I agree, that RAZR phone is damn pretty. I've been lugging around a nokia (one of the last non-color, non-flip ones they made- no polyphonic ringtones, even). I hadn't bothered to get a new phone, even though this one looks like it's been to iraq, since I wasn't happy with ANY of the offerings from any company.
Even the Danger Sidekick wasn't really what I was looking for. I thought the sidekick2 would be worth it, but after playing with one, it really feels just like the first. i have no idea what the difference is except for the USB an the stupid camera and redesigned case...
I just wish the RAZR had a slightly bigger screen.
It reminds me of the Titanium Powerbook, but in Cell-form.
That's how I feel. Especially since I buy devices specifically for certain tasks.
My main gripe is that these features that are added to these devices are done half-assed, so to speak. Sure, the Palm series of handhelds (and the various pocketPCs) do the PDA thing damn-good, but when you wanna watch video/listen to music, they don't really have the storage for them... and when you wanna play games, they don't really have the hand-control.
That's why I bought an iPod, so I have the storage for my music.
That's why I bought my DS and my PSP, so I have something taylored towards games.
That's why I bought a digital camera, so I have something to take pictures with that's got decent quality.
It'll be a different story when my Cell phone has a 40GB harddrive in it and is still this tiny little thing, then sure, maybe I'll leave my iPod at home. Or when my iPod has a full-front, high res, bright, color touch-screen with a stylus that can play decent quality video and is a full-featured PDA, then I'll have that device.
When they add features to devices just for the sake of adding features, it gets wasted on the people who have a pocket full of devices.
I'd pay 600$ for the iPod I spoke of earlier. Hell, if they put that nice aluminum oxide coating on the screen to prevent scratches, that'd be even better, and if they decide to make it a cell phone, too, I could finally get rid of my Nokia 8265 (it's like 4 years old).
I haven't been following the work of you guys for the last month or so, but it seems you've gotten some serious work done. Last I saw was the vieo with the pass-through thing set up where you hacked the metroid hunters screen to show yer website.
...And a person with a 2GHz processor will get better performance than a 1GHz processor (with the the same processor core, of course), so why not charge based on clock rate?
Having dual processors is actually a little more complicated than just having faster-running software. If a program is written to handle multiple processors (read: multithreaded), it, theoretically cost more to develop since it's more complex software. Database software, for example, imo, is one type of software that should be written to take advantage of as much hardware as possible, and is specifically written to take advantage of secondary (and beyond) processors that are available.
You can't really tune a program to take advantage of a couple extra MFLOPS/MIPS/Cache. That comes more or less "for free." Making your program make the most of multiple processors, on the other hand, requires extra work.
I believe it's fair to charge more for more processors, but I don't think dual-core == dual-processor, in terms of licenses. Especially since, as I understand it, you can upgrade a single-proc board with a dual-core chip. It's a single part.
There should be a different pricing structure for multi-core machines and true multi-processor machines.
Personally, I chose Emusic, because I actually own the music I pay for
yeah, I did emusic for a month and canceled. The first 2 nights were spent downloading those manifest files that described the albums I wanted and the rest of the month was spent monitoring the downloads. All in all, I managed to get nearly 25GB of music.
emusic was great. It had a lot of the bands I was into at the time and a lot of ones that I was into later-on (skycamefalling, atreyu, from autumn to ashes, poison the well, and a lot of other screamy stuff), although I can't stand most of those bands anymore.
At least I don't have to segregate my emusic purchases from the rest of my mp3 collection as I do with my iTunes tracks... I keep hitting that computer limit with iTunes. I use my iPod/iTMS music at home, on my powerbook, and at 2 jobs and when I'm at my mom's house, work or wherever, and I get errors at some places due to the fact that iTMS limits how many machines can be registered to play my music. ug. Luckily I regressed back to buying my music in physical form on half.com.
Unfortunately, all of the external drive bays I've ever purchased aren't mac mini friendly...
