Just say no to using the Registry! I have lots of little utilities that brag about a "clean install" that doesn't use the Registry. Just delete the folder to uninstall. Is there any reason a more sophisticated program (like word processor or browser) must use the Registry?
No, and in fact Microsoft has been discouraging use of the registry. You put configuration files in the "Documents and Settings\username" folder.
If Apple is looking high-end, Itanium is a much better option than x86. Intel poured a lot of money into its development, and I'm sure they'd love to have an outlet for them. I could see them giving Apple a sweet deal, as the Itanium is on the verge of a total failure otherwise.
Now wait, this is business as usual. Pick just about any processor (ARM, PowerPC, x86, MIPS, you name it) and you can download detailed specs, both for the programming model and the hardware details. Honestly, I can't think of a CPU that this hasn't been true for. Maybe with the general closedness of GPUs people are forgetting this.
Yes apples and oranges, but the SNES's slow CPU was claimed to be the reason for the slow down in many SNES games.
Those claims were incorrect, however. The slowdown talk started because some of the first round of SNES games were terrible in this respect. But this was due to poor vram management, with far too much being DMAed each frame, and in a far from optimal manner. Trust me, I've been there.
Nintendo didn't miss out on online in the current generation. Xbox Live has been a mild success, though the majority of Xbox owners don't use it, but PS2 online was a fizzle.
Honestly, I think Nintendo has been trying harder than anyone to innovate. The DS lineup is really out there: Nintendogs, PacPix, Electroplankton. Weird, wonderful stuff. But maybe the rest of the hardcore gaming market has gone too much over the top, expecting desaturated military shooters, which is what everyone is announcing at E3 this year.
People like to cite Nintendo as the loser of the current generation, but that's far from true. They dominate the handheld market both in hardware and game sales. And though the Game Cube is the third place console, the big games for that console are all coming straight from Nintendo, with each one pulling in awards and selling like crazy.
Personally, I think Nintendo's biggest difficulty is that they lean much too hard on old franchises: Metroid, Zelda, Mario, Kirby, and so on. They were once fresh, but no longer. Hopefully some of Nintendo's experimentation will result in a brand new hit for them.
That's because it's been *years* since they've been in the technological lead. They used to tout the SNES' scaling and rotation over the Genesis every chance they could.
Honestly, I don't remember Nintendo hawking those features other than writing games using them. The SNES was more powerful across the board in graphics, though, compared with the Genesis: more colors, more sprites, more layers, hardware transparency. That was generally obvious from looking at games on both systems.
The Xbox succeeded because it wasn't a console - it's a mini-PC. They got their games because many game developers are familiar with DirectX, which shows as the majority of games are written for Windows.
Incorrect. The Xbox is a console, not a PC, as anyone who has written a game for it would know. Think about it: only 64MB of RAM, no virtual memory, a minimal shred of an OS. And it's just a bare-bones subset of DirectX, too. You make some calls to set things up, then everything is reduced to "here's a big block of pre-built data, can you render it for me please?" It's not like a PC at all.
The Radeon 9600 was released in 2003.. Where is the X800??
Apple is more about balance than most PC manufacturers are. You need a big power supply for the X800, plus it puts out tons of heat. It costs more, too. If you consider that the majority of G5 owners aren't anywhere near close to pushing a 9600 to its limits, then it makes sense.
Truthfully, the features of the highest end video cards are being ignored by just about all developers, except for a handful of game companies. Even game companies aren't pushing things like they used to, because the PC game market has been in steep decline for the last five years. And we're talking about the Mac market here, which is much, much smaller.
At the user level, no one wants an "operating system." People want applications and a way to use them. Thinking that people want UNIX or Linux or whatever doesn't make any sense.
From a more techie point of view, big operating systems are a relic from earlier days of computing. Look at how successful game consoles are, and yet they essentially have no more than a BIOS in firmware. All this debate about Linux and Windows and so on is misguided. That's old, tech-oriented thinking.
