I don't regret 'switching' but you will get quickly pissed off with how limiting OSX feels after a while. As you say, Apple likes to be very stupid and limit trivial features like dual screen's on 'consumer machines'.
I think the main problem is performance - The G5 is starting to look very dated. Infact it looks very much like the G4, oh so much promised from it but very little delivered. It seems to be stuck at 2.5GHz (I don't even think it's rated for that - they are defnitely taking it past what it should be with the watercooling system they have on it).
Apple hardware, is I'm afraid, vastly overpriced. Especially their monitors - 20" Cinema Display - $1300. Dell 21" TFT Display with better specs, colours and brightness/contrast - $600. How someone can defend that is absurd. The Dell monitor I'm talking about is the 2005FPW and you can get it easily for $600 after the various rebates Dell does. As little as $300 with a XPS machine...
Oh absolutely, I'm just questioning the logic of having 2 open source rendering engines, when both are moving towards each other - Gecko is getting slimmer and better managed, and KHTML is bloating and losing management due to just having all the new components in it. I tihnk we'll end up with two very similar rendering engines when we could of just pooled efforts.
Apple could of got a lot out of using XUL. Apple could of wrote an Applescript (ie: very easy)-style GUI builder and IDE, and you would be able to deploy cross platform apps with one click. Instead we'll probably see a rushed effort for either Apple to make their own XUL/XAML style language or them hurriedly adopting XUL. XAML is going to be a big bastard for Apple, and it's probably going to be the end for Apple to get into the corperate market - which will probably end their server hopes in it. Shame really, but that's what you get for being complacent. Market share is dwindling. Apple needs to make it _very_ easy to port Windows apps over if they want to reverse this trend.
Ok, so the Kernel is technically Mach. However, it's getting more and more like FreeBSD, and I have no doubt they have ported some of the 'improvements' from FreeBSD to Mach.
There was no real reason to use KHTML over Gecko for Safari. Firefox is very nearly as fast as Safari (on my iBook 800) now, and is compabitable with far more websites than Safari, due to Gecko having a lot more real world use than KHTML ever will. 7 vs 1-2%.
As for CUPS, I disagree. The gnome-cups-* set of packages are absolutely fantastic on GNOME 2.8. I found Apple's printing setup applications much slower and less intuitive (especially with networked Windows printers) to use.
I'm not saying OSX is a bad OS, it's just that Apple haven't really made much of it themselves.
They bought Next which gave them Obj-C, Cocoa, Interface Builder (and basically XCode), Kernel, Postscript based display...
All I am saying is that Apple is regarded as the world's big computer innovator - they don't really innovate whatsoever. They are good at packaging stuff up neatly and doing silver sprays on laptops, but that's about it.
I mean even the iPod, something I will be sure that Apple will go down for as the great digital music innovator is all bought-in components. They got the HDDs from Toshiba, the software + interface design that is so amazing from some small company that I can't remember the name of, and bought iTunes from another company I can't remember the name off.
What technologies has Apple actually 'innovated' in, apart from packaging up other people's work? Not many, that's the answer.
Dell is overpriced. They are very good if you have a few thousand machines to order, but not if you are just a home user. Build it yourself. You _can_ get a hell of a machine for the price of a 17" imac.
I use Ubuntu Linux. I 'switched' from Windows XP (which I still run on another machine, but not on my primary one anymore - mainly down to Fireworks. Can't find an app similar to it at all on the linux side, and no, GIMP/Photoshop is not similar, whatsoever)
1) I have yet to get infected with spyware or viruses in 2 years with OSX 2) I can tool around the web without having to worry too much about getting owned
3) I can get freakin email with out having to worry too much about getting owned
Me neither, with Linux. 4) OSX shipps with XCode for free, a fully functional development environment with excellent documentation
Eclipse, Glade and your assorted command line utilites are all on Linux. Python, Perl, PHP etc. Very good stuff.
