I usually purchase CDs for two reasons, I can rip them where I want and how I want, and I can get the audio quality I want, no iTunes watered down quality if I don't want.
However if we are pushed to an online buying model for the media, I will just make adjustments in life and move on.
I however will not lock myself into a single vendor model, so sorry iTunes, you lost my online business. I would rather choose to use my Zen M if I want. I also like software that doesn't crash every 5 minutes and has wonderful new daily holes via its Quicktime reliance.
So this leaves me with the choice of about 5-10 online music providers, not counting the MS Live video content coming to Vista later this year (think XBox 360 content / IPTV/etc).
Out of the online stores, I, like a lot of individuals will finally bite the bullet and go the Cable cost model, and for 5-15US a month I will do a subscription and have access to virtually ever song ever written.
And besides the copy or sending to friend's issues, isn't actually too bad. And if most of my friends are using a subscription service, I can just forward them the link or name of the song and let them grab the song themselves anyway legally.
I spend the same amout on 1 CD a month, and for that I could have access to millions of songs and reload my MP3 players daily with 1000 new song mixes.
Oh, and since Apple is poo pooing subscriptioin based models, it looks like another reason I won't be an iTunes customer.
Actually, Apple's audio video is an open standard, although not a free standard. It is just one that is not really implemented a lot by others.
So tired of your double standards... Even MSN Messenger is a standard 'format', just not fully open. However you will notice that MSN Messenger adheres to inter-operability between services like Yahoo, and even doesn't care about third party support or usage from Trillion to Jabber clients that easily use MSN Messenger.
What? Samba is and always has been an aberration when it comes to MS protocols. I already provided an example, kereberos. Do explain how MS's implementation is not intentionally breaking interoperability. Or you could discuss MAPI for mail if you wanted; or NTFS for disk.
You need to go look up the MS issue with Kerebos, the problem wasn't they 'broke' it or did something that wasn't allowed. MS's changes to Kerebos are now support parts of the STANDARD. Go look it up.
MS fault on kerebos is they didn't disclose their changes as fast as they should have, period.
MS workstations, however, require special work because in general they are not built upon standards that everyone can modify or access.
Bullcrap... Windows mixes into any environment, why do you think the industry sees it as almost 'viral'... You need to stop talking and learn about what you are talking about.
The problem is companies wanting to support Windows specific functionality outside of Windows clients. Instead of the OSS community actually bucking up and providing these features it is far more easy to rely on Samba's copies of these features and let them take the brunt of the work.
Adaptation of existing contractual usage rights...
Not here to defend NBC or MSNBC; however, if you look at the industry standard wording for usage of their content is exactly this.
This applies to CNN using content from the debate to any Radio show across america. The exception here is that this debate was not on free air waves, so they are using industry standard usage right sharing policies.
Yes they need to update with the times of Internet and people sharing media, but out of ALL the major news outlets NBC and MSNBC have been some of the most liberal about usage on places from Youtube to grandma's website.
Even Olbermann himself said in the segment prior to the debate that the internet would create the winners and losers of the debate if anything major happened, as it would be shared and up on sites like YouTube before the night was out. So do you really think MSNBC doesn't get it?
Ya, the wording isn't ideal, but if this was a 'major' issue with MSNBC, they would have had places like YouTube yank Olbermann and other shows a long time ago, and they just haven't.
I know we like to get excited about things like this here, but I see smoke not fire.
I think you misunderstood the parent. He was not saying that MS itself reverse engineered but was saying that *other systems* that try to interact with MS have to achieve it via reverse engineering a la Samba. Other people have to guess at the MS protocols because the MS protocols are closed. Again, the classic example is Samba which implements a reverse engineered version of CIFS(SMB)/Active Directory. Compare to NFS from SUN or X from MIT X Consortium, both of which have fully published protocol specifications that anyone is free to implement royalty free.
I did misunderstand the gp because of the wording, you are correct.
However there is a miss still in this argument. CIFS(SMB) protocols are not closed and even with MS changes are very well documented. Sure there have been problems because MS was going to require servers to respond to Vista on the faster versions of the protocols, and this left a lot of Samba based devices that didn't 'implement' the faster standard out in the cold. (MS has addressed this, but it would have been easier if these products would have JUST put in place the entire specification and not a subset to get by.)
The second problem here is Active Directory. This is a MS technology and not a protocol. Why should Samba even try to copy Active Directory when there are many other supported ACL models that are both 'open' and are very much supported on *nix and any version of Windows released in the past 7 years.
Just because MS uses Active Directory doesn't mean Samba should reverse engineer and copy it, when they could simply use tons of 'open' models that work with Win2k-Vista.
I can only guess the reason they do copy Active Directory is they want to implement the features it has because it is a bit more robust and easier to manage than most Open equivalents. However, this is a shortcoming of the open offerings and Samba keeping users hooked on MS technologies even though they are not using MS products.
If Active Directory was a protocol or 'necessary' for communications it would be different, but it is NOT.
Umm, do you have any specifics you'd like to point out, or only open rhetoric
Ok go for it. Explain how well OSX Server works in place of another *nix, because as you say, it supports the standards 'clean'. Gag. You have no freaking idea do you?
And this isn't even touching all upper stuff like the non-Open audio video used on OSX to even iChat.
I said MS uses closed protocols and interoperability with those MS machines/protocols is achieved by reverse engineering them.
Lets take a basic example. Samba. The protocols are NOT what is reverse engineered. However them implementing a 'copy' of Active Directory technologies is reverse engineered.
So if you have NO use for Active Directory and are using LDAP or other 'standards' then nothing you are running is reverse engineered. And if you are primarily *nix, why on earth would you want Active Directory controling your ACLs (Even a copy of the technology)?
Ya, apparently everyone knows this, sorry to say what you know is myth.
How is this new for Mac users? 90% of the hardware and software is not supported by OSX.
BTW the drive has native OSX drivers, and can burn and read from the drive, there is just no Movie player. (Remember when people were making fun of Vista supporting HD because it require MFR DRM, Mac users get ready for you turn.)
PS you can always bootcamp and play the movies in Vista on your Mac.
It's a bad idea to rush into selling something that isn't ready. There is no PLAYER! Although this is a real juicy project for an OSS lover............:-)
>>While specialists say they wish third-party support were greater, >>the openness of the Mac makes correcting issues possible
What do they mean by "openness" here. (Just curious - don't interpret this as troll.)
I'm curious about this as well, and the *nix argument is not enough here. Sure OSX has MACH/BSD *nix foundation, but it is FAR from open anymore, and the entire GUI OS level is more closed than Windows.
