The current tide against skeuomorphic design is mostly a case of something that works but is out of fashion. It'll be back like skinny jeans before you know it. Who would have thought Microsoft would start this trend with Windows 8?
There are real reasons for skeuomorphic interfaces in audio gear however. Interfaces that look and feel like their real world equivalents are fun to use. Audio geeks are notorious for collecting real gear, and having virtual gear that looks like the real thing lets us pretend we're getting the real thing for a fraction of the analogue price. (If we've paid for it at all, but alas that's another topic.)
Furthermore, with analogue gear being in vogue, as a repudiation of their "cold" digital implementations of the 80s and 90s, skeuomorphic interfaces that recall vintage meatspace gear help sell the sizzle of carefully-modelled analogue circuits.
Don't mistake a music producer for an audiophile â" the latter are particularly vulnerable to voodoo benefits of overpriced obscure gear. But both groups are drawn to legendary equipment, and that's perhaps the main reason that skeuomorphism lives on in the DAW world, which frankly I hope remains steadfast against the hate-on for skeuomorphism.
whether companies don't hold back on fixes to these reported bugs as a concession to governments... could companies offering private services like iMessage patch some holes, while serving up others to the spooks with the understanding they have a limited time-frame to work, in exchange for generally being left alone?
Do your homework before building a hackintosh. I've built several over the past five years, and Apple is quietly making them less compatible, at the moment by restricting iMessage and Facetime to machines with legitimate serial numbers. For my next machine, still a few years down the road, I'll save up the extra dollars and buy the one I want from Apple, properly outfitted from the start.
... is far infrared (FIR) panels. Not the hot-element, near-infrared kind, these ones come in various sizes and colours and emit no visible light. They're also very safe – they get warm, but it would take several seconds' contact to scald yourself. Surface temperature wouldn't boil water.
Counterintuitively, they are best mounted on ceilings in commonly-occupied places, radiating heat downward. They heat the objects and people in the room, and the air mostly indirectly. The infrared light/heat bouncing around the room means you can be comfortable at an ambient air temperature about 5C lower than with traditional heating. They're common in infrared saunas and hot yoga studios, but new to the home heating market. I haven't had a full winter with mine yet, but claims of savings on the order of 40% are common.
These are more efficient and far less costly to install than radiant floor heating systems... several hundred euros per panel, plus installation.
Before you consider any heating system, however, know the differences among radiant, convective and conductive heat transfer!
For bonus points, combine with renewably-sourced electricity and other home energy loss minimizations.
As great as these advances are, perhaps the biggest news is what wasn't announced.
Tim has made lots of hints this year about products in the pipeline not hinted at in the rumour mills, then teased us again today about "tripling down" on secrecy.
Making Stephen Colbert their chief of secrecy is a pretty strong hint it's TV-related.
AeroFS is like Dropbox without the middleman; they control only credentials, but your content never touches their servers.
It's free for up to three users, and $10/month per additional user.
I installed one of the 500GB drives several days ago, and the performance improvement is incredible. Boot times are under a quarter what they used to be with the 5400RPM drive that came with the laptop (a 2011 Macbook Pro). Application launches are virtually instantaneous. It's like a new computer.
I can't speak to the abstract "overall performance" measurements from the article (random 4K response times? give me a break)--where this drive soars is in real-world, day-to-day performance, and the improvements are phenomenal.
Repeated writes are a weak spot for SSD, and this is where a hybrid drive should offer more reliability: cache the frequently-accessed, less-frequently changed data. Should the SSD fail, the drive will fall back to the platter.
The value proposition of these drives is unbeatable--vastly improved speed, great storage capacity, dirt-cheap prices. Let's hope the long-term reliability is what it should be.
The obsession of some Americans with owning arms strikes much of the rest of the world as strange. It's a holdover from a revolutionary era. The net result of increased gun ownership is increased gun deaths.
Your sense of security from your ammunition is delusional.
$5.5 billion paid to developers is 70% of the total raked in, which is (5.5/70%) = $7.85 billion. 30% of that is about $2.4 billion.
It's a fantastic market Apple provides for developers, no argument there. My point is only that it's a very good little business for Apple. Personally I think 30% is a bit rich--20% or 25% would be fairer. But Apple dictates the terms--developers don't exactly have a choice if they want to develop for iOS.
Apple makes good money from their App store. Their earnings report for 2012 Q3 states they've paid (cumulatively) $5.5 billion to app developers, which means $2.4 billion in commissions to Apple--hardly chump change. It does look small, however, in comparison to the outrageous profits they rake in from hardware sales.
However, Apple has indeed managed to broadly slash the perceived value of software, a neat way of squeezing Microsoft. MS has seen the light, and it's why they're also going the ecosystem/integrated hardware/software route.
It does give pause about what the state of open computing will be in ten years...
Twenty years ago I was amazed at the quality of the UK magazines, in my case, Amiga computing & gaming rags, that came with floppy disks chocked full of stuff--barely a sector free. The value was far greater than what's available this side of the pond, and nothing has changed.
