"I don't really know much about the christian mythology but the early Apple logos featured the whole tree"
They also featured Sir Isaac Newton under said tree. It's not in reference to biblical events but in homage to Newton and scientific thought. Notice years later Apple created the first PDA which they called the Newton.
And in other news, a large nuclear explosion occurred today in Lindon, Utah. The Government has no word on what happened, who was behind it or what motives were involved. Some believe it had to do with a company called The SCO Group, but this is unconfirmed. Sadly, there were no survivors.
In other news, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, executives at IBM, DaimlerChrysler and Autozone were seen dancing in the streets after the unfortunate nuclear explosion.
Back to you Bob, in the studio with the weather...
That's not entirely true. With Unix under the hood, the casual user still has access to Unix attributes; namely, Apache. With one click in the System Preferences, even the most naive user can set up an Apache-driven website right from their Macintosh. There's not a lot of other Unixes that make it so easy to set up Apache.
The way it was written suggested that the iPod mini cost $400. It's an honest mistake on my behalf, no need to be a sarcastic asshole. I wasn't trying to flame the person, and made a innocuously honest mistake, so there's no need for personal insults. Had the original author written his sentence a little differently it would have avoided the misunderstanding.
Corel is having problems and perhaps by migrating to the Macintosh platform they could dominate this nascent market (whereas it would be much harder in the PC world due to more competition).
The reason I bring up BMW is because BMW holds a similar market share in their respective market. Unlike Apple, no one chastises BMW for their relatively miniscule market share.
The point to consider is that Apple has 3-5% of the total PC market. A lot of people like to compare them to this unified PC market, when in reality they're up against hundreds of PC makers. I think comparing them to other, individual PC makers is more fair. If we compare them to HP, Toshiba or Dell individually then we get a slightly more "fair" look at the pieces of the puzzle.
10 million isn't exactly "so few" (and this is JUST the current OS X users; this number is growing. The total number of Macintosh users is around 25 million, but many haven't upgraded to OS X yet). I mean, really. Is BMW looked down upon for "only" having 5% of the car market?
Umm, the recent powerbooks all have a PgUp, PgDn and Del key. Take a look. Also, I believe OS 10.3 now has the ability to let the user assign/reassign key commands. That means that you could assign one key to function as the second mouse button. I would confirm this but I'm logged in to 10.2 currently.
How much harder is it to hold down the CTRL button with the mouse button (or trackpad's button) to get the right-click functionality? Seriously? I don't mind the one button mouse. I thought I'd hate when I got my first Mac two or three years ago (I used Windows for a decade, and Amiga/C64's before that)... and you know what, it's not really that bad. CTRL+mouse click works just fine for me. You only need one hand for the mouse, so the other hand will almost always still be on the keyboard, and subsequently right by the CTRL button, making the CTRL+mouse click not really hard or awkward.
And as the other poster said, if you don't like it, buy a third-party USB mouse. I've seen ones with like five or six buttons, and you can program them to work with Macs just like you can with Windows. The right button and scroll wheel work out of the box with Macs. It's not that hard, people.
"The machine is the first supercomputer based on Macs; it is one of the few supercomputers built entirely from off-the-shelf components and it cost a bargain-bucket price -- only $5.2 million. By comparison, most of the top 10 supercomputers cost about $40 million and up. The Earth Simulator cost $350 million."
The Earth Simulator is #1 on the Top 500 list as seen here. Quote taken from here.
"The $200 million (US$) computer is the fifth in the DOE's nuclear weapons simulation program, called Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), which allows the U.S. to keep its nuclear stockpile while complying with the nuclear test-ban treaty. Named "ASCI Q," the newest supercomputer will be capable of performing 30 trillion calculations per second.*"
So, the #1 Supercomputer, the Earth Simulator, cost $350 million. The #2 Supercomputer, the ASCI Q, cost $100 million. The #3 Supercomputer, the Big Mac, cost a mere $5.2 million.
*Looks like ASCI Q got only 13.88 trillion calculations per second, not 30.
Personally I don't like the idea of disposable cell phones. Imagine the unprecedented amount of waste this will provide for land fills. We humans already create an enormous amount of trash (a lot of which is not biodegradable and even toxic), so I'd have to say this is a horrible idea. It's almost on par with Disney's recent disposable DVDs that begin to corrode after 48 hours (link and link).