If this is about bringing 3rd party *nix applications to OSX, then the article seems to miss an important fact. XP, Win2003, & Vista have a full BSD subsystem available, and bringing 3rd party *nix applications to Windows very easy by using either the BSD subsystem(not emulation) or the mass amount of cross porting tools for the Win32/Win64 subsystem.
So again, how is Apple AT ALL open? Closed OS, closed hardware...
suspect they mean that Macs integrate with all the open standard protocols and tools that Linux does (think LDAP) instead of the MS controlled closed protocols where interoperability is always a little broken since it is achieved via reverse engineering.
This is wrong on so many levels...
If you think all Apple's implementations are 'clean' you are reading the marketing and not actually using the products.
If you think MS's support of 99.9% of protocols is 'changed' or 'reverse engineered' again, you have no idea what you are talking about.
People forget MS owned Xenix before Linux existed.
Maybe it's because I remember the days when one could do useful things with a computer that had just 8 or 16 or 32MB of RAM, because the operating system wasn't taking up 50% to 66% of physical memory and paging things out to disk.
I understand most people's inherent concerns regarding RAM usage.
However Vista isn't pushing the envelope very much, and certainly not past what most people use already.
As for paging, you will find that Vista is far more intelligent and very little is ever paged, and when it is to meet an applications needs, the system does a fast recovery of paged information. There are several technet articles on how Vista works differently and why Vista is faster just because it doesn't page out RAM for copy operations like XP did.
That's why giving up 50% of memory to housekeeping functions seems like an anathema to me.
Pre-fetching RAM is not really house keeping. Yes it does make Vista's RAM usage look high, but the performance Vista offers by using the 'non-used' RAM is quite exceptional, and a good reason for people to move to Vista. Even if you have 4Gb of RAM and are running just a word-processor, Vista's Superfetch technology will continue to increase overall system performance even though Vista and your wordprocessor would never come close to using all 4GB of RAM.
Based on actual experience, Vista totally trips out trying to run games if you have a 32 bit deep desktop.
Starting Flight Sim more often than not fails, *unless* you switch to a shallower color desktop, then start it.
OS X may be old fashioned, but at least it works without flashing, pausing and crashing. And this is Vista running on a PC with 1 Gig and a 6800GT which is still a pretty decent card. This is completely unacceptable.
Meantime, a MacBook with the Intel graphics manages all the eye candy, and runs WoW just fine. Vista requirements are ridiculous for what it is.
I can't see any reason to switch from XP, which is a great solid, nice looking and well proven piece of software.
-- -- Support open source software.
If you have problems running a desktop with 32bit color depth, then you have serious hardware issues. A Geforce 6800 level card is 'overkill' for Vista's needs.
Maybe XP is the best choice for you right now. I admit Vista will not initially appeal to everyone, especially if they are having issues like you describe; although, I do think you need to see if there isn't an underlying hardware problem, as Vista should not freeze and should be far more fluid than XP.
If your tag says to support open source, why are you recommending OSX? Not only is the OS closed source, the hardware is even closed.
I work at a computer shop and have had more people call me to see if I can downgrade them from Vista because xp ran fine and vista doesn't. These are people usually using vista business and they have something like 512 MB of ram and an radeon 9200 or something similar.
Tips to ensure Vista runs as fast as XP.
After installation - leave machine on for night to enable indexing and prefetching setups to complete. When someone first upgrades to Vista the background process to index the entire HD is going to make the system slightly less responsive, especially if the user has a lot of data files.
Also after setup, restart Vista 5 times. Vista monitors boot logs and will keep optimizing the boot cycle. So for example, the first couple of reboots after installing Vista will be slower than XP, but by the time the system optimizes itself after 5 boots to compare, the boot time will speed up incredibly.
512mb is the low end requirement and should give the users an XP experience; however, if they are gamers or using applications that like to consume 500mb of RAM, the math just doesn't work. Recommend that your customers that are having performance problems to move to 1Gb as it is the Vista sweet spot to where it will for sure be faster than XP.
Do NOT disable Glass/Aero. A lot of 'tech' users will turn off the desktop effects thinking it slows down the computer. However it actually is a part of what speeds up the display in Vista. So encourage all users to use WDDM Drivers and leave Glass/Aero/DWM enabled. Even for games running in a Window, many will perform faster with Aero left enabled while the game is playing. Also the CPU shift to the GPU for drawing is a considerable speed increase, and DWM is what turns this fully on. So even though the user is getting the 'cute' glass, if they hate it, they are better to turn the transparency on the Glass down to 0, and leave Aero/Glass enabled for performance reasons alone.
not doing anything that's not being done on OSX or Linux (Compiz, Beryl).
I know there is a lot of ignorance and lack of understanding in the tech journalism, but for people that have or 'had' to actually work with or understand Vista know that this is not the case.
There is quite a list of things that Vista does and that only can be currently done in Vista.
Since you mention graphics, I'll just mention the few main items.
Vista implements a full Vector based Composer Vista implements GPU Scheduling (pre-emptive multi-tasking of the GPU) Vista implements GPU RAM Virtualization (system and VRAM are shared) Vista implements Video Hot Swap (Plug in New Video cards/devices live - change video live, etc.)
Unlike OSX, Vista does not do double buffering of the display in the way OSX does, so it has less latency. The Composer in Vista can write from system or VRAM directly to the display. The double buffering of OSX has given OSX a tear free interface, but it is using very old concepts by using just simple double buffering which adds RAM overhead and reduces speed. 3D Applications & Games in a 'window' will never be able to perform under OSX like they do on Vista.
Since Vista also is doing a Vector based composer for newer applications, the bandwidth between the applications and the composer is very light and the composer itself manges redraws even inside the application's window. This allows RDP to do some really nice 3D and animation effects remotely.
Vista also drops GDI/GDI+ (Font Drawing) & WPF through the 3D GPU for more acceleration. Vista does this even on old video cards. Any Video card that has 8mb of RAM and support DirectX 7 get GPU acceleration for existing applications.
This is why even on a low end system Vista running AI or CorelDraw will paint complex images 10x faster than XP or OSX can. OSX nor any X11/Linux solution does this for existing applications. OSX does have Quartz Extreme, but is NOT YET working properly and the compatibility issues is one reason Leopard is delayed.
And this discussion on just Video could go on and on with concepts that the WDDM brings to computing (Multi-core GPU support) to other features like CableCard, which Vista is the only OS that natievly supports.
So why does Vista require so much power when Linux and OSX can do it on half the hardware?
See this is another misconception. As for basic computing the ONLY big requirement of Vista is 512mb of RAM to run as fast as XP. This is not a big leap, considering even OSX wants 512mb for adequate performance, and even Linux running KDE or GNOME will run better with at least 512mb of RAM.
