The problem is, they don't come supported either. From the web page:
It is written for OS X 10.2-10.3.
No, they didn't just omit 10.4 accidentally, or not update the page. It doesn't work at all:
Apple completely changed the kernel interfaces in Tiger and as such, a lot of work needs to be done to get the Ext2 driver running on Tiger. I started some of this work last year after WWDC, but there is still a lot to do and I don't have the time to finish things up right now.
...
I've started getting back to bringing up the driver on Tiger. Progress is going well, everything is compiling (but not necessarily running) except for the vnops file. I still have to implement locking and then testing before a release can happen.
Except, no, you're wrong. Manufacturers format it as FAT, but don't have to. I can format it as FAT, FAT32, HFS+, EXT3 - the card won't care. My camera will, but the card is a dumb storage device - there is no "FAT algorithm" on the card itself. All handling of FAT is done by the host operating system. Cameras, for instance, have to have FAT software to know how to write to the card. Computers have to have FAT software to know how to read it. The card does not.
Okay, what's the rationale behind dropping things that existed on the "old" Powerbook?
Firewire 800 - Sure, the iPod moved to USB and such. But why NOT use Firewire 800? You can plug Firewire 400 into it, but you wouldn't want to do the opposite (people bought 800 for a reason). Why would you step backwards on your own technology like that?
DVD DL Burner - Yup, you read right - no dual layer burning. No mention anywhere, especially in the tech specs, which DOES list dual layer reading speeds. Again, why?
S-Video out - Powerbooks had it, MacBooks don't. Apple sells a DVI to S-Video adapter, but doesn't say if it's compatible (which is troublesome since the mini-DVI has been updated for the iMac Intel).
I can't fathom why they'd introduce a new generation of hardware like this and drop back on features that are almost a no-op to keep.
Stream aware operating systems should always KNOW where the limits are, and if certain streams with certain properties still fit into the bandwidth limits, whatever causes the limitations.
Yes, because we know how simple and deterministic computers and operating systems are. Nothing chaotic about them at all, no sir.
Or the editors could do that. But, you know, that would require effort...
Go ahead, mod me down - you know it's true. New stories get posted every half hour or so (if that often) - you're telling me the editors can't 1) search for obvious dupes, and 2) can't coralize the links with a script?
Probably yet another reply of "no problem here". If your logic boards keep dying, ever think something ELSE is causing the problem? Power surges from other equipment, or from the adapter? Bad battery causing shorts?
My iBook is also a late-2002 800Mhz G3 model, and it's rock solid, if getting a bit poky these days.
While I loved the CW IDE as much as anyone, it wasn't maintained properly. Featurewise it hasn't advanced significantly in ages, and the release schedule slowed WAY down (remember the quarterly updates? Yeah, me neither).
As for Apple's direction, you're spouting a complete load of bullshit. It was:
Copland (no "e", thank you), OpenDoc. OpenDoc was killed off by lack of support and poor implementation. Copland was almost a complete disaster. Ultimately, a lot of the technology and API's (Open Transport, Appearance Manager, etc) made their way into the classic Mac OS.
Then came Rhapsody, which was essentially ObjC and Cocoa (only back then it was called "Yellow Box" - same API's). Those who had enormous code investments in CodeWarrior/Carbon didn't care to throw out all of their code (Adobe, Macromedia, Microsoft) and threatened to dump the Mac entirely. In 1998, that would have been the death knell. Hell, today it wouldn't be good either, but a lot less realistic given the different environment we're in today.
So, Apple created Carbon for porting over existing code, but has always emphasized Cocoa/ObjC as the preferred way of doing things. Architecturally, it makes sense, since OS X's roots are primarily NeXTstep. It makes even more sense now that we're changing platform architectures - NeXT/Cocoa has been through that before.
So to sum up, things were in a tizzy PRIOR to Steve's return - OpenDoc! Copland! PowerTalk! QuickDraw GX! A lot of people jumped ship - that was 1995-1997 when adjectives like "beleagured" described Apple all the time. After Steve, it's been one simple message - focus on Cocoa/ObjC. Use Carbon if you must, but otherwise use Cocoa/ObjC.
