It's not even that their broadcast products are "great" (and they are) it's that they're the 800 pound gorilla in that market and I'll wager it pays them very well, especially since they've been known for such things as selling a camera and having the power adapter *and* batteries as "optional extras", which makes sense if you only want the body (lens optional too in high end broadcast gear), but you can't half make a fortune on accessories.
Oh I remember - I went to Duxford when I was a child and I stood under the wing of the B52 and marvelled at just how enormous it was.
I didn't have that reaction again until I saw the inside of a Globemaster - it doesn't look very big from the outside, until you peer in through the cargo doors and see people standing in the hold. Hmm, strategic airlift role... check!
And the PM used to be carried around in a military jet for official visits - it was only recently the Government decided to lease two specialised planes (fitted out like AF1 with defences, security equipment, communications etc) at a similar annual cost to using the RAF to move them around.
It's not on the the scale of AF1, but it's a similar idea.
I desperately wanted to see the base at Dayton, but I'm a British citizen so I assumed I probably wouldn't get past the gates (beyond the civilian-safe public areas), and I kept putting it off since I just thought "oh I'll go at some point", and of course now I'm not likely to be back in Ohio full time ever again (back living in the UK).
Dayton has the B2 prototype/mockup aircraft that I really wanted to see too.
Well, he didn't get a Concorde because, while it can fly faster and higher than a 747, it is *very* small compared to the jumbo, so has no room for all the advisors, radars, communication equipment, etc etc, and also requires considerably more fuel stops than a 747, so it is either hobbled anyway by having to fly near to (or between) tanker aircraft, or it has to keep landing.
No, there's far more sensible reasons not to use a Concorde as a flying command station that doubles as an airtaxi, and none of them are "it's not made by America!".
No idea, but likely to be as old as the first down line system itself. Every camera covering the game has at least two XLR inputs for audio, so grabbing one of those and running XLRs to the OB truck sure beats having to roll your own wired system. The crew can just break out the super long XLRs that they already have for long range audio/mics etc.
That was the data transmission. They encode all the data the sensors collect and send it via audio - since the camera has a spare audio channel (some have 4 or more) to get the data from the camera to the OB truck. There's no need to design a transport system, or use something like ethernet or wireless networking when you can just piggy back on the camera's own systems that are going to the truck anyway.
It's a genius move on the part of the designers of the system -seems so obvious when it;s in place, but they probably puzzled on how to do it effectively before coming up with that solution. "Sometimes you have to look backwards to go forwards".
While it is not upgradable in the same way that a tower is, it ticks *a lot* of the boxes for the typical home comouter user who is looking to buy a machine and is starting to look at other places than Windows.
It's said all the time, but the slashdot crowd does not make up the bulk of the computer buying public. The iMac is a great platform for them - the bulk of the computer buying public do not upgrade them, they simply replace them with the newest models. The fact that they *were* upgradabe likely wasn't a selling point, it was just a side effect. If they did buy it with the upgrade path in mind, then they're not looking at Mac just yet - they're sticking with their old computer).
Apple are not blind to the market at large - if they saw a profitable niche that they could exploit with their hardware then they'd go for it. As it is, they are shifting laptops by the ton, moving iMacs by slightly less than that, and they have the hyper overkill Mac Pro for the pro market that really does need the PCI-e expansion.
The iMac itself comes with everything it needs, so an expansion slot would really just be wasted (and a esoteric PCI-e card that connects to your specific media system, for example, only applies to 0.1% of the potential buying public) - you have ethernet, firewire, usb, extra dvi port, wireless, webcam, bluetooth, optical and analogue audio in and out and an accessible RAM bay if you want to upgrade that. There's no need to add any extra function with expansion cards, and if you really need to, there's likely a USB or firewire version that attaches externally.
I'm not doubting that the iMac us unsuitable for some customers who need expansion ability, just that fir the vast number of people, it suits just fine.
Heh, perhaps so. It really does need some serious work, and there must be a compelling reason that Apple haven't done so already - given all the changes they've made to other parts of the OS to improve them (or attempt to, depending on your outlook), the Finder is a big, gaping black hole.
They cannot possibly think it's the pinnacle of file management tools.
It's *really* slow - much slower than could be expected even for a 802.11b speeds, and it doesn't like interrupted backups.
