The big problem with Appleworks is that the interface is some unholy mixture of Sys9 and OSX. For instance the spreadsheet has "labels" running along the top and left of the window that are nearly unreadable. Further there are many serious bugs such as the oft mentioned kerning problem in its word processor module. It also doesn't open up Word files with much by way of fidelity to the original presentation.
I spent my money thinking I'd get something good but ended up having to splurge the money for Office. Office has a slightly quirky interface - sort of a half XP half OSX. But it is still much more aesthetically pleasing than a quick Carbon port.
[b]You would likely never see an iOffice for two reasons. Firstly, Apple would like something that doesn't sound like an MS clone. ..[/b]
That's actually why they might do it. If they are worried about not having "Office for OSX" if MS drops MS Office then having something OSX Office would allow them to say something very similar.
You are right that this would be a tempting target for MS lawyers though. The question really is how generic the term "office" is. I don't think Windows compares as a term, given that Windows is such a trademark. Office really isn't a trademark in the same way. (As far as I know - I could be wrong)
It almost certainly wouldn't be OpenOffice. However it might involve some of the OpenOffice/StarOffice codebase. Rumors of a Sun - Apple alliance on this matter have been flying around for months. Given some of Apple's recent releases, such as Safari and Keynote, along with the dismall state of Appleworks on OSX, I think this is almost certainly the case.
However if this happens then I'd lay very good odds that it will parallel what happened wiht Safari. Safari isn't Konquerer, but it shares some code with it. In the same way I suspect AppleWorks 7.0 or whatever they call it will share code with OpenOffice or StarOffice but won't be equivalent to it.
Realize though that most voter turnout is low because in most elections the outcome is already decided by polling. At a certain point it is typically kind of pointless because one person has already "won" the election. In other cases both people are about equal and the voter doesn't particularly *care* which person wins. When there is a bad candidate that people don't like then they aren't neck and neck and democracy is still served.
While I favor stronger voter turnout, I think it is erroneous to assume that low voter turnout implies little democracy or a lack of concern about poltics. I consider myself very political. However around here most elections are led come election day by more than 20 points. Why should I go to all the trouble of voting when it is just to rubber stamp and made decision? If there was something where I felt my vote mattered then I would vote. However this year I tried to vote but my registration somehow ended up in the wrong distrinct. After visiting three different precincts I gave up as I'd already wasted 2 hours of my busy day.
It wouldn't be completely safe. Imagine if you were near the blast radius with a pacemaker, for instance. Further you wouldn't want to be dependent upon any other medical technology. There are also other cases where you may be doing something that becomes extremely dangerous when suddenly electronic devices stop working.
However relative to a munitions, it is extremely safe. It will dramatically reduce casualties for certain actions. As such we ought to praise the military for investing so much money the past few decades to reducing civilian casualties. It isn't perfect and never can be that way. After all at some point you have to eliminate or incapacitate the enemy troops and take positions. In such there will be bloodshed and unfortunately the innocent will suffer along with the guilty. But at least they are trying to narrow that down as much as possible.
Unfortunately I find the OSX version of Mozilla to be damn ugly. I'm definitely not a Mozilla fan, although I do like Chimera. I'm hoping Apple improves Mail in the next version. Realistically if they gave a real folder pane instead of the drawer and dealt with blockquote tags in their HTML I'd be able to live with the rest. Now that they've added Applescript support for rules (i.e. trigger a script) I'm pretty happy.
One thing I would like and which I don't believe most SPAM filters do is allow multiple sets of tags. (i.e. general categorization rather than just SPAM categorization) While some of the "hacks" you use for SPAM are different from general text categorization, the same approach can be used. It would be useful, especially if you could use the information for further actions.
