Incidentally, SCSI has not been replaced by USB or Firewire
For the purpose of plugging and unplugging external peripherals like scanners and hard disks, it has been replaced by USB and Firewire. The fact that it is still used by uber-geeks inside of a computer's case has nothing to do with the context in which you brought up SCSI. As far as the particulars of the IIfx, I can't say since I didn't own one. However, I will say that sometimes Apple is an early adopter of standards which is why, for example, my PowerMac 7100 had an AAUI ethernet adapter instead of 10 Base-T. A year after they shipped that computer, it was an obviously bad decision, but I'm sure seemed reasonable when they designed it.
However, I think that Apple's computers are actually made by Qantas, not Foxconn. Foxconn makes the iPod.
It's possible that they changed, but AFAIK Apple's been using Foxconn since the Macintosh II, and stuck with 'em.
That is just completely wrong. The Macintosh II came out in the 1980s when Apple still owned and operated all of their own factories - most of them in the united states. I think they still had factories in California at that time. Foxconn makes the iPod - they do not make laptops for Apple or anyone else.
Given that Apple's designs have been seriously flawed in many respects in the past, I'm not sure I trust them today, either. In fact, I'm sure I don't. Not that I trust anyone in particular - I like to build my own PCs
You do not design your own motherboards. You do not design electrical components. Apple does. Their designs are as good as any and better than most.
I remember them well. They were perfectly good computers - they just had too many redundant models which was confusing when someone asked "which Mac should I buy?". Also, you probably mean the Quadra line, not the Centris line. The Centris line didn't actually last very long, there were only three models, and they were great systems. I do remember that some people who bought the Mac IIvi thought that their particular model was discontinued too quickly (when the Centris line was introduced), but I'd hardly call that a serious problem - nor is it a shortcoming of the Centris line.
You probably also forgot how hard it is to upgrade memory in the stupid iMac.
Which model are you referring to? I have installed memory in most of the G3 iMacs including the original model and it wasn't any more hard than most computers of that era.
You probably never knew about the B&W G3 ATA problem, where most UDMA devices will experience data loss during periods of high CPU load. On a 300 MHz G3, that's every moment.
I had one of these as a development box and I never noticed the problem to which you refer.
You've clearly either forgotten or never knew that the SCSI bus on the IIfx was nonstandard and required a wonky terminator to work correctly.
I never had a IIfx, but I remember that SCSI from that era having all kinds of termination problems. Yes it sucked, that's one of the reasons why SCSI was replaced by USB and Firewire for peripherals. How is this point relevant as a serious criticism of Apple's computers today?
Apple sends their designs off to Foxconn to be built, you might as well buy something from ASUS - they also use Foxconn.
Most computer and electronics companies use contract manufacturers in Asia. However, I think that Apple's computers are actually made by Qantas, not Foxconn. Foxconn makes the iPod. Again, I fail to see the logic of your point. As you say, it is Apple's design. While manufacturing is important, the design both of the electronics and also the industrial design is also important. ASUS doesn't have Jonathan Ive.
Apparently you aren't much for studying the past either. Power Computing was a Mac clone maker started by folks who came from Dell. They were based in Round Rock, Texas (where Dell is). They made Mac clones that came in cases that were quite similar to standard PC cases.
Mac users overwhelmingly bought Power Computing systems over Apple systems in the market segments in which Apple allowed Power to compete. (Power Computing was not allowed to make laptops, for example.) This almost caused Apple to go out of business. And yes, even though that was before the iMac, Apple still had nicer looking computers than most other companies and had been winning design awards for years. For example, the original Mac made it into art museums because of its design. I remember a coffee table book on the subject of Apple hardware and the design awards it had won that came out while Gil Amelio was CEO.
Apple customers are, on the whole, actually quite rational, despite what some may think. It is just that they have different priorities than other computer users. They care about those priorities that would favor purchasing a Mac (things just work, the system is quite elegant, few viruses, etc.) than those priorities that would make you use Linux (lower cost, can run on older hardware really nicely, excellent security - few viruses, freedom from corporate control) or Windows (lost of choices of third party software applications, lots of hardware vendor choice, etc.)
The fact is that most people behave in a rational manner. The fact that they make different purchasing choices has far more to do with things like their needs, their individual preferences and priorities, etc. Also, if you are currently a user of a platform there is a cost to staying with it vs. a cost of changing.
And people like to feel good about the choice they have made, so they sometimes come across sounding like fanboys and fangirls. People used to argue vehemently about Atari 800 vs. Commodore 64 on BBSes too.
