It's literally remove battery, undo 3 screws and the piece they are holding and then the hard drive slides out. The RAM is also in the same spot and they also just slide out. It's one of the easiest hard drive/RAM installs I've ever seen on a laptop.
The iTunes Store also has a section called "Just For You" which makes recommendations based on stuff you've purchased in the past but it's just a part of what is presented to you. They give you a pretty eclectic selection when you first open up the iTunes Store and then you can get more specific with genre and such. If you go to a band or a song they will also show you what other people who have bought that item are buying. This is great because there's a greater chance the reference will show you something new you might like.
It's pretty clearly and logically arranged and you can get to interesting items fairly easily. If you have any interest then give it a try, you might like it.
The problem is not just bad code. What is happening is they are coding specifically to bugs in IE. IE has a number of quirks that web developers code around. Once the site works in IE they declare the site done and don't bother to check how it works in other browsers. Firefox has a quirks mode where it basically emulates IE's quirks so it mostly works. Also, a lot of developers check for Firefox compatibility because it is the second most-used browser out there. Even with this there are still a lot of sites that choke Firefox but work fine on IE.
The upshot is that web developers shouldn't be coding to a specific browser, they should be coding to the web STANDARDS. If a browser doesn't work with the standards then it's the browser's developers that should be working on the problem, not the web developers.
Safari (and KHMTL on which WebKit is based) are forerunners in being standards-complient. They do work around messy web code but it's pretty tough to actually figure out what a web developer meant when he coded something ugly. You can only sanity-check so far, at some point the onus is on the web developer to get his act together and make his web page work with the standards. This isn't about "elitist snobbery", this is about doing the right thing.
By default Mac OS X blinks a menu item once after selecting it, then performs the action. It's fairly quick and unobtrusive. You can't change it directly but I believe there is a setting behind the scenes that you can do with a 3rd party application or by editing some system preference files.
I definitely think the way to test these things is by just using the default values out of the box. Don't tweak at all, install the OS and test. The OS comes set up as the manufacturer feels is best and that's an adequate starting point for any usability testing. Past that starts getting into individual user preferences and that's a huge grey area.
I've had no problems at all with several large labs and cloning a single install to run all machines. You can use the free Carbon Copy Cloner or just use the tools that Apple provides, it's fairly simple and works nearly flawlessly in my experience.
I've thought for some time that the USA should just drop the penny, nickel, and quarter and just have all prices put to the nearest tenth of a cent. That would simplify things a ton by leaving us with the dime, the half-dollar, and then paper currency.
We could also just revalue our currency by a factor of 1/10 and have a penny equal the value of an old dime, a nickel the value of an old half-dollar, a dime the value of an old dollar, and so on. This could cause some confusion as people adjust to the new valuation, as well as incur a currency change-over and force businesses to have to change all of their price sheets and advertising.
Right now the hundreds place in our currency is pretty much irrelevant except in bulk transactions. By eliminating the hundreds place we will simplify both the change in our pockets and our day-to-day purchases.
You create a "standard" image of Windows for these machines, and keep the image on the network, and use Ghost (or equivalent) to push images onto the client PCs. This image has everything locked down. Users can't tweak or install anything. Their "My Documents" folder is redirected to a share on the server, which gets backed up. If you need to install software on a machine, you do it with SMS, and don't even have to touch the client machines. If you want to REALLY get crazy, you give everyone a roaming profile, so any machine they login to has all their stuff.
You DO realize that you can do the same under Mac OS X? In fact it's even easier!
These services are extremely simple to set up and manage. In my opinion they are much easier to manage than Ghost and Active Directory or their equivalents on the Windows side of things.
Recently someone at work got one of the Mac Pros. Chime to login 12 seconds. I was just plain floored./blockquote> That's because MacOS X monitors what is starting up on your system and creates a cached block of stuff that is loaded. The next time it boots it just loads the cache in one quick burst instead of jumping around loading this and initializing that. You'll notice that if you ever install something that requires a reboot then that first boot is significantly longer than subsequent boots, that's because it is rebuilding that cache. This is something that it probably does infrequently so most times you will have a very fast boot time.