5) Graphics acceleration at the presentation layer far exceeds any other OS out there at the moment
You need to check out Xorg. Their hardware compositing is very, very impressive.
6) Apple hardware retains a higher resale value than just about any other manufacturer out there, check out ebay to see for your self
This is just because they are more expensive and updated less. Also you pay a lot more at the start with Mac.
7) The construction of the circuitry is of much higher quality than most of the competition, just take a side by side comparison of several pc motherboards to apple motherboards
I would, but I can't seem to find Apple motherboards anywhere. Oh, you mean the propetiary ones that no-one else but Apple can buy? The same ones that have had thousands of defects in iBooks?
The Motherboard is the only part Apple makes themselves AFAIK. Even then it's mainly other chipsets on it. CPU, HDD, RAM, GPU, PSU - all just generic components
Steve Jobs reguallaly bashes Linux for no good reason. He often does this on his Keynote's. However, I don't think people realize how little of OSX is actually Apple's:
Because Windows XP + Firefox, Thunderbird and various other OSS apps is a very competent system, and can be had for about 1/2 of the price of the lowest eMac, and if you want you can install Linux very quickly (or dual boot)?
Oh, it also plays games too. New games, like Half Life 2 *gasp*!
I own an iBook by the way. It's ok, but OSX is getting really tiresome. I think I will soon just install Linux over it, especially at the pace that Linux is maturing at..
Re:Biggest plus about VHS -- DRM couldn't touch it
on
The VHS is Dead
·
· Score: 1
Please think. How would you seriously enforce DRM in 1976 when VHS was introduced? Do you think that the movie studios wouldn't of put DRM if they could of?
Seriously, back in 1976 the computing power of one $20 DVD player probably outstripped every computer in the world then. It would not be feasiable to apply a 56bit encryption algorithm on it, or anything like the 2048bit encryption that will be on your soon-to-come HD-DVD. That will be probably, incredibly hard to crack. Then again, it'll probably have a stupid flaw that renders it useless within the first week of it being out.
Starforce 3 protection installs an incredibly hard to remove driver, that's right.. kernel level driver onto your computer. Obviously it's not 'spyware' per-se but it's bloody close to it.
I think that PalmOne is right in choosing to use a block based filesystem. There is obvious limits on the the old method, and while this has some problems, from what I gather they could easily solve them by instead of having each contact data in a seperate file, moving it to one file (or having a 'zip folder' which could expand and look like a normal folder when opened).
The main problem is that PalmOS is looking very dated compared to WinCE and Linux, and it's going to require serious pain that I don't think PalmOne can take to modernize it fully. This is just one step.. think how much it's going to hurt to get proper multitasking in etc...
Re:I'd Like to Run Linux -- Just No Time
on
Linux Kernel to Fork?
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Don't get too happy. A lot of problems are solved, but there is a HUGE problem in the form of installing software.
Currently they are 4 'methods':
Compile from source RPM/DEB apt-get/yum Custom installer
Compile from source is not going to work. Takes too long, requires too much knowledge, requires lots of source already on the system.
RPM/Deb is useless for anything but the most simple tasks, because of dependancy hell.
apt-get/yum is good, infact it's the closest we have at the moment. However, it's has 3 huge downsides: 1) it requires a central server that can go down, hacked, go offline due to financial issues, whatever. 2) it requires the central server organization to test and ensure the packages work, which really should be the packagers job. This results in it being slow, and can take weeks before new versions of software come onto the apt server. 3) Some packages due to their legal status cannot be hosted. Also, for commercial software it would require each company to host their own apt server as most distro's would not want to bear the costs of distrubuting their software.
Exactly. If Half Life 2's engine is used anywhere near as much as HL (6 years, and it's still being used for the worlds most popular online FPS), loading times like these are going to be nothing in the next few years as HDDs get faster, people have more RAM etc etc.
HL2 is a very good game though. The later levels seem a little rushed, though.
No shit sherlock, but I can build a far faster machine than the single G5 1.8 for half the price. Plus I can use my old monitor.