Vista 'does' scale with more RAM better than most other OSes, in fact it will continue to scale and show performance up to at least 16Gb of RAM because of the new caching system. Most OSes, like XP drop performance increases at a certain memory level because of the OS's inability to forecast content needed from the HD. So as you add 2GB, 4GB, 16GB of RAM Vista 'WILL' keep getting faster, where XP and other OSes will stop at about 1Gb or 2Gb because once the OS and application needs are met the performance increase stops.
As for processor, Vista will run on a P3 from 1999 quite easily as the processor requirements are also not high. I assume PIIs are also support, but our labs have not actually tested Vista on anything lower than a 700mhz machine.
As for Video to get basic acceleration, a DirectX 7 card from 1998/1999 will work just fine, and it will draw faster than XP by using the 3D portion of the GPU for vector and font acceleration.
The only other 'high' requirement for Vista is a PS 2.0 card to get the Glass effects and higher end WDDM features. So this means any 3D card made in 2003 or newer will work just fine. And you can pick up a Geforce 5200 or 5600 for $10-20 bucks in the cheap OEM market.
Considering Vista is an OS designed for today's hardware, it seems to be right in line with the market.
Vista having 'high' requirements is just being mis-informed, unless you feel that a video card made in 2003 or a 512mb of RAM is 'high'.
We know that Apple is not the problem because an application should never be able to invoke a BSOD, no matter how poorly written.
Um, you can pretty much drop any OS when you touch video overlays or drivers (yes even usermode drivers), although the OS may not officially crash, but the video UI/GUI will be gone and unable to resume.
However from what the user posted in the article, we would have to assume that he is NOT using the WDDM drivers for the 945, or if he is has Glass/Aero disabled. However if he is using the WDDM drivers with Aero on and is getting a BSOD, Intel has done something horribly wrong with their implementation because they shouldn't be touching anything low enough to BSOD Vista.
BSODs in Vista via video is almost non-existent with WDDM drivers, as they run in User mode and Vista even has driver drop down and hot plug support features for errant WDDM Drivers, so it will restore the video, even if it has to drop to a VGA driver or enable another video device if the hardware is fried.
Non-WDDM are XP drivers and act just like they do in XP, so they run in the kernel and can BSOD just like they would on XP.
Ok, we all kind of understand that there will come a time when bandwidth allows profile concepts to be moved to a universally accessible secure location. But it will have to be a highly secured and trusted service or user created server service. (i.e. A home BSD box or even Windows Home Server for example for home users.)
However, I don't want my personal documents stored on their servers, and I know most business policies will not allow documents to be stored in this manner.
Also, why are they 'reinventing' the wheel with patented technology to do this? There are many known and secure remote app technologies that could be already put into place for something like this.
I'm open to ideas here, but I don't see how this is 'Open' or a good thing...
the short answer is with extensions GL can have support for anything, without waiting for the next official release
Partially true in theory; however, there are a few exceptions to this.
Notably OS level GPU Scheduling, OS level GPU RAM Virtualization, and non-graphic Physics APIs, although the later could be addressed, but are outside OpenGL. (Originally, people didn't 'get' why Vista was needed for DX10, maybe now people are figuring it out.)
You also then have to deal with the standard fragmenting by going with OEM variations and at that point why even have a standard hardware agnostic API?
Ok I'm going to ignore all the errors and misconceptions in your post and just assume you are an average Joe and don't realize you are misleading people via ignorance.
But please, go look up VC1 before you go on a rant about MPEG4 or talking about how WMV/WMA is not used.
Technially, even on the internet WMV is the most widely streamed content format, even with all Youtube Flash Video sites. (Yes there are numbers for this, go look them up.)
So if you think MS has no chance and MPEG4 has won, then you don't realize every HD player in the world ships with WMV support, even the PS3. Geesh.
You also don't seem to understand the difference between providing WMV content in the Silverlight player control concepts. This is in addition to WMV supporting clickable moving video content for taking Hyperlinking beyond hypertext to hypervideo.
Why are we still designing GPUs for Windows? It's like the Slashdot crowd hates Microsoft for everything but still clings to them for their computer games. Screw DX10, ask for Open GL 3.0 already!
Ok, go look up the technologies, you really need to educate yourself on what, why and when.
The first thing is that OpenGL doesn't support features DX10 does.
The second thing is concepts from the architecture of these cards are not completely exclusive to DX10 or Windows, many of the features can be modified to work well in native and OpenGL environments. (Although as we move to multi-core GPUs, the OS will need to have a basic understanding of GPU scheduling, and right now Vista is the only OS that does this.)
The third thing is the design of this generation of cards was done by Microsoft. Go look at the XBox360 and you will see the same technology in the MS/ATI developed GPU. So whether you hate MS or not, this progression of technology is very much pushed and even partially funded by them.
Also if you look back at the original XBox and the money NVidia got in the development of the GPU with MS, a lot of that technology set the stage for the last generation of GPUs. For example the XBox's GPU was feature comparable to the Geforce3 Ti, and that was all the way back in 1999/2000. NVidia and MS ended up fighting over production costs, but what most people don't realize is that NVidia got a lot of Money from MS up front to develop the technologies that they later put into their Geforce3 Ti, and Geforce 4 line of video cards, which helped them take and hold the market while ATI flopped like a fish.
So ya, MS technologies are pushing what goes into the Video cards, but these are also the 'newest' technologies for GPUs, not just what MS wants.
You will also start to see dual/multi core GPUs and other technologies that are a part of the MS DX10 technologies pushing ATI/NVidia hardware.
DX10 right now is just the only technology that effectively is designed for and uses these new GPU concepts effectively. From native support for multi-core GPUs to GPU scheduling (pre-emptive multitasking video) to even the full set of non-Video APIs that allow the GPUs to handle physics, which is a part of DX10 and something ATI will be using to showcase their new line of GPUs.
Agreed! I've heard people complain that Norton is broken under Vista. IMO, Norton is broken, period.
The sad thing is MS tried to prevent Norton from hacking into Vista at a low level by providing standard APIs for spyware, network monitoring, and anti-virus, and Symantec and McAfee yelled anyway and sadly, the Norton version for Vista is the biggest most intrusive piece of crap they have put out to date. Yet the companies that use simple methods or just use the APIs provided by MS work well and don't have performance issues or create system unstability.
Even in XP, 90% of the systems our teams work with have to remove Norton or McAfee because of networking performance issues, it messing with simple email over SMTP, and the horrible freaking hooks into the OS at levels that make our OS engineers shutter. We have seen systems where Norton would increase boot times by several minutes, make login times several minutes because it is waiting for a network connection and yet not allowing the DSL to initiate a connection and various other massive insane problems.