Personally I almost never shut down or boot up my Mac desktop and laptop. I put them to sleep and wake them up when I need them. It takes a couple of seconds to put them to sleep and even less to wake them up. The uptime on my desktop right now is 43 days, I only really reboot it when I'm installing updates that need it.
Mmmm, this sort of thing always reminds me of the Monty Python sketch: The Argument Clinic
A: Look, let's get this thing clear; I quite definitely told you. M: No you did not. A: Yes I did. M: No you didn't. A: Yes I did. M: No you didn't. A: Yes I did. M: No you didn't. A: Yes I did. M: You didn't. A: Did. M: Oh look, this isn't an argument. A: Yes it is. M: No it isn't. It's just contradiction. A: No it isn't. M: It is! A: It is not. M: Look, you just contradicted me. A: I did not. M: Oh you did!! A: No, no, no. M: You did just then. A: Nonsense! M: Oh, this is futile! A: No it isn't. M: I came here for a good argument. A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument. M: An argument isn't just contradiction. A: It can be. M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. A: No it isn't. M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction. A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position. M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.' A: Yes it is! M: No it isn't!
A: Yes it is! M: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes. (short pause) A: No it isn't.
It has actually become more hazardous to use your turn signal than to not signal at all.
If you signal to move into a lane on the highway then everyone moves their car up closer to the person in front of them, blocking you from changing lanes and tailgating the car in front. If you change lanes without signaling then you often have plenty of room to make the lane change.
I believe that's one of the main reasons no one signals any more. If you want to change lanes safely you need to do it without letting the other drivers know what your intentions are or they will "defend" their spot in the traffic flow, often to the death. Talk about stupidity...
That download DOES include the PPC and Intel versions of Firefox 2. I don't quite know why the Mac version is triple the size of the Windows or Linux version, it should be at most double the size and probably a lot less. The way Universal Binaries are supposed to work is that each version of the code shares the same resources (graphics, user interface files, etc) and only the actual compiled code is different.
For most applications compiled code is quite small when compared to the graphics and other resources, which means that a Universal Binary should only grow by a small fraction of its size for each new architecture it supports. If Firefox 2 for the Mac is double or triple the size of Firefox 2 for other platforms then I'd suspect that there was some other reason for it than Apple's Universal Binaries system.
Also, there is very little difference in actual code between 32 bit and 64 bit support on the Mac. For most applications you gain a lot of 64 bit support just by using the proper libraries. There are very few applications out there that would need both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of their code, so that probably wouldn't add to the size of the Mac version of Firefox 2.
Believe it or not, generally each revision to Mac OS X GAINS speed rather than slows down.
The engineers at Apple have been tightening up their code with each release, finding new and better ways to do things. With each new release I've been finding my systems gaining reliability and speed. Memory requirements have slowly been climbing but overall CPU usage is steady or even a bit lower.
On older systems you might not be able to use some of the new technologies in the newer releases but it shouldn't affect your ability to run the latest version of Mac OS X. The newer graphics and such that won't run on older systems will just fall back into a simpler mode and will continue to work just fine as they did in past revisions.
here were some major major differences between XP and 2000, and I can understand Microsoft paying for these. I can also understand Apple charging for the jump from 9.x to 10.x. But from 10.4 to 10.5? What am I missing here?
Apple uses a different numbering scheme than most software manufacturers, at least for the Mac OS X releases.
You see, the "X" in Mac OS X stands for the number 10. When Apple does a major release they don't want to have to go to Mac OS XI, Mac OS XII, etc. What they do instead is Mac OS X 10.0, Mac OS X 10.1, and so on. Each 0.1 release is actually a major release, not a minor one. When Apple goes from Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) to Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) it is similar to Microsoft jumping from XP to Vista, it's a major upgrade and you are charged for it. When Apple does a minor release they do it in the form of Mac OS X 10.x.y, those are free to download.
