Well, the software is different, even if the hardware is the same.
Flash runs ok on my iMac if I reboot it into Windows XP, running on literally identical hardware, but is a hog under OS X.
The argument isn't at all silly.
Adobe's Mac version of Flash is just really poor, although better with the 10.1 release. Given how much iOS and OS X have in common under the hood (at least as common as Android and Linux, for example), it is not hard to see why Flash on the iPhone is a non starter, even if Apple wanted it.
Well, partially - the keyboard shortcuts are just another way to speed things up, just like right click.
On every primary menu on the Mac (ie, the top menu bar that has access to all the functions) each item has the shortcut next to it, so you can quickly learn if you go to a specific function many times.
The main reason there was only a single button was exactly as I said - it was to ensure that any function could be accessed via left click and that there would never be (or shouldn't be) any function that *required* a right click or a shortcut combo.
No, Apple did not want to kill USB in favour of firewire, it always wanted them to work together, since they are complementary technologies - USB is good for the low speed stuff, firewire was better (and still is) at the high bandwidth, high IO stuff like hard drives and cameras and so on. They were always meant to work together, not to be exclusive.
The USB 1.1 spec came out in September 98, at the same time as the original iMac. While there were possibly some PCs that had ports before then, MS didn't add proper support (read: full) for USB until Win 98. For some versions of Win 95 they had a patch (service release 2.1 or something?) that provided some function in late 1997 or early 98, but it was hardly the huge step forward intel were hoping for - it didn't ship with support until Win98.
Either way, my point was not "who did it first" but more how it was done - the way the iMac was released, there was a guaranteed new market for peripherals, since there were no legacy ports on it at all. If you wanted a printer you either needed a network one, or a USB one (or a USB to serial converter, which was another new market). For the new PCs, they had these new ports, but you weren't forced into using them - you could just buy a printer or modem or whatever with an old connector, that your machine still supported. Much the same as eSATA finds itself today - there's no huge surge in eSATA drives since USB2 and firewire are on pretty much every machine you can buy, and it's enough for most people.
A firewire mouse or keyboard would just be silly and unnecessary there was never any motive to remove USB in favour of firewire - they both shipped on the iMac, and always have on all future Macs.
Apple *still* has Firewire - it was never a replacement or competitor to USB for peripherals, it was *as well as*.
USB was conceived for things like home printers, scanners, keyboards, mice and so on that didn;t need major bandwidth and IO. Firewire was designed for things that did, like hard drives and video cameras and high-end soundcards and so on - a market it still serves today because it does it very well.
Apple were one of the first to push USB keyboards and mice, alongside the firewire port as well.
It was NEVER Apple's goal to push firewire in spite of USB, until the whole USB2 issue came along, where Intel were trying to shoehorn the high speed, high bandwidth stuff onto it too, which it was never designed for. This is why it theoretically has a higher bandwidth than firewire, but is rarely seen in practice - firewire (and now eSata) is king for that sort of task.
Even then, when USB2 was attempting to kill off firewire (and it did, in all but Macs and for people who needed decent high bandwidth external support), Apple were still going with "USB for low speed stuff, firewire for high speed stuff", although obviously also supported the new USB2 specs.
Firewire is only dead if you have never worked in the pro-video industry, where it is still a major connection component for many cameras and decks for source capture, where SDI or other more esoteric connection systems aren't being used (not all cameras and decks feature SDI, but 95% will support firewire).
That's why Darwin, Webkit, GCC and so on are closed source and proprietary, right? (to name just three things off the top of my head).
It's why they use closed standards like.ics and.mbox, and documented human-readable XML.
iTunes was produced for Windows because the iPod was released for Windows - before that, it was a music player that no one using Windows wanted ("some silly little Mac thing that no one uses"). It didn't come to Windows because it wasn't needed on Windows before then (and Apple aren;t really in the market for writing software for other platforms, and iTunes itself only exists to sell iPods and iPhones).
The first iPod to be Windows compatible was the second gen iPod, which came out 8 months after the original one, in July 2002 - hardly "serious nipple twisting" when the second generation of your product adds Windows compatibility.
We just had an election: stats are king right now for "look at how bad it was under [previous government], but with our new [tough to sell policy] we will be so much better!"
