A BBC Radio series worth listening to..
on
Newsy Numbers
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· Score: 4, Informative
The BBC has an excellent radio series called More Or Less" that unpicks the numbers and statistics that are bandied about in the news. It is authoritative, interesting and a remarkably good listen (available on demand using Real Audio)
The Dell has XP Home on it, and only has a CD ROM drive (v a CD Writer/DVD-ROM combo). It has no speakers (OK, the Mac Mini's inbuilt is probably crap, but still, a beep's a beep).
The Dell has an integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900, which wouldn't be my choice.
Oh and the Mac Mini has a 56k modem (OK, big deal, I wish this was swappable for an 802.11, but still).
Also worth factoring the bundled iLife apps. They really are very good.
Definitely worth NOT going for teh 1 Gig Apple installed memory though. Get a dealer to fit memory afterwards (although I'm happy with 512Mb on this old G4).
I'd ask in the developers' section in the Apple discussion boards. There are some pretty clueful people there. They will probably enthuse about the bundled dev tools too.
Well, it's kind of you to be concerned, but looking at my memory usage while using iMovie, I'm not memory constrained thanks.
You completely misunderstand the point about Windows. This is a machine for people who are sick of Windows and want an entré into the Mac world, but have previously been put off by the price. People who are not sick of Windows will stick with a Windows box as you point out.
Anyone who believes that 'The market seems to have chosen Windows and Linux, though. Running something else is a liability, not an asset, regardless of how nice the operating system is.' Wouldn't be interested in this box even if it cost $1 and had a G5, surely?
Strange, one thing about the Mac UI is the ubiquity and consistency of keyboard shortcuts. MS Word has a few commands with no shortcut - which annoys me, but most well written apps are replete with them.
1. Memory. Expandability to 1 Gig is going to be *more* than sufficient for most uses. 1 Have a 512Mb, 800MHz G4 and use it all the the time for movie editing and DVD burning as well as office apps, and never come across memory limitations, despite running horrible numbers of apps simultaneously. OS X's memory management ain't shoddy.
2. You forgot to factor in all the bundled iLife apps. iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and Garageband are very very decent, and I guess that the new iWork stuff is likely to be bundled too (didn't check). Finding something of similar quality on a PC is going to be costly.
3. OS X v Win XP. You're right - if the user is dedicated to Windows, then they should stick to the PC. But OS X is *the* reason to buy a Mac.
As a business journalist, I had it drummed into me time and time again that companies are singular. Hence Microsoft is evil, IBM hasdeveloped a new chip.
This makes logical sense, but is at odds with most colloquial usage and can become awkward when there is confusion as to whether you are talking about the corporate entity, or the people that comprise it.
The correct description of the Beeb is, of course 'Aunty'.
I think I did walk out. Either that or rock back and forwards in the foetal position keening. Never before has so much trivial shallow nonsense been package as 'really really deep'.
When I was about 15 I got my first ZX81 and started mucking about on the school's very first Apple ][.
The first thing I would say is go for an interpreted language so that the kid gets immediate feedback. Make sure it is graphic intensive.
Personally I would recommend the superb freeACSLogo for Mac OS X. This is a truly excellent free implementation - so not just turtle graphics, but also full Lispish string handling - fun with recursion, fun writing programs that write programs etc.
Mucking about with AppleScript can be quite fun too. And don't forget the Graphing calculator which can make maths a little less tedious.
And of course, the Wired article is desperate to make it also so much more self-important than it really is. I love the way they take fairly mundane elements and hype them with names like Darknet and the 'Shadow Internet'. Password protected SFTP server sounds just too dull.
Sadly, it isn't irrelevant. The point I was making was that people do an informal cost benefit analysis. They then notice that this complex piece of machinery needs complex frequent maintenance or... nothing much bad really happens. So they don't do it.
The stakes in car maintenance are more obviously high, thus making the comparison ill-judged at best and misleading at worst.
Are there any figures available for private U.S donations? The UK figure currently stands at GBP 32million and is rising rapidly - pretty astonishing for a country with a population of around 60million.
That sounds very compelling, until you realize that Joe User knows that not maintaining his car will result in a fatality, whereas not maintaining the computer will most likely result in some slightly bizarre behaviour which will annoy them enough to gripe occasional about it - but not sufficiently to modify their behaviour.
Scolding? A lot of it was fairly sensible advice about how to manage the medical profession... i.e don't keep swapping doctors all the time, because they will tend to begin at the beginning again.
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The BBC has an excellent radio series called More Or Less" that unpicks the numbers and statistics that are bandied about in the news. It is authoritative, interesting and a remarkably good listen (available on demand using Real Audio)
Well, I've just ordered a Mac Mini for my Dad.
The Apple USB keyboard (which is nice to type on) has two USB ports out of the back for expansion.
1. From http://www.apple.com/macmini/design.html
"Best of all, Mac mini purrs along at a whisper-quiet sound level, so there's no reason to hide it under your desk like an old PC to save your ears."
