The greater the sweep of a wing, the less compressible drag it creates.
A high level of sweep is used in fighters and high speed aircraft because of this - however, it makes the plane somewhat unstable at low speeds thus making take off and landing difficult (you must do both at higher speeds).
A delta wing is essentially a big triangle - like very swept back wings, so it performs very similarly to swept wings.
Great for high speed flight, but very poor at lower speeds - a model aircraft would suffer since the speeds necessary to develop lift would be higher than a normal model plane.
The dock connector is essentially a custom firewire port - it can pretty much do anything you want it to that you could do with FW plus a few other things, like line out, which will no doubt be a set of extra pins on the connector that a normal firwire port will ignore (it only connects 6 of the contacts) but that other devices like the iPod dock take advantage of.
It sounds like Apple has planned this sort of function (interoperation with 3rd party kit) from the beginning.
I still have a 9600/300 running downstairs - it's been through the wars somewhat and is pretty beaten up but it still works and has never given me a single problem.
The same is true for my 600Mhz G3 iBook - that's younger, only 2 years old, but she's still pretty much as good as new apart from having a 'lived in look'. Structurally sound and everything feels as solid as it did when I used her for the first time.
We use a Dual 450 G4 as a Final Cut Pro 4 edit suite to this day (alongside a dual 2 gig G5 box that we bought in December). That DP 450 is churning out broadcast material without so much as a sneeze, and it's still bombproof.
Every Mac I've ever come across (a lot) have been rugged, consistent performers with the build quality to match.
Every PC I've come across has been shoddy 'built to last a year' construction with bits that break off, things that stop working, hardware that becomes slow if you want to run the latest OS (OS X is actually faster on my iBook now that it was when I bought it two years ago).
Yes, there are exceptions in the PC world, but that's all they are - exceptions to a crappy build quality rule. Sure the hard drive might be the same as the one in a Mac, but the chassis isn't engineered as well, the exterior panels, that fans used wear out and start to vibrate, cheap 'filler' parts like modem cards, budget CD drives etc that PC vendors use to keep the costs down stop working after a time, or worse, used drivers that have long since been lost for most machines and you have no hope of finding them if the card is unmarked (at least not without hassle).
My friend dropped my iBook on the floor from a few feet (something for which I've forgiven her) and you'd never be able to tell - nothing broke, nothing chipped, no dents or scratches. That was 6 months after I bought it. Don't tell me your average PC laptop would survive a fall completely unbroken (while open and running)? Maybe a Thinkpad, but they have that horrible nipple mouse (not that I have anything against nipples mind you, just that they don't make very effective navigation devices).
It obviously depends what you're buying, but Macs tend to have a longer useful life than PCs and as such, cost more second hand.
I doubt you're anti-Apple, base on that post, however, so I don't really need to point that out.
As for hardware.. well, I don't see many people moaning about how Mercedes and BMW make expensive cars that you could get cheaper if you went for Skoda or Ford.
You think Apple machines don't hold their value any more because they use off the shelf hardware?
Go poke about on ebay for a while in the Mac section and compare G3, G4, Cubes, iMacs, Powerbooks and iBooks against x86 boxen of the same age - there's no comparison.
Apple kit depeciates much, much more slowly that x86.
I have an old school MD recorder (Sony MZ-R30 - one of the early models with the lithium ion batteries before they went miniature and changed to smaller NiMH ones or single AA).
I also have an iPod. Both are about the same for surface toughness - I've had my iPod for almost a year now in pretty heavy use without scratches on the surface.
I agree it's probably less durable (on the front face) than my trusty MD recorder.
Most of the external surface area of the iPod is aluminium - all of the back and most of the sides.
Only the front face is polycarbonate, and I would hardly call that a cheap white plastic - I'd call it bullet proof glass (although it's treated differently in that guise).
Re:Still way outdated, Apple fanatics please read.
on
Apple Revises eMac
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· Score: 1
Toast 6 is indispensable to me, and far and away the best CD burning app I've ever come across on any platform.
BBEdit was nice, but I prefer SubEthaEdit for what I do (mainly html and css).
My list of apps to go on after a nuke and pave:
NcFTP - can't live without it. CLI only, but that's the way to go with ftp for me. Used to have to build from source, but there's an OS X binary installer available now to make my life easier.
SubEthaEdit - great icon, great app. Does exactly what it says on the tin. Works great as a standalone editor, but the shared edit features have been useful from time to time.
Toast Titanium 6 - indispensable. Perfection in a CD burning app.
