Does that really seem like how it is to you? Apple gets offended somehow that they aren't the only company using PowerPC chips, and their big desire is to be using a chip no-one else is using..... and their response is to go to INTEL?!?!
Honestly, I really doubt this, and we've already read enough of the history to know that this has very little to do with the reason for the switch. If IBM had been able to deliver 3 GHz G5's and cool/low-power G5's to run in the laptop, that would have been all that Apple would have asked for. The notion that Apple switched because IBM was delivering PPC variants (note that the Cell and the other console PPC-based chips are not G5's) to console makers doesn't make much sense.
Yeah, the USB case is a really good example. Apple was really derided at the time for it ("Only USB? No serial ports? You mean I'll have to buy new peripherals?")..... that and the "no floppy" thing.
If the NY Times article from yesterday is accurate, this isn't necessarily that far off. Not that IBM specifically "dropped" Apple, but according to the article, they didn't see enough money in the desktop PC market to justify developing a G5 that could run in a laptop, etc.
And for anyone who is still upset about Apple's switch to Intel, that should be all you need to know. IBM was not going to advance the desktop PowerPC roadmap any further, and if Apple DIDN'T make the switch, the Power Mac would essentially be stuck with a dead-end desktop chip.
I'm almost positive iTunes was around for the original iPod. I think that maybe he meant the iTunes Music Store (which is different than just the iTunes software). For what it's worth, before iTunes for Windows, you had to use MusicMatch on the PC side.
I think you might be reading too much into what I said. First, I didn't "go through" those games that quickly. I still play them regularly and enjoy them a lot.
I realize you have to have patience, and I don't expect a top tier title every week. But I'm looking at what we've seen as being in the works for the upcoming year. I am sure there are some great titles that are currently in development that we just don't know about.
I didn't mean to make it sound like I didn't think there was anything in the future for the PSP. I'm just commenting on the current state of it. As it is, I'm just saying that there seems to be a significant dearth of new titles over the next year or so.
I'm not sure the horsepower is such a big deal though. Remember that the original Game Boy and the Game Boy Color were both dramatically underpowered compared to some of the competition they faced throughout the years (Lynx, GameGear, TurboGrafix Express, Nomad, NeoGeo Pocket, etc.).
It's pretty clear that horsepower can certainly garner some attention, but what it comes down to is the games, and the GBA and DS still have a huge and amazing library (I think the point the parent poster was making was that even though the DS's software library isn't quite that impressive yet, it still benefits from being able to play all the great GBA games).
As far as the DS is concerned, it seems to be doing ok so far (which is pretty impressive when you do think how lackluster most of the lineup of DS games is), and seems to be in good shape for some of the DS titles coming out later (Animal Crossing DS, Mario Kart DS, Advance Wars DS, that surgery game, that attorney sim game, Trace Memory, Lost in Blue, Nintendogs, etc.)
The PSP almost seems to have the opposite problem. And first, just to clarify, I bought a PSP on launch day, and have also bought a number of games for it (Lumines, Wipeout Pure, Twisted Metal Head On, NBA Street Showdown, MVP Baseball, Untold Legends and Hot Shots Golf). It had a really excellent launch lineup with a lot of variety, and it seemed to really drive a dagger into the DS, which looked absolutely pathetic in comparison.
But it seems like the PSP's subsequent lineup has been pretty thin. Hot Shots Golf and MVP Baseball are the only two games I've bought recently (and Hot Shots is excellent), and there honestly isn't a ton of stuff on the horizon. The GTA game is looking pretty good (although I still wonder about battery life while playing it), and the Coded Arms and Ghost in the Shell games look pretty good for handheld FPS's. And GT4 looks good if it ever comes out. But really, beyond that, there isn't a whole lot that is getting me excited about the PSP's future.
In comparison, even though I own only one DS game (Super Mario 64 DS), along with a lot of GBA games, I'm actually much more interested in some of the stuff coming out for the DS. Are they all groundbreaking games? Do they have better graphics than the PSP? No, not really....... in some cases the games look not that different from GBA games (i.e. Advance Wars) or n64 games (Animal Crossing DS)........ but frankly, those were awesome games before, and I'm looking forward to the idea of being able to play them online against other people. And I'm looking forward to some of the non-games like Nintendogs and Elektroplankton and Band Brothers.
So anyway, "horsepower" seems like the less relevant issue. I'm impressed by the PSP's horsepower, and it's made for some beautiful and amazing games. But horsepower only gets you so far......... if the PSP is only going to have a handful of compelling games, it is irrelevant how much horsepower it has. The PSP needs to have more interesting games as well.....
