Macs have had their BIOS integrated with the Mac OS since their inception. When Linux became available for Macs (i.e. LinuxPPC and mklinux), all we had to do was boot into Mac OS first then run the Linux Loader (forget what it was called though).
The BIOS OS integration on the Mac has always been a thing of beauty, and it makes sense that M$ would (after 20 years) start to catch up by now.
Re:When the iPod will come with bluetooth or WIFI?
on
New iMacs (and iPods)
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· Score: 1
I read on SpyMac that Apple is secretly developing a way to charge the iPod via Bluetooth, too!
(But seriously - the thing has to be plugged in some time, it might as well be while you're syncing it up. Wireless would just add unnecessarily to the cost.)
Very interesting article I noticed on thinksecret today... I thought of this thread when I saw the article.
First let me say that I take what I read on most of the rumour sites with a grain of salt, but Think Secret has been pretty damn accurate for the past year or so.
Anyway they are suggesting Apple will shortly be replacing their mouse and keyboard with Bluetooth models. Doesn't seem so absurd, and I'll bet if it's true they'll be updated cosmetically too...
Can't you buy get the clear keyboard and mouse with the black keys and mouse innards instead of white? White was introduced with the flat iMac, but I always thought the more sinister-looking black keyboards looked better with the towers.
If you would be developing a site with the intention of going live on Linux, why not just install Linux in a separate partition and only have to go through installation headaches once?
The "Logic Audio" series is now just called "Logic". It is available in 3 different versions: Logic Platinum, Logic Gold, and Logic Audio (they used to be called Logic Audio Platinum, Logic Audio Gold, and Logic Audio Silver).
You categorize it as a sequencer which may do a little bit of notation - but in fact Logic's score editor is an extremely powerful notation package unto itself. It's leaps beyond any other sequencer package in this area.
As stated in a previous post, it really is a do-all notation app, but the author is looking for a no-nonsense solution, so Logic's learning curve and poor documentation are its main drawbacks - not features.
Your perspective on Logic is a little extreme - I use it every day and find it an extremely powerful program. You are correct though that while Logic includes a very powerful notation function, it has a severe learning curve and a really really crappy manual.
To put "really crappy manual" in perspective, Logic is at version 6, and my manual is a poorly organized version 4 manual with a version 5 addendum and a version 6 addendum. Yes I upgraded from version 4, but even people who buy the new version get this truckload of books.
For this reason alone, I cannot recommend Logic since the author seems to be asking for a "no-nonsense" approach to notation.
Let me see if I've got this straight. One word: Mame. But emulation just isn't the same. So buy the console and restore it. Better still call up all your beer buddies to throw in some quarters and buy the rights. Ah, joust. Tempest. Lest we not forget the C64 Lode Runner era.
there are a lot of differences between the switch from 68k and PPC and that of PPC/32 to PPC/64. There isn't emulation required, nor is a bunch of code rewriting to get your app optimized for the G5. It's a matter of installing the dev tools update, and recompiling. Things weren't that easy in the 68k->PPC transition days...
Agreed... a more accurate analogy might be waiting for AltiVec optimization. When the G4 was introduced, most software ran a bit faster on it, but certain apps saw incredible performance boosts when they were made AltiVec-aware.
I agree. M-Audio products are pretty flawless, they work well under Windows and Mac, and they're inexpensive.
I was tasked with doing real-time encoding of 8 separate audio streams over a corporate LAN, so I set up a box with XP Pro and 2 M-Audio Delta 1010's. It runs 8 simultaneous instances of Windows Media encoder, with each instance directed to look at a different pair of inputs from the Delta cards. This encoder has not been rebooted for over 6 months and is running flawlessly. This says something for the M-Audio drivers, which are the same for the 410 as the 1010.
While my scenario is a little different (I am encoding, you are decoding), multiple instances of any MP3 playback software should be able to run with much less horsepower than my encoders (I'm using a P4-2.4 GHz, and I'm guessing you could play back 4 to 6 stereo MP3's using a P3-500.)
Also, the Delta's outputs are probably hot enough that, using high-quality shielded cable, you should be able to run to just about anywhere in the house without having to worry about loss or interference.
You can poo-poo the 1024x768 screen on the 12" PowerBook, but to my knowledge there is no higher resolution 12" display on a notebook anywhere. If you want higher resolution you need a bigger notebook. This is the right trade-off in my opinion, because things would start getting pretty tiny at higher res on a 12".
Also check the Apple PDF Datasheet on the 12", you'll see that the drive is stated to write at 24x, not 2x as you suggest. (I just checked, and interestingly the Apple Store page says the drive writes at 8x. Weird, but still faster than 2x.)