I'm sure that eventually Apple will eventually come up with some sort of new numbering scheme once they get to Mac OS X 10.10 because that will just be EXTREMELY confusing to the consumer. For now their numbering scheme is just a little different from what you'd expect but it makes sense once you understand it.
Mass is irrelevant when maintaining a constant angular momentum, all else (like coefficient of friction) equal.
Not exactly true. Remember that the coefficient of friction is just a imensionless scalar value, it is not the actual force of friction. You need to multiply the coefficient of friction by the normal force between the two objects that are moving past each other. In this case we are talking about the mass of the flywheel acting upon its pivot point. I believe the relationship of friction to the mass of the flywheel is linear so a flywheel that is twice as massive as a ligher flywheel will take twice as much energy to maintain the same angular momentum.
And yes, it is actually a bit more complicated than this depending on how the flywheel is supported on its axis but the fact remains that the mass of the flywheel does have some bearing on the energy needed to maintain its angular momentum.
Forgot to mention, the reason film isn't used is the coefficient of expansion. There's no temperature regulation in drives (yet) and there isn't a film material in existence that doesn't expand and contract with the temperature.
That's not so hard to deal with actually. Have a few marker bits at the start of each track which tell you what track you are currently on and provide you with rotational timing and have a bit of code which compensates for being off a little bit because of temperature effects. Temperatures will tend to stabilize fairly quickly and adjustments will probably be infrequent. You'll lose a little bit of speed when there is a sudden temperature shift but I'd only expect that on a cold start, something that will happen once a session on a computer usually.
They could also include a temperature sensor and just adjust their tracking based on the temperature but this kind of dead reckoning could be dangerous if your measurements are not in calibration and you are dealing with close tolerances.
There's a way to prevent this. Basically you make a small program which registers the "quit application" event and when the program receives that event you send back a "user canceled" error result to the system. This cancels the reboot and keeps your program running.
Once you are done you just end the program and the user can reboot as normal.
A better plan might be to do the software update as a logout hook. That way the update can be configured to occur when the user logs out and it won't interrupt their work. You can read more about login and logout hooks here.
Yeah, true enough, but last I checked, due to DRM issues, it's hard to get from ALAC to other formats, Could be wrong.
What DRM issues? The only DRM on anything Apple does is on stuff sold from the iTunes Music Store. Stuff from the iTunes Music Store is not sold in ALAC format, it is sold in M4P format which is a DRM-protected AAC.
You can choose to rip your CDs in ALAC format which losslessly compresses the sound. There is no DRM involved and you can convert it to another format at your own whim. So if some day you want that ALAC music file in FLAC or MP3 format you can just convert it and suffer no quality loss other than the normal loss of whatever final format you are putting the file into.
Yep, there is a difference between WoW FPS under Mac OS and under Windows. WoW runs a bit slower on the Mac because of OpenGL drivers and threading issues, which means that the rendering work isn't threading as evenly as possible across the multiple processors and cores. This is an issue that will supposedly be fixed in MacOS 10.5. However, WoW still does run just fine under the current Mac OS.
If you absolutely must get the absolute best performance out of WoW then you can always use BootCamp or a similar application to run the Windows version of WoW on your Mac. WoW comes with both versions on the install disk so just use the one you want to use. I know a lot of people who run WoW under Mac OS X and hardly even notice a little loss of FPS.
BTW, if you really want to see some amazing tech support, check out the WoW Mac Tech Support Forum. Those guys are amazing, they really go the extra mile to solve problems and give out information. I wish every company's tech support was this good!
I've heard of some complaints about the Mighty Mouse. The two main ones are that the multi-button feature is not as intuitive as a real multi-button mouse (issues with fingers resting on the mouse and triggering false clicks, etc) and that the scroll ball tends to gunk up easily.
It's an intresting mouse for sure, but I have a feeling that most advanced users are going to be happier with a traditional multi-button mouse.
