Sorry but every freaking year Apple says that they have exciting new products in store for us and every year they disappoint.
On the hardware front they keep removing ports and while other companies can make a laptop with > 16G we can't get that on the MBP. I can get a lightup bar that changes depending on the app but sadly I touch type and rarely look at the keyboard so this isn't for me or most of the developers I know that can type.
Sure, if you have to look at the keyboard as you hunt and peck it's probably useful but Apple doesn't seem to know that a keyboard that changes as you type isn't a step in the right direction. I tried the new MBP in the store and it's lost all of it's feel. We shouldn't have to sacrifice in the race to be thin.
The new mini is a joke and they don't even do monitors or access points anymore.
My mac's have served me well but if I never have to open iTunes again I'll be happy.
Looking at what they just released as the new iPad I can see that they have started to go the cheap route. It's no longer about the product but about the profit.
So, yes, Apple has abandoned the PC market they just don't want to admit it.
This and the visual voicemail. That was game changing and it took someone big enough to push the telco's into getting it done.
What's sad is that Microsoft probably had the power to push for the same stuff but not the vision, my phone before my first iPhone was the Motorola MPX-200 (a windows phone - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )) and it sucked. I tried the Palm phone and while it was a little bit better the OS was just not up to getting decent apps.
So aside from everyone copying the look and feel they did manage to pull away control from the telcos which is a great thing (IMHO). I wish Google would do that for Android but I don't see that happening.
Loyal Apple fan for years but this year I just finally gave up. I was due for a laptop upgrade but was holding out for > 16G. That didn't happen and there is no way I'll be going to the new MBP. Saved > 2k there.
Then I was going to get the Apple TV but it doesn't play nicely with my Harmony hub so I decided to do an Amazon Fire TV. It's impressive, 4k, runs Plex and everything I need, I can still AirPlay (granted I needed to buy an app for that but I can live with that) and it's 1/2 the price of an apple tv.
I was also going to go from my 5s to the new phone (every 2 or 3 years it seems) but the 7 had too much courage for me and I use a headset for over an hour a day and although I tried bluetooth headset, a wired headset just works.
So Apple saved me a bunch of money and that is going to my new motorcycle fund, thank you apple.
I've been a mac user for years so I pay attention to what they say in the annual conf calls. Every freaking year Steve Jobs or now Tim Cook would say that they have exciting new products in the pipeline and it's going to be an exciting year ahead.
And every single year we get nothing exciting or innovative or from the Mac side even a decent refresh. I'm now making the effort to move away when possible. I did the Fire TV instead of the new appleTV (which is good since the appleTV doesn't pay nice with the Harmony Hub) and there is no way I'll jump on the Home infrastructure. I like the Insteon system (currently).
The wonderful Intel NUC is making for a nice replacement for my mac mini (for headless servers) so that area is covered.
That leaves a replacement for the MacPro and my notebook (MBP). I have another 2 years or so before I'll be refreshing so I'm just going to wait.
The fact that they threw away monitors makes getting a Dell monitor that much easier. For my work the Dell's have been great.
Sad to see how much I've spent over the past 20 years but before that I was buying a Sony or HP every stinking year. It was nice to go 3+ years and then be able to hand the replacement to a family member. We have MBPs that are going on 8 years old still running strong.
It appears that QNAP NAS also support note station. I haven't installed it yet but since I just deactivated my Evernote account I guess it's my next step.
I stopped paying for evernote when I had to do a restore and all of my notes went into one folder.
Since then I use a combination of Pocket and email, note perfect and hopefully Note Station will be a decent solution.
Ok, so they brag about how great the keyboard is and that you can connect to a bunch of monitors. But I don't know anyone who connects to external monitors and still types on the laptop keyboard.
Of course most of the people I know touch type and don't look at the keyboard anyway, so that 'feature' is just going to be a pain.
After this I'm done with macs and that's saying a lot considering how many how many I've used over the years.
I just checked, it's a dollar if you redeem in 24 hours then the price changes. The web site doesn't say how much it changes but they do say that there is a floor.
So it's a dollar or more depending on when you trade it back in.
The cool thing about netflix is that I can sit on a disk if I don't want to watch it right away. I pay a flat price and I'm happy with it.
If it doesn't work for you then fine, I actually find it quite handy. (note that it's nowhere near perfect though but the real issues have been discussed before (battery life being the biggest)).
