My place of work has IE only on their woeful network (we are a separate department of Macs cut off from the network).
I had to look up some song lyrics for one of the staff here and I had forgotten just how bad pop ups are, especially the hateful "open new window on close" ones.
I guess I've been spoiled by Mozilla/Camino/Safari on my machine.
I don't know how you managed to make the connection that because you believe that there is less choice in the software market for the Mac, and the fact that it costs money that I would pirate my software. That's just rediculous.
I think you'll find software piracy is less pronounced in Mac circles, but that's beside the point.
To be honest, if you inculde Virtual PC, you can run pretty much all Windows software on a Mac (albeit at a performance penalty), but most of the big name stuff is Mac native. Unless you need some obscure piece of windows software, you're in business (for the same software cost as Windows), but of course, there's always Virtual PC for that obscure bit of software..
Do I lose karma for feeding this brain dead troll?
I agree with you on the Centrino point - my argument being that Intel, and the PC world, are playing catchup to Apple.
The G3 and G4 are different chips entirely - IBM's processes and chip fab factories are different to Motorola's. The fact that Motorola doesn't want to put in the time/money/effort to get the G4 to scale past 1.42Ghz doesn't mean that IBM won't be able to with their chip. I'd expect to see the G3 going up in speed by quite a bit over the next year or so.
But the current Centrino offerings pale in comparison to the iBook - for all intents and purposes, they're iBook copies that have been run through a bad photocopier several times.
Ugly, creaky, Windows-based etc etc.
I think the iBook will get faster, much faster, while still keeping its low power consuption. It will also retain its good looks and rock solid build quality. I've yet to see anything in the PC world that even comes close.
Ah, yes, but there's nothing better than hearing your friend shout "you bastard!" when you nail him to the wall in Quake 3 when all you have at your disposal is a "feeble" 600Mhz iBook, a one button mouse and a 12" screen!
Proof, should us Apple folks need it, that the one button mouse can triumph over the two button in a head to head test.
Although, by that chalk, my 600Mhz G3 with 8Mb rage card is better than his P4 with 32Mb GeForce 2... Either that, or I'm better at Quake 3 than he is. I prefer the former assumption!
G3 machines don't miss Quartz - all OS X machines use Quartz, which is Apple's name for it's graphics system.
Some G3 machines miss Quartz Extreme, which is the hardware accelerated form of Quartz, where the OS passes off all the drawing and compositing tasks to the graphics chip - it's completely CPU independent. If you have a graphics chip that will support it, it will work on a G3 system. Every iBook with an 700Mhz or higher has a graphics card that supports Quartz Extreme.
A 1Ghz G3 with 512/1Gb RAM and a 32Mb GeForce/Radeon would be a belter of a machine - this pretty much describes the top of the range iBook right now.
We were using a 9600/300 with a Media 100 card to produce videos until recently. We replaced it with a G4 last year, and moved it to fileserving duties.
We then replaced it again as a fileserver with a Beige G3.
Macs go on and on - that 9600/300 is still working, and we're using it as a music editing platform now.
I have the 600Mhz iBook with the 8Mb rage card - the last iBook to be made that doesn't support QE.
I'm happy with my CPU, but I'd kill for a QE-capable graphics chip.
I suspected that IBM would roll out these >1Ghz G3s after the G5 was announced. Now that Apple can't be embarrased that their consumer line will be equal or greater clock speed than their "pro" G4 line, they're free to bump the iBook right up there well past the 1Ghz mark.
The iBook isn't going away - it fits a particular part of the Mac market. There's a slight crossover (12" Albook or 14" iBook? - both cost about the same) but there's clearly a progression of technology from the base iBook up to the behemoth 17" Albook.
Not always - there are a couple of popular aspect ratios; 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 being the two main wide ratios. Essentially you're correct though, the 16:9 shape fits as a standard screen ratio for the assorted video and film ratios.
If you ever want to upgrade that laptop you have, replace it with a 12" iBook; you won't be disappointed.
