"Methinks that there's more than a "niche" of people who want lots of storage but don't need lots of processing power, and for whom a vanilla dual core is more than sufficient. This wouldn't be as much of an issue if Apple would up Firewire to match SATA, but for now it's stuck at a quarter of the speed."
I think it's still pretty niche because you have to append that group to "wants all of the above AND OS X." One thing that's for sure, despite any argument here, Apple certainly doesn't think it's a big market as can be seen by the lack of available products!
Forget upping firewire... what the hell is wrong with eSATA? I like my MBP (I have one of the October 2008 models and violated my own rule about not buying first generation products) but the most annoying deficiency is the lack of eSATA. Firewire800 ANYTHING is overpriced (take external drive docks and such). And, if I want eSATA I have to get an ExpressCard which isn't so bad EXCEPT the only model that works well, from the research I have done, runs around $90. That's a bit pricy.
"I agree that Honda shouldn't have to provide support for your attempts, but if you get it working they shouldn't be able to sue you either."
I agree too. I'm not defending Apple's business practices (for the umpteenth time) since there's nothing to defend. They're bastards. However, they're bastards with products people want, even people around here. Their business practices are the main reason I'm going with a G1 instead of an iPhone and why my next laptop may not be made by Apple.
However, given their crap, I got an Apple laptop because dammit... I like OS X and the aesthetic IS important to me. (And their touchpads blow everything else away.)
"Or someone who wants to put a lot of storage into a Mac without forking over $2500 for a baseline tower. Snow Leopard is supposed to have ZFS support - it would be awsome to put four 2-terabyte drives into a system without forking out the cash for a couple Xeons in the process."
And this doesn't qualify as a geek... how?
"And no, four external drives is not a substitute. Internal drives are far less likely to be jostled, which can shorten the life of the drive. And Firewire 800 is nice for single drives, but isn't a substitute for 3.0 Gbs SATA and a raid card."
Couldn't agree more.
"So I'll probably be taking a hard look at building a Hackintosh once Snow Leopard is released. I like Apple's stuff, but I don't want to pay for Xeons when I just want a case with space."
So build a Hackintosh. My only point is that, while you may WANT those things, Apple doesn't owe it to you to accommodate you. This may have something to with the fact that while the needs you mention above are NEEDS to you, you're niche and not worth rolling out a product line for. I'm in your niche! It'd be nice, but Apple doesn't owe it to me and if I don't give them my money well... they're doing fine with iPods and iMacs and aren't too worried about me or you. There's no reason to be indignant about it anymore than I should be indignant that BMW doesn't offer a 3/4 ton pickup with 4 wheel drive. Someone may love BMWs that wants and truck. BMW has lost a truck sale by not offering that. They don't care.
Look, I don't like iMacs because of the built in display. That might not be YOUR problem with them (the cost doesn't bug me) but it's my primary beef.
People like iMacs. Otherwise, Apple wouldn't be selling them. I understand why the crowd here doesn't like them and even doesn't get them. Again, they're not selling to you. They're selling to someone who just plugs it in and turns it on like any appliance. It's easier to set up than a DVD player.
Also, people here seem to measure computer purely in terms of tech specs. There is something to be said for the simplicity of the iMac. Although its strengths are weaknesses to someone like me.
The critics here can complain and complain that THEIR needs aren't being met by Apple, but again... Apple doesn't care. The iMac is an exceptionally popular machine. I wouldn't use it, but I'd certainly consider putting my mom on one (she's on a Mini now). It's stylish, clean, etc. Those things MATTER to some people and they certainly matter to the people that buy them.
Again, I would love an affordable Apple tower (I'd even pay more than normal for it if the case were half as cool as the Pro's) and don't want an iMac. I also hate BMWs, but don't find myself confused when people buy them. BMW isn't selling to ME. That's the problem people miss. "Apple is sitting on a gold mine if they just targeted people with my needs and budget! There are dozens of me! They're so stupid."
They're not stupid. That's why they're continuing to make bank. Evil? In many respects. Lock in? Totally. Products not well suited to gamers? Who woulda thunk it? But they don't sell to you and they don't make OS X generically available because they don't find that it's financially viable and no forum dweller is going to convince them otherwise. The problem continue to be, in this crowd in particular, a sense of entitlement. "I deserve to be able to install OS X wherever I want." No, you don't no more than I "deserve" to be able to throw a Honda alternator in a Dodge.