I just got the new MSDN disks so I'll see if they have any betas on Office. Hopefully they will have that in the next version of Outlook. (Which, in spite of the legion of security problems is a damn fine email program - naysayers be damned)
The big problem with most current spam filters is that they work at the server level or else require an extra "intermediary" pop-like server between you and your regular mail server. This is a problem because they assume a "one size fits all" approach to Spam. The problem is that one man's spam is an other man's interesting offer. Further they require the maintainer of the server continually update the corpus that trains the filter.
The real fact of the matter is that for most people the hassle is nearly as bad as the spam! I don't want to spend the time setting up such things. And when people have set them up *for* me I get too many false positives, if only because my interests differ from them. Thus any filter has to be trained with user data and be trainable in an unobtrusive, easy fashion.
The only software I know of that does this is Apple's Mail program in OSX. Unfortunately the program has many limitations and annoyances. (Damn that drawer) However Apple's approach to Spam ought to be followed by all other email clients. Adding Bayesian inference to an email client is very easy. Putting it in the sever is a mistake because you *can't* easily click and lable an email as spam. As with unfortunately too much Open Source software, the interface has been ill conceived.
And how do we know that you, my friend, are not part of the conspiracy to cover this up?
The conspiracy to cover it up involved the DoS attack aka being slashdotted. The boys in the black jackets knew that no one of slashdot would accept the aliens because they used a closed non-open source computing environment and that it had already been done in Star Trek and X-Files. Plus they are all too hard for regular people to understand anyway. Then the UFO site goes down under the load and the government conspiracy can get back to doing trilateral control of the oil reserves.
This is correct. There is a new version of the G4 coming out that does support DDR properly. But by the time it comes out the 970 will be here and its value will be questionable. It may end up in the low end Macs, depending upon cost.
I'm not sure Java's virtual machine counts as a full operating system. I do think that Microsoft's.net strategy is much closer. In the.net languages (C#, managed C, VB.net, ASP.net) you really do start to blur the lines between the language, the class library and the OS. It hasn't gone all the way, of course. Further the fact that there are multiple languages undermines the idea of a language as the OS. With.net it is multiple languages.
There are excellent reasons to go this route though. While I'm definitely no Microsoft lover, I do think.net is pretty cool. Even if figuring out what they mean by that is more than a tad confusing.
Of course in practice the distinction between language and OS has always been somewhat blurry. Take Unix. At what point to you separate Perl, gcc, and the shell from the OS? In a way, in the older versions of Unix it was even more pronounced. Using LaTex involved many shell scripts and custom programs and even writing in it was in effect programming.
Even early versions of LISP were their own OS and one could argue that UCSD Pascal was as well. (Especially the version for the old Apple II)
So this is hardly a new thing. The only time I think we can truly make an OS - language distinction is when people start trying to make languages portable and make it used for development. The move to do everything in C for all platforms in the late 80's is a great example of this. This lead to many companies using C instead of Pascal for development and also pushed ANSI C and then the C++ standards. Class libraries tended to be quite separate from the language. However lets be honest. All of this was more of a short blip in the history of languages rather than the typical situation.
Even going back to "prehistoric" times, when people wrote Fortran code with punch cards could they tell what was the program and what was the OS easily?
As recent events [slashdot.org] have shown us Apple makes proprietary software and hardware and it sometimes bites you in the a$$. If thye don't like what you are doing they have much more power to stop you when you are running Apple software.
This is wrong on so many levels. First off it was the modification of iTunes in a way which broke the license agreement with the SDK. The above is like complaining about the two different QT licenses and therefore inferring we all ought to avoid KDE.
Second basically every Linux MP3 player still works with OSX. Exactly what have you lost? So you didn't get to modify iTunes. Yet even with that removed you still have more choice than you did on your Linux or BSD box.
Complaining that one piece of non-open source software can't be modified when all the existing opensource ones can is silly. What's even sillier is that you can still do everything that iCommune did using Apache and Rendezvous. Further a lot of people would say that iCommune didn't work that well to begin with.
Part of the reason Apple's marketshare is slipping is because people are afraid to buy because Apple's marketshare is slipping.