My story is the same as yours, but I moved from a Win2k desktop to a 12", 600Mhz iBook that became my primary machine. It goes with me everywhere, does everything I ask of it (even editing a short video while I was on the road and didn't have access to our Final Cut Pro machine).
It's bombproof - solidly built and with no ports or doors sticking out. It feels sturdy and has survived a drop onto the floor.
I upgraded the internal hard drive at the beginning of the year since, having become my primary machine, I needed more than the 20Gb of space that it came with. At some point I'll probably stick that 20Gb drive in a firewire case to use externally, but for now the internal space has been upped to 40Gb and I can tell that this thing is just going to keep going and going tirelessly until Apple stops making batteries that fit (the Lithium Ion battery is just about the only thing inside the case with less than a 5 year life).
We only just retired a 9600/300, replacing it with a Beige G3 at work. I can see this trusty little iBook serving me will long into the future. If Apple is still making iBooks in 5 years time I'll probably buy another one to replace it rather than a powerbook - the iBook is fantastic value for money.
My university used I-deas for FEM and 3D stuff - a bit more advanced than the AutoCad stuff that you did in the first year.
One of our tasks was to construct an object and do some Finite Elephant Modelling (as our tutor so humeously calls it), working out stresses and strains and so on.
My friend got to the part where you define your element size and shape and she selected some rather small values.
As a result, the model looked like it was coloured in with solid green since the boundries of the elements all merged together, even at a closeup view.
I told her to fetch a sleeping bag before she set the computer off working it out!
My point was that when you install OS X it doesn't pop up a box that says "please enter your 25 letter, case sensitive serial number now, plus your name and organisation".
It just installs. Sure, it has a serial number, as does your hardware, but it's not used for anything much other than identification for the benefit of the user, not the other way round. For example, it would be useful for support calls and so on since they could keep track of your machine in the system.
I agree here. While Star Trek: Armada (and the sequel, Armada II) were reasonable, it was more like C&C in space, but done poorly. It was very much a case of who could build the largest number of powerful ships and swarm the enemy. Very little in the way of tactics and so on.
It was also far too easy to wall your base with torpedo turrets, turning it into a virtually impregnable fortress.
Galaxy class starships were also reduced to little more than chubby turrets (I read that somewhere and the quote stuck with me).
Voyager: Elite Force, on the other hand, while being a completely different genre (FPS), rocks. The single player game is insanely easy (except for the final boss), but the multiplayer and single player holomatches are where the gameplay really lives.
They added some great new games to the multiplayer FPS world - Action Hero and Assimilation come to mind as well as the usual DM/Team DM/CTF etc.
Plus, the sound that the Photon Burst (hand held photon torpedo launcher) makes is just divine!
Buy from Apple. They have no such nonsense with OS X. No serial numbers, no activation, no spying, no treating you like a criminal, no slimy EULAs giving them access to your drive and all data on it.
Just an operating system on a couple of CDs that works, installs easily and still makes Apple money. Imagine that.
If real life was like Monopoly...
on
My Visit to SCO
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· Score: 1
And if real life was like Monopoly, when SCO is bankrupted by IBM after these lawsuits happen, all of SCO's remaining money and property pass to IBM.
This was a big surprise to me when I opened the 10.2 box and found a grey CD marked "Developer Tools" in there along with the Jag install disks.
It was free so I installed it just to see if I'd enjoy programming. Sure enough, it was good fun and I had some simple programs going (with help from the wealth of online sources on the subject).
Thanks to Apple, there'll be one more person willing to contribute to open source software as soon as I learn enough to be useful.
I'm sure there are free ways to develop stuff on windows (I know that MS's own dev tools are not free though), but having that CD in the box with Jaguar was a good way to get me interested enough to actually try some stuff out.
Ok. so my programs unexpectedly quit whenever you click on certain buttons, but I'm improvinf slowly. And come on, who doesn't need an unexpectedly quitting program? It reminds me of my Windows days!
Re:I don't mean to troll, but
on
150 Mbit/s DSL.
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· Score: 1
At least we can't be thrown into prison without probable cause and without access to a lawyer, denied phonecalls and contact with other people under a warrant that no one is allowed to see.
