No idea why they require this. To make this more confusing, the AE will get a IPv4 address by DHCP, which you can ping over WiFi. It just never uses IPv4.
The Airport Express can also be used as a router, WiFi (and WDS) access point, a wireless bridge, and a print server along with being an AirTunes sink. All of which can work in either IPv4 or IPv6.
Chances are what is happening for you is that the Airport Express is advertising both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses on your network via Bonjour/ZeroConf, as it is getting an autoconf address from your router. From what I've observed, Apple products tend to prefer IPv6 addresses when it receives them via Bonjour/ZeroConf, unless you force IPv4 only mode (which isn't generally an option in GUI apps like iTunes).
The trick for you is probably going to be to ensure that no IPv6 support is enabled on your client system, to force it to use IPv4 only. AFAIK, there is no way to completely disable IPv6 on the Airport Express, other than to ensure it can't get an IPv6 address.
Install a Bonjour/ZeroConf browser on your system, and take a look at the AirTunes (_raop._tcp.) entry. Looking at mine, it's advertising both IPv4 and link-local IPv6 addresses. If you either can get it to advertise only IPv4 addresses, or change your client such that IPv6 isn't even available for link-local access, you should fix it up. A lot of people use the Airport Express on IPv4-only networks -- I'm guessing the issue you're facing is that you do have an IPv6 supporting router running autoconf, but with the wireless part of your network having no IPv6 support across the link, the model assumed by Apple inside iTunes is breaking down.
You don't know anyone that streams Netflix on their computer?
That's not so hard to imagine. Netflix doesn't have much penetration outside the US -- they don't expand to Europe until 2012, they just expanded to Latin America in September, and has been in Canada for only a year. I don't know about Latin America, but the Canadian selection is exceedingly poor when compared to that of the US. From what I could see scanning through recently, it appears that most of the selection is direct-to-DVD stuff that I've never heard of.
Here in Canada, I know exactly 0 people using Netflix. Some people I know are starting to ask me about it (mostly as more and more DVD video rental stores close down -- in my parents town, Blockbuster was the only choice, and now that they're gone, they have nothing), but until they improve their selection here to include more movies and shows people have actually heard of, I suspect the number of users to remain low
(It doesn't help that our major ISPs have bought most of the TV stations in the country now, and don't want competition from online networks like Netflix. As such, they've been bringing in pretty strict monthly download limits in some areas of the country that discourage people from even trying such services in the first place. I'd love nothing more than to get rid of our cable TV subscription and use nothing but streamed/downloaded content from a provider such as Netflix or iTunes. My wife and I are getting closer to that goal, but most people I know are far from that goal).
Those USB devices will drain your battery fast as well.
A solid-state USB key with some movies on it is going to use significantly less power than a DVD drive will.
This is why I keep a slower but larger 640 GB 5400 RPM drive in my laptop. Yep, slower loading for games but more storage for everything else. The spinning disk does not use as much power as a spinning disk in a USB caddy.
Thanks for making my argument for me. You have a large, slow disk built into your computer that uses the battery efficiently. Why then, would you playback movies on a secondary, lower capacity, removable drive that is only going to chew up the battery even faster? You have an efficient device your system can't do without, and yet you watch movies on another, less efficient device that you can do without? Where is the sense in that?
If you are in love with your optical drive, it's not my intent to deprive you from it. I hear some people are really attached to their phonographs too. But there are significantly better ways of storing and playing movies while at 30 000 feet than using a DVD drive that use less power, allow you to carry more media in less (or no additional) space, and gives you significantly more flexibility.
I have a PMP, but a lot of people find it easier to stick CDs in a car stereo than to fumble around with a PMP and a Jupiter Jack.
Fair enough, but I do have to point out that playing CDs in your car stereo has nothing to do with laptops abandoning the format. Indeed, not playing CDs in your laptop means you can just leave them in the car without lugging them around everywhere you go.
1) Reading documentation manuals that come with hardware (like printers) on CD format
Virtually all of which are available online, usually as newer revisions with errata included. Indeed, the CD that ships with the hardware is usually the last place I check for PDF documentation, as there is virtually always more up-to-date documentation online
.
2) Listening to CD's
Are you the one person who doesn't have some sort of portable music player, or who hasn't ripped all their music CDs to a more portable AAC/MP3/FLAC/ALAC format? For playback on a laptop, any time you need to be running off battery playing back a file off your hard drive is going to consume significantly less power than doing the same off spinning physical media.
3) Watching some DVD's
Again, having these files stored on the hard drive is more efficient for a portable device. And there are a number of legal solutions for renting, downloading, and streaming movies available online that doesn't rely on physical media.
4) Occasionally rescue CD's come in handy when a root password is forgotten.
Since the article (and your post) specifically mentions Apple, in their case all modern Apple systems are perfectly capable of booting from USB or Firewire. I do understand that in the PC world booting from removable USB keys can be really hit-or-miss, but in the Apple world this isn't a concern. Booting from USB is faster, and requires less dedicated hardware in your portable system that you wind up having to carry around the other 99.99% of the time when you're not trying to recover from a forgotten root password.
I've already made the decision that I don't need to carry around an optical drive that I use <1% of the time in my next laptop. An external drive or drive sharing across the network to a dedicated system will be more than sufficient in the event I need to move data to or from optical disc.
Please let me know how you are going to play back movies etc while in an airplane at 30,000 feet.
I suppose if you want to watch in a manner which drains your battery dead the fastest, you could go that way. Personally, I prefer carrying and watching my movies in a more portable form, such as data files stored on a HDD, my iPad, or flash media.
Hmmm. Everything also tastes better with bacon. So the question is: does putting real maple syrup on your bacon cause them to improve one another's flavors until your breakfast reaches a maximum recursion limit?
Careful: you risk overflowing your pancake stack if you do.
It appears everybody but Apple makes tools available for Windows or Linux or both. So a developer can keep current by buying the latest Dell, HP, Acer, or even a local white box brand. Apple, on the other hand, requires developers to buy its computer in order to develop applications for its device.
So, in other words you're backing down from your argument that you need to add in the cost of a new mobile device every few years, correct?