I've got a dual-bay firewire enclosure that's only about 4" wide, a CD burner in an enclosure that's got a convex top (the mini wouldn't sit flat on top of it), and 2 of those LaCie Pocket drives... All of those peripherals insist on either sitting on top of the mini (although they are a good margin deeper than the mini), or next to it, using precious desk space...
Although, one could always get one of those spiffy mini accessories that allow stacking things on top of it.
I have a first gen g4 (originally 450mhz) with a 800mhz upgrade. so it doesn't have all the coolness of the models you described...
The case that the machine came with only had a zip and CD external bay and 2 internal spots for HDs (I believe I could probably attach a 3rd internal 3.5" drive, too, but I didn't have any decently sized scsi drives), so I popped the innards into an ATX case and a CD burner in addition to the slotload DVD and zip drive. There just wasn't room for all this madness in the original case.
I've also got a DVR-108 drive in an external firewire enclosure on top with a dual-bay HD firewire enclosure on top of that... Those are only there so I can attach them to my powerbook if need be (only has a 1x superdrive in it and a 60gb HD)
I actually ruined my Yosemite G3's case trying to mod the zip bay to fit a second optical drive, and had to buy a replacement bay off ebay.
The accessories I'm talking about are basically extra and/or oversize (3.5") drives.
well, there actually ARE reasons for wanting to do this...
having a small formfactor box is pointless if it's surrounded by external devices. If you pop it into a single enclosure with all the extra drives and whatnot encased in a single unit, it's a lot easier to manage and you don't have to worry about toppling. It probably also will increase the lives of the devices since they'll be moved less (moved all at the same time rather than in small increments).
I took apart a G4 and popped it into an ATX case so I could have 2 optical drives and room for more internal HDs. Also, I liked the idea of having a window and UV cathode tubes illuminating the internals...
A small form-factor mini-itx case is still a small form-factor case. The project (althought I didn't RTFA, it's fried) doesn't say to put the mac mini's logic board into a full ATX tower, does it?
yeah, they really need to bring back folder actions... I didn't really use them too much when they were around until right before I switched to OSX for work, so I never really got to experience their full potential.
I work as a production artist in a Flag shop and at a screenprinter and find applescript to save sometimes up to 100 mouseclicks in a single task.
I've got one script that iterates through an illustrator file and creates a list of spot colors that are used in a file. (illustrator 10/CS is fully scriptable... 9 might even be, too).
I wrote another script that exports my illustrator files to a jpeg, opens it in photoshop, crops it, resizes it, and emails it to my customer for a proof (we don't do pdf proofs since clients could use them for production).
Another script for when we outsource our files that dupes them, opens them, converts fonts to outlines, waits for me to doublecheck that everything's ok, then when I click OK, closes, and iterates through all the files. Then, when it's done, asks which company I'm sending to, figures out if the file is small enough to email, and if so, stuffs and emails the file to the correct email address with a list of included files, types, and sizes, or if too large to email, either stuffs and FTPs (using transmit) or launches toast, creates a new CD, and ejects the CD Tray waiting to burn.
I've also written several scripts for creating job folders and for general file management and preflighting (opening files in photoshop and printing with info about size, resolution, file format and color mode).
There's a very good book on Illustrator 10 applescripting and VBA scripting on amazon that got me started with scripting for illustrator, although CS works differently than 10 and requires a rewrite of the scripts.
well, when you plug a USB windows keyboard (keyboard with windows key) into a mac, it's a little confusing. Ctrl is Control, alt is Option (alt), and the windows key acts as Command (apple key)
that's making what I paid for mine seem more and more worth it.
Originally, all the websites/ebay/chinatown had them selling for 4-800$ each, and I found a website where I got it for 315$ including shipping AND a game (Minna No Golf). Since the games were selling for 70-90$, it seems I got a really good deal on it, even imported from japan and almost 4 months earlier than the rest of the US.