Also, I can play HL2 if I dual boot.
Apple hardware is overpriced compared to home-built systems. To Dell and co it's not so bad, but for me I build all my systems and have been thoroughly unimpressed with the standard of performance of most Macs.
You sound like IBM in 1960 when it comes to computers - "they'll only be perhaps 5 computers in the world" or something is the famous quote. Also, Gates saying 'no-one needs 640KB of RAM', but that's probably stupidly twisted by now.
I can easily see this. We have nanosecond response times in RAM, so it is not unfeasible to suggest a computer which could analyze thousands of frames per second of infared video and detect RPG-style heat spots, move a laser/similar weapon and either vaporize the missle or make it fall to the ground harmlessly.
Look, we now fabricate 'consumer electronics' at 90nanometers, soon to be 65, then most likely 30. Keep that in mind when you suggest things like these have to be big. Sure, lasers may not have the power in small spaces now, but that's just a matter of time - how big do you expect a computer built out of valves to be that had the same performance as the one you are typing this on now? I'd guess the size of a large country.
Yes, I realized that was more than a little silly after I posted it. Sorry.
What I meant was Iraqi-style guerrila warriors. Or something. It was a lot easier just to type 'terrorists' and hope people got the right meaning through the context.
PS: I'm not American. I'm British, but British English is dying fast, no-one uses it and it's acceptable to use both 'z' and 's' in words like 'critize'. I feel it's probably better to use a language (dialect?) which is much more literal to phonetics and gets away with those nasty silent 'u's in colour:).
Linux will be the primary platform, if not, it'll be Windows (if someone ports it - not sure if it already is).
BSD has lackluster hardware support. It simply doesn't have the interest nor the amount of coders on it. Not trying to put it down here but if you have to fight with BSD and hardware when it 'just works' on Linux, guess which one will be the favorite.
Solaris is never going to happen. Overpriced hardware, with no tangible benefits apart from being locked into it.
OSX, also, not going to happen. There are probably less Mac administrators than Linux admins these days, and the hardware is frankly, not very good. The G5 has been surpassed by AMD64 and it's just lagging behind now, not to mention the hardware is highly proprietary and therefore spares are very hard to get at short notice (vs HP and Dell offering part swapouts within 4 hours). Also Linux can be compiled to be fully AMD64, whereas OSX doesn't really take advantage of the G5 as much.
I'm slightly confused. This system seems to deal with 'sidewinder'-style missiles - ie: small, very fast, and can easily destroy a tank/plane/humvee.
I know for a fact that i'd prefer one of these to take out any RPG shots that might be fired towards me if I were in Iraq.
This is how the US is going to win the 'war on terror': simply make their weapons totally useless. At the moment, RPGs are probably the biggest danger to a soldier moving around. With this, it's not a problem anymore. I'm sure they could work on a system that could eventually shoot down bullets in mid air, and then finally make it small enough so that soldiers can carry it. Virtually invincible soldiers.
Terrorists are probably not going to be able to kit out their soldiers with this. Sure, they can use suicide bombs, but it's certainly not as easy as setting an RPG a half-mile away, firing at a passing patrol and killing 5 soldiers.
GSM is very little of the bandwidth. Probably 10% of it. The rest is overheads - to keep it in real time, you have to do FEC and other nasty nasty things which require heaps of upstream.
You'll need about 100kbit/sec upstream for each line.
Why would Google risk their billions to sell a database to spammers and govt?
Not to mention this 'social map' would be nearly useless, it'd contain so many dead ends and general bad data in that no-one would want it.
The reason that they have invite's is the same reason Apple always kills iPod supplies before Christmas, it hypes the product up so much if you can't get it. You want it much more if you have to wait and you feel by getting it you are in the 'cool' crowd.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't regret 'switching' but you will get quickly pissed off with how limiting OSX feels after a while. As you say, Apple likes to be very stupid and limit trivial features like dual screen's on 'consumer machines'.
