There's a reason it's mandatory, you know. It's so that when you're hit by some asshole driving like an idiot, you get your car fixed and you get your medical bills paid.
The only insurance that's required by law is liability.
Before it was required, people were getting completely fucked. You'd get hit by some asshole and he's be broke and not give a shit. You can't get blood from a stone, so you could potentially lose everything you own paying for an accident that wasn't your fault.
In a perfect society, people would get insurance on their own and everything would be good. But we don't live there, so sometimes shit needs to be required, as shitty as it may seem. Don't blame Uncle Sam, blame shithead John Doe down the road.
Maybe in one of the early betas or something you couldn't and there were lots of rumors before Vista was released, but they have a boot switch you can enable to run unsigned drivers on Vista 64. Been there since release. It's similar to Windows X64.
Of course, if a data hop through another CPU is necessary, it's just that - a hop. The other core doesn't have to reprocess the data, so it's a quick transfer. The same will happen in multi-socket SMP systems. Say, a quad socket CPU system. The machine will have four banks of RAM, each connecting directly to one of the sockets. So, if CPU 2 needs to access RAM connected through CPU 1, a hop will have to take place. But, that's what NUMA is supposed to help avoid. Moving RAM data around to be local to the CPU that needs it. The AMD Quad-core design would run into similar issues but NUMA can help a little bit there, too. And, AMD's BUS is faster than Intel's BUS, not to mention that AMD processors integrate the memory controller on the CPU which helps things out quite a bit - no need to always bridge through a northbridge.
Overall, if you want to be able to get the most out of a big SMP box, you need to run AMD. The proliferation of VMware across the enterprise has helped push AMD forward. If there's more than two CPU's, I insist on running Opterons. Better performance; less BUS and RAM contention issues.
I'm sure Intel will move to a similar architecture eventually, but you can still achieve good performance with the current design and it's cheap.
I thought that this was a "native" quad-core CPU? I know that Intel does the dual-dual-core thing, but it was my understanding that the reason AMD is touting their quad (and this triple) core as being better than Intel because of this fact.
Then again, I haven't been following CPU product lines in the past few months, so I could be mistaken.
In the end, this CPU will enable AMD to yield more CPU's and actually turn profit, but it won't be on market too long once AMD perfects the process and yields working quad-core chips most of the time.
Yea, that may be. However, I've found no, zero, nada web sites in recent months that don't work very well in Firefox, and thus in other browsers as well. I think that's why Firefox can be such high market share numbers right now.
Almost nothing requires IE anymore, except internal or corporate web sites that rely on IE-only functions or activeX plug-ins. As soon as those companies finally get off their asses and stop making web appliances for IE-only, it'll be all over.
Yea, although Firefox is indeed bundled with all Linux, FreeBSD, etc operating systems. It's different though, because Mozilla doesn't own the OS, and the distribution doesn't own the browser.
If Firefox really does take over browser share, and linux continues to get big on the desktop, Opera will probably complain anyways. I really don't feel bad for Opera. I mean, they're in a market selling a product where alternatives exist for free - and really good alternatives.
I liked your comparison, I appreciated the fact that you did that. Maybe we should run some more, against different configurations, and include Vista.
Actually, only with QE is everything done on the GPU =) Of course, any recent Mac will have a decent enough video card to run QE.
I should point out that I really wasn't referring to default settings, or default fonts, or licensing issues (considering that everyone probably owns a copy of Windows, using Windows fonts seems fairly legit to me,) or performance. I am solely focused (for the purpose of the discussion) on the quality of font Anti-Aliasing. Given the proper fonts and enabling the proper features, I really like how well X.org is doing in this area. The results of their work has been superb. The first few attempts at it were abysmal, but things have gotten progressively better with each release. Now, I really enjoy using my linux boxes; fonts look great!
I suppose I can understand why MacOS does what it does to fonts. Because there's not enough pixels on a screen (compared to print) it might not be able to put glyphs in precisely the right position to display the typeface accurately. Rather than just do it "good enough" and then smooth it out for viewing on LCD screens, they will blur it out to make the glyph appear in the right position (say, in the letter 'e' the bar could be in between two pixels, so they blur out above and below instead of just picking the closest row.) While I understand why they might believe this is better, and for you it could be, it's a problem in my eyes. Why bother trying to make the type match 100% when it would look much better when the accuracy is 95%? When you zoom in on a font, any of the systems would be able to display that font correctly. Does it really matter if viewing a very small font on the screen at no zoom is 95% of what it will look like in print?
Besides that, most publishing software will render the typeface more accurately, no matter what the system.
I just think that things would be nicer if they gave you the choice in MacOS. Perhaps in several years when our screens are all 300DPI it just won't matter anymore but until then, damn, I get eyestrain looking at that.
I agree with your sediments over the proper display of bold or other sub-types. Seems like a pretty simple thing, yet it's not being done universally. Though, I've never encountered any problems when using Quark on Windows, or most of the Adobe software.