Only downside is that I didn't get the value-pack, so I only got the PSP and the charger in the box.
I also dropped 80$ on a 512MB MemoryStick, but now I have mobile pr0n. Hooray for bangbus on the train! =)
generally, apple's consumer products need a gimmick. Apple would never release a desktop computer that was a regular sized tower whose only gimmick was the low price.
This machine is tiny. You ever try to build a mini Pentium4 machine? Go to mini-itx.com... they have a mini-itx P4 board for 180$. Throw in a decent processor (about another 80$ from newegg), RAM (90$), small PSU (70$), slotload CDRW/DVD+/-RW drive (190$), and Harddrive ($100), and yer already up over 700$ and that doesn't even include a spiffy case or other miscellanious periphery...
just remember, a lot of the cost of the new mini is coming from the size (or lack thereof).
I agree. I had 256mb RAM in my 450mhz G3 and OSX ran like a dog doing anything more than chatting and web surfing. Photoshop and Illustrator ran like molasses.
After upgrading to 512MB, performance was like a new machine... and after obtaining a new 450mhz G4 box with 1GB RAM, OSX ran insanely better (the APG graphics made a huge difference in performance, as well as the altivec, I'm sure).
I can't really comment on the RPM speed of the HD, but my Powerbook (1ghz G4, 1GB RAM) runs OSX better than any of my desktop machines (fastest: 800mhz G4, 7600rpm, 2GB RAM). I'd prefer to use it over my desktops except for the fact that I've got a dual-monitor setup for my desktop machine and more ram for doing work.
qctuqlly, WinFS is a direct ripoff of BeOS's BFS which was a database/query driven filesystem, and was blazingly fast. I believe the guy who designed BFS is now working for apple.
dashboard is a ripoff of many apps, but those apps were ripoffs of others and when it comes down to it, it's just an API for programming smaller applications that are all managed by a bigger app... From what I understand (have read previously), the Mac's desk accessories (from the mid 80s) were basically that, but without the big managing app.
the.app packaging format is nothing new... it was in NeXT's OS from the start... but that's what OSX's based on, anyway.
quake3 runs fine in OSX on my 800mhz G4 w/ RADEON 9000 AGP...
Although, I have to agree, warcraft3 (and C&C Generals) runs like crap on my 1ghz powerbook, and I haven't run any incarnation of UT since the original back before the dev previews of OSX were even out (like 99), so I can't comment on that...
I wouldn't really call say "macs are just not gaming machines" but rather "the mac platform doesn't have a decent amount of good games"
anyway, I agree with your last point about more developers embracing the MacOS... It's completely feasible to have comparable performance in a mac port of a PC game.
i just wish things were like the old days where you could attach a PC videocard to a mac and use it with little to no hacking (maybe just a bios flash). I understand the companies' arguments about justifying funding the development for drivers for alternate platforms, but sheeeit... c'mon. when a card costs 180$ for a PC and 400$ for the mac version, that's just not fair...
yeah, I actually had an ADB 2-button/scroll wheel mouse back in like 96/97 or so. Without drivers, the second button behaved as a shift-click (this is before the control-click context menus were available) and the mouse wheel was the up and down arrows, but the drivers let you customize it.
i didn't really like the feel of the mouse, but I mainly got it for playing starcraft and warcraft and marathon.
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I agree, that RAZR phone is damn pretty. I've been lugging around a nokia (one of the last non-color, non-flip ones they made- no polyphonic ringtones, even). I hadn't bothered to get a new phone, even though this one looks like it's been to iraq, since I wasn't happy with ANY of the offerings from any company.
Even the Danger Sidekick wasn't really what I was looking for. I thought the sidekick2 would be worth it, but after playing with one, it really feels just like the first. i have no idea what the difference is except for the USB an the stupid camera and redesigned case...
I just wish the RAZR had a slightly bigger screen.