It's easier and faster to just hook up a local drive and make backups yourself (or use Time Machine). If you need the multiple-machine-to-one-location solution there are better ways to do it with a tiny bit more effort.
While Apple have tried to make it nice and easy, you are paying a severe price for the convenience.
That's what it should do, but sometimes it just doesn't refresh the window. It will if you do any operation locally, like making a new directory, but if you delete or create a file on a remote share, remotely (Mac makes a new file in directory A on its own HD, Second Mac is viewing that directory in a Finder Window over the network) then sometimes it auto updates with no need for a refresh. Other times it will just sit there as if nothing has changed - even if you go back one level and then open the directory again, it sometimes won't update.
The network hang and the single thread problems have been addressed, I just mention them as legacy problems that I used to have but are now solved.
I'm not saying the Finder is the worst application ever to grace a Mac, but it is feeling its age a little.
Sorting in column view, single-threaded process in the early days (so it would hang there with the beachball and not let you do anything until the network share timed out, or whatever it was doing and waiting on), no easy way to interact with special attribute files and folders (like files beginning with a period or other files and folders hidden from the Finder by default, locked files and their interaction with the Trash (for non advanced users), no single keystroke to refresh a directory window you have open (so you sometimes have to resort to making a new directory in the window to force it to update the contents. You also can't hide it if it's the only foreground app (which I guess makes some sense, since you need at least one app in the foreground, so you need to pull something else out of hiding before you can hide the Finder if you're down to those last two apps.
Ok, strike that last one - whatever app is the only "unhidden" app refuses to hide if it's the only one left, this is not limited to the Finder.
There may be more, but I just carry on with it. I thought about Pathfinder, but I figured that with the amount of admin of other people's machines that I do, if I am expecting Pathfinder on each one of them, it would just frustrate me further, and the annoyances of the Finder, while bad, are not enough to get me to buy an app to replace it just yet.
Oh I know a lot about the Explorer - I look after several Windows boxes, they just don't belong to me - I just couldn't remember what it was called, since I get to it on Windows by aiming at "My Computer" or "Documents" and drilling up or down from there, and I know it goes by neither of those names.
I'm not your typical slashdot animal - I won't talk shit about a computer app unless I've actually used it. Perhaps it was better that you concealed your identity; wouldn't want to look silly now, would we?
You think it would be hard to install a standard, off the shelf hard drive into a mac tower without buying them from Apple? Or the standard, off the shelf, industry standard RAM (into riser cards that are really easy to remove and swap out RAM sticks)? Or a PCI/PCI Express card that fits into a totally standard slot on the logic board, and fits with no need for screws?
The only thing that might give you trouble is the graphics card because you need one with a Mac-specific firmware on it, but you don;t have to buy that from Apple, or the PSU which is replaceable in a PC tower but may need service work for the Mac Pro (I believe they changed the design to make it possible for a home user to change the PSU at one of the revisions, but I can't remember). The other items in the case are specific to the Mac Pro and are no different from any other proprietary case (like brackets, widgets etc), which includes the heat sinks and fans, since the logic board and cpu assemblies are not changable like a PC motherboard, if you need new ones, you can get them from Apple. The front and rear fan assemblies for the Mac Pro I had were user serviceable and were easy to put in and out (no screws - they were push fit, and guided by plastic rails).
The SATA hard drive was a standard model, that I replaced with a bigger one from a white box store. There's space for more drives in the case, and each bay has a little caddy ready to accept your standard drive. When you've installed it into thise caddy it slides into the Mac Pro and locks into place with no need for screws. There's no cables, since these are built into the caddy, with the SATA connector on the front that docks with the tower once the caddy is locked into place.
I installed a third party gigabit ethernet card (no need for screws) and a third party HDMI card from Decklink (again, no screws) in about 10 minutes, including the time it took to open the external case (no screws - it just has a handle on the back that you lift from flush that unlocks all the internal latches so you can easily remove the side).
Your post makes it sound like you've never even looked inside a Mac Pro before, let alone worked on one.
Regarding sending all your data off to Apple because you need it repaired. Well, I'm going to say it but if your data is that important to you, you can just restore it from the backup you made. If the data that is trapped on the broken machine is life and death, then you've either been extremely unlucky (work you've done that is irreplaceable since the last backup, or b) you don;t backup enough.