I'm browsing with a few mod points, and while I never touched that comment, I would have metamodded an off-topic mod as 'fair' on it because...
It *LOOKS* like it's off topic. It's a fact of life on/. - as mods we try to make things easier to read by weeding out the crap. To those of us who don't recognize the reference(excuuuuuuuuuuuse me) it looks like crap... the 'n' side of s/n.
Advice: if you post an obscure reference you run the risk of being modded down unless you explain yourself. Accept it, it's a fact of life. A quality post of this nature should provide at least subtle clues that it is relevant. It's just a product of the self-moderating slashdot society.
Try browsing flat at -1 and see the crap that gets modded 'off topic' and 'troll'.
Buying music by the minute is not the same as buying gas by the gallon.
Your comment is like saying that the value of a painting is proportional to its square footage.
A buck a song is simple and effective, and I would hate to see Apple listen to your suggestion. If you don't feel that your buck is well spent on a 2-minute song, then buy a longer song. Better still - why don't you see if you can put them out of business by only downloading 7-minute songs!
The difference between 640 MB and 1 GB is that Apple is presenting this machine at a radically different price point from the iBook. The 12" iBook, which also tops at 640 MB, is positioned as a budget small notebook, while the PBG4 is a professional small notebook. Some of the missing 12" AlBook features make it appear, to many, as too small a step up to justify the extra cost over the iBook.
The 640 MB limitation is also significant to audio professionals who use realtime DSP plug-ins, and the extra 384 MB does make a difference as to how many plug-ins you can run. I would not recommend the 12" PB to be a good value for an audio pro. Historically, the stock configuration of *any* Apple product has always needed RAM right out of the box, and the added cost of having Apple add RAM is not worth it.
I'm also very surprised there is no gigabit ethernet on the 12" PB, but you are correct.
FW800 is something Apple should be racing to deploy across their professional line, followed by their consumer stuff. FW800 makes a PowerBook appear more competitive in the face of other manufacturers' products which feature USB 2.
The 12" PBG4 is of course still a great laptop and I would love to have one, but I think Apple should have really loaded this one up with the bells and whistles.
Reasons for a 12" powerbook over the iBook, if you have money to burn:
You forgot Superdrive, gigabit ethernet, slightly smaller, and lighter.
IMHO Apple missed the boat with the 12" Albook by not including FireWire 800 on this product, and only including a single DIMM slot. If there was absolutely no room left for a second slot, they should have just stuck 512 MB right on the motherboard.
Still the 12" PB is a sweet machine, but then again so's my 500 MHz iBook (now almost 2 years old).
I went to the the ebay page where the Lego Mac is currently for sale and the owner recently posted that he's now using the Lego Mac to host a web page!
Agreed. I use Logic Audio a lot, and my 350 MHz G4 can run about 3 times more simultaneous real-time DSP plug-ins than my 500 MHz iBook. I realize the 66 MHz system bus on the iBook comes into play here (it's 100 MHz on my old G4), but my mom's iMac (400 MHz with 100 MHz system bus) performs about as well as my iBook.
When Apple first announced the Power Mac G4, the rumor sites were all saying that the G4 was still at least 6 months away. Jobs blew everybody away and even made an "if you believe the rumor sites" remark just before he said that the Power Mac G4 will begin shipping "today".
Apple must have had at least some "same machines that will be sold" at that time; they just did a really good job at keeping them under wraps.
These days the beans are typically spilled at least a few days prior to the announcement of new Apple products. It would be very difficult to have such a high-profile (and high-tech) company entirely leak-proof.
Take this article to mean what you want it to, but I think it is quite possible that it is true.
I have an older 'Sawtooth' G4 and I'm considering a Radeon 8500. I didn't know YDL doesn't support it. Thanks for the info, that definitely is cause for me to rethink this.
Do you notice a big improvement over the old Rage cards on OS X thanks to 'Quartz Extreme'? None of the sites I've researched talk about the real-world performance gains of this card.
Since the advent of word processors, authors have saved a mint on the cost of manuscript paper and ribbon. In fact thousands of books have been authored with a product called Microsoft Word. Why has this lower cost of book production not been passed on to the consumer?
Rhetoric aside, Pro Tools replaces one key component in the traditional recording studio: tape. Big consoles, microphones, cabling, maintenance, acoustically treated spaces, reference monitor speakers, and signal processors are still pretty much a mainstay in high-end recording studios.
Instead of having to align and clean tape heads, recording engineers have become software gurus, yet they still need a good knowledge of signal routing, electronics theory, and all their gear.
