I'm not sure that I get it. If you want a tuner, then yes, the EyeTV does the job, but why does it matter whether it a card or a stick?
If you want a video card, i.e. something with an NVIDIA or ATI chip on it, something which slings graphics onto the screen, something with, these days, >128MB of RAM on it, then, yes, with the Mac mini you are fucked. But I don't see what that has to do with TV tuners...
Latency is a problem but quality is not - at least, it's better than my cell phone.
I think this is the key issue. I can call mobiles via Skype from my phone, but I only do so very occasionally, precisely because of the latency issues. Perhaps the lack of processing power is contributory too - i.e. a delay is introduced by the time it takes to process received audio. But in my experience - and I am posting this from a 3.5G connection:P - it really is more about the connection's latency. So as far as I am concerned, anyone on here who is suggesting they can do proper VoIP, i.e. voice data routed over a TCP/IP connection, over a GPRS connection (!), is talking shit.
They are even allowing VOIP apps (though admittedly only over WiFi, not EDGE).
Though that is doubtless a revenue protection measure, VOIP would never work over EDGE anyway. In my experience (using VOIP on my Nokia), even 3.5G isn't really quick enough and latencies are so high as to render it practically unusable. Limited processing power doubtless also plays a part.
As others have noted, your mistake was to go into Currys. The Currys shop I went into recently (in Redhill) was feeding all their HDTVs via component. Admittedly it's better than RF, but I would rather see something running off HDMI. "Proper" shops run all their TVs off HDMI.
You should realise that the updates don't actually irreversibly brick unlocked iPhones. They just make the unlocks stop working. A complete software restore makes the iPhone work again, though of course only with AT&T's network. Whilst that may be inconvenient for some customers (maybe as many as 18%), it is not a bricking in the true sense of the word. A truly bricked iPhone would be one not salvageable even with a software restore.
Just a couple of points - yeah, Leopard has some rough edges right now but by the sounds of things most of those should be fixed by 10.5.2 which is due out in January. For writing to NTFS, check out MacFUSE and NTFS-3g (Google it).
On the Boot Camp running hot point, I don't use it myself (although I know people that do), and from what I've heard, it's simply down to the fact that the power management isn't as good under Windows, and the product of this is reduced battery life and increased heat generation. Whether you blame Apple drivers or Microsoft for this is up to you - this brow-beaten long-time Microsoft-disliker-turned-Mac-fan thinks the latter is more likely at fault, but there we go...
You did make the right choice though. Eye candy and all that aside, the beauty of the Mac comes from being hassle free. It appeals particularly to IT professionals, who spend their working days wrestling with Microsoft shit. When they get home, the last thing they want to do is wrestle with their home computers as well, so the Mac is the obvious choice. Oh, and plus, it's a UNIX box - indeed, the most beautiful UNIX box anyone's ever produced.
No, I say "the third of February two thousand and seven." Or, in an attempt to stay on topic, "the eighteenth of January two thousand and eight".
In any case, the it-matches-the-order-in-which-I-say-it argument is very weak. I write 4:45, yet I say "quarter to five"; 2:30, yet "half two"; and so on.
In an ideal world, though, we would all use the ISO format, which is that used in East Asia. It is the most logical, with a full date/time representation going from largest to smallest without exceptions (i.e. YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS). Given that we are all vaguely tech savvy here, and thus surely types who appreciate a clean, logical system, ISO should prevail.
...and because, like MM/DD/YYYY, YYYY/DD/MM would be completely idiotic.
Americans have given much that the modern world should be thankful for (the Internet, for one), but a braindead way of representing dates is not one of these things. It should have been buried a long time ago.
It's always funny when people tie themselves in knots trying to explain this one. The sister posts demonstrate this nicely.
In fact, the phrase makes perfect sense, but only if you know that one of the older meanings of "prove" is "to test". See, for example, here, but a quick Google will turn up plenty more results.