Quartz has a lot of improvements in this area, agreed. I just with they WOULD have used X, and improved it for their needs. I don't really buy the fact that they'd have to replace *everything* in order for it to suit their specific needs, and it would have been to the benefit of everyone. Of course, we all know that given the choice, Apple always chooses proprietary so it doesn't really surprise me much. (ps, that guy's assertion of 200Mbit of commands and textures possibly being an issue is a silly one. I think compiz-fusion, Unreal III, and any number of graphical X application handily dispels that.)
I appreciate this conversation, thanks. And don't get me wrong, I like MacOS. I wish I could run it on normal PC's without using hacks that break whenever Apple releases an update.
I think the Windows XP aliasing looks pretty decent. Nice and clear, not over pushed. Easy on the eyes. You can still see very good definition, particularly in the lower-case "e." The zoomed in version shows the discoloration due to the use of sub-pixel rendering. You don't see those colors when you're not zoomed.
On the Linux version, it doesn't look like you're using sub-pixel rendering. Not sure why. Anyways, that's why it looks rough on your example. It has to alias full pixels, so you get jaggies and blur. On my Ununtu installs, it works great and looks better than the Windows XP version. Very smooth, hardly any jaggedness at all, and no over-blending of small letters. Yea, there's a shortage of quality free fonts on your normal distribution but you can add them yourself. And that's changing, slowly but surely.
The MacOS version is using sub-pixel rendering, but it goes way too far with it's attempt to blur the pixels to "fix them up." Look at the loss of sharpness on the smaller text. Some lines are completely blurred down, such as the line in the lower-case "e." The dots on the i's are almost invisible, and whenever you get a lot of pipes next to each other (like double lower-case l's or i's) they blend together too. This is my biggest problem with the MacOS implementation of Anti-aliasing. It's too much. Even at the lowest setting, it still happens.
I don't like the AA on MacOS, it can be difficult to read, especially when you are reading technical documents.
Yea ya ya yadda yadda.. Catholic church did some bad things in the 1500's - we know.
But, it's matured. No longer, and not for a long time, has a Catholic church or it's leaders promoted hate, tried to censor, or sued people for talking against them. The Catholic church these days is a very decent organization. You don't have to believe everything they teach, and in most cases, that's OK with the church. The vast majority of people that follow the bible do NOT take it word for word.
Scientology is a cult, but they try to seem more "church like" - like Jahova's Whitnesses. They bomb their members with love and affection, they get together for brainwashing sessions, and they demand significant chunks of your salary.
I don't agree with that at all! Apple would be very pleased to have MacOS be a games platform. From my experience, the performance of OpenGL on MacOS is pretty good. Maybe it won't benchmark as fast but it's good enough.
Just because there's not a lot of games on MacOS doesn't mean there's "minimum service."
Unfortunately, you can't get anything but over-the-air HD channels, well, over the air. You won't get any of the extended cable HD channels, nor HBO/Sho/Max/Stars/etc in HD.
I spend a lot of my time watching HD Discovery, Theater, Science HD, TLC, etc.
I'm not pointing directly at you here, but there's a whole lot of people posting on this topic that in one breath said "Yea Apple is expensive but SO WHAT" and saying how awesome and pre-ordered the Apple Air is, and and the next breath saying how expensive and horribly costly Cable TV is.
My head almost exploded reading all of the "well I replaced TV eight years ago!!" and "t0rentszzzz!~" from all the no-TV snobs. This is exactly the type of article that brings them out of the woodwork I guess. "MY DAY TO SHINE!"
Of course, none of those iTunes downloads or Torrents would exist if there were no TV.
I don't think the WEB will replace TV. I think there might be something that's more interactive than TV, but less interactive than the Internet. The On-Demand stuff is a step in that direction.
Now, I've watched movies on the computer screen, and I've watched TV shows there too. But it's never as comfortable as lounging on the couch. The remote control is easy to hold, easy to use; you generally don't even have to look at it. There's a few hundred channels to choose from on most cable systems, and personally I can always find something to watch. It might be something I've seen before, but don't mind watching again, or it might be something new. The HD channels are where I spend most of my time. Between Discovery, HD Theater, Science and TLC, and sometimes HGTV, I can usually find something interesting enough to watch.
When I'm in for the night, and I'm settling down, I don't want to deal with crappy web pages and CLICK HERE!!! flashing crap I have to click around. I don't want to deal with server down, server overloaded, or whatever. I just want to watch TV.
I like TV. There's several shows that I think are top notch. I don't mind waiting for the next installment of whatever show. It's okay. Maybe it's part of getting a little older, or maybe it's because the Internet was only becoming a word that people knew when I was a Senior in high school. Perhaps I just have more patience for these things.
You know, all of that is well and good, but you're missing one thing: If IE8 came along, with NO IE6 bugs mode past what the other browsers do (well, probably better) and defaulted to true standards mode - how long do you think it would take before all web sites were standards compliant?
