You never heard of SDIO? What's this Bluetooth card that fits in my m505's SD/MMC slot, then? There's already an SD digital camera for the Palm, and SD 802.11b cards are due this fall (sooner for Pocket PC).
Is the space saved really that important?
Yes.
Or could the unit not afford the slight extra power drain?
PDAs are always a tradeoff between size and features. A PDA with a CF slot and a larger battery to power it would be larger than a Tungsten T2. The Sony NX series has a CF slot and a pile of other features; it's also considerably larger and has been criticized for its short battery life, which apparently has been rectified to some extent with the new NX73/80 handhelds.
Why does palm insist on the clearly inferior expansion slot?
Because it's not inferior -- it just has different advantages and disadvantages than CF.
I wish people would stop comparing the price of a Mac with the cost of putting a computer together themselves -- this happens all the time on Slashdot. What you say about Apple is true, to varying degrees, of any computer company.
They're not competing with people like you who make their own damned machines. They can't -- not on price. No one can. (Some poor fucker somewhere has to be paid for putting it together.) So why bother? Besides, it's not like there are all that many of you for them to lose too much sleep over it.
Since we're talking about rumours, this one here suggests that PPC 970s are cheaper for Apple to acquire than G4s by 25-35 per cent. While that in itself may have no bearing on the final price point of these new machines -- other technologies on the mobo might also have something to do with that -- it suggests, contrary to what some are expecting, that Apple might be able to at least hold prices at or near to current price points. Couple that with the fact that Apple really does want to boost sales of its Power Macs and has been somewhat more aggressive on price lately than they used to be.
Last fall Apple had a promo where if you bought a Power Mac G4, you got a free copy of InDesign, so I think that might come close to something in the "just recommending" category.
Note also that the cluster node only comes with a single 60 GB hard drive (rather than four of them on the Xserve proper), and you can't BTO a bigger one at the Apple Store.
When bought separately, Mac OS X Server comes in two licences: 10-client ($499) and unlimited ($999). The cluster box simply comes with the smaller of the two licences.
They're assembled in Asia, but priced in US dollars. The price in other currencies is set when a given model is announced, and does not fluctuate with the currency. So if something is priced at, say, 1,000 euros, and the euro goes up in value, the price doesn't change until the item is revised. At least, that's my understanding, given what I've seen (Canadian vs. US prices -- iPods at the US$399 price point have risen from C$599 to C$629 since their introduction) and my vague recollection of a quarterly results conference call or something like that.
I should add that it's quite common to have European complaints about the price difference here on Slashdot; in most cases, they fail to take VAT into account. When VAT is 17% or more, it does make a difference, and VAT is usually included in the price, if I'm not mistaken. Whereas in North America, sales taxes -- if any -- are added after the fact.
I've got an 867MHz PowerBook G4 I bought back in July 2002
Very interesting, since the first 867-MHz PowerBooks were released in November 2002. Or did you mean 800 MHz? (Hate to nitpick, but you did mention these details.)
Your points one to three are no longer operative thanks to OS X. Haven't used a Mac in a while, have we? Extension conflicts simply don't exist -- that's a classic Mac OS thing. Journalling came in (as an option) with 10.2.3. And the machine crashes... how often? Not very, in my experience.
I'll grant you the point about the flimsy keyboard, though.
I wonder if he is being paid by Microsoft as part of the new "UnSwitcher" campaign?
My thought was that he shorted Apple stock big time a while back, and is pissed it won't go any lower than it currently is, so he's trying to talk it down further.
(Since Apple's cash reserves translate to about $11/share anyway, IIRC, it's unlikely that the stock will go much lower without someone making a play for the company.)
I thought John Gruber's review of Konfabulator at Daring Fireball was interesting: he points out that you can't use native widgets -- every graphic element has to be composed -- and that he'd have liked an IDE. He also thinks that adoption rates would be better if they gave away the runtime engine (the app itself) but charged for the development environment.
I can't see this getting past the "this is cool" stage, or getting anywhere near the "this is useful" or even the "this is indispensable" stages.
See also Crazy Apple Rumors, which, as usual, hits the nail on the head: "While there is widespread confusion about what Konfabulator specifically does, there is little confusion about the fact that it is stylish and it is the hottest new application for OS X."