There is some truth to this. However it tends to be based upon questionable statistics. Apple's marketplace slide pretty much stopped around '98 and has remained fairly constant since. Further folks keep quoting world figures rather than American figures. So these statistics are somewhat biased and misleading. I think you also have to recognize that Apple is still amongst the big 5 players as well. I think Sun has a better chance of going under than Apple does. Does this mean you shouldn't buy anything with Solaris?
The processor line is the problem. However that is also a problem that Apple has solved. Like those awaiting the new AMD chips, the vision is in sight. We're just waiting for delivery. And this isn't vaporware the way that the promised G5 was.
Interesting you bring up Sun and the Sparcs. As people recall, back just before the Apple - NeXT merging a lot of people were predicting a Sun - Apple merging. I'm not sure that would have been a good thing, especially considering how Sun has been run. However all those complaining about Apple's 8 million dollar loss, consider this. Sun lost 2.3 Billion dollars.
Also, as many have mentioned, despite losing world marketshare their American marketshare has been creeping up. Also the recent powerbooks are clearly aimed at the Japanese market. Don't get me wrong, it would be nice to have a larger world marketshare. But given a lot of the economies and politics of the world market, I doubt that will happen. The important figures are for the US, Canada, Japan and some of the European countries. That sounds a little ethnocentric, but it is good business sense. I predict that within 10 years even MS will have lost a lot of world marketshare due to the nature of opensource being so attractive to 3rd world and 2cd world economies and political situations.
In that more useful (and meaningfully measurable) barometer Apple is doing quite well. For instance in America Apple's share increased from 2.9% to 3.0%. Report That's quite amazing when you realize that they did this with machines that are heavily overpriced and woefully underpowered and did it at a time when most PC manufactures were doing quite poorly.
That's the real issue. Right now any switching is being done on more emotional decisions. You want an alternative to Microsoft. You like the "look" of OSX. However once Apple weathers this recession and its chip problems there will be far more rational reasons for switching. The 970 will provide a huge performance boost for Apple. In terms of SMP it will be at least on the AMD level. (Albeit not in performance - at least for the initial 970 run) I don't know what prices will look like, but it may well be that Apple gets well within the PC's price/performance range.
At that point when you add in all the benefits of a Unix based OS (especailly with Apple's recent X11 app), the aesthetics of OSX and (IMO) its better multitastking to XP, it will be very attractive for switchers. Right now Apple is spreading the word, preparing folks for what is ahead this fall.
Mark my words. This fall is going to be very exciting. The Iraq situation will be over. I think the recession and slowdown will be over. And I think Apple will be the computer manufacturer to watch.
To say that Apple has done nothing to solve their problem is a bit much. Other than going the x86 route, what could they do but put pressure on the PPC producers? That appears to be coming to fruition with the IBM 970 chips. Those seem quite exciting, although they will be slower than equivalent Opterons out around the same time. However they are about equivalent in speed to current top end P4 chips. (Although those will increase in performance by the time the new PowerMacs are out) The big advantage to the 970 are the way they allow multiprocessing systems. Whether Apple will utilize this initially for a high end graphics oriented Mac is up in the air. I think they should but there will undoubtedly be a shortage of chips initially.
Beyond what they have done, I'm not sure what people expect them to do. Everyone cried to move to the x86, especially AMD systems. However the fact of the matter is that emulation is slow at the best of times (look at Virtual PC for OSX). Further the nature of x86 design and the limits on true general registers makes emulating PPC code that uses a lot of registers quite difficult. However even here it is widely known that Apple *has* ported most of OSX to the x86 platform, even if only as an intellectual endeavor. So clearly this was an option, even if only a last ditch one.
Yeah this year sucks in terms of performance for OSX. Most of the improvements are in terms of software. (With 10.2.3 and iLife, OSX is really starting to sing) Come summer or fall I think we'll see Apple being much more competitive in terms of price/performance. At that point switching will make a lot more rational sense.