My test of usefulness was a week long trip I took for business and forgot to grab it on the way out. I missed being able to figure out what phone call to ignore or answer, seeing the next meeting or the text I just got without dragging the phone out of the pocket all the time is where it's a time/effort saver for me.
I can see if you are one of those people who get hundreds of notifications a day then it might be a pain but I only have family and work setup to buzz the watch. So if I get buzzed more than a couple times an hour that is unusual. Everything else I check when I have time.
It reminds me of the first apple phone, I came from using a palm treo so it wasn't an evolutionary jump for me (I also a couple windows devices). The first apple phone really didn't do much. Apple is frustratingly slow to market with features.
I probably won't buy v2 of the apple watch, I'm saving up for the next Garmin Forerunner (9xx) if it is a big enough jump from my 910XT but I do wear the apple watch daily and like it.
I would rather have a jerk trying to run the country than a puppet for Koch and friends, I'm really interesting to see if the RNC will let him actually represent them or if something will happen on the way to the convention. Now that the Koch brothers are pushing Rubio I expect him to get better coverage but I think that Trump would make for an interesting 4 years. I don't think that 4 years under Trump would be as bad as 4 years under the Koch brothers.
Raspberry PI: don't like the fact that you have to boot off the sd card. BBB - no complaints, nice board and has an optional display that's pretty nice PcDuino - my favorite, more memory and flash than the other 2 devices and the v3s is in a really nice case.
The Pi and BBB lack a decent case (from what i can find)
I did the AT&T line thing from around noon on and it went well. They had around 60 8G units and I was around #40 so my wait was worth it.
Quite a few people were holding places for bosses, parents and spouses. Most of the people seemed to be Mac users. Everyone was in a good mood and it made the time pass.
The Store was great, good attitudes all the way around, I gave them a credit card they gave me a phone. Can't get much easier than that. They told us ahead of time that the # accessories was limited and tried to set expectations. We were told ahead of time that they would only sell one phone per person which I think really helped.
Online activation was easy, note that I'm a current AT&T customer so that may account for something.
The phone is nice and it's easier to learn to type on than doing Graffiti (sp) on my old Treo. The edge works as I expected (note: I spend a lot of time in a non-3G area so that wasn't a problem). The voice quality is good according to friends I've talked to.
For those out there that don't like it, don't buy one. Most of the arguments against it (it's going to cost $$$ over 2 years, like I won't have a phone otherwise) are just silly but such is the world it seems.
Of course, today my Nokia 770 arrived (from the Woot last week) so now I have two toys to play with...
My problem is that I haven't seen where Apple has said that the future product line will use Blue-Ray. I would hate to buy one of these and find out in June that all the new high end mac are HD-DVD.
I have a smart phone (SX66) and even with it's 400Mhz processor it's not what I would call fast.
I'm pretty confused since there isn't that much screen to refresh (320x200 or so) and it's not running a bunch of stuff.
Has anyone ever profiled the OS? I'm really curious if the hardware is just sucky and slow (i.e. really slow bus, etc) or if the OS is just not well structured.
I can remember the old 4.7Mhz days and can't how a 100x increase in clock speed can produce something so unimpressive in performance.
Of course this is all 'seat of the pants' observations since I seen any benchmark apps out there.
It's really small, runs Linux with the has a 1024x600 screen and I get 5+ hours on the extended battery.
Other pluses is that you can watch movies, listen to music and other stuff (it has a 30G disk). It uses a Crusoe processor so you're helping pay Linus's paycheck (if he's still working there, I haven't really cared much).
It's bigger than my Zaurus but smaller than just about anything else on the market. It's really a sleeper of a product.
I'm currently doing the University of Phoenix degree program and am preparing to drop out and look somewhere else.
Reasons:
1: you can't test out of the core courses, that means that I just got done taking introduction to C++ and my next course would be a VB course, ugh.
2: I really don't like the spam and think that at some point it will backfire and hurt them in the end (hopefully).
3: For what I feel that I'm getting, the price price is too high.
4: They consider VB to be advanced programming, I was hoping to see some Java or more C++ but they quickly move to VB for 'Advanced Object Design' -- something like that..
ummm,....
5: Profit!:-)
I'll continue to work on my degree, just not there. Of course, I don't know where yet so I'll save to bucks I was spending and by a Mac or something.