Silverlight may be a Microsoft product, but it is way better than Flash on my OS X machine. MS may be some sort of boogyman, but they managed to do with Silverlight what Adobe has failed or can't be bothered to do with Flash - make it work well on something other than Windows, which is amusing since I didn't think MS would care about making it work well on the Mac. Certainly less than Adobe should care about decent flash performance.
SkyPlayer uses Silverlight, which is Sky's web-based streaming service for subscribers of Sky's satellite TV service in the UK. Sky has quite a large user base, although I'm sure the percentage of its customers who use SkyPlayer is probably quite small.
Yes, and the reason USB is so ubiquitous, was in part because Apple shipped a computer that had USB as the only interface for small/basic devices like keyboards, mice, printers etc that helped to spawn the explosion and growth of the USB peripheral market. They were not the only ones to do this; PC makers were doing it too, but they were shipping boards that had USB and the older connectors like 9 pin serial and the 4 pin kb and mouse connectors that didn't help to push USB as the hot new thing as much as the iMac did - why bother when you can just use the older connectors.
The floppy didn't die directly because of Steve Jobs, but the rise of USB sticks was partially to do with Apple as the USB connector became the de facto low bandwidth peripheral connector in the wake of the iMac (and all subsequent Macs) and the inclusion of the new port alongside the old connectors on new PC boards.
The OS has always supported right click, since at least OS 8.6 - just plug in a 2 button mouse, or use control+click. The single button was all about lack of confusion, but it was not "enforced" if you wanted to be able to right click. So, they listened to the feedback way back when OS 8 was the new thing (in 1997) and provided right click for those that wanted it. The only way this could possibly affect Mac sales if if people didn't actually do any research before purchase and just assumed. Perhaps this is why, in 2010, people still think you cannot right click on a Mac (not that you do think that, but I have seen it on slashdot).
All current Apple mice have right click. They haven't shipped a single button mouse for some time now. The wireless ones are multitouch too.
Apple has always provided right click, since way back in OS 8.6 or earlier (it was very definitely in OS9). Just because the mouse didn't have two buttons didn't mean you couldn't use context menus, either via control+click or via a two button mouse that you just plugged in.
The point of a single click interface (and the one button mouse) was to force a UI where everything that the computer could do *could* be done with only left click, but that didn't mean that context sensitive menus were not included, they were just optional. This is compared to a system where some menus could *only* be accessed via right click, which Apple wanted to avoid.
The dropping of a floppy drive as an obsolete component is nothing like leaving out a second mouse button.
But you can already make a web app on iOS that bypasses the store - it was the original way apps were going to be on the iPhone in the first place, and that method of delivery has never gone away. I don;t think it has anything to do with the store and profit margins - the profit on app sales is pretty slim anyway; the store exists to sell iOS devices, not as a cash cow for Apple indirectly. The devices are where the money is.
Flash is dog, dog slow on OS X right now, even with a lot of CPU grunt, and it has nothing to do with Apple "blocking access to necessary APIs" or the lack of hardware accelerated h.264 that Adobe (or others) will try to claim. It really is woeful at all animation, even when H.264 video is not involved at all. An iPhone version would just be even worse, since there just isn't the CPU grunt to cover up how poor it is. You can get away with it on a desktop machine - you have a 2GHz cpu mostly idle that can help you out with your simple flash page, but on a mobile device you actually have to make the code decent.
The biggest reason there is no Flash on iOS is performance. The HTML5 and open web are secondary concerns.
The 10.1 release of flash is much better on OS X, but it is still a terrible resource hog for no good reason. Even the Mac Silverlight player is much better. I assume MS has the same "access" to the core of OS X as Adobe do.
Can you show me how Apple's HTML5 implementation differs from anyone elses with some actual proof, or is this just biased anti-Apple ranting, just like the entire article?
I am betting on the former, but I am willing to listen to anyone who can actually back this claim up - a fragmented HTML5 serves no one.
It's going both ways though - this is like a D vs R, except it's broadly turning into Euro vs US for no good reason.
I am a Brit, and do not believe that an American gun culture would do anything to affect the UK crime rate, but I am personally not opposed to guns or gun ownership - one of the first things I did on my last visit to the US was visit a gun store.
