The idea of an all-in-one application always worked against the Macintosh operating system. How could Apple show how well divergent programs work together when promoting a single application? Office suites and bundles (like iLife) make much more sense.
Personally, I still miss WriteNow and SuperPaint. I never did really replace them, nor did I ever find a spread sheet program that was in the same class (fast, functional, light weight, reasonably priced). ClarisWorks was okay, but personally I never could get over the stigma of using an all-in-one package.
Your "etc" omitted the OS X services I find most useful: Check Spelling, Summarize, and Start Speaking Text. Indeed, under-appreciated integrated advantages for any that Apple rarely boasts about.
This rumored system is pretty much [an eMac] with the $100 monitor removed. No way Apple sells it for $500.
Agreed. If the "headless iMac" keeps pace with the eMac (which is also suppose to get a G5) but is just a $100 cheaper it will be wildly successful. If the eMac keeps the G4, they could sell this for $699. If the eMac gets a G5, they could still be highly successful with a $599 price point.
You can buy an old G3 tower which will run OS X just fine for about $300. Add a $100 CPU upgrade, and there's your G4 right there.
Except that in order to really appreciate OS X one needs a Quartz Extreme which means upgrading the video card, and probably RAM and HD while you are at it. This means spending closer to $600 at a minimum (not counting the cost of the OS) to get a low-end system. Hmm, why not hold out for the headless iMac?
Of course, one other surprisingly addictive aspect of OS X is hooking a Mac to a DV camcorder. Now you need firewire and a SuperDrive (and iDVD). Try and do that for $600!
Okay, so Mr. No Skills should have written "desktop" instead of "workstation." But please excuse the semantics, as this will be a very nice box if it does the things you list! I have been waiting for way too long to upgrade my Cube, and this should (finally) be a suitable replacement. I hope I can swap out the video card though, one of the most compelling things about the Cube IMHO is the sweet ADC monitor.
This box sounds like Apple's answer to small form factor PC's running Myth or Microsoft's media center software. It's a multimedia box.
One of the very few things that bothered me with OS X as compared to 9 was how much screen real real-estate the UI required. The default presentation of the Dock, Finder, and iLife apps are large and clumsy, albeit quite attractive. Latter on I realized they would work well on a large format, relatively low resolution (but high color) display -- even from across the room, sitting in a couch.
Many of these details in the bible seem like pieces added on when a 4 year old when being read a book asks questions.
I have often thought that much of old testament reads like Just So Stories.
Why do we have a rainbow? (Noah's Ark)
Why are there so many languages? (Tower of Babel)
I agree with you about the market for a lower priced (less-expandable) box, but the eMac has many, many fans, and for good reason. Others at/. have made argued a good case that the price is reasonable, and they have done this without attaching a dollar value to FireWire, OS X, the all-in-one form factor! The 1.25 GHz eMac Value Equation: Wow!
Battery on a mini DV cam corder lets you record a whole tape (90 min, ~20 GB) and run the screen (i.e., camera is ready) for a few hours. While the screen is running, the DV tape is ready to record, instantly. When at the ready like this, the tape mechanism uses no power (although the screen and rest of the camera is powered up of course). Can a HD be at the ready without spinning (and thus eating battery)?
Silent, beautiful, spouse friendly, and the combination of OS X and iLife is soo much better than Windows Media Center. You will have to upgrade it up quite a bit (at the very least the RAM, and HD) and add a FireWire tuner but it would still be half the cost.
Well, I think the manufacturers have merely gotten the first two of the three parent's categories (okay, that's batting 667). Only the real penny pinchers have been tapped by the current mass market attempt. I don't think cheap has actually been offered. To be an "iPod Killer" something has to be "good enough" (i.e., about the same size -- shape and storage) and about half the price.
Cost is reason enough to switch. The would-be iPod competitors are not really pricing their products to move. Even your average consumer can tell that 256 mb is not in the same ballpark as 4 gb. Fifty dollars less than the MSRP of an iPod mini ain't gonna get these pretenders anything, no matter how much they spend on marketing!
Just let the device show up as a USB/firewire drive. Don't make me use propriety software! I want Mac compatibility for my iPod clone! The average consumer cares more about MP3s and ripping CDs than they do about buying DRM encumbered songs online. I find it ironic that the player manufactures act like WMV compatibility is a feature rather than a limitation! The iPod interface is nice, but people are willing to put up with a clumsy interface if the price is right.