"II had the opportunity to take some pictures of my friend playing soccer a couple of weeks ago, and I found out how challenging it was to photograph sports action. A gentleman nearby was taking pictures with a brand-new Nikon digital camera. He was having a much harder time than me, because all of his pictures were a split second behind the action. In fast action, a split second lag is a lifetime. "
The new Nikons are fantastic cameras and what the gentleman probably had a problem with was the autofocus. When you hold the button down half way it will prefocus and then the shot is immediate when you press the rest of the way. Or he could have dropped to manual mode.
I have at last count around 9000 pictures from my old Canon s100 (2mpix) and my new Minolta D7i and I like what I capture. We went to the pumpkin patch with my son's preschool and I shot 100+ pictures, I never had to worry about extra film or even if the shot turned out.
One of the nicest things about the digi is that I can review the shot right away so I can do a retake (if possible), this is actually great in family get togethers.
Dan said: Your best bet is to find a good cellular provider (Verizon in the US), and go in and ask THEM. THey have all the answers about the phones they offer and the services that go with them. Slashdot is a bad place to go for anything but theoretical discussions and anecdotes.
I'm looking at providers right now (I have Sprint and it just doesn't have the coverage, like when I'm sitting at my desk:-( ).
The problem is that the dealers lie when you ask about coverage areas and stuff like that and without a road trip you really have no idea.
That said I'm leaning towards Verizon and am going to stay away from the 3g stuff for a bit more (it is nice though).
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone remember when Osborne Computers made the mistake of announcing computers before they were ready and pretty much tanked the company?
I guess that is no longer a concern, what I see Apple doing is - don't buy a Samsung since we have neat new stuff that will probably never come out.
I see this as an attempt to dampen the Samsung hype going on with the S8.
I'm not needing a phone for awhile and still use wired headphones so I'm not really on Apples radar anymore.
Sorry but every freaking year Apple says that they have exciting new products in store for us and every year they disappoint.
On the hardware front they keep removing ports and while other companies can make a laptop with > 16G we can't get that on the MBP. I can get a lightup bar that changes depending on the app but sadly I touch type and rarely look at the keyboard so this isn't for me or most of the developers I know that can type.
Sure, if you have to look at the keyboard as you hunt and peck it's probably useful but Apple doesn't seem to know that a keyboard that changes as you type isn't a step in the right direction. I tried the new MBP in the store and it's lost all of it's feel. We shouldn't have to sacrifice in the race to be thin.
The new mini is a joke and they don't even do monitors or access points anymore.
My mac's have served me well but if I never have to open iTunes again I'll be happy.
Looking at what they just released as the new iPad I can see that they have started to go the cheap route. It's no longer about the product but about the profit.
So, yes, Apple has abandoned the PC market they just don't want to admit it.
from the article:
She is hopeful her lawsuit and public comments wonâ(TM)t end her career at a company she loves.
Would a sane person really think that suing the company they work for won't impact their future with the company?
Serious question, how are people working in retail or supermarkets or places like that manage to live there?
How do people with kids make it work?
Even though I'm giving up on the Apple Watch and computers I do find the Apple Pay to be pretty convenient.
Considering the time delay on the new chip cards its much faster and I don't have to fake a signature anymore.
This and the visual voicemail. That was game changing and it took someone big enough to push the telco's into getting it done.
What's sad is that Microsoft probably had the power to push for the same stuff but not the vision, my phone before my first iPhone was the Motorola MPX-200 (a windows phone - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )) and it sucked. I tried the Palm phone and while it was a little bit better the OS was just not up to getting decent apps.
So aside from everyone copying the look and feel they did manage to pull away control from the telcos which is a great thing (IMHO). I wish Google would do that for Android but I don't see that happening.
Loyal Apple fan for years but this year I just finally gave up. I was due for a laptop upgrade but was holding out for > 16G. That didn't happen and there is no way I'll be going to the new MBP. Saved > 2k there.
Then I was going to get the Apple TV but it doesn't play nicely with my Harmony hub so I decided to do an Amazon Fire TV. It's impressive, 4k, runs Plex and everything I need, I can still AirPlay (granted I needed to buy an app for that but I can live with that) and it's 1/2 the price of an apple tv.
I was also going to go from my 5s to the new phone (every 2 or 3 years it seems) but the 7 had too much courage for me and I use a headset for over an hour a day and although I tried bluetooth headset, a wired headset just works.