They appear to treat the required hardware as a one-time expense and forget that one needs to replace both the Mac and the iPod touch with the current model every few years.
My circa 2007 MacBook runs the latest Xcode and OS X Lion just fine, thank-you-very-much.
The device is, of course, a different matter -- which is why Apple provides an iPhone/iPod/iPad simulator in their development toolkit. Certainly having the latest-and-greatest iOS device at your disposal is useful for testing and debugging on-device, particularly if you're targeting the features of the latest and greatest device, but isn't this true when developing for virtually *any* device? I don't think Google hands out brand new Nexus devices to third party developers for free, and I know Atmel isn't going to send me a free development board to replace my several-years-old AT90USB board. Isn't what you're describing here really just something that affects every computing platform ever developed, and is thus part and parcel of participating in the act of software creation (simply exacerbated in the mobile device space due to competition and rapid improvements to devices)? I don't see the situation being any different for anyone developing for any other mobile platform (unless you're still writing code for your old Palm Tungsten I suppose...).
I think you're missing the point. It's good that you like your screen, but what if you worked in an environment where glare is an issue? The point is that the glossy screen is your only option, you have no other options with Apple.
Really? Because the last time I checked (about 10 seconds ago), a non-glossy, high-resolution screen is still an option on the 15" and 17" MacBook Pro's (you know, the ones Apple actually targets at professionals). Admittedly, they do charge $150 (CDN) extra for the option, but that's a far cry from "no other options with Apple". It's not only an option, but it's one they offer you right up-front on their online store.
Now admit it -- you're new here, and took the summary as being accurate, right?;)
The problem is with the OEM's themselves, but they have little incentive to lock out all the systems.
And yet they've done it before, when in order to reduce costs many OEMs started shipping hardware that heavily relied upon CPU processing and device drivers (remember "WinModems/Printers/Scanners"?), instead of on-board processing. Such devices were significantly less expensive to manufacture, but generally only ever had Windows drivers available from the manufacturer. Users of other OS's (BSD, OS/2, Linux, and even DOS) were generally locked out of making use of these devices and features (in some cases, even Windows users have had problems when older drivers wouldn't work in newer Windows versions, with no new drivers ever having been made available. A family member ran into this with a software-driven scanner they had purchased inexpensively; drivers were only ever made for one version of Windows (either 98 or ME), and it stopped working when they upgraded).
The OEMs didn't care one whit that Linux and OS/2 and other non-Windows users were locked out of using those functions of their systems -- they design the systems to work with Windows, and that was all they supported, and the fact that it saved them a lot of money was the overriding concern.
Microsoft knows what they're doing here, and I think alternative OS users have a lot of reason to complain. Yes, Microsoft isn't preventing any Windows 8 logo program OEMs from providing the option to switch off the secure boot option, but they're not making it mandatory either. They know that the really low-end/bargain OEMs are going to do the absolute least amount of work to get a Windows 8 logo'd system up and running, and probably won't offer this option (as it's not mandatory for the logo program, and will reduce QA costs on their end). True, in the end it's really these OEMs that will be at fault, but Microsoft could have at least held out an olive branch to the computing community to make it mandatory to have this feature disable-able as part of the logo program. But they didn't.
(And before anyone claims again that no OEM in their right mid would do this, first re-read the above mention of WinModems, and then check out this summary of the situation. Note on page 2 the mention that they are already aware of at least one unnamed OEM who is planning on NOT providing a way to disable SecureBoot).
That's going to hurt the cost-concious segment of the Linux community -- currently one of their big arguments against the only other major consumer UNIX-based system (Mac OS X) is they they can buy a $300 beige-box with more CPU power than a comparable Mac and throw Linux on it. Once those ultra-cheap systems are only capable of booting Windows 8, the savings proposition of Linux desktops is going to change. I don't see it happening any time in the near future (as I suspect motherboard manufacturers aren't in a big hurry to stop supplying BIOS based systems), but once legacy BIOS based motherboards are gone and everyone is selling UEFI based boards, Microsoft is going to be able to lock people buying systems from the major OEMs into running only Windows on those systems.
Interestingly enough, the one consumer systems company that already ships every system with UEFI enabled is the one that is least likely to pursue a Windows 8 logo program -- Apple. No word yet on whether or not they're looking to pursue the SecureBoot UEFI extensions for use with OS X, however as they already provide BootCamp for multi-booting, I'd assume they would at least still support the booting of alternate OS's (as I also don't see Microsoft handing them their SecureBoot keys without them agreeing to the logo program -- why would they?)
Could Apple wind up being the bastion of multi-boot freedom? Wouldn't that just turn some peoples world-views upside-down!
And why exactly? It's pretty obvious you need different builds for x86 and ARM versions. You can still get them if you want to, but it would be just idiotic to emulate another architecture. Native executables is the only good way to go.
Native executables could be implemented as Fat binaries, however (where the non-resource binaries are pre-compiled for multiple architectures). They do have a cost in increased file size, but with the benefit of portability.
I think fat binaries can make sense for your average end-consumer, who just wants to run their app on whatever device they want, without having to concern themselves with architectures, or downloading multiple versions of the application. Apple does this for IOS apps, providing binaries for both ARM6 and ARM7 architectures (for older IOS devices and those powered by the new A4 and A5 chips, respectively).
Some people complain about adding the word "science" to professions that may be less rigorous science.
...
Computer Science
There are indeed things that get labelled as "Computer Science" which are not in and of themselves particularly scientific, however that doesn't mean that rigorous Computer Science doesn't exist.
By way of example, when I did my Masters thesis, I proposed a new algorithm that was virtually impossible to prove formally. In my thesis, I provided a full characterization of the problem set, along with measurements of existing algorithms in my area of research, provided a hypothesis that certain improvements could be made to optimize the cost of using such algorithms, offered predictions for my proposed algorithm, and ran a series of experiments by running my and other closely related algorithms inside a simulated environment to determine their suitability, and how the experimental data matched up with the predictions. The process was iterated a few times, until some conclusions could be formed, and the result was published (in thesis form -- I unfortunately haven't got around to writing up a paper on my results).