The market for people willing to purchase encrypted songs is well addressed (by iTMS and the windows-only stores). The only market space left is people holding out for something cheaper, much cheaper, but with comparable features. Sometime after xMas the product I am waiting for (the $99 5 gb MP3 player) will be on the market. (Okay, maybe after xMas 2006.) I think this ties into another post on this sub-thread, the "Fast/Cheap/Good" triangle:
> If you want it Cheap and Good, it's going to take a long time.
I can wait. There are millions of hold outs like me.
Just to add to the referenced article, here is a new player
review
of a new player that isn't in the five-part series.
Actually, a cheap price is good enough reason to switch. The problem is that Creative (and others) aren't willing to go the distance. To be an "iPod Killer" something has to be "good enough" (i.e., about the same size -- shape and storage) and about half the price.
Fifty dollars less than the MSRP of an iPod mini ain't gonna get these pretenders anything, no matter how much they spend on marketing!
Just let the device show up as a USB/firewire drive. Don't make me use propriety software. I want Mac compatibility for my iPod clone! The average consumer cares more about MP3s and ripping CDs than they do about buying DRM encumbered songs online. I find it ironic that the player manufactures act like WMV compatibility is a feature rather than a limitation! The iPod interface is nice, but people are willing to put up with inferiority if the price is right -- or we would all be using OS X instead of Windows.
The market for people willing to purchase encrypted songs is well addressed (by iTMS and the windows-only stores). The only market space left is people holding out for something cheaper, much cheaper.
I think Jef is out in left field on this, but it is interesting that we have settled for an interface that is ideally suited for someone with three hands. Remember how your typing instructor taught you: Keep both hands above the home row. Now, for efficiencies sake, you will also want to keep your dominant hand on the mouse.
Yes, it is a nice knife sharpener. It would have been nice for him to give credit to the manufacturer (Chantry) rather than some random vendor. The fact that he got this detail wrong doesn't give me much faith in the rest of his opinions.
Are you really questioning if the Bush administration uses propaganda?
Well, if you know of have a similar analysis on propoganda by the Bush administration, let's have it.
How about The 'Prop-Agenda' At War, a leading hit from a restrictive search which returned almost 600 items (ironically, the top one was the Rhoads paper).
Ditto ditto. A game from 1998 that runs natively under OS X! Add to this that one is hard pressed to find the Mac version for sale anywhere at any price -- for years now. And the game play is better the supposed sequel. Crazy. The bugs Colazar mentions are fixed. The latest version is SMAC_Carbon_b3.sit -- full text from Read Me follows:
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire
Carbon Version Beta
System Requirements:
MacOS 8.6 or later, or MacOS X 10.1 or later. MacOS 10.0.x is not supported.
CarbonLib 1.0.4 or greater. Has not been tested extensively with CarbonLib versions less than 1.2.5.
A PowerPC Macintosh, 180MHz 603 or better.
32 Megabytes of free memory (you may need to enable virtual memory).
A monitor and video card capable of a resolution of 800x600 at 256 colors.
The original SMAC/SMAX game
Tech Support/Reporting Problems:
The Carbon versions of SMAC/SMAX are currently unsupported betas. Use them at your own risk. If you run into a problem not listed below, please send an e-mail describing the problem and if possible steps to reproduce it to: XbradXman@Xpobox.com. [n.b., human-obvious spam filter added]
Installation:
Drag the two new application files, along with the OpenPlay file and folder to the folder on your hard drive which contains your current SMAC/SMACX applications.
Known Issues with the Carbon versions not present in the regular versions
When running in a window, some animations do not update under MacOS X. Examples: the ship does not crash at the start of the game, the menus do not slide out - they pop out, etc. If this bothers you, play the game fullscreen.
I bought iLife at the beginning of last year, as I really wanted iDVD. At the time, iLife included iTunes 3, iPhoto 2, iMovie 3, and iDVD 3. I missed the free upgrade by a matter of weeks. Since then, I paid for the upgrade to Panther, and renewed my.mac account. With the exception of iTunes, all that software is now obsolete. I would like to have the current versions, but there is no upgrade path. I am not interested in Garage Band, so it just doesn't seem worth the money with everything else I paid Apple this past year. There is no upgrade path to the current versions, short of buying a new copy (at full price) of iLife '04. This is very frustrating to me. At the time, I understood having to pay for iLife just to get iDVD, as there are licensed codecs that cost Apple money (I already owned the rest). I can understand charging for Garage Band (it's new). iTunes is free. I paid for Jaguar and Panther without any regret. I know I am whining, but I really wish Apple was more generous with their upgrade paths for their consumer products. Really I am a MacFanBoi, but this is the second worse thing Apple has done in recent years (the first was charging for.mac -- after heavily advertising it a free feature of OS X).