The contra-point that seems to have arisen is that us non-gun-legal folk are helpless sheeple controlled by our governments who can do nothing but cower behind a table while people physically bigger than us "do their will" (sorry, just paraphrasing from several comments in this thread).
I've got no problem with gun ownership, but I don't believe it is a magic bullet (ha) for crime reduction and an increase in personal safety with respect to being a victim of violent crime.
That is a very sensationalist piece, and is attempting to link crimes with firearms occurring as a direct result of the UK population being unable to legally own a gun to prevent it. None of the three standout cases at the beginning of the article would have been prevented if people were able to own handguns/firearms, either as a deterrent or as a direct retaliation.
The gun crime rate is remarkably low in this country, even for a a place that bans (most) guns (you can still own and use shotguns for sporting purposes), and even with the hollow "if guns are illegal, only criminals will have guns" hasn't turned us into a lawless wasteland where criminals shoot people with impunity while we all cower behind tables and other forms of cover because we can't shoot back at them.
The other stories in the article are your typical tabloid fare, and are the exception to the rule (and the bulk of them seem to be about the legislation relating to offensive weapons, not guns - which are covered by a separate offence). We don't routinely go around prosecuting women who carry knitting needles, although apparently it is an indication of how we are not protecting our citizens.
While our "violent crime rate" is high in an era where the government can cherry pick the way it displays statistics (that includes the former Labour government), the homicide rate is still low - 1.5 per 100k population, compared to the US's 5.0 per 100k.
There's just no outstanding evidence to suggest that legalising guns for personal defence would have any tangible benefit - especially if the US is the model we are looking at.
Just because you believe that to be the case doesn't mean the current reality will reflect that. You can't just choose *not* not pay the licensing fee for a mpeg2 decoder from Apple (either rolled into the cost of the OS or in the Quicktime Pro fee) because they *do* respect it.
You can, of course, get the mpeg2 encoder from other sources but we're not talking about that in this instance.
I'm not the OP, but that person might just be an arrogant asshole if their entire argument is trashing a movie that they haven't personally seen.
I haven't personally used Red Hat Linux, but I have heard from some reviewers that it is rubbish, so I'm just going to go with that as my opinion. No need to actually experience it for myself to confirm it, eh?
I *have* seen Avatar, and while it is pretty much Pocahontas with a bigger budget, it was no worse than any other action film - it was light years better than Transformers (both of them).
Remember this is wild speculation from a supposed leak. It's not an Apple press release.
Apple know they have the market controlled (on their device) but they're not stupid. Consider the revenue sharing on the app store itself - it's not set up to gouge the developers. I wouldn't imagine this one will be either - but that's just my opinion. YMMV.
OS X doesn't play blu-ray, but the Mac Mini doesn't necessarily have to run OS X.
You can drop a slot-load BD drive into a Mac Mini and use it from Windows if you choose, or pull the files off it and watch them via XBMC from any of three OSes that the Mini will run.
No, you were marked troll because while you might be succinct with your valid opinion, you put it across like a petulant teenager. The only thing missing was calling anything you dislike "gay" while proclaiming your superior (to you) opinion.
The reason slashdot has been "reduced to" the state it is in is *exactly* because of posts like yours (and I suppose, like mine right here, since I am barely hiding my contempt for such an idiotic reply in response to an obvious moderation decision). Pot, meet kettle.
yes, and [osmosis] is also the diffusion of molecules from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration....
you're an idiot.
No, no it really isn't. I suggest you actually look it up before throwing around the "idiot" tag. It's actually very specifically the movement of water molecules across a semi-permeable membrane. Both of those parts of the definition are important. This is compared to diffusion, which just requires a concentration gradient (ie, no membrane required, and the particles in question are not specifically water molecules).
Alternatively you can borrow my shovel if you want to keep digging that hole you're in.
So, you got called on your bullshit and you try to reframe the argument?
The iPad certainly doesn't "[have a] rather pathetic processor for 2010" as you stated - it is pretty much state of the art. If you mean it doesn't have a Core i7 or something, then no, it doesn't. It's far from pathetic for 2010 though.
So, have you actually tried to use it to decode SD content in software, or are you just spouting unconfirmed speculation and regurgitating anti-Apple propaganda?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the software is different, even if the hardware is the same.