I walked into a Mercedes dealer today when I realized that, as a contractor, what I need is a truck and not a car.
As Mac user *I* don't need a laptop without an optical drive, which is why didn't buy the Air.
Oh, and one more thing, I'm tired of the "one button" crap. It's just old. The fact that you neanderthals are still using crappy plastic buttons rather than gestures and other multitouch goodies isn't my fault. I use an external mouse when I have the room, but when using a touch pad, sorry, Apple is by far the nicest to work with, period.
While I agree that it's a big gap (I've always hated iMacs, mainly because my monitors tend to have a much longer lifespan than the rest of the computer), who is an expandable mid-ranged desktop targeted at?
Geeks and gamers.
Who is Apple not targeting?
See above.
They have home user machines and workstations. All of these machines are capable of running World of Warcraft which is the only game anyone plays on the Mac anyway.
I do part time consulting for a little company here that has a Japanese sister company that sells a martial arts magazine. (Cliche, I know.) And when I read, "Seriously, have you ever looked at one of their webpages?" I laughed. Yep, I have. Watch Japanese news (at least the few I've see) and there's stuff moving around everywhere and colors that make me ill. (It's like FOX News + psychedelics.) I can't read Japanese and yet their general design in marketing and broadcast always "feels" like it's screaming at me from all over the place.
It doesn't appeal to me. I'm not saying it's bad or wrong or whatever because I'd probably feel differently if I grew up there, but from the culture I've grown up in everything seems so crammed and "busy."
Maybe my puny gaijin just can't handle all that information.
Who cares if parents want to do so? And who cares if some gay person gets impregnated and intentionally has a gay kid?
If the genetic marker that makes someone attracted to members of the same sex was, for whatever reason, nipped off at this generation and there was never another homosexual that lived again... what would be the downside?
I don't mean that in a "kill all gays way" but if no one was attracted to members of the same sex anymore, how does that hurt humanity? (If no one was attracted to members of the opposite sex anymore and we could simply vat grow the next generation, who cares? What's the loss?) My sexual attraction one way or another doesn't define me. Geez.
Re:China and India
on
Designer Babies
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Who flagged this as insightful?
If you don't want to "cheapen" your baby and make one the old-fashioned way, do it. If I want a redhead with green eyes, I'll do it. Who gives a shit? Suddenly having choice in something that used to be arbitrary is somehow bad now? Should we actually get to that level of customization it'll be an epoch of sorts and we'll either get through it or something will go terribly wrong. Life and the universe will go on.
25,000 years from now there's bound to be a severe paradigm shift (and probably many). People who fear this sort of thing are just afraid of change. Nothing's stopping anyone from getting a random hand dealt to them with a new child. I'd prefer, however, to weed out a ton of bad genetics. Is it really so terrible for me to want to not have to play the odds for having a son or daughter with the same leg deformities I have or the same crooked teeth or poor eyesight?
And who said Darwin cared? You say that almost religiously, which I think is hilarious.
My exact thoughts. It's not like the whole world will embrace this and I have some feeling no one will try finding the genes that make us racist and classist jackoffs as a species anyway. So, the rich will mod, the poor will do it the old-fashioned way and well, I can hope that something goes really REALLY wrong with the modifications because I have no qualms about the people shallow enough and wealthy enough to afford this crap dying off.
"The fact that there are "Denialists", "Believers", "Supporters" and "Followers" makes this area of science look a lot like religion. The fact that it also includes politicians, corporations, lawyers, and lots of appeals to emotion ("Someone think of the cuddly polar bears!") makes it look a lot like pork. Those two things alone removes much of it's potential appeal to me as I heavily devalue things of that nature as a waste of my time."
Ha! Next thing you know, someone is gonna say something like "stop using the global warming bogeyman!"
American in particular doesn't respond to anything but bogeymen. Look at our fucking foreign policy. You can't blame regular people for being alarmist nut jobs when it's integral to their culture.