So it has nothing to do with "prov[ing] the existence of a rule to be excepted" (see sister post) or "mak[ing]... a rule more obvious". Rather, it means exactly what it says.
I must echo the view of the sibling post who asks whether you actually have a point. If you did, you have clouded it with so much anti-English (do you mean British?) rambling that it is impossible to make out what that point was.
To respond to your point about "fine-working legislation", we are doing quite nicely thank you very much. Crime has in fact fallen, but you would never know it from the hysterical media reporting, and for that reason, crime is, alas, perceived to be on the rise. It is in fact these perceptions, and the political responses thereto (pandering to fears by mandating longer sentences, etc. - something which is to be condemned) which are far more problematic than our restrictions on gun ownership. One cannot help but observe that the peculiar American fear of gun control - one presumes it stems from deep-rooted insecurities about power, feelings of inadequacy and the belief that a man without a gun is impotent - has caused far more harm than European efforts to take guns off the streets.
Something to ponder, anyway, next time you mouth off about "England".
Might make these idiots think before going out on a piss-up on the way home and taking the laptop with them, then losing it. Legislation like this - which actually takes people's privacy seriously and does something about it - is something we could use more of. And I don't normally hear myself clamouring for new law...
The firewall patches come 24 hours after a Mac OS X update that provided cover for at least 41 security vulnerabilities.
Yes, that was an update for Mac OS X 10.4. This patch is for Mac OS X 10.5. The two are essentially unrelated, so trying to imply that this represents some kind of patch frenzy is at least a little disingenuous.
For now I got an iPodTouch with a very attractive WiFi contract and will see how that pans out. If Apple comes along with a higher capacity 3G iPhone in 12 months I'll consider swapping for that, despite the carrier lock-in. Until then I'll carry two devices around with me.
I'm in pretty much the same boat. Got an iPod touch, though no nice Wi-Fi deal, but I have a 3.5G phone and a very nice data contract, so I get my Internet that way. Convergence isn't that important. When it goes 3G - and a bit of extra storage space would be cool too - then, like you, I'll probably think about it.
I always assumed it was because the phone was primarily designed for use in the US where 3G doesn't really exist.
That probably has an awful lot to do with it as well. In fact, it's probably the prime concern. But this way, they can say that the iPhone offers better battery life than the Nokia N95 (8 hours vs. 4 hours, evidently), plus it's a hell of a lot prettier.
But I think the response was perhaps somewhat underwhelming in Europe, because people think that if they are going to buy a phone this cool, it damn well better have 3G. The lack of that is a deal-breaker.
(Find files that have been altered from last update -> Copy Said files to alternate drive in directory with the date as a name, make note of files that have deleted)
Trivialising the technical underpinnings of Time Machine is unwise, and plays right into the hands of those who say Apple is all about show and lacks substance. In fact, the way Time Machine knows what files have been modified is really quite elegant and shouldn't be underplayed. I shan't go into the details of it all here, but if you are interested, see the relevant page of John Siracusa's excellent review of 10.5 over at Ars Technica.
In the meantime, you might like to consider learning how to spell.
Undoubtedly because he was caught using an iPhone or an iPod touch. Or perhaps he brought a MacBook Pro to work. I can see it now!
Ballmer: What the fuck is that?
Scott: Oh yeah, it's a MacBook Pro. Sexy piece of kit, isn't it?
Ballmer: What the fucking fuck? Fucking sexy? No, it's not fucking sexy. It's fucking Apple, that's fucking what. What the fuck?
Scott:...Er...It's only running Vista, if that helps. I erased that...oh-so-lovely (whoops) Mac operating system...Mac X, or whatever it's called...
Ballmer: You fucking fuck! Get the fuck out of my fucking face!
Ballmer grabs a chair. Scott exits quickly stage left.
And when it debuted, it cost consumers five hundred dollars. The same as the iPhone.