If you carry mission-critical, life or death, can't lose this or the world ends, data on your laptop then you really have to back it up on creation (who knows when you might damage the laptop, lose the laptop, or the laptop might break down). The same applies to your desktop machine. If your data is that important, you need to back it up so that if your 5 year old gives you a birthday present while you're away by washing your computer in the dishwasher, you'll be able to restore your data and carry on on another machine.
Well, someone other than just Mac fans must be buying Macs, since their yearly sales growth continues to outpace the growth of the computer industry at large.
You can assume that your standard Mac fanbase is buying as normal, but even they don;t have infinite purchasing power, or the ability to keep the growth in sales of Macs above that of PCs - if your userbase isn't expanding, you're not really going to see that sort of growth, especially in the turbulent financial environment.
It's anecdotal, but I introduced my friends to Mac when they upgraded their machines, but only when they were ready for it (ie, they were getting a new computer anyway). The lump-sum purchase of a new machine makes the uptake (and the risk of a platform switch) take a little bit longer, compared to an iPod or an iPhone.
Apple is in a *great* position with the iPhone and I can only see it driving more people to the Apple store for a Mac - using an iPhone is joy (mostly, and for most people) and works in a very "mac like way". A proportion of the people using it are going to want that same experience from their home machine, and the Mac is right there for them when they are ready.
I'm sure there is an element of the subculture, or 'cult' of Apple surrounding their products (I'm likely part of it since I waited in line at the first UK Apple store in Birmingham and I was about the 20th person inside), but you're going to see that sort of culture around any popular and "cool" product (or even not so cool - take a look at the Morris Marina club, or the Morris Minor club). Apple's club may be large, but I don't just have several Mac computers because that's what's expected of me, and put up with deficiencies in the product I use because it really must be Apple - I use Macs because they do everything I want them too (mostly) and are far more pleasant than the alternative.
To head off the "you can do it all for free with Linux and not have to deal with the heathen non-totally-OSS operating system" types, I have installed Ubuntu 8.10 on one of my Powerbooks, rather than upgrading it to OS X 10.5 and am currently looking at how well I can get Ubuntu and OS X to work for me as a multi-OS home environment. I have no Windows boxes anywhere in the house.
As a closer, I'll just add that while I'm probably the typical Mac fanboy (I have multiple Macs, have an iPod, buy music on iTunes, looking at changing to an iPhone when my phone contract is up, use Apple-designed peripherals rather than cheaper alternatives [bluetooth keyboard, igloo airport base station etc), I'm not totally blinded by the Apple cult - I dislike the Finder with the passion of a thousand burning suns because it sucks, I won't buy Time Capsule because it also sucks and I really would be buying the brand over quality/value if I did. I'm not going to just swallow that because it;s almighty Apple. However, at least the Finder is better than Explorer for windows (or whatever the file manager is called on vista nowadays).
No more or less wear and tear than a giant dock connector that you're going to need between the laptop and your docking station.
The MacBook Pro has USB ports for your keyboard and mouse (or you can have the mouse connected to the keyboard) and a mini display connector, which with an adapter to hook up to your display connector of choice is a quick friction-fit port on the side.
So, to "dock" your Macbook pro currently you need to plug in your USB keyboard, mini display connector and you're away.
If you want to keep the connections down to a minimum, you can connect a USB hub to your keyboard (or the keyboard to the hub and the hub into the MacBook when you 'dock up'), then your other peripherals can connect to that hub. If you need a firewire connection or absolutely must have a wired ethernet connection (say you just want to be assured of connectivity or you have some big files to move over GigE) then the port is right there on the side.
You don't need to fiddle about behind the laptop to plug anything in, so there's really no need for a cumbersome docking station any more - the convenience factor of mating the typically large multi connector between the base and the laptop isn't better than the few seconds it takes to hook up a couple of cables. Double downside is that now I have a large docking port on my laptop that I have to protect from damage that is either on the bottom or side of my laptop, making the laptop bigger or adding some sort of panel I have to remove, or some mechanism that opens up like a set of doors. Either way, it's an extra "weakness" in the case (along with the already existing ports that really have to be there anyway).
