There are currently hybrid SUVs on the market. Ford's Escape Hybrid is what I would consider a smaller hybrid, more of a crossover... but have you considered Toyota Highlander Hybrid or the Lexus RX400h? Both of those vehicles have 7 passenger seating, V6 (with the hybrid drive, that can deliver V8 power) and intelligent 4WD. They both are advertised to be able to get over 30 MPG as well, and can be well equipped for comfort.
Regardless, Apple is not going to be using *any* processor that's currently available on the market today in their new Macs. That's the whole point... they are picking and choosing *tomorrow's* best technology, not today's.
It's not a simple choice for Apple. Look, it may be easy for you to think you've got experience because you've gone out there, checked out the market for chips and bought an AMD chip over Intel for your own PC, so you think you can play armchair quarterback for Apple.
Apple's not buying one chip, one motherboard, and one case... they're going to be buying millions of these things. Production capacity is a big requirement for them. They do not want to have the supply problems that they've had with IBM and Freescale in the past, so by sticking with the biggest chip maker, they'll ensure they'll never have a shortage when they go to ship a new product.
The Turion 64 may be a good chip from AMD compared to Pentium M, but according to all of the reviews that I've read, it does well in performance, but badly in power compared to the Pentium M. That's not good for what Apple wants.
Moreover, Apple probably isn't too concerned about 64 bit capabilities at this point, as Mac OS X Tiger has relatively limited 64-bit support. (in fact, even Windows has limited support. Yeah there's Windows x64, but that has limited compatibility with devices because driver support isn't there.) We will probably need to wait until Leopard to get more concrete 64 bit support, and that'll be out around the same time as Vista. By then, Apple should be using 64-bit Merom and Conroe chips from Intel.
You're an idiot. First of all, this is not some zealot on some forum worshipping Jobs... RTFA. The quote about AMD not perfecting low-power chips is from an IDC analyst, IDC is a respected market research firm. this is Macworld magazine (a journalist still) reporting on what *IDC*'s Shane Rau is saying about Intel and AMD...
Once again, RTFA... it's not about how much power AMD's Athlon64 FX consumes compared to the Pentium XE... The whole article was about low power low voltage chips like the Pentium M. The whole point of the article was that Intel has on the table low power dual core Yonah processors for early next year, while AMD has not disclosed anything about that. Sure AMD has Turion, but that's a single core chip, and it's not fair to compare that to Yonah.
If you payed attention during the Intel Developer Forum, you'll realize that 5x "performance per watt" was compared to Banias, the first Pentium M... which DOES NOT SUCK at performance/watt now.
Intel's Pentium M chips don't suck today... so you're mistaken. The whole article was basically about Pentium M, not Pentium 4 netburst, you buffoon. And moreover, the whole point was future processors, not processors today, so your point about how Intel sucks today is stupid.
See IDF news for the answer to that... Apple will incorporate Intel's newest processors from 06/07, meaning processors like Yonah, Merom, Conroe, and Woodcrest. They are all based on an entirely different microarchitecture than the Pentium 4.
No... there are no G4s that outpace G5s at the same clock speed. According to www.barefeats.com, a 2 Ghz G4 is beaten handily by a 2 Ghz G5. Not only are G5s clocked faster than the G4s, but they also are a more robust architecture sitting on a faster FSB.
64-bit compared to 32-bit processors does not tell you a lick about performance on anything but cases where 64-bit integer math, or a huge memory addressing are being used. PC users are used to thinking that Oh... AMD64 is teh faster because it's 64 instead of 32... WRONG. The architecture is just robust. Most people still 32-bit Windows on Athlon 64s and the like...
Furthermore, there is not a lot of support for 64 bit in Mac OS X even on the G5 as it stands.
And which codec do you speak of in particular? MP3? AAC? Be specific. Codec matters a lot.
If you are making generalizations between codecs... yes 128kbps MP3 sucks... was the best you could get in that package 10 years ago, but AAC is a different beast at 128.
if those files are AAC files, I believe that all you need to do to change it over to the book behavior is rename the file to the extension.m4b and reimport it into iTunes. That is the iTunes Music Store audiobook format, and it treats it as such based on the file extension. There may be something along those lines for mp3s as well...
iTunes is required to watch the Full Screen version. Their reasoning must be that iTunes does a better job at displaying the trailer in Full Screen compared to Quicktime.
Quicktime has a nasty habit of actually changing the screen resolution on my monitor when I watch one of the full screen trailers. It resizes all of my open windows to match the 640 by 480 size. iTunes does no such thing.
And maybe because its harder to download the entire full screen trailer if they make it an iTunes only affair.