I use it daily and have for years. Honestly, this is one of those cases where a new version (VS.net) offers little over old versions (VS 6), but has gotten unstable and twice as slow in the process. VS 6 was kinda clunky, but it got the job done without any serious drawbacks. VS.net, though...I've switched to using external tools as much as possible.
What amazes me most is how short of a time it took for OS X to get put together. Most everyone agrees that the first release was more of a public beta, but even X.0 was an amazingly mature product for something completely new that had been started mere years earlier.
Of course Apple spent a long time working up to that point. All the talk about Pink/Taligent, Rhapsody, and so on, that went back to the early 1990s. After working through all the issues involved with creating several different OSes, I suspect Apple engineers knew what they wanted and how to avoid wasting time reinventing the same things over again.
This was said in the early 90's, the mid 90's, the late 90's, the early 2000's and now again. Till Apple has 5% of the market it's rather pointless.
Why is it pointless? Because you refuse to do something because everyone else isn't doing it too?
From my experience, 25-30% of all people I see sitting in coffeeshops or at conferences or whatever are using Macs. Mostly iBooks, but some PowerBooks, too. That's huge. I think the 5% number may still refer to desktops, but Macs are taking a big chunk of the notebook market.
Re:Probably worth mentioning...
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: -1, Redundant
..that the "hacking" in "Hacking Mac OS X" is referring to "hacking [catb.org]" in the traditional sense, not "cracking [catb.org]".
But honestly, would anyone who reads Slashdot not know this already. Look at all the "____ Hacks" books from O'Reilly, for example.
All of this is for Joe Sixpack. Not gamers and enthusiasts.
Except that Joe Sixpack doesn't understand the point of 64-bits. Okay, you can have a lot more memory, but then you hardly run into any average computer users with more than 512 megabytes of RAM anyway, and *zero* who are maxing out what a 32-bit CPU can handle.
Not to mention Joe Sixpack's reaction when he finds out that upgrading to 8 gigs of RAM is going to cost more than his entire PC did.
I definitely agree with your assumptions. While I don't know enough about the apple business history, I can definitely agree with the idea that intel is losing relevancy and marketability.
Except that Intel still owns the vast majority of the CPU market in the PC world. All the CPU mumbo-jumbo may not hurt them, because no one cares about CPUs any more. Well, that's not completely true. "Pentium-M" means "longer battery life in a notebook." All the rest of it is just noise. But again, it doesn't matter. All CPUs are fast these days.
The idea that Megahertz matters still is just another Intel Marketing plan that backfired on them in the end.
Well, that's the revisionist view anyway. Megahertz mattered for a long time (~20 years), in that, with few exceptions, you could reliably compare x86 CPUs based on clock speed. This stopped being the case a few years ago, when the x86 hit a clockspeed wall.
I mean that semi-facetiously, so don't call me a troll. But five years ago, I hardly saw any Mac notebooks around. Now I'm seeing a large number of iBooks and, to a lesser extent, PowerBooks in local coffeeshops and so on. I'd estimate that 20-25% of all notebooks I see are now Macs. This is a huge jump.
Re:I wish I could make that much moola....
on
Yahoo buys Flickr
·
· Score: 1
Agreed. And let's not forget that Flickr was founded by two A-list bloggers, the kind of people who could mention something in passing and have it linked to from dozens of sites. They had a ready-made way to get publicity. Heck, that's how I found out about Flickr.
I could not agree more. I really miss the old games (SNES-era) where companies didn't put the majority of their focus on games looking jaw-droppingly realistic, but rather they put their effort into making the game fun.
You mean back when 80% of all games were ripoffs of Mario/Sonic featuring a lead character with "attitude"? Sorry, but you're just falling into the nostalgia trap here.
Slashdot Mirror
Just say no to using the Registry! I have lots of little utilities that brag about a "clean install" that doesn't use the Registry. Just delete the folder to uninstall. Is there any reason a more sophisticated program (like word processor or browser) must use the Registry?
No, and in fact Microsoft has been discouraging use of the registry. You put configuration files in the "Documents and Settings\username" folder.