The keyboards are generally pretty nice. Having extra USB ports on a keyboard is a great feature. The layout of the keys is decent, and the action of the keys is good. My only real complaint about the newest Apple keyboards are that they are made of clear and white plastics. Any little bit of filth tends to crud up the keyboard very noticably and it can be very distracting to use. They are a pain to clean (as are most keyboards) so I'd recommend getting some sort of clear membrane to put over them or they will be filled with all sorts of nasty, visible junk in no time at all.
As far as Crucial goes, I order from them a ton for the office computers and 2 computer labs I run. Out of around 50 memory sticks I've ordered I've had 2 come in that have had trouble. They came in as part of the same shipment which makes me think that it was a bad lot by the manufacturer or possibly some bad handling somewhere. I called up Crucial, got a live human in no time flat, and they cross-shipped me replacements by next day air for free. I don't see enough customer service like that so I was suitably impressed. Yeah their prices are a bit more than some other memory houses but I figure it's a small enough premium to pay for that kind of product and service.
I totally agree about Kingston memory though, talk about craptastic. I'd only order that stuff for my enemies. Any time I've taken a chance on them it's ended up badly.
Hmm, well save your old mouse or buy a new one. You probably won't be happy with the Apple-supplied mouse, it's intresting for sure but geared a bit more to a novice. Pretty much any USB mouse will work on a Mac and the same thing with keyboards, although you might need some minor key-remapping on a keyboard. For multibutton mice (more than 2) I recommend downloading USB Overdrive - an inexpensive, 3rd-party input device "driver" that really makes your input devices a lot more effective.
You'll have to get used to slight differences in how things work, give it a bit and keep an open mind, once you get used to the Mac way of doing things you'll find it's actually pretty intuitive. Use the Help menu in the Finder, it is very complete and tells you tons of shortcuts that would take you a while to stumble across.
Macs have been a bit less forgiving of borderline RAM because they actually check to see if the RAM is in spec. Some other hardware manufacturers are a bit more lax so the memory seems like it is working and then causes lots of little headaches down the road. With the Mac a questionable piece of RAM will usually cause a big problem quickly, like not being able to boot right after installing it. Crucial has always had decent prices, excellent RAM, and amazing customer support, I use them a lot and rarely have any RAM troubles.
Dunno if there are really any other major things you should know. The Mac community is pretty supportive so if anything gives you a concern just ask around and you'll probably get dozens of people who will try to help. Good luck with it!
Basically almost all Linux apps that are open source just work. Mac has a pretty standard POSIX command-line and X11 environment, as well as an excellent version of GCC. There are several package systems such as Fink that provide an easy way to install programs. A lot of closed source Linux stuff is being produced for the Mac also since porting them over is usually just a minor cleanup and compile. Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Firefox, OpenOffice, and many other major programs all work on the Mac.
WoW runs nicely on any Mac, better on the high-end stuff but it all runs pretty decently. The Macintosh operating system has a bit more overhead than Linux but it is pretty on-par with Windows. You'll get a bit more bang for your buck running Linux on the Mac hardware but then again you'll lose some of the nice GUI features of the Mac.
One of the nicest things is it is easy now to double or triple boot Mac OS, Windows, and Linux on Mac hardware. There are even some free and commercial software out there that enables you to run Windows applications directly under Mac OS X, without having to boot Windows.
As far as price, well building it yourself will always be the least expensive method. However, once you figure in time spent, support costs if something goes wrong, overall compatibility of the hardware components, and so on I'd say that the difference between a Mac and a self-built are pretty close. When you buy a Mac you are pretty certain you'll get a solid machine with a solid operating system. Throw in the fact that the new Macs can run just about any modern software and are in some sweet form-factors and I'd say buying a Mac is a win.
After all, if you end up hating Mac OS you can just wipe the drive install Windows or Linux on it, no harm no foul!
From the American Heritage Dictionary: whinge intr.v. Chiefly British whinged, whinging, whinges To complain or protest, especially in an annoying or persistent manner.