I think the main problem is performance - The G5 is starting to look very dated. Infact it looks very much like the G4, oh so much promised from it but very little delivered. It seems to be stuck at 2.5GHz (I don't even think it's rated for that - they are defnitely taking it past what it should be with the watercooling system they have on it).
Apple hardware, is I'm afraid, vastly overpriced. Especially their monitors - 20" Cinema Display - $1300. Dell 21" TFT Display with better specs, colours and brightness/contrast - $600. How someone can defend that is absurd. The Dell monitor I'm talking about is the 2005FPW and you can get it easily for $600 after the various rebates Dell does. As little as $300 with a XPS machine...
What the hell are you on about? Who is possbly going to buy a $800 computer after seeing a book about it?!!
Oh absolutely, I'm just questioning the logic of having 2 open source rendering engines, when both are moving towards each other - Gecko is getting slimmer and better managed, and KHTML is bloating and losing management due to just having all the new components in it. I tihnk we'll end up with two very similar rendering engines when we could of just pooled efforts.
Apple could of got a lot out of using XUL. Apple could of wrote an Applescript (ie: very easy)-style GUI builder and IDE, and you would be able to deploy cross platform apps with one click. Instead we'll probably see a rushed effort for either Apple to make their own XUL/XAML style language or them hurriedly adopting XUL. XAML is going to be a big bastard for Apple, and it's probably going to be the end for Apple to get into the corperate market - which will probably end their server hopes in it. Shame really, but that's what you get for being complacent. Market share is dwindling. Apple needs to make it _very_ easy to port Windows apps over if they want to reverse this trend.
Norway isn't in the EU, fool.
Ok, so the Kernel is technically Mach. However, it's getting more and more like FreeBSD, and I have no doubt they have ported some of the 'improvements' from FreeBSD to Mach.
There was no real reason to use KHTML over Gecko for Safari. Firefox is very nearly as fast as Safari (on my iBook 800) now, and is compabitable with far more websites than Safari, due to Gecko having a lot more real world use than KHTML ever will. 7 vs 1-2%.
As for CUPS, I disagree. The gnome-cups-* set of packages are absolutely fantastic on GNOME 2.8. I found Apple's printing setup applications much slower and less intuitive (especially with networked Windows printers) to use.
I'm not saying OSX is a bad OS, it's just that Apple haven't really made much of it themselves.
They bought Next which gave them Obj-C, Cocoa, Interface Builder (and basically XCode), Kernel, Postscript based display...
All I am saying is that Apple is regarded as the world's big computer innovator - they don't really innovate whatsoever. They are good at packaging stuff up neatly and doing silver sprays on laptops, but that's about it.
I mean even the iPod, something I will be sure that Apple will go down for as the great digital music innovator is all bought-in components. They got the HDDs from Toshiba, the software + interface design that is so amazing from some small company that I can't remember the name of, and bought iTunes from another company I can't remember the name off.
What technologies has Apple actually 'innovated' in, apart from packaging up other people's work? Not many, that's the answer.
Dell is overpriced. They are very good if you have a few thousand machines to order, but not if you are just a home user. Build it yourself. You _can_ get a hell of a machine for the price of a 17" imac.
1) I have yet to get infected with spyware or viruses in 2 years with OSX
2) I can tool around the web without having to worry too much about getting owned
3) I can get freakin email with out having to worry too much about getting owned
Me neither, with Linux.
4) OSX shipps with XCode for free, a fully functional development environment with excellent documentation
Eclipse, Glade and your assorted command line utilites are all on Linux. Python, Perl, PHP etc. Very good stuff.
5) Graphics acceleration at the presentation layer far exceeds any other OS out there at the moment
You need to check out Xorg. Their hardware compositing is very, very impressive.
6) Apple hardware retains a higher resale value than just about any other manufacturer out there, check out ebay to see for your self
This is just because they are more expensive and updated less. Also you pay a lot more at the start with Mac.