As far as I can tell, that little thing in the lower left is NOT the speaker on the PSP... The specs seem to talk about stereo speakers, and there is not the same thing on the other side of the device.
No.. that bumpy pad in the corner is the PSP's analog thumbstick... probably along the lines of the belly-button touch mouse pointer on a laptop.
That's too bad. I just tried copying a 17 MB file from one folder to another on my mac. It took maybe a second, if even that... and its not even a G5. so clearly i've got your 200 mhz Pentium beat.
I think there's something wrong with your mac... but to generalize that to all macs is naive, and well.. trollish.
Your problem in this situation is that you immediately demanded that a brand new machine be entirely replaced. I've had the exact opposite experience with Apple support. After being on the phone with Apple support for about 10 minutes about the appearance of dead pixels on the screen of my Powerbook, the woman had me signed up for service. About 2 days later, packaging came in the mail with Airborne Express return postage already on it, and everything was taken care of within a week.
My brother had run the gamut of problems on his 1st generation 12" iBook in the 2 and a half years he's had it. CD tray issues, logic board failures... he had basically every part of the machine replaced in that time. About a month ago the CD tray stopped working, he sent it in again, and it came back not entirely fixed. He pushed a little harder, and they offered to replaced his old G3 iBook with a new 800 Mhz G4 iBook with slot load drive (the model in the current line with the closest specs to his machine), and threw in the bluetooth module on there as a show of good faith. Plus, they prorated his 3 year applecare, and wrote him a check for the months left on his Applecare for the original machine that he won't use.
Again, YMMV, but my family has had nothing but good experiences dealing with Apple support.
Your argument is flawed. Not "only" Microsoft... Sony and Nintendo (and Sega before they quit consoles) have been selling game systems at a loss for years now. Its not Microsoft being benevolent to its loyal masses as you imply... Its the name of the game in game consoles, and Microsoft is trying their best to keep their head above water (and not really doing well in that regard) in a market they don't exercise absolute control over... how's that for a change?
the fact of the matter is that "quality products, at a fair price" is bullshit. Everyone in this market does this, and do not kid yourself into believing that Microsoft has the consumer in mind... this is not an act of benevolence... they are simply trying to stay alive in this market.
The fact of the matter is that the hardware is sold at a loss here, but games make up the slack. Playstation 2 has been enormously successful not because Sony makes a bunch on the console... even now at $179, it probably barely breaks even. But the money is in games. Unfortunately, Microsoft has had a few things against them... 1) slow start in attracting game developers to the platform 2) still a dearth of games altogether and 3) getting people to buy those games that are out, with the exception of Halo.
I'm impressed that someone actually worked themselves up to be outraged that people are bashing MS on Slashdot, by the way...
Actually, it does seem to be the case that iTunes itself functioning solely as a music jukebox is a good reason for people to buy an iPod, even if you have a PC.
iTunes allows the user to organize their music, and even go as far as Rendezvous share it over a network. I have friends who, since iTunes was released on Windows last October, have taken their entire MP3 collections, and meticulously tagged it all to take full advantage of iTunes...
since then, they have started to think about a portable player, and the logical choice for one, since they already use iTunes as their primary jukebox on the computer, is the iPod. The iPod share's iTunes's simplicity... so my friend got a 40 GB iPod... he's got a PC.
They are in the same category as the Rio Nitrus, which uses the same hard drive with the same capacity, and costs the same.
Granted, its not something I'd buy into, but there may be people who do. The players that are the same price with much more storage have a significantly larger form factor...
Steve Jobs segued into his introduction of the iPod Mini by breaking down the mp3 player market share that is everything but the iPod... 31% represents high end flash players with about 256 MB of memory, and cost between $100 and $200...
The iPod Mini is a hard drive player designed to take market share away from this 31%.
Thus, the appeal of this player is clearly not the same as the regular iPod, though they share similar design philosophies. Surprise! If the iPod appeals to you, then the iPod Mini probably won't... you're not in the target demographic, and you should consider a new 15 or 20 GB iPod. Apple has proven over the last 2 years that the greatest value in the market has been high capacity MP3 players... their original iPod.
Does Apple expect the iPod mini to be as successful as the original iPod or their 3rd generation ipods? How could they? They are aiming at a niche, and Mr. Jobs's keynote made it very clear that the iPod mini is designed to expand market share by targeting a niche... It does not have the universal appeal that the iPod does. Apple probably did NOT spend a lot of R&D on the iPod mini. All of the work was done with the development of the 3rd generation iPods last year, and they can experiment with a new product and test the waters... Its not like they are betting the whole farm on this product... The original iPod is a complete success, and lots of revenue is pouring into Apple's coffers, so they can afford to make this small experiment.
