Apart from the fact that your remark is a bit on the anal side, you're right. the sig is indeed sloppy. I am pretty anal and precise myself - as far as my translations are concerned, so I'll bow my head and try to take the hint with grace.
Actually, I have a splitting head-ache right now, so forget about the bowing and the grace part...
yep, I love mine, it's small, inobtrusive, silent and still pretty fast and solid. The weird optical start-button and the awkwardly placed connections sometimes combine to shut down the machine when changing a usb or firewire devise and I have installed a bigger hard drive, but apart from that it's a perfect out of the box experience.
How much does such an upgrade cost and could it be shipped to say El Salvador?
I actually did this. It's optional, but as easy as not installing umpteen language support options and the classic environment. Two reasons: saving diskspace and I was moving away from tech-work, and was sure I woudn't ever want to be bothered again.
I've regretted that a few months later when I realised quite a few applications out there rely on BSD, some without mentioning it. And predictively I later did install developer tools again...
I was stupid, just install the package is my advise.
You are totally, utterly, completely wrong in your assessment (I think;-)
Most creative people put their "art" before their tools. And as such they use the tools that are most useful to them.
Exponents of that same artistic community are therefor known to have pushed the envelope to its extreme, making discoveries and more modern tools that fit their need.
Others only use their own set of familiar tools.
And even others actually go dig in the past to find more arcane tools for their stuff, making their own paint for instance...
It's not a matter of being progressive or backward, it's about picking the tools that are most productive for them. And productivity is in this case not measured in the way we look at it (amount of functions, coolness, how fast it gets an average job done) but in how it triggers the processes they need in order to do what they do.
A lot of people think this is total crap, and then happily go through their own routines failing to see that half of those routines are deviced quite subconsciously to make them better in what they themselves do...
I'm pretty certain (without having any statistics to back this up) "artists" are no different in accepting technology than any other group of tool-using homo sapiens sapiens...
It's just that as a group they stand out because they voice strong personal opinions on the subject.
Apple's TextEdit. It has a few typical wordprocessor functions, but you're free not to use them.
You can open a clean slate without any functions whatsoever, just a blank clean page.
And it still has spellchecking, all the professional fonts you need, good cross-platform saving options (in Panther it will even include MS Word format) and easy markup functions. You are however free to ignore all that. If you do use those functions, you'll find they're extremely clear and easy to use.
The marked advantage over wordpad and vi is that your text looks beautiful on that buttonless toolbarless blank page. A quality I personally like very much.
I like Apple's style more, and it's not such a bloated mix of propaganda and uselessness, but I've been frustrated a few times myself there.
As I've pointed out a few times here, the Software Update thingy in OS X does allow for just downloading the packages to the desktop. That usually means no trips to the support site is necessary.
You have my sympathy, but why oh why didn't you download a technical document of the computer? Apple's technical documents are excellent, they have those cute pictures in them guiding you step by step through the process.
And this only in case your friend has lost the original booklet that came with the laptop.
" After the last round of "updates" my machine is unable to copy & paste after it has been on for more than about 45 minutes."
Hey! My wife's Toshiba portable has that too. Any idea why? And how you fix this?
I sort of advised her to just restart, because my experience has tought me that trying to fix a problem on Windows is more often than not going to leave you with a whole new set of them. Better to live with the shit you know...
Yep, in all honesty, Windows beat Mac on it's update service.
Now, I think Apple wins hands down, it's just too easy:-)
But still, the Windows update webservice is useable. What I really hate is to go and look for downloads on their website. Horrible, just play horrible.
You can always just download updates from within Software Update. In the Menu (you know, that little strip of words on a background of your favorite underwear stripes on top of your screen) you'll find an option to download selected updates to your desktop.
Once downloaded, you can install the updates by doubleclicking them or again you can use an exciting Menu option from within Software Update. You can also click the big Install button on S.U.'s main window, but now that we've rediscovered the Menu, why not go there?:-)
This incidentally avoids the cumbersome available disk space bug on older systems with smaller hard disks.
An update "prebinds" a lot of files and your system performs periodical maintenance tasks (the famed "cron scripts"). If you're interested in what that means, browse through Apple's support section. If not, just download Coctail and periodically do your own maintenance.
You'll find all you want to do under the "System" icon. Three tabs will interest you: Prebinding, Scripts and Caches. All those tasks take a couple of minutes and you'll need your administrator password to actually perform them.