"I use ( Mac OS X) but I have computers with ( Mac OS 9) doing important tasks. Why would I switch when it just works forever?" Wozniak said, noting that his home computer collection includes a number of desktop and notebook machines running various versions of Apple's operating system. One of those home machines is Apple's ill-fated Cube.
There are actually two hard drive bays. Look closely.
The lack of more than two hard drive bays was a concern of mine as well, but the drive that ships with the G5's is 60 to 250 gigabyte Serial ATA. Factor in the plethora of fast Firewire/Firewire 800 external drives and most Mac users will be as happy as pigs in shit (as well as Fibre channel XServe Raid for multi-terabyte storage for the higher end users). So you can get half a terabyte internal Serial ATA in the G5's if you chose to pay the premium. I think that's more than enough for 99% of the population.
I do agree there's some aspects of the G5 design that seem like a step backwards over the previous G3 & G4 'El Capitan' case. While two hard drive spaces is fine for most users, the G4 allowed you to have four internal hard drives. The lack of a second optical drive bay is also a "step backwards" over the G4 design (this can be rectified with an external Firewire drive if needed, and again, most users don't require a second optical drive).
For me though the biggest gripe I have with the G5 case is the removal of the drop-down motherboard door design on the G3 (Blue and White) and G4. The one button access with drop-down door was an amazing feat of engineering and it saddens me to see this go. The new G5's internals are very elegant but installing and upgrading RAM, PCI and AGP cards is so much easier on the previous G4 and G3 models (although the G5 certainly looks easier to upgrade/get into than most PC boxes I've worked on before).
As far as the fans go, I have no gripe there. While it might be more moving parts, the idea of thermal zones is a sound idea and will help keep the machine cool and output less decibels. By the way, the fans will be replaceable. You make it sound like the machine will be junk just because one fan fails. I'm sure Apple has thought of this and will provide replacement fans.
One could also argue that by having nine fans that work in tandem you'll have less chance for failure since no one fan will be running at 100% at all times like on other machines. This quote kind of explains what I mean:
"the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long."
" IMO, for desktop systems, if you can't build it yourself why bother? I can build a comparable PC based system for far less money than what these things will be going for."
You could probably build your own car but it won't compete style-wise or reliable-wise (or probably even performance-wise) with one built by Porsche.
If everything was always about cost then we'd all be driving Yugos.
Slashdot Mirror
There already is a consumer's advocacy group, especially in relation to electronics.
They're called The Electronic Frontier Foundation.
See the image here:
http://www.geektimes.com/michael/techno/computing
And in other news, a large nuclear explosion occurred today in Lindon, Utah. The Government has no word on what happened, who was behind it or what motives were involved. Some believe it had to do with a company called The SCO Group, but this is unconfirmed. Sadly, there were no survivors.
In other news, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, executives at IBM, DaimlerChrysler and Autozone were seen dancing in the streets after the unfortunate nuclear explosion.
Back to you Bob, in the studio with the weather...
That's not entirely true. With Unix under the hood, the casual user still has access to Unix attributes; namely, Apache. With one click in the System Preferences, even the most naive user can set up an Apache-driven website right from their Macintosh. There's not a lot of other Unixes that make it so easy to set up Apache.
The way it was written suggested that the iPod mini cost $400. It's an honest mistake on my behalf, no need to be a sarcastic asshole. I wasn't trying to flame the person, and made a innocuously honest mistake, so there's no need for personal insults. Had the original author written his sentence a little differently it would have avoided the misunderstanding.
Corel is having problems and perhaps by migrating to the Macintosh platform they could dominate this nascent market (whereas it would be much harder in the PC world due to more competition).
The reason I bring up BMW is because BMW holds a similar market share in their respective market. Unlike Apple, no one chastises BMW for their relatively miniscule market share.
The point to consider is that Apple has 3-5% of the total PC market. A lot of people like to compare them to this unified PC market, when in reality they're up against hundreds of PC makers. I think comparing them to other, individual PC makers is more fair. If we compare them to HP, Toshiba or Dell individually then we get a slightly more "fair" look at the pieces of the puzzle.