Hiring a child molester is not a crime. However, if the school board were super irresponsible so as to hire one, I might want to sue them for neglegence.
Failing WGA has very few consequences right now. Under Vista it will have much bigger consequences. Target is the same, but the payoff dramatically increases under Vista.
Why is it sad that he is always wrong? He usually predicts bad news.
What gets me is the fact that he writes articles about what has happened in the past and his monday morning quarterbacking is pretty much always terrible advice, even if you were armed with his article and a time machine you wouldn't want to do what he suggests. (For example, the article he wrote one time about how Apple should have canceled the Apple II much earlier than they did - the fact is that the Apple II was basically a license to print money in the mid to late 80s. Dvorak's take was that it "held them back" or whatever.)
The best decision the US ever made was to put the Shah into Iran. We should have done a better job putting a successor to the Shah into Iran. Muslim countries need a strong dictator to keep the lid on things. Bush has proved in Iraq that democracy can't work in a muslim country. We should put Saddam back in charge there.
How did they handle it growing up when they didn't fit in with the other kids because they didn't know what was on TV?
My daughter doesn't watch TV and doesn't listen to rap music. Most of her classmates do and apparently that is what they like to talk about at school. Somehow she manages to survive. Incredible!
Nice try, but we know that cable actually entered large markets first: California, New York, and other very dense, urban, upscale areas. The same large markets that had been previously served quite well by over the air broadcasting. In really rural areas, you often can't get cable and can't get anything over the air, so its satelite or nothing. Cable companies aren't running a charity - they went into areas where they could sell the largest number of subscriptions while stringing the smallest amount of wire.
Pretty much, yeah. If you're a control nazi, don't release your shit. Fuck corporations like Apple who wanna fuck the consumers up the ass sans lube.
Apple doesn't exactly try to get people thrown in jail for doing this. Sure, they frown on people who distribute hacked versions of their OS. But, I think they are right to do that merely from the point of view that they are protecting less savvy people from fucking themselves and also making it really clear that running OS X in that manner is unsupported and therefore unwise if you are doing any work that might actually be important. But frankly, I've spoken with lots of people from Apple on the subject (admittedly they are not from Apple Legal and are not speaking officially) and they pretty all say that if you want to hack something for the sheer fun of trying to get it to work and aren't redistributing their stuff, then knock yourself out.
Hmm, I wonder if an Intel Mac could be coaxed into running Mac OS 9 under Classic under Rosetta, and if so whether you could run 68k binaries in it.
No, you cannot run Classic under Rosetta. Classic is not just an application running an emulator. It directly hooks into the core OS and touches hardware.
I think perhaps they only wanted it to be disabled so that they could say "Yep, game is clean." but make it easily enabled so that more...skilled and knowledable adults could hack their way into it
Somehow, I just doubt that. I think they probably disabled it in working code rather than pre-processor because of a combination of sloppyness and hubris. The reason why I think so is that it doesn't seem to me that a responsible person would think that it was OK for the hot coffee to execute in the wild. However, I DO think that it is entirely reasonable that a developer would think that disabling the code using something like a global variable would be OK. Many devs aren't suspenders and belt type engineers and most of the devs in the video game business tend to be very young. So, I could picture them just screwing it up rather more easily than I could see the company making a conscious decision to enable this to be used in the wild.
And if you are against abortion, don't have one. If you are against gay marriage, don't marry someone of the same sex. If you are against drugs, quit taking them. Duh!
Actually, as far as I know, "Hot Coffee" wasn't even a mod. It was coded into the game, just like everything else. Before release, the developpers "hid" it, by removing a few key lines, much like turning off PHP support in Apache. The "hack" that enabled it, simply reconfigured the game so that it was once again enabled.
Which just proves that the correct way to disable stuff like this is with the fscking preprocessor. If they had just used #if 0 #endif around the hot coffee code, then it could not have been re-enabled.
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By the time you pay for the support, you might as well by from someone else who had better support to begin with (and probably a better product).
Long story short, Jackson would have to prove that a video game movie would appeal to a wide enough audience to justify comparing it to King Kong
I thought King Kong was a video game movie.
Incidentally, SCSI has not been replaced by USB or Firewire
For the purpose of plugging and unplugging external peripherals like scanners and hard disks, it has been replaced by USB and Firewire. The fact that it is still used by uber-geeks inside of a computer's case has nothing to do with the context in which you brought up SCSI. As far as the particulars of the IIfx, I can't say since I didn't own one. However, I will say that sometimes Apple is an early adopter of standards which is why, for example, my PowerMac 7100 had an AAUI ethernet adapter instead of 10 Base-T. A year after they shipped that computer, it was an obviously bad decision, but I'm sure seemed reasonable when they designed it.