This follows the classical Scientific Method. I would like to think that others can take my work and verify the results for themselves, and then iterate to refine and improve them, which is at the heart of the scientific method.
There is indeed an area of endeavour that is justly called "Computer Science". I can agree that there is a lot of work out there on computers that is not scientific in nature that gets lumped into "Computer Science" by some, but don't use that as an excuse to ignore or dismiss real science that is done in the field of computation.
Yaz
PS: The final conclusion of my research? The proposed and amended algorithm did significantly improve upon the established algorithms in several use cases, but was roughly equivalent to the best of the existing algorithms in one use case, and was marginally worse in another. Being a self-optimizing heuristic algorithm, it tended to perform terribly in early iterations, but improved itself over time such that the average cost was lower. As with much areas of early research, my conclusion was that further research is necessary.
You know? It's funny. MS was sued for "monopolic practices" for including Internet Explorer as their default option.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And in this case, you either have too little knowledge, or are simply trolling.
MS was sued for a variety of reasons; the browser issue was only one small part (which got a lot of airtime). The per-processor licensing agreements that required OEM's to pay Microsoft for both a DOS and Windows license for every computer they shipped, even if it didn't include DOS or Windows was a significant part of that suit (as it made any computers that shipped with any other OS's much more expensive, as they had to pay for DOS, Windows, and the alternate OS, passing those extra costs on to the customer, who didn't get the or license to use DOS or Windows, even though they had paid for it), as was Microsoft's breaking of their licensing agreement with Sun over Java.
But as to the IE issue, the problem wasn't that Microsoft bundled a browser. The problem was that Microsoft bundled a browser that was bolted into the OS in such a way that it was impossible to remove, and required (via licensing terms) OEMs to ship Windows with IE, and the IE icon on the desktop. Thus, even if an OEM wanted to install Netscape as the default browser, even if to fulfil customer demand they also had to include IE, and make it prominent by including it on the desktop. What's more, not only did they bolt it into the OS to make it difficult to remove, the court found that they specifically scattered IE functionality into unrelated libraries, including the core Win32 DLL's, to make it virtually impossible for anyone to remove.
But you know what really did them in? Their own internal e-mails and memos, which specifically showed that they did these things with the intent to put the competition completely out of business. They wielded their monopoly in Operating Systems to put companies in a completely different market out of business, and the e-mails and memos presented to the court bear this out. That is why they got into trouble.
If you want to read up on this (including quotes from their internal messages that show they specifically took actions that hurt browser developers, OEMs, and Windows users in general), why not go right to the source? Courts Findings of Fact ss 3.F. Now that you have a lot of knowledge at your disposal, you can avoid being incorrect in the future. You're welcome.
Both Rogers and Telus/Bell theoretically cover it according to their maps, but it's definitely on the fringe.
Consider this my addition to the chorus of people who know the area who are telling you that coverage up that way can be weak at best. My family owns property around Gooderham, and while coverage has improved in the last five years or so, don't expect anything. At all. You might get something on the island, but the cell companies aren't optimizing for coverage in those areas beyond some of the bigger towns (Haliburton), and some of the more heavily travelled highways. Bell has historically been a bit stronger in the area than Rogers/Fido.
I'll also add my voice to those who have said that this is a part of the world where you should take the opportunity to just unplug and commune with the land. There is more than enough opportunity to be tied to electronic devices in our lives, and so few these days where you can just unplug yourself from the world for a bit. Take advantage of it.
Palm, a shitty company? They were innovative and made excellent PDAs.
Perhaps for the first two or three years of their existence, yes: the Palm Pilot Professional was, for its time, quite innovative.
But after they were bought out by US Robotics (which was then bought by 3Com), they just rested on their laurels and the innovation stopped. It took seemly ages before they released a colour model, and took even longer before they released any models with any form of wireless networking. Innovation in their OS was at an absolutely glacial pace, with only the most minor updates to support new models. Garnet sat in beta status for years. Colbalt has never shipped on any device I'm aware of. And even when they did finally start implementing some of the new functionality that users had been crying for, they were often half-hearted attempts at an implementation (for example, the Tungsten C was the first Palm device to come with built-in WiFi; it came with 802.11b in 2003 -- four years after 802.11b hardware first came to market -- with support for only WEP encryption, at a time when WEP had already been cracked. WPA has never been implemented for this device. It wasn't until 2005 that WiFi was standard for any other Palm model, with the release of the T|X).
Sorry, but Palm was a shitty company. I'm sure they had lots of nice and talented people, but the company itself was a mess. It was bought out, moved around, split apart, and sold and spun off way too many times, even the founders left to form a competing company (Handspring, which itself was later bought by palmOne).
Palm is the classic example of a company that saw some early success, only to sit on their hands and try to ride that initial success for as long as they could, with only minimal effort at pushing the boundaries. I imagine the continuous management/executive churn with being sold/merged/spun-off/broken-up/sold ever two to three years had a significant influence on this, and it hurt them big-time. WebOS should have been a reality years earlier than it was -- they could have had a massive lead on Apple and Google, but instead they let it fritter away in an attempt to cash-in while doing as little actual innovation as possible.
It wins the prize for the most misnamed button ever. It's purpose was never to make your computer "go faster"; the "turbo" speed was your computers native speed. It's sole purpose was to make the computer go slower, to be more compatible with software that used timing loops that assumed a fixed instruction processing rate.
Unfortunately, it wasn't good marketing to advertise a feature that made your computer function even slower than it already was, so instead someone came up with flipping its purpose, and making it sound like you were getting more performance with the flick of a switch.
In defense of CmdrTaco, the first generation iPod was a piece of crap. It was expensive, only had 5 GB of storage space...
...and yet for the longest time, their best selling unit was the iPod mini (remember those?), which in its first generation maxed out at 4GB (and only ever reached a maximum capacity of 6GB). Apple still makes the iPod shuffle, which maxes out at 4GB as well. They seem to sell quite a lot of them, so it would seem to me that a lot of people aren't so bothered by these limitations.
... required a FireWire port, and only had software available for the Mac.