This tells us one of two possible things: either that the iPhone is astoundingly good value or that the RAZR was disgracefully overpriced. Given that the RAZR has sold very well, I suggest that we conclude the former. The iPhone is light years ahead of anything else out there and yet it costs the same price as that piece-of-shit RAZR did when it came out, and the RAZR was in no way revolutionary.*
I'm not comparing the features of these phones.
But the features of the iPhone are what matters here. The point is that the iPhone is so astoundingly great that it makes AT&T want to talk about things like exclusivity, as they know people will do anything (well, switch networks) to get one. Which in turn is how Apple is able to demand a cut of monthly contract revenues.
And once again, for the third time, the sole objective of a company is to make a profit. Getting a cut of AT&T contract revenues is a very nice cash-cow. Apple would have been foolish to turn it down. Hence the exclusivity, the locking, etc. Any handset manufacturer would gladly sell their own mother, so to speak, for a cut of carrier contract revenues if all they had to do was make the phone exclusive to one network for a period of time. It's simple capitalism.
When you recognise that the United States is not a communist state, you will understand why Apple have done what they have done. Until you come to that realisation, however, I can see that the above will be difficult for you to comprehend.
:P
(* It's a nice phone externally, as I have already allowed. It's very slim. But, argh, that interface! It is bad even by the standards of the time (see, e.g. Sony Ericsson's efforts). Revolutionary it most certainly ain't.)
Yes. Look at phones like the Razr, which you can get through multiple carriers, or directly through Motorola.
Externally, the RAZR is a nice phone, but its interface is reminiscent of an unrefined turd. In usage, it is truly a horrible thing. The only thing worth debating is whether it is better or worse than S60 on Nokia phones. I hate them both equally (and have - alas - a Nokia). So to compare iPhones to RAZRs is a bit disingenuous - rather like comparing apples to oranges. Hohoho. One is the most revolutionary device to enter the mobile phone market ever and the other is the same old shit with a shiny case.
I don't have the numbers, but I'd bet money that more Razrs have been sold than iPhones.
I'd bet that too. The RAZR has been out a lot longer than the iPhone, and it's the kind of phone you get free with a contract (at least that's how it works on this side of the pond), so it's probably reasonable to suggest that there are more RAZR owners than there are iPhone owners. But here's a question - how many of those RAZR owners would rather have an iPhone?
As to blame, I don't think it's as clear cut as you make out. As I understand it, it is quite normal for mobile phone network operators to fuck customers over by restricting what one can do with the phone, to the extent that even Bluetooth functionality can be disabled in some cases, lest one do something naughty like send an MP3 to the phone from one's computer to use as a ringtone, thus depriving the network of revenue. (For reference, the situation is not as bad in Europe.) In that climate, an exclusivity deal doesn't seem particularly abnormal, particularly when it concerns a product as desirable as the iPhone. As I have already pointed out, the purpose of a company is to make money, and Apple would be foolish (and liable to litigation by disgruntled shareholders) if it did not do its utmost to pursue profitable activities. Making some money out of the fact that you have created perhaps the most desirable phone ever is thus a completely common-sense course of action.
So no, in other words, I do not "get it". I suspect, however, that it is you that is lacking the mental faculties or the willingness to "get" what is more commonly accepted as "it".
Well, either way, they will open it up to other carriers eventually (it was only ever intended to be a limited period of exclusivity), at which point people will have to find something else to complain about. And Apple will sell a metric shitload of phones to those who wouldn't buy it because it was tethered to AT&T.
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I'm not sure that I get it. If you want a tuner, then yes, the EyeTV does the job, but why does it matter whether it a card or a stick?
:?
If you want a video card, i.e. something with an NVIDIA or ATI chip on it, something which slings graphics onto the screen, something with, these days, >128MB of RAM on it, then, yes, with the Mac mini you are fucked. But I don't see what that has to do with TV tuners...
Well, the hardware would have the same functionality as the 800 Mhz G3 iBook.
:|
Man I fucking hated that machine. Three fucking times it burned me. THREE FUCKING TIMES! Twice in the space of a month as well.