[Dialectal alteration of Middle English whinsen, from Old English hwinsian.] whinger n. whingingly adv.
Of course I meant that the two corporations are completely separate entities. Even if the case was developed by Earl Halliburton and thus has his name associated with that model of case that doesn't mean that the Zero Corporation has anything to do with the Dubai Ports situation.
Obviously the original poster who mentioned this just has an axe to grind and will stop at nothing to make a point.
It's like someone saying "Hitler lived on Earth and George Bush lives on Earth! George Bush must be evil!" That statement may turn out to be true or it might be false, but the statement itself is a fallacy.
Slashdot Mirror
You are 100% correct. In fact MacWorld has an article on it along with a video showing how easy it is:
a cbookvideo/index.php
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macword/2006/05/m
It's literally remove battery, undo 3 screws and the piece they are holding and then the hard drive slides out. The RAM is also in the same spot and they also just slide out. It's one of the easiest hard drive/RAM installs I've ever seen on a laptop.
The iTunes Store also has a section called "Just For You" which makes recommendations based on stuff you've purchased in the past but it's just a part of what is presented to you. They give you a pretty eclectic selection when you first open up the iTunes Store and then you can get more specific with genre and such. If you go to a band or a song they will also show you what other people who have bought that item are buying. This is great because there's a greater chance the reference will show you something new you might like.
It's pretty clearly and logically arranged and you can get to interesting items fairly easily. If you have any interest then give it a try, you might like it.
You mean the character that Microsoft ripped off from Berke Breathed in "Bloom County"?
http://toastytech.com/guis/banana.html
I'm very surprised that Berke Breathed never nailed Microsoft to the wall for copyright infringement, Max was such a rip-off of the Banana Jr.
The problem is not just bad code. What is happening is they are coding specifically to bugs in IE. IE has a number of quirks that web developers code around. Once the site works in IE they declare the site done and don't bother to check how it works in other browsers. Firefox has a quirks mode where it basically emulates IE's quirks so it mostly works. Also, a lot of developers check for Firefox compatibility because it is the second most-used browser out there. Even with this there are still a lot of sites that choke Firefox but work fine on IE.
The upshot is that web developers shouldn't be coding to a specific browser, they should be coding to the web STANDARDS. If a browser doesn't work with the standards then it's the browser's developers that should be working on the problem, not the web developers.
Safari (and KHMTL on which WebKit is based) are forerunners in being standards-complient. They do work around messy web code but it's pretty tough to actually figure out what a web developer meant when he coded something ugly. You can only sanity-check so far, at some point the onus is on the web developer to get his act together and make his web page work with the standards. This isn't about "elitist snobbery", this is about doing the right thing.
By default Mac OS X blinks a menu item once after selecting it, then performs the action. It's fairly quick and unobtrusive. You can't change it directly but I believe there is a setting behind the scenes that you can do with a 3rd party application or by editing some system preference files.
I definitely think the way to test these things is by just using the default values out of the box. Don't tweak at all, install the OS and test. The OS comes set up as the manufacturer feels is best and that's an adequate starting point for any usability testing. Past that starts getting into individual user preferences and that's a huge grey area.
I've had no problems at all with several large labs and cloning a single install to run all machines. You can use the free Carbon Copy Cloner or just use the tools that Apple provides, it's fairly simple and works nearly flawlessly in my experience.
I've thought for some time that the USA should just drop the penny, nickel, and quarter and just have all prices put to the nearest tenth of a cent. That would simplify things a ton by leaving us with the dime, the half-dollar, and then paper currency.
We could also just revalue our currency by a factor of 1/10 and have a penny equal the value of an old dime, a nickel the value of an old half-dollar, a dime the value of an old dollar, and so on. This could cause some confusion as people adjust to the new valuation, as well as incur a currency change-over and force businesses to have to change all of their price sheets and advertising.
Right now the hundreds place in our currency is pretty much irrelevant except in bulk transactions. By eliminating the hundreds place we will simplify both the change in our pockets and our day-to-day purchases.