7) The construction of the circuitry is of much higher quality than most of the competition, just take a side by side comparison of several pc motherboards to apple motherboards
I would, but I can't seem to find Apple motherboards anywhere. Oh, you mean the propetiary ones that no-one else but Apple can buy? The same ones that have had thousands of defects in iBooks?
The Motherboard is the only part Apple makes themselves AFAIK. Even then it's mainly other chipsets on it. CPU, HDD, RAM, GPU, PSU - all just generic components
Steve Jobs reguallaly bashes Linux for no good reason. He often does this on his Keynote's. However, I don't think people realize how little of OSX is actually Apple's:
Kernel.. nope, thats FreeBSD derived.
Safari.. nope, that's KHTML derived.
Printing.. nope, that's CUPS derived.
Shell.. nope, that's bash/tcsh derived.
Compiler.. nope, that's GCC.
Windows Networking nope, that's Samba.
What does it leave?
Because Windows XP + Firefox, Thunderbird and various other OSS apps is a very competent system, and can be had for about 1/2 of the price of the lowest eMac, and if you want you can install Linux very quickly (or dual boot)?
Oh, it also plays games too. New games, like Half Life 2 *gasp*!
I own an iBook by the way. It's ok, but OSX is getting really tiresome. I think I will soon just install Linux over it, especially at the pace that Linux is maturing at..
Please think. How would you seriously enforce DRM in 1976 when VHS was introduced? Do you think that the movie studios wouldn't of put DRM if they could of?
Seriously, back in 1976 the computing power of one $20 DVD player probably outstripped every computer in the world then. It would not be feasiable to apply a 56bit encryption algorithm on it, or anything like the 2048bit encryption that will be on your soon-to-come HD-DVD. That will be probably, incredibly hard to crack. Then again, it'll probably have a stupid flaw that renders it useless within the first week of it being out.
Starforce 3 protection installs an incredibly hard to remove driver, that's right.. kernel level driver onto your computer. Obviously it's not 'spyware' per-se but it's bloody close to it.
Most games nowadays (including HL2) detect this sort of virtual CD and disable it/make the game not run.
Because responsive, fast web applications that reduce server trips is a bad thing, obviously...
I think that PalmOne is right in choosing to use a block based filesystem. There is obvious limits on the the old method, and while this has some problems, from what I gather they could easily solve them by instead of having each contact data in a seperate file, moving it to one file (or having a 'zip folder' which could expand and look like a normal folder when opened).
The main problem is that PalmOS is looking very dated compared to WinCE and Linux, and it's going to require serious pain that I don't think PalmOne can take to modernize it fully. This is just one step.. think how much it's going to hurt to get proper multitasking in etc...
Don't get too happy. A lot of problems are solved, but there is a HUGE problem in the form of installing software.
Currently they are 4 'methods':
Compile from source
RPM/DEB
apt-get/yum
Custom installer
Compile from source is not going to work. Takes too long, requires too much knowledge, requires lots of source already on the system.
RPM/Deb is useless for anything but the most simple tasks, because of dependancy hell.
apt-get/yum is good, infact it's the closest we have at the moment. However, it's has 3 huge downsides:
1) it requires a central server that can go down, hacked, go offline due to financial issues, whatever.
2) it requires the central server organization to test and ensure the packages work, which really should be the packagers job. This results in it being slow, and can take weeks before new versions of software come onto the apt server.
3) Some packages due to their legal status cannot be hosted. Also, for commercial software it would require each company to host their own apt server as most distro's would not want to bear the costs of distrubuting their software.
Wow... yes, I didn't even notice it. Makes so much sense now...
Exactly. If Half Life 2's engine is used anywhere near as much as HL (6 years, and it's still being used for the worlds most popular online FPS), loading times like these are going to be nothing in the next few years as HDDs get faster, people have more RAM etc etc.
HL2 is a very good game though. The later levels seem a little rushed, though.
No shit sherlock, but I can build a far faster machine than the single G5 1.8 for half the price. Plus I can use my old monitor.