Now a very happy MacBook Pro user, I should add (having come via a PowerBook G4 12" - greatest laptop ever), but the iBook G3 800 was a low point.
Except that there are no tuner cards for Mac.
:|
Except that you are hopelessly misinformed. See here.
Sigh.
Many such people want it to have TV tuner capabilities...
:|
Indeed. See here. No "slot" required.
Latency is a problem but quality is not - at least, it's better than my cell phone.
:P - it really is more about the connection's latency. So as far as I am concerned, anyone on here who is suggesting they can do proper VoIP, i.e. voice data routed over a TCP/IP connection, over a GPRS connection (!), is talking shit.
:|
I think this is the key issue. I can call mobiles via Skype from my phone, but I only do so very occasionally, precisely because of the latency issues. Perhaps the lack of processing power is contributory too - i.e. a delay is introduced by the time it takes to process received audio. But in my experience - and I am posting this from a 3.5G connection
They are even allowing VOIP apps (though admittedly only over WiFi, not EDGE).
:|
Though that is doubtless a revenue protection measure, VOIP would never work over EDGE anyway. In my experience (using VOIP on my Nokia), even 3.5G isn't really quick enough and latencies are so high as to render it practically unusable. Limited processing power doubtless also plays a part.
Ooooh, how meta.
:P
As others have noted, your mistake was to go into Currys. The Currys shop I went into recently (in Redhill) was feeding all their HDTVs via component. Admittedly it's better than RF, but I would rather see something running off HDMI. "Proper" shops run all their TVs off HDMI.
:|
You should realise that the updates don't actually irreversibly brick unlocked iPhones. They just make the unlocks stop working. A complete software restore makes the iPhone work again, though of course only with AT&T's network. Whilst that may be inconvenient for some customers (maybe as many as 18%), it is not a bricking in the true sense of the word. A truly bricked iPhone would be one not salvageable even with a software restore.
:|
iqu
Just a couple of points - yeah, Leopard has some rough edges right now but by the sounds of things most of those should be fixed by 10.5.2 which is due out in January. For writing to NTFS, check out MacFUSE and NTFS-3g (Google it).
:|
On the Boot Camp running hot point, I don't use it myself (although I know people that do), and from what I've heard, it's simply down to the fact that the power management isn't as good under Windows, and the product of this is reduced battery life and increased heat generation. Whether you blame Apple drivers or Microsoft for this is up to you - this brow-beaten long-time Microsoft-disliker-turned-Mac-fan thinks the latter is more likely at fault, but there we go...
You did make the right choice though. Eye candy and all that aside, the beauty of the Mac comes from being hassle free. It appeals particularly to IT professionals, who spend their working days wrestling with Microsoft shit. When they get home, the last thing they want to do is wrestle with their home computers as well, so the Mac is the obvious choice. Oh, and plus, it's a UNIX box - indeed, the most beautiful UNIX box anyone's ever produced.
iqu
No, I say "the third of February two thousand and seven." Or, in an attempt to stay on topic, "the eighteenth of January two thousand and eight".
:|
In any case, the it-matches-the-order-in-which-I-say-it argument is very weak. I write 4:45, yet I say "quarter to five"; 2:30, yet "half two"; and so on.
In an ideal world, though, we would all use the ISO format, which is that used in East Asia. It is the most logical, with a full date/time representation going from largest to smallest without exceptions (i.e. YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS). Given that we are all vaguely tech savvy here, and thus surely types who appreciate a clean, logical system, ISO should prevail.
...and because, like MM/DD/YYYY, YYYY/DD/MM would be completely idiotic.
:|
Americans have given much that the modern world should be thankful for (the Internet, for one), but a braindead way of representing dates is not one of these things. It should have been buried a long time ago.
So, being based on UNIX ideas, wouldn't that constitute as being based on UNIX?
:|
Absolutely not! Were you asleep for the whole SCO lawsuit thing?
