I paid. Grumbling.)
Saddam gassed the Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war, well before Gulf War I which resulted in the no-fly zones. Your statement here shows you know absolutely nothing about that incident.
Sorry, I can see where you got that idea - I was responding to this:
People forget that France was making the planes that Iraq used to gas its own people.
I merely meant, 1) Saddam used US helicopters against the Kurds, and 2) any pathetic air force that Iraq might have had has been gone entirely since GW1. On reflection the second point was extraneous, but not incorrect - they are two separate statements.
I have seen that 1% stat before, and I don't believe it tells the whole story. The US has had a longtime policy of not selling any military equipment to Iraq; however this was a very tongue-in-cheek policy as often things like the aforementioned helicopters would be sold, sans guns, which were readily available from the Russians or whatever. So Iraq got things like helicopter gunships that did not technically have the guns - but with the gun mounts left intact - from the US, and this did not count as a military sale.
I'm sorry I don't have links with me right now so take this as you will. I readily admit that I can't prove it.
You are absolutely right, I stand amended.