Besides, we all know that in the case of enormous, triple-platinum records, the actual creation of the recording has little or nothing to do with the sticker price. Yes it's sad, but CD's are priced right at the point where they can sell the most and also make the most profit.
I just recorded an eight track demo for my friends who are in a little band, and I can tell you the quality is pretty damn good compared to the price of recording in most studios(Some run about $100 an hour)
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Macs have had their BIOS integrated with the Mac OS since their inception. When Linux became available for Macs (i.e. LinuxPPC and mklinux), all we had to do was boot into Mac OS first then run the Linux Loader (forget what it was called though).
The BIOS OS integration on the Mac has always been a thing of beauty, and it makes sense that M$ would (after 20 years) start to catch up by now.
I read on SpyMac that Apple is secretly developing a way to charge the iPod via Bluetooth, too!
(But seriously - the thing has to be plugged in some time, it might as well be while you're syncing it up. Wireless would just add unnecessarily to the cost.)
Check out this link. (Emulation.net - very cool site)
First let me say that I take what I read on most of the rumour sites with a grain of salt, but Think Secret has been pretty damn accurate for the past year or so.
Anyway they are suggesting Apple will shortly be replacing their mouse and keyboard with Bluetooth models. Doesn't seem so absurd, and I'll bet if it's true they'll be updated cosmetically too...
Wow, I've never seen such an oversimplification in my life, my man.
Clearly then, by your logic, Microsoft, Intel and Dell make better products than Sun?
Can't you buy get the clear keyboard and mouse with the black keys and mouse innards instead of white? White was introduced with the flat iMac, but I always thought the more sinister-looking black keyboards looked better with the towers.
News flash! Somebody can build a PC cheaper than a Mac and run more software!
Idiot.
If you would be developing a site with the intention of going live on Linux, why not just install Linux in a separate partition and only have to go through installation headaches once?
A quick note....
The "Logic Audio" series is now just called "Logic". It is available in 3 different versions: Logic Platinum, Logic Gold, and Logic Audio (they used to be called Logic Audio Platinum, Logic Audio Gold, and Logic Audio Silver).
You categorize it as a sequencer which may do a little bit of notation - but in fact Logic's score editor is an extremely powerful notation package unto itself. It's leaps beyond any other sequencer package in this area.
As stated in a previous post, it really is a do-all notation app, but the author is looking for a no-nonsense solution, so Logic's learning curve and poor documentation are its main drawbacks - not features.
Your perspective on Logic is a little extreme - I use it every day and find it an extremely powerful program. You are correct though that while Logic includes a very powerful notation function, it has a severe learning curve and a really really crappy manual.
To put "really crappy manual" in perspective, Logic is at version 6, and my manual is a poorly organized version 4 manual with a version 5 addendum and a version 6 addendum. Yes I upgraded from version 4, but even people who buy the new version get this truckload of books.
For this reason alone, I cannot recommend Logic since the author seems to be asking for a "no-nonsense" approach to notation.
Let me see if I've got this straight. One word: Mame. But emulation just isn't the same. So buy the console and restore it. Better still call up all your beer buddies to throw in some quarters and buy the rights. Ah, joust. Tempest. Lest we not forget the C64 Lode Runner era.
OK, next article.
This app requires a G4/500 or G4/450 dual proc. Is it just me or does this seem like an awful lot to run this app?
I'm using Logic Audio on a G4/350 and it's quite capable of running all the Emagic plug-ins included with Soundtrack.
Agreed... a more accurate analogy might be waiting for AltiVec optimization. When the G4 was introduced, most software ran a bit faster on it, but certain apps saw incredible performance boosts when they were made AltiVec-aware.
I agree. M-Audio products are pretty flawless, they work well under Windows and Mac, and they're inexpensive.
I was tasked with doing real-time encoding of 8 separate audio streams over a corporate LAN, so I set up a box with XP Pro and 2 M-Audio Delta 1010's. It runs 8 simultaneous instances of Windows Media encoder, with each instance directed to look at a different pair of inputs from the Delta cards. This encoder has not been rebooted for over 6 months and is running flawlessly. This says something for the M-Audio drivers, which are the same for the 410 as the 1010.
While my scenario is a little different (I am encoding, you are decoding), multiple instances of any MP3 playback software should be able to run with much less horsepower than my encoders (I'm using a P4-2.4 GHz, and I'm guessing you could play back 4 to 6 stereo MP3's using a P3-500.)
Also, the Delta's outputs are probably hot enough that, using high-quality shielded cable, you should be able to run to just about anywhere in the house without having to worry about loss or interference.
You can poo-poo the 1024x768 screen on the 12" PowerBook, but to my knowledge there is no higher resolution 12" display on a notebook anywhere. If you want higher resolution you need a bigger notebook. This is the right trade-off in my opinion, because things would start getting pretty tiny at higher res on a 12".