...Ice Cap Zone.
:D
Hands down the best evar. Fucking glorious.
Not sure about another eleven though. Probably a fair few Sonic ones in there.
It's always funny when people tie themselves in knots trying to explain this one. The sister posts demonstrate this nicely.
... a rule more obvious". Rather, it means exactly what it says.
:)
In fact, the phrase makes perfect sense, but only if you know that one of the older meanings of "prove" is "to test". See, for example, here, but a quick Google will turn up plenty more results.
So it has nothing to do with "prov[ing] the existence of a rule to be excepted" (see sister post) or "mak[ing]
I must echo the view of the sibling post who asks whether you actually have a point. If you did, you have clouded it with so much anti-English (do you mean British?) rambling that it is impossible to make out what that point was.
:|
To respond to your point about "fine-working legislation", we are doing quite nicely thank you very much. Crime has in fact fallen, but you would never know it from the hysterical media reporting, and for that reason, crime is, alas, perceived to be on the rise. It is in fact these perceptions, and the political responses thereto (pandering to fears by mandating longer sentences, etc. - something which is to be condemned) which are far more problematic than our restrictions on gun ownership. One cannot help but observe that the peculiar American fear of gun control - one presumes it stems from deep-rooted insecurities about power, feelings of inadequacy and the belief that a man without a gun is impotent - has caused far more harm than European efforts to take guns off the streets.
Something to ponder, anyway, next time you mouth off about "England".
Might make these idiots think before going out on a piss-up on the way home and taking the laptop with them, then losing it. Legislation like this - which actually takes people's privacy seriously and does something about it - is something we could use more of. And I don't normally hear myself clamouring for new law...
:|
The firewall patches come 24 hours after a Mac OS X update that provided cover for at least 41 security vulnerabilities.
:|
Yes, that was an update for Mac OS X 10.4. This patch is for Mac OS X 10.5. The two are essentially unrelated, so trying to imply that this represents some kind of patch frenzy is at least a little disingenuous.
For now I got an iPodTouch with a very attractive WiFi contract and will see how that pans out. If Apple comes along with a higher capacity 3G iPhone in 12 months I'll consider swapping for that, despite the carrier lock-in. Until then I'll carry two devices around with me.
:|
I'm in pretty much the same boat. Got an iPod touch, though no nice Wi-Fi deal, but I have a 3.5G phone and a very nice data contract, so I get my Internet that way. Convergence isn't that important. When it goes 3G - and a bit of extra storage space would be cool too - then, like you, I'll probably think about it.
I always assumed it was because the phone was primarily designed for use in the US where 3G doesn't really exist.
:|
That probably has an awful lot to do with it as well. In fact, it's probably the prime concern. But this way, they can say that the iPhone offers better battery life than the Nokia N95 (8 hours vs. 4 hours, evidently), plus it's a hell of a lot prettier.
But I think the response was perhaps somewhat underwhelming in Europe, because people think that if they are going to buy a phone this cool, it damn well better have 3G. The lack of that is a deal-breaker.
(Find files that have been altered from last update -> Copy Said files to alternate drive in directory with the date as a name, make note of files that have deleted)
:|
Trivialising the technical underpinnings of Time Machine is unwise, and plays right into the hands of those who say Apple is all about show and lacks substance. In fact, the way Time Machine knows what files have been modified is really quite elegant and shouldn't be underplayed. I shan't go into the details of it all here, but if you are interested, see the relevant page of John Siracusa's excellent review of 10.5 over at Ars Technica.
In the meantime, you might like to consider learning how to spell.
Undoubtedly because he was caught using an iPhone or an iPod touch. Or perhaps he brought a MacBook Pro to work. I can see it now!
...Er...It's only running Vista, if that helps. I erased that...oh-so-lovely (whoops) Mac operating system...Mac X, or whatever it's called...
:P
Ballmer: What the fuck is that?
Scott: Oh yeah, it's a MacBook Pro. Sexy piece of kit, isn't it?