I just don't see a dock as a piece of hardware that people really want - it's main useful function (beyond one stop connection to laptop) is to be a hub for peripherals, and in the vast majority of cases for consumer devices now, a simple, small USB hub will take care of that if you need it (or you have wireless printing, or remote device sharing if the laptop is not the main machine).
iTunes is offering me the ability to upgrade my purchased music here in the UK, but is unable to do so at the moment (times out - I think everyone and his dog is hitting the store server right now), so it is international.
UK price is 20p per song, or 25% of album price, so around £1.50 to £2.
The iTunes store has been selling DRM-free songs for some time now, but only a limited selection - I have one or two of those tracks, since I tried to get those if they were available (naturally). The big news is the whole-store migration.
You are complaining about adding RAM to a device that Apple sold with a warning that the RAM was not designed to be user-serviceable. It's not hard to do if you're used to working on laptops and small electronics, but don't complain about "un-openable" s a downside when you're buying a computer that's the size of a few CD boxes, and is very obviously a laptop without a screen, in a much smaller footprint - of course it's going to be hard to upgrade!
You don;t see me complaining that the Macbook is "unopenable" - sure it's easier to upgrade the RAM on a Macbook than a Mini, but small devices are often hard to work on.
Apple's design choices for some of their key products make then a pain in the ass to work on (have you ever taken apart a 12" Aluminium Powerbook? Changing out the optical drive on those bad boys is like something out of The Krypton Factor).
They sell the "un-openable" devices (that are easy enough to work on if you have the skills for it) and they sell "openable" ones - like the Mac Pro, which are the very picture of easy access (no screws! all levers and toggles!). The old G4 boxes with the handles were a breeze to work on compared to PC cases of the time.
If buying a computer that is difficult to work on is not for you then who am I to argue, but I feel I must point out the two sides to the Apple "accessibility" coin - for very small devices, it's just harder.
Well, it depends how much volume you use having to create a bay for the battery, with walls to cut it off from internal components, then a way to hold the battery in, so tabs on one side and a mechanism on the other to latch it in (or some other metod to hold it in there), then a study connection point for the terminals inside this bay.
Now you have to engineer your removable battery to be more sturdy than an internal one only (since it has to be able to easily survive in a computer bag, or through repeated handling that an internal-only battery doesn't have to be so concerned with, since it has the external case to protect it and is not subject to removal and handling as often.
Also now, you can create a very oddly-shaped battery to fill awkward spaces that would otherwise be wasted if you had to use a more conventional shape that is easy to remove (and more difficult to damage).
So all together you have a battery that has a) less duplicated protective casing (battery itself and battery bay in laptop), b) capable of being moulded into odd shape to take advantage of extra space, c), no need for latches and other components to hold the battery in and enable it to interface with the DC board (you can just have it fixed inside the case with a smaller system, and just have a couple of flying leads and a simple IC plug to mate it to your power system - no need for quick release terminals.
As soon as these things go on sale you know someone is going to take it apart and see what they've done inside the case. 28% more volume doesn't sound outlandish when you can dispense with a lot of the compromises you have to make when the computer itself has to be designed around the battery being removable - the battery might be really thin and sandwiched very intricately around all the components, which have now been able to spread out a little since there's no defined battery bay any more.
The one thing they really do need to change about the tutorial is the invention step - when you have to make a character named "Villiard Wheels" that you can link to in rookie chat, whose bio page has a step by step instruction list to be able to do that part of the tutorial, then it's too advanced at that stage of the game.
While you can get use to it pretty quickly, the invention/research/manufacturing system can be a little daunting at first, especially if you've only been playing for an hour or so and all you've done is shoot a rat with your civvy blaster, and mine a bit of veld with your civvy miner.
However, you can quickly spot the rookies that will soon be leaving the world - "what does it mean when I click my gun and it says 'out of ammo'?", or "how do I shoot at enemies!"
Slashdot Mirror
It's not even that their broadcast products are "great" (and they are) it's that they're the 800 pound gorilla in that market and I'll wager it pays them very well, especially since they've been known for such things as selling a camera and having the power adapter *and* batteries as "optional extras", which makes sense if you only want the body (lens optional too in high end broadcast gear), but you can't half make a fortune on accessories.