It reminds me of the Titanium Powerbook, but in Cell-form.
That's how I feel. Especially since I buy devices specifically for certain tasks.
My main gripe is that these features that are added to these devices are done half-assed, so to speak. Sure, the Palm series of handhelds (and the various pocketPCs) do the PDA thing damn-good, but when you wanna watch video/listen to music, they don't really have the storage for them... and when you wanna play games, they don't really have the hand-control.
That's why I bought an iPod, so I have the storage for my music.
That's why I bought my DS and my PSP, so I have something taylored towards games.
That's why I bought a digital camera, so I have something to take pictures with that's got decent quality.
It'll be a different story when my Cell phone has a 40GB harddrive in it and is still this tiny little thing, then sure, maybe I'll leave my iPod at home. Or when my iPod has a full-front, high res, bright, color touch-screen with a stylus that can play decent quality video and is a full-featured PDA, then I'll have that device.
When they add features to devices just for the sake of adding features, it gets wasted on the people who have a pocket full of devices.
I'd pay 600$ for the iPod I spoke of earlier. Hell, if they put that nice aluminum oxide coating on the screen to prevent scratches, that'd be even better, and if they decide to make it a cell phone, too, I could finally get rid of my Nokia 8265 (it's like 4 years old).
darkfader, good job. ;)
I haven't been following the work of you guys for the last month or so, but it seems you've gotten some serious work done. Last I saw was the vieo with the pass-through thing set up where you hacked the metroid hunters screen to show yer website.
yeah, me too. I think I missed FP because of my extended pondering...
It would be an interesting thing if this V-Pocket was a pocket video-player. Something to compete against the iPod/PSP/etc stuffs.
Maybe it's a VoIP appliance for the DS?
I still think the greatest part of that comic is the "2+3=cats" part.
...And a person with a 2GHz processor will get better performance than a 1GHz processor (with the the same processor core, of course), so why not charge based on clock rate?
Having dual processors is actually a little more complicated than just having faster-running software. If a program is written to handle multiple processors (read: multithreaded), it, theoretically cost more to develop since it's more complex software. Database software, for example, imo, is one type of software that should be written to take advantage of as much hardware as possible, and is specifically written to take advantage of secondary (and beyond) processors that are available.
You can't really tune a program to take advantage of a couple extra MFLOPS/MIPS/Cache. That comes more or less "for free." Making your program make the most of multiple processors, on the other hand, requires extra work.
I believe it's fair to charge more for more processors, but I don't think dual-core == dual-processor, in terms of licenses. Especially since, as I understand it, you can upgrade a single-proc board with a dual-core chip. It's a single part.
There should be a different pricing structure for multi-core machines and true multi-processor machines.
Personally, I chose Emusic, because I actually own the music I pay for
yeah, I did emusic for a month and canceled. The first 2 nights were spent downloading those manifest files that described the albums I wanted and the rest of the month was spent monitoring the downloads. All in all, I managed to get nearly 25GB of music.
emusic was great. It had a lot of the bands I was into at the time and a lot of ones that I was into later-on (skycamefalling, atreyu, from autumn to ashes, poison the well, and a lot of other screamy stuff), although I can't stand most of those bands anymore.
At least I don't have to segregate my emusic purchases from the rest of my mp3 collection as I do with my iTunes tracks... I keep hitting that computer limit with iTunes. I use my iPod/iTMS music at home, on my powerbook, and at 2 jobs and when I'm at my mom's house, work or wherever, and I get errors at some places due to the fact that iTMS limits how many machines can be registered to play my music. ug. Luckily I regressed back to buying my music in physical form on half.com.
you know how long Gentoo would take to install on that 2nd hand pentium 233 you speak of?!?!?!!?
psshhhhh...
Unfortunately, all of the external drive bays I've ever purchased aren't mac mini friendly...