I'll second this. I really like Transmit as well, but that is shareware. RBrowserLite is a great FTP program and is free (and takes about 5 seconds to find using versiontracker, so I'm not sure why it would have been so hard for the original poster to find a free FTP program for OS X).
I know, that wasn't the point I was replying to (I already understand that the underlying point of this case was Apple not having a replacement program).... I was replying to the parent post about the problem being Apple's "false advertising" by not explicitly stating that the battery life wouldn't be 8 hours forever.
Right, I understand that. I was replying more to the point raised in the original post, that the problem here was that Apple didn't explicitly state that the "8 hour" battery life wouldn't last for the lifetime of the product. I didn't get that, since it does seem to be pretty similar.
And when you say your laptop explicitly states that the battery is considered a consumable item, what do you mean exactly? I know it does normally say this somewhere, usually in fine print. In most laptop advertising I've seen, they don't exactly go out of their way to talk about how the battery will wear down, etc. They normally bury that in the fine print somewhere.
I don't get it, how is that unique to Apple though? Are you saying Apple is the only company which mentions a battery life but doesn't specifically mention that the battery life will degrade in large print with the main claim?
I just don't get it. Almost every laptop I've seen advertised advertises some specific battery life...... same with most other devices sold with rechargable battery lives. And most of them don't put anything in big print about the lifespan of the batteries.
Isn't that significantly larger (at least wider and longer) than the Mac mini form factor (and the form factor of this "Pandora" prototype)? It's hard for me to tell from the photos, but given the size of the CD drive relative to the rest of it, it seems like those systems are not as compact.
Well, Apple's machine was news more because it was Apple making a much cheaper Mac than it had before......... frankly, the tiny form factor in and of itself wasn't really the newsworthy aspect of the Mac mini.
But for what it's worth, the Mac mini IS really tiny, even in relation to a lot of SFF PC's I've seen. I'm not personally aware of a way to get a microATX board and a casing that would result in a PC as small in form factor as the Mac mini.
Can you point me to one? I've definitely seem some small PC's, but I haven't seen anything quite as compact and tiny as the Mac mini form factor (not counting some of those specialized tiny wearable PC's, etc.).
The improved handwriting recognition in Newton OS 2.0 (I believe this was introduced in the MessagePad 130, and really shined with the beefed up horsepower of the MP2000 and MP2100.... I think this is the one that was codenamed Rosetta, and is also the basis for the Inkwell HWR in OS X) is certainly worth noting. It still holds up very well today.
Either way, there's certainly more to the Newton OS than the handwriting recognition.
I think there is something to this. Certainly the points made about whether the Newton was the "first" of anything are worth discussing. But I think it is disappointing that the bulk of the discussion of the Newton is essentially in just saying that it wasn't the "first" PDA. I think this is fine to say, but why spend so much time debunking this? If this is truly a history, why not spend some more time on the things the Newton did well (more than just saying it had a nice UI)? Certainly things like the Wizard came before it, but the Newton still did bring a lot to the PDA table, and it seems odd to me, to say the least, to have a history of PDA's that has almost no discussion of the contributions of the Newton OS and the Newton hardware.
Why is that funny though? And why is that specific to Mac users? It's not like ALL Mac users do that......... some do, sure, but so what? Some Linux users do too. And some Windows users come out of the woodwork (and have been for years) to attack Mac users for any number of reasons. It's not like any platform's userbase is lacking in the "major assholes" demographic.
Right, of course. I was just pointing out that it's not like Firefox is inherently immune to any sort of exploits or problems (or more generally, it's not like the Firefox team is incapable of developing something that could be exploited). I think the larger point of course is that there's potential for this in any software...... no reason someone should take an attitude like "I use Firefox, thus I never have to worry about a problem like this".
-Tom
P.S. Just to be clear, I use Firefox and I'm a big fan of it. But it's not doing anyone any favors to treat it like nothing bad can ever happen with it.
I think you're missing the point. This is the common excuse, especially from Microsoft........ i.e. "The reason Windows is so full of malware isn't because of any flaws in our development, but because it is the most popular". The problem with this is that it absolves MS of any responsibility for the inherently unsafe features in the OS and their other software. Certainly the number of people using it make it a target, but the malware wouldn't be so widespread if there weren't so many easily exploitable areas of the software. The point being made in the phrase you quoted is that Apple could run the risk of doing down the same path if they started leaving a lot of obvious security holes, etc. in there that other people could exploit.