Sadly, as if Windows doesn't have a bad enough reputation, people that are running Symantec or McAfee hate Windows even more for reasons that aren't even Window's fault.
So very much a warning to anyone that uses or has to use Windows and wants anti-virus protection, run a small free or simple application. And if the system comes pre-loaded with McAfee or Symantec, download another solution and then uninstall them ASAP.
You can easily even get by with a non-realtime solution, if you schedule the utility to check your system once a day, thus not having to give up any real-time monitoring performance. Also if you are not a click anything person or novice user, you can even avoid anti-virus software, especially in Vista, as I haven't ran any solutions since the Win9x days and have never had a virus, knock on wood.
Anyone notice the article was about how Vista 'automatically' works around most incompatibilities even for badly written software?
Instead everyone here replying is going from the out of context pull quote or not even reading the article.
Almost everything mentioned in the article talks about what is different in Vista, and then goes on to explain how Vista tries to work around 99% of these incompatibilities - AUTOMATICALLY.
Sure Vista changed a lot in comparison to XP, so the fact that people think Vista isn't different than XP or applications run as well as they is quite remarkable.
Just a short list of major rewritten portions: Video subsystem, Printing subsystem, inter process communications, new intelligent audio stack, network stack, xaml based language from application to screen to printer, etc etc..
In our labs we have very few applications that break under Vista or require Admin Rights to run at all. And this is a number like 10 out of a few thousand we have tested.
Out of the thousands of applications we run and have tested for our environments, half of the ones that did have compatibility problems MS itself released Vista updates to allow the 3rd party applications to run properly, even though they were coded improperly, had bugs, or have no concept of security.
I dare any OS to support as many applications as Vista and not break a few bad applications along the way from the XP upgrade. When facing this challenge, remember Vista has a full BSD subsystem and can run 99% of all the *nix apps in addition to the DOS and Windows base.
XP allowed applications to do stuff MS should never have allowed that created performance and security risks, and Vista finally draws the line in the sand for developers so they have to learn about security and writing applications properly.
For every broken application, I give MS a kudos for finally stopping crap from doing stuff it shouldn't.
PS - Anyone running Windows, run a free anti-virus application, Norton and McAfee cause more performance problems and dig into the OS in areas they should never touch. If your XP or Vista installation on a computer made in the last 5 years takes more than 30secs to boot, you have hardware problems or crap like Norton or McAfee installed.
Microsoft seriously need to start work on a "Windows Neo" or something that is redesigned from the core and will break compatibility with _everything_ unless they can create some "Classic" thing like Apple did for OSX.
I see this as the only way to "fix" the Windows codebase which must look like a complete, utter mess after a decade of hacks
There is so much wrong with almost everything you say, and yet I am still shocked that people like you post statements like this.
Go look up NT then go look up the Win32 subsystem.
Recoding NT would be a waste of time, because even from the harshest Windows critics, the ones with a background in OS engineering know that NT is not an OS or OS architecture to make fun of.
So make fun of Win32 or MS or whatever you want all day, but suggesting that NT needs to be rewritten is like telling the *nix world that BSD should be scrapped and written from scratch because it is crap code. Which is not only stupid, but insane.
People need to learn what 'Windows' actually is - especially the architectural base before making comments like this.
PS Ironically Vista is the first step in moving past the Win32 subsystem, which is as close to what you are suggesting should be done, and look at the people complaining about what few apps are broken.
I'm curious how a machine with a 2 gigabyte limit on RAM will benefit from 64-bit code, since the main benefit of 64-bit code is to allow your machine to address more than 4 gigabytes of RAM. Seems to be you're never going to have that issue. Now, while I am being snarky, I'm also asking a serious question. It's possible that you know more than I do about this stuff and that there are some benefits to 64-bit code which do not have to do with memory addressing and of which I am not aware. If that's not the case, then it seems to be that you're not losing anything from having to wait for Leopard, other than a reason to complain.
Well there are several questions and factors to be considered here.
How good is the x64 implementation of OSX. Past versions of OSX's x64 support are barely funtional beyond a developer's point of view, as the OS doesn't use the important aspects of the x64 architecture to gain performance.
If Leopard does provide an outstanding 'fully' implemented x64 version of OSX and not a hybrid as it appears it is going to be, there would be many benefits beyond extended RAM addressing.
The x64 architecture has many things that open the door for increased performance. There are many modes that doesn't cater to x32 legacy routes that are performance bottlenecks.
Even though applications running 64bit would in theory consume a bit more RAM, in number crunching applications, jamming 64bits together at a time is far more efficient than jamming two chunks of 32bits together.
If you look at other OSes with 'good' 64bit implementation, performance is increased for all applications because the OS itself is performing faster. Vista x64 or XP x64 are good examples of this. Even when running old 32bit applications, they perform faster than running the x32bit version of the OSes on the same hardware. And as applications ship in 64bit versions, the performance will continue to increase.
Everything thinks that the jump from 16bit to 32bit was better because of the RAM addresses and the modes the 386 CPUs offered over the 286 CPUS, but there was a lot of performance gains in just the pure math of dealing with one 32bit chunk instead of two 16bit chunks. I can still remember the debates from back then saying that 32bit was going to be slower even though it offered more features. However, the increase in the amount of data being shoved around easier proved this to be incorrect.
It is also worth reading up on the x64 extensions in both the Intel and AMD CPUs, as there are many changes when running in native x64 bit mode at the OS level that are very significant when it comes to performance.
Even the story article said that the AppleTV interface was like a bazillion times better than the XBox360's.
This is an opinion, and you can find tons of other reviews that would say different. The whole Windows Media Center interface tends to gain good reviews, but since Apple doesn't even have a product like this, not easy to compare.
And other media extenders cost between $300 and $600, with reviews scaling from 1 to 3 stars between those price ranges.
Wow, no... Media Extenders start around $100 and Network Media Share devices (that do the same thing, but are Windows independent) are in the 150-300 range. And these are OLD technology that is STILL more full featured than freaking Apple TV.
Let alone $300 can buy a 360 that does real HD, I don't see how you are helping your argument.
As for the iPod interface, there is a bit more locked in the NDAs that Apple would like to admit to. I will agree Apple refined aspects of the iPod, the controls and interface features they are applauded for were the work of people outside of Apple that existed before the people and companies were picked up by Apple.
Slashdot Mirror
Stupid, but ok, fine I'll move to online Music...
/etc).
I usually purchase CDs for two reasons, I can rip them where I want and how I want, and I can get the audio quality I want, no iTunes watered down quality if I don't want.
However if we are pushed to an online buying model for the media, I will just make adjustments in life and move on.