I've got a dual-bay firewire enclosure that's only about 4" wide, a CD burner in an enclosure that's got a convex top (the mini wouldn't sit flat on top of it), and 2 of those LaCie Pocket drives... All of those peripherals insist on either sitting on top of the mini (although they are a good margin deeper than the mini), or next to it, using precious desk space...
Although, one could always get one of those spiffy mini accessories that allow stacking things on top of it.
I have a first gen g4 (originally 450mhz) with a 800mhz upgrade. so it doesn't have all the coolness of the models you described...
The case that the machine came with only had a zip and CD external bay and 2 internal spots for HDs (I believe I could probably attach a 3rd internal 3.5" drive, too, but I didn't have any decently sized scsi drives), so I popped the innards into an ATX case and a CD burner in addition to the slotload DVD and zip drive. There just wasn't room for all this madness in the original case.
I've also got a DVR-108 drive in an external firewire enclosure on top with a dual-bay HD firewire enclosure on top of that... Those are only there so I can attach them to my powerbook if need be (only has a 1x superdrive in it and a 60gb HD)
I actually ruined my Yosemite G3's case trying to mod the zip bay to fit a second optical drive, and had to buy a replacement bay off ebay.
The accessories I'm talking about are basically extra and/or oversize (3.5") drives.
well, there actually ARE reasons for wanting to do this...
having a small formfactor box is pointless if it's surrounded by external devices. If you pop it into a single enclosure with all the extra drives and whatnot encased in a single unit, it's a lot easier to manage and you don't have to worry about toppling. It probably also will increase the lives of the devices since they'll be moved less (moved all at the same time rather than in small increments).
I took apart a G4 and popped it into an ATX case so I could have 2 optical drives and room for more internal HDs. Also, I liked the idea of having a window and UV cathode tubes illuminating the internals...
A small form-factor mini-itx case is still a small form-factor case. The project (althought I didn't RTFA, it's fried) doesn't say to put the mac mini's logic board into a full ATX tower, does it?
oh wow, yer right!
holy crap.
I actually hadn't looked. I just assumed, since I haven't used them and I remember that a previous version of OSX had been lacking them.
hmmmmm.... now I've gotta implement them....
if only they'd bring back popup windows... *sigh*
yeah, they really need to bring back folder actions... I didn't really use them too much when they were around until right before I switched to OSX for work, so I never really got to experience their full potential.
;)
Hey, at least they brought back labels, right?
I work as a production artist in a Flag shop and at a screenprinter and find applescript to save sometimes up to 100 mouseclicks in a single task.
I've got one script that iterates through an illustrator file and creates a list of spot colors that are used in a file. (illustrator 10/CS is fully scriptable... 9 might even be, too).
I wrote another script that exports my illustrator files to a jpeg, opens it in photoshop, crops it, resizes it, and emails it to my customer for a proof (we don't do pdf proofs since clients could use them for production).
Another script for when we outsource our files that dupes them, opens them, converts fonts to outlines, waits for me to doublecheck that everything's ok, then when I click OK, closes, and iterates through all the files. Then, when it's done, asks which company I'm sending to, figures out if the file is small enough to email, and if so, stuffs and emails the file to the correct email address with a list of included files, types, and sizes, or if too large to email, either stuffs and FTPs (using transmit) or launches toast, creates a new CD, and ejects the CD Tray waiting to burn.
I've also written several scripts for creating job folders and for general file management and preflighting (opening files in photoshop and printing with info about size, resolution, file format and color mode).
There's a very good book on Illustrator 10 applescripting and VBA scripting on amazon that got me started with scripting for illustrator, although CS works differently than 10 and requires a rewrite of the scripts.
so it had MacOS labels AND Windows labels?