Nope. The Xserve has three expansion slots: two PCIs and a PCI/AGP. One gigabit ethernet card is on the motherboard. The second gigabit ethernet card is on the PCI/AGP slot -- that can be swapped out with an ATi Radeon 8500. As for the two PCI slots, the lower slot has either a PCI video card or, if you've added the Radeon, a SCSI card, and the upper slot can have either a SCSI card or the fibre channel card. So yes, you could have two ethernet cards and a fibre channel card; you just couldn't upgrade the video or add SCSI if you did.
Apple has to pay a royalty for the MPEG-2 encoder required to create DVD video, so it would be to whomever owns the patents on MPEG-2 video compression.
According to this piece by John Martellaro, Microsoft might not be able to drop Office for Mac if Apple released a direct competitor: Microsoft would either look like a monopolist crushing a platform to stop competition, or like a company whose product just got its ass handed to it. Martellaro figures Microsoft's only possible response would be to work on a better, cheaper Office -- something they don't necessarily have to do right now.
Man, I was hoping someone would talk about the real AppleWorks -- for me it was version 1 on the IIe and version 3 on the IIgs (AppleWorks GS was a bit buggy at the outset, and printing on an ImageWriter was slow). My whole high school career, such as it was, depended on that app.
I own a 600 MHz iBook, and I find opening new Safari windows to be very quick. Quicker than opening new windows -- or new tabs -- in Mozilla or Chimera. I'll take fast windows over slow tabs any day. Make the tabs comparably fast, and we'll talk.
There's nothing inherently wrong with liking tabs. (On the other hand, there's nothing inherently wrong with not liking them.) But I think it's a mistake to assume that tabs are the only solution to navigating multiple pages at once. They are only one possible solution; they may not even be the best solution.
Here's something else to think about. Most non-geeks use IE; if Safari is targeted at these users, and these users are adopting it wholesale, then they have no experience with tabbed browsing to miss it. The tabbed browsing discussion is by definition limited to those of us who have used a browser that supports tabs. That isn't many people.
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Nvidia fans are also semi-screwed, because Apply only sells the G5 computers with ATI cards; I hope you enjoy gaming with wacky ATI drivers.
Go to the Apple Store.
Click on "Power Mac G5".
Look at the specs for the 1.6 GHz model.
You're welcome.
Screen resolution isn't likely to be the key issue in deciding between a general-purpose Palm and a smartphone.
the SD/ MMC format can only be used for memory
You never heard of SDIO? What's this Bluetooth card that fits in my m505's SD/MMC slot, then? There's already an SD digital camera for the Palm, and SD 802.11b cards are due this fall (sooner for Pocket PC).
Is the space saved really that important?
Yes.
Or could the unit not afford the slight extra power drain?
PDAs are always a tradeoff between size and features. A PDA with a CF slot and a larger battery to power it would be larger than a Tungsten T2. The Sony NX series has a CF slot and a pile of other features; it's also considerably larger and has been criticized for its short battery life, which apparently has been rectified to some extent with the new NX73/80 handhelds.
Why does palm insist on the clearly inferior expansion slot?
Because it's not inferior -- it just has different advantages and disadvantages than CF.
It's a bigger part than the part that has bought, used or even thought about a WinCE/Pocket PC/Windows Mobile device.
I wish people would stop comparing the price of a Mac with the cost of putting a computer together themselves -- this happens all the time on Slashdot. What you say about Apple is true, to varying degrees, of any computer company.
They're not competing with people like you who make their own damned machines. They can't -- not on price. No one can. (Some poor fucker somewhere has to be paid for putting it together.) So why bother? Besides, it's not like there are all that many of you for them to lose too much sleep over it.
Since we're talking about rumours, this one here suggests that PPC 970s are cheaper for Apple to acquire than G4s by 25-35 per cent. While that in itself may have no bearing on the final price point of these new machines -- other technologies on the mobo might also have something to do with that -- it suggests, contrary to what some are expecting, that Apple might be able to at least hold prices at or near to current price points. Couple that with the fact that Apple really does want to boost sales of its Power Macs and has been somewhat more aggressive on price lately than they used to be.
No, only syncing To-Do Items requires iPod 2.0. Syncing To-Do items is new. Old iPods will work as before, presumably.
Last fall Apple had a promo where if you bought a Power Mac G4, you got a free copy of InDesign, so I think that might come close to something in the "just recommending" category.
Oh sure, the one time you should ...
Note also that the cluster node only comes with a single 60 GB hard drive (rather than four of them on the Xserve proper), and you can't BTO a bigger one at the Apple Store.
When bought separately, Mac OS X Server comes in two licences: 10-client ($499) and unlimited ($999). The cluster box simply comes with the smaller of the two licences.