Flash runs ok on my iMac if I reboot it into Windows XP, running on literally identical hardware, but is a hog under OS X.
The argument isn't at all silly.
Adobe's Mac version of Flash is just really poor, although better with the 10.1 release. Given how much iOS and OS X have in common under the hood (at least as common as Android and Linux, for example), it is not hard to see why Flash on the iPhone is a non starter, even if Apple wanted it.
Well, partially - the keyboard shortcuts are just another way to speed things up, just like right click.
On every primary menu on the Mac (ie, the top menu bar that has access to all the functions) each item has the shortcut next to it, so you can quickly learn if you go to a specific function many times.
The main reason there was only a single button was exactly as I said - it was to ensure that any function could be accessed via left click and that there would never be (or shouldn't be) any function that *required* a right click or a shortcut combo.
No, Apple did not want to kill USB in favour of firewire, it always wanted them to work together, since they are complementary technologies - USB is good for the low speed stuff, firewire was better (and still is) at the high bandwidth, high IO stuff like hard drives and cameras and so on. They were always meant to work together, not to be exclusive.
The USB 1.1 spec came out in September 98, at the same time as the original iMac. While there were possibly some PCs that had ports before then, MS didn't add proper support (read: full) for USB until Win 98. For some versions of Win 95 they had a patch (service release 2.1 or something?) that provided some function in late 1997 or early 98, but it was hardly the huge step forward intel were hoping for - it didn't ship with support until Win98.
Either way, my point was not "who did it first" but more how it was done - the way the iMac was released, there was a guaranteed new market for peripherals, since there were no legacy ports on it at all. If you wanted a printer you either needed a network one, or a USB one (or a USB to serial converter, which was another new market). For the new PCs, they had these new ports, but you weren't forced into using them - you could just buy a printer or modem or whatever with an old connector, that your machine still supported. Much the same as eSATA finds itself today - there's no huge surge in eSATA drives since USB2 and firewire are on pretty much every machine you can buy, and it's enough for most people.
A firewire mouse or keyboard would just be silly and unnecessary there was never any motive to remove USB in favour of firewire - they both shipped on the iMac, and always have on all future Macs.
Apple *still* has Firewire - it was never a replacement or competitor to USB for peripherals, it was *as well as*.
USB was conceived for things like home printers, scanners, keyboards, mice and so on that didn;t need major bandwidth and IO. Firewire was designed for things that did, like hard drives and video cameras and high-end soundcards and so on - a market it still serves today because it does it very well.
Apple were one of the first to push USB keyboards and mice, alongside the firewire port as well.
It was NEVER Apple's goal to push firewire in spite of USB, until the whole USB2 issue came along, where Intel were trying to shoehorn the high speed, high bandwidth stuff onto it too, which it was never designed for. This is why it theoretically has a higher bandwidth than firewire, but is rarely seen in practice - firewire (and now eSata) is king for that sort of task.
Even then, when USB2 was attempting to kill off firewire (and it did, in all but Macs and for people who needed decent high bandwidth external support), Apple were still going with "USB for low speed stuff, firewire for high speed stuff", although obviously also supported the new USB2 specs.
Firewire is only dead if you have never worked in the pro-video industry, where it is still a major connection component for many cameras and decks for source capture, where SDI or other more esoteric connection systems aren't being used (not all cameras and decks feature SDI, but 95% will support firewire).
"entire history" eh?
That's why Darwin, Webkit, GCC and so on are closed source and proprietary, right? (to name just three things off the top of my head).
It's why they use closed standards like .ics and .mbox, and documented human-readable XML.
iTunes was produced for Windows because the iPod was released for Windows - before that, it was a music player that no one using Windows wanted ("some silly little Mac thing that no one uses"). It didn't come to Windows because it wasn't needed on Windows before then (and Apple aren;t really in the market for writing software for other platforms, and iTunes itself only exists to sell iPods and iPhones).
The first iPod to be Windows compatible was the second gen iPod, which came out 8 months after the original one, in July 2002 - hardly "serious nipple twisting" when the second generation of your product adds Windows compatibility.
We just had an election: stats are king right now for "look at how bad it was under [previous government], but with our new [tough to sell policy] we will be so much better!"