I however will not lock myself into a single vendor model, so sorry iTunes, you lost my online business. I would rather choose to use my Zen M if I want. I also like software that doesn't crash every 5 minutes and has wonderful new daily holes via its Quicktime reliance.
So this leaves me with the choice of about 5-10 online music providers, not counting the MS Live video content coming to Vista later this year (think XBox 360 content / IPTV
Out of the online stores, I, like a lot of individuals will finally bite the bullet and go the Cable cost model, and for 5-15US a month I will do a subscription and have access to virtually ever song ever written.
And besides the copy or sending to friend's issues, isn't actually too bad. And if most of my friends are using a subscription service, I can just forward them the link or name of the song and let them grab the song themselves anyway legally.
I spend the same amout on 1 CD a month, and for that I could have access to millions of songs and reload my MP3 players daily with 1000 new song mixes.
Oh, and since Apple is poo pooing subscriptioin based models, it looks like another reason I won't be an iTunes customer.
Actually, Apple's audio video is an open standard, although not a free standard. It is just one that is not really implemented a lot by others.
So tired of your double standards... Even MSN Messenger is a standard 'format', just not fully open. However you will notice that MSN Messenger adheres to inter-operability between services like Yahoo, and even doesn't care about third party support or usage from Trillion to Jabber clients that easily use MSN Messenger.
What? Samba is and always has been an aberration when it comes to MS protocols. I already provided an example, kereberos. Do explain how MS's implementation is not intentionally breaking interoperability. Or you could discuss MAPI for mail if you wanted; or NTFS for disk.
You need to go look up the MS issue with Kerebos, the problem wasn't they 'broke' it or did something that wasn't allowed. MS's changes to Kerebos are now support parts of the STANDARD. Go look it up.
MS fault on kerebos is they didn't disclose their changes as fast as they should have, period.
MS workstations, however, require special work because in general they are not built upon standards that everyone can modify or access.
Bullcrap... Windows mixes into any environment, why do you think the industry sees it as almost 'viral'... You need to stop talking and learn about what you are talking about.
The problem is companies wanting to support Windows specific functionality outside of Windows clients. Instead of the OSS community actually bucking up and providing these features it is far more easy to rely on Samba's copies of these features and let them take the brunt of the work.
Adaptation of existing contractual usage rights...
Not here to defend NBC or MSNBC; however, if you look at the industry standard wording for usage of their content is exactly this.
This applies to CNN using content from the debate to any Radio show across america. The exception here is that this debate was not on free air waves, so they are using industry standard usage right sharing policies.
Yes they need to update with the times of Internet and people sharing media, but out of ALL the major news outlets NBC and MSNBC have been some of the most liberal about usage on places from Youtube to grandma's website.
Even Olbermann himself said in the segment prior to the debate that the internet would create the winners and losers of the debate if anything major happened, as it would be shared and up on sites like YouTube before the night was out. So do you really think MSNBC doesn't get it?
Ya, the wording isn't ideal, but if this was a 'major' issue with MSNBC, they would have had places like YouTube yank Olbermann and other shows a long time ago, and they just haven't.
I know we like to get excited about things like this here, but I see smoke not fire.
I think you misunderstood the parent. He was not saying that MS itself reverse engineered but was saying that *other systems* that try to interact with MS have to achieve it via reverse engineering a la Samba. Other people have to guess at the MS protocols because the MS protocols are closed. Again, the classic example is Samba which implements a reverse engineered version of CIFS(SMB)/Active Directory. Compare to NFS from SUN or X from MIT X Consortium, both of which have fully published protocol specifications that anyone is free to implement royalty free.
I did misunderstand the gp because of the wording, you are correct.
However there is a miss still in this argument. CIFS(SMB) protocols are not closed and even with MS changes are very well documented. Sure there have been problems because MS was going to require servers to respond to Vista on the faster versions of the protocols, and this left a lot of Samba based devices that didn't 'implement' the faster standard out in the cold. (MS has addressed this, but it would have been easier if these products would have JUST put in place the entire specification and not a subset to get by.)
The second problem here is Active Directory. This is a MS technology and not a protocol. Why should Samba even try to copy Active Directory when there are many other supported ACL models that are both 'open' and are very much supported on *nix and any version of Windows released in the past 7 years.
Just because MS uses Active Directory doesn't mean Samba should reverse engineer and copy it, when they could simply use tons of 'open' models that work with Win2k-Vista.
I can only guess the reason they do copy Active Directory is they want to implement the features it has because it is a bit more robust and easier to manage than most Open equivalents. However, this is a shortcoming of the open offerings and Samba keeping users hooked on MS technologies even though they are not using MS products.
If Active Directory was a protocol or 'necessary' for communications it would be different, but it is NOT.
Umm, do you have any specifics you'd like to point out, or only open rhetoric
Ok go for it. Explain how well OSX Server works in place of another *nix, because as you say, it supports the standards 'clean'. Gag. You have no freaking idea do you?
And this isn't even touching all upper stuff like the non-Open audio video used on OSX to even iChat.
I said MS uses closed protocols and interoperability with those MS machines/protocols is achieved by reverse engineering them.
Lets take a basic example. Samba. The protocols are NOT what is reverse engineered. However them implementing a 'copy' of Active Directory technologies is reverse engineered.
So if you have NO use for Active Directory and are using LDAP or other 'standards' then nothing you are running is reverse engineered. And if you are primarily *nix, why on earth would you want Active Directory controling your ACLs (Even a copy of the technology)?
Ya, apparently everyone knows this, sorry to say what you know is myth.
selling a product that the OS doesn't support
How is this new for Mac users? 90% of the hardware and software is not supported by OSX.
BTW the drive has native OSX drivers, and can burn and read from the drive, there is just no Movie player. (Remember when people were making fun of Vista supporting HD because it require MFR DRM, Mac users get ready for you turn.)
PS you can always bootcamp and play the movies in Vista on your Mac.
It's a bad idea to rush into selling something that isn't ready. There is no PLAYER! Although this is a real juicy project for an OSS lover............ :-)
:)
This is already done.
BootCamp
Vista
Play Movie
>>While specialists say they wish third-party support were greater,
>>the openness of the Mac makes correcting issues possible
What do they mean by "openness" here. (Just curious - don't interpret this as troll.)
I'm curious about this as well, and the *nix argument is not enough here. Sure OSX has MACH/BSD *nix foundation, but it is FAR from open anymore, and the entire GUI OS level is more closed than Windows.
If this is about bringing 3rd party *nix applications to OSX, then the article seems to miss an important fact. XP, Win2003, & Vista have a full BSD subsystem available, and bringing 3rd party *nix applications to Windows very easy by using either the BSD subsystem(not emulation) or the mass amount of cross porting tools for the Win32/Win64 subsystem.