To bring things back on topic, I also wish there was a decent way to take advantage of the Cocoa API without ObjC. I love the object oriented API, but I HATE the ObjC syntax (as many have mentioned, the method-calling syntax is bizarre). As a result, I quit developing for the Mac some years ago. Can someone tell me why the same language couldn't be implemented with a more "familiar" syntax using parens, etc? It seems all you'd have to do is change the front-end parser and tokenizer, and everything else would just work.
Allow me to expand on this. People might question Intel's motives with "performance per watt" instead of pure megahertz. In the consumer market, it is a bit more confusing (although I'll bet it helps silent PC's move into the mainstream). In the server market, it's critical.
Right now, the best datacenters being built have power and cooling capacity for 110W/sq ft, maximum. A standard 19" rack with proper allowances for cooling, access, etc takes anywhere from 20 to 25 square feet (let's use the 25 sq ft number, since that's what Qwest quoted me last week).
This means in a given rack, you can have at most 2750W of power. One BladeCenter requires two 2000W power supplies, and four if you use more than 6 blades, all in a 7U form factor. Yes, that means you need to use about 35-40 square feet of floor space to support the power and cooling for a 7U box (albeit, an extremely dense one).
Likewise, look at your standard 4U/4 processor server (now more frequently 3U). Five years ago they were using dual 300W power supplies. Now they use dual 1300W power supplies. What's taking all the power? The main board isn't, the PCI adapters aren't, and the disks may even be taking less (faster disks, but 2.5" SCSI is making its way in - see the xSeries 366, for instance). Even if some of the other components are taking more power, the lion's share is the CPU.
I honestly can't tell if we're in disagreement on anything or not.:)
All I'm saying is that ultimately whoever has the music (whether it's dinosaur music companies or the artists themselves) will want to control the supply. In a digital age, that means DRM. How do we avoid DRM (from whoever) and still have an incentive for musicians to produce their works, if they can't actually make a living at it? Are we back to the age of patrons of the arts (and will even that work in today's world)?
Okay, here's a question. Say all of the music companies die tomorrow, and bands are able to promote themselves over the internet, deliver with P2P, etc. Now, how are those musicians supposed to make money themselves, if their music can be freely copied? Don't you think that they'll suddenly be in favor of DRM as well?
I'm really sick of asshats like this (flamebait/troll moderation, here I come!).
They are a digital lifestyles company, selling computing and digital entertainment kit at high markups compared to the Dells of the world.
How many times do we have to go through this one? There are very few devices out there that are significantly cheaper than a comparable iPod. The Shuffle and Nano are cheaper than the competition, and the iPod is equal. Meanwhile, while smug people like to say that people buy iPods "to be cool", I'd say they buy them because they are simple, and they work. Hell, go back and watch Apple's intro video for the iPod from 4 years ago - they lay out exactly what their success formula was - seamless integration between the iPod and iTunes (long before the music store was a twinkling in anyone's eye), and a simple, usable interface. Somehow, not a single competitor has gotten it over the years.
Apple has always been about control-- control of the hardware, software -- the whole experience.
Apple largely has been, I'll grant you that. However, they're much more often about a seamless, simple experience. You know, the whole "it just works" mantra. That's why they've always maintained a tight lock on the hardware and OS integration. Their control of the software is usually about simplicity (lack of preferences and options), and sometimes about Jobs' ego (lack of themes).
The fact that they're using Unix means nothing -- it only means they felt investing $$$ on a custom OS wasn't worth it.
Given that they spent 5 years and a billion dollars on a custom OS that never came to fruition, yeah, I'd say pragmatism won out there. First people criticized Apple for a huge "Not Invented Here" syndrome, and now they're crticized for taking good stuff that already exists and using it? They could have chosen BeOS, they could have tried Linux even, but instead they chose NeXT. The fact that it has a UNIX foundation has always been something of a happy accident, and I don't think anyone has portrayed it as anything but. Since releasing OS X it's become more prominent, but hell, it is UNIX-based, so why not tout that advantage? (Oh, and please don't start on trademark diatribes and kernel discussions - for all intents and purposes, it's UNIX.)