Also check the Apple PDF Datasheet on the 12", you'll see that the drive is stated to write at 24x, not 2x as you suggest. (I just checked, and interestingly the Apple Store page says the drive writes at 8x. Weird, but still faster than 2x.)
I'm browsing with a few mod points, and while I never touched that comment, I would have metamodded an off-topic mod as 'fair' on it because...
/. - as mods we try to make things easier to read by weeding out the crap. To those of us who don't recognize the reference(excuuuuuuuuuuuse me) it looks like crap... the 'n' side of s/n.
It *LOOKS* like it's off topic. It's a fact of life on
Advice: if you post an obscure reference you run the risk of being modded down unless you explain yourself. Accept it, it's a fact of life. A quality post of this nature should provide at least subtle clues that it is relevant. It's just a product of the self-moderating slashdot society.
Try browsing flat at -1 and see the crap that gets modded 'off topic' and 'troll'.
Buying music by the minute is not the same as buying gas by the gallon.
Your comment is like saying that the value of a painting is proportional to its square footage.
A buck a song is simple and effective, and I would hate to see Apple listen to your suggestion. If you don't feel that your buck is well spent on a 2-minute song, then buy a longer song. Better still - why don't you see if you can put them out of business by only downloading 7-minute songs!
The difference between 640 MB and 1 GB is that Apple is presenting this machine at a radically different price point from the iBook. The 12" iBook, which also tops at 640 MB, is positioned as a budget small notebook, while the PBG4 is a professional small notebook. Some of the missing 12" AlBook features make it appear, to many, as too small a step up to justify the extra cost over the iBook.
The 640 MB limitation is also significant to audio professionals who use realtime DSP plug-ins, and the extra 384 MB does make a difference as to how many plug-ins you can run. I would not recommend the 12" PB to be a good value for an audio pro. Historically, the stock configuration of *any* Apple product has always needed RAM right out of the box, and the added cost of having Apple add RAM is not worth it.
I'm also very surprised there is no gigabit ethernet on the 12" PB, but you are correct.
FW800 is something Apple should be racing to deploy across their professional line, followed by their consumer stuff. FW800 makes a PowerBook appear more competitive in the face of other manufacturers' products which feature USB 2.
The 12" PBG4 is of course still a great laptop and I would love to have one, but I think Apple should have really loaded this one up with the bells and whistles.
You forgot Superdrive, gigabit ethernet, slightly smaller, and lighter.
IMHO Apple missed the boat with the 12" Albook by not including FireWire 800 on this product, and only including a single DIMM slot. If there was absolutely no room left for a second slot, they should have just stuck 512 MB right on the motherboard.
Still the 12" PB is a sweet machine, but then again so's my 500 MHz iBook (now almost 2 years old).
I went to the the ebay page where the Lego Mac is currently for sale and the owner recently posted that he's now using the Lego Mac to host a web page!
Agreed. I use Logic Audio a lot, and my 350 MHz G4 can run about 3 times more simultaneous real-time DSP plug-ins than my 500 MHz iBook. I realize the 66 MHz system bus on the iBook comes into play here (it's 100 MHz on my old G4), but my mom's iMac (400 MHz with 100 MHz system bus) performs about as well as my iBook.
Apple must have had at least some "same machines that will be sold" at that time; they just did a really good job at keeping them under wraps.
These days the beans are typically spilled at least a few days prior to the announcement of new Apple products. It would be very difficult to have such a high-profile (and high-tech) company entirely leak-proof.
Take this article to mean what you want it to, but I think it is quite possible that it is true.
I have an older 'Sawtooth' G4 and I'm considering a Radeon 8500. I didn't know YDL doesn't support it. Thanks for the info, that definitely is cause for me to rethink this.
Do you notice a big improvement over the old Rage cards on OS X thanks to 'Quartz Extreme'? None of the sites I've researched talk about the real-world performance gains of this card.
Rhetoric aside, Pro Tools replaces one key component in the traditional recording studio: tape. Big consoles, microphones, cabling, maintenance, acoustically treated spaces, reference monitor speakers, and signal processors are still pretty much a mainstay in high-end recording studios.
Instead of having to align and clean tape heads, recording engineers have become software gurus, yet they still need a good knowledge of signal routing, electronics theory, and all their gear.
Besides, we all know that in the case of enormous, triple-platinum records, the actual creation of the recording has little or nothing to do with the sticker price. Yes it's sad, but CD's are priced right at the point where they can sell the most and also make the most profit.
If the quality is so good, why is it only a demo?