I can do that with a Firewire-equipped camera and a PowerBook with Final Cut Pro on it.
This is dependent on your production environment using DVCAM or (for low importance work) DV or MiniDV since all the pro DVCAM and consumer cameras have firewire ports. If the camera has an I/O firewire port (some have out only due to a silly tax law defining it as a VCR if it has external video inputs), then you can master back to DVCAM and have the tape ready before you even get back to the office.
Nothing Apple makes at present has component inputs, for that you need Media 100i, which has a breakout box with assorted inputs including component, SDI, AES/EBU etc depending on how much you want to spend.
We have a Media 100 system and a Final Cut Pro system. Both have strengths and weknesses, but for a program I can pick up for under £1000 and install and use on a Dual 450 G4 (our current FCP system), Final Cut Pro compares very favourably to Media 100.
If you're using Betacam then you're limited to expensive NLE's anyway - either Media 100 or Avid, and I've found that I prefer using Media 100, even if it is a bit slow in the render department. The PPC970 should help there.
The G3 and G4 are more alike than people give them credit for. Aside from the Altivec unit on the G4 they're almost the same clock for clock.
It's rumoured that IBM has the G3 way past the Ghz barrier, but that it's being kept back so as not to embarras Apple (it wouldn't be all that good for business to have your "consumer" chip at the same or higher speeds than your "pro" G4 line).
I think when the PPC970 debuts in the towers we'll see G3 speeds start to increase. There's life in it yet - especially in the iBook. It's almost the perfect processor for the product.
Slashdot Mirror
Word on that.
My place of work has IE only on their woeful network (we are a separate department of Macs cut off from the network).
I had to look up some song lyrics for one of the staff here and I had forgotten just how bad pop ups are, especially the hateful "open new window on close" ones.
I guess I've been spoiled by Mozilla/Camino/Safari on my machine.
Wow! What a thinly veiled insult.
I don't know how you managed to make the connection that because you believe that there is less choice in the software market for the Mac, and the fact that it costs money that I would pirate my software. That's just rediculous.
I think you'll find software piracy is less pronounced in Mac circles, but that's beside the point.
To be honest, if you inculde Virtual PC, you can run pretty much all Windows software on a Mac (albeit at a performance penalty), but most of the big name stuff is Mac native. Unless you need some obscure piece of windows software, you're in business (for the same software cost as Windows), but of course, there's always Virtual PC for that obscure bit of software..
Do I lose karma for feeding this brain dead troll?
I agree with you on the Centrino point - my argument being that Intel, and the PC world, are playing catchup to Apple.
The G3 and G4 are different chips entirely - IBM's processes and chip fab factories are different to Motorola's. The fact that Motorola doesn't want to put in the time/money/effort to get the G4 to scale past 1.42Ghz doesn't mean that IBM won't be able to with their chip. I'd expect to see the G3 going up in speed by quite a bit over the next year or so.
But the current Centrino offerings pale in comparison to the iBook - for all intents and purposes, they're iBook copies that have been run through a bad photocopier several times.
Ugly, creaky, Windows-based etc etc.
I think the iBook will get faster, much faster, while still keeping its low power consuption. It will also retain its good looks and rock solid build quality. I've yet to see anything in the PC world that even comes close.
Ah, yes, but there's nothing better than hearing your friend shout "you bastard!" when you nail him to the wall in Quake 3 when all you have at your disposal is a "feeble" 600Mhz iBook, a one button mouse and a 12" screen!
Proof, should us Apple folks need it, that the one button mouse can triumph over the two button in a head to head test.
Although, by that chalk, my 600Mhz G3 with 8Mb rage card is better than his P4 with 32Mb GeForce 2... Either that, or I'm better at Quake 3 than he is. I prefer the former assumption!
G3 machines don't miss Quartz - all OS X machines use Quartz, which is Apple's name for it's graphics system.