Another thing: you'll need to have BSD installed. This you find on your original Mac OS X Install disks. Normally you'll have that on your system, but Coctail will advise you if it doesn't find the BSD system in place.
A nice utility to just install the BSD package without going through the whole install process is Pacifist.
Startup Pacifist, insert the first Mac OS X Install disk and in Pacifist, click on the big button saying "Open Mac OS X Install Packages" (which will only be enabled if the install disk is inserted). From there on, browse through the package list, select the BSD package and choose "Install" from the options...
I know, a bit of work, but it is worth your while.
Sometimes these things are machine-specific. I've had quite a few printing problems over USB with a Cube. Although not officially acknowledged by Apple, some people seemed to know this was "typical".
You are of course right, but that's largely due to your specialised definition of the word "Clueless".
For me it's more like this:
1) installing Linux: if you're lucky, everything installs itself (with a decent distro). No probs. If you're not lucky, you're up shit creek without a paddle. It's worse than a Mickysoft install gone wrong. Granted, if done well, you have a system that's tweakable to the limit - provided you know exactly, and I mean e-x-a-c-t-l-y what you're doing. 2) using: if you don't do anything complex or daring (stick to email, surfing and a bit of quake) you should be very happy. If however you try to install all those exciting packages out there, you'll more likely than not end up in same said creek. Binding, commands in consoles, twiddling with config files, whatever. Give me one screen, a crappy user licence and a button... yeahyeah, I know, I'm dumb.
Recap: for everything that goes wrong or is even mildly engaging (installing drivers, programs, hardware in quite a few cases) you find the cosmetic part of Linux doesn't support you.
You'll have to go into the geeky land of Man and ubernerd snottyness ("Ghwhat, you don't do chhommand line? Ghyou ghave a.... moussse? Ghyou looooking for phretty windows with bhuttons to push no doubtttt?")
Now, do you think that sounds appealing for people who've already gone through Microsoft Nevereverstoppayingland? Or for the happy candy-mac crowd - a large part of which doesn't know what a computer is And Still Gets Work Done(TM)?
And yeah, I guess I'm lame, but every linux person must recognise some of what I write, no?
In short, linux is great. For everyone? I doubt it very much. Because people are lame and clueless? No again, but because most people aren't into computers to exactly the same degree as yourself.
BTW Sun got that part right with their madhatter thingy: make a simple, productive and user-ready environment for people who do such and such tasks and put everything that distracts from that Under The Hood. My guess is we'll see more specialised environments - for the clueless if you will - like that in the near future.
It was objective alright, but most (intelligent) people objected on other grounds than -erm- objectivity.
They argued PC's should have run an optimized compiler, as the G5 should have. That way you'd have a subjective but real world benchmark. Because that's the thing most people would do with a machine like that, when programming. Only makes sense.
What Apple showed with that benchmark was that the G5 was faster at a bunch of tasks people wouldn't necessarily want to perform under that set of circumstances.
I personally only started drooling after that. When Stevie Wonder showed Photoshop, Mathematica, Logic/Cubase, rendering and FCP stuff. That's what this beast is made for, that's why you'd buy a G5 instead of a Dell. Not only good soft, but screaming hardware... etc etc
And that's why this PC Mag article is for most people more interesting than two high-end machines running an open source all-purpose compiler.
Apart from that it shows the G5 in a decent light to a mostly PC audience. Could have been worse.
Disclaimer: if I were Apple I would have done the same thing. It might not excite me personally, but it did show the G5 advantage in a levelled field, set up by the best and most impartial people they could have hired.
I'm not into semantic nitpicking but since you're now describing the Ideal Workstation Configuration (tm), it's only fair to say how much this is going to cost, mmm?
We're talking about a Serious Computer (another tm) that does iTunes as well, not the Perfect umptydumpty Dollar Workstation, although it means something that you're making the comparison, quite a compliment, me thinks.
Slashdot Mirror
it has, thank you.
Signature test
Hope you don't mind my abusing this post...
Apart from the fact that your remark is a bit on the anal side, you're right. the sig is indeed sloppy. I am pretty anal and precise myself - as far as my translations are concerned, so I'll bow my head and try to take the hint with grace.
Actually, I have a splitting head-ache right now, so forget about the bowing and the grace part...
That's quite alright easter, considering your use of the word 'considering' I've inferred your programs suck.