The fact that they're using x86 means nothing -- it only means they were no longer ready to pay IBM/Moto premium coin to be one of the few customers for an unsuitable chipset.
It had little to nothing to do with price, and had everything to do with focus, and economies of scale. Neither IBM nor Motorola wanted to focus on desktop chips anymore, so development lagged. Meanwhile, they've had supply problems of one sort or another for the last 6 years. Switching to Intel was a gutsy move to fix that once and for all, but sure enough, people will criticize them for anything.
stuff no one else can (such as introduce new peripherals in one ship cycle or have the luxury of saying 'emulate' to customers and developers as a viable back compat strategy while switching OSes/chip architectures)
And what would be your suggested alternative? We're listening, Einstein.
Does Apple control its image? Yes. Do people buy their products for the image? Maybe a very few. Most people buy it because it is simple and it works. Meanwhile, Apple has made a huge number of both gutsy and pragmatic moves over the last decade, yet all people can do is bitch and whine.
Yup, I got a bit pissed an deserve the flamebait moniker on that. I'll chill next time. However, after reading the same reason over and over from people who haven't set up "real" networks (enterprises, hosting, datacenters) it gets VERY tiresome. Maybe I'll just write up a decent reply and save a copy for the next time this comes up...
The ISP problem is one of artificial scarcity, which is exactly what IPv6 relieves. The only reason they charge in the first place is that IP's really are a limited commodity, and they can't give them out to every device. With IPv6, this is no longer an issue, and static addressing would be the norm (probably still managed by DHCP, but it would never change). Every piece of equipment worth anything has supported IPv6 for a long time now. Anything that doesn't (in 2005!) deserves not to work, home networking equipment included.
The amount of pure pain that NAT causes for network administration is incredible. I went into all of the routing problems in another post (asynchronous routing, excessive static routing, firewall problems, etc). Don't keep saying "we don't need to do things right, my kludge works fine (mostly)", just do it right already!
It *mostly* works for home networks, but still causes problems even there. It is still responsible for software having things like "this won't work unless you configure your router to forward these ports here", which also results in your being able to only use one of a given service "normally" on your network. Try to set up two web servers on your home network, both on port 80. With IPv6 and static addresses, you can; with NAT, you can't. P2P would be even easier (and probably more commercialized) if you could install the app and have it just work, but no, you have to forward a different range of ports for each protocol. None of this would be necessary if you had IPv6.
The only reason I've seen on this whole discussion to keep NAT is that it does allow your network to be completely abstracted from your ISP's address space. Agreed, that is certainly a benefit. However (you knew this was coming), it would be better still if instead of doing a one-to-many NAT, you did a one-to-one NAT. Keep your addresses abstracted, but avoid all of the problems and messiness of NAT (or PAT, as I probably should be calling it).
Cue some leftist to come tell me how socialism works, how no American understands Real Socialism(tm) and why Capitalism is absolutely identical in practice to Italian Fascism
Perhaps if we had some truth in advertising, so the parties were labelled "Socialist", "Capitalist", etc. Then there would be none of this patriotic "Republican", "Democratic", etc bullshit. If your views are libertarian, vote for the Libertarian party. If you're more socialist, vote for the Socialists.
And dear God, do I wish America wouldn't wig out every time socialism, communism, etc is mentioned. Of course, people would have to THINK to get over their knee-jerk "hate them reds". To the american people (not the parent poster): I don't care if you still don't like it after thinking about it, but at least THINK about it.
In reality, how much stuff out there doesn't support IPv6 these days? Doesn't any piece of network or server gear from the last 5 years support it? By the time we need to move to it, it will likely be like the Y2K problem - ready in 99.9% of places, and tough luck to the last 0.1%.
In a lot of jobs, it's "write it, or be fired and we'll hire someone else". If this was mandated from high enough up (as I suspect it was - inane ideas like this usually are sent from the people farthest from the actual knoweldge of what it does), then it's not open for discussion. At least, if you like supporting your family and/or eating.