Besides, the only sites that offer any issues these days are corporate intranet/Appliance administration sites anyways. I can't remember the last time I used Firefox or Konqueror and had any real problems.
Microsoft broke the web with Internet Explorer, and web developers helped them by making IE-Only web sites. I really don't feel bad for any of them, and in the end, I don't think that a major shift to standard web would be that difficult anymore. Six years ago, they couldn't have just CUT to standards, but now? Yea. No problem.
Well, it's a little bit more complicated than just "blur" to the fonts =) Generally speaking, AA Font rendering looks okay on most CRT's when sub-pixel rendering is not enabled. A pixel on the screen is actually three pixels right next to each other - red, green, and blue. So what SPR does is it uses just one of those at times to smooth out the typeface without having to blend an entire pixel. It makes AA on small fonts possible. On LCD screens, it works the best, but on CRT screens it often leads to unsightly blurryness and discoloration.
"t's too much of an annoyance for enabling what is, in Windows, a matter of simply selecting an option in a drop down box"
I absolutely agree with you. I've been amazed at how much better Linux on the desktop has gotten in recent times (particularly due to Ubuntu) but yea, stupid little things like this keep getting overlooked. It's like, they put in all this stuff for WiFi usability, lots of GUI panels for themes, but when it comes to changing the desktop resolution or turning things like AA on and off, they're mysteriously missing. It's one of my biggest beefs.
Linux is like the opposite of Windows in some ways. On Windows, you do everything from the GUI, and can only do some things from the CLI. On Linux, you can do everything from the CLI but only some things from the GUI. I really hope steps are taken to improve things to let people do more from the GUI. It's 2008.
Yea, we definately have different standard. Your standard is "Anything Apple does is the best, and you all suck." I prefer to go on the merits of the system itself. Anti-aliasing on Windows and Linux look better than MacOS. They're not perfect, but they're far superior. Ubuntu 7.1's version of X and the settings they use make it look so so easy on the eyes, so crisp, on any LCD screen I use.
MacOS aliasing is a fucking joke. Too many times are letters simply blended together because the smoothing is too hard. It's almost offensive to the eyes. Sometimes you can't even tell if you're using a nice Helvetica or a knock-off like Arial because it's all just a smashed up blob. Many times, people sit in front of my mac and they say "Why is the text so blurry?" - And it ain't the monitor.
So, whatever-the-shit you want to call it, Quartz/Aqua/Spongebob, it's not X, and that's all I've been trying to say. Unfortunately for me, I've apparently inadvertently hurt some poor apple boys feelings. I don't know about you, but if someone pointed to my truck and said "That Nissan is not a Ford" I would say "You're right" not "That's FUNNY! Why would you even SAY that? Are you MAD??!! My NISSAN IS BETTERERERER"
You can claim you're a publisher for 15 years, good for you. But just because your eyes are simply used to the crap Apple feeds you, doesn't mean mine are.
Anti-aliasing on X now is among the best you can get. However, any issues you have with turning it off are the fault of whatever distribution you're using, not X itself. If you can't find the option to turn off anti-aliasing, don't blame X.
Remember, X is not Gnome, KDE, or Ubuntu. It's the graphical framework behind all of that.
Anti-aliasing started to get big in the last few years because it makes text on LCD screens look smoother, but has the unintended side-effect of making text on CRT's fuzzy sometimes. It depends on the CRT. Sometimes anti-aliasing doesn't look good on some LCD's either. It's not blurring, it's blending.
blah blah blah no crap no crap no crap. But you're wrong. You can't say "X, Aqua, Gnome, KDE" because they are different parts of the system.
X is comparable to Aqua in that they provide the low level graphical capabilities of the system. However, the original point was that somehow MacOS is more "Unix" than Linux Distributions, and I contend that by not using a standard X system, instead relying on Aqua which is a MacOS-Only gig, it's another example of how MacOS is in fact "less" UNIX than Linux Distributions.
It is a pointless argument, but it's brought up over and over because so many ignorant MacOS fanboys insist on telling the world that MacOS is so awesome, it's the best Unix, it's the best Windows, it's the best Toaster. And try to tell them otherwise.
I'm not sure either. The last couple distributions of Linux I've tried (Ubuntu 6 and 7, plus others) have all done anti-aliasing better than anything else I've seen. They render fonts great! I think the anti-aliasing on MacOS is horrible. Whenever I use MacOS it's the thing I hate the most. Talk about smashed and smushed lettering! Windows XP does a better job.
New X "integrates" with OpenGL, too! In fact, OpenGL was first implimented on X. Quartz is really just a Window Manager, and "Core Image" and the other "Core" things don't really have anything to do with the underlying GUI system - the part that lines up with X. And again, Finder doesn't have anything to do with Aqua, it's just a file manager app. It's got the same relation to Aqua that Gnome's Nautilus has with X. Just an app. What's next, Aqua is better because of iTunes? Try to keep it on target.
