You know that there is more than just shitty cheap earbuds on the market, right?
I have a pair of Sennheiser headphones that can either be bluetooth or wired. I almost never use them as bluetooth because the quality is measurably less than plugging in, even when using the AptX codec and not the shitty SBC codec that most A2DP devices use.
if you're having to carry an adapter around to make 99% of headphones work, why go with a slightly smaller TRS connector that saves you 10% of the volume, instead of just deleting it altogether to save 100% of the volume and using a lightning adapter?
a 2.5mm TRS connector would be just as annoying, and twice as pointless.
I have a set of Sennheiser bluetooth (and also pluggable) headphones that support AptX, and so does OS X. The same song sounds worse using AptX then it does if I plug the same headphones into the Mac.
Yes, AptX is better than SBC; it still has a way to go.
You do know that their laptops haven't had replaceable batteries for some time now, right? And that when they made this change, it was because they could use more volume inside the laptop for energy cell, and less on latches, casing, bulky connectors, etc.
It's one of the reasons you can use a 2-year old MacBook Pro, on WiFi, practically all day without plugging in - something that still escapes some laptop manufacturers.
You're absolutely right - every once in a while, some company comes along with a product that allows them to entrench themselves deeply into the fabric of business, and eventually they start to abuse that position until there is a tipping point where business will grasp at anything that might allow them to get away. We saw it with AT&T. We saw it with IBM. We're seeing it with Microsoft and Cisco now. And these are just the tech companies.
You have it backwards - it's the Apple hardware that will refuse to boot on an OS released before the hardware shipped, with rare exception. The hardware has a minimum system version in the firmware, and if the OS chosen to boot doesn't meet that, you get a nice grey circle with a slash through it.
By the way, this isn't new behavior - you can go all the way back to System 7.1 on it - some old school 68K Macs couldn't boot unless the System Folder had the proper System Enablers in it, which only shipped with some versions of the OS.
I know you're being funny because Apple's current product lineup looks like something unearthed from an ancient Sumerian ziggurat at this point, but I have a feeling they aren't quite done with Mac yet, and their A-series SoCs can't get anywhere close to the performance of even the lowest wattage CPU in Intel's x64 products.
Apple might be one of the first large OEMs to ship kaby lake - maybe that's why they took a pass on the current chips?
Slack is actually a reasonably useable modern version of IRC without having to load a shit ton of bots and plugins, but where it wins is it's ability to integrate with so many other services, such as ScreenHero, Jenkins, JIRA, etc.
There's probably Slack integrations for most of the other tools you're already using, and it's a few clicks on some web pages rather than hours of installing bots or screwing around with conf files - this is where Slack becomes more than just IRC.
Why does everyone continue to trot this out? It's completely false, and has been since the first uEFI systems shipped.
Please show me a motherboard or non-tablet OEM system that doesn't allow you to turn off Secure Boot. They don't exist outside of Windows RT devices that basically don't exist anymore. Microsoft even publishes documentation on how to turn it off. You can even turn it off on Microsoft's own Surface Pro hardware. Surely if Secure Boot was about locking out other operating systems, they would have done it on their own god damn hardware?
No, Microsoft doesn't allow Windows 7 licensing anymore.
Yes, Microsoft has software licensing agreements with corporations that allow back-versioning of the OS from the OEM sticker that came with the hardware. E.g. a company can have an agreement with Microsoft to allow 'n-1' versioning - if it has a Windows 10 sticker on it, the company can install Windows 8 under the agreement and be licensed.
This statement of not developing or certifying hardware drivers for operating systems that are still supported is a way to back door these companies out of negotiated clauses in their agreements, when the company may have perfectly legit reasons for not wanting to be on the bleeding edge. This is just more of Microsoft using whatever they have in the toolbox to accelerate the abandonment of Windows 7, because they don't want another XP scenario.
For people that want to reply out of some emotional response to what the AC said - don't bother. The AC is absolutely right. Apple has enforced a minimum system version in the firmware ever since the transition to only booting OS X, even if it would be possible to boot earlier versions with updated kernel extensions to make hardware work.
I spent 8 years supporting OS X in a corporate environment, and every time new hardware came out it was always a race to get our imaging and applications updated before one of the new models was ordered, so we could actually support it without a shload of manual configuration and one-off units in our environment.