Which somewhat negates the argument, as Apple had been supporting Firewire in its OS for two years when the iPod was released, with about half of their 1999 lineup featuring Firewire (by 2001, when the iPod 1 was released, their entire line had at least one Firewire 400 port). They didn't have a lot of choice in the matter; the prevailing USB standard in most computers in 2001 was USB 1.1, which featured "full bandwidth" of 12Mbps. At a perfectly sustained 12Mbps (virtually impossible in USB), it would take 1 hour to fill a 5GB iPod. Using Firewire 400, it would take about 1 minute 42 seconds. One leads to a positive user experience, and one doesn't, and by targeting Macs only at that time, they had a bigger market of Firewire-enabled users to target, until USB 2.0 was shipping on sufficient systems to be a viable alternative.
Revisionist history? I thought Apple was very, very anti-USB and pro-firewire? Heck the first iPod didn't even interface to USB (and therefore couldn't talk to anything but macs). That's how anti-USB apple was initially.
No, not revisionist history at all. Apple was never anti-USB for the types of low speed devices USB 1 was originally designed to handle. Firewire was for significantly higher bandwidth applications of the type USB wasn't originally designed for.
This would be why Apple never released a Firewire mouse or keyboard. You have to recall when USB was originally introduced, it's fastest speed was only 1.5Mbps -- it wasn't until USB 1.1 that "high speed" mode was introduced, running at 12Mbps. Firewire 1 on the other hand, was 400Mbps -- or about 33 times faster. Where USB 1 was painful for external storage, Firewire flew.
This was the situation Apple faced when the iPod 1 was released (which, I should point out, was a Mac-only device at the time, as iTunes hadn't been ported to Windows yet, and the formatted file system out of the box was HFS). They had a choice between slow USB 1 (USB 2 was standardized at the end of 2001. The iPod 1 was released in October 2001, so at the time the iPod 1 was released, virtually all USB ports on consumer machines ran at a maximum of 12Mbps), or fast Firewire 1.
So it was purely about speed -- a device that could store up to 10GB of data (iPod 2's, released in July 2002, could store up to 20GB) needed something faster than 12Mbps. By the time USB 2 become more ubiquitous, Apple released the iPod 3 (April 2003) with USB sync support.
None of which indicates anything about being anti-USB; USB simply wasn't up to the task when the first two generations of iPod were released, whereas Firewire was.
So If want to to upgrade the video card. maybe Maybe I want to run a Quadro for CAD. Maybe in the future there will some strange box like external video cards that used Thunderbolt but not now.
Or maybe I want a RAID for storage?
Not a big deal:
Thunderbolt supports chaining up to six devices per interconnect,
Thunderbolt devices use the standard PCIe protocol, and
The 27" iMac supplies two Thunderbolt connectors.
If twelve PCIe bus connectors aren't enough for you, then chances are your desired "tower Mac" isn't going to be enough for you either. Not even the Mac Pro comes with 12 PCIe slots.
The people who died that day were liberal and conservative, but all were American.
While I otherwise agree with your post, I wish remind everyone that no, not everyone who died that day were Americans. As an internationally important centre of commerce, people from around the world were in the WTC at the time. The planes flown into the WTC, the Pentagon, and the field had people of various nationalities in them.
The attack was directed against Americans and took place on American soil, but Osama bin Laden and Al Queda didn't care one whit who else they took out in the process.
As a citizen of a country that lost 24 citizens that day, I want to offer my congratulations to the United States for successfully taking out this enemy of world freedom and liberty. Job well done.
Next up, I want to share a contrary attitude that many of us in the non-Apple community feel. I hasten to mention that I'm not saying your attitude is wrong, but I want to share a different point of view. You said you don't want something that's obsolete in 2 years, but I kind of wonder why? Spending $600 every 2 years gets you a lot further than spending $1200 every 4 years. If you had bought a $1200 laptop 4 years ago, you'd have a first-gen Core2Duo (Merom), 1GB of RAM, 802.11g
While I can appreciate the point you're trying to make, you'd make it much better if your facts were at least correct.
I'm currently using a white MacBook that was introduce in late 2006 (although according to the records, it was manufactured in May 2007). I received it directly from the factory with a first-gen C2D (as you stated), but with 2GB of RAM and 802.11n for approximately the $1200 you're quoting (admittedly with student discount applied). And it also has a DVD-RW +/- burner, Bluetooth, and a Firewire 400 port (items not all that common on similar period $600 PC's). It's a year older than what you're quoting for the $1200 price point you mention, and still has significantly better specs that what you stated (and, excepting processor speed, is about equivalent to the +2 year $600 PC specs you list).
While I think it's good the bill died.. as a canadian I'm a little pissed that we're having another expensive election.
I have to take exception to this attitude that more and more of my fellow Canadians have been sporting this past decade.
I'm sorry that you find democracy too expensive for your liking. Just remember there are people right now in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iran, and Tunisia who are paying with their lives just for the chance of being able to vote in the kind of fair elections we here in Canada have been fortunate to participate in for the past 144 years.
Personally, I find the minor cost of an election to live in a liberal democracy like ours to be well worth it. Our forefathers fought and died to ensure we had this right, and all some people can do is bitch about the cost. Get over it, and take some pride that our system gives you the chance to register your political will, and have a say in the direction our country should take.
According to him, he's already written some chapters from the next two books. Why?
It's my understanding that some of the chapters written for DWD didn't quite fit, and needed to be moved in the timeline to a future point to be dealt with in one of the future novels.
The way he writes his novels, I can understand. Some of the characters stories are probably a lot easier for him to write all at once, even if you don't intend those parts to be included in the timeline dealt with in the next book.
Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if he winds up rewriting those chapters as well (not that we'll necessarily ever know...).
Anytime you read an anti-IPv6 rant that doesn't even once mention how their magical solution is even routable, and does so without blowing up the routing tables beyond belief or computation, you have my permission to kick the author in the nutsack.
Slashdot Mirror
No idea why they require this. To make this more confusing, the AE will get a IPv4 address by DHCP, which you can ping over WiFi. It just never uses IPv4.
The Airport Express can also be used as a router, WiFi (and WDS) access point, a wireless bridge, and a print server along with being an AirTunes sink. All of which can work in either IPv4 or IPv6.
