We can cry about what Apple screwed up all we want, but there is really only one question that is going to matter to the end user. Does it work? Can I point my RSS reader at a URL containing a Photocast and get the photos?
If the answer is yes, they didn't break a thing. If the answer is no, they have a bug. That may not be *technically* correct, but that's what the end user is going to think.
Either way, can someone tell me why this is being cast as something maliciously done? As far as I can tell, there aren't many RSS readers that this doesn't work for. Why assume this was malicious, when it seems more likely that a developer coded this stuff up, some testers checked that it worked with well-known RSS readers? Whiner, eh?
Sure, Apple needs to patch up their XML so it's more correct... but let's not pretend this is some sort of Microsoftian embrace-and-extend strategy from Apple. When Apple wants to create an incompatable technology, they create something proprietary. These are bugs in a 1.0 product, folks. File bug reports... save your freak out for the next release if the problems aren't fixed.
Oh, it was quite expensive. The operating system cost $795, and the developer tools cost around $2000 or $3000. Per machine.
Wow, I thought it was a lot less than that ( funny I don't know since I worked at NeXT at the time ), but it appears you are correct. gee, I wonder why that didn't catch on. All this time I've been blaming MSFT anti-compete OEM licenses.
It seems to me that if there are still a few Classic apps that people run in this day and age, there's a business opportunity for a small developer to make a good Cocoa implementation and clean up. I wonder why this isn't happening. It's especially noticeable with educational software - there seems to be nothing on OS X if the complaints I read on Mac forums are accurate.
Oh really? Well, first off, I'm not terribly sure that 'educational software' is really a market a truly small developer could easily tackle, depending on what we're talking about... but as a programmer who writes Cocoa-based Objective-C code most days, I'm *certainly* interested in learning about any gaps in the available OS X software. What are people still running in Classic mode that they can't find a suitable OS X replacement for ? Somehow I suspect it's software put out by Autodesk or some similar larger outfit that really actually wouldn't be too easy for one or two developers to slap together. That, or the end user doesn't want to pay for another copy of somethign they already own.
But really, I am curious because there do seem to be a good number of educational OS X programs... could you provide a link to the forums you're talking about, or give me the name or description of the software they're looking for ? I'd love to write it... just looking for that niche, you know...
SBC/AT&T, Bell South, and soon others will be at Congress's heels to get the concept changed.
Speaking of companies with a whole crapload of money and political influence, where do you think Microsoft is going to come down on this one ?
Yea, I don't know for sure, but I think Bells are going to find themselves managing to be the one force that will get Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, and, well... just about *any* company other than a U.S.-regulated telco to join forces against their cause.
At the end of the day, BS needs to figure out who their customers are. Frankly, I'm not sure if I mind them charging content providers, if it means end users pay nothing ( not a small fee, nothing ). But that's just it; either I'm a customer, or Google is a customer... we aren't *both* customers ( unless we both use BellSouth as our ISP, but that's still different; they don't get to charge either of us *again*, it's a dumb idea on the face of it ). Clearly the bosses aren't technology experts.
Do not mistake their resolve.
I don't... it's really a question of who is going to sue them and what it's going to look like when they finally find a few content providers who'll pay for "faster" data access, meaning everyone else's data is slowed down... is it possible to have a class action where companies are the plaintiffs? Or would we be looking at a RICO case ? That'd be rich, MSFT convincing the AG to take down BellSouth for a RICO or monopoloy violation... I'm almost looking forward to it, as long as it's BellSouth and I ( being in an SBC area ) don't catch the operational fallout...
I don't think you understand anything about processors, chipsets and motherboards. Switching to AMD would require a completely different motherboard design.
Yea, and as we all know, Apple has never changed their motherboard design.
Granted, it would be a big deal, but still... it'd be much less of a big deal than the transition to Intel.
It's not even *really* crazy to think that at some point in the future there might be both Intel and AMD iMacs ( or, more likely different models ) being sold side-by-side by Apple.