So again, how is Apple AT ALL open? Closed OS, closed hardware...
suspect they mean that Macs integrate with all the open standard protocols and tools that Linux does (think LDAP) instead of the MS controlled closed protocols where interoperability is always a little broken since it is achieved via reverse engineering.
This is wrong on so many levels...
If you think all Apple's implementations are 'clean' you are reading the marketing and not actually using the products.
If you think MS's support of 99.9% of protocols is 'changed' or 'reverse engineered' again, you have no idea what you are talking about.
People forget MS owned Xenix before Linux existed.
Maybe it's because I remember the days when one could do useful things with a computer that had just 8 or 16 or 32MB of RAM, because the operating system wasn't taking up 50% to 66% of physical memory and paging things out to disk.
I understand most people's inherent concerns regarding RAM usage.
However Vista isn't pushing the envelope very much, and certainly not past what most people use already.
As for paging, you will find that Vista is far more intelligent and very little is ever paged, and when it is to meet an applications needs, the system does a fast recovery of paged information. There are several technet articles on how Vista works differently and why Vista is faster just because it doesn't page out RAM for copy operations like XP did.
That's why giving up 50% of memory to housekeeping functions seems like an anathema to me.
Pre-fetching RAM is not really house keeping. Yes it does make Vista's RAM usage look high, but the performance Vista offers by using the 'non-used' RAM is quite exceptional, and a good reason for people to move to Vista. Even if you have 4Gb of RAM and are running just a word-processor, Vista's Superfetch technology will continue to increase overall system performance even though Vista and your wordprocessor would never come close to using all 4GB of RAM.
Based on actual experience, Vista totally trips out trying to run games if you have a 32 bit deep desktop.
Starting Flight Sim more often than not fails, *unless* you switch to a shallower color desktop, then start it.
OS X may be old fashioned, but at least it works without flashing, pausing and crashing. And this is Vista running on a PC with 1 Gig and a 6800GT which is still a pretty decent card. This is completely unacceptable.
Meantime, a MacBook with the Intel graphics manages all the eye candy, and runs WoW just fine. Vista requirements are ridiculous for what it is.
I can't see any reason to switch from XP, which is a great solid, nice looking and well proven piece of software.
--
-- Support open source software.
If you have problems running a desktop with 32bit color depth, then you have serious hardware issues. A Geforce 6800 level card is 'overkill' for Vista's needs.
Maybe XP is the best choice for you right now. I admit Vista will not initially appeal to everyone, especially if they are having issues like you describe; although, I do think you need to see if there isn't an underlying hardware problem, as Vista should not freeze and should be far more fluid than XP.
If your tag says to support open source, why are you recommending OSX? Not only is the OS closed source, the hardware is even closed.
I work at a computer shop and have had more people call me to see if I can downgrade them from Vista because xp ran fine and vista doesn't. These are people usually using vista business and they have something like 512 MB of ram and an radeon 9200 or something similar.
Tips to ensure Vista runs as fast as XP.
After installation - leave machine on for night to enable indexing and prefetching setups to complete. When someone first upgrades to Vista the background process to index the entire HD is going to make the system slightly less responsive, especially if the user has a lot of data files.
Also after setup, restart Vista 5 times. Vista monitors boot logs and will keep optimizing the boot cycle. So for example, the first couple of reboots after installing Vista will be slower than XP, but by the time the system optimizes itself after 5 boots to compare, the boot time will speed up incredibly.
512mb is the low end requirement and should give the users an XP experience; however, if they are gamers or using applications that like to consume 500mb of RAM, the math just doesn't work. Recommend that your customers that are having performance problems to move to 1Gb as it is the Vista sweet spot to where it will for sure be faster than XP.
Do NOT disable Glass/Aero. A lot of 'tech' users will turn off the desktop effects thinking it slows down the computer. However it actually is a part of what speeds up the display in Vista. So encourage all users to use WDDM Drivers and leave Glass/Aero/DWM enabled. Even for games running in a Window, many will perform faster with Aero left enabled while the game is playing. Also the CPU shift to the GPU for drawing is a considerable speed increase, and DWM is what turns this fully on. So even though the user is getting the 'cute' glass, if they hate it, they are better to turn the transparency on the Glass down to 0, and leave Aero/Glass enabled for performance reasons alone.
Good Luck with your users.
not doing anything that's not being done on OSX or Linux (Compiz, Beryl).
I know there is a lot of ignorance and lack of understanding in the tech journalism, but for people that have or 'had' to actually work with or understand Vista know that this is not the case.
There is quite a list of things that Vista does and that only can be currently done in Vista.
Since you mention graphics, I'll just mention the few main items.
Vista implements a full Vector based Composer
Vista implements GPU Scheduling (pre-emptive multi-tasking of the GPU)
Vista implements GPU RAM Virtualization (system and VRAM are shared)
Vista implements Video Hot Swap (Plug in New Video cards/devices live - change video live, etc.)
Unlike OSX, Vista does not do double buffering of the display in the way OSX does, so it has less latency. The Composer in Vista can write from system or VRAM directly to the display. The double buffering of OSX has given OSX a tear free interface, but it is using very old concepts by using just simple double buffering which adds RAM overhead and reduces speed. 3D Applications & Games in a 'window' will never be able to perform under OSX like they do on Vista.
Since Vista also is doing a Vector based composer for newer applications, the bandwidth between the applications and the composer is very light and the composer itself manges redraws even inside the application's window. This allows RDP to do some really nice 3D and animation effects remotely.
Vista also drops GDI/GDI+ (Font Drawing) & WPF through the 3D GPU for more acceleration. Vista does this even on old video cards. Any Video card that has 8mb of RAM and support DirectX 7 get GPU acceleration for existing applications.
This is why even on a low end system Vista running AI or CorelDraw will paint complex images 10x faster than XP or OSX can. OSX nor any X11/Linux solution does this for existing applications. OSX does have Quartz Extreme, but is NOT YET working properly and the compatibility issues is one reason Leopard is delayed.
And this discussion on just Video could go on and on with concepts that the WDDM brings to computing (Multi-core GPU support) to other features like CableCard, which Vista is the only OS that natievly supports.
So why does Vista require so much power when Linux and OSX can do it on half the hardware?
See this is another misconception. As for basic computing the ONLY big requirement of Vista is 512mb of RAM to run as fast as XP. This is not a big leap, considering even OSX wants 512mb for adequate performance, and even Linux running KDE or GNOME will run better with at least 512mb of RAM.