Adium - necessary on my humble 600Mhz iBook which is still going strong. It has a small footprint and is much less CPU heavy than iChat or and of the other clients.
TinyFugue - again, used to have to build this from source, but no longer. I've tried other MUD clients, but this one keeps me loyal.
Photoshop 7 - can't afford the Creative Suite yet, so on the old one (which is still perfectly fine). Runs pretty well on my battered G3 iBook.
XRegion - simple app that allows me to change the region code on my DVD drive (firmware upgraded to unlock/uncripple it).
That's pretty much it - music, mail and browsing is taken care of with the apps Apple provides.
Oh, I almost forgot: Quake III Arena. Ok, so it's a little ropey on my iBook, but it's good for a couple of quick DMs on q3dm17 while waiting in airport lounges.
It plays better on my G5 box, but then I'd expect no less! The vital app install list is the same for the G5 except for two more apps that facilitate my living: Final Cut Pro 4 and DVD Studio Pro 1.5.
Re:Depends on your philosophy, doesn't it
on
Apple Revises eMac
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· Score: 1
It's not just Darwin that they are "giving back" you know. They have added considerable drive to KHTML as just one example.
And improvements to things like zeroconf - they didn't just splash a flashy French name on it and use it to sell computers.
Apple exists to make money, first and foremost. As a sideline, I think they're doing a pretty good job giving back the community that helped them get a leg up (but isn't solely responsible) toward their success with OS X.
Besides, if you don't like OS X for that reason, Apple still makes great hardware that you can stick Linux on. You can even buy Macs with YDL pre installed so you don't have to pay the "tax" for an OS you won't use.
Re:What do you say now zealots? (Socre:5, Insightf
on
iPod Mini Design Flaw?
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
I think they are bringing back fat binaries so that they can have 64-bit optimised apps for the G5 line that will work on the previous G4 and G3 generations without hassle.
Not sure if any of Apple's apps actually employ this yet.
The only proprietary hardware components in a Mac are the motherboard (logic board) and the CPU.
Everything else is standard - hard drives, memory, expansion ports (firewire, ethernet, usb) graphics cards (with slight ROM modification to work with open firmware), optical drives, PCI cards...
You can pretty much stick anything from awhitebox PC vendor in to a Mac. I buy all my memory from Crucial.com and it's the same stuff that goes in PCs.
I bought my iBook's new internal HD from a PC vendor and it works with no problems.
The Mac is no more proprietary than an Intel or AMD system - you can't interchange CPU/motherboards between the two manufacturers, but you can transfer everything else inside the case.
The only difference is that you can't run Apple's OS on anything other than Apple. You can, however, run other ones if you so choose - Linux, Darwin etc.
Not all Windows Media works on the Mac player, and it's pretty broken - you can't make playlists or anything, it's pretty much just a player app and that's it.
Sometimes it will randomly decide not to play a file, even though that same file will work on another Mac.
Indeed, the Final Cut Pro 4 box weighs about 10 pounds and is the size of a breeze block, yet the software install is on three DVDs, which are packaged in paper sleeves, squeezed into the tiniest space left in the box after all the manuals are put in!
Obviously it's a much more complex app (suite of apps really) and it cost nearly 1000 compared to 39 for iLife 04, but there was something refreshing about being able to pick up the iLife box without needing a warmup beforehand.
Slashdot Mirror
Since always.
The greater the sweep of a wing, the less compressible drag it creates.
A high level of sweep is used in fighters and high speed aircraft because of this - however, it makes the plane somewhat unstable at low speeds thus making take off and landing difficult (you must do both at higher speeds).
A delta wing is essentially a big triangle - like very swept back wings, so it performs very similarly to swept wings.
Great for high speed flight, but very poor at lower speeds - a model aircraft would suffer since the speeds necessary to develop lift would be higher than a normal model plane.
It has no wings, and it is a delta shape - delta wings are aerodynamically unstable.
It would be very difficult to keep it true to the real shape of the movie ship and also make it fly.
FCP is pretty much the only reason my company was able to get off the ground.
The low cost of entry into pro work now, with the ability to create content that blows people out of the water allowed us to get established.
We started with Dual 450 G4 with FCP3 and have added a Dual 2Gig G5 with FCP4 to that.
Next step is an XServe Raid to replace the large numbers of firewire drives we're using.
Yes, but the licence fee talked about here is for Shake, not the OS.
Render nodes are free for Shake on OS X, but not for Linux.