Oddly, the Australian version of Apple's site has this:
"Best of all, Mac mini features a teensy little fan, too, so there's no reason to hide it under your desk like an old PC to save your ears."
It has a fan.
I doubt it is the quietest ever made - wasn't the cube fanless? This has a fan.
It runs OK, but not comfortably. 512Mb is comfortable in my opinion.
Oh, just checked - a few things to note
The Dell has XP Home on it, and only has a CD ROM drive (v a CD Writer/DVD-ROM combo). It has no speakers (OK, the Mac Mini's inbuilt is probably crap, but still, a beep's a beep).
The Dell has an integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900, which wouldn't be my choice.
Oh and the Mac Mini has a 56k modem (OK, big deal, I wish this was swappable for an 802.11, but still).
Also worth factoring the bundled iLife apps. They really are very good.
Definitely worth NOT going for teh 1 Gig Apple installed memory though. Get a dealer to fit memory afterwards (although I'm happy with 512Mb on this old G4).
I'd ask in the developers' section in the Apple discussion boards. There are some pretty clueful people there. They will probably enthuse about the bundled dev tools too.
I seem to recall that Iterated System's system was used to compress all the images in MS Encarta at one time.
Well, it's kind of you to be concerned, but looking at my memory usage while using iMovie, I'm not memory constrained thanks.
You completely misunderstand the point about Windows. This is a machine for people who are sick of Windows and want an entré into the Mac world, but have previously been put off by the price. People who are not sick of Windows will stick with a Windows box as you point out.
Anyone who believes that 'The market seems to have chosen Windows and Linux, though. Running something else is a liability, not an asset, regardless of how nice the operating system is.' Wouldn't be interested in this box even if it cost $1 and had a G5, surely?
Strange, one thing about the Mac UI is the ubiquity and consistency of keyboard shortcuts. MS Word has a few commands with no shortcut - which annoys me, but most well written apps are replete with them.
A couple of quick points on this.
1. Memory. Expandability to 1 Gig is going to be *more* than sufficient for most uses. 1 Have a 512Mb, 800MHz G4 and use it all the the time for movie editing and DVD burning as well as office apps, and never come across memory limitations, despite running horrible numbers of apps simultaneously. OS X's memory management ain't shoddy.
2. You forgot to factor in all the bundled iLife apps. iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and Garageband are very very decent, and I guess that the new iWork stuff is likely to be bundled too (didn't check). Finding something of similar quality on a PC is going to be costly.
3. OS X v Win XP. You're right - if the user is dedicated to Windows, then they should stick to the PC. But OS X is *the* reason to buy a Mac.
As a business journalist, I had it drummed into me time and time again that companies are singular. Hence Microsoft is evil, IBM hasdeveloped a new chip.
This makes logical sense, but is at odds with most colloquial usage and can become awkward when there is confusion as to whether you are talking about the corporate entity, or the people that comprise it.
The correct description of the Beeb is, of course 'Aunty'.
No problem - if you take a look at any article, you'll see a little 'history' tab at the top of the page.
I suspect that you don't use Wikipedia much - this is exactly what they do do.
I think I did walk out. Either that or rock back and forwards in the foetal position keening. Never before has so much trivial shallow nonsense been package as 'really really deep'.
When I was about 15 I got my first ZX81 and started mucking about on the school's very first Apple ][.
The first thing I would say is go for an interpreted language so that the kid gets immediate feedback. Make sure it is graphic intensive.
Personally I would recommend the superb free ACSLogo for Mac OS X. This is a truly excellent free implementation - so not just turtle graphics, but also full Lispish string handling - fun with recursion, fun writing programs that write programs etc.
Mucking about with AppleScript can be quite fun too. And don't forget the Graphing calculator which can make maths a little less tedious.
And of course, the Wired article is desperate to make it also so much more self-important than it really is. I love the way they take fairly mundane elements and hype them with names like Darknet and the 'Shadow Internet'. Password protected SFTP server sounds just too dull.
Sadly, it isn't irrelevant. The point I was making was that people do an informal cost benefit analysis. They then notice that this complex piece of machinery needs complex frequent maintenance or... nothing much bad really happens. So they don't do it.
The stakes in car maintenance are more obviously high, thus making the comparison ill-judged at best and misleading at worst.
Are there any figures available for private U.S donations? The UK figure currently stands at GBP 32million and is rising rapidly - pretty astonishing for a country with a population of around 60million.
And http://www.apple.com/ deserves a little bit of kudos for the way it has transformed its home page.
That sounds very compelling, until you realize that Joe User knows that not maintaining his car will result in a fatality, whereas not maintaining the computer will most likely result in some slightly bizarre behaviour which will annoy them enough to gripe occasional about it - but not sufficiently to modify their behaviour.
Scolding? A lot of it was fairly sensible advice about how to manage the medical profession... i.e don't keep swapping doctors all the time, because they will tend to begin at the beginning again.
Apple doesn't object to 3rd party developers producing apps for the Mac after-all. I really don't get this.