Vista 'does' scale with more RAM better than most other OSes, in fact it will continue to scale and show performance up to at least 16Gb of RAM because of the new caching system. Most OSes, like XP drop performance increases at a certain memory level because of the OS's inability to forecast content needed from the HD. So as you add 2GB, 4GB, 16GB of RAM Vista 'WILL' keep getting faster, where XP and other OSes will stop at about 1Gb or 2Gb because once the OS and application needs are met the performance increase stops.
As for processor, Vista will run on a P3 from 1999 quite easily as the processor requirements are also not high. I assume PIIs are also support, but our labs have not actually tested Vista on anything lower than a 700mhz machine.
As for Video to get basic acceleration, a DirectX 7 card from 1998/1999 will work just fine, and it will draw faster than XP by using the 3D portion of the GPU for vector and font acceleration.
The only other 'high' requirement for Vista is a PS 2.0 card to get the Glass effects and higher end WDDM features. So this means any 3D card made in 2003 or newer will work just fine. And you can pick up a Geforce 5200 or 5600 for $10-20 bucks in the cheap OEM market.
Considering Vista is an OS designed for today's hardware, it seems to be right in line with the market.
Vista having 'high' requirements is just being mis-informed, unless you feel that a video card made in 2003 or a 512mb of RAM is 'high'.
We know that Apple is not the problem because an application should never be able to invoke a BSOD, no matter how poorly written.
Um, you can pretty much drop any OS when you touch video overlays or drivers (yes even usermode drivers), although the OS may not officially crash, but the video UI/GUI will be gone and unable to resume.
However from what the user posted in the article, we would have to assume that he is NOT using the WDDM drivers for the 945, or if he is has Glass/Aero disabled. However if he is using the WDDM drivers with Aero on and is getting a BSOD, Intel has done something horribly wrong with their implementation because they shouldn't be touching anything low enough to BSOD Vista.
BSODs in Vista via video is almost non-existent with WDDM drivers, as they run in User mode and Vista even has driver drop down and hot plug support features for errant WDDM Drivers, so it will restore the video, even if it has to drop to a VGA driver or enable another video device if the hardware is fried.
Non-WDDM are XP drivers and act just like they do in XP, so they run in the kernel and can BSOD just like they would on XP.
Ok, we all kind of understand that there will come a time when bandwidth allows profile concepts to be moved to a universally accessible secure location. But it will have to be a highly secured and trusted service or user created server service. (i.e. A home BSD box or even Windows Home Server for example for home users.)
However, I don't want my personal documents stored on their servers, and I know most business policies will not allow documents to be stored in this manner.
Also, why are they 'reinventing' the wheel with patented technology to do this? There are many known and secure remote app technologies that could be already put into place for something like this.
I'm open to ideas here, but I don't see how this is 'Open' or a good thing...
Then I'd get a barrage of yellow banners claiming I need a plugin (could be a new JRE version, could be this MS thingy, could be...?)
Could be... or maybe you turn them off, or tell it to ignore them and stop displaying them? Na, that would be too simple for a brainiac like yourself.
Wow, love your wealth of knowledge.
the short answer is with extensions GL can have support for anything, without waiting for the next official release
Partially true in theory; however, there are a few exceptions to this.
Notably OS level GPU Scheduling, OS level GPU RAM Virtualization, and non-graphic Physics APIs, although the later could be addressed, but are outside OpenGL. (Originally, people didn't 'get' why Vista was needed for DX10, maybe now people are figuring it out.)
You also then have to deal with the standard fragmenting by going with OEM variations and at that point why even have a standard hardware agnostic API?
Ok I'm going to ignore all the errors and misconceptions in your post and just assume you are an average Joe and don't realize you are misleading people via ignorance.
But please, go look up VC1 before you go on a rant about MPEG4 or talking about how WMV/WMA is not used.
Technially, even on the internet WMV is the most widely streamed content format, even with all Youtube Flash Video sites. (Yes there are numbers for this, go look them up.)
So if you think MS has no chance and MPEG4 has won, then you don't realize every HD player in the world ships with WMV support, even the PS3. Geesh.
You also don't seem to understand the difference between providing WMV content in the Silverlight player control concepts. This is in addition to WMV supporting clickable moving video content for taking Hyperlinking beyond hypertext to hypervideo.
I repeat go look up VC1.
Why are we still designing GPUs for Windows? It's like the Slashdot crowd hates Microsoft for everything but still clings to them for their computer games. Screw DX10, ask for Open GL 3.0 already!
Ok, go look up the technologies, you really need to educate yourself on what, why and when.
The first thing is that OpenGL doesn't support features DX10 does.
The second thing is concepts from the architecture of these cards are not completely exclusive to DX10 or Windows, many of the features can be modified to work well in native and OpenGL environments. (Although as we move to multi-core GPUs, the OS will need to have a basic understanding of GPU scheduling, and right now Vista is the only OS that does this.)
The third thing is the design of this generation of cards was done by Microsoft. Go look at the XBox360 and you will see the same technology in the MS/ATI developed GPU. So whether you hate MS or not, this progression of technology is very much pushed and even partially funded by them.
Also if you look back at the original XBox and the money NVidia got in the development of the GPU with MS, a lot of that technology set the stage for the last generation of GPUs. For example the XBox's GPU was feature comparable to the Geforce3 Ti, and that was all the way back in 1999/2000. NVidia and MS ended up fighting over production costs, but what most people don't realize is that NVidia got a lot of Money from MS up front to develop the technologies that they later put into their Geforce3 Ti, and Geforce 4 line of video cards, which helped them take and hold the market while ATI flopped like a fish.
So ya, MS technologies are pushing what goes into the Video cards, but these are also the 'newest' technologies for GPUs, not just what MS wants.
You will also start to see dual/multi core GPUs and other technologies that are a part of the MS DX10 technologies pushing ATI/NVidia hardware.
DX10 right now is just the only technology that effectively is designed for and uses these new GPU concepts effectively. From native support for multi-core GPUs to GPU scheduling (pre-emptive multitasking video) to even the full set of non-Video APIs that allow the GPUs to handle physics, which is a part of DX10 and something ATI will be using to showcase their new line of GPUs.
Great... just great. Now there's TWO variants of flashing crap that I have to filter out of my browser.
Here's a cool trick, don't install it...
(Didn't this use to be a site for knowledgable nerds?)
Agreed! I've heard people complain that Norton is broken under Vista. IMO, Norton is broken, period.
The sad thing is MS tried to prevent Norton from hacking into Vista at a low level by providing standard APIs for spyware, network monitoring, and anti-virus, and Symantec and McAfee yelled anyway and sadly, the Norton version for Vista is the biggest most intrusive piece of crap they have put out to date. Yet the companies that use simple methods or just use the APIs provided by MS work well and don't have performance issues or create system unstability.