Yes, it'd be a completely different motherboard, but I'm not really sure why that would preclude Apple from creating an AMD board with EFI and building OS X to run on it. It's not terribly likely, and they wouldn't do it without good reason, but... what if Apple wanted to offer some high-end 64-bit system and AMD had ( in some alternate reality ) a *huge* lead in performance there- Apple might do it. It's not terribly likely, but it's absolutely possible. That's the real thing about this Intel switch for Apple- it opens up a whole world of possiblilities.
I did something like this the other day to order Vietnamese food from a Chinese restaurant for some French people.
Somehow I suspect this process took long enough and was complicated enough that you wouldn't want to do it every day. Emulating OS 9 "Classic" in OS X on Intel would be a little bit like that. Throwing in the 68k thing is how I know you're trying for a "funny" mod.
It's shocking enough to me that you actually *can* run some 68k apps on OS X on PPC today. Really. Think about that for a minute. That's crazy. But I've done it... not that I want to do it every day...
Now, Apple is shipping with processors from Intel. So, if the curse holds, AMD is going to be mopping the floor with Intel... at least until Apple decides to ship some machines with AMD processors as well...
The other read could be that, well, this story is BS because it's not counting online sales ( Dell, duh ). Although, it's true that AMD has been gaining a little ground, due to having cheap laptop chips on one end and hot, killer 64-bit gaming-rig CPUs on the other end.
Whatever. It's hardly as if Intel is "in trouble", they just aren't growing as fast as they ( or Wall Street ) would like. Let's hold of on talking about Intel's demise for a while... let's wait until Dell starts shipping AMD systems, or has chips running 30% faster than Intel's, before freaking out, OK ?
maybe not for all the other applications (iLife, FCP, etc).
Actually, aren't nearly all of the iLife programs now Universal Binary? With maybe the exception of GarageBand?
The Pro video apps are exactly what we shouldn't expect to be ported quickly, because they must rely heavily on optimized Altivec code... that's the segment of apps that will be most difficult to port.
There were lots of applications for the 680x0 systems, I sometimes had to search for those 486 applications. I assume we are headed back into that world.
Not on your life. There's a world of difference between NeXT in the early 90's and Apple today. Forget about the fact that Apple's market share and install base is something NeXT never dreamed of. The other important differences are:
- NeXT wasn't making it's own hardware. It was relying on OEMs to bundle NeXTStep with compatable Intel systems. Some users were buying the NeXTStep package and finding their hardware unsupported, as NeXT couldn't possibly support every hardware configuration used by PCs of the time.
- Microsoft was entering into licensing agreements with OEMs which included exclusive contracts ( later ruled to be in violation of anti-trust laws ) preventing them from marketing NeXTStep and other operating systems.
- Microsoft was not developing any products ( notably Word and Excel ) for NeXTStep, it's releasing Office on OS X ( for the next 5 years, even ).
- Developing for NeXTStep was actually quite expensive, if I remember... well, not horribly expensive, but you weren't going to pick up the developer kit if you were a student or just checking it out or building non-commercial software, that's for sure. Apple's developer kit? It's free.
- Microsoft had just released "Windows NT"... people were really, really excited about that, and NeXTStep Intel went up against that with a tiny install base, little OEM support, and a small developer base. Are people as excited about Vista after their experience with XP? Probably not.
I'm sure there are other key differences, these just seem like the more important ones to me. Another key difference: there are already a good number of Universal Binary applications. A partial list can be found on this MacRumors page, but it's *very* far from complete, as a search on Apple's "Downloads" web page using the term "Universal Binary" reveals, there are a good number of apps shipping with Universal Binaries today which aren't on the MacRumors list. Maybe there is a better list somewhere, I didn't look very hard.
As a side note, I just sold my G5 DP to someone looking to do video editing with FCP. Even with them knowing the Intel systems were coming out, they still wanted it.
If you want to do some work today, you use the applications and technology that are available today. That DP G5 is a great machine fully capable of just about any video editing task you'd want to throw at it, and it has the native software to do that work *today*, so it's an obvious choice. They'll be wishing they had the PowerMac replacement when it comes along, probably, and I'd expect the Pro apps to be ready when the PowerMac replacement is ready... but that's not today. Today, PowerMacs are what you want if you're editing video or audio... unlike the Amiga ( or the NeXT ), it's not because of some special-purpose vector-processing chip ( though you could make the case for Altivec ), it's because of the software. That same software will be available natively on the Intel versions, and the other problems that plagued NeXTStep on Intel aren't there for Apple.