I call it the clit mouse on occasion, but only when I'm intimate with her.
Haven't been intimate with the Windows laptop for a long time.
The dock connector is essentially a custom firewire port - it can pretty much do anything you want it to that you could do with FW plus a few other things, like line out, which will no doubt be a set of extra pins on the connector that a normal firwire port will ignore (it only connects 6 of the contacts) but that other devices like the iPod dock take advantage of.
It sounds like Apple has planned this sort of function (interoperation with 3rd party kit) from the beginning.
I still have a 9600/300 running downstairs - it's been through the wars somewhat and is pretty beaten up but it still works and has never given me a single problem.
The same is true for my 600Mhz G3 iBook - that's younger, only 2 years old, but she's still pretty much as good as new apart from having a 'lived in look'. Structurally sound and everything feels as solid as it did when I used her for the first time.
We use a Dual 450 G4 as a Final Cut Pro 4 edit suite to this day (alongside a dual 2 gig G5 box that we bought in December). That DP 450 is churning out broadcast material without so much as a sneeze, and it's still bombproof.
Every Mac I've ever come across (a lot) have been rugged, consistent performers with the build quality to match.
Every PC I've come across has been shoddy 'built to last a year' construction with bits that break off, things that stop working, hardware that becomes slow if you want to run the latest OS (OS X is actually faster on my iBook now that it was when I bought it two years ago).
Yes, there are exceptions in the PC world, but that's all they are - exceptions to a crappy build quality rule. Sure the hard drive might be the same as the one in a Mac, but the chassis isn't engineered as well, the exterior panels, that fans used wear out and start to vibrate, cheap 'filler' parts like modem cards, budget CD drives etc that PC vendors use to keep the costs down stop working after a time, or worse, used drivers that have long since been lost for most machines and you have no hope of finding them if the card is unmarked (at least not without hassle).
My friend dropped my iBook on the floor from a few feet (something for which I've forgiven her) and you'd never be able to tell - nothing broke, nothing chipped, no dents or scratches. That was 6 months after I bought it. Don't tell me your average PC laptop would survive a fall completely unbroken (while open and running)? Maybe a Thinkpad, but they have that horrible nipple mouse (not that I have anything against nipples mind you, just that they don't make very effective navigation devices).
It obviously depends what you're buying, but Macs tend to have a longer useful life than PCs and as such, cost more second hand.
The Finder burns CDs.
Just pop in a blank CD, drag files to it and pull it to the trash (which turns into a burn icon)
Alternatively, you can use Disk Utility, located in Applications > Utilities.
Personally, I think it's worth the money for Toast Titanium.
You can download a freeware Toast-a-like from versiontracker that does pretty much everything Toast does. It's called Firestarter.
It costs less than Windows.
Well, OS X does, and you get more for your money.
I doubt you're anti-Apple, base on that post, however, so I don't really need to point that out.
As for hardware.. well, I don't see many people moaning about how Mercedes and BMW make expensive cars that you could get cheaper if you went for Skoda or Ford.
Further to the reply already posted, Apple tries its best to interoperate with formats and systems other than its own.
MS on the other hand, goes to great lengths to warp things to create MS Standards(tm) that don't play well with the competition.
You think Apple machines don't hold their value any more because they use off the shelf hardware?
Go poke about on ebay for a while in the Mac section and compare G3, G4, Cubes, iMacs, Powerbooks and iBooks against x86 boxen of the same age - there's no comparison.
Apple kit depeciates much, much more slowly that x86.
Licencing OS X is not like licencing Windows - Apple is very fair in the price it charges for volume licences and such.
Hell, it's very fair in the prices set for consumers - $130 for Panther or $199 for a 5 user "Family" licence.
And note, Apple doesn't force to upgrade every time they release a new OS (Puma, Jaguar, Panther).
Apple doesn't have forced upgrade contracts with customers, making payment and upgrade of OS and Office suite mandatory.
Ok, it's not as cheap as free, but someone has to support your platform once it's in place, even if it was free to download and use.
I have an old school MD recorder (Sony MZ-R30 - one of the early models with the lithium ion batteries before they went miniature and changed to smaller NiMH ones or single AA).
I also have an iPod. Both are about the same for surface toughness - I've had my iPod for almost a year now in pretty heavy use without scratches on the surface.
I agree it's probably less durable (on the front face) than my trusty MD recorder.
Most of the external surface area of the iPod is aluminium - all of the back and most of the sides.