So who would want one of these? People looking for something smaller than a traditional iPod... believe it or not I have heard some people complain that even the smaller formfactor 10, 15 and 20 GB iPods are too big... and simply don't have that many songs... Why do you think people buy 256 MB flash players? These people don't listen to a lot of music, maybe they have a grand total of 2 GB on their computers... Most of the Slashdot folk and a lot of the people that frequent Mac forums are NOT these people... Personally, it doesn't make sense for me to get one of these since I've got a bunch more music than that ( that's why I have an iPod )... but there are people who would find this appealing.
I think you all expected this thing to be the end all of MP3 players to trump the original iPod... well its not. Apple clearly put itself into a niche. When the smoke clears, though, people will find that its not nearly as bad as you say right now. I think there is lots of room for improvement here... i'd like to see an even smaller version, and the price needs to drop (since everyone else's street prices are always lower than asking price), but this is not a train wreck.
Though GPRS and the 1xRTT have ambitious theoretical speeds, and bluetooth should theoretically accommodate that connection, theoretical rates of 90+ kbps are just that... theoretical. In practice, these 2.5G and 3G technologies afford dial up performance, if even that...
No way you're going to get the 128kbps internet radio that most are used to... you could make a case for 56K audio designed to be streamed from a modem, but realistically, from a cell phone you'll more likely to be getting the low end of 20-60 kbps, that ain't gonna happen either...
Highly unlikely, with the technologies that are around right now, and really, internet radio this way would be far too costly and lousy sounding.
According to Top 500's little blurb about the G5 cluster that has been called "Big Mac" or "SuperMac", the cluster is designated as "Virginia Tech's X"
I'm sure that no one has trademarked the letter X yet...
There is no reason for people to be getting angry at Apple for "breaking" the older iPods. The problem, having owned an iPod and taking that most of these people are using XPlay to get a Mac iPod to work with PC iTunes, is that the Mac iPod is still formatted HFS+
The simple solution is to back up the data from the iPod, and format it using Apple's software updater on their website.
Then start over with iTunes. Should work. The only reason its failing is because they initially tried getting it to work with a file system hack (Xplay). Using the PC updater above for iPod 1.3 will make the iPod into a PC 5 GB or 10 GB or 20 GB iPod ( the hardware is absolutely the same be it PC or Mac compatible, just the software is different ) and Windows iTunes will work properly with it.
I have no idea what point you are trying to make... the original parent's point was that generally there is an attention to detail in Apple's design (the Powerbooks and the iPod for example) that is significantly above the average among all the PCs you'll find out there.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but in this case, Apple has done well to make their products instantly recognizable in movies and television...
Its not impossible to build a PC or buy a PC that is on par with Apple's in terms of aesthetic, in my opinion, but Apple spends a great deal of time on the special touches on their systems...
can you honestly find a laptop that can even remotely hold a candle to the 17" Powerbook? There must have been months of extra development time in getting that machine as thin and as light as it is. It is lighter, and probably smaller in almost every dimension than most 16" laptops out there...
Apple goes as far as to make the experience of unpacking one of their machines really memorable and stylish... Anyone who's ever bought a mac or an iPod will know what i mean... just how they lay out the machine and its accessories in the box is so simple and yet so chic.
I'm rambling. Needless to say, I don't doubt that you can buy or build a machine yourself that can match the Mac in terms of look... but it will most definitely lack Apple's attitude... its just that little extra that helps Apple's stuff transcend geek appeal and go into the area of being actually COOL.... i mean, 50 cent and Snoop Dog have an iPod...
Slashdot Mirror
There are currently hybrid SUVs on the market. Ford's Escape Hybrid is what I would consider a smaller hybrid, more of a crossover... but have you considered Toyota Highlander Hybrid or the Lexus RX400h? Both of those vehicles have 7 passenger seating, V6 (with the hybrid drive, that can deliver V8 power) and intelligent 4WD. They both are advertised to be able to get over 30 MPG as well, and can be well equipped for comfort.
Regardless, Apple is not going to be using *any* processor that's currently available on the market today in their new Macs. That's the whole point... they are picking and choosing *tomorrow's* best technology, not today's.
Apple's not buying one chip, one motherboard, and one case... they're going to be buying millions of these things. Production capacity is a big requirement for them. They do not want to have the supply problems that they've had with IBM and Freescale in the past, so by sticking with the biggest chip maker, they'll ensure they'll never have a shortage when they go to ship a new product.