Silverlight may be a Microsoft product, but it is way better than Flash on my OS X machine. MS may be some sort of boogyman, but they managed to do with Silverlight what Adobe has failed or can't be bothered to do with Flash - make it work well on something other than Windows, which is amusing since I didn't think MS would care about making it work well on the Mac. Certainly less than Adobe should care about decent flash performance.
SkyPlayer uses Silverlight, which is Sky's web-based streaming service for subscribers of Sky's satellite TV service in the UK. Sky has quite a large user base, although I'm sure the percentage of its customers who use SkyPlayer is probably quite small.
Yes, and the reason USB is so ubiquitous, was in part because Apple shipped a computer that had USB as the only interface for small/basic devices like keyboards, mice, printers etc that helped to spawn the explosion and growth of the USB peripheral market. They were not the only ones to do this; PC makers were doing it too, but they were shipping boards that had USB and the older connectors like 9 pin serial and the 4 pin kb and mouse connectors that didn't help to push USB as the hot new thing as much as the iMac did - why bother when you can just use the older connectors.
The floppy didn't die directly because of Steve Jobs, but the rise of USB sticks was partially to do with Apple as the USB connector became the de facto low bandwidth peripheral connector in the wake of the iMac (and all subsequent Macs) and the inclusion of the new port alongside the old connectors on new PC boards.
The OS has always supported right click, since at least OS 8.6 - just plug in a 2 button mouse, or use control+click. The single button was all about lack of confusion, but it was not "enforced" if you wanted to be able to right click. So, they listened to the feedback way back when OS 8 was the new thing (in 1997) and provided right click for those that wanted it. The only way this could possibly affect Mac sales if if people didn't actually do any research before purchase and just assumed. Perhaps this is why, in 2010, people still think you cannot right click on a Mac (not that you do think that, but I have seen it on slashdot).
All current Apple mice have right click. They haven't shipped a single button mouse for some time now. The wireless ones are multitouch too.
Apple has always provided right click, since way back in OS 8.6 or earlier (it was very definitely in OS9). Just because the mouse didn't have two buttons didn't mean you couldn't use context menus, either via control+click or via a two button mouse that you just plugged in.
The point of a single click interface (and the one button mouse) was to force a UI where everything that the computer could do *could* be done with only left click, but that didn't mean that context sensitive menus were not included, they were just optional. This is compared to a system where some menus could *only* be accessed via right click, which Apple wanted to avoid.
The dropping of a floppy drive as an obsolete component is nothing like leaving out a second mouse button.
But you can already make a web app on iOS that bypasses the store - it was the original way apps were going to be on the iPhone in the first place, and that method of delivery has never gone away. I don;t think it has anything to do with the store and profit margins - the profit on app sales is pretty slim anyway; the store exists to sell iOS devices, not as a cash cow for Apple indirectly. The devices are where the money is.
Flash is dog, dog slow on OS X right now, even with a lot of CPU grunt, and it has nothing to do with Apple "blocking access to necessary APIs" or the lack of hardware accelerated h.264 that Adobe (or others) will try to claim. It really is woeful at all animation, even when H.264 video is not involved at all. An iPhone version would just be even worse, since there just isn't the CPU grunt to cover up how poor it is. You can get away with it on a desktop machine - you have a 2GHz cpu mostly idle that can help you out with your simple flash page, but on a mobile device you actually have to make the code decent.
The biggest reason there is no Flash on iOS is performance. The HTML5 and open web are secondary concerns.
The 10.1 release of flash is much better on OS X, but it is still a terrible resource hog for no good reason. Even the Mac Silverlight player is much better. I assume MS has the same "access" to the core of OS X as Adobe do.
[citation needed]
Can you show me how Apple's HTML5 implementation differs from anyone elses with some actual proof, or is this just biased anti-Apple ranting, just like the entire article?
I am betting on the former, but I am willing to listen to anyone who can actually back this claim up - a fragmented HTML5 serves no one.
It's going both ways though - this is like a D vs R, except it's broadly turning into Euro vs US for no good reason.
I am a Brit, and do not believe that an American gun culture would do anything to affect the UK crime rate, but I am personally not opposed to guns or gun ownership - one of the first things I did on my last visit to the US was visit a gun store.
The contra-point that seems to have arisen is that us non-gun-legal folk are helpless sheeple controlled by our governments who can do nothing but cower behind a table while people physically bigger than us "do their will" (sorry, just paraphrasing from several comments in this thread).