Wow, a child can click the next button. Weee! So, since he can't read the code Windows requires I wonder how he handled making the right decision when it came time to partition disks. Or, had he been installing it on a machine with data still on the drive or what did he do when his video card refused to display the proper resolution from his LCD? (Damn thing just wouldn't go about 1024x768!) What would he do in either OS if the printer didn't magically detect and "just work." And how did he create initial user accounts without being able to read?
Yes, any drooling monkey can put a CD in a machine and hit next until the magic happens. However, most adults that know very little about computers would have the advantage of considering factors like data loss and, when reading something they didn't understand refusing to proceed.
Microsoft is always in a damned if they do and damned if they don't position by critics. The fact is, people like to complain about... everything. (Just look at me now.)
Although, I dunno if he's worth responding too. BSOD a few times a month? Seriously? Every single time I have had a BSOD in the last, I dunno, 4 years it's been because of bad hardware. And forget drivers, it's been a failing hard drive and RAM on almost every occasion.
I dealt with this intelligently after seeing the 3rd Matrix movie: I let my friends see the sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean and tell me what they thought. The negative reaction was enough for me to say, "All right, we'll pretend those never happened and enjoy the first one on a stand alone basis."
"It was developed for a country in 1776, not 2009, and it didn't scale well enough."
Although I agree with this to some degree, that's not the entire problem. Part of the problem is that we have completely turned our backs on the part of the 1776 plan that made government scalable: states' rights and extended autonomy. The Federal Government should have been a small lean organization that did nothing more than what it was allowed to by the Constitution. That's not how things have worked out because instead of thinking of themselves as the glue between the states, they imagined themselves as the rulers and it all went downhill from there.
I dunno how to solve this mess though. The US government has been telling people they need it to pass more laws in order to be a prosperous society. It's a joke. We continue to erode everything that was core to the system though. It doesn't really matter anyway: so long as the average man is either fat and happy, or not on the brink of desperation yet still too afraid to do anything corruption will grow until the common man is literally faced with consequences so bad he has no choice but to fight back.
We can barely get out people out to vote and when they do vote... well, just look at this presidential election. The average voter supports either of the major parties for reasons as arbitrary as the reasons they cheer for any given sports team and act accordingly.
There's a world of difference between the two. I'd hardly say that our country mobilized for Iraq to the point where people were living on rations. Just because they both happen to be conflicts involving guns and bombs and the like does not mean that have the same economic ramifications. WWII and the current "conflicts" (hard to call it a real war when congress won't even make a fucking declaration) are an ocean apart.
About the only thing Ubuntu (for me anyway) never seems to get right is resolution. I don't know why. My older Samsung LCD is 1600x1200 and it seems like anything over 1280x1024 is an issue. If I install the binary nVidia drivers it comes with its own set of problems. I've been editing my x.org (and XF86) configs for a long time so it doesn't bother me. But yeah... it's a problem.
If by "shortly after" you mean years later when all the lemmings using ancient copies of Windows Vista and IE 8 are finally forced to upgrade. I STILL have to make concessions for IE 6.
I forget how it happened, but I read a synopsis of the first few books and it read like someone who had purchased a bunch of White Wolf books and asked the question, "Can I have a vampire with werewolf, mage, hunter and perhaps even changeling powers?" When all the reasonable GMs said, "No," Ms. Hamilton said, "Fine, I'll write my own fantastic stories about such a character... and add sex to them so people will buy them."
The fact that these books exist isn't what scares me. There's creepy talentless fan fiction all over the internet (with everything from Harry Potter and Snape being secret lovers to some insane girl who writes about her life and romance with Link--as in, the dude from The Legend of Zelda), but not a whole lot of it makes a profit. People actually buy these Anita Blake books though. WHY!?
I dread the results of this, particularly if Laurell Hamilton is referring to having a "first class Writer" since she fancies herself as one. Ugh. Just... ugh.
Slashdot Mirror
"Methinks that there's more than a "niche" of people who want lots of storage but don't need lots of processing power, and for whom a vanilla dual core is more than sufficient. This wouldn't be as much of an issue if Apple would up Firewire to match SATA, but for now it's stuck at a quarter of the speed."