You missed my reference to the scientific method!
on
Living Without a Pulse
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· Score: 1
I write that you have it backwards, so you write I got it backwards. Very nice.
You obviously missed my reference to the scientific method so I will quote one succinct definition here.
The scientific method is the best way yet discovered for winnowing the truth from lies and delusion. The simple version looks something like this:
Observe some aspect of the universe.
Invent a theory that is consistent with what you have observed.
Use the theory to make predictions.
Test those predictions by experiments or further observations.
Modify the theory in the light of your results.
Go to step 3.
The piece goes on to discuss 1.3: Can science ever really prove anything? Most hard science doesn't work out as simple math. There is huge amounts of evidence for evolution but I guess if that doesn't sway your opinion, then nothing will. (By the way, do you hold that the religion of your absolute reality should reduce to a mathematical proof as well?)
This is why the theory of evolution with mutation and natural selection is science. It is useful. It can be (and has been) used to make predictions. It can be (and has been) tested.
Creationism is faith. One could reasonably argue that as an explaination it is just as good as evolution. The problem is that it is not scientific theory (no matter how much the ID folks dress it up) because it cannot be used to make predictions and it is impossible to devise tests for it.
The best creationist can do is "to trying to make itself real by trying to make" evolution false by focusing on the very marginal areas where the current evidence is weak or incomplete.
Like I have enough time to take on every fundamentalist AC on/. I guess I can but try! It was only a day ago that I learned that some think blood coagulation to be an example of ID. I read that and just though, huh? I haven't bothered to read more about this one, not even for this post. Like we all bleed exactly the same? Obviously, there is a wide range of platelet count that is survivable. Ideal blood chemistry varies by geography and lifestyle. Our ancestors used other substances before developing hemoglobin. I just don't see blood coagulation as being an interesting mystery.
I agree that just saying add millions (or billions) is no answer, but that's not an argument a good Darwinists would make. It is usually the creationists who are accused of begging the question! This is something I have noticed in recent years, the creationists trying to turn arguments around. It seems to me the Republicans have gotten good at this too! Science has no use for faith. If it can't be used for prediction, it isn't science.
I couldn't find the name of the logic fallacy you are trying to use. I did want to share this quote:
Another instance of the prosecutor's fallacy is sometimes encountered when discussing the origins of life: the probability of life arising at random out of the physical laws is estimated to be tiny, and this is presented as evidence for a creator, without regard for the possibility that the probability of such a creator could be even tinier.
But I am not a very good athesist, so here's my gift to you... The Heisenberg uncertainty principle puts a little black box around each sub atomic particle. Is this not enough room for God to work miracles?
I am glad to see that a day latter, your post has gone from a 5 to a 2, much more reasonable. I actually appreciate you bringing up the flagella on a bacterium as an interesting example, I just cannot abide your conclusion that this provides evidence of ID. I have been interested in animals with wheels since I saw a picture of some monster proposed for Empire of the Petal Throne in Dragon magazine some twenty five years ago.
Have you heard of the scientific method?
on
Living Without a Pulse
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· Score: 2, Informative
You have it exactly backwards. The theory of evolution is just that, a theory. This is how science works. One postulates a hypothesis. Only if it is useful, that is, it furthers our understanding, and allows testing against, is it kept. Theories that are not testable, like intelligent design, are not scientific, they are matters of faith. Theories can easily be proved false, all one needs is a single concrete counter example, but being mere theories, they are never quite proved true. If after years and years of being tested (and not once being false), and continuously demonstrated as being useful, theories are accepted as fact. The creationists like to put this backwards: concluding that since scientist cannot prove evolution, the competing model (ID) is on equal footing. ID is faith, it is by definition not testable, and it is not useful in science. You can feel free to believe it you wish, but your conclusion is not based on logic. Scientific models, laws even, do not have to be fully understood to be useful. The effects of gravity, for example, are well understood -- and we have plenty of equations for it -- even though science hasn't quite explained where gravity comes from (except that it is an intrinsic feature of mass). Gravity isn't mentioned in the Bible, so the religious nuts don't feel compelled to manufacture un-testable competing theories.