PS. Finder is "light years" ahead of other file managers? What planet are you from? Finder shouldn't even be considered a file manager. More like a "file launcher." That's why there's about five dozen finder replacements and add-on file managers for MacOS, and only a couple for Windows. Explorer is much better for File Management.
I don't necessarily believe that Aqua is better than X. X can do some mighty cool stuff, and if you haven't been following X development in recent times, it's improved quite a bit. The next major version of X.org will introduce a lot of new features and correct some long standing X shortcomings.
Chuckle all you want; as far as performance, X is capable of running OpenGL every bit as fast as Aqua or Windows. When you run X as the primary back end for your graphical environment, it's quite a different experience over running it on top of another GUI system. When I run Linux, I don't see any performance or usability issues that could be contributed to X itself.
Ohh, and X is open source, the specification is freely available to any system (which is WHY you can run it on MacOS and Windows) and that actually is a factor to be considered. There's something about free software that makes sense.
Anyways, the point wasn't that X was better than Aero though, the point was that X is a common part of Unix and it's not a part of MacOS. You can add it on top of Aqua, but it's not native. Darwin isn't MacOS, although the back-end is the same. One could argue that what one considers "MacOS" is in fact what runs on top of Darwin, not Darwin itself. Of course, it's the whole system that makes up MacOS. Still, the argument is valid.
I held out on Windows XP for awhile too (although, not THAT long) because I didn't feel the need. At that time, it was supported with updates and software pretty much the same as Windows XP. I upgraded when I found it more and more difficult to run games. When I upgraded to XP, most of those problems evaporated. It wasn't because Windows 2000 was inferior; it was because the publishers were developing for XP, and you'd run into little compatibility issues that got more and more annoying.
I don't find that hardware upgrades are a big deal these days. I mean, if you have a decent machine from the last several years, you'll be fine to run whatever you want. And if not, you can throw in a few more GB RAM for cheap, cheap (did you know that a 1GB stick is like.. $20 now?) and be done with it. Saving money on hardware might apply if you run Apple hardware, but I just don't buy the argument anymore. You can build a really slick machine that will even do Aero for $250 or less.
I also don't really buy the "bloat" argument anymore either. It's a term that's too loosely used. Anything with a feature that someone doesn't want, they call it bloat. I call it a feature that takes advantage of the new, incredibly powerful computers that can be had for peanuts. I prefer my software to be rich in features to make use of my hardware, not simple and featureless just so it loads 5 seconds faster.
Hello, Captain MissThePoint. Look at any other UNIX - Solaris, AIX, BSD, and you'll find more similarities to Linux systems than MacOS systems. Pretty much everything is the same. If you know one real well, you'll be OK using any other one. MacOS, on the other hand, might share similarities and can compile a fair amount of code without extensive modifications, but it doesn't line up to "Unix" as the others do.
Say what you want about X, and try to put in some crap about how MacOS is BETTER- but again, it's not the point. X is a big part of Unix systems, like it or not, and it's an after-thought on MacOS. It's a bolt-on like running an X server on Windows. Again, I'm not talking trash about your precious MacOS; and Aqua is probably better, but Aqua isn't X.
"that doesn't make it anymore of an UNIX than Vista is a version of MacOS."
Actually, it does. Vista wasn't an attempt to re-implement MacOS. Linux and Linux distributions WERE an attempt to re-implement UNIX.
PS. You do know that a Linux distribution isn't made by Linus Torvalds right? That in fact it's just the kernel, and the rest of the system is considered "GNU?"
Of course, if you slipstreamed the updates and service packs onto the installation media, and/or deleted the uninstall files afterwards, it's smaller than that. I don't have any bare XP installs that take up that much space.
So, why don't you just run NT4? It will run on 4MB RAM. It will run really fast with 96MB RAM! So, it's old. It'll still run IE6. Why don't your recommend NT4 to everyone? Same difference; it's not supported either.
Or you could run Windows 98. Why not.
I contend that there IS a point to using updated software. Obviously there's a point where the hardware can't sustain the newer software; you wouldn't put Windows Vista or KDE 4 on a 386 but if it runs Windows 2000, it will run Windows XP. If there's a point where an OS re-install is necessary, I always go with the latest version that will run on the hardware. It's better for the user, it's better for compatibility, and it's better for security.
In terms of a "modern" UNIX, a Linux distribution is more "UNIX" than OSX. The filesystem layout is more standard UNIX, the graphical environment is more UNIX, etc etc etc without using add-ons like a non-native X server running on top of Aqua, and the list goes on..
MacOS is a decent system in of itself, but to say it's more UNIX than a Linux distribution is laughable. I mean, c'mon. Get over it. Next you'll say MacOS washes a car better than a sponge..
Slashdot Mirror
There's a reason it's mandatory, you know. It's so that when you're hit by some asshole driving like an idiot, you get your car fixed and you get your medical bills paid.
The only insurance that's required by law is liability.