So Apple saved me a bunch of money and that is going to my new motorcycle fund, thank you apple.
I've been a mac user for years so I pay attention to what they say in the annual conf calls. Every freaking year Steve Jobs or now Tim Cook would say that they have exciting new products in the pipeline and it's going to be an exciting year ahead.
And every single year we get nothing exciting or innovative or from the Mac side even a decent refresh. I'm now making the effort to move away when possible. I did the Fire TV instead of the new appleTV (which is good since the appleTV doesn't pay nice with the Harmony Hub) and there is no way I'll jump on the Home infrastructure. I like the Insteon system (currently).
The wonderful Intel NUC is making for a nice replacement for my mac mini (for headless servers) so that area is covered.
That leaves a replacement for the MacPro and my notebook (MBP). I have another 2 years or so before I'll be refreshing so I'm just going to wait.
The fact that they threw away monitors makes getting a Dell monitor that much easier. For my work the Dell's have been great.
Sad to see how much I've spent over the past 20 years but before that I was buying a Sony or HP every stinking year. It was nice to go 3+ years and then be able to hand the replacement to a family member. We have MBPs that are going on 8 years old still running strong.
It appears that QNAP NAS also support note station. I haven't installed it yet but since I just deactivated my Evernote account I guess it's my next step.
I stopped paying for evernote when I had to do a restore and all of my notes went into one folder.
Since then I use a combination of Pocket and email, note perfect and hopefully Note Station will be a decent solution.
So the demand will be big for 2 more months?
Ok, so they brag about how great the keyboard is and that you can connect to a bunch of monitors. But I don't know anyone who connects to external monitors and still types on the laptop keyboard.
Of course most of the people I know touch type and don't look at the keyboard anyway, so that 'feature' is just going to be a pain.
After this I'm done with macs and that's saying a lot considering how many how many I've used over the years.
I just checked, it's a dollar if you redeem in 24 hours then the price changes. The web site doesn't say how much it changes but they do say that there is a floor.
So it's a dollar or more depending on when you trade it back in.
The cool thing about netflix is that I can sit on a disk if I don't want to watch it right away. I pay a flat price and I'm happy with it.
If it doesn't work for you then fine, I actually find it quite handy. (note that it's nowhere near perfect though but the real issues have been discussed before (battery life being the biggest)).
My test of usefulness was a week long trip I took for business and forgot to grab it on the way out. I missed being able to figure out what phone call to ignore or answer, seeing the next meeting or the text I just got without dragging the phone out of the pocket all the time is where it's a time/effort saver for me.
I can see if you are one of those people who get hundreds of notifications a day then it might be a pain but I only have family and work setup to buzz the watch. So if I get buzzed more than a couple times an hour that is unusual. Everything else I check when I have time.
It reminds me of the first apple phone, I came from using a palm treo so it wasn't an evolutionary jump for me (I also a couple windows devices). The first apple phone really didn't do much. Apple is frustratingly slow to market with features.
I probably won't buy v2 of the apple watch, I'm saving up for the next Garmin Forerunner (9xx) if it is a big enough jump from my 910XT but I do wear the apple watch daily and like it.
I would rather have a jerk trying to run the country than a puppet for Koch and friends, I'm really interesting to see if the RNC will let him actually represent them or if something will happen on the way to the convention. Now that the Koch brothers are pushing Rubio I expect him to get better coverage but I think that Trump would make for an interesting 4 years. I don't think that 4 years under Trump would be as bad as 4 years under the Koch brothers.
( http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/top-koch-brothers-official-jumps-marco-rubio-s-campaign-n524336 )
Yeah, my problem is that it's not robots but just RC cars with fancy bodies. Pretty boring to watch without a lot of fast forwarding.
Of course I grew up on CRobots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crobots) and never really got into RC cars, real cars are enough of a time-sink.
http://pcduino.com/
I have a raspberry Pi, Beagle Bone Black and PcDuino.
Raspberry PI: don't like the fact that you have to boot off the sd card.
BBB - no complaints, nice board and has an optional display that's pretty nice
PcDuino - my favorite, more memory and flash than the other 2 devices and the v3s is in a really nice case.
The Pi and BBB lack a decent case (from what i can find)
The i7 mac mini makes a really cool home ESXi server (to learn vmware and run lots of different OSs).
It even runs Mountain Lion under visualization. (legally I might add).
