On a positive note, getting laid off is (usually) better than having the whole company shut down. At my last company the people who got laid off also got a few weeks of severance pay, while those who stayed a few more weeks till the end didn't get anything. Hopefully the Oracle/Siebel folks will get a good severance package and also have a network for finding new jobs. Or maybe SAP will come calling.:)
Steve may have prefaced his remarks, but the 2x speed claims are mentioned several times on the Apple website.
http://www.apple.com/imac/
In most places they do include a footnote disclaimer or say "up to" 2x, but the boldface text on the intro page clearly says "Rev up your digital life at speeds twice as fast as the previous iMac." There's also a blurb about a "whole new architecture".
Sure, but that's in the Wintel world, where different companies sell you the hardware, software, OS and service. In the Apple world you get the hardware, software, service and support all from one company. This integration is supposed to be a boon to the consumers, and presumably one advantage would be an iPod that didn't require additional purchases for everyday use...
It's kind of a rambling article. Using the mobile phone as your only computing device doesn't sound like the main point at all, especially since in the second half he basically says "all you need besides the phone is another box, which contains a fast CPU, hard drives and optical drives"!
It really sounds like Greenspun is just calling for computers that are easier to use and share. He talks about automatically saving documents, having just a single application available for any task, doing backups, etc. The mobile phone seems to come in mostly as a portable storage device (with documents, passwords, contacts) that you can plug into any other computer--err, "Appliance."
Hmm. I'll bet the average cost for each In-Stat research report sold is a quarter[1]. But those reports sell for up to $2995 at http://www.instat.com/!
[1] This does not include research and writing costs.
It always amazes me how much stuff people think you can learn in college. Look at all those course topics listed in the opinion piece: patterns, architectures, usability, security, and more--subjects which take some serious time and experience to learn. However most students spend only four years in college, with maybe half of their classes devoted to CS. It's just not possible to get senior software engineer experience in an undergraduate program, and the colleges don't bother to pretend otherwise either. School is just meant to teach the fundamentals. You'll have the next forty years to develop "experience.":)
By supporting right clicks, Apple has virtually guaranteed developers will make features that are available only through right clicks. This defeats the article's second reason for why Apple sells only single-button mice. (You did read the article before jumping all over me, didn't you?)
For example, in Firefox 1.0 you can put a "live bookmark" (an RSS feed) in the bookmark toolbar. But the only way I can find to refresh that feed is by right-clicking or control-clicking, which brings up a menu. Even holding down the mouse button, which often does replace a right-click in other Mac programs, doesn't work.
P.S. I am writing this on my iBook. Think more and assume less before you post next time.
I don't understand Apple's inconsistency. If having a single mouse button really is better from a UI perspective, then why have they supported two-button mice for the last seven years?
This is mostly my experience too, except you have to make sure the G4s have enough RAM. (The original 64MB G4 cubes don't cut it, for instance.)
Mac/OSX game performance review link
on
Is Mac OS X Slow?
·
· Score: 1
Sorry, you didn't mention the hardware/video card you're running with?
MacGamer.com recently reviewed a dual 1.25GHz PowerMac with a GF4. They reported 93 fps in Unreal Tournament under OS9, and 55 fps in OSX, in 1024x768. They didn't list actual numbers for other games, though. They just said "silky smooth frame rates."
So if the performance is bad, then it's a bad benchmark? Everybody who wants to play games on the Mac should ignore the OSX problems?
Maintaining compatibility with old programs, or getting developers to rewrite their code, is critical for any new OS. You can blame Westlake or Apple or both, but the fact remains that many OS X games are (relatively) slow, and that may be important to some folks out there.
I don't use Photoshop but it's possible that CMD-H was already used by Photoshop since before OS X. This leaves Adobe with the choice of "breaking" the Aqua guidelines or "breaking" their own interface.
BBEdit from Bare Bones faces such an issue. Their solution is to allow users to remap Command-H to whichever they prefer. See
their FAQ about Command-H.
Ha I must be the only doofus in the world who consistently undershoots the top menu bar. I probably shouldn't even be admitting this in public. Haven't adjusted to the iBook trackpad yet I guess.