Hey thanks :-)
yep, I love mine, it's small, inobtrusive, silent and still pretty fast and solid.
The weird optical start-button and the awkwardly placed connections sometimes combine to shut down the machine when changing a usb or firewire devise and I have installed a bigger hard drive, but apart from that it's a perfect out of the box experience.
How much does such an upgrade cost and could it be shipped to say El Salvador?
Cheers
Darn, I feel left out!
Any other Cube owners without problems? Maybe we could start a support group...
I actually did this. It's optional, but as easy as not installing umpteen language support options and the classic environment. Two reasons: saving diskspace and I was moving away from tech-work, and was sure I woudn't ever want to be bothered again.
I've regretted that a few months later when I realised quite a few applications out there rely on BSD, some without mentioning it. And predictively I later did install developer tools again...
I was stupid, just install the package is my advise.
You are totally, utterly, completely wrong in your assessment (I think ;-)
Most creative people put their "art" before their tools. And as such they use the tools that are most useful to them.
Exponents of that same artistic community are therefor known to have pushed the envelope to its extreme, making discoveries and more modern tools that fit their need.
Others only use their own set of familiar tools.
And even others actually go dig in the past to find more arcane tools for their stuff, making their own paint for instance...
It's not a matter of being progressive or backward, it's about picking the tools that are most productive for them. And productivity is in this case not measured in the way we look at it (amount of functions, coolness, how fast it gets an average job done) but in how it triggers the processes they need in order to do what they do.
A lot of people think this is total crap, and then happily go through their own routines failing to see that half of those routines are deviced quite subconsciously to make them better in what they themselves do...
I'm pretty certain (without having any statistics to back this up) "artists" are no different in accepting technology than any other group of tool-using homo sapiens sapiens...
It's just that as a group they stand out because they voice strong personal opinions on the subject.
Apple's TextEdit.
...
It has a few typical wordprocessor functions, but you're free not to use them.
You can open a clean slate without any functions whatsoever, just a blank clean page.
And it still has spellchecking, all the professional fonts you need, good cross-platform saving options (in Panther it will even include MS Word format) and easy markup functions. You are however free to ignore all that. If you do use those functions, you'll find they're extremely clear and easy to use.
The marked advantage over wordpad and vi is that your text looks beautiful on that buttonless toolbarless blank page. A quality I personally like very much.
If that's not spoken like a true Apple fan
You're right of course.
I like Apple's style more, and it's not such a bloated mix of propaganda and uselessness, but I've been frustrated a few times myself there.
As I've pointed out a few times here, the Software Update thingy in OS X does allow for just downloading the packages to the desktop. That usually means no trips to the support site is necessary.
You have my sympathy, but why oh why didn't you download a technical document of the computer? Apple's technical documents are excellent, they have those cute pictures in them guiding you step by step through the process.
And this only in case your friend has lost the original booklet that came with the laptop.
" After the last round of "updates" my machine is unable to copy & paste after it has been on for more than about 45 minutes."
...
Hey! My wife's Toshiba portable has that too. Any idea why? And how you fix this?
I sort of advised her to just restart, because my experience has tought me that trying to fix a problem on Windows is more often than not going to leave you with a whole new set of them. Better to live with the shit you know
cheers
Yep, in all honesty, Windows beat Mac on it's update service.
:-)
Now, I think Apple wins hands down, it's just too easy
But still, the Windows update webservice is useable. What I really hate is to go and look for downloads on their website. Horrible, just play horrible.
You can always just download updates from within Software Update. In the Menu (you know, that little strip of words on a background of your favorite underwear stripes on top of your screen) you'll find an option to download selected updates to your desktop.
:-)
Once downloaded, you can install the updates by doubleclicking them or again you can use an exciting Menu option from within Software Update. You can also click the big Install button on S.U.'s main window, but now that we've rediscovered the Menu, why not go there?
This incidentally avoids the cumbersome available disk space bug on older systems with smaller hard disks.
Download Coctail to once in a while optimize your system.
An update "prebinds" a lot of files and your system performs periodical maintenance tasks (the famed "cron scripts"). If you're interested in what that means, browse through Apple's support section. If not, just download Coctail and periodically do your own maintenance.
You'll find all you want to do under the "System" icon. Three tabs will interest you: Prebinding, Scripts and Caches. All those tasks take a couple of minutes and you'll need your administrator password to actually perform them.