You DO realize that you can do the same under Mac OS X? In fact it's even easier!
NetBoot
Workgroup Manager
These services are extremely simple to set up and manage. In my opinion they are much easier to manage than Ghost and Active Directory or their equivalents on the Windows side of things.
Mmmm, this sort of thing always reminds me of the Monty Python sketch: The Argument Clinic
A: Look, let's get this thing clear; I quite definitely told you.
M: No you did not.
A: Yes I did.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: You didn't.
A: Did.
M: Oh look, this isn't an argument.
A: Yes it is.
M: No it isn't. It's just contradiction.
A: No it isn't.
M: It is!
A: It is not.
M: Look, you just contradicted me.
A: I did not.
M: Oh you did!!
A: No, no, no.
M: You did just then.
A: Nonsense!
M: Oh, this is futile!
A: No it isn't.
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
A: Yes it is!
M: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
(short pause)
A: No it isn't.
It has actually become more hazardous to use your turn signal than to not signal at all.
If you signal to move into a lane on the highway then everyone moves their car up closer to the person in front of them, blocking you from changing lanes and tailgating the car in front. If you change lanes without signaling then you often have plenty of room to make the lane change.
I believe that's one of the main reasons no one signals any more. If you want to change lanes safely you need to do it without letting the other drivers know what your intentions are or they will "defend" their spot in the traffic flow, often to the death. Talk about stupidity...
That download DOES include the PPC and Intel versions of Firefox 2. I don't quite know why the Mac version is triple the size of the Windows or Linux version, it should be at most double the size and probably a lot less. The way Universal Binaries are supposed to work is that each version of the code shares the same resources (graphics, user interface files, etc) and only the actual compiled code is different.
For most applications compiled code is quite small when compared to the graphics and other resources, which means that a Universal Binary should only grow by a small fraction of its size for each new architecture it supports. If Firefox 2 for the Mac is double or triple the size of Firefox 2 for other platforms then I'd suspect that there was some other reason for it than Apple's Universal Binaries system.
Also, there is very little difference in actual code between 32 bit and 64 bit support on the Mac. For most applications you gain a lot of 64 bit support just by using the proper libraries. There are very few applications out there that would need both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of their code, so that probably wouldn't add to the size of the Mac version of Firefox 2.
Believe it or not, generally each revision to Mac OS X GAINS speed rather than slows down.
The engineers at Apple have been tightening up their code with each release, finding new and better ways to do things. With each new release I've been finding my systems gaining reliability and speed. Memory requirements have slowly been climbing but overall CPU usage is steady or even a bit lower.
On older systems you might not be able to use some of the new technologies in the newer releases but it shouldn't affect your ability to run the latest version of Mac OS X. The newer graphics and such that won't run on older systems will just fall back into a simpler mode and will continue to work just fine as they did in past revisions.
Apple uses a different numbering scheme than most software manufacturers, at least for the Mac OS X releases.
You see, the "X" in Mac OS X stands for the number 10. When Apple does a major release they don't want to have to go to Mac OS XI, Mac OS XII, etc. What they do instead is Mac OS X 10.0, Mac OS X 10.1, and so on. Each 0.1 release is actually a major release, not a minor one. When Apple goes from Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) to Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) it is similar to Microsoft jumping from XP to Vista, it's a major upgrade and you are charged for it. When Apple does a minor release they do it in the form of Mac OS X 10.x.y, those are free to download.
I'm sure that eventually Apple will eventually come up with some sort of new numbering scheme once they get to Mac OS X 10.10 because that will just be EXTREMELY confusing to the consumer. For now their numbering scheme is just a little different from what you'd expect but it makes sense once you understand it.
Not exactly true. Remember that the coefficient of friction is just a imensionless scalar value, it is not the actual force of friction. You need to multiply the coefficient of friction by the normal force between the two objects that are moving past each other. In this case we are talking about the mass of the flywheel acting upon its pivot point. I believe the relationship of friction to the mass of the flywheel is linear so a flywheel that is twice as massive as a ligher flywheel will take twice as much energy to maintain the same angular momentum.