Slashdot Mirror
The current tide against skeuomorphic design is mostly a case of something that works but is out of fashion. It'll be back like skinny jeans before you know it. Who would have thought Microsoft would start this trend with Windows 8? There are real reasons for skeuomorphic interfaces in audio gear however. Interfaces that look and feel like their real world equivalents are fun to use. Audio geeks are notorious for collecting real gear, and having virtual gear that looks like the real thing lets us pretend we're getting the real thing for a fraction of the analogue price. (If we've paid for it at all, but alas that's another topic.) Furthermore, with analogue gear being in vogue, as a repudiation of their "cold" digital implementations of the 80s and 90s, skeuomorphic interfaces that recall vintage meatspace gear help sell the sizzle of carefully-modelled analogue circuits. Don't mistake a music producer for an audiophile â" the latter are particularly vulnerable to voodoo benefits of overpriced obscure gear. But both groups are drawn to legendary equipment, and that's perhaps the main reason that skeuomorphism lives on in the DAW world, which frankly I hope remains steadfast against the hate-on for skeuomorphism.
mod parent up to 65535
Like your high school math teacher would, I give you a grade of zero for those answers.
Care to share your work?
whether companies don't hold back on fixes to these reported bugs as a concession to governments... could companies offering private services like iMessage patch some holes, while serving up others to the spooks with the understanding they have a limited time-frame to work, in exchange for generally being left alone?
Do your homework before building a hackintosh. I've built several over the past five years, and Apple is quietly making them less compatible, at the moment by restricting iMessage and Facetime to machines with legitimate serial numbers. For my next machine, still a few years down the road, I'll save up the extra dollars and buy the one I want from Apple, properly outfitted from the start.
Counterintuitively, they are best mounted on ceilings in commonly-occupied places, radiating heat downward. They heat the objects and people in the room, and the air mostly indirectly. The infrared light/heat bouncing around the room means you can be comfortable at an ambient air temperature about 5C lower than with traditional heating. They're common in infrared saunas and hot yoga studios, but new to the home heating market. I haven't had a full winter with mine yet, but claims of savings on the order of 40% are common.
These are more efficient and far less costly to install than radiant floor heating systems... several hundred euros per panel, plus installation.
Before you consider any heating system, however, know the differences among radiant, convective and conductive heat transfer!
For bonus points, combine with renewably-sourced electricity and other home energy loss minimizations.
As great as these advances are, perhaps the biggest news is what wasn't announced. Tim has made lots of hints this year about products in the pipeline not hinted at in the rumour mills, then teased us again today about "tripling down" on secrecy. Making Stephen Colbert their chief of secrecy is a pretty strong hint it's TV-related.
AeroFS is like Dropbox without the middleman; they control only credentials, but your content never touches their servers. It's free for up to three users, and $10/month per additional user.
I installed one of the 500GB drives several days ago, and the performance improvement is incredible. Boot times are under a quarter what they used to be with the 5400RPM drive that came with the laptop (a 2011 Macbook Pro). Application launches are virtually instantaneous. It's like a new computer.
I can't speak to the abstract "overall performance" measurements from the article (random 4K response times? give me a break)--where this drive soars is in real-world, day-to-day performance, and the improvements are phenomenal.
Repeated writes are a weak spot for SSD, and this is where a hybrid drive should offer more reliability: cache the frequently-accessed, less-frequently changed data. Should the SSD fail, the drive will fall back to the platter.
The value proposition of these drives is unbeatable--vastly improved speed, great storage capacity, dirt-cheap prices. Let's hope the long-term reliability is what it should be.
Lightning is simply not capable of streaming a "raw" HDMI signal across the cable.
Why not? Handling raw 1080p video for an interface released in 2012 seems like a minimum to me.
This may be automatic processing, but the fact that you're aware of it means that it's not subconscious.
I keep one month's email on my IMAP server, and pop everything to my main machine.
Slashdot community, how is an anti-Apple post rated 5 Insightful, and an Apple defence post rated 0 Troll?
The obsession of some Americans with owning arms strikes much of the rest of the world as strange. It's a holdover from a revolutionary era. The net result of increased gun ownership is increased gun deaths.
Your sense of security from your ammunition is delusional.
Yes, they would be... I've looked but found none. Trade secrets!
$5.5 billion paid to developers is 70% of the total raked in, which is (5.5/70%) = $7.85 billion. 30% of that is about $2.4 billion.
It's a fantastic market Apple provides for developers, no argument there. My point is only that it's a very good little business for Apple. Personally I think 30% is a bit rich--20% or 25% would be fairer. But Apple dictates the terms--developers don't exactly have a choice if they want to develop for iOS.
$2.4 billion, 500,000 apps... are you suggesting it costs on the order of $4,800 in wages to approve an app?
You are confusing gross with net. They have considerably expenses in running the app store.
I made no claims of net vs gross... but if their curation and hosting costs are even close to $2.4 billion, they're doing something very wrong!
Apple makes good money from their App store. Their earnings report for 2012 Q3 states they've paid (cumulatively) $5.5 billion to app developers, which means $2.4 billion in commissions to Apple--hardly chump change. It does look small, however, in comparison to the outrageous profits they rake in from hardware sales.
However, Apple has indeed managed to broadly slash the perceived value of software, a neat way of squeezing Microsoft. MS has seen the light, and it's why they're also going the ecosystem/integrated hardware/software route.
It does give pause about what the state of open computing will be in ten years...
It's a bit anachronistic to say people hated closed systems--as you said, everything was closed. Only in retrospect does it look so quaint.
Twenty years ago I was amazed at the quality of the UK magazines, in my case, Amiga computing & gaming rags, that came with floppy disks chocked full of stuff--barely a sector free. The value was far greater than what's available this side of the pond, and nothing has changed.