Also, I can play HL2 if I dual boot.
Apple hardware is overpriced compared to home-built systems. To Dell and co it's not so bad, but for me I build all my systems and have been thoroughly unimpressed with the standard of performance of most Macs.
You sound like IBM in 1960 when it comes to computers - "they'll only be perhaps 5 computers in the world" or something is the famous quote. Also, Gates saying 'no-one needs 640KB of RAM', but that's probably stupidly twisted by now.
I can easily see this. We have nanosecond response times in RAM, so it is not unfeasible to suggest a computer which could analyze thousands of frames per second of infared video and detect RPG-style heat spots, move a laser/similar weapon and either vaporize the missle or make it fall to the ground harmlessly.
Look, we now fabricate 'consumer electronics' at 90nanometers, soon to be 65, then most likely 30. Keep that in mind when you suggest things like these have to be big. Sure, lasers may not have the power in small spaces now, but that's just a matter of time - how big do you expect a computer built out of valves to be that had the same performance as the one you are typing this on now? I'd guess the size of a large country.
Yes, I realized that was more than a little silly after I posted it. Sorry.
:).
What I meant was Iraqi-style guerrila warriors. Or something. It was a lot easier just to type 'terrorists' and hope people got the right meaning through the context.
PS: I'm not American. I'm British, but British English is dying fast, no-one uses it and it's acceptable to use both 'z' and 's' in words like 'critize'. I feel it's probably better to use a language (dialect?) which is much more literal to phonetics and gets away with those nasty silent 'u's in colour
Linux will be the primary platform, if not, it'll be Windows (if someone ports it - not sure if it already is).
BSD has lackluster hardware support. It simply doesn't have the interest nor the amount of coders on it. Not trying to put it down here but if you have to fight with BSD and hardware when it 'just works' on Linux, guess which one will be the favorite.
Solaris is never going to happen. Overpriced hardware, with no tangible benefits apart from being locked into it.
OSX, also, not going to happen. There are probably less Mac administrators than Linux admins these days, and the hardware is frankly, not very good. The G5 has been surpassed by AMD64 and it's just lagging behind now, not to mention the hardware is highly proprietary and therefore spares are very hard to get at short notice (vs HP and Dell offering part swapouts within 4 hours). Also Linux can be compiled to be fully AMD64, whereas OSX doesn't really take advantage of the G5 as much.
I'm slightly confused. This system seems to deal with 'sidewinder'-style missiles - ie: small, very fast, and can easily destroy a tank/plane/humvee.
I know for a fact that i'd prefer one of these to take out any RPG shots that might be fired towards me if I were in Iraq.
This is how the US is going to win the 'war on terror': simply make their weapons totally useless. At the moment, RPGs are probably the biggest danger to a soldier moving around. With this, it's not a problem anymore. I'm sure they could work on a system that could eventually shoot down bullets in mid air, and then finally make it small enough so that soldiers can carry it. Virtually invincible soldiers.
Terrorists are probably not going to be able to kit out their soldiers with this. Sure, they can use suicide bombs, but it's certainly not as easy as setting an RPG a half-mile away, firing at a passing patrol and killing 5 soldiers.
GSM is very little of the bandwidth. Probably 10% of it. The rest is overheads - to keep it in real time, you have to do FEC and other nasty nasty things which require heaps of upstream.
You'll need about 100kbit/sec upstream for each line.
Most people use 10MB or less of their Gmail storage. I use 100MB and I'd consider myself a heavy user.
I think it's 95% marketing and 5% technical, the invite system.
Why would Google risk their billions to sell a database to spammers and govt?
Not to mention this 'social map' would be nearly useless, it'd contain so many dead ends and general bad data in that no-one would want it.
The reason that they have invite's is the same reason Apple always kills iPod supplies before Christmas, it hypes the product up so much if you can't get it. You want it much more if you have to wait and you feel by getting it you are in the 'cool' crowd.