Then blame your fucking ISP. Don't screw up technology because YOUR ISP is shitty.
Anyone who understands networking (beyond My First Home Network) knows that NAT is an ugly kludge to deal with a lack of IP's, and causes innumerable headaches and workarounds.
(And furthermore, nothing is saying you can't keep on using an IPv6 NAT for Your First Home Network, since you chose a shitty ISP.)
Blame your ISP and your poor network setup or operating system.
Neither point you make says anything about NAT and what it actually does. You have no idea how difficult it can be to connect two servers that are both behind NATing devices. Avoiding asynchronous routing becomes very difficult. Routing design in general becomes much more difficult to predict, since the source address and destination address *might* not be what they claim to be. Static routes (which are easy to screw up if you're not very careful and have good peer review) are needed far more than they have any right to be.
If you think of NAT as a good thing compared to a larger static IP address space, then you don't know very much about IP. NAT is a kludge to deal with a lack of IP's, and causes a lot of problems and headaches. DHCP at least provides some additional benefits like automatic IP address configuration and security, but NAT is an ugly kludgy hack, pure and simple.
Did Motorola sabotage it by preventing you from using your own songs as ringtones? Did they sabotage it by introducing it in that ugly-ass phone and not the RAZR (which did just come out - finally)?
Apple put limits on it to protect the iPod. Motorola put limits in to protect the carriers (their customers). In the end, it's a shitty product that will do little for either company.
Yes, because people obviously plunked down several hundred to a couple thousand dollars without checking on software first. And if it turned out to be an issue, of course they didn't return the computer for their money back, but used it as a doorstop.
Right...
Not to belittle the very substantial cost of software for switching, but I have to give people just a little more credit than that. Meanwhile, for Mom and Pop and "average" people. how much are they buying beyond standard fare like MS Office, Quicken, Photoshop Elements, etc? All of their basic internet and multimedia apps come with the system. If you're a graphic designer or something with umpteen-thousand dollars in professional software, then I don't see you switching anytime soon, no matter how compelling the platform is.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is, they don't come supported either. From the web page:
It is written for OS X 10.2-10.3.
No, they didn't just omit 10.4 accidentally, or not update the page. It doesn't work at all:
Apple completely changed the kernel interfaces in Tiger and as such, a lot of work needs to be done to get the Ext2 driver running on Tiger. I started some of this work last year after WWDC, but there is still a lot to do and I don't have the time to finish things up right now.
...
I've started getting back to bringing up the driver on Tiger. Progress is going well, everything is compiling (but not necessarily running) except for the vnops file. I still have to implement locking and then testing before a release can happen.
Except, no, you're wrong. Manufacturers format it as FAT, but don't have to. I can format it as FAT, FAT32, HFS+, EXT3 - the card won't care. My camera will, but the card is a dumb storage device - there is no "FAT algorithm" on the card itself. All handling of FAT is done by the host operating system. Cameras, for instance, have to have FAT software to know how to write to the card. Computers have to have FAT software to know how to read it. The card does not.
I can't fathom why they'd introduce a new generation of hardware like this and drop back on features that are almost a no-op to keep.
Ah, that is refreshing - a post that genuinely informed me of something. Thanks!
Stream aware operating systems should always KNOW where the limits are, and if certain streams with certain properties still fit into the bandwidth limits, whatever causes the limitations.
Yes, because we know how simple and deterministic computers and operating systems are. Nothing chaotic about them at all, no sir.
Or the editors could do that. But, you know, that would require effort...
Go ahead, mod me down - you know it's true. New stories get posted every half hour or so (if that often) - you're telling me the editors can't 1) search for obvious dupes, and 2) can't coralize the links with a script?
Probably yet another reply of "no problem here". If your logic boards keep dying, ever think something ELSE is causing the problem? Power surges from other equipment, or from the adapter? Bad battery causing shorts?
My iBook is also a late-2002 800Mhz G3 model, and it's rock solid, if getting a bit poky these days.
You have to use C++ for a couple of years to truly, honestly hate the language.