And yes, it is actually a bit more complicated than this depending on how the flywheel is supported on its axis but the fact remains that the mass of the flywheel does have some bearing on the energy needed to maintain its angular momentum.
That's not so hard to deal with actually. Have a few marker bits at the start of each track which tell you what track you are currently on and provide you with rotational timing and have a bit of code which compensates for being off a little bit because of temperature effects. Temperatures will tend to stabilize fairly quickly and adjustments will probably be infrequent. You'll lose a little bit of speed when there is a sudden temperature shift but I'd only expect that on a cold start, something that will happen once a session on a computer usually.
They could also include a temperature sensor and just adjust their tracking based on the temperature but this kind of dead reckoning could be dangerous if your measurements are not in calibration and you are dealing with close tolerances.
There's a way to prevent this. Basically you make a small program which registers the "quit application" event and when the program receives that event you send back a "user canceled" error result to the system. This cancels the reboot and keeps your program running.
Once you are done you just end the program and the user can reboot as normal.
There some info on the technique here:
How do I disable Command-Control-Eject (normal reboot)?
A better plan might be to do the software update as a logout hook. That way the update can be configured to occur when the user logs out and it won't interrupt their work. You can read more about login and logout hooks here.
Here are some official Apple articles on the matter:
The Boot Process (includes everything from boot to shutdown)
Customizing Login and Logout
There's more info on this at Mike's Mac OS X Management Software and Tips and at Apple's Knowledgebase
What DRM issues? The only DRM on anything Apple does is on stuff sold from the iTunes Music Store. Stuff from the iTunes Music Store is not sold in ALAC format, it is sold in M4P format which is a DRM-protected AAC.
You can choose to rip your CDs in ALAC format which losslessly compresses the sound. There is no DRM involved and you can convert it to another format at your own whim. So if some day you want that ALAC music file in FLAC or MP3 format you can just convert it and suffer no quality loss other than the normal loss of whatever final format you are putting the file into.
Here's a bit more info on ALAC.
Yep, there is a difference between WoW FPS under Mac OS and under Windows. WoW runs a bit slower on the Mac because of OpenGL drivers and threading issues, which means that the rendering work isn't threading as evenly as possible across the multiple processors and cores. This is an issue that will supposedly be fixed in MacOS 10.5. However, WoW still does run just fine under the current Mac OS.
If you absolutely must get the absolute best performance out of WoW then you can always use BootCamp or a similar application to run the Windows version of WoW on your Mac. WoW comes with both versions on the install disk so just use the one you want to use. I know a lot of people who run WoW under Mac OS X and hardly even notice a little loss of FPS.
BTW, if you really want to see some amazing tech support, check out the WoW Mac Tech Support Forum. Those guys are amazing, they really go the extra mile to solve problems and give out information. I wish every company's tech support was this good!
I've heard of some complaints about the Mighty Mouse. The two main ones are that the multi-button feature is not as intuitive as a real multi-button mouse (issues with fingers resting on the mouse and triggering false clicks, etc) and that the scroll ball tends to gunk up easily.
It's an intresting mouse for sure, but I have a feeling that most advanced users are going to be happier with a traditional multi-button mouse.
The keyboards are generally pretty nice. Having extra USB ports on a keyboard is a great feature. The layout of the keys is decent, and the action of the keys is good. My only real complaint about the newest Apple keyboards are that they are made of clear and white plastics. Any little bit of filth tends to crud up the keyboard very noticably and it can be very distracting to use. They are a pain to clean (as are most keyboards) so I'd recommend getting some sort of clear membrane to put over them or they will be filled with all sorts of nasty, visible junk in no time at all.