I think it's still pretty niche because you have to append that group to "wants all of the above AND OS X." One thing that's for sure, despite any argument here, Apple certainly doesn't think it's a big market as can be seen by the lack of available products!
Forget upping firewire... what the hell is wrong with eSATA? I like my MBP (I have one of the October 2008 models and violated my own rule about not buying first generation products) but the most annoying deficiency is the lack of eSATA. Firewire800 ANYTHING is overpriced (take external drive docks and such). And, if I want eSATA I have to get an ExpressCard which isn't so bad EXCEPT the only model that works well, from the research I have done, runs around $90. That's a bit pricy.
"I agree that Honda shouldn't have to provide support for your attempts, but if you get it working they shouldn't be able to sue you either."
I agree too. I'm not defending Apple's business practices (for the umpteenth time) since there's nothing to defend. They're bastards. However, they're bastards with products people want, even people around here. Their business practices are the main reason I'm going with a G1 instead of an iPhone and why my next laptop may not be made by Apple.
However, given their crap, I got an Apple laptop because dammit... I like OS X and the aesthetic IS important to me. (And their touchpads blow everything else away.)
"Or someone who wants to put a lot of storage into a Mac without forking over $2500 for a baseline tower. Snow Leopard is supposed to have ZFS support - it would be awsome to put four 2-terabyte drives into a system without forking out the cash for a couple Xeons in the process."
And this doesn't qualify as a geek... how?
"And no, four external drives is not a substitute. Internal drives are far less likely to be jostled, which can shorten the life of the drive. And Firewire 800 is nice for single drives, but isn't a substitute for 3.0 Gbs SATA and a raid card."
Couldn't agree more.
"So I'll probably be taking a hard look at building a Hackintosh once Snow Leopard is released. I like Apple's stuff, but I don't want to pay for Xeons when I just want a case with space."
So build a Hackintosh. My only point is that, while you may WANT those things, Apple doesn't owe it to you to accommodate you. This may have something to with the fact that while the needs you mention above are NEEDS to you, you're niche and not worth rolling out a product line for. I'm in your niche! It'd be nice, but Apple doesn't owe it to me and if I don't give them my money well... they're doing fine with iPods and iMacs and aren't too worried about me or you. There's no reason to be indignant about it anymore than I should be indignant that BMW doesn't offer a 3/4 ton pickup with 4 wheel drive. Someone may love BMWs that wants and truck. BMW has lost a truck sale by not offering that. They don't care.
And there are crafty geeks that can build Hackintoshes.
In the auto scenario, no one would freak out about their warranties being voided.
*sigh*
Look, I don't like iMacs because of the built in display. That might not be YOUR problem with them (the cost doesn't bug me) but it's my primary beef.
People like iMacs. Otherwise, Apple wouldn't be selling them. I understand why the crowd here doesn't like them and even doesn't get them. Again, they're not selling to you. They're selling to someone who just plugs it in and turns it on like any appliance. It's easier to set up than a DVD player.
Also, people here seem to measure computer purely in terms of tech specs. There is something to be said for the simplicity of the iMac. Although its strengths are weaknesses to someone like me.
The critics here can complain and complain that THEIR needs aren't being met by Apple, but again... Apple doesn't care. The iMac is an exceptionally popular machine. I wouldn't use it, but I'd certainly consider putting my mom on one (she's on a Mini now). It's stylish, clean, etc. Those things MATTER to some people and they certainly matter to the people that buy them.
Again, I would love an affordable Apple tower (I'd even pay more than normal for it if the case were half as cool as the Pro's) and don't want an iMac. I also hate BMWs, but don't find myself confused when people buy them. BMW isn't selling to ME. That's the problem people miss. "Apple is sitting on a gold mine if they just targeted people with my needs and budget! There are dozens of me! They're so stupid."
They're not stupid. That's why they're continuing to make bank. Evil? In many respects. Lock in? Totally. Products not well suited to gamers? Who woulda thunk it? But they don't sell to you and they don't make OS X generically available because they don't find that it's financially viable and no forum dweller is going to convince them otherwise. The problem continue to be, in this crowd in particular, a sense of entitlement. "I deserve to be able to install OS X wherever I want." No, you don't no more than I "deserve" to be able to throw a Honda alternator in a Dodge.