Cool..... thanks everyone for the clarification on this. I guess the main question will be whether it's worth it to get x64 or not. I mean, I certainly don't mind paying for an OS if it will help me get some significant performance benefit out of the A64.
I have an Athlon 64 system I built, and I'm currently running regular Windows XP Home (which I had a license for from a previous computer, and didn't feel like buying XP Pro). One thing I haven't seen yet is what the costs will be of this x64 version of Windows XP. Will it be a free upgrade? If not, any idea on what it's going to cost? One reason I never tried out the pre-release version of x64 is that it seemed to require an XP Pro key, which I didn't have.
Who are you trying to kid, that's totally a kiddy game.... same deal with Metroid Prime, Baiten Katos, Soul Calibur II, Ikaruga, etc. All kiddy games, and therefore "teh suq".
Oh yeah, and Zelda: The Wind Waker is also a kiddy game because it has kiddy graphics, and only kids can enjoy it. Any adult who enjoys it, is, of course, "teh suq".
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Honestly, I really doubt this, and we've already read enough of the history to know that this has very little to do with the reason for the switch. If IBM had been able to deliver 3 GHz G5's and cool/low-power G5's to run in the laptop, that would have been all that Apple would have asked for. The notion that Apple switched because IBM was delivering PPC variants (note that the Cell and the other console PPC-based chips are not G5's) to console makers doesn't make much sense.
Yeah, the USB case is a really good example. Apple was really derided at the time for it ("Only USB? No serial ports? You mean I'll have to buy new peripherals?")..... that and the "no floppy" thing.
And for anyone who is still upset about Apple's switch to Intel, that should be all you need to know. IBM was not going to advance the desktop PowerPC roadmap any further, and if Apple DIDN'T make the switch, the Power Mac would essentially be stuck with a dead-end desktop chip.
I'm almost positive iTunes was around for the original iPod. I think that maybe he meant the iTunes Music Store (which is different than just the iTunes software). For what it's worth, before iTunes for Windows, you had to use MusicMatch on the PC side.
I realize you have to have patience, and I don't expect a top tier title every week. But I'm looking at what we've seen as being in the works for the upcoming year. I am sure there are some great titles that are currently in development that we just don't know about.
I didn't mean to make it sound like I didn't think there was anything in the future for the PSP. I'm just commenting on the current state of it. As it is, I'm just saying that there seems to be a significant dearth of new titles over the next year or so.
It's pretty clear that horsepower can certainly garner some attention, but what it comes down to is the games, and the GBA and DS still have a huge and amazing library (I think the point the parent poster was making was that even though the DS's software library isn't quite that impressive yet, it still benefits from being able to play all the great GBA games).
As far as the DS is concerned, it seems to be doing ok so far (which is pretty impressive when you do think how lackluster most of the lineup of DS games is), and seems to be in good shape for some of the DS titles coming out later (Animal Crossing DS, Mario Kart DS, Advance Wars DS, that surgery game, that attorney sim game, Trace Memory, Lost in Blue, Nintendogs, etc.)
The PSP almost seems to have the opposite problem. And first, just to clarify, I bought a PSP on launch day, and have also bought a number of games for it (Lumines, Wipeout Pure, Twisted Metal Head On, NBA Street Showdown, MVP Baseball, Untold Legends and Hot Shots Golf). It had a really excellent launch lineup with a lot of variety, and it seemed to really drive a dagger into the DS, which looked absolutely pathetic in comparison.
But it seems like the PSP's subsequent lineup has been pretty thin. Hot Shots Golf and MVP Baseball are the only two games I've bought recently (and Hot Shots is excellent), and there honestly isn't a ton of stuff on the horizon. The GTA game is looking pretty good (although I still wonder about battery life while playing it), and the Coded Arms and Ghost in the Shell games look pretty good for handheld FPS's. And GT4 looks good if it ever comes out. But really, beyond that, there isn't a whole lot that is getting me excited about the PSP's future.
In comparison, even though I own only one DS game (Super Mario 64 DS), along with a lot of GBA games, I'm actually much more interested in some of the stuff coming out for the DS. Are they all groundbreaking games? Do they have better graphics than the PSP? No, not really....... in some cases the games look not that different from GBA games (i.e. Advance Wars) or n64 games (Animal Crossing DS)........ but frankly, those were awesome games before, and I'm looking forward to the idea of being able to play them online against other people. And I'm looking forward to some of the non-games like Nintendogs and Elektroplankton and Band Brothers.