10 million isn't exactly "so few" (and this is JUST the current OS X users; this number is growing. The total number of Macintosh users is around 25 million, but many haven't upgraded to OS X yet). I mean, really. Is BMW looked down upon for "only" having 5% of the car market?
Umm, the recent powerbooks all have a PgUp, PgDn and Del key. Take a look. Also, I believe OS 10.3 now has the ability to let the user assign/reassign key commands. That means that you could assign one key to function as the second mouse button. I would confirm this but I'm logged in to 10.2 currently.
How much harder is it to hold down the CTRL button with the mouse button (or trackpad's button) to get the right-click functionality? Seriously? I don't mind the one button mouse. I thought I'd hate when I got my first Mac two or three years ago (I used Windows for a decade, and Amiga/C64's before that)... and you know what, it's not really that bad. CTRL+mouse click works just fine for me. You only need one hand for the mouse, so the other hand will almost always still be on the keyboard, and subsequently right by the CTRL button, making the CTRL+mouse click not really hard or awkward.
And as the other poster said, if you don't like it, buy a third-party USB mouse. I've seen ones with like five or six buttons, and you can program them to work with Macs just like you can with Windows. The right button and scroll wheel work out of the box with Macs. It's not that hard, people.
So, the #1 Supercomputer, the Earth Simulator, cost $350 million. The #2 Supercomputer, the ASCI Q, cost $100 million. The #3 Supercomputer, the Big Mac, cost a mere $5.2 million.
*Looks like ASCI Q got only 13.88 trillion calculations per second, not 30.
Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of TI85s!?
Forgive me... it had to be said.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
--
Personally I don't like the idea of disposable cell phones. Imagine the unprecedented amount of waste this will provide for land fills. We humans already create an enormous amount of trash (a lot of which is not biodegradable and even toxic), so I'd have to say this is a horrible idea. It's almost on par with Disney's recent disposable DVDs that begin to corrode after 48 hours (link and link).
Web sites don't kill people... people do.
I agree, WBS. I bought a Lexmark Z52 two years ago but I've decided to sell it and buy an Epson, in part due to this court case.
They're not "moons" around Uranus, they're actually hemorrhoids.
6) Profit!!!
Yay, what prize do I win!?
There are actually two hard drive bays. Look closely.
The lack of more than two hard drive bays was a concern of mine as well, but the drive that ships with the G5's is 60 to 250 gigabyte Serial ATA. Factor in the plethora of fast Firewire/Firewire 800 external drives and most Mac users will be as happy as pigs in shit (as well as Fibre channel XServe Raid for multi-terabyte storage for the higher end users). So you can get half a terabyte internal Serial ATA in the G5's if you chose to pay the premium. I think that's more than enough for 99% of the population.
I do agree there's some aspects of the G5 design that seem like a step backwards over the previous G3 & G4 'El Capitan' case. While two hard drive spaces is fine for most users, the G4 allowed you to have four internal hard drives. The lack of a second optical drive bay is also a "step backwards" over the G4 design (this can be rectified with an external Firewire drive if needed, and again, most users don't require a second optical drive).
For me though the biggest gripe I have with the G5 case is the removal of the drop-down motherboard door design on the G3 (Blue and White) and G4. The one button access with drop-down door was an amazing feat of engineering and it saddens me to see this go. The new G5's internals are very elegant but installing and upgrading RAM, PCI and AGP cards is so much easier on the previous G4 and G3 models (although the G5 certainly looks easier to upgrade/get into than most PC boxes I've worked on before).
As far as the fans go, I have no gripe there. While it might be more moving parts, the idea of thermal zones is a sound idea and will help keep the machine cool and output less decibels. By the way, the fans will be replaceable. You make it sound like the machine will be junk just because one fan fails. I'm sure Apple has thought of this and will provide replacement fans.
One could also argue that by having nine fans that work in tandem you'll have less chance for failure since no one fan will be running at 100% at all times like on other machines. This quote kind of explains what I mean:
"the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long."
Isn't Boromir the son of Denethor, and not Faramir? Faramir is Boromir's brother, if my LOTR knowledge is correct.
No offense, but if you're going to name yourself after LOTR, you should get it right. Heh.
I hope Microsoft doesn't have their MS Cruise Missle 2003 aimed at the coordinates.
If everything was always about cost then we'd all be driving Yugos.