Oh I remember - I went to Duxford when I was a child and I stood under the wing of the B52 and marvelled at just how enormous it was.
I didn't have that reaction again until I saw the inside of a Globemaster - it doesn't look very big from the outside, until you peer in through the cargo doors and see people standing in the hold. Hmm, strategic airlift role... check!
Then that settles it - I'll be going back to visit that museum next time I'm in the US in that area.
And the PM used to be carried around in a military jet for official visits - it was only recently the Government decided to lease two specialised planes (fitted out like AF1 with defences, security equipment, communications etc) at a similar annual cost to using the RAF to move them around.
It's not on the the scale of AF1, but it's a similar idea.
I desperately wanted to see the base at Dayton, but I'm a British citizen so I assumed I probably wouldn't get past the gates (beyond the civilian-safe public areas), and I kept putting it off since I just thought "oh I'll go at some point", and of course now I'm not likely to be back in Ohio full time ever again (back living in the UK).
Dayton has the B2 prototype/mockup aircraft that I really wanted to see too.
Well, he didn't get a Concorde because, while it can fly faster and higher than a 747, it is *very* small compared to the jumbo, so has no room for all the advisors, radars, communication equipment, etc etc, and also requires considerably more fuel stops than a 747, so it is either hobbled anyway by having to fly near to (or between) tanker aircraft, or it has to keep landing.
No, there's far more sensible reasons not to use a Concorde as a flying command station that doubles as an airtaxi, and none of them are "it's not made by America!".
No idea, but likely to be as old as the first down line system itself. Every camera covering the game has at least two XLR inputs for audio, so grabbing one of those and running XLRs to the OB truck sure beats having to roll your own wired system. The crew can just break out the super long XLRs that they already have for long range audio/mics etc.
That was the data transmission. They encode all the data the sensors collect and send it via audio - since the camera has a spare audio channel (some have 4 or more) to get the data from the camera to the OB truck. There's no need to design a transport system, or use something like ethernet or wireless networking when you can just piggy back on the camera's own systems that are going to the truck anyway.
It's a genius move on the part of the designers of the system -seems so obvious when it;s in place, but they probably puzzled on how to do it effectively before coming up with that solution. "Sometimes you have to look backwards to go forwards".
The home computer that does this is the iMac.
While it is not upgradable in the same way that a tower is, it ticks *a lot* of the boxes for the typical home comouter user who is looking to buy a machine and is starting to look at other places than Windows.
It's said all the time, but the slashdot crowd does not make up the bulk of the computer buying public. The iMac is a great platform for them - the bulk of the computer buying public do not upgrade them, they simply replace them with the newest models. The fact that they *were* upgradabe likely wasn't a selling point, it was just a side effect. If they did buy it with the upgrade path in mind, then they're not looking at Mac just yet - they're sticking with their old computer).
Apple are not blind to the market at large - if they saw a profitable niche that they could exploit with their hardware then they'd go for it. As it is, they are shifting laptops by the ton, moving iMacs by slightly less than that, and they have the hyper overkill Mac Pro for the pro market that really does need the PCI-e expansion.
The iMac itself comes with everything it needs, so an expansion slot would really just be wasted (and a esoteric PCI-e card that connects to your specific media system, for example, only applies to 0.1% of the potential buying public) - you have ethernet, firewire, usb, extra dvi port, wireless, webcam, bluetooth, optical and analogue audio in and out and an accessible RAM bay if you want to upgrade that. There's no need to add any extra function with expansion cards, and if you really need to, there's likely a USB or firewire version that attaches externally.
I'm not doubting that the iMac us unsuitable for some customers who need expansion ability, just that fir the vast number of people, it suits just fine.
IPv6?
No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame.
Heh, perhaps so. It really does need some serious work, and there must be a compelling reason that Apple haven't done so already - given all the changes they've made to other parts of the OS to improve them (or attempt to, depending on your outlook), the Finder is a big, gaping black hole.
They cannot possibly think it's the pinnacle of file management tools.
Tom Nok: "wawaweeewaaawaaeeeeewawewaaweewaa?!!!"
"Me "For the last time! I do not understand your fucked up language! Eat chainsaw bayonet!!!"