Before it was required, people were getting completely fucked. You'd get hit by some asshole and he's be broke and not give a shit. You can't get blood from a stone, so you could potentially lose everything you own paying for an accident that wasn't your fault.
In a perfect society, people would get insurance on their own and everything would be good. But we don't live there, so sometimes shit needs to be required, as shitty as it may seem. Don't blame Uncle Sam, blame shithead John Doe down the road.
Uhh, yes you can.
Maybe in one of the early betas or something you couldn't and there were lots of rumors before Vista was released, but they have a boot switch you can enable to run unsigned drivers on Vista 64. Been there since release. It's similar to Windows X64.
So rock on with your driver, little man.
Of course, if a data hop through another CPU is necessary, it's just that - a hop. The other core doesn't have to reprocess the data, so it's a quick transfer. The same will happen in multi-socket SMP systems. Say, a quad socket CPU system. The machine will have four banks of RAM, each connecting directly to one of the sockets. So, if CPU 2 needs to access RAM connected through CPU 1, a hop will have to take place. But, that's what NUMA is supposed to help avoid. Moving RAM data around to be local to the CPU that needs it. The AMD Quad-core design would run into similar issues but NUMA can help a little bit there, too. And, AMD's BUS is faster than Intel's BUS, not to mention that AMD processors integrate the memory controller on the CPU which helps things out quite a bit - no need to always bridge through a northbridge.
Overall, if you want to be able to get the most out of a big SMP box, you need to run AMD. The proliferation of VMware across the enterprise has helped push AMD forward. If there's more than two CPU's, I insist on running Opterons. Better performance; less BUS and RAM contention issues.
I'm sure Intel will move to a similar architecture eventually, but you can still achieve good performance with the current design and it's cheap.
I thought that this was a "native" quad-core CPU? I know that Intel does the dual-dual-core thing, but it was my understanding that the reason AMD is touting their quad (and this triple) core as being better than Intel because of this fact.
Then again, I haven't been following CPU product lines in the past few months, so I could be mistaken.
In the end, this CPU will enable AMD to yield more CPU's and actually turn profit, but it won't be on market too long once AMD perfects the process and yields working quad-core chips most of the time.
Yea, that may be. However, I've found no, zero, nada web sites in recent months that don't work very well in Firefox, and thus in other browsers as well. I think that's why Firefox can be such high market share numbers right now.
Almost nothing requires IE anymore, except internal or corporate web sites that rely on IE-only functions or activeX plug-ins. As soon as those companies finally get off their asses and stop making web appliances for IE-only, it'll be all over.
Maybe people think lobbying is illegal or something. It's not. It's how shit gets done.
Yea, although Firefox is indeed bundled with all Linux, FreeBSD, etc operating systems. It's different though, because Mozilla doesn't own the OS, and the distribution doesn't own the browser.
If Firefox really does take over browser share, and linux continues to get big on the desktop, Opera will probably complain anyways. I really don't feel bad for Opera. I mean, they're in a market selling a product where alternatives exist for free - and really good alternatives.
I liked your comparison, I appreciated the fact that you did that. Maybe we should run some more, against different configurations, and include Vista.
Actually, only with QE is everything done on the GPU =) Of course, any recent Mac will have a decent enough video card to run QE.
I should point out that I really wasn't referring to default settings, or default fonts, or licensing issues (considering that everyone probably owns a copy of Windows, using Windows fonts seems fairly legit to me,) or performance. I am solely focused (for the purpose of the discussion) on the quality of font Anti-Aliasing. Given the proper fonts and enabling the proper features, I really like how well X.org is doing in this area. The results of their work has been superb. The first few attempts at it were abysmal, but things have gotten progressively better with each release. Now, I really enjoy using my linux boxes; fonts look great!
I suppose I can understand why MacOS does what it does to fonts. Because there's not enough pixels on a screen (compared to print) it might not be able to put glyphs in precisely the right position to display the typeface accurately. Rather than just do it "good enough" and then smooth it out for viewing on LCD screens, they will blur it out to make the glyph appear in the right position (say, in the letter 'e' the bar could be in between two pixels, so they blur out above and below instead of just picking the closest row.) While I understand why they might believe this is better, and for you it could be, it's a problem in my eyes. Why bother trying to make the type match 100% when it would look much better when the accuracy is 95%? When you zoom in on a font, any of the systems would be able to display that font correctly. Does it really matter if viewing a very small font on the screen at no zoom is 95% of what it will look like in print?
Besides that, most publishing software will render the typeface more accurately, no matter what the system.
I just think that things would be nicer if they gave you the choice in MacOS. Perhaps in several years when our screens are all 300DPI it just won't matter anymore but until then, damn, I get eyestrain looking at that.
I agree with your sediments over the proper display of bold or other sub-types. Seems like a pretty simple thing, yet it's not being done universally. Though, I've never encountered any problems when using Quark on Windows, or most of the Adobe software.