Hahaha.
Okay. Okay.
Touché sir.
I walked into a Mercedes dealer today when I realized that, as a contractor, what I need is a truck and not a car.
As Mac user *I* don't need a laptop without an optical drive, which is why didn't buy the Air.
Oh, and one more thing, I'm tired of the "one button" crap. It's just old. The fact that you neanderthals are still using crappy plastic buttons rather than gestures and other multitouch goodies isn't my fault. I use an external mouse when I have the room, but when using a touch pad, sorry, Apple is by far the nicest to work with, period.
Insightful? *rolls eyes*
While I agree that it's a big gap (I've always hated iMacs, mainly because my monitors tend to have a much longer lifespan than the rest of the computer), who is an expandable mid-ranged desktop targeted at?
Geeks and gamers.
Who is Apple not targeting?
See above.
They have home user machines and workstations. All of these machines are capable of running World of Warcraft which is the only game anyone plays on the Mac anyway.
I do part time consulting for a little company here that has a Japanese sister company that sells a martial arts magazine. (Cliche, I know.) And when I read, "Seriously, have you ever looked at one of their webpages?" I laughed. Yep, I have. Watch Japanese news (at least the few I've see) and there's stuff moving around everywhere and colors that make me ill. (It's like FOX News + psychedelics.) I can't read Japanese and yet their general design in marketing and broadcast always "feels" like it's screaming at me from all over the place.
It doesn't appeal to me. I'm not saying it's bad or wrong or whatever because I'd probably feel differently if I grew up there, but from the culture I've grown up in everything seems so crammed and "busy."
Maybe my puny gaijin just can't handle all that information.
What is the point of this question? Seriously.
Who cares if parents want to do so? And who cares if some gay person gets impregnated and intentionally has a gay kid?
If the genetic marker that makes someone attracted to members of the same sex was, for whatever reason, nipped off at this generation and there was never another homosexual that lived again... what would be the downside?
I don't mean that in a "kill all gays way" but if no one was attracted to members of the same sex anymore, how does that hurt humanity? (If no one was attracted to members of the opposite sex anymore and we could simply vat grow the next generation, who cares? What's the loss?) My sexual attraction one way or another doesn't define me. Geez.
Who flagged this as insightful?
If you don't want to "cheapen" your baby and make one the old-fashioned way, do it. If I want a redhead with green eyes, I'll do it. Who gives a shit? Suddenly having choice in something that used to be arbitrary is somehow bad now? Should we actually get to that level of customization it'll be an epoch of sorts and we'll either get through it or something will go terribly wrong. Life and the universe will go on.
25,000 years from now there's bound to be a severe paradigm shift (and probably many). People who fear this sort of thing are just afraid of change. Nothing's stopping anyone from getting a random hand dealt to them with a new child. I'd prefer, however, to weed out a ton of bad genetics. Is it really so terrible for me to want to not have to play the odds for having a son or daughter with the same leg deformities I have or the same crooked teeth or poor eyesight?
And who said Darwin cared? You say that almost religiously, which I think is hilarious.
My exact thoughts. It's not like the whole world will embrace this and I have some feeling no one will try finding the genes that make us racist and classist jackoffs as a species anyway. So, the rich will mod, the poor will do it the old-fashioned way and well, I can hope that something goes really REALLY wrong with the modifications because I have no qualms about the people shallow enough and wealthy enough to afford this crap dying off.
"The fact that there are "Denialists", "Believers", "Supporters" and "Followers" makes this area of science look a lot like religion. The fact that it also includes politicians, corporations, lawyers, and lots of appeals to emotion ("Someone think of the cuddly polar bears!") makes it look a lot like pork. Those two things alone removes much of it's potential appeal to me as I heavily devalue things of that nature as a waste of my time."
Well said.
Ha! Next thing you know, someone is gonna say something like "stop using the global warming bogeyman!"
American in particular doesn't respond to anything but bogeymen. Look at our fucking foreign policy. You can't blame regular people for being alarmist nut jobs when it's integral to their culture.
Who marked clear bullshit as interesting?