Some G3 machines miss Quartz Extreme, which is the hardware accelerated form of Quartz, where the OS passes off all the drawing and compositing tasks to the graphics chip - it's completely CPU independent. If you have a graphics chip that will support it, it will work on a G3 system. Every iBook with an 700Mhz or higher has a graphics card that supports Quartz Extreme.
A 1Ghz G3 with 512/1Gb RAM and a 32Mb GeForce/Radeon would be a belter of a machine - this pretty much describes the top of the range iBook right now.
We were using a 9600/300 with a Media 100 card to produce videos until recently. We replaced it with a G4 last year, and moved it to fileserving duties.
We then replaced it again as a fileserver with a Beige G3.
Macs go on and on - that 9600/300 is still working, and we're using it as a music editing platform now.
Word.
I have the 600Mhz iBook with the 8Mb rage card - the last iBook to be made that doesn't support QE.
I'm happy with my CPU, but I'd kill for a QE-capable graphics chip.
I suspected that IBM would roll out these >1Ghz G3s after the G5 was announced. Now that Apple can't be embarrased that their consumer line will be equal or greater clock speed than their "pro" G4 line, they're free to bump the iBook right up there well past the 1Ghz mark.
The iBook isn't going away - it fits a particular part of the Mac market. There's a slight crossover (12" Albook or 14" iBook? - both cost about the same) but there's clearly a progression of technology from the base iBook up to the behemoth 17" Albook.
It would be like comparing Apples and Oranges in fact...
karma to burn, oh yeah.
Not always - there are a couple of popular aspect ratios; 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 being the two main wide ratios. Essentially you're correct though, the 16:9 shape fits as a standard screen ratio for the assorted video and film ratios.
If you ever want to upgrade that laptop you have, replace it with a 12" iBook; you won't be disappointed.
My story is the same as yours, but I moved from a Win2k desktop to a 12", 600Mhz iBook that became my primary machine. It goes with me everywhere, does everything I ask of it (even editing a short video while I was on the road and didn't have access to our Final Cut Pro machine).
It's bombproof - solidly built and with no ports or doors sticking out. It feels sturdy and has survived a drop onto the floor.
I upgraded the internal hard drive at the beginning of the year since, having become my primary machine, I needed more than the 20Gb of space that it came with. At some point I'll probably stick that 20Gb drive in a firewire case to use externally, but for now the internal space has been upped to 40Gb and I can tell that this thing is just going to keep going and going tirelessly until Apple stops making batteries that fit (the Lithium Ion battery is just about the only thing inside the case with less than a 5 year life).
We only just retired a 9600/300, replacing it with a Beige G3 at work. I can see this trusty little iBook serving me will long into the future. If Apple is still making iBooks in 5 years time I'll probably buy another one to replace it rather than a powerbook - the iBook is fantastic value for money.
But now Macs are a form of *nix and you can run LaTeX on them. Plus, Macs play extemely well with pdf.
My university used I-deas for FEM and 3D stuff - a bit more advanced than the AutoCad stuff that you did in the first year.
One of our tasks was to construct an object and do some Finite Elephant Modelling (as our tutor so humeously calls it), working out stresses and strains and so on.
My friend got to the part where you define your element size and shape and she selected some rather small values.
As a result, the model looked like it was coloured in with solid green since the boundries of the elements all merged together, even at a closeup view.
I told her to fetch a sleeping bag before she set the computer off working it out!
My point was that when you install OS X it doesn't pop up a box that says "please enter your 25 letter, case sensitive serial number now, plus your name and organisation".
It just installs. Sure, it has a serial number, as does your hardware, but it's not used for anything much other than identification for the benefit of the user, not the other way round. For example, it would be useful for support calls and so on since they could keep track of your machine in the system.
It's not used as an anti-piracy measure.
Re: star trek games.
I agree here. While Star Trek: Armada (and the sequel, Armada II) were reasonable, it was more like C&C in space, but done poorly. It was very much a case of who could build the largest number of powerful ships and swarm the enemy. Very little in the way of tactics and so on.
It was also far too easy to wall your base with torpedo turrets, turning it into a virtually impregnable fortress.