Slashdot Mirror
AppleWorks doesn't suck, never did.
The idea of an all-in-one application always worked against the Macintosh operating system. How could Apple show how well divergent programs work together when promoting a single application? Office suites and bundles (like iLife) make much more sense.
Personally, I still miss WriteNow and SuperPaint. I never did really replace them, nor did I ever find a spread sheet program that was in the same class (fast, functional, light weight, reasonably priced). ClarisWorks was okay, but personally I never could get over the stigma of using an all-in-one package.
Your "etc" omitted the OS X services I find most useful: Check Spelling, Summarize, and Start Speaking Text. Indeed, under-appreciated integrated advantages for any that Apple rarely boasts about.
Of course, one other surprisingly addictive aspect of OS X is hooking a Mac to a DV camcorder. Now you need firewire and a SuperDrive (and iDVD). Try and do that for $600!
Okay, so Mr. No Skills should have written "desktop" instead of "workstation." But please excuse the semantics, as this will be a very nice box if it does the things you list! I have been waiting for way too long to upgrade my Cube, and this should (finally) be a suitable replacement. I hope I can swap out the video card though, one of the most compelling things about the Cube IMHO is the sweet ADC monitor.
Why do we have a rainbow? (Noah's Ark)
Why are there so many languages? (Tower of Babel)
They failed to review the best product available, EyeTV
Hilarious!
Nice recommendation, also endorsed by CubeOwner.com. Don't stop at 80GB, as Cube supports up to 120GB natively. Seagate Barracuda 7200.7-Plu from OWC
I agree with you about the market for a lower priced (less-expandable) box, but the eMac has many, many fans, and for good reason. Others at /. have made argued a good case that the price is reasonable, and they have done this without attaching a dollar value to FireWire, OS X, the all-in-one form factor!
The 1.25 GHz eMac Value Equation: Wow!
Battery on a mini DV cam corder lets you record a whole tape (90 min, ~20 GB) and run the screen (i.e., camera is ready) for a few hours. While the screen is running, the DV tape is ready to record, instantly. When at the ready like this, the tape mechanism uses no power (although the screen and rest of the camera is powered up of course). Can a HD be at the ready without spinning (and thus eating battery)?
Silent, beautiful, spouse friendly, and the combination of OS X and iLife is soo much better than Windows Media Center. You will have to upgrade it up quite a bit (at the very least the RAM, and HD) and add a FireWire tuner but it would still be half the cost.
Cost is reason enough to switch. The would-be iPod competitors are not really pricing their products to move. Even your average consumer can tell that 256 mb is not in the same ballpark as 4 gb. Fifty dollars less than the MSRP of an iPod mini ain't gonna get these pretenders anything, no matter how much they spend on marketing!
Just let the device show up as a USB/firewire drive. Don't make me use propriety software! I want Mac compatibility for my iPod clone! The average consumer cares more about MP3s and ripping CDs than they do about buying DRM encumbered songs online. I find it ironic that the player manufactures act like WMV compatibility is a feature rather than a limitation! The iPod interface is nice, but people are willing to put up with a clumsy interface if the price is right.
The market for people willing to purchase encrypted songs is well addressed (by iTMS and the windows-only stores). The only market space left is people holding out for something cheaper, much cheaper, but with comparable features. Sometime after xMas the product I am waiting for (the $99 5 gb MP3 player) will be on the market. (Okay, maybe after xMas 2006.) I think this ties into another post on this sub-thread, the "Fast/Cheap/Good" triangle:
> If you want it Cheap and Good, it's going to take a long time.
I can wait. There are millions of hold outs like me.
Just to add to the referenced article, here is a new player review of a new player that isn't in the five-part series.
Just let the device show up as a USB/firewire drive. Don't make me use propriety software. I want Mac compatibility for my iPod clone! The average consumer cares more about MP3s and ripping CDs than they do about buying DRM encumbered songs online. I find it ironic that the player manufactures act like WMV compatibility is a feature rather than a limitation! The iPod interface is nice, but people are willing to put up with inferiority if the price is right -- or we would all be using OS X instead of Windows.
The market for people willing to purchase encrypted songs is well addressed (by iTMS and the windows-only stores). The only market space left is people holding out for something cheaper, much cheaper.
Here's a picture of the Medion/Aldi mobile jukebox.