Whereas Perl only takes a few minutes. Such efficiency!
While I loved the CW IDE as much as anyone, it wasn't maintained properly. Featurewise it hasn't advanced significantly in ages, and the release schedule slowed WAY down (remember the quarterly updates? Yeah, me neither).
As for Apple's direction, you're spouting a complete load of bullshit. It was:
Copland (no "e", thank you), OpenDoc. OpenDoc was killed off by lack of support and poor implementation. Copland was almost a complete disaster. Ultimately, a lot of the technology and API's (Open Transport, Appearance Manager, etc) made their way into the classic Mac OS.
Then came Rhapsody, which was essentially ObjC and Cocoa (only back then it was called "Yellow Box" - same API's). Those who had enormous code investments in CodeWarrior/Carbon didn't care to throw out all of their code (Adobe, Macromedia, Microsoft) and threatened to dump the Mac entirely. In 1998, that would have been the death knell. Hell, today it wouldn't be good either, but a lot less realistic given the different environment we're in today.
So, Apple created Carbon for porting over existing code, but has always emphasized Cocoa/ObjC as the preferred way of doing things. Architecturally, it makes sense, since OS X's roots are primarily NeXTstep. It makes even more sense now that we're changing platform architectures - NeXT/Cocoa has been through that before.
So to sum up, things were in a tizzy PRIOR to Steve's return - OpenDoc! Copland! PowerTalk! QuickDraw GX! A lot of people jumped ship - that was 1995-1997 when adjectives like "beleagured" described Apple all the time. After Steve, it's been one simple message - focus on Cocoa/ObjC. Use Carbon if you must, but otherwise use Cocoa/ObjC.
To bring things back on topic, I also wish there was a decent way to take advantage of the Cocoa API without ObjC. I love the object oriented API, but I HATE the ObjC syntax (as many have mentioned, the method-calling syntax is bizarre). As a result, I quit developing for the Mac some years ago. Can someone tell me why the same language couldn't be implemented with a more "familiar" syntax using parens, etc? It seems all you'd have to do is change the front-end parser and tokenizer, and everything else would just work.
Allow me to expand on this. People might question Intel's motives with "performance per watt" instead of pure megahertz. In the consumer market, it is a bit more confusing (although I'll bet it helps silent PC's move into the mainstream). In the server market, it's critical.
Right now, the best datacenters being built have power and cooling capacity for 110W/sq ft, maximum. A standard 19" rack with proper allowances for cooling, access, etc takes anywhere from 20 to 25 square feet (let's use the 25 sq ft number, since that's what Qwest quoted me last week).
This means in a given rack, you can have at most 2750W of power. One BladeCenter requires two 2000W power supplies, and four if you use more than 6 blades, all in a 7U form factor. Yes, that means you need to use about 35-40 square feet of floor space to support the power and cooling for a 7U box (albeit, an extremely dense one).
Likewise, look at your standard 4U/4 processor server (now more frequently 3U). Five years ago they were using dual 300W power supplies. Now they use dual 1300W power supplies. What's taking all the power? The main board isn't, the PCI adapters aren't, and the disks may even be taking less (faster disks, but 2.5" SCSI is making its way in - see the xSeries 366, for instance). Even if some of the other components are taking more power, the lion's share is the CPU.
Two words: strategic cutouts.
I honestly can't tell if we're in disagreement on anything or not. :)
All I'm saying is that ultimately whoever has the music (whether it's dinosaur music companies or the artists themselves) will want to control the supply. In a digital age, that means DRM. How do we avoid DRM (from whoever) and still have an incentive for musicians to produce their works, if they can't actually make a living at it? Are we back to the age of patrons of the arts (and will even that work in today's world)?
Okay, here's a question. Say all of the music companies die tomorrow, and bands are able to promote themselves over the internet, deliver with P2P, etc. Now, how are those musicians supposed to make money themselves, if their music can be freely copied? Don't you think that they'll suddenly be in favor of DRM as well?
Have any of the x86 builds (beyond the first one) been cracked? There have been at least two more, and I haven't seen anything indicating any success.