However, I think that Apple's computers are actually made by Qantas, not Foxconn. Foxconn makes the iPod.
It's possible that they changed, but AFAIK Apple's been using Foxconn since the Macintosh II, and stuck with 'em.
That is just completely wrong. The Macintosh II came out in the 1980s when Apple still owned and operated all of their own factories - most of them in the united states. I think they still had factories in California at that time. Foxconn makes the iPod - they do not make laptops for Apple or anyone else.
Given that Apple's designs have been seriously flawed in many respects in the past, I'm not sure I trust them today, either. In fact, I'm sure I don't. Not that I trust anyone in particular - I like to build my own PCs
You do not design your own motherboards. You do not design electrical components. Apple does. Their designs are as good as any and better than most.
Vista closes the gap
Everything I've read says that Vista will be a flying bucket of turds. You seriously think it will be able to compete with OS X?
the entire Centris and Performa lines.
I remember them well. They were perfectly good computers - they just had too many redundant models which was confusing when someone asked "which Mac should I buy?". Also, you probably mean the Quadra line, not the Centris line. The Centris line didn't actually last very long, there were only three models, and they were great systems. I do remember that some people who bought the Mac IIvi thought that their particular model was discontinued too quickly (when the Centris line was introduced), but I'd hardly call that a serious problem - nor is it a shortcoming of the Centris line.
You probably also forgot how hard it is to upgrade memory in the stupid iMac.
Which model are you referring to? I have installed memory in most of the G3 iMacs including the original model and it wasn't any more hard than most computers of that era.
You probably never knew about the B&W G3 ATA problem, where most UDMA devices will experience data loss during periods of high CPU load. On a 300 MHz G3, that's every moment.
I had one of these as a development box and I never noticed the problem to which you refer.
You've clearly either forgotten or never knew that the SCSI bus on the IIfx was nonstandard and required a wonky terminator to work correctly.
I never had a IIfx, but I remember that SCSI from that era having all kinds of termination problems. Yes it sucked, that's one of the reasons why SCSI was replaced by USB and Firewire for peripherals. How is this point relevant as a serious criticism of Apple's computers today?
Apple sends their designs off to Foxconn to be built, you might as well buy something from ASUS - they also use Foxconn.
Most computer and electronics companies use contract manufacturers in Asia. However, I think that Apple's computers are actually made by Qantas, not Foxconn. Foxconn makes the iPod. Again, I fail to see the logic of your point. As you say, it is Apple's design. While manufacturing is important, the design both of the electronics and also the industrial design is also important. ASUS doesn't have Jonathan Ive.
Apparently you aren't much for studying the past either. Power Computing was a Mac clone maker started by folks who came from Dell. They were based in Round Rock, Texas (where Dell is). They made Mac clones that came in cases that were quite similar to standard PC cases.
Mac users overwhelmingly bought Power Computing systems over Apple systems in the market segments in which Apple allowed Power to compete. (Power Computing was not allowed to make laptops, for example.) This almost caused Apple to go out of business. And yes, even though that was before the iMac, Apple still had nicer looking computers than most other companies and had been winning design awards for years. For example, the original Mac made it into art museums because of its design. I remember a coffee table book on the subject of Apple hardware and the design awards it had won that came out while Gil Amelio was CEO.
Apple customers are, on the whole, actually quite rational, despite what some may think. It is just that they have different priorities than other computer users. They care about those priorities that would favor purchasing a Mac (things just work, the system is quite elegant, few viruses, etc.) than those priorities that would make you use Linux (lower cost, can run on older hardware really nicely, excellent security - few viruses, freedom from corporate control) or Windows (lost of choices of third party software applications, lots of hardware vendor choice, etc.)
The fact is that most people behave in a rational manner. The fact that they make different purchasing choices has far more to do with things like their needs, their individual preferences and priorities, etc. Also, if you are currently a user of a platform there is a cost to staying with it vs. a cost of changing.
And people like to feel good about the choice they have made, so they sometimes come across sounding like fanboys and fangirls. People used to argue vehemently about Atari 800 vs. Commodore 64 on BBSes too.
Hiring a child molester is not a crime. However, if the school board were super irresponsible so as to hire one, I might want to sue them for neglegence.
Failing WGA has very few consequences right now. Under Vista it will have much bigger consequences. Target is the same, but the payoff dramatically increases under Vista.
Dvorak's forecast of the future is often wrong.
Why is it sad that he is always wrong? He usually predicts bad news.