Rather than sell bikes with computers they ought to just sell one of those spinners you place your bike on and give it a USB interface. (You know, the front wheel goes on a roller and the back is locked in place) Then sell software. That way you don't get stuck with crappy games or crappy video cards. (The typical bane of these sorts of things)
That would also cut down on the cost of the thing and would let you use your own bike. Hell, I'd get one in a sec.
Of course what I'd really like is a stair climber version of joust. But that's just dreaming.
Well, with Linux and OSX explicitly not having DRM, then it provides a way for Microsoft and to a lesser extent companies like Dell to lose market share. They don't want this. So if there is enough consumer demand they won't have as much DRM. If they do - well if Apple can fix the CPU speed gap that is an excellent reason to switch.
That's my point. At the moment it doesn't work with [b]Windows[/b] stuff only Apple stuff.
Right now I have about 4 Windows machine, a Linux box, a BSD box, a Solaris box and a couple of OSX boxes. Getting the OSX box to play nice with the Windows boxes is a pain. I can sometimes do it with effort. But I can't imagine the typical user getting the kind of experience they do with running an XP client accessing a NT or XP server.
I largely agree. However with the Networking, even with Samba built in, networking OSX with a Windows network is not simple. There is no browser equivalent to Network Neighborhood that correctly shows all the servers. Further getting printing to work is a hassle as well and typically doesn't work right. Gimp-Print helps a bit, but it has bugs of its own. (I had to reinstall my Epson 820 drivers to get it to start printing right again)
Until the 970 systems come out Apple will be behind the performance curve. Given how poorly multitasking most applications are (including most of Apple's) the dual processing units don't really help that much. In practice most people are using systems that are single processing at about 1/2 the speed of equivalent PCs or worse.
That's why Apple is emphasizing portables. Because of the poor power consumption of most x86 chips, they are far more competitive in that market. Indeed I think their new systems are killer, albeit slightly overpriced. I know a lot of PC users eyeing them seriously.
But until August or September when the 970 comes out Apple won't be that competitive. In the meantime it would help if they'd at least get their multithreading written right. The Finder is still an embarrassment in that regard compared to Windows Explorer. That is without a doubt greatly improved over 10.1 but still far below where it needs to be.
I'd agree with the "for most people anything over a 600MHz P3 is adequate." However OSX puts a lot of gee whiz features that make it more power hungry than an equivalent XP box. Users notice that. Just look at the complaints new users voice. Further some of the iApps like iPhoto [b]are[/b] very computationally intensive. The way it browses uses a lot of horsepower - horsepower that most Macintosh models lack. (Poor programming with iPhoto 1.2 didn't help, although iPhoto 2 seems better from what I've seen)
Unfortunately the Dr. Bott iPod thing is worse than useless. In a car it has to be basically beside your stereo and even then it doesn't really have enough power. If you hold it then your body's capacitance changes things enough that you actually get decent reception. Unfortunately that isn't exactly convenient.
Anyone who thinks they could use one of these in a house is fooling themselves. There are other radio transmitters, as a Google search will attest. The good ones cost nearly as much as your iPod!
I wish there was a power booster for the Dr. Bott thing. It is a good idea. But right now I feel like I wasted my money.
Did they get it so that it sees the local OSX fonts as well as the standard X11 fonts? That has been the bane with most X11 based office applications.
The notes with Apple's X11.app says that any application should be able to use Apple's fonts as well. So, for example, you can use Monoco in Xterm (which I have done). However I know AbiWord didn't access them. Before I d/l this huge distro, I'm curious if it will.
Hey, that's pretty cool. It is even OSX compatible. (The archive software looked like Java, but I assume that is compatible once you upgrade your dev tools to Java 1.4 from Apple's web site)
The implication of this quote is that the underlying renderer Omniweb 5.0 was supposed to have wasn't as far along as many thought. Presumably they are keeping their high level interface stuff. But to completely switch rendering engines at this stage is a fairly significant change.