As far as Crucial goes, I order from them a ton for the office computers and 2 computer labs I run. Out of around 50 memory sticks I've ordered I've had 2 come in that have had trouble. They came in as part of the same shipment which makes me think that it was a bad lot by the manufacturer or possibly some bad handling somewhere. I called up Crucial, got a live human in no time flat, and they cross-shipped me replacements by next day air for free. I don't see enough customer service like that so I was suitably impressed. Yeah their prices are a bit more than some other memory houses but I figure it's a small enough premium to pay for that kind of product and service.
I totally agree about Kingston memory though, talk about craptastic. I'd only order that stuff for my enemies. Any time I've taken a chance on them it's ended up badly.
Hmm, well save your old mouse or buy a new one. You probably won't be happy with the Apple-supplied mouse, it's intresting for sure but geared a bit more to a novice. Pretty much any USB mouse will work on a Mac and the same thing with keyboards, although you might need some minor key-remapping on a keyboard. For multibutton mice (more than 2) I recommend downloading USB Overdrive - an inexpensive, 3rd-party input device "driver" that really makes your input devices a lot more effective.
You'll have to get used to slight differences in how things work, give it a bit and keep an open mind, once you get used to the Mac way of doing things you'll find it's actually pretty intuitive. Use the Help menu in the Finder, it is very complete and tells you tons of shortcuts that would take you a while to stumble across.
Macs have been a bit less forgiving of borderline RAM because they actually check to see if the RAM is in spec. Some other hardware manufacturers are a bit more lax so the memory seems like it is working and then causes lots of little headaches down the road. With the Mac a questionable piece of RAM will usually cause a big problem quickly, like not being able to boot right after installing it. Crucial has always had decent prices, excellent RAM, and amazing customer support, I use them a lot and rarely have any RAM troubles.
Dunno if there are really any other major things you should know. The Mac community is pretty supportive so if anything gives you a concern just ask around and you'll probably get dozens of people who will try to help. Good luck with it!
Basically almost all Linux apps that are open source just work. Mac has a pretty standard POSIX command-line and X11 environment, as well as an excellent version of GCC. There are several package systems such as Fink that provide an easy way to install programs. A lot of closed source Linux stuff is being produced for the Mac also since porting them over is usually just a minor cleanup and compile. Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Firefox, OpenOffice, and many other major programs all work on the Mac.
WoW runs nicely on any Mac, better on the high-end stuff but it all runs pretty decently. The Macintosh operating system has a bit more overhead than Linux but it is pretty on-par with Windows. You'll get a bit more bang for your buck running Linux on the Mac hardware but then again you'll lose some of the nice GUI features of the Mac.
One of the nicest things is it is easy now to double or triple boot Mac OS, Windows, and Linux on Mac hardware. There are even some free and commercial software out there that enables you to run Windows applications directly under Mac OS X, without having to boot Windows.
As far as price, well building it yourself will always be the least expensive method. However, once you figure in time spent, support costs if something goes wrong, overall compatibility of the hardware components, and so on I'd say that the difference between a Mac and a self-built are pretty close. When you buy a Mac you are pretty certain you'll get a solid machine with a solid operating system. Throw in the fact that the new Macs can run just about any modern software and are in some sweet form-factors and I'd say buying a Mac is a win.
After all, if you end up hating Mac OS you can just wipe the drive install Windows or Linux on it, no harm no foul!
From the American Heritage Dictionary:
whinge
intr.v. Chiefly British whinged, whinging, whinges
To complain or protest, especially in an annoying or persistent manner.
[Dialectal alteration of Middle English whinsen, from Old English hwinsian.]
whinger n.
whingingly adv.
Of course I meant that the two corporations are completely separate entities. Even if the case was developed by Earl Halliburton and thus has his name associated with that model of case that doesn't mean that the Zero Corporation has anything to do with the Dubai Ports situation.
Obviously the original poster who mentioned this just has an axe to grind and will stop at nothing to make a point.
It's like someone saying "Hitler lived on Earth and George Bush lives on Earth! George Bush must be evil!" That statement may turn out to be true or it might be false, but the statement itself is a fallacy.