Quartz has a lot of improvements in this area, agreed. I just with they WOULD have used X, and improved it for their needs. I don't really buy the fact that they'd have to replace *everything* in order for it to suit their specific needs, and it would have been to the benefit of everyone. Of course, we all know that given the choice, Apple always chooses proprietary so it doesn't really surprise me much. (ps, that guy's assertion of 200Mbit of commands and textures possibly being an issue is a silly one. I think compiz-fusion, Unreal III, and any number of graphical X application handily dispels that.)
I appreciate this conversation, thanks. And don't get me wrong, I like MacOS. I wish I could run it on normal PC's without using hacks that break whenever Apple releases an update.
From that comparison, I can see a few things.
I think the Windows XP aliasing looks pretty decent. Nice and clear, not over pushed. Easy on the eyes. You can still see very good definition, particularly in the lower-case "e." The zoomed in version shows the discoloration due to the use of sub-pixel rendering. You don't see those colors when you're not zoomed.
On the Linux version, it doesn't look like you're using sub-pixel rendering. Not sure why. Anyways, that's why it looks rough on your example. It has to alias full pixels, so you get jaggies and blur. On my Ununtu installs, it works great and looks better than the Windows XP version. Very smooth, hardly any jaggedness at all, and no over-blending of small letters. Yea, there's a shortage of quality free fonts on your normal distribution but you can add them yourself. And that's changing, slowly but surely.
The MacOS version is using sub-pixel rendering, but it goes way too far with it's attempt to blur the pixels to "fix them up." Look at the loss of sharpness on the smaller text. Some lines are completely blurred down, such as the line in the lower-case "e." The dots on the i's are almost invisible, and whenever you get a lot of pipes next to each other (like double lower-case l's or i's) they blend together too. This is my biggest problem with the MacOS implementation of Anti-aliasing. It's too much. Even at the lowest setting, it still happens.
I don't like the AA on MacOS, it can be difficult to read, especially when you are reading technical documents.
Yea ya ya yadda yadda.. Catholic church did some bad things in the 1500's - we know.
But, it's matured. No longer, and not for a long time, has a Catholic church or it's leaders promoted hate, tried to censor, or sued people for talking against them. The Catholic church these days is a very decent organization. You don't have to believe everything they teach, and in most cases, that's OK with the church. The vast majority of people that follow the bible do NOT take it word for word.
Scientology is a cult, but they try to seem more "church like" - like Jahova's Whitnesses. They bomb their members with love and affection, they get together for brainwashing sessions, and they demand significant chunks of your salary.
I don't agree with that at all! Apple would be very pleased to have MacOS be a games platform. From my experience, the performance of OpenGL on MacOS is pretty good. Maybe it won't benchmark as fast but it's good enough.
Just because there's not a lot of games on MacOS doesn't mean there's "minimum service."
Unfortunately, you can't get anything but over-the-air HD channels, well, over the air. You won't get any of the extended cable HD channels, nor HBO/Sho/Max/Stars/etc in HD.
I spend a lot of my time watching HD Discovery, Theater, Science HD, TLC, etc.
I'm not pointing directly at you here, but there's a whole lot of people posting on this topic that in one breath said "Yea Apple is expensive but SO WHAT" and saying how awesome and pre-ordered the Apple Air is, and and the next breath saying how expensive and horribly costly Cable TV is.
Strange.
My head almost exploded reading all of the "well I replaced TV eight years ago!!" and "t0rentszzzz!~" from all the no-TV snobs. This is exactly the type of article that brings them out of the woodwork I guess. "MY DAY TO SHINE!"
Of course, none of those iTunes downloads or Torrents would exist if there were no TV.
I don't think the WEB will replace TV. I think there might be something that's more interactive than TV, but less interactive than the Internet. The On-Demand stuff is a step in that direction.
Now, I've watched movies on the computer screen, and I've watched TV shows there too. But it's never as comfortable as lounging on the couch. The remote control is easy to hold, easy to use; you generally don't even have to look at it. There's a few hundred channels to choose from on most cable systems, and personally I can always find something to watch. It might be something I've seen before, but don't mind watching again, or it might be something new. The HD channels are where I spend most of my time. Between Discovery, HD Theater, Science and TLC, and sometimes HGTV, I can usually find something interesting enough to watch.
When I'm in for the night, and I'm settling down, I don't want to deal with crappy web pages and CLICK HERE!!! flashing crap I have to click around. I don't want to deal with server down, server overloaded, or whatever. I just want to watch TV.
I like TV. There's several shows that I think are top notch. I don't mind waiting for the next installment of whatever show. It's okay. Maybe it's part of getting a little older, or maybe it's because the Internet was only becoming a word that people knew when I was a Senior in high school. Perhaps I just have more patience for these things.
You know, all of that is well and good, but you're missing one thing: If IE8 came along, with NO IE6 bugs mode past what the other browsers do (well, probably better) and defaulted to true standards mode - how long do you think it would take before all web sites were standards compliant?