It works, it's just soooooo slooooooow. Much slower than it should be.
It's like watching paint dry.
It's *really* slow - much slower than could be expected even for a 802.11b speeds, and it doesn't like interrupted backups.
It's easier and faster to just hook up a local drive and make backups yourself (or use Time Machine). If you need the multiple-machine-to-one-location solution there are better ways to do it with a tiny bit more effort.
While Apple have tried to make it nice and easy, you are paying a severe price for the convenience.
That's what it should do, but sometimes it just doesn't refresh the window. It will if you do any operation locally, like making a new directory, but if you delete or create a file on a remote share, remotely (Mac makes a new file in directory A on its own HD, Second Mac is viewing that directory in a Finder Window over the network) then sometimes it auto updates with no need for a refresh. Other times it will just sit there as if nothing has changed - even if you go back one level and then open the directory again, it sometimes won't update.
The network hang and the single thread problems have been addressed, I just mention them as legacy problems that I used to have but are now solved.
I'm not saying the Finder is the worst application ever to grace a Mac, but it is feeling its age a little.
Sorting in column view, single-threaded process in the early days (so it would hang there with the beachball and not let you do anything until the network share timed out, or whatever it was doing and waiting on), no easy way to interact with special attribute files and folders (like files beginning with a period or other files and folders hidden from the Finder by default, locked files and their interaction with the Trash (for non advanced users), no single keystroke to refresh a directory window you have open (so you sometimes have to resort to making a new directory in the window to force it to update the contents. You also can't hide it if it's the only foreground app (which I guess makes some sense, since you need at least one app in the foreground, so you need to pull something else out of hiding before you can hide the Finder if you're down to those last two apps.
Ok, strike that last one - whatever app is the only "unhidden" app refuses to hide if it's the only one left, this is not limited to the Finder.
There may be more, but I just carry on with it. I thought about Pathfinder, but I figured that with the amount of admin of other people's machines that I do, if I am expecting Pathfinder on each one of them, it would just frustrate me further, and the annoyances of the Finder, while bad, are not enough to get me to buy an app to replace it just yet.
Oh I know a lot about the Explorer - I look after several Windows boxes, they just don't belong to me - I just couldn't remember what it was called, since I get to it on Windows by aiming at "My Computer" or "Documents" and drilling up or down from there, and I know it goes by neither of those names.
I'm not your typical slashdot animal - I won't talk shit about a computer app unless I've actually used it. Perhaps it was better that you concealed your identity; wouldn't want to look silly now, would we?
You think it would be hard to install a standard, off the shelf hard drive into a mac tower without buying them from Apple? Or the standard, off the shelf, industry standard RAM (into riser cards that are really easy to remove and swap out RAM sticks)? Or a PCI/PCI Express card that fits into a totally standard slot on the logic board, and fits with no need for screws?
The only thing that might give you trouble is the graphics card because you need one with a Mac-specific firmware on it, but you don;t have to buy that from Apple, or the PSU which is replaceable in a PC tower but may need service work for the Mac Pro (I believe they changed the design to make it possible for a home user to change the PSU at one of the revisions, but I can't remember). The other items in the case are specific to the Mac Pro and are no different from any other proprietary case (like brackets, widgets etc), which includes the heat sinks and fans, since the logic board and cpu assemblies are not changable like a PC motherboard, if you need new ones, you can get them from Apple. The front and rear fan assemblies for the Mac Pro I had were user serviceable and were easy to put in and out (no screws - they were push fit, and guided by plastic rails).
The SATA hard drive was a standard model, that I replaced with a bigger one from a white box store. There's space for more drives in the case, and each bay has a little caddy ready to accept your standard drive. When you've installed it into thise caddy it slides into the Mac Pro and locks into place with no need for screws. There's no cables, since these are built into the caddy, with the SATA connector on the front that docks with the tower once the caddy is locked into place.
I installed a third party gigabit ethernet card (no need for screws) and a third party HDMI card from Decklink (again, no screws) in about 10 minutes, including the time it took to open the external case (no screws - it just has a handle on the back that you lift from flush that unlocks all the internal latches so you can easily remove the side).
Your post makes it sound like you've never even looked inside a Mac Pro before, let alone worked on one.