What it would let you do is play your MP-3's in your stereo system without setting up a full computer in your living room.
I halfway wonder if it will let you play your recorded videos on you Mac.
QT already DOES hook into Carbon. It has for quite some time. That's probably what made the port as easy as it was. Further by using the Konquerer stuff rather than the Gecko stuff they don't run into all those problems with text fields. Those have been the bane of Chimera. So it does make sense.
In regards to the CSS problems - this is a beta. I suspect that as time goes on it will support much more CSS.
Slashdot Mirror
I spent my money thinking I'd get something good but ended up having to splurge the money for Office. Office has a slightly quirky interface - sort of a half XP half OSX. But it is still much more aesthetically pleasing than a quick Carbon port.
That's actually why they might do it. If they are worried about not having "Office for OSX" if MS drops MS Office then having something OSX Office would allow them to say something very similar.
You are right that this would be a tempting target for MS lawyers though. The question really is how generic the term "office" is. I don't think Windows compares as a term, given that Windows is such a trademark. Office really isn't a trademark in the same way. (As far as I know - I could be wrong)
However if this happens then I'd lay very good odds that it will parallel what happened wiht Safari. Safari isn't Konquerer, but it shares some code with it. In the same way I suspect AppleWorks 7.0 or whatever they call it will share code with OpenOffice or StarOffice but won't be equivalent to it.
While I favor stronger voter turnout, I think it is erroneous to assume that low voter turnout implies little democracy or a lack of concern about poltics. I consider myself very political. However around here most elections are led come election day by more than 20 points. Why should I go to all the trouble of voting when it is just to rubber stamp and made decision? If there was something where I felt my vote mattered then I would vote. However this year I tried to vote but my registration somehow ended up in the wrong distrinct. After visiting three different precincts I gave up as I'd already wasted 2 hours of my busy day.
However relative to a munitions, it is extremely safe. It will dramatically reduce casualties for certain actions. As such we ought to praise the military for investing so much money the past few decades to reducing civilian casualties. It isn't perfect and never can be that way. After all at some point you have to eliminate or incapacitate the enemy troops and take positions. In such there will be bloodshed and unfortunately the innocent will suffer along with the guilty. But at least they are trying to narrow that down as much as possible.
One thing I would like and which I don't believe most SPAM filters do is allow multiple sets of tags. (i.e. general categorization rather than just SPAM categorization) While some of the "hacks" you use for SPAM are different from general text categorization, the same approach can be used. It would be useful, especially if you could use the information for further actions.
I just got the new MSDN disks so I'll see if they have any betas on Office. Hopefully they will have that in the next version of Outlook. (Which, in spite of the legion of security problems is a damn fine email program - naysayers be damned)
The real fact of the matter is that for most people the hassle is nearly as bad as the spam! I don't want to spend the time setting up such things. And when people have set them up *for* me I get too many false positives, if only because my interests differ from them. Thus any filter has to be trained with user data and be trainable in an unobtrusive, easy fashion.
The only software I know of that does this is Apple's Mail program in OSX. Unfortunately the program has many limitations and annoyances. (Damn that drawer) However Apple's approach to Spam ought to be followed by all other email clients. Adding Bayesian inference to an email client is very easy. Putting it in the sever is a mistake because you *can't* easily click and lable an email as spam. As with unfortunately too much Open Source software, the interface has been ill conceived.
The conspiracy to cover it up involved the DoS attack aka being slashdotted. The boys in the black jackets knew that no one of slashdot would accept the aliens because they used a closed non-open source computing environment and that it had already been done in Star Trek and X-Files. Plus they are all too hard for regular people to understand anyway. Then the UFO site goes down under the load and the government conspiracy can get back to doing trilateral control of the oil reserves.
Umm. What does economics say about trying to sell something anyone with a computer and a network can get for free?
This is correct. There is a new version of the G4 coming out that does support DDR properly. But by the time it comes out the 970 will be here and its value will be questionable. It may end up in the low end Macs, depending upon cost.