Only the front face is polycarbonate, and I would hardly call that a cheap white plastic - I'd call it bullet proof glass (although it's treated differently in that guise).
Toast 6 is indispensable to me, and far and away the best CD burning app I've ever come across on any platform.
BBEdit was nice, but I prefer SubEthaEdit for what I do (mainly html and css).
My list of apps to go on after a nuke and pave:
NcFTP - can't live without it. CLI only, but that's the way to go with ftp for me. Used to have to build from source, but there's an OS X binary installer available now to make my life easier.
SubEthaEdit - great icon, great app. Does exactly what it says on the tin. Works great as a standalone editor, but the shared edit features have been useful from time to time.
Toast Titanium 6 - indispensable. Perfection in a CD burning app.
Adium - necessary on my humble 600Mhz iBook which is still going strong. It has a small footprint and is much less CPU heavy than iChat or and of the other clients.
TinyFugue - again, used to have to build this from source, but no longer. I've tried other MUD clients, but this one keeps me loyal.
Photoshop 7 - can't afford the Creative Suite yet, so on the old one (which is still perfectly fine). Runs pretty well on my battered G3 iBook.
XRegion - simple app that allows me to change the region code on my DVD drive (firmware upgraded to unlock/uncripple it).
That's pretty much it - music, mail and browsing is taken care of with the apps Apple provides.
Oh, I almost forgot: Quake III Arena. Ok, so it's a little ropey on my iBook, but it's good for a couple of quick DMs on q3dm17 while waiting in airport lounges.
It plays better on my G5 box, but then I'd expect no less! The vital app install list is the same for the G5 except for two more apps that facilitate my living: Final Cut Pro 4 and DVD Studio Pro 1.5.
It's not just Darwin that they are "giving back" you know. They have added considerable drive to KHTML as just one example.
And improvements to things like zeroconf - they didn't just splash a flashy French name on it and use it to sell computers.
Apple exists to make money, first and foremost. As a sideline, I think they're doing a pretty good job giving back the community that helped them get a leg up (but isn't solely responsible) toward their success with OS X.
Besides, if you don't like OS X for that reason, Apple still makes great hardware that you can stick Linux on. You can even buy Macs with YDL pre installed so you don't have to pay the "tax" for an OS you won't use.
Take some Xanax or something.
Drag to trash. Voila, it's gone.
Oh, you use Windows? I'm so sorry,so very sorry. You have bigger problems than Quicktime.
Already there. All my Macs (except the iBook) have Gig ports - even the ageing dual 450 G4.
I don't need gig, however - my LAN is all 10/100.
I think they are bringing back fat binaries so that they can have 64-bit optimised apps for the G5 line that will work on the previous G4 and G3 generations without hassle.
Not sure if any of Apple's apps actually employ this yet.
The only proprietary hardware components in a Mac are the motherboard (logic board) and the CPU.
Everything else is standard - hard drives, memory, expansion ports (firewire, ethernet, usb) graphics cards (with slight ROM modification to work with open firmware), optical drives, PCI cards...
You can pretty much stick anything from awhitebox PC vendor in to a Mac. I buy all my memory from Crucial.com and it's the same stuff that goes in PCs.
I bought my iBook's new internal HD from a PC vendor and it works with no problems.
The Mac is no more proprietary than an Intel or AMD system - you can't interchange CPU/motherboards between the two manufacturers, but you can transfer everything else inside the case.
The only difference is that you can't run Apple's OS on anything other than Apple. You can, however, run other ones if you so choose - Linux, Darwin etc.
NcFTP is all you need.
There's even a precompiled OS X installer now, so you don't have to build it from source any more.
Ok, it's command line only, but it beats the hell out of pretty much every GUI based ftp client I've ever used.
Not all Windows Media works on the Mac player, and it's pretty broken - you can't make playlists or anything, it's pretty much just a player app and that's it.
Sometimes it will randomly decide not to play a file, even though that same file will work on another Mac.
Apple did think about people's backs though and packaged the install DVDs in paper sleeves to keep the weight down...
No need for heavy plastic boxes!
Indeed, the Final Cut Pro 4 box weighs about 10 pounds and is the size of a breeze block, yet the software install is on three DVDs, which are packaged in paper sleeves, squeezed into the tiniest space left in the box after all the manuals are put in!
Obviously it's a much more complex app (suite of apps really) and it cost nearly 1000 compared to 39 for iLife 04, but there was something refreshing about being able to pick up the iLife box without needing a warmup beforehand.