Chances are what is happening for you is that the Airport Express is advertising both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses on your network via Bonjour/ZeroConf, as it is getting an autoconf address from your router. From what I've observed, Apple products tend to prefer IPv6 addresses when it receives them via Bonjour/ZeroConf, unless you force IPv4 only mode (which isn't generally an option in GUI apps like iTunes).
The trick for you is probably going to be to ensure that no IPv6 support is enabled on your client system, to force it to use IPv4 only. AFAIK, there is no way to completely disable IPv6 on the Airport Express, other than to ensure it can't get an IPv6 address.
Install a Bonjour/ZeroConf browser on your system, and take a look at the AirTunes (_raop._tcp.) entry. Looking at mine, it's advertising both IPv4 and link-local IPv6 addresses. If you either can get it to advertise only IPv4 addresses, or change your client such that IPv6 isn't even available for link-local access, you should fix it up. A lot of people use the Airport Express on IPv4-only networks -- I'm guessing the issue you're facing is that you do have an IPv6 supporting router running autoconf, but with the wireless part of your network having no IPv6 support across the link, the model assumed by Apple inside iTunes is breaking down.
Yaz
You don't know anyone that streams Netflix on their computer?
That's not so hard to imagine. Netflix doesn't have much penetration outside the US -- they don't expand to Europe until 2012, they just expanded to Latin America in September, and has been in Canada for only a year. I don't know about Latin America, but the Canadian selection is exceedingly poor when compared to that of the US. From what I could see scanning through recently, it appears that most of the selection is direct-to-DVD stuff that I've never heard of.
Here in Canada, I know exactly 0 people using Netflix. Some people I know are starting to ask me about it (mostly as more and more DVD video rental stores close down -- in my parents town, Blockbuster was the only choice, and now that they're gone, they have nothing), but until they improve their selection here to include more movies and shows people have actually heard of, I suspect the number of users to remain low
(It doesn't help that our major ISPs have bought most of the TV stations in the country now, and don't want competition from online networks like Netflix. As such, they've been bringing in pretty strict monthly download limits in some areas of the country that discourage people from even trying such services in the first place. I'd love nothing more than to get rid of our cable TV subscription and use nothing but streamed/downloaded content from a provider such as Netflix or iTunes. My wife and I are getting closer to that goal, but most people I know are far from that goal).
Yaz.
Those USB devices will drain your battery fast as well.
A solid-state USB key with some movies on it is going to use significantly less power than a DVD drive will.
This is why I keep a slower but larger 640 GB 5400 RPM drive in my laptop. Yep, slower loading for games but more storage for everything else. The spinning disk does not use as much power as a spinning disk in a USB caddy.
Thanks for making my argument for me. You have a large, slow disk built into your computer that uses the battery efficiently. Why then, would you playback movies on a secondary, lower capacity, removable drive that is only going to chew up the battery even faster? You have an efficient device your system can't do without, and yet you watch movies on another, less efficient device that you can do without? Where is the sense in that?
If you are in love with your optical drive, it's not my intent to deprive you from it. I hear some people are really attached to their phonographs too. But there are significantly better ways of storing and playing movies while at 30 000 feet than using a DVD drive that use less power, allow you to carry more media in less (or no additional) space, and gives you significantly more flexibility.
Yaz.
I have a PMP, but a lot of people find it easier to stick CDs in a car stereo than to fumble around with a PMP and a Jupiter Jack.
Fair enough, but I do have to point out that playing CDs in your car stereo has nothing to do with laptops abandoning the format. Indeed, not playing CDs in your laptop means you can just leave them in the car without lugging them around everywhere you go.
Yaz
1) Reading documentation manuals that come with hardware (like printers) on CD format
Virtually all of which are available online, usually as newer revisions with errata included. Indeed, the CD that ships with the hardware is usually the last place I check for PDF documentation, as there is virtually always more up-to-date documentation online
.
2) Listening to CD's
Are you the one person who doesn't have some sort of portable music player, or who hasn't ripped all their music CDs to a more portable AAC/MP3/FLAC/ALAC format? For playback on a laptop, any time you need to be running off battery playing back a file off your hard drive is going to consume significantly less power than doing the same off spinning physical media.
3) Watching some DVD's
Again, having these files stored on the hard drive is more efficient for a portable device. And there are a number of legal solutions for renting, downloading, and streaming movies available online that doesn't rely on physical media.
4) Occasionally rescue CD's come in handy when a root password is forgotten.
Since the article (and your post) specifically mentions Apple, in their case all modern Apple systems are perfectly capable of booting from USB or Firewire. I do understand that in the PC world booting from removable USB keys can be really hit-or-miss, but in the Apple world this isn't a concern. Booting from USB is faster, and requires less dedicated hardware in your portable system that you wind up having to carry around the other 99.99% of the time when you're not trying to recover from a forgotten root password.
I've already made the decision that I don't need to carry around an optical drive that I use <1% of the time in my next laptop. An external drive or drive sharing across the network to a dedicated system will be more than sufficient in the event I need to move data to or from optical disc.
Yaz
Please let me know how you are going to play back movies etc while in an airplane at 30,000 feet.
I suppose if you want to watch in a manner which drains your battery dead the fastest, you could go that way. Personally, I prefer carrying and watching my movies in a more portable form, such as data files stored on a HDD, my iPad, or flash media.
Yaz
Hmmm. Everything also tastes better with bacon. So the question is: does putting real maple syrup on your bacon cause them to improve one another's flavors until your breakfast reaches a maximum recursion limit?
Careful: you risk overflowing your pancake stack if you do.
Yaz
In circa 2007, what convinced you to buy a MacBook instead of a Dell, HP, or Acer?
Well, it certainly wasn't for iPhone development -- while the iPhone had been announced just a few months prior to my purchase, it didn't become available here in Canada until the iPhone 3G was released in July 2008 (which, FWIW, coincides with the release of iOS 2.0, the first iOS to even support third-party applications. There was no dev kit prior to this, or have you forgotten the debacle of the first iPhone and Apple's expectation everyone would want to create HTML 5 apps?).