There are excellent reasons to go this route though. While I'm definitely no Microsoft lover, I do think .net is pretty cool. Even if figuring out what they mean by that is more than a tad confusing.
Of course in practice the distinction between language and OS has always been somewhat blurry. Take Unix. At what point to you separate Perl, gcc, and the shell from the OS? In a way, in the older versions of Unix it was even more pronounced. Using LaTex involved many shell scripts and custom programs and even writing in it was in effect programming.
Even early versions of LISP were their own OS and one could argue that UCSD Pascal was as well. (Especially the version for the old Apple II)
So this is hardly a new thing. The only time I think we can truly make an OS - language distinction is when people start trying to make languages portable and make it used for development. The move to do everything in C for all platforms in the late 80's is a great example of this. This lead to many companies using C instead of Pascal for development and also pushed ANSI C and then the C++ standards. Class libraries tended to be quite separate from the language. However lets be honest. All of this was more of a short blip in the history of languages rather than the typical situation.
Even going back to "prehistoric" times, when people wrote Fortran code with punch cards could they tell what was the program and what was the OS easily?
Second basically every Linux MP3 player still works with OSX. Exactly what have you lost? So you didn't get to modify iTunes. Yet even with that removed you still have more choice than you did on your Linux or BSD box.
Complaining that one piece of non-open source software can't be modified when all the existing opensource ones can is silly. What's even sillier is that you can still do everything that iCommune did using Apache and Rendezvous. Further a lot of people would say that iCommune didn't work that well to begin with.
Part of the reason Apple's marketshare is slipping is because people are afraid to buy because Apple's marketshare is slipping. There is some truth to this. However it tends to be based upon questionable statistics. Apple's marketplace slide pretty much stopped around '98 and has remained fairly constant since. Further folks keep quoting world figures rather than American figures. So these statistics are somewhat biased and misleading. I think you also have to recognize that Apple is still amongst the big 5 players as well. I think Sun has a better chance of going under than Apple does. Does this mean you shouldn't buy anything with Solaris?
The processor line is the problem. However that is also a problem that Apple has solved. Like those awaiting the new AMD chips, the vision is in sight. We're just waiting for delivery. And this isn't vaporware the way that the promised G5 was.
Also, as many have mentioned, despite losing world marketshare their American marketshare has been creeping up. Also the recent powerbooks are clearly aimed at the Japanese market. Don't get me wrong, it would be nice to have a larger world marketshare. But given a lot of the economies and politics of the world market, I doubt that will happen. The important figures are for the US, Canada, Japan and some of the European countries. That sounds a little ethnocentric, but it is good business sense. I predict that within 10 years even MS will have lost a lot of world marketshare due to the nature of opensource being so attractive to 3rd world and 2cd world economies and political situations.
In that more useful (and meaningfully measurable) barometer Apple is doing quite well. For instance in America Apple's share increased from 2.9% to 3.0%. Report That's quite amazing when you realize that they did this with machines that are heavily overpriced and woefully underpowered and did it at a time when most PC manufactures were doing quite poorly.
That's the real issue. Right now any switching is being done on more emotional decisions. You want an alternative to Microsoft. You like the "look" of OSX. However once Apple weathers this recession and its chip problems there will be far more rational reasons for switching. The 970 will provide a huge performance boost for Apple. In terms of SMP it will be at least on the AMD level. (Albeit not in performance - at least for the initial 970 run) I don't know what prices will look like, but it may well be that Apple gets well within the PC's price/performance range.
At that point when you add in all the benefits of a Unix based OS (especailly with Apple's recent X11 app), the aesthetics of OSX and (IMO) its better multitastking to XP, it will be very attractive for switchers. Right now Apple is spreading the word, preparing folks for what is ahead this fall.
Mark my words. This fall is going to be very exciting. The Iraq situation will be over. I think the recession and slowdown will be over. And I think Apple will be the computer manufacturer to watch.