Even in XP, 90% of the systems our teams work with have to remove Norton or McAfee because of networking performance issues, it messing with simple email over SMTP, and the horrible freaking hooks into the OS at levels that make our OS engineers shutter. We have seen systems where Norton would increase boot times by several minutes, make login times several minutes because it is waiting for a network connection and yet not allowing the DSL to initiate a connection and various other massive insane problems.
Sadly, as if Windows doesn't have a bad enough reputation, people that are running Symantec or McAfee hate Windows even more for reasons that aren't even Window's fault.
So very much a warning to anyone that uses or has to use Windows and wants anti-virus protection, run a small free or simple application. And if the system comes pre-loaded with McAfee or Symantec, download another solution and then uninstall them ASAP.
You can easily even get by with a non-realtime solution, if you schedule the utility to check your system once a day, thus not having to give up any real-time monitoring performance. Also if you are not a click anything person or novice user, you can even avoid anti-virus software, especially in Vista, as I haven't ran any solutions since the Win9x days and have never had a virus, knock on wood.
Anyone notice the article was about how Vista 'automatically' works around most incompatibilities even for badly written software?
Instead everyone here replying is going from the out of context pull quote or not even reading the article.
Almost everything mentioned in the article talks about what is different in Vista, and then goes on to explain how Vista tries to work around 99% of these incompatibilities - AUTOMATICALLY.
Sure Vista changed a lot in comparison to XP, so the fact that people think Vista isn't different than XP or applications run as well as they is quite remarkable.
Just a short list of major rewritten portions: Video subsystem, Printing subsystem, inter process communications, new intelligent audio stack, network stack, xaml based language from application to screen to printer, etc etc..
In our labs we have very few applications that break under Vista or require Admin Rights to run at all. And this is a number like 10 out of a few thousand we have tested.
Out of the thousands of applications we run and have tested for our environments, half of the ones that did have compatibility problems MS itself released Vista updates to allow the 3rd party applications to run properly, even though they were coded improperly, had bugs, or have no concept of security.
I dare any OS to support as many applications as Vista and not break a few bad applications along the way from the XP upgrade. When facing this challenge, remember Vista has a full BSD subsystem and can run 99% of all the *nix apps in addition to the DOS and Windows base.
XP allowed applications to do stuff MS should never have allowed that created performance and security risks, and Vista finally draws the line in the sand for developers so they have to learn about security and writing applications properly.
For every broken application, I give MS a kudos for finally stopping crap from doing stuff it shouldn't.
PS - Anyone running Windows, run a free anti-virus application, Norton and McAfee cause more performance problems and dig into the OS in areas they should never touch. If your XP or Vista installation on a computer made in the last 5 years takes more than 30secs to boot, you have hardware problems or crap like Norton or McAfee installed.
Microsoft seriously need to start work on a "Windows Neo" or something that is redesigned from the core and will break compatibility with _everything_ unless they can create some "Classic" thing like Apple did for OSX.
I see this as the only way to "fix" the Windows codebase which must look like a complete, utter mess after a decade of hacks
There is so much wrong with almost everything you say, and yet I am still shocked that people like you post statements like this.
Go look up NT then go look up the Win32 subsystem.
Recoding NT would be a waste of time, because even from the harshest Windows critics, the ones with a background in OS engineering know that NT is not an OS or OS architecture to make fun of.
So make fun of Win32 or MS or whatever you want all day, but suggesting that NT needs to be rewritten is like telling the *nix world that BSD should be scrapped and written from scratch because it is crap code. Which is not only stupid, but insane.
People need to learn what 'Windows' actually is - especially the architectural base before making comments like this.
PS Ironically Vista is the first step in moving past the Win32 subsystem, which is as close to what you are suggesting should be done, and look at the people complaining about what few apps are broken.
I'm curious how a machine with a 2 gigabyte limit on RAM will benefit from 64-bit code, since the main benefit of 64-bit code is to allow your machine to address more than 4 gigabytes of RAM. Seems to be you're never going to have that issue. Now, while I am being snarky, I'm also asking a serious question. It's possible that you know more than I do about this stuff and that there are some benefits to 64-bit code which do not have to do with memory addressing and of which I am not aware. If that's not the case, then it seems to be that you're not losing anything from having to wait for Leopard, other than a reason to complain.
Well there are several questions and factors to be considered here.
How good is the x64 implementation of OSX. Past versions of OSX's x64 support are barely funtional beyond a developer's point of view, as the OS doesn't use the important aspects of the x64 architecture to gain performance.
If Leopard does provide an outstanding 'fully' implemented x64 version of OSX and not a hybrid as it appears it is going to be, there would be many benefits beyond extended RAM addressing.
The x64 architecture has many things that open the door for increased performance. There are many modes that doesn't cater to x32 legacy routes that are performance bottlenecks.
Even though applications running 64bit would in theory consume a bit more RAM, in number crunching applications, jamming 64bits together at a time is far more efficient than jamming two chunks of 32bits together.
If you look at other OSes with 'good' 64bit implementation, performance is increased for all applications because the OS itself is performing faster. Vista x64 or XP x64 are good examples of this. Even when running old 32bit applications, they perform faster than running the x32bit version of the OSes on the same hardware. And as applications ship in 64bit versions, the performance will continue to increase.
Everything thinks that the jump from 16bit to 32bit was better because of the RAM addresses and the modes the 386 CPUs offered over the 286 CPUS, but there was a lot of performance gains in just the pure math of dealing with one 32bit chunk instead of two 16bit chunks. I can still remember the debates from back then saying that 32bit was going to be slower even though it offered more features. However, the increase in the amount of data being shoved around easier proved this to be incorrect.
It is also worth reading up on the x64 extensions in both the Intel and AMD CPUs, as there are many changes when running in native x64 bit mode at the OS level that are very significant when it comes to performance.
Even the story article said that the AppleTV interface was like a bazillion times better than the XBox360's.
This is an opinion, and you can find tons of other reviews that would say different. The whole Windows Media Center interface tends to gain good reviews, but since Apple doesn't even have a product like this, not easy to compare.
And other media extenders cost between $300 and $600, with reviews scaling from 1 to 3 stars between those price ranges.
Wow, no... Media Extenders start around $100 and Network Media Share devices (that do the same thing, but are Windows independent) are in the 150-300 range. And these are OLD technology that is STILL more full featured than freaking Apple TV.
Let alone $300 can buy a 360 that does real HD, I don't see how you are helping your argument.
As for the iPod interface, there is a bit more locked in the NDAs that Apple would like to admit to. I will agree Apple refined aspects of the iPod, the controls and interface features they are applauded for were the work of people outside of Apple that existed before the people and companies were picked up by Apple.