Regarding sending all your data off to Apple because you need it repaired. Well, I'm going to say it but if your data is that important to you, you can just restore it from the backup you made. If the data that is trapped on the broken machine is life and death, then you've either been extremely unlucky (work you've done that is irreplaceable since the last backup, or b) you don;t backup enough.
If you carry mission-critical, life or death, can't lose this or the world ends, data on your laptop then you really have to back it up on creation (who knows when you might damage the laptop, lose the laptop, or the laptop might break down). The same applies to your desktop machine. If your data is that important, you need to back it up so that if your 5 year old gives you a birthday present while you're away by washing your computer in the dishwasher, you'll be able to restore your data and carry on on another machine.
Did you put in Paul McGann? Or do you just treat that like an actual episode and pretend it was an alternate reality?
And on David's successor, a big "umm, maybe" from me - I was really hoping for Simon Pegg.
Well, someone other than just Mac fans must be buying Macs, since their yearly sales growth continues to outpace the growth of the computer industry at large.
You can assume that your standard Mac fanbase is buying as normal, but even they don;t have infinite purchasing power, or the ability to keep the growth in sales of Macs above that of PCs - if your userbase isn't expanding, you're not really going to see that sort of growth, especially in the turbulent financial environment.
It's anecdotal, but I introduced my friends to Mac when they upgraded their machines, but only when they were ready for it (ie, they were getting a new computer anyway). The lump-sum purchase of a new machine makes the uptake (and the risk of a platform switch) take a little bit longer, compared to an iPod or an iPhone.
Apple is in a *great* position with the iPhone and I can only see it driving more people to the Apple store for a Mac - using an iPhone is joy (mostly, and for most people) and works in a very "mac like way". A proportion of the people using it are going to want that same experience from their home machine, and the Mac is right there for them when they are ready.
I'm sure there is an element of the subculture, or 'cult' of Apple surrounding their products (I'm likely part of it since I waited in line at the first UK Apple store in Birmingham and I was about the 20th person inside), but you're going to see that sort of culture around any popular and "cool" product (or even not so cool - take a look at the Morris Marina club, or the Morris Minor club). Apple's club may be large, but I don't just have several Mac computers because that's what's expected of me, and put up with deficiencies in the product I use because it really must be Apple - I use Macs because they do everything I want them too (mostly) and are far more pleasant than the alternative.
To head off the "you can do it all for free with Linux and not have to deal with the heathen non-totally-OSS operating system" types, I have installed Ubuntu 8.10 on one of my Powerbooks, rather than upgrading it to OS X 10.5 and am currently looking at how well I can get Ubuntu and OS X to work for me as a multi-OS home environment. I have no Windows boxes anywhere in the house.
As a closer, I'll just add that while I'm probably the typical Mac fanboy (I have multiple Macs, have an iPod, buy music on iTunes, looking at changing to an iPhone when my phone contract is up, use Apple-designed peripherals rather than cheaper alternatives [bluetooth keyboard, igloo airport base station etc), I'm not totally blinded by the Apple cult - I dislike the Finder with the passion of a thousand burning suns because it sucks, I won't buy Time Capsule because it also sucks and I really would be buying the brand over quality/value if I did. I'm not going to just swallow that because it;s almighty Apple. However, at least the Finder is better than Explorer for windows (or whatever the file manager is called on vista nowadays).
No more or less wear and tear than a giant dock connector that you're going to need between the laptop and your docking station.
The MacBook Pro has USB ports for your keyboard and mouse (or you can have the mouse connected to the keyboard) and a mini display connector, which with an adapter to hook up to your display connector of choice is a quick friction-fit port on the side.
So, to "dock" your Macbook pro currently you need to plug in your USB keyboard, mini display connector and you're away.
If you want to keep the connections down to a minimum, you can connect a USB hub to your keyboard (or the keyboard to the hub and the hub into the MacBook when you 'dock up'), then your other peripherals can connect to that hub. If you need a firewire connection or absolutely must have a wired ethernet connection (say you just want to be assured of connectivity or you have some big files to move over GigE) then the port is right there on the side.