It appears everybody but Apple makes tools available for Windows or Linux or both. So a developer can keep current by buying the latest Dell, HP, Acer, or even a local white box brand. Apple, on the other hand, requires developers to buy its computer in order to develop applications for its device.
So, in other words you're backing down from your argument that you need to add in the cost of a new mobile device every few years, correct?
They appear to treat the required hardware as a one-time expense and forget that one needs to replace both the Mac and the iPod touch with the current model every few years.
My circa 2007 MacBook runs the latest Xcode and OS X Lion just fine, thank-you-very-much.
The device is, of course, a different matter -- which is why Apple provides an iPhone/iPod/iPad simulator in their development toolkit. Certainly having the latest-and-greatest iOS device at your disposal is useful for testing and debugging on-device, particularly if you're targeting the features of the latest and greatest device, but isn't this true when developing for virtually *any* device? I don't think Google hands out brand new Nexus devices to third party developers for free, and I know Atmel isn't going to send me a free development board to replace my several-years-old AT90USB board. Isn't what you're describing here really just something that affects every computing platform ever developed, and is thus part and parcel of participating in the act of software creation (simply exacerbated in the mobile device space due to competition and rapid improvements to devices)? I don't see the situation being any different for anyone developing for any other mobile platform (unless you're still writing code for your old Palm Tungsten I suppose...).
Yaz.
I think you're missing the point. It's good that you like your screen, but what if you worked in an environment where glare is an issue? The point is that the glossy screen is your only option, you have no other options with Apple.
Really? Because the last time I checked (about 10 seconds ago), a non-glossy, high-resolution screen is still an option on the 15" and 17" MacBook Pro's (you know, the ones Apple actually targets at professionals). Admittedly, they do charge $150 (CDN) extra for the option, but that's a far cry from "no other options with Apple". It's not only an option, but it's one they offer you right up-front on their online store.
Now admit it -- you're new here, and took the summary as being accurate, right? ;)
Yaz
The problem is with the OEM's themselves, but they have little incentive to lock out all the systems.
And yet they've done it before, when in order to reduce costs many OEMs started shipping hardware that heavily relied upon CPU processing and device drivers (remember "WinModems/Printers/Scanners"?), instead of on-board processing. Such devices were significantly less expensive to manufacture, but generally only ever had Windows drivers available from the manufacturer. Users of other OS's (BSD, OS/2, Linux, and even DOS) were generally locked out of making use of these devices and features (in some cases, even Windows users have had problems when older drivers wouldn't work in newer Windows versions, with no new drivers ever having been made available. A family member ran into this with a software-driven scanner they had purchased inexpensively; drivers were only ever made for one version of Windows (either 98 or ME), and it stopped working when they upgraded).
The OEMs didn't care one whit that Linux and OS/2 and other non-Windows users were locked out of using those functions of their systems -- they design the systems to work with Windows, and that was all they supported, and the fact that it saved them a lot of money was the overriding concern.
Microsoft knows what they're doing here, and I think alternative OS users have a lot of reason to complain. Yes, Microsoft isn't preventing any Windows 8 logo program OEMs from providing the option to switch off the secure boot option, but they're not making it mandatory either. They know that the really low-end/bargain OEMs are going to do the absolute least amount of work to get a Windows 8 logo'd system up and running, and probably won't offer this option (as it's not mandatory for the logo program, and will reduce QA costs on their end). True, in the end it's really these OEMs that will be at fault, but Microsoft could have at least held out an olive branch to the computing community to make it mandatory to have this feature disable-able as part of the logo program. But they didn't.
(And before anyone claims again that no OEM in their right mid would do this, first re-read the above mention of WinModems, and then check out this summary of the situation. Note on page 2 the mention that they are already aware of at least one unnamed OEM who is planning on NOT providing a way to disable SecureBoot).
That's going to hurt the cost-concious segment of the Linux community -- currently one of their big arguments against the only other major consumer UNIX-based system (Mac OS X) is they they can buy a $300 beige-box with more CPU power than a comparable Mac and throw Linux on it. Once those ultra-cheap systems are only capable of booting Windows 8, the savings proposition of Linux desktops is going to change. I don't see it happening any time in the near future (as I suspect motherboard manufacturers aren't in a big hurry to stop supplying BIOS based systems), but once legacy BIOS based motherboards are gone and everyone is selling UEFI based boards, Microsoft is going to be able to lock people buying systems from the major OEMs into running only Windows on those systems.
Interestingly enough, the one consumer systems company that already ships every system with UEFI enabled is the one that is least likely to pursue a Windows 8 logo program -- Apple. No word yet on whether or not they're looking to pursue the SecureBoot UEFI extensions for use with OS X, however as they already provide BootCamp for multi-booting, I'd assume they would at least still support the booting of alternate OS's (as I also don't see Microsoft handing them their SecureBoot keys without them agreeing to the logo program -- why would they?)
Could Apple wind up being the bastion of multi-boot freedom? Wouldn't that just turn some peoples world-views upside-down!
Yaz
And why exactly? It's pretty obvious you need different builds for x86 and ARM versions. You can still get them if you want to, but it would be just idiotic to emulate another architecture. Native executables is the only good way to go.
Native executables could be implemented as Fat binaries, however (where the non-resource binaries are pre-compiled for multiple architectures). They do have a cost in increased file size, but with the benefit of portability.
I think fat binaries can make sense for your average end-consumer, who just wants to run their app on whatever device they want, without having to concern themselves with architectures, or downloading multiple versions of the application. Apple does this for IOS apps, providing binaries for both ARM6 and ARM7 architectures (for older IOS devices and those powered by the new A4 and A5 chips, respectively).
Yaz
Some people complain about adding the word "science" to professions that may be less rigorous science.
...
Computer Science
There are indeed things that get labelled as "Computer Science" which are not in and of themselves particularly scientific, however that doesn't mean that rigorous Computer Science doesn't exist.
By way of example, when I did my Masters thesis, I proposed a new algorithm that was virtually impossible to prove formally. In my thesis, I provided a full characterization of the problem set, along with measurements of existing algorithms in my area of research, provided a hypothesis that certain improvements could be made to optimize the cost of using such algorithms, offered predictions for my proposed algorithm, and ran a series of experiments by running my and other closely related algorithms inside a simulated environment to determine their suitability, and how the experimental data matched up with the predictions. The process was iterated a few times, until some conclusions could be formed, and the result was published (in thesis form -- I unfortunately haven't got around to writing up a paper on my results).