So anyway, "horsepower" seems like the less relevant issue. I'm impressed by the PSP's horsepower, and it's made for some beautiful and amazing games. But horsepower only gets you so far......... if the PSP is only going to have a handful of compelling games, it is irrelevant how much horsepower it has. The PSP needs to have more interesting games as well.....
I'll second this. I really like Transmit as well, but that is shareware. RBrowserLite is a great FTP program and is free (and takes about 5 seconds to find using versiontracker, so I'm not sure why it would have been so hard for the original poster to find a free FTP program for OS X).
Sceptical is a valid alternate spelling of the word skeptical.
I know, that wasn't the point I was replying to (I already understand that the underlying point of this case was Apple not having a replacement program).... I was replying to the parent post about the problem being Apple's "false advertising" by not explicitly stating that the battery life wouldn't be 8 hours forever.
And when you say your laptop explicitly states that the battery is considered a consumable item, what do you mean exactly? I know it does normally say this somewhere, usually in fine print. In most laptop advertising I've seen, they don't exactly go out of their way to talk about how the battery will wear down, etc. They normally bury that in the fine print somewhere.
-Tom
I just don't get it. Almost every laptop I've seen advertised advertises some specific battery life...... same with most other devices sold with rechargable battery lives. And most of them don't put anything in big print about the lifespan of the batteries.
So why is Apple somehow unique in this?
-Tom
But for what it's worth, the Mac mini IS really tiny, even in relation to a lot of SFF PC's I've seen. I'm not personally aware of a way to get a microATX board and a casing that would result in a PC as small in form factor as the Mac mini.
Can you point me to one? I've definitely seem some small PC's, but I haven't seen anything quite as compact and tiny as the Mac mini form factor (not counting some of those specialized tiny wearable PC's, etc.).
Exactly...:)
I've heard w00t of course, and ginormous, but where are people using the term "confuzzled"?
Either way, there's certainly more to the Newton OS than the handwriting recognition.
I think there is something to this. Certainly the points made about whether the Newton was the "first" of anything are worth discussing. But I think it is disappointing that the bulk of the discussion of the Newton is essentially in just saying that it wasn't the "first" PDA. I think this is fine to say, but why spend so much time debunking this? If this is truly a history, why not spend some more time on the things the Newton did well (more than just saying it had a nice UI)? Certainly things like the Wizard came before it, but the Newton still did bring a lot to the PDA table, and it seems odd to me, to say the least, to have a history of PDA's that has almost no discussion of the contributions of the Newton OS and the Newton hardware.
Why is that funny though? And why is that specific to Mac users? It's not like ALL Mac users do that......... some do, sure, but so what? Some Linux users do too. And some Windows users come out of the woodwork (and have been for years) to attack Mac users for any number of reasons. It's not like any platform's userbase is lacking in the "major assholes" demographic.
-Tom
P.S. Just to be clear, I use Firefox and I'm a big fan of it. But it's not doing anyone any favors to treat it like nothing bad can ever happen with it.
I think you're missing the point. This is the common excuse, especially from Microsoft........ i.e. "The reason Windows is so full of malware isn't because of any flaws in our development, but because it is the most popular". The problem with this is that it absolves MS of any responsibility for the inherently unsafe features in the OS and their other software. Certainly the number of people using it make it a target, but the malware wouldn't be so widespread if there weren't so many easily exploitable areas of the software. The point being made in the phrase you quoted is that Apple could run the risk of doing down the same path if they started leaving a lot of obvious security holes, etc. in there that other people could exploit.
-Tom
Cool..... thanks everyone for the clarification on this. I guess the main question will be whether it's worth it to get x64 or not. I mean, I certainly don't mind paying for an OS if it will help me get some significant performance benefit out of the A64.
I have an Athlon 64 system I built, and I'm currently running regular Windows XP Home (which I had a license for from a previous computer, and didn't feel like buying XP Pro). One thing I haven't seen yet is what the costs will be of this x64 version of Windows XP. Will it be a free upgrade? If not, any idea on what it's going to cost? One reason I never tried out the pre-release version of x64 is that it seemed to require an XP Pro key, which I didn't have.
Hrmm, why did my comment above get modded as flamebait? I was being sarcastic... the post above wasn't serious.
Oh yeah, and Zelda: The Wind Waker is also a kiddy game because it has kiddy graphics, and only kids can enjoy it. Any adult who enjoys it, is, of course, "teh suq".
-Tom