Besides, the only sites that offer any issues these days are corporate intranet/Appliance administration sites anyways. I can't remember the last time I used Firefox or Konqueror and had any real problems.
Microsoft broke the web with Internet Explorer, and web developers helped them by making IE-Only web sites. I really don't feel bad for any of them, and in the end, I don't think that a major shift to standard web would be that difficult anymore. Six years ago, they couldn't have just CUT to standards, but now? Yea. No problem.
Well, it's a little bit more complicated than just "blur" to the fonts =) Generally speaking, AA Font rendering looks okay on most CRT's when sub-pixel rendering is not enabled. A pixel on the screen is actually three pixels right next to each other - red, green, and blue. So what SPR does is it uses just one of those at times to smooth out the typeface without having to blend an entire pixel. It makes AA on small fonts possible. On LCD screens, it works the best, but on CRT screens it often leads to unsightly blurryness and discoloration.
"t's too much of an annoyance for enabling what is, in Windows, a matter of simply selecting an option in a drop down box"
I absolutely agree with you. I've been amazed at how much better Linux on the desktop has gotten in recent times (particularly due to Ubuntu) but yea, stupid little things like this keep getting overlooked. It's like, they put in all this stuff for WiFi usability, lots of GUI panels for themes, but when it comes to changing the desktop resolution or turning things like AA on and off, they're mysteriously missing. It's one of my biggest beefs.
Linux is like the opposite of Windows in some ways. On Windows, you do everything from the GUI, and can only do some things from the CLI. On Linux, you can do everything from the CLI but only some things from the GUI. I really hope steps are taken to improve things to let people do more from the GUI. It's 2008.
Yea, we definately have different standard. Your standard is "Anything Apple does is the best, and you all suck." I prefer to go on the merits of the system itself. Anti-aliasing on Windows and Linux look better than MacOS. They're not perfect, but they're far superior. Ubuntu 7.1's version of X and the settings they use make it look so so easy on the eyes, so crisp, on any LCD screen I use.
MacOS aliasing is a fucking joke. Too many times are letters simply blended together because the smoothing is too hard. It's almost offensive to the eyes. Sometimes you can't even tell if you're using a nice Helvetica or a knock-off like Arial because it's all just a smashed up blob. Many times, people sit in front of my mac and they say "Why is the text so blurry?" - And it ain't the monitor.
So, whatever-the-shit you want to call it, Quartz/Aqua/Spongebob, it's not X, and that's all I've been trying to say. Unfortunately for me, I've apparently inadvertently hurt some poor apple boys feelings. I don't know about you, but if someone pointed to my truck and said "That Nissan is not a Ford" I would say "You're right" not "That's FUNNY! Why would you even SAY that? Are you MAD??!! My NISSAN IS BETTERERERER"
You can claim you're a publisher for 15 years, good for you. But just because your eyes are simply used to the crap Apple feeds you, doesn't mean mine are.
Are you that dense as to *completely* miss the point? Did you even bother reading the context in which X was mentioned? No?
Then shut the fuck up.
Anti-aliasing on X now is among the best you can get. However, any issues you have with turning it off are the fault of whatever distribution you're using, not X itself. If you can't find the option to turn off anti-aliasing, don't blame X.
Remember, X is not Gnome, KDE, or Ubuntu. It's the graphical framework behind all of that.
Anti-aliasing started to get big in the last few years because it makes text on LCD screens look smoother, but has the unintended side-effect of making text on CRT's fuzzy sometimes. It depends on the CRT. Sometimes anti-aliasing doesn't look good on some LCD's either. It's not blurring, it's blending.
Overall I like Anti-aliasing.
blah blah blah no crap no crap no crap. But you're wrong. You can't say "X, Aqua, Gnome, KDE" because they are different parts of the system.
X is comparable to Aqua in that they provide the low level graphical capabilities of the system. However, the original point was that somehow MacOS is more "Unix" than Linux Distributions, and I contend that by not using a standard X system, instead relying on Aqua which is a MacOS-Only gig, it's another example of how MacOS is in fact "less" UNIX than Linux Distributions.
It is a pointless argument, but it's brought up over and over because so many ignorant MacOS fanboys insist on telling the world that MacOS is so awesome, it's the best Unix, it's the best Windows, it's the best Toaster. And try to tell them otherwise.
I'm not sure either. The last couple distributions of Linux I've tried (Ubuntu 6 and 7, plus others) have all done anti-aliasing better than anything else I've seen. They render fonts great! I think the anti-aliasing on MacOS is horrible. Whenever I use MacOS it's the thing I hate the most. Talk about smashed and smushed lettering! Windows XP does a better job.
New X "integrates" with OpenGL, too! In fact, OpenGL was first implimented on X. Quartz is really just a Window Manager, and "Core Image" and the other "Core" things don't really have anything to do with the underlying GUI system - the part that lines up with X. And again, Finder doesn't have anything to do with Aqua, it's just a file manager app. It's got the same relation to Aqua that Gnome's Nautilus has with X. Just an app. What's next, Aqua is better because of iTunes? Try to keep it on target.