It's a little better now because maintaining an image for standard deployment on OS X is almost unnecessary now with the modern tools that Apple has available for practically no cost, or the ability to enroll your Macs to your existing MDM solution for automatic configuration. Mix in some kind of app delivery / maintenance product like Chef or FileWave, and you're all good. Just maintain a testing environment for when new models come around - which hasn't been for some time now.
Apple has an advantage of being both the OS publisher and the hardware manufacturer - they know exactly what hardware they are soldering into the computer, and can get the necessary documentation from the silicon designers to write drivers for it.
The fact that they are fairly bad at writing these drivers is still a bit shocking, considering that they have the biggest market share they ever have, and far more resources than any other tech company except possibly Google.
And all the large companies on software licensing agreements with Microsoft that have full support for Windows 7 for those 3 years will now be forced into running a hybrid environment running multiple OS versions because of an arbitrary decision by Microsoft, or they have to accelerate their plans to move to the latest OS before they have a chance to test the thousands of applications running in their environment, or regardless of what that testing shows. Their final option is to not buy the latest generation of hardware until they absolutely have to, opting to spend more for less from their hardware OEMs.
And, at the end of the day, this is Microsoft basically saying they don't actually want to support their back versioned OS anymore to the degree they have in the past. This support is what their enterprise customers have always counted on in order to keep their environments stable. Not anymore?
Slashdot Mirror
What the hell - nice going Chrome, not actually copying when I hit the keyboard shortcut.
Actual link I meant to post: http://www.apple.com/shop/prod...
Yeah,
Except that is a solved problem already.
Complain that you need to spend a few extra bucks, but don't bitch that you can no longer do it.
So don't buy their headphones if they don't meet your needs? It's not like they're removing Bluetooth or something.
What is it about Apple making accessories for their products that enrages people? Just don't buy the fucking thing.
and this happens somehow with the lightning-to-phono adapter that ships with every single one... how?
You know that there is more than just shitty cheap earbuds on the market, right?
I have a pair of Sennheiser headphones that can either be bluetooth or wired. I almost never use them as bluetooth because the quality is measurably less than plugging in, even when using the AptX codec and not the shitty SBC codec that most A2DP devices use.
if you're having to carry an adapter around to make 99% of headphones work, why go with a slightly smaller TRS connector that saves you 10% of the volume, instead of just deleting it altogether to save 100% of the volume and using a lightning adapter?
a 2.5mm TRS connector would be just as annoying, and twice as pointless.
I'm pretty sure he meant that he uses Bluetooth to get his music from the phone to the stereo built into the car, not headphones.
I have a set of Sennheiser bluetooth (and also pluggable) headphones that support AptX, and so does OS X. The same song sounds worse using AptX then it does if I plug the same headphones into the Mac.
Yes, AptX is better than SBC; it still has a way to go.
People that give a shit about sound quality still use wired headphones. Bluetooth audio is lossy as fuck.
You do know that their laptops haven't had replaceable batteries for some time now, right? And that when they made this change, it was because they could use more volume inside the laptop for energy cell, and less on latches, casing, bulky connectors, etc.
It's one of the reasons you can use a 2-year old MacBook Pro, on WiFi, practically all day without plugging in - something that still escapes some laptop manufacturers.
You're absolutely right - every once in a while, some company comes along with a product that allows them to entrench themselves deeply into the fabric of business, and eventually they start to abuse that position until there is a tipping point where business will grasp at anything that might allow them to get away. We saw it with AT&T. We saw it with IBM. We're seeing it with Microsoft and Cisco now. And these are just the tech companies.
More than that, good luck patching the Windows 7 Ultimate DVD in my closet combined with a DNS blackhole for the Windows Update server.
You have it backwards - it's the Apple hardware that will refuse to boot on an OS released before the hardware shipped, with rare exception. The hardware has a minimum system version in the firmware, and if the OS chosen to boot doesn't meet that, you get a nice grey circle with a slash through it.
By the way, this isn't new behavior - you can go all the way back to System 7.1 on it - some old school 68K Macs couldn't boot unless the System Folder had the proper System Enablers in it, which only shipped with some versions of the OS.