Galaxy class starships were also reduced to little more than chubby turrets (I read that somewhere and the quote stuck with me).
Voyager: Elite Force, on the other hand, while being a completely different genre (FPS), rocks. The single player game is insanely easy (except for the final boss), but the multiplayer and single player holomatches are where the gameplay really lives.
They added some great new games to the multiplayer FPS world - Action Hero and Assimilation come to mind as well as the usual DM/Team DM/CTF etc.
Plus, the sound that the Photon Burst (hand held photon torpedo launcher) makes is just divine!
Buy from Apple. They have no such nonsense with OS X. No serial numbers, no activation, no spying, no treating you like a criminal, no slimy EULAs giving them access to your drive and all data on it.
Just an operating system on a couple of CDs that works, installs easily and still makes Apple money. Imagine that.
And if real life was like Monopoly, when SCO is bankrupted by IBM after these lawsuits happen, all of SCO's remaining money and property pass to IBM.
Now that would be a win for IBM!
I was being a bit tongue in cheek with my comment.
I have an iBook - a far cry from the cuttign edge in terms of games performance.
I too, have a Windows PC for gaming but that's all I use it for.
For everything else I use my iBook.
Yeah, but I can frag for longer than you can in Quake III Arena if the power goes out.
Plus, my laptop attracts girls. I have to fend them off before my girlfriend notices.
Plus, how often can you take photos like this with your Dell laptop?
It's Ali in the ring.
First round, first minute.
SCO just lost 50 brain cells thanks to walking into IBM's fist.
They're 49 brain cells in debt now.
This was a big surprise to me when I opened the 10.2 box and found a grey CD marked "Developer Tools" in there along with the Jag install disks.
It was free so I installed it just to see if I'd enjoy programming. Sure enough, it was good fun and I had some simple programs going (with help from the wealth of online sources on the subject).
Thanks to Apple, there'll be one more person willing to contribute to open source software as soon as I learn enough to be useful.
I'm sure there are free ways to develop stuff on windows (I know that MS's own dev tools are not free though), but having that CD in the box with Jaguar was a good way to get me interested enough to actually try some stuff out.
Ok. so my programs unexpectedly quit whenever you click on certain buttons, but I'm improvinf slowly. And come on, who doesn't need an unexpectedly quitting program? It reminds me of my Windows days!
At least we can't be thrown into prison without probable cause and without access to a lawyer, denied phonecalls and contact with other people under a warrant that no one is allowed to see.
Welcome to the Free World.
I can do that with a Firewire-equipped camera and a PowerBook with Final Cut Pro on it.
This is dependent on your production environment using DVCAM or (for low importance work) DV or MiniDV since all the pro DVCAM and consumer cameras have firewire ports. If the camera has an I/O firewire port (some have out only due to a silly tax law defining it as a VCR if it has external video inputs), then you can master back to DVCAM and have the tape ready before you even get back to the office.
Nothing Apple makes at present has component inputs, for that you need Media 100i, which has a breakout box with assorted inputs including component, SDI, AES/EBU etc depending on how much you want to spend.
We have a Media 100 system and a Final Cut Pro system. Both have strengths and weknesses, but for a program I can pick up for under £1000 and install and use on a Dual 450 G4 (our current FCP system), Final Cut Pro compares very favourably to Media 100.
If you're using Betacam then you're limited to expensive NLE's anyway - either Media 100 or Avid, and I've found that I prefer using Media 100, even if it is a bit slow in the render department. The PPC970 should help there.
The G3 and G4 are more alike than people give them credit for. Aside from the Altivec unit on the G4 they're almost the same clock for clock.
It's rumoured that IBM has the G3 way past the Ghz barrier, but that it's being kept back so as not to embarras Apple (it wouldn't be all that good for business to have your "consumer" chip at the same or higher speeds than your "pro" G4 line).
I think when the PPC970 debuts in the towers we'll see G3 speeds start to increase. There's life in it yet - especially in the iBook. It's almost the perfect processor for the product.
The new set of Cluster jokes is being run past Natalie Portman as we speak.