I did the AT&T line thing from around noon on and it went well. They had around 60 8G units and I was around #40 so my wait was worth it.
Quite a few people were holding places for bosses, parents and spouses. Most of the people seemed to be Mac users. Everyone was in a good mood and it made the time pass.
The Store was great, good attitudes all the way around, I gave them a credit card they gave me a phone. Can't get much easier than that. They told us ahead of time that the # accessories was limited and tried to set expectations. We were told ahead of time that they would only sell one phone per person which I think really helped.
Online activation was easy, note that I'm a current AT&T customer so that may account for something.
The phone is nice and it's easier to learn to type on than doing Graffiti (sp) on my old Treo. The edge works as I expected (note: I spend a lot of time in a non-3G area so that wasn't a problem). The voice quality is good according to friends I've talked to.
For those out there that don't like it, don't buy one. Most of the arguments against it (it's going to cost $$$ over 2 years, like I won't have a phone otherwise) are just silly but such is the world it seems.
Of course, today my Nokia 770 arrived (from the Woot last week) so now I have two toys to play with...
My problem is that I haven't seen where Apple has said that the future product line will use Blue-Ray. I would hate to buy one of these and find out in June that all the new high end mac are HD-DVD.
5: He was in 'SpongeBob the Movie'
I have a smart phone (SX66) and even with it's 400Mhz processor it's not what I would call fast.
I'm pretty confused since there isn't that much screen to refresh (320x200 or so) and it's not running a bunch of stuff.
Has anyone ever profiled the OS? I'm really curious if the hardware is just sucky and slow (i.e. really slow bus, etc) or if the OS is just not well structured.
I can remember the old 4.7Mhz days and can't how a 100x increase in clock speed can produce something so unimpressive in performance.
Of course this is all 'seat of the pants' observations since I seen any benchmark apps out there.
It's really small, runs Linux with the has a 1024x600 screen and I get 5+ hours on the extended battery.
Other pluses is that you can watch movies, listen to music and other stuff (it has a 30G disk). It uses a Crusoe processor so you're helping pay Linus's paycheck (if he's still working there, I haven't really cared much).
It's bigger than my Zaurus but smaller than just about anything else on the market. It's really a sleeper of a product.
I'm currently doing the University of Phoenix degree program and am preparing to drop out and look somewhere else.
....
:-)
Reasons:
1: you can't test out of the core courses, that means that I just got done taking introduction to C++ and my next course would be a VB course, ugh.
2: I really don't like the spam and think that at some point it will backfire and hurt them in the end (hopefully).
3: For what I feel that I'm getting, the price price is too high.
4: They consider VB to be advanced programming, I was hoping to see some Java or more C++ but they quickly move to VB for 'Advanced Object Design' -- something like that..
ummm,
5: Profit!
I'll continue to work on my degree, just not there. Of course, I don't know where yet so I'll save to bucks I was spending and by a Mac or something.
"II had the opportunity to take some pictures of my friend playing soccer a couple of weeks ago, and I found out how challenging it was to photograph sports action. A gentleman nearby was taking pictures with a brand-new Nikon digital camera. He was having a much harder time than me, because all of his pictures were a split second behind the action. In fast action, a split second lag is a lifetime. "
The new Nikons are fantastic cameras and what the gentleman probably had a problem with was the autofocus. When you hold the button down half way it will prefocus and then the shot is immediate when you press the rest of the way. Or he could have dropped to manual mode.
I have at last count around 9000 pictures from my old Canon s100 (2mpix) and my new Minolta D7i and I like what I capture. We went to the pumpkin patch with my son's preschool and I shot 100+ pictures, I never had to worry about extra film or even if the shot turned out.
One of the nicest things about the digi is that I can review the shot right away so I can do a retake (if possible), this is actually great in family get togethers.
Dan said: Your best bet is to find a good cellular provider (Verizon in the US), and go in and ask THEM. THey have all the answers about the phones they offer and the services that go with them. Slashdot is a bad place to go for anything but theoretical discussions and anecdotes.
:-( ).
I'm looking at providers right now (I have Sprint and it just doesn't have the coverage, like when I'm sitting at my desk
The problem is that the dealers lie when you ask about coverage areas and stuff like that and without a road trip you really have no idea.
That said I'm leaning towards Verizon and am going to stay away from the 3g stuff for a bit more (it is nice though).