The Turion 64 may be a good chip from AMD compared to Pentium M, but according to all of the reviews that I've read, it does well in performance, but badly in power compared to the Pentium M. That's not good for what Apple wants.
Moreover, Apple probably isn't too concerned about 64 bit capabilities at this point, as Mac OS X Tiger has relatively limited 64-bit support. (in fact, even Windows has limited support. Yeah there's Windows x64, but that has limited compatibility with devices because driver support isn't there.) We will probably need to wait until Leopard to get more concrete 64 bit support, and that'll be out around the same time as Vista. By then, Apple should be using 64-bit Merom and Conroe chips from Intel.
Once again, RTFA... it's not about how much power AMD's Athlon64 FX consumes compared to the Pentium XE... The whole article was about low power low voltage chips like the Pentium M. The whole point of the article was that Intel has on the table low power dual core Yonah processors for early next year, while AMD has not disclosed anything about that. Sure AMD has Turion, but that's a single core chip, and it's not fair to compare that to Yonah.
If you payed attention during the Intel Developer Forum, you'll realize that 5x "performance per watt" was compared to Banias, the first Pentium M... which DOES NOT SUCK at performance/watt now.
Intel's Pentium M chips don't suck today... so you're mistaken. The whole article was basically about Pentium M, not Pentium 4 netburst, you buffoon. And moreover, the whole point was future processors, not processors today, so your point about how Intel sucks today is stupid.
See IDF news for the answer to that... Apple will incorporate Intel's newest processors from 06/07, meaning processors like Yonah, Merom, Conroe, and Woodcrest. They are all based on an entirely different microarchitecture than the Pentium 4.
64-bit compared to 32-bit processors does not tell you a lick about performance on anything but cases where 64-bit integer math, or a huge memory addressing are being used. PC users are used to thinking that Oh... AMD64 is teh faster because it's 64 instead of 32... WRONG. The architecture is just robust. Most people still 32-bit Windows on Athlon 64s and the like...
Furthermore, there is not a lot of support for 64 bit in Mac OS X even on the G5 as it stands.
ha ha. No one else gets it? Why is this not modded Funny?
If you are making generalizations between codecs... yes 128kbps MP3 sucks... was the best you could get in that package 10 years ago, but AAC is a different beast at 128.
I think all of the web browsers that are a part of this alliance have some sort of pop up protection. Mozilla and Firefox, anyone?
Not really recursion... more of a set of pointers forming a loop. Hope your garbage collector doesn't work by reference count.
if those files are AAC files, I believe that all you need to do to change it over to the book behavior is rename the file to the extension .m4b and reimport it into iTunes. That is the iTunes Music Store audiobook format, and it treats it as such based on the file extension. There may be something along those lines for mp3s as well...
Akamai. You won't see these sites /. today.
Quicktime has a nasty habit of actually changing the screen resolution on my monitor when I watch one of the full screen trailers. It resizes all of my open windows to match the 640 by 480 size. iTunes does no such thing.
And maybe because its harder to download the entire full screen trailer if they make it an iTunes only affair.
No.. that bumpy pad in the corner is the PSP's analog thumbstick... probably along the lines of the belly-button touch mouse pointer on a laptop.
I think there's something wrong with your mac... but to generalize that to all macs is naive, and well.. trollish.
My brother had run the gamut of problems on his 1st generation 12" iBook in the 2 and a half years he's had it. CD tray issues, logic board failures... he had basically every part of the machine replaced in that time. About a month ago the CD tray stopped working, he sent it in again, and it came back not entirely fixed. He pushed a little harder, and they offered to replaced his old G3 iBook with a new 800 Mhz G4 iBook with slot load drive (the model in the current line with the closest specs to his machine), and threw in the bluetooth module on there as a show of good faith. Plus, they prorated his 3 year applecare, and wrote him a check for the months left on his Applecare for the original machine that he won't use.
Again, YMMV, but my family has had nothing but good experiences dealing with Apple support.
the fact of the matter is that "quality products, at a fair price" is bullshit. Everyone in this market does this, and do not kid yourself into believing that Microsoft has the consumer in mind... this is not an act of benevolence... they are simply trying to stay alive in this market.
The fact of the matter is that the hardware is sold at a loss here, but games make up the slack. Playstation 2 has been enormously successful not because Sony makes a bunch on the console... even now at $179, it probably barely breaks even. But the money is in games. Unfortunately, Microsoft has had a few things against them... 1) slow start in attracting game developers to the platform 2) still a dearth of games altogether and 3) getting people to buy those games that are out, with the exception of Halo.
I'm impressed that someone actually worked themselves up to be outraged that people are bashing MS on Slashdot, by the way...