Furthermore, with all of the "trusted computing" locks in place, will OS X run in VMWare (I'm assuming VMWare will come out for the IntelMacs)?
I'm really sick of asshats like this (flamebait/troll moderation, here I come!).
They are a digital lifestyles company, selling computing and digital entertainment kit at high markups compared to the Dells of the world.
How many times do we have to go through this one? There are very few devices out there that are significantly cheaper than a comparable iPod. The Shuffle and Nano are cheaper than the competition, and the iPod is equal. Meanwhile, while smug people like to say that people buy iPods "to be cool", I'd say they buy them because they are simple, and they work. Hell, go back and watch Apple's intro video for the iPod from 4 years ago - they lay out exactly what their success formula was - seamless integration between the iPod and iTunes (long before the music store was a twinkling in anyone's eye), and a simple, usable interface. Somehow, not a single competitor has gotten it over the years.
Apple has always been about control-- control of the hardware, software -- the whole experience.
Apple largely has been, I'll grant you that. However, they're much more often about a seamless, simple experience. You know, the whole "it just works" mantra. That's why they've always maintained a tight lock on the hardware and OS integration. Their control of the software is usually about simplicity (lack of preferences and options), and sometimes about Jobs' ego (lack of themes).
The fact that they're using Unix means nothing -- it only means they felt investing $$$ on a custom OS wasn't worth it.
Given that they spent 5 years and a billion dollars on a custom OS that never came to fruition, yeah, I'd say pragmatism won out there. First people criticized Apple for a huge "Not Invented Here" syndrome, and now they're crticized for taking good stuff that already exists and using it? They could have chosen BeOS, they could have tried Linux even, but instead they chose NeXT. The fact that it has a UNIX foundation has always been something of a happy accident, and I don't think anyone has portrayed it as anything but. Since releasing OS X it's become more prominent, but hell, it is UNIX-based, so why not tout that advantage? (Oh, and please don't start on trademark diatribes and kernel discussions - for all intents and purposes, it's UNIX.)
The fact that they're using x86 means nothing -- it only means they were no longer ready to pay IBM/Moto premium coin to be one of the few customers for an unsuitable chipset.
It had little to nothing to do with price, and had everything to do with focus, and economies of scale. Neither IBM nor Motorola wanted to focus on desktop chips anymore, so development lagged. Meanwhile, they've had supply problems of one sort or another for the last 6 years. Switching to Intel was a gutsy move to fix that once and for all, but sure enough, people will criticize them for anything.
stuff no one else can (such as introduce new peripherals in one ship cycle or have the luxury of saying 'emulate' to customers and developers as a viable back compat strategy while switching OSes/chip architectures)
And what would be your suggested alternative? We're listening, Einstein.
Does Apple control its image? Yes. Do people buy their products for the image? Maybe a very few. Most people buy it because it is simple and it works. Meanwhile, Apple has made a huge number of both gutsy and pragmatic moves over the last decade, yet all people can do is bitch and whine.
Yup, I got a bit pissed an deserve the flamebait moniker on that. I'll chill next time. However, after reading the same reason over and over from people who haven't set up "real" networks (enterprises, hosting, datacenters) it gets VERY tiresome. Maybe I'll just write up a decent reply and save a copy for the next time this comes up...
The ISP problem is one of artificial scarcity, which is exactly what IPv6 relieves. The only reason they charge in the first place is that IP's really are a limited commodity, and they can't give them out to every device. With IPv6, this is no longer an issue, and static addressing would be the norm (probably still managed by DHCP, but it would never change). Every piece of equipment worth anything has supported IPv6 for a long time now. Anything that doesn't (in 2005!) deserves not to work, home networking equipment included.
The amount of pure pain that NAT causes for network administration is incredible. I went into all of the routing problems in another post (asynchronous routing, excessive static routing, firewall problems, etc). Don't keep saying "we don't need to do things right, my kludge works fine (mostly)", just do it right already!