They're assembled in Asia, but priced in US dollars. The price in other currencies is set when a given model is announced, and does not fluctuate with the currency. So if something is priced at, say, 1,000 euros, and the euro goes up in value, the price doesn't change until the item is revised. At least, that's my understanding, given what I've seen (Canadian vs. US prices -- iPods at the US$399 price point have risen from C$599 to C$629 since their introduction) and my vague recollection of a quarterly results conference call or something like that.
I should add that it's quite common to have European complaints about the price difference here on Slashdot; in most cases, they fail to take VAT into account. When VAT is 17% or more, it does make a difference, and VAT is usually included in the price, if I'm not mistaken. Whereas in North America, sales taxes -- if any -- are added after the fact.
I've got an 867MHz PowerBook G4 I bought back in July 2002
Very interesting, since the first 867-MHz PowerBooks were released in November 2002. Or did you mean 800 MHz? (Hate to nitpick, but you did mention these details.)
Your points one to three are no longer operative thanks to OS X. Haven't used a Mac in a while, have we? Extension conflicts simply don't exist -- that's a classic Mac OS thing. Journalling came in (as an option) with 10.2.3. And the machine crashes ... how often? Not very, in my experience.
I'll grant you the point about the flimsy keyboard, though.
Free as in beer or free as in speech? GNU sex?
And popups. Don't forget the lovely, wonderful popups.
I wonder if he is being paid by Microsoft as part of the new "UnSwitcher" campaign?
My thought was that he shorted Apple stock big time a while back, and is pissed it won't go any lower than it currently is, so he's trying to talk it down further.
(Since Apple's cash reserves translate to about $11/share anyway, IIRC, it's unlikely that the stock will go much lower without someone making a play for the company.)
I thought John Gruber's review of Konfabulator at Daring Fireball was interesting: he points out that you can't use native widgets -- every graphic element has to be composed -- and that he'd have liked an IDE. He also thinks that adoption rates would be better if they gave away the runtime engine (the app itself) but charged for the development environment.
I can't see this getting past the "this is cool" stage, or getting anywhere near the "this is useful" or even the "this is indispensable" stages.
See also Crazy Apple Rumors, which, as usual, hits the nail on the head: "While there is widespread confusion about what Konfabulator specifically does, there is little confusion about the fact that it is stylish and it is the hottest new application for OS X."
The article says that the P800 uses SyncML, so I can't see any reason why iSync wouldn't support it at some point.
Nope. The Xserve has three expansion slots: two PCIs and a PCI/AGP. One gigabit ethernet card is on the motherboard. The second gigabit ethernet card is on the PCI/AGP slot -- that can be swapped out with an ATi Radeon 8500. As for the two PCI slots, the lower slot has either a PCI video card or, if you've added the Radeon, a SCSI card, and the upper slot can have either a SCSI card or the fibre channel card. So yes, you could have two ethernet cards and a fibre channel card; you just couldn't upgrade the video or add SCSI if you did.
Apple has to pay a royalty for the MPEG-2 encoder required to create DVD video, so it would be to whomever owns the patents on MPEG-2 video compression.
According to this piece by John Martellaro, Microsoft might not be able to drop Office for Mac if Apple released a direct competitor: Microsoft would either look like a monopolist crushing a platform to stop competition, or like a company whose product just got its ass handed to it. Martellaro figures Microsoft's only possible response would be to work on a better, cheaper Office -- something they don't necessarily have to do right now.
Man, I was hoping someone would talk about the real AppleWorks -- for me it was version 1 on the IIe and version 3 on the IIgs (AppleWorks GS was a bit buggy at the outset, and printing on an ImageWriter was slow). My whole high school career, such as it was, depended on that app.
I own a 600 MHz iBook, and I find opening new Safari windows to be very quick. Quicker than opening new windows -- or new tabs -- in Mozilla or Chimera. I'll take fast windows over slow tabs any day. Make the tabs comparably fast, and we'll talk.
There's nothing inherently wrong with liking tabs. (On the other hand, there's nothing inherently wrong with not liking them.) But I think it's a mistake to assume that tabs are the only solution to navigating multiple pages at once. They are only one possible solution; they may not even be the best solution.
Here's something else to think about. Most non-geeks use IE; if Safari is targeted at these users, and these users are adopting it wholesale, then they have no experience with tabbed browsing to miss it. The tabbed browsing discussion is by definition limited to those of us who have used a browser that supports tabs. That isn't many people.
My mistake; I ought to have said that Phoenix wasn't a Mac program. Sorry about that, Linux users.