Ballmer: What the fucking fuck? Fucking sexy? No, it's not fucking sexy. It's fucking Apple, that's fucking what. What the fuck?
Scott:
Ballmer: You fucking fuck! Get the fuck out of my fucking face!
Ballmer grabs a chair. Scott exits quickly stage left.
And when it debuted, it cost consumers five hundred dollars. The same as the iPhone.
:P
This tells us one of two possible things: either that the iPhone is astoundingly good value or that the RAZR was disgracefully overpriced. Given that the RAZR has sold very well, I suggest that we conclude the former. The iPhone is light years ahead of anything else out there and yet it costs the same price as that piece-of-shit RAZR did when it came out, and the RAZR was in no way revolutionary.*
I'm not comparing the features of these phones.
But the features of the iPhone are what matters here. The point is that the iPhone is so astoundingly great that it makes AT&T want to talk about things like exclusivity, as they know people will do anything (well, switch networks) to get one. Which in turn is how Apple is able to demand a cut of monthly contract revenues.
And once again, for the third time, the sole objective of a company is to make a profit. Getting a cut of AT&T contract revenues is a very nice cash-cow. Apple would have been foolish to turn it down. Hence the exclusivity, the locking, etc. Any handset manufacturer would gladly sell their own mother, so to speak, for a cut of carrier contract revenues if all they had to do was make the phone exclusive to one network for a period of time. It's simple capitalism.
When you recognise that the United States is not a communist state, you will understand why Apple have done what they have done. Until you come to that realisation, however, I can see that the above will be difficult for you to comprehend.
(* It's a nice phone externally, as I have already allowed. It's very slim. But, argh, that interface! It is bad even by the standards of the time (see, e.g. Sony Ericsson's efforts). Revolutionary it most certainly ain't.)
Yes. Look at phones like the Razr, which you can get through multiple carriers, or directly through Motorola.
:P
Externally, the RAZR is a nice phone, but its interface is reminiscent of an unrefined turd. In usage, it is truly a horrible thing. The only thing worth debating is whether it is better or worse than S60 on Nokia phones. I hate them both equally (and have - alas - a Nokia). So to compare iPhones to RAZRs is a bit disingenuous - rather like comparing apples to oranges. Hohoho. One is the most revolutionary device to enter the mobile phone market ever and the other is the same old shit with a shiny case.
I don't have the numbers, but I'd bet money that more Razrs have been sold than iPhones.
I'd bet that too. The RAZR has been out a lot longer than the iPhone, and it's the kind of phone you get free with a contract (at least that's how it works on this side of the pond), so it's probably reasonable to suggest that there are more RAZR owners than there are iPhone owners. But here's a question - how many of those RAZR owners would rather have an iPhone?
As to blame, I don't think it's as clear cut as you make out. As I understand it, it is quite normal for mobile phone network operators to fuck customers over by restricting what one can do with the phone, to the extent that even Bluetooth functionality can be disabled in some cases, lest one do something naughty like send an MP3 to the phone from one's computer to use as a ringtone, thus depriving the network of revenue. (For reference, the situation is not as bad in Europe.) In that climate, an exclusivity deal doesn't seem particularly abnormal, particularly when it concerns a product as desirable as the iPhone. As I have already pointed out, the purpose of a company is to make money, and Apple would be foolish (and liable to litigation by disgruntled shareholders) if it did not do its utmost to pursue profitable activities. Making some money out of the fact that you have created perhaps the most desirable phone ever is thus a completely common-sense course of action.
So no, in other words, I do not "get it". I suspect, however, that it is you that is lacking the mental faculties or the willingness to "get" what is more commonly accepted as "it".
Well, either way, they will open it up to other carriers eventually (it was only ever intended to be a limited period of exclusivity), at which point people will have to find something else to complain about. And Apple will sell a metric shitload of phones to those who wouldn't buy it because it was tethered to AT&T.
:|