I know you're being funny because Apple's current product lineup looks like something unearthed from an ancient Sumerian ziggurat at this point, but I have a feeling they aren't quite done with Mac yet, and their A-series SoCs can't get anywhere close to the performance of even the lowest wattage CPU in Intel's x64 products.
Apple might be one of the first large OEMs to ship kaby lake - maybe that's why they took a pass on the current chips?
Then get on that. Make an improved IRC that integrates with dozens of other web services with a few clicks. You'll have a product worth $8B!
Slack is actually a reasonably useable modern version of IRC without having to load a shit ton of bots and plugins, but where it wins is it's ability to integrate with so many other services, such as ScreenHero, Jenkins, JIRA, etc.
There's probably Slack integrations for most of the other tools you're already using, and it's a few clicks on some web pages rather than hours of installing bots or screwing around with conf files - this is where Slack becomes more than just IRC.
H.265 may be paid, but if the bandwidth saved per annum by using H.265 saves more money than the cost of licensing, then you come out ahead.
So why pay patent royalties on [...] when you don't have to?
Good question.
Signed,
DisplayPort vs. HDMI
Why does everyone continue to trot this out? It's completely false, and has been since the first uEFI systems shipped.
Please show me a motherboard or non-tablet OEM system that doesn't allow you to turn off Secure Boot. They don't exist outside of Windows RT devices that basically don't exist anymore. Microsoft even publishes documentation on how to turn it off. You can even turn it off on Microsoft's own Surface Pro hardware. Surely if Secure Boot was about locking out other operating systems, they would have done it on their own god damn hardware?
Stop spreading FUD.
No, Microsoft doesn't allow Windows 7 licensing anymore.
Yes, Microsoft has software licensing agreements with corporations that allow back-versioning of the OS from the OEM sticker that came with the hardware. E.g. a company can have an agreement with Microsoft to allow 'n-1' versioning - if it has a Windows 10 sticker on it, the company can install Windows 8 under the agreement and be licensed.
This statement of not developing or certifying hardware drivers for operating systems that are still supported is a way to back door these companies out of negotiated clauses in their agreements, when the company may have perfectly legit reasons for not wanting to be on the bleeding edge. This is just more of Microsoft using whatever they have in the toolbox to accelerate the abandonment of Windows 7, because they don't want another XP scenario.
It's collusion for Microsoft to announce they aren't writing drivers for new hardware on end-of-sale operating systems now?
Yeah, because in Linux, the "complicated" path to linux updates is one of:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
or
sudo yum update
There are also nice GUI tools that involve clicking a button. How scary!
For people that want to reply out of some emotional response to what the AC said - don't bother. The AC is absolutely right. Apple has enforced a minimum system version in the firmware ever since the transition to only booting OS X, even if it would be possible to boot earlier versions with updated kernel extensions to make hardware work.
I spent 8 years supporting OS X in a corporate environment, and every time new hardware came out it was always a race to get our imaging and applications updated before one of the new models was ordered, so we could actually support it without a shload of manual configuration and one-off units in our environment.
It's a little better now because maintaining an image for standard deployment on OS X is almost unnecessary now with the modern tools that Apple has available for practically no cost, or the ability to enroll your Macs to your existing MDM solution for automatic configuration. Mix in some kind of app delivery / maintenance product like Chef or FileWave, and you're all good. Just maintain a testing environment for when new models come around - which hasn't been for some time now.
Apple has an advantage of being both the OS publisher and the hardware manufacturer - they know exactly what hardware they are soldering into the computer, and can get the necessary documentation from the silicon designers to write drivers for it.
The fact that they are fairly bad at writing these drivers is still a bit shocking, considering that they have the biggest market share they ever have, and far more resources than any other tech company except possibly Google.
And all the large companies on software licensing agreements with Microsoft that have full support for Windows 7 for those 3 years will now be forced into running a hybrid environment running multiple OS versions because of an arbitrary decision by Microsoft, or they have to accelerate their plans to move to the latest OS before they have a chance to test the thousands of applications running in their environment, or regardless of what that testing shows. Their final option is to not buy the latest generation of hardware until they absolutely have to, opting to spend more for less from their hardware OEMs.
And, at the end of the day, this is Microsoft basically saying they don't actually want to support their back versioned OS anymore to the degree they have in the past. This support is what their enterprise customers have always counted on in order to keep their environments stable. Not anymore?