Slashdot crowd and your video games!
ditto with Unreal Tournament 2003
iTunes allows the user to organize their music, and even go as far as Rendezvous share it over a network. I have friends who, since iTunes was released on Windows last October, have taken their entire MP3 collections, and meticulously tagged it all to take full advantage of iTunes...
since then, they have started to think about a portable player, and the logical choice for one, since they already use iTunes as their primary jukebox on the computer, is the iPod. The iPod share's iTunes's simplicity... so my friend got a 40 GB iPod... he's got a PC.
iTunes helps sell iPods, without a doubt.
Granted, its not something I'd buy into, but there may be people who do. The players that are the same price with much more storage have a significantly larger form factor...
Steve Jobs segued into his introduction of the iPod Mini by breaking down the mp3 player market share that is everything but the iPod... 31% represents high end flash players with about 256 MB of memory, and cost between $100 and $200...
The iPod Mini is a hard drive player designed to take market share away from this 31%.
Thus, the appeal of this player is clearly not the same as the regular iPod, though they share similar design philosophies. Surprise! If the iPod appeals to you, then the iPod Mini probably won't... you're not in the target demographic, and you should consider a new 15 or 20 GB iPod. Apple has proven over the last 2 years that the greatest value in the market has been high capacity MP3 players... their original iPod.
Does Apple expect the iPod mini to be as successful as the original iPod or their 3rd generation ipods? How could they? They are aiming at a niche, and Mr. Jobs's keynote made it very clear that the iPod mini is designed to expand market share by targeting a niche... It does not have the universal appeal that the iPod does. Apple probably did NOT spend a lot of R&D on the iPod mini. All of the work was done with the development of the 3rd generation iPods last year, and they can experiment with a new product and test the waters... Its not like they are betting the whole farm on this product... The original iPod is a complete success, and lots of revenue is pouring into Apple's coffers, so they can afford to make this small experiment.
So who would want one of these? People looking for something smaller than a traditional iPod... believe it or not I have heard some people complain that even the smaller formfactor 10, 15 and 20 GB iPods are too big... and simply don't have that many songs... Why do you think people buy 256 MB flash players? These people don't listen to a lot of music, maybe they have a grand total of 2 GB on their computers... Most of the Slashdot folk and a lot of the people that frequent Mac forums are NOT these people... Personally, it doesn't make sense for me to get one of these since I've got a bunch more music than that ( that's why I have an iPod )... but there are people who would find this appealing.
I think you all expected this thing to be the end all of MP3 players to trump the original iPod... well its not. Apple clearly put itself into a niche. When the smoke clears, though, people will find that its not nearly as bad as you say right now. I think there is lots of room for improvement here... i'd like to see an even smaller version, and the price needs to drop (since everyone else's street prices are always lower than asking price), but this is not a train wreck.
No way you're going to get the 128kbps internet radio that most are used to... you could make a case for 56K audio designed to be streamed from a modem, but realistically, from a cell phone you'll more likely to be getting the low end of 20-60 kbps, that ain't gonna happen either...
Highly unlikely, with the technologies that are around right now, and really, internet radio this way would be far too costly and lousy sounding.
I'm sure that no one has trademarked the letter X yet...
Linkie
The simple solution is to back up the data from the iPod, and format it using Apple's software updater on their website.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120 236
Then start over with iTunes. Should work. The only reason its failing is because they initially tried getting it to work with a file system hack (Xplay). Using the PC updater above for iPod 1.3 will make the iPod into a PC 5 GB or 10 GB or 20 GB iPod ( the hardware is absolutely the same be it PC or Mac compatible, just the software is different ) and Windows iTunes will work properly with it.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but in this case, Apple has done well to make their products instantly recognizable in movies and television...
Its not impossible to build a PC or buy a PC that is on par with Apple's in terms of aesthetic, in my opinion, but Apple spends a great deal of time on the special touches on their systems...
can you honestly find a laptop that can even remotely hold a candle to the 17" Powerbook? There must have been months of extra development time in getting that machine as thin and as light as it is. It is lighter, and probably smaller in almost every dimension than most 16" laptops out there...
Apple goes as far as to make the experience of unpacking one of their machines really memorable and stylish... Anyone who's ever bought a mac or an iPod will know what i mean... just how they lay out the machine and its accessories in the box is so simple and yet so chic.
I'm rambling. Needless to say, I don't doubt that you can buy or build a machine yourself that can match the Mac in terms of look... but it will most definitely lack Apple's attitude... its just that little extra that helps Apple's stuff transcend geek appeal and go into the area of being actually COOL.... i mean, 50 cent and Snoop Dog have an iPod...