I've got no problem with gun ownership, but I don't believe it is a magic bullet (ha) for crime reduction and an increase in personal safety with respect to being a victim of violent crime.
That is a very sensationalist piece, and is attempting to link crimes with firearms occurring as a direct result of the UK population being unable to legally own a gun to prevent it. None of the three standout cases at the beginning of the article would have been prevented if people were able to own handguns/firearms, either as a deterrent or as a direct retaliation.
The gun crime rate is remarkably low in this country, even for a a place that bans (most) guns (you can still own and use shotguns for sporting purposes), and even with the hollow "if guns are illegal, only criminals will have guns" hasn't turned us into a lawless wasteland where criminals shoot people with impunity while we all cower behind tables and other forms of cover because we can't shoot back at them.
The other stories in the article are your typical tabloid fare, and are the exception to the rule (and the bulk of them seem to be about the legislation relating to offensive weapons, not guns - which are covered by a separate offence). We don't routinely go around prosecuting women who carry knitting needles, although apparently it is an indication of how we are not protecting our citizens.
While our "violent crime rate" is high in an era where the government can cherry pick the way it displays statistics (that includes the former Labour government), the homicide rate is still low - 1.5 per 100k population, compared to the US's 5.0 per 100k.
There's just no outstanding evidence to suggest that legalising guns for personal defence would have any tangible benefit - especially if the US is the model we are looking at.
Just because you believe that to be the case doesn't mean the current reality will reflect that. You can't just choose *not* not pay the licensing fee for a mpeg2 decoder from Apple (either rolled into the cost of the OS or in the Quicktime Pro fee) because they *do* respect it.
You can, of course, get the mpeg2 encoder from other sources but we're not talking about that in this instance.
I'm not the OP, but that person might just be an arrogant asshole if their entire argument is trashing a movie that they haven't personally seen.
I haven't personally used Red Hat Linux, but I have heard from some reviewers that it is rubbish, so I'm just going to go with that as my opinion. No need to actually experience it for myself to confirm it, eh?
I *have* seen Avatar, and while it is pretty much Pocahontas with a bigger budget, it was no worse than any other action film - it was light years better than Transformers (both of them).
Remember this is wild speculation from a supposed leak. It's not an Apple press release.
Apple know they have the market controlled (on their device) but they're not stupid. Consider the revenue sharing on the app store itself - it's not set up to gouge the developers. I wouldn't imagine this one will be either - but that's just my opinion. YMMV.
Ubuntu even runs on my 15" Powerbook G4 without issue, although it's less graceful with the fan control compared to OS X.
OS X doesn't play blu-ray, but the Mac Mini doesn't necessarily have to run OS X.
You can drop a slot-load BD drive into a Mac Mini and use it from Windows if you choose, or pull the files off it and watch them via XBMC from any of three OSes that the Mini will run.
No, you were marked troll because while you might be succinct with your valid opinion, you put it across like a petulant teenager. The only thing missing was calling anything you dislike "gay" while proclaiming your superior (to you) opinion.
The reason slashdot has been "reduced to" the state it is in is *exactly* because of posts like yours (and I suppose, like mine right here, since I am barely hiding my contempt for such an idiotic reply in response to an obvious moderation decision). Pot, meet kettle.
What are you smoking and where can I get some?
yes, and [osmosis] is also the diffusion of molecules from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration....
you're an idiot.
No, no it really isn't. I suggest you actually look it up before throwing around the "idiot" tag. It's actually very specifically the movement of water molecules across a semi-permeable membrane. Both of those parts of the definition are important. This is compared to diffusion, which just requires a concentration gradient (ie, no membrane required, and the particles in question are not specifically water molecules).
Alternatively you can borrow my shovel if you want to keep digging that hole you're in.
So, you got called on your bullshit and you try to reframe the argument?
The iPad certainly doesn't "[have a] rather pathetic processor for 2010" as you stated - it is pretty much state of the art. If you mean it doesn't have a Core i7 or something, then no, it doesn't. It's far from pathetic for 2010 though.
So, have you actually tried to use it to decode SD content in software, or are you just spouting unconfirmed speculation and regurgitating anti-Apple propaganda?