What gets me is the fact that he writes articles about what has happened in the past and his monday morning quarterbacking is pretty much always terrible advice, even if you were armed with his article and a time machine you wouldn't want to do what he suggests. (For example, the article he wrote one time about how Apple should have canceled the Apple II much earlier than they did - the fact is that the Apple II was basically a license to print money in the mid to late 80s. Dvorak's take was that it "held them back" or whatever.)
Dell sells in two weeks what Apple sells in a year.
You fail arithmetic. Also, GPP isn't about sales figures, it is about quality. Ford outsells BMW, but Ford makes crap and BMW makes nice cars.
The only difference is Apple charges twice as much for the same crap.
MacPro is cheaper than comparable Dell system. You fail it.
Counting all that by hand would be an enormously complex task.
Scan-tron? Seriously, if it is good enough for the SAT, it is good enough for voting.
Actually that is what we used in Washington state and also in Oregon and it seemed like a pretty good system.
The best decision the US ever made was to put the Shah into Iran. We should have done a better job putting a successor to the Shah into Iran. Muslim countries need a strong dictator to keep the lid on things. Bush has proved in Iraq that democracy can't work in a muslim country. We should put Saddam back in charge there.
Iran does nothing for us
You haven't heard of oil?
Yeah, that movie made me never want to see a movie again.
Why not just pass a law that parents can't use the public legal system to sue public schools?
That's a great idea. The local schools here are run by absolute crooks and your proposed idea would allow them to hire child molesters too.
who was only a victim of his own inability to get his ass off the couch once in a while.
He tried, but the school board banned getting off the couch out of fear that he would fall down, get injured, and sue the school.
Iran is a preview of what our society will look like after the MPAA/RIAA get through with us.
How did they handle it growing up when they didn't fit in with the other kids because they didn't know what was on TV?
My daughter doesn't watch TV and doesn't listen to rap music. Most of her classmates do and apparently that is what they like to talk about at school. Somehow she manages to survive. Incredible!
Nice try, but we know that cable actually entered large markets first: California, New York, and other very dense, urban, upscale areas. The same large markets that had been previously served quite well by over the air broadcasting. In really rural areas, you often can't get cable and can't get anything over the air, so its satelite or nothing. Cable companies aren't running a charity - they went into areas where they could sell the largest number of subscriptions while stringing the smallest amount of wire.
Pretty much, yeah. If you're a control nazi, don't release your shit. Fuck corporations like Apple who wanna fuck the consumers up the ass sans lube.
Apple doesn't exactly try to get people thrown in jail for doing this. Sure, they frown on people who distribute hacked versions of their OS. But, I think they are right to do that merely from the point of view that they are protecting less savvy people from fucking themselves and also making it really clear that running OS X in that manner is unsupported and therefore unwise if you are doing any work that might actually be important. But frankly, I've spoken with lots of people from Apple on the subject (admittedly they are not from Apple Legal and are not speaking officially) and they pretty all say that if you want to hack something for the sheer fun of trying to get it to work and aren't redistributing their stuff, then knock yourself out.
Hmm, I wonder if an Intel Mac could be coaxed into running Mac OS 9 under Classic under Rosetta, and if so whether you could run 68k binaries in it.
No, you cannot run Classic under Rosetta. Classic is not just an application running an emulator. It directly hooks into the core OS and touches hardware.
I think perhaps they only wanted it to be disabled so that they could say "Yep, game is clean." but make it easily enabled so that more...skilled and knowledable adults could hack their way into it
Somehow, I just doubt that. I think they probably disabled it in working code rather than pre-processor because of a combination of sloppyness and hubris. The reason why I think so is that it doesn't seem to me that a responsible person would think that it was OK for the hot coffee to execute in the wild. However, I DO think that it is entirely reasonable that a developer would think that disabling the code using something like a global variable would be OK. Many devs aren't suspenders and belt type engineers and most of the devs in the video game business tend to be very young. So, I could picture them just screwing it up rather more easily than I could see the company making a conscious decision to enable this to be used in the wild.
"If you don't like it, don't play it"
And if you are against abortion, don't have one. If you are against gay marriage, don't marry someone of the same sex. If you are against drugs, quit taking them. Duh!
Actually, as far as I know, "Hot Coffee" wasn't even a mod. It was coded into the game, just like everything else. Before release, the developpers "hid" it, by removing a few key lines, much like turning off PHP support in Apache. The "hack" that enabled it, simply reconfigured the game so that it was once again enabled.
Which just proves that the correct way to disable stuff like this is with the fscking preprocessor. If they had just used #if 0 #endif around the hot coffee code, then it could not have been re-enabled.