Wow, a child can click the next button. Weee! So, since he can't read the code Windows requires I wonder how he handled making the right decision when it came time to partition disks. Or, had he been installing it on a machine with data still on the drive or what did he do when his video card refused to display the proper resolution from his LCD? (Damn thing just wouldn't go about 1024x768!) What would he do in either OS if the printer didn't magically detect and "just work." And how did he create initial user accounts without being able to read?
Yes, any drooling monkey can put a CD in a machine and hit next until the magic happens. However, most adults that know very little about computers would have the advantage of considering factors like data loss and, when reading something they didn't understand refusing to proceed.
Simply put, this post is a non-issue.
Microsoft is always in a damned if they do and damned if they don't position by critics. The fact is, people like to complain about... everything. (Just look at me now.)
Although, I dunno if he's worth responding too. BSOD a few times a month? Seriously? Every single time I have had a BSOD in the last, I dunno, 4 years it's been because of bad hardware. And forget drivers, it's been a failing hard drive and RAM on almost every occasion.
Static IPs required a reboot to change. I'm pretty sure that's what's being talked about.
(I still have to reboot to change my workgroup, even in Vista.)
I dealt with this intelligently after seeing the 3rd Matrix movie: I let my friends see the sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean and tell me what they thought. The negative reaction was enough for me to say, "All right, we'll pretend those never happened and enjoy the first one on a stand alone basis."
"It was developed for a country in 1776, not 2009, and it didn't scale well enough."
Although I agree with this to some degree, that's not the entire problem. Part of the problem is that we have completely turned our backs on the part of the 1776 plan that made government scalable: states' rights and extended autonomy. The Federal Government should have been a small lean organization that did nothing more than what it was allowed to by the Constitution. That's not how things have worked out because instead of thinking of themselves as the glue between the states, they imagined themselves as the rulers and it all went downhill from there.
I dunno how to solve this mess though. The US government has been telling people they need it to pass more laws in order to be a prosperous society. It's a joke. We continue to erode everything that was core to the system though. It doesn't really matter anyway: so long as the average man is either fat and happy, or not on the brink of desperation yet still too afraid to do anything corruption will grow until the common man is literally faced with consequences so bad he has no choice but to fight back.
We can barely get out people out to vote and when they do vote... well, just look at this presidential election. The average voter supports either of the major parties for reasons as arbitrary as the reasons they cheer for any given sports team and act accordingly.
There's a world of difference between the two. I'd hardly say that our country mobilized for Iraq to the point where people were living on rations. Just because they both happen to be conflicts involving guns and bombs and the like does not mean that have the same economic ramifications. WWII and the current "conflicts" (hard to call it a real war when congress won't even make a fucking declaration) are an ocean apart.
Thanks for fixing that. And yes, he is.
About the only thing Ubuntu (for me anyway) never seems to get right is resolution. I don't know why. My older Samsung LCD is 1600x1200 and it seems like anything over 1280x1024 is an issue. If I install the binary nVidia drivers it comes with its own set of problems. I've been editing my x.org (and XF86) configs for a long time so it doesn't bother me. But yeah... it's a problem.
If by "shortly after" you mean years later when all the lemmings using ancient copies of Windows Vista and IE 8 are finally forced to upgrade. I STILL have to make concessions for IE 6.
I forget how it happened, but I read a synopsis of the first few books and it read like someone who had purchased a bunch of White Wolf books and asked the question, "Can I have a vampire with werewolf, mage, hunter and perhaps even changeling powers?" When all the reasonable GMs said, "No," Ms. Hamilton said, "Fine, I'll write my own fantastic stories about such a character... and add sex to them so people will buy them."
The fact that these books exist isn't what scares me. There's creepy talentless fan fiction all over the internet (with everything from Harry Potter and Snape being secret lovers to some insane girl who writes about her life and romance with Link--as in, the dude from The Legend of Zelda), but not a whole lot of it makes a profit. People actually buy these Anita Blake books though. WHY!?
I dread the results of this, particularly if Laurell Hamilton is referring to having a "first class Writer" since she fancies herself as one. Ugh. Just... ugh.
You know what disturbs me? The number of couples I know who met over WoW (and the content of said couples. *shudder*)