PS. Finder is "light years" ahead of other file managers? What planet are you from? Finder shouldn't even be considered a file manager. More like a "file launcher." That's why there's about five dozen finder replacements and add-on file managers for MacOS, and only a couple for Windows. Explorer is much better for File Management.
I don't necessarily believe that Aqua is better than X. X can do some mighty cool stuff, and if you haven't been following X development in recent times, it's improved quite a bit. The next major version of X.org will introduce a lot of new features and correct some long standing X shortcomings.
Chuckle all you want; as far as performance, X is capable of running OpenGL every bit as fast as Aqua or Windows. When you run X as the primary back end for your graphical environment, it's quite a different experience over running it on top of another GUI system. When I run Linux, I don't see any performance or usability issues that could be contributed to X itself.
Ohh, and X is open source, the specification is freely available to any system (which is WHY you can run it on MacOS and Windows) and that actually is a factor to be considered. There's something about free software that makes sense.
Anyways, the point wasn't that X was better than Aero though, the point was that X is a common part of Unix and it's not a part of MacOS. You can add it on top of Aqua, but it's not native. Darwin isn't MacOS, although the back-end is the same. One could argue that what one considers "MacOS" is in fact what runs on top of Darwin, not Darwin itself. Of course, it's the whole system that makes up MacOS. Still, the argument is valid.
Wait.. what were we talking about?
I held out on Windows XP for awhile too (although, not THAT long) because I didn't feel the need. At that time, it was supported with updates and software pretty much the same as Windows XP. I upgraded when I found it more and more difficult to run games. When I upgraded to XP, most of those problems evaporated. It wasn't because Windows 2000 was inferior; it was because the publishers were developing for XP, and you'd run into little compatibility issues that got more and more annoying.
I don't find that hardware upgrades are a big deal these days. I mean, if you have a decent machine from the last several years, you'll be fine to run whatever you want. And if not, you can throw in a few more GB RAM for cheap, cheap (did you know that a 1GB stick is like.. $20 now?) and be done with it. Saving money on hardware might apply if you run Apple hardware, but I just don't buy the argument anymore. You can build a really slick machine that will even do Aero for $250 or less.
I also don't really buy the "bloat" argument anymore either. It's a term that's too loosely used. Anything with a feature that someone doesn't want, they call it bloat. I call it a feature that takes advantage of the new, incredibly powerful computers that can be had for peanuts. I prefer my software to be rich in features to make use of my hardware, not simple and featureless just so it loads 5 seconds faster.
Hello, Captain MissThePoint. Look at any other UNIX - Solaris, AIX, BSD, and you'll find more similarities to Linux systems than MacOS systems. Pretty much everything is the same. If you know one real well, you'll be OK using any other one. MacOS, on the other hand, might share similarities and can compile a fair amount of code without extensive modifications, but it doesn't line up to "Unix" as the others do.
Say what you want about X, and try to put in some crap about how MacOS is BETTER- but again, it's not the point. X is a big part of Unix systems, like it or not, and it's an after-thought on MacOS. It's a bolt-on like running an X server on Windows. Again, I'm not talking trash about your precious MacOS; and Aqua is probably better, but Aqua isn't X.
"that doesn't make it anymore of an UNIX than Vista is a version of MacOS."
Actually, it does. Vista wasn't an attempt to re-implement MacOS. Linux and Linux distributions WERE an attempt to re-implement UNIX.
PS. You do know that a Linux distribution isn't made by Linus Torvalds right? That in fact it's just the kernel, and the rest of the system is considered "GNU?"
Of course, if you slipstreamed the updates and service packs onto the installation media, and/or deleted the uninstall files afterwards, it's smaller than that. I don't have any bare XP installs that take up that much space.
So, why don't you just run NT4? It will run on 4MB RAM. It will run really fast with 96MB RAM! So, it's old. It'll still run IE6. Why don't your recommend NT4 to everyone? Same difference; it's not supported either.
Or you could run Windows 98. Why not.
I contend that there IS a point to using updated software. Obviously there's a point where the hardware can't sustain the newer software; you wouldn't put Windows Vista or KDE 4 on a 386 but if it runs Windows 2000, it will run Windows XP. If there's a point where an OS re-install is necessary, I always go with the latest version that will run on the hardware. It's better for the user, it's better for compatibility, and it's better for security.
But, that's just my opinion =)
And what does UNIX actually mean?
In terms of a "modern" UNIX, a Linux distribution is more "UNIX" than OSX. The filesystem layout is more standard UNIX, the graphical environment is more UNIX, etc etc etc without using add-ons like a non-native X server running on top of Aqua, and the list goes on..
MacOS is a decent system in of itself, but to say it's more UNIX than a Linux distribution is laughable. I mean, c'mon. Get over it. Next you'll say MacOS washes a car better than a sponge..