If Apple is looking high-end, Itanium is a much better option than x86. Intel poured a lot of money into its development, and I'm sure they'd love to have an outlet for them. I could see them giving Apple a sweet deal, as the Itanium is on the verge of a total failure otherwise.
I expect it was a minimal, custom kernel. Something along the lines of a bootloader and a handful of calls to talk to the graphics card.
"OS" doesn't mean much when it comes to consoles.
Now wait, this is business as usual. Pick just about any processor (ARM,
PowerPC, x86, MIPS, you name it) and you can download detailed specs, both for
the programming model and the hardware details. Honestly, I can't think of a
CPU that this hasn't been true for. Maybe with the general closedness
of GPUs people are forgetting this.
Xbox 360: modified PowerPC
PlayStation 3: PowerPC core + Sony custom extensions
Nintendo Revolution: PowerPC (supposedly)
The primary reason is because the PPC chips use significantly less power. Now, now they stack up against the Pentium-M series is a good question.
Yes apples and oranges, but the SNES's slow CPU was claimed to be the reason for the slow down in many SNES games.
Those claims were incorrect, however. The slowdown talk started because some of
the first round of SNES games were terrible in this respect. But this was due
to poor vram management, with far too much being DMAed each frame, and in a far
from optimal manner. Trust me, I've been there.
Nintendo didn't miss out on online in the current generation. Xbox Live has
been a mild success, though the majority of Xbox owners don't use it, but PS2
online was a fizzle.
Honestly, I think Nintendo has been trying harder than anyone to innovate. The
DS lineup is really out there: Nintendogs, PacPix, Electroplankton. Weird,
wonderful stuff. But maybe the rest of the hardcore gaming market has gone too
much over the top, expecting desaturated military shooters, which is what
everyone is announcing at E3 this year.
People like to cite Nintendo as the loser of the current generation, but that's
far from true. They dominate the handheld market both in hardware and game
sales. And though the Game Cube is the third place console, the big games for
that console are all coming straight from Nintendo, with each one pulling in
awards and selling like crazy.
Personally, I think Nintendo's biggest difficulty is that they lean much too
hard on old franchises: Metroid, Zelda, Mario, Kirby, and so on. They were once
fresh, but no longer. Hopefully some of Nintendo's experimentation will result
in a brand new hit for them.
That's because it's been *years* since they've been in the technological lead. They used to tout the SNES' scaling and rotation over the Genesis every chance they could.
Honestly, I don't remember Nintendo hawking those features other than writing games using them. The SNES was more powerful across the board in graphics, though, compared with the Genesis: more colors, more sprites, more layers, hardware transparency. That was generally obvious from looking at games on both systems.
What are it's inherent advantages over other languages?
The big one is super nice module system, at least if you're talking about Turbo/Delphi compatible Pascal's.
The Xbox succeeded because it wasn't a console - it's a mini-PC. They got
their games because many game developers are familiar with DirectX, which shows
as the majority of games are written for Windows.
Incorrect. The Xbox is a console, not a PC, as anyone who has written a game for it would know. Think about it:
only 64MB of RAM, no virtual memory, a minimal shred of an OS. And it's just a bare-bones subset of DirectX, too.
You make some calls to set things up, then everything is reduced to "here's a big block of pre-built data, can you render
it for me please?" It's not like a PC at all.
See the GDC rant session which was previously reported on Slashdot.
The Radeon 9600 was released in 2003 .. Where is the X800??
Apple is more about balance than most PC manufacturers are. You need a big power supply for the X800, plus it puts out tons of heat. It costs more, too. If you consider that the majority of G5 owners aren't anywhere near close to pushing a 9600 to its limits, then it makes sense.
Truthfully, the features of the highest end video cards are being ignored by just about all developers, except for a handful of game companies. Even game companies aren't pushing things like they used to, because the PC game market has been in steep decline for the last five years. And we're talking about the Mac market here, which is much, much smaller.
Apple made the right call here.
At the user level, no one wants an "operating system." People want applications and a way to use them. Thinking that people want UNIX or Linux or whatever doesn't make any sense.