Another thing: you'll need to have BSD installed. This you find on your original Mac OS X Install disks. Normally you'll have that on your system, but Coctail will advise you if it doesn't find the BSD system in place.
A nice utility to just install the BSD package without going through the whole install process is Pacifist.
Startup Pacifist, insert the first Mac OS X Install disk and in Pacifist, click on the big button saying "Open Mac OS X Install Packages" (which will only be enabled if the install disk is inserted). From there on, browse through the package list, select the BSD package and choose "Install" from the options...
I know, a bit of work, but it is worth your while.
What machine do you have?
Sometimes these things are machine-specific. I've had quite a few printing problems over USB with a Cube. Although not officially acknowledged by Apple, some people seemed to know this was "typical".
BTW, using DHCP right now, no problem whatsoever.
Have you checked with your provider?
This typed on an updated mac...
Imagine a Beowulf cluster running that!
and in soviet russia we stopped wearing red hats after glasnost!
You are of course right, but that's largely due to your specialised definition of the word "Clueless".
... yeahyeah, I know, I'm dumb.
.... moussse? Ghyou looooking for phretty windows with bhuttons to push no doubtttt?")
For me it's more like this:
1) installing Linux: if you're lucky, everything installs itself (with a decent distro). No probs. If you're not lucky, you're up shit creek without a paddle. It's worse than a Mickysoft install gone wrong.
Granted, if done well, you have a system that's tweakable to the limit - provided you know exactly, and I mean e-x-a-c-t-l-y what you're doing.
2) using: if you don't do anything complex or daring (stick to email, surfing and a bit of quake) you should be very happy. If however you try to install all those exciting packages out there, you'll more likely than not end up in same said creek.
Binding, commands in consoles, twiddling with config files, whatever. Give me one screen, a crappy user licence and a button
Recap: for everything that goes wrong or is even mildly engaging (installing drivers, programs, hardware in quite a few cases) you find the cosmetic part of Linux doesn't support you.
You'll have to go into the geeky land of Man and ubernerd snottyness ("Ghwhat, you don't do chhommand line? Ghyou ghave a
Now, do you think that sounds appealing for people who've already gone through Microsoft Nevereverstoppayingland? Or for the happy candy-mac crowd - a large part of which doesn't know what a computer is And Still Gets Work Done(TM)?
And yeah, I guess I'm lame, but every linux person must recognise some of what I write, no?
In short, linux is great. For everyone? I doubt it very much. Because people are lame and clueless? No again, but because most people aren't into computers to exactly the same degree as yourself.
BTW Sun got that part right with their madhatter thingy: make a simple, productive and user-ready environment for people who do such and such tasks and put everything that distracts from that Under The Hood. My guess is we'll see more specialised environments - for the clueless if you will - like that in the near future.
But in the end your home made thingy won't run OS X ...
It was objective alright, but most (intelligent) people objected on other grounds than -erm- objectivity.
They argued PC's should have run an optimized compiler, as the G5 should have. That way you'd have a subjective but real world benchmark. Because that's the thing most people would do with a machine like that, when programming. Only makes sense.
What Apple showed with that benchmark was that the G5 was faster at a bunch of tasks people wouldn't necessarily want to perform under that set of circumstances.
I personally only started drooling after that. When Stevie Wonder showed Photoshop, Mathematica, Logic/Cubase, rendering and FCP stuff. That's what this beast is made for, that's why you'd buy a G5 instead of a Dell. Not only good soft, but screaming hardware... etc etc
And that's why this PC Mag article is for most people more interesting than two high-end machines running an open source all-purpose compiler.
Apart from that it shows the G5 in a decent light to a mostly PC audience. Could have been worse.
Disclaimer: if I were Apple I would have done the same thing. It might not excite me personally, but it did show the G5 advantage in a levelled field, set up by the best and most impartial people they could have hired.
Can you give a price tag for all that?
I'm not into semantic nitpicking but since you're now describing the Ideal Workstation Configuration (tm), it's only fair to say how much this is going to cost, mmm?
We're talking about a Serious Computer (another tm) that does iTunes as well, not the Perfect umptydumpty Dollar Workstation, although it means something that you're making the comparison, quite a compliment, me thinks.
PS: pricetag?
not trying to troll you to death, but um, Apple?
no way ;-)
...
but at the time - also considering the alternatives