It *mostly* works for home networks, but still causes problems even there. It is still responsible for software having things like "this won't work unless you configure your router to forward these ports here", which also results in your being able to only use one of a given service "normally" on your network. Try to set up two web servers on your home network, both on port 80. With IPv6 and static addresses, you can; with NAT, you can't. P2P would be even easier (and probably more commercialized) if you could install the app and have it just work, but no, you have to forward a different range of ports for each protocol. None of this would be necessary if you had IPv6.
The only reason I've seen on this whole discussion to keep NAT is that it does allow your network to be completely abstracted from your ISP's address space. Agreed, that is certainly a benefit. However (you knew this was coming), it would be better still if instead of doing a one-to-many NAT, you did a one-to-one NAT. Keep your addresses abstracted, but avoid all of the problems and messiness of NAT (or PAT, as I probably should be calling it).
consumers unite somehow
Get back to us when you figure out that prereq.
Cue some leftist to come tell me how socialism works, how no American understands Real Socialism(tm) and why Capitalism is absolutely identical in practice to Italian Fascism
Perhaps if we had some truth in advertising, so the parties were labelled "Socialist", "Capitalist", etc. Then there would be none of this patriotic "Republican", "Democratic", etc bullshit. If your views are libertarian, vote for the Libertarian party. If you're more socialist, vote for the Socialists.
And dear God, do I wish America wouldn't wig out every time socialism, communism, etc is mentioned. Of course, people would have to THINK to get over their knee-jerk "hate them reds". To the american people (not the parent poster): I don't care if you still don't like it after thinking about it, but at least THINK about it.
In reality, how much stuff out there doesn't support IPv6 these days? Doesn't any piece of network or server gear from the last 5 years support it? By the time we need to move to it, it will likely be like the Y2K problem - ready in 99.9% of places, and tough luck to the last 0.1%.
In a lot of jobs, it's "write it, or be fired and we'll hire someone else". If this was mandated from high enough up (as I suspect it was - inane ideas like this usually are sent from the people farthest from the actual knoweldge of what it does), then it's not open for discussion. At least, if you like supporting your family and/or eating.
jhines, I bow before you - that is the first truly insightful reason to use NAT that I think anyone has said yet.
Then blame your fucking ISP. Don't screw up technology because YOUR ISP is shitty.
Anyone who understands networking (beyond My First Home Network) knows that NAT is an ugly kludge to deal with a lack of IP's, and causes innumerable headaches and workarounds.
(And furthermore, nothing is saying you can't keep on using an IPv6 NAT for Your First Home Network, since you chose a shitty ISP.)
Blame your ISP and your poor network setup or operating system.
Neither point you make says anything about NAT and what it actually does. You have no idea how difficult it can be to connect two servers that are both behind NATing devices. Avoiding asynchronous routing becomes very difficult. Routing design in general becomes much more difficult to predict, since the source address and destination address *might* not be what they claim to be. Static routes (which are easy to screw up if you're not very careful and have good peer review) are needed far more than they have any right to be.
If you think of NAT as a good thing compared to a larger static IP address space, then you don't know very much about IP. NAT is a kludge to deal with a lack of IP's, and causes a lot of problems and headaches. DHCP at least provides some additional benefits like automatic IP address configuration and security, but NAT is an ugly kludgy hack, pure and simple.
Did Motorola sabotage it by preventing you from using your own songs as ringtones? Did they sabotage it by introducing it in that ugly-ass phone and not the RAZR (which did just come out - finally)?
Apple put limits on it to protect the iPod. Motorola put limits in to protect the carriers (their customers). In the end, it's a shitty product that will do little for either company.
Yes, because people obviously plunked down several hundred to a couple thousand dollars without checking on software first. And if it turned out to be an issue, of course they didn't return the computer for their money back, but used it as a doorstop.
Right...
Not to belittle the very substantial cost of software for switching, but I have to give people just a little more credit than that. Meanwhile, for Mom and Pop and "average" people. how much are they buying beyond standard fare like MS Office, Quicken, Photoshop Elements, etc? All of their basic internet and multimedia apps come with the system. If you're a graphic designer or something with umpteen-thousand dollars in professional software, then I don't see you switching anytime soon, no matter how compelling the platform is.