I think Jef is out in left field on this, but it is interesting that we have settled for an interface that is ideally suited for someone with three hands. Remember how your typing instructor taught you: Keep both hands above the home row. Now, for efficiencies sake, you will also want to keep your dominant hand on the mouse.
Yes, it is a nice knife sharpener. It would have been nice for him to give credit to the manufacturer (Chantry) rather than some random vendor. The fact that he got this detail wrong doesn't give me much faith in the rest of his opinions.
Doctors grow new jaw in man's back.
I bought iLife at the beginning of last year, as I really wanted iDVD. At the time, iLife included iTunes 3, iPhoto 2, iMovie 3, and iDVD 3. I missed the free upgrade by a matter of weeks. Since then, I paid for the upgrade to Panther, and renewed my .mac account. With the exception of iTunes, all that software is now obsolete. I would like to have the current versions, but there is no upgrade path. I am not interested in Garage Band, so it just doesn't seem worth the money with everything else I paid Apple this past year. There is no upgrade path to the current versions, short of buying a new copy (at full price) of iLife '04. This is very frustrating to me. At the time, I understood having to pay for iLife just to get iDVD, as there are licensed codecs that cost Apple money (I already owned the rest). I can understand charging for Garage Band (it's new). iTunes is free. I paid for Jaguar and Panther without any regret. I know I am whining, but I really wish Apple was more generous with their upgrade paths for their consumer products. Really I am a MacFanBoi, but this is the second worse thing Apple has done in recent years (the first was charging for .mac -- after heavily advertising it a free feature of OS X).
You obviously missed my reference to the scientific method so I will quote one succinct definition here.
The piece goes on to discuss 1.3: Can science ever really prove anything? Most hard science doesn't work out as simple math. There is huge amounts of evidence for evolution but I guess if that doesn't sway your opinion, then nothing will. (By the way, do you hold that the religion of your absolute reality should reduce to a mathematical proof as well?)This is why the theory of evolution with mutation and natural selection is science. It is useful. It can be (and has been) used to make predictions. It can be (and has been) tested.
Creationism is faith. One could reasonably argue that as an explaination it is just as good as evolution. The problem is that it is not scientific theory (no matter how much the ID folks dress it up) because it cannot be used to make predictions and it is impossible to devise tests for it.
The best creationist can do is "to trying to make itself real by trying to make" evolution false by focusing on the very marginal areas where the current evidence is weak or incomplete.
I agree that just saying add millions (or billions) is no answer, but that's not an argument a good Darwinists would make. It is usually the creationists who are accused of begging the question! This is something I have noticed in recent years, the creationists trying to turn arguments around. It seems to me the Republicans have gotten good at this too! Science has no use for faith. If it can't be used for prediction, it isn't science.
I couldn't find the name of the logic fallacy you are trying to use. I did want to share this quote:
But I am not a very good athesist, so here's my gift to you... The Heisenberg uncertainty principle puts a little black box around each sub atomic particle. Is this not enough room for God to work miracles?
I am glad to see that a day latter, your post has gone from a 5 to a 2, much more reasonable. I actually appreciate you bringing up the flagella on a bacterium as an interesting example, I just cannot abide your conclusion that this provides evidence of ID. I have been interested in animals with wheels since I saw a picture of some monster proposed for Empire of the Petal Throne in Dragon magazine some twenty five years ago.
You have it exactly backwards. The theory of evolution is just that, a theory. This is how science works. One postulates a hypothesis. Only if it is useful, that is, it furthers our understanding, and allows testing against, is it kept. Theories that are not testable, like intelligent design, are not scientific, they are matters of faith. Theories can easily be proved false, all one needs is a single concrete counter example, but being mere theories, they are never quite proved true. If after years and years of being tested (and not once being false), and continuously demonstrated as being useful, theories are accepted as fact. The creationists like to put this backwards: concluding that since scientist cannot prove evolution, the competing model (ID) is on equal footing. ID is faith, it is by definition not testable, and it is not useful in science. You can feel free to believe it you wish, but your conclusion is not based on logic. Scientific models, laws even, do not have to be fully understood to be useful. The effects of gravity, for example, are well understood -- and we have plenty of equations for it -- even though science hasn't quite explained where gravity comes from (except that it is an intrinsic feature of mass). Gravity isn't mentioned in the Bible, so the religious nuts don't feel compelled to manufacture un-testable competing theories.