Anyway if I undershoot but accidentally click, then usually some other app becomes active (I most commonly end up clicking in the desktop, making the Finder active) and its menu bar takes over from the original app. Then I have to mouse back down to the Dock, or to ASM on the right, or install FruitMenu, or hit Command-~ just to get back to the original program. That's my (opposite) annoyance with top menu bars...
Slashdot Mirror
On a positive note, getting laid off is (usually) better than having the whole company shut down. At my last company the people who got laid off also got a few weeks of severance pay, while those who stayed a few more weeks till the end didn't get anything. Hopefully the Oracle/Siebel folks will get a good severance package and also have a network for finding new jobs. Or maybe SAP will come calling. :)
Steve may have prefaced his remarks, but the 2x speed claims are mentioned several times on the Apple website. http://www.apple.com/imac/ In most places they do include a footnote disclaimer or say "up to" 2x, but the boldface text on the intro page clearly says "Rev up your digital life at speeds twice as fast as the previous iMac." There's also a blurb about a "whole new architecture".
Sure, but that's in the Wintel world, where different companies sell you the hardware, software, OS and service. In the Apple world you get the hardware, software, service and support all from one company. This integration is supposed to be a boon to the consumers, and presumably one advantage would be an iPod that didn't require additional purchases for everyday use...
It really sounds like Greenspun is just calling for computers that are easier to use and share. He talks about automatically saving documents, having just a single application available for any task, doing backups, etc. The mobile phone seems to come in mostly as a portable storage device (with documents, passwords, contacts) that you can plug into any other computer--err, "Appliance."
[1] This does not include research and writing costs.
It always amazes me how much stuff people think you can learn in college. Look at all those course topics listed in the opinion piece: patterns, architectures, usability, security, and more--subjects which take some serious time and experience to learn. However most students spend only four years in college, with maybe half of their classes devoted to CS. It's just not possible to get senior software engineer experience in an undergraduate program, and the colleges don't bother to pretend otherwise either. School is just meant to teach the fundamentals. You'll have the next forty years to develop "experience." :)
By supporting right clicks, Apple has virtually guaranteed developers will make features that are available only through right clicks. This defeats the article's second reason for why Apple sells only single-button mice. (You did read the article before jumping all over me, didn't you?)
For example, in Firefox 1.0 you can put a "live bookmark" (an RSS feed) in the bookmark toolbar. But the only way I can find to refresh that feed is by right-clicking or control-clicking, which brings up a menu. Even holding down the mouse button, which often does replace a right-click in other Mac programs, doesn't work.
P.S. I am writing this on my iBook. Think more and assume less before you post next time.
I don't understand Apple's inconsistency. If having a single mouse button really is better from a UI perspective, then why have they supported two-button mice for the last seven years?
Are you playing the same streams (Real/Windows Media/QT)?
This is mostly my experience too, except you have to make sure the G4s have enough RAM. (The original 64MB G4 cubes don't cut it, for instance.)
MacGamer.com recently reviewed a dual 1.25GHz PowerMac with a GF4. They reported 93 fps in Unreal Tournament under OS9, and 55 fps in OSX, in 1024x768. They didn't list actual numbers for other games, though. They just said "silky smooth frame rates."
So if the performance is bad, then it's a bad benchmark? Everybody who wants to play games on the Mac should ignore the OSX problems? Maintaining compatibility with old programs, or getting developers to rewrite their code, is critical for any new OS. You can blame Westlake or Apple or both, but the fact remains that many OS X games are (relatively) slow, and that may be important to some folks out there.
BBEdit from Bare Bones faces such an issue. Their solution is to allow users to remap Command-H to whichever they prefer. See their FAQ about Command-H.
Ha I must be the only doofus in the world who consistently undershoots the top menu bar. I probably shouldn't even be admitting this in public. Haven't adjusted to the iBook trackpad yet I guess. Anyway if I undershoot but accidentally click, then usually some other app becomes active (I most commonly end up clicking in the desktop, making the Finder active) and its menu bar takes over from the original app. Then I have to mouse back down to the Dock, or to ASM on the right, or install FruitMenu, or hit Command-~ just to get back to the original program. That's my (opposite) annoyance with top menu bars...