This follows the classical Scientific Method. I would like to think that others can take my work and verify the results for themselves, and then iterate to refine and improve them, which is at the heart of the scientific method.
There is indeed an area of endeavour that is justly called "Computer Science". I can agree that there is a lot of work out there on computers that is not scientific in nature that gets lumped into "Computer Science" by some, but don't use that as an excuse to ignore or dismiss real science that is done in the field of computation.
Yaz
PS: The final conclusion of my research? The proposed and amended algorithm did significantly improve upon the established algorithms in several use cases, but was roughly equivalent to the best of the existing algorithms in one use case, and was marginally worse in another. Being a self-optimizing heuristic algorithm, it tended to perform terribly in early iterations, but improved itself over time such that the average cost was lower. As with much areas of early research, my conclusion was that further research is necessary.
You know? It's funny. MS was sued for "monopolic practices" for including Internet Explorer as their default option.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And in this case, you either have too little knowledge, or are simply trolling.
MS was sued for a variety of reasons; the browser issue was only one small part (which got a lot of airtime). The per-processor licensing agreements that required OEM's to pay Microsoft for both a DOS and Windows license for every computer they shipped, even if it didn't include DOS or Windows was a significant part of that suit (as it made any computers that shipped with any other OS's much more expensive, as they had to pay for DOS, Windows, and the alternate OS, passing those extra costs on to the customer, who didn't get the or license to use DOS or Windows, even though they had paid for it), as was Microsoft's breaking of their licensing agreement with Sun over Java.
But as to the IE issue, the problem wasn't that Microsoft bundled a browser. The problem was that Microsoft bundled a browser that was bolted into the OS in such a way that it was impossible to remove, and required (via licensing terms) OEMs to ship Windows with IE, and the IE icon on the desktop. Thus, even if an OEM wanted to install Netscape as the default browser, even if to fulfil customer demand they also had to include IE, and make it prominent by including it on the desktop. What's more, not only did they bolt it into the OS to make it difficult to remove, the court found that they specifically scattered IE functionality into unrelated libraries, including the core Win32 DLL's, to make it virtually impossible for anyone to remove.
But you know what really did them in? Their own internal e-mails and memos, which specifically showed that they did these things with the intent to put the competition completely out of business. They wielded their monopoly in Operating Systems to put companies in a completely different market out of business, and the e-mails and memos presented to the court bear this out. That is why they got into trouble.
If you want to read up on this (including quotes from their internal messages that show they specifically took actions that hurt browser developers, OEMs, and Windows users in general), why not go right to the source? Courts Findings of Fact ss 3.F. Now that you have a lot of knowledge at your disposal, you can avoid being incorrect in the future. You're welcome.
Yaz
Both Rogers and Telus/Bell theoretically cover it according to their maps, but it's definitely on the fringe.
Consider this my addition to the chorus of people who know the area who are telling you that coverage up that way can be weak at best. My family owns property around Gooderham, and while coverage has improved in the last five years or so, don't expect anything. At all. You might get something on the island, but the cell companies aren't optimizing for coverage in those areas beyond some of the bigger towns (Haliburton), and some of the more heavily travelled highways. Bell has historically been a bit stronger in the area than Rogers/Fido.
I'll also add my voice to those who have said that this is a part of the world where you should take the opportunity to just unplug and commune with the land. There is more than enough opportunity to be tied to electronic devices in our lives, and so few these days where you can just unplug yourself from the world for a bit. Take advantage of it.
Yaz
Palm, a shitty company? They were innovative and made excellent PDAs.
Perhaps for the first two or three years of their existence, yes: the Palm Pilot Professional was, for its time, quite innovative.
But after they were bought out by US Robotics (which was then bought by 3Com), they just rested on their laurels and the innovation stopped. It took seemly ages before they released a colour model, and took even longer before they released any models with any form of wireless networking. Innovation in their OS was at an absolutely glacial pace, with only the most minor updates to support new models. Garnet sat in beta status for years. Colbalt has never shipped on any device I'm aware of. And even when they did finally start implementing some of the new functionality that users had been crying for, they were often half-hearted attempts at an implementation (for example, the Tungsten C was the first Palm device to come with built-in WiFi; it came with 802.11b in 2003 -- four years after 802.11b hardware first came to market -- with support for only WEP encryption, at a time when WEP had already been cracked. WPA has never been implemented for this device. It wasn't until 2005 that WiFi was standard for any other Palm model, with the release of the T|X).
Sorry, but Palm was a shitty company. I'm sure they had lots of nice and talented people, but the company itself was a mess. It was bought out, moved around, split apart, and sold and spun off way too many times, even the founders left to form a competing company (Handspring, which itself was later bought by palmOne).
Palm is the classic example of a company that saw some early success, only to sit on their hands and try to ride that initial success for as long as they could, with only minimal effort at pushing the boundaries. I imagine the continuous management/executive churn with being sold/merged/spun-off/broken-up/sold ever two to three years had a significant influence on this, and it hurt them big-time. WebOS should have been a reality years earlier than it was -- they could have had a massive lead on Apple and Google, but instead they let it fritter away in an attempt to cash-in while doing as little actual innovation as possible.
Yaz.
Bring back the Turbo button!
It wins the prize for the most misnamed button ever. It's purpose was never to make your computer "go faster"; the "turbo" speed was your computers native speed. It's sole purpose was to make the computer go slower, to be more compatible with software that used timing loops that assumed a fixed instruction processing rate.
Unfortunately, it wasn't good marketing to advertise a feature that made your computer function even slower than it already was, so instead someone came up with flipping its purpose, and making it sound like you were getting more performance with the flick of a switch.
Yaz.
In defense of CmdrTaco, the first generation iPod was a piece of crap. It was expensive, only had 5 GB of storage space...