You don't need to fiddle about behind the laptop to plug anything in, so there's really no need for a cumbersome docking station any more - the convenience factor of mating the typically large multi connector between the base and the laptop isn't better than the few seconds it takes to hook up a couple of cables. Double downside is that now I have a large docking port on my laptop that I have to protect from damage that is either on the bottom or side of my laptop, making the laptop bigger or adding some sort of panel I have to remove, or some mechanism that opens up like a set of doors. Either way, it's an extra "weakness" in the case (along with the already existing ports that really have to be there anyway).
I just don't see a dock as a piece of hardware that people really want - it's main useful function (beyond one stop connection to laptop) is to be a hub for peripherals, and in the vast majority of cases for consumer devices now, a simple, small USB hub will take care of that if you need it (or you have wireless printing, or remote device sharing if the laptop is not the main machine).
iTunes is offering me the ability to upgrade my purchased music here in the UK, but is unable to do so at the moment (times out - I think everyone and his dog is hitting the store server right now), so it is international.
UK price is 20p per song, or 25% of album price, so around £1.50 to £2.
The iTunes store has been selling DRM-free songs for some time now, but only a limited selection - I have one or two of those tracks, since I tried to get those if they were available (naturally). The big news is the whole-store migration.
You are complaining about adding RAM to a device that Apple sold with a warning that the RAM was not designed to be user-serviceable. It's not hard to do if you're used to working on laptops and small electronics, but don't complain about "un-openable" s a downside when you're buying a computer that's the size of a few CD boxes, and is very obviously a laptop without a screen, in a much smaller footprint - of course it's going to be hard to upgrade!
You don;t see me complaining that the Macbook is "unopenable" - sure it's easier to upgrade the RAM on a Macbook than a Mini, but small devices are often hard to work on.
Apple's design choices for some of their key products make then a pain in the ass to work on (have you ever taken apart a 12" Aluminium Powerbook? Changing out the optical drive on those bad boys is like something out of The Krypton Factor).
They sell the "un-openable" devices (that are easy enough to work on if you have the skills for it) and they sell "openable" ones - like the Mac Pro, which are the very picture of easy access (no screws! all levers and toggles!). The old G4 boxes with the handles were a breeze to work on compared to PC cases of the time.
If buying a computer that is difficult to work on is not for you then who am I to argue, but I feel I must point out the two sides to the Apple "accessibility" coin - for very small devices, it's just harder.
Well, it depends how much volume you use having to create a bay for the battery, with walls to cut it off from internal components, then a way to hold the battery in, so tabs on one side and a mechanism on the other to latch it in (or some other metod to hold it in there), then a study connection point for the terminals inside this bay.
Now you have to engineer your removable battery to be more sturdy than an internal one only (since it has to be able to easily survive in a computer bag, or through repeated handling that an internal-only battery doesn't have to be so concerned with, since it has the external case to protect it and is not subject to removal and handling as often.
Also now, you can create a very oddly-shaped battery to fill awkward spaces that would otherwise be wasted if you had to use a more conventional shape that is easy to remove (and more difficult to damage).
So all together you have a battery that has a) less duplicated protective casing (battery itself and battery bay in laptop), b) capable of being moulded into odd shape to take advantage of extra space, c), no need for latches and other components to hold the battery in and enable it to interface with the DC board (you can just have it fixed inside the case with a smaller system, and just have a couple of flying leads and a simple IC plug to mate it to your power system - no need for quick release terminals.
As soon as these things go on sale you know someone is going to take it apart and see what they've done inside the case. 28% more volume doesn't sound outlandish when you can dispense with a lot of the compromises you have to make when the computer itself has to be designed around the battery being removable - the battery might be really thin and sandwiched very intricately around all the components, which have now been able to spread out a little since there's no defined battery bay any more.
The one thing they really do need to change about the tutorial is the invention step - when you have to make a character named "Villiard Wheels" that you can link to in rookie chat, whose bio page has a step by step instruction list to be able to do that part of the tutorial, then it's too advanced at that stage of the game.
While you can get use to it pretty quickly, the invention/research/manufacturing system can be a little daunting at first, especially if you've only been playing for an hour or so and all you've done is shoot a rat with your civvy blaster, and mine a bit of veld with your civvy miner.
However, you can quickly spot the rookies that will soon be leaving the world - "what does it mean when I click my gun and it says 'out of ammo'?", or "how do I shoot at enemies!"