Beyond what they have done, I'm not sure what people expect them to do. Everyone cried to move to the x86, especially AMD systems. However the fact of the matter is that emulation is slow at the best of times (look at Virtual PC for OSX). Further the nature of x86 design and the limits on true general registers makes emulating PPC code that uses a lot of registers quite difficult. However even here it is widely known that Apple *has* ported most of OSX to the x86 platform, even if only as an intellectual endeavor. So clearly this was an option, even if only a last ditch one.
Yeah this year sucks in terms of performance for OSX. Most of the improvements are in terms of software. (With 10.2.3 and iLife, OSX is really starting to sing) Come summer or fall I think we'll see Apple being much more competitive in terms of price/performance. At that point switching will make a lot more rational sense.
That would also cut down on the cost of the thing and would let you use your own bike. Hell, I'd get one in a sec.
Of course what I'd really like is a stair climber version of joust. But that's just dreaming.
Well, with Linux and OSX explicitly not having DRM, then it provides a way for Microsoft and to a lesser extent companies like Dell to lose market share. They don't want this. So if there is enough consumer demand they won't have as much DRM. If they do - well if Apple can fix the CPU speed gap that is an excellent reason to switch.
Right now I have about 4 Windows machine, a Linux box, a BSD box, a Solaris box and a couple of OSX boxes. Getting the OSX box to play nice with the Windows boxes is a pain. I can sometimes do it with effort. But I can't imagine the typical user getting the kind of experience they do with running an XP client accessing a NT or XP server.
It just doesn't work well.
Until the 970 systems come out Apple will be behind the performance curve. Given how poorly multitasking most applications are (including most of Apple's) the dual processing units don't really help that much. In practice most people are using systems that are single processing at about 1/2 the speed of equivalent PCs or worse.
That's why Apple is emphasizing portables. Because of the poor power consumption of most x86 chips, they are far more competitive in that market. Indeed I think their new systems are killer, albeit slightly overpriced. I know a lot of PC users eyeing them seriously.
But until August or September when the 970 comes out Apple won't be that competitive. In the meantime it would help if they'd at least get their multithreading written right. The Finder is still an embarrassment in that regard compared to Windows Explorer. That is without a doubt greatly improved over 10.1 but still far below where it needs to be.
I'd agree with the "for most people anything over a 600MHz P3 is adequate." However OSX puts a lot of gee whiz features that make it more power hungry than an equivalent XP box. Users notice that. Just look at the complaints new users voice. Further some of the iApps like iPhoto [b]are[/b] very computationally intensive. The way it browses uses a lot of horsepower - horsepower that most Macintosh models lack. (Poor programming with iPhoto 1.2 didn't help, although iPhoto 2 seems better from what I've seen)
I'd lay pretty good odds that this includes the changes to quicktime to let it work with those new MPEG4 enabled cell phones.
Anyone who thinks they could use one of these in a house is fooling themselves. There are other radio transmitters, as a Google search will attest. The good ones cost nearly as much as your iPod!
I wish there was a power booster for the Dr. Bott thing. It is a good idea. But right now I feel like I wasted my money.
The notes with Apple's X11.app says that any application should be able to use Apple's fonts as well. So, for example, you can use Monoco in Xterm (which I have done). However I know AbiWord didn't access them. Before I d/l this huge distro, I'm curious if it will.
Hey, that's pretty cool. It is even OSX compatible. (The archive software looked like Java, but I assume that is compatible once you upgrade your dev tools to Java 1.4 from Apple's web site)
The implication of this quote is that the underlying renderer Omniweb 5.0 was supposed to have wasn't as far along as many thought. Presumably they are keeping their high level interface stuff. But to completely switch rendering engines at this stage is a fairly significant change.
What it would let you do is play your MP-3's in your stereo system without setting up a full computer in your living room. I halfway wonder if it will let you play your recorded videos on you Mac.
In regards to the CSS problems - this is a beta. I suspect that as time goes on it will support much more CSS.