...and yet for the longest time, their best selling unit was the iPod mini (remember those?), which in its first generation maxed out at 4GB (and only ever reached a maximum capacity of 6GB). Apple still makes the iPod shuffle, which maxes out at 4GB as well. They seem to sell quite a lot of them, so it would seem to me that a lot of people aren't so bothered by these limitations.
... required a FireWire port, and only had software available for the Mac.
Which somewhat negates the argument, as Apple had been supporting Firewire in its OS for two years when the iPod was released, with about half of their 1999 lineup featuring Firewire (by 2001, when the iPod 1 was released, their entire line had at least one Firewire 400 port). They didn't have a lot of choice in the matter; the prevailing USB standard in most computers in 2001 was USB 1.1, which featured "full bandwidth" of 12Mbps. At a perfectly sustained 12Mbps (virtually impossible in USB), it would take 1 hour to fill a 5GB iPod. Using Firewire 400, it would take about 1 minute 42 seconds. One leads to a positive user experience, and one doesn't, and by targeting Macs only at that time, they had a bigger market of Firewire-enabled users to target, until USB 2.0 was shipping on sufficient systems to be a viable alternative.
Yaz.
Revisionist history? I thought Apple was very, very anti-USB and pro-firewire? Heck the first iPod didn't even interface to USB (and therefore couldn't talk to anything but macs). That's how anti-USB apple was initially.
No, not revisionist history at all. Apple was never anti-USB for the types of low speed devices USB 1 was originally designed to handle. Firewire was for significantly higher bandwidth applications of the type USB wasn't originally designed for.
This would be why Apple never released a Firewire mouse or keyboard. You have to recall when USB was originally introduced, it's fastest speed was only 1.5Mbps -- it wasn't until USB 1.1 that "high speed" mode was introduced, running at 12Mbps. Firewire 1 on the other hand, was 400Mbps -- or about 33 times faster. Where USB 1 was painful for external storage, Firewire flew.
This was the situation Apple faced when the iPod 1 was released (which, I should point out, was a Mac-only device at the time, as iTunes hadn't been ported to Windows yet, and the formatted file system out of the box was HFS). They had a choice between slow USB 1 (USB 2 was standardized at the end of 2001. The iPod 1 was released in October 2001, so at the time the iPod 1 was released, virtually all USB ports on consumer machines ran at a maximum of 12Mbps), or fast Firewire 1.
So it was purely about speed -- a device that could store up to 10GB of data (iPod 2's, released in July 2002, could store up to 20GB) needed something faster than 12Mbps. By the time USB 2 become more ubiquitous, Apple released the iPod 3 (April 2003) with USB sync support.
None of which indicates anything about being anti-USB; USB simply wasn't up to the task when the first two generations of iPod were released, whereas Firewire was.
Yaz.
So If want to to upgrade the video card. maybe Maybe I want to run a Quadro for CAD. Maybe in the future there will some strange box like external video cards that used Thunderbolt but not now. Or maybe I want a RAID for storage?
Not a big deal:
If twelve PCIe bus connectors aren't enough for you, then chances are your desired "tower Mac" isn't going to be enough for you either. Not even the Mac Pro comes with 12 PCIe slots.
Yaz.
The people who died that day were liberal and conservative, but all were American.
While I otherwise agree with your post, I wish remind everyone that no, not everyone who died that day were Americans. As an internationally important centre of commerce, people from around the world were in the WTC at the time. The planes flown into the WTC, the Pentagon, and the field had people of various nationalities in them.
The attack was directed against Americans and took place on American soil, but Osama bin Laden and Al Queda didn't care one whit who else they took out in the process.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks#Non-American_casualties)
As a citizen of a country that lost 24 citizens that day, I want to offer my congratulations to the United States for successfully taking out this enemy of world freedom and liberty. Job well done.
Yaz.
Next up, I want to share a contrary attitude that many of us in the non-Apple community feel. I hasten to mention that I'm not saying your attitude is wrong, but I want to share a different point of view. You said you don't want something that's obsolete in 2 years, but I kind of wonder why? Spending $600 every 2 years gets you a lot further than spending $1200 every 4 years. If you had bought a $1200 laptop 4 years ago, you'd have a first-gen Core2Duo (Merom), 1GB of RAM, 802.11g
While I can appreciate the point you're trying to make, you'd make it much better if your facts were at least correct.
I'm currently using a white MacBook that was introduce in late 2006 (although according to the records, it was manufactured in May 2007). I received it directly from the factory with a first-gen C2D (as you stated), but with 2GB of RAM and 802.11n for approximately the $1200 you're quoting (admittedly with student discount applied). And it also has a DVD-RW +/- burner, Bluetooth, and a Firewire 400 port (items not all that common on similar period $600 PC's). It's a year older than what you're quoting for the $1200 price point you mention, and still has significantly better specs that what you stated (and, excepting processor speed, is about equivalent to the +2 year $600 PC specs you list).
Yaz.
While I think it's good the bill died.. as a canadian I'm a little pissed that we're having another expensive election.
I have to take exception to this attitude that more and more of my fellow Canadians have been sporting this past decade.
I'm sorry that you find democracy too expensive for your liking. Just remember there are people right now in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iran, and Tunisia who are paying with their lives just for the chance of being able to vote in the kind of fair elections we here in Canada have been fortunate to participate in for the past 144 years.
Personally, I find the minor cost of an election to live in a liberal democracy like ours to be well worth it. Our forefathers fought and died to ensure we had this right, and all some people can do is bitch about the cost. Get over it, and take some pride that our system gives you the chance to register your political will, and have a say in the direction our country should take.
Yaz.
According to him, he's already written some chapters from the next two books. Why?
It's my understanding that some of the chapters written for DWD didn't quite fit, and needed to be moved in the timeline to a future point to be dealt with in one of the future novels.
The way he writes his novels, I can understand. Some of the characters stories are probably a lot easier for him to write all at once, even if you don't intend those parts to be included in the timeline dealt with in the next book.
Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if he winds up rewriting those chapters as well (not that we'll necessarily ever know...).
Yaz.
Not so fast:
Anytime you read an anti-IPv6 rant that doesn't even once mention how their magical solution is even routable, and does so without blowing up the routing tables beyond belief or computation, you have my permission to kick the author in the nutsack.
Hard.
Yaz.