From a more techie point of view, big operating systems are a relic from earlier days of computing. Look at how successful game consoles are, and yet they essentially have no more than a BIOS in firmware. All this debate about Linux and Windows and so on is misguided. That's old, tech-oriented thinking.
I use it daily and have for years. Honestly, this is one of those cases where a new version (VS .net) offers little over old versions (VS 6), but has gotten unstable and twice as slow in the process. VS 6 was kinda clunky, but it got the job done without any serious drawbacks. VS .net, though...I've switched to using external tools as much as possible.
i still dont understand why Rockstar didnt implement some kind of multiplayer mode in Vice City.
Because implementing multiplayer is a large undertaking?
What amazes me most is how short of a time it took for OS X to get put together. Most everyone agrees that the first release was more of a public beta, but even X.0 was an amazingly mature product for something completely new that had been started mere years earlier.
Of course Apple spent a long time working up to that point. All the talk about Pink/Taligent, Rhapsody, and so on, that went back to the early 1990s. After working through all the issues involved with creating several different OSes, I suspect Apple engineers knew what they wanted and how to avoid wasting time reinventing the same things over again.
This was said in the early 90's, the mid 90's, the late 90's, the early 2000's and now again. Till Apple has 5% of the market it's rather pointless.
Why is it pointless? Because you refuse to do something because everyone else isn't doing it too?
From my experience, 25-30% of all people I see sitting in coffeeshops or at conferences or whatever are using Macs. Mostly iBooks, but some PowerBooks, too. That's huge. I think the 5% number may still refer to desktops, but Macs are taking a big chunk of the notebook market.
..that the "hacking" in "Hacking Mac OS X" is referring to "hacking [catb.org]" in the traditional sense, not "cracking [catb.org]".
But honestly, would anyone who reads Slashdot not know this already. Look at all the "____ Hacks" books from O'Reilly, for example.
All of this is for Joe Sixpack. Not gamers and enthusiasts.
Except that Joe Sixpack doesn't understand the point of 64-bits. Okay, you can have a lot more memory, but then you hardly run into any average computer users with more than 512 megabytes of RAM anyway, and *zero* who are maxing out what a 32-bit CPU can handle.
Not to mention Joe Sixpack's reaction when he finds out that upgrading to 8 gigs of RAM is going to cost more than his entire PC did.
I definitely agree with your assumptions. While I don't know enough about the apple business history, I can definitely agree with the idea that intel is losing relevancy and marketability.
Except that Intel still owns the vast majority of the CPU market in the PC world. All the CPU mumbo-jumbo may not hurt them, because no one cares about CPUs any more. Well, that's not completely true. "Pentium-M" means "longer battery life in a notebook." All the rest of it is just noise. But again, it doesn't matter. All CPUs are fast these days.
The idea that Megahertz matters still is just another Intel Marketing plan that backfired on them in the end.
Well, that's the revisionist view anyway. Megahertz mattered for a long time (~20 years), in that, with few exceptions, you could reliably compare x86 CPUs based on clock speed. This stopped being the case a few years ago, when the x86 hit a clockspeed wall.
I mean that semi-facetiously, so don't call me a troll. But five years ago, I hardly saw any Mac notebooks around. Now I'm seeing a large number of iBooks and, to a lesser extent, PowerBooks in local coffeeshops and so on. I'd estimate that 20-25% of all notebooks I see are now Macs. This is a huge jump.
Agreed. And let's not forget that Flickr was founded by two A-list bloggers, the kind of people who could mention something in passing and have it linked to from dozens of sites. They had a ready-made way to get publicity. Heck, that's how I found out about Flickr.
The text-based UnrealScript has gone away, to be replaced by a fully-visual language, Kismet.
I could not agree more. I really miss the old games (SNES-era) where companies didn't put the majority of their focus on games looking jaw-droppingly realistic, but rather they put their effort into making the game fun.
You mean back when 80% of all games were ripoffs of Mario/Sonic featuring a lead character with "attitude"? Sorry, but you're just falling into the nostalgia trap here.