That's pretty neat. =)
well, when you plug a USB windows keyboard (keyboard with windows key) into a mac, it's a little confusing. Ctrl is Control, alt is Option (alt), and the windows key acts as Command (apple key)
well, photoshop has come with ImageReady since version 5.5, I think...
so yeah, they got it with photoshop, but so does everyone else. =P
Actually, the file was probably edited in Photoshop and exported from ImageReady to control the quality/filesize.
that's making what I paid for mine seem more and more worth it.
Originally, all the websites/ebay/chinatown had them selling for 4-800$ each, and I found a website where I got it for 315$ including shipping AND a game (Minna No Golf). Since the games were selling for 70-90$, it seems I got a really good deal on it, even imported from japan and almost 4 months earlier than the rest of the US.
Only downside is that I didn't get the value-pack, so I only got the PSP and the charger in the box.
I also dropped 80$ on a 512MB MemoryStick, but now I have mobile pr0n. Hooray for bangbus on the train! =)
What?!?!?! NO GENTOO?!
generally, apple's consumer products need a gimmick. Apple would never release a desktop computer that was a regular sized tower whose only gimmick was the low price.
This machine is tiny. You ever try to build a mini Pentium4 machine? Go to mini-itx.com... they have a mini-itx P4 board for 180$. Throw in a decent processor (about another 80$ from newegg), RAM (90$), small PSU (70$), slotload CDRW/DVD+/-RW drive (190$), and Harddrive ($100), and yer already up over 700$ and that doesn't even include a spiffy case or other miscellanious periphery...
just remember, a lot of the cost of the new mini is coming from the size (or lack thereof).
I agree. I had 256mb RAM in my 450mhz G3 and OSX ran like a dog doing anything more than chatting and web surfing. Photoshop and Illustrator ran like molasses.
After upgrading to 512MB, performance was like a new machine... and after obtaining a new 450mhz G4 box with 1GB RAM, OSX ran insanely better (the APG graphics made a huge difference in performance, as well as the altivec, I'm sure).
I can't really comment on the RPM speed of the HD, but my Powerbook (1ghz G4, 1GB RAM) runs OSX better than any of my desktop machines (fastest: 800mhz G4, 7600rpm, 2GB RAM). I'd prefer to use it over my desktops except for the fact that I've got a dual-monitor setup for my desktop machine and more ram for doing work.
qctuqlly, WinFS is a direct ripoff of BeOS's BFS which was a database/query driven filesystem, and was blazingly fast. I believe the guy who designed BFS is now working for apple.
.app packaging format is nothing new... it was in NeXT's OS from the start... but that's what OSX's based on, anyway.
dashboard is a ripoff of many apps, but those apps were ripoffs of others and when it comes down to it, it's just an API for programming smaller applications that are all managed by a bigger app... From what I understand (have read previously), the Mac's desk accessories (from the mid 80s) were basically that, but without the big managing app.
the
quake3 runs fine in OSX on my 800mhz G4 w/ RADEON 9000 AGP...
Although, I have to agree, warcraft3 (and C&C Generals) runs like crap on my 1ghz powerbook, and I haven't run any incarnation of UT since the original back before the dev previews of OSX were even out (like 99), so I can't comment on that...
I wouldn't really call say "macs are just not gaming machines" but rather "the mac platform doesn't have a decent amount of good games"
anyway, I agree with your last point about more developers embracing the MacOS... It's completely feasible to have comparable performance in a mac port of a PC game.
i just wish things were like the old days where you could attach a PC videocard to a mac and use it with little to no hacking (maybe just a bios flash). I understand the companies' arguments about justifying funding the development for drivers for alternate platforms, but sheeeit... c'mon. when a card costs 180$ for a PC and 400$ for the mac version, that's just not fair...
yeah, I actually had an ADB 2-button/scroll wheel mouse back in like 96/97 or so. Without drivers, the second button behaved as a shift-click (this is before the control-click context menus were available) and the mouse wheel was the up and down arrows, but the drivers let you customize it.
i didn't really like the feel of the mouse, but I mainly got it for playing starcraft and warcraft and marathon.