There's no problem with hardware compatability- OS X is only supported on Apple hardware. There's no problem with OEMs- Apple is the only OEM. There's no problem with Apps- there are plenty Intel Native already, and non-Altivec apps largely just recompile. There is a large and healthy community of Apple developers, which includes even Microsoft
On January 17, 2002, p. 1, the New York Times reported, "Stung by Security Flaws, Microsoft Makes Software Safety a Top Goal" and quoted Jim Allchin said "Every developer is going to be told not to write any new line of code until they have thought out the security implications for the product" and that "the company was trying to change the culture of its software developers, who have been putting their emphasis on adding features to the company's software to increase its value."
In your opinion, has Microsoft succeeded in changing its culture so that every developer now considers security first, features second?
I don't think that's _quite_ the right question to ask in relation to that quote, although it's not bad. How about "Please described what happened as a direct result of this security initiative. Did anything at all change? What specific things were different at Microsoft after this announcement ? Were any projects reviewed, shelved, or changed drastically as a result ?"
Have we not seen a large number of new features being added to Microsoft products, while at the same time also seeing a large number of security issues ?
How is the average individual, viewing things from outside of Microsoft, expected to think that this announcement was anything other than PR ? Would Microsoft security have really been that much worse without this initiative ?
Ok, maybe that's more than one question... but not really. We deserve an answer here- it seriously seems like that effort failed, if it was taken seriously... or did the effort apply to only new code, and all of the serious problems lately are in older code ? What happened ?
It was. The only data point that I can offer is that I and a friend of mine edit video on external FW400 drives without issue using our 800Mhz and 1Ghz G4 iMacs. I can only assume that there's some issue with the firewire chipset on the laptop, or something else about the design of the system that caused this problem. Weird... this is the first time I've heard of anything like that, but then again... I can't think of anyone I know who has tried to use their laptop to edit video.
Tell that to the students and instructors in the labs I support, many of whom keep clicking ye olde blue e instead of the shiny new compass right next to it in the Dock.
... Microsoft will end support for Internet Explorer for Mac on December 31st, 2005, and will provide no further security or performance updates.
Additionally, as of January 31st, 2006, Internet Explorer for the Mac will no longer be available for download from Mactopia. It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari.
Microsoft itself recommends that your Macinsosh users migrate to some other web browser, and at the end of this month you won't even be able to download I.E. for the Macintosh.
Print out that Mactopia page and post it near your OS X machines in your lab... your users really need to get used the idea that there are other, better web browsers to use on OS X.
That's a textbook definition of a straw man argument. Nobody who wants the right to make money off of their ideas also wants people to starve. Shame on you for even implying that.
You see, it's not so much that they *want* people to starve, it's just that when someone starves, it's not their problem, and giving away the secret that makes the company money doesn't make business sense. Google "Monsanto" for a case study. Or, for the flip side "nobody who sells a product wants people to die as a result", look at any tobacco company. The argument is extreme, but not a straw man- history is nothing if not full of examples of people willing to kill others to make a buck.
If you want to save some money by buying a cheap Intel PC at Wal-Mart and installing OSX on it rather than paying Apple's high margins, then groovy -- go for it, if that's what you want to do. This makes you a careful consumer, not some crusader for human rights. If you'd rather keep the money for yourself, than give it to some purveyor of computing hardware or operating system software or record company or film studio, and this fits with your moral compass, then you're simply looking out for your own bottom line. It's saving a few bucks, not the Montomery Freedom March.
Truth, brutha, truth. There's already enough intellectual dishonesty these days, without people stealing songs and software thinking of themselves as 'freedom fighters'. Stripping DRM off some file to make a backup or use it on a unrestricted device is cool, but as soon as you stick that software on a share point, as soon as you give someone else a copy, you know you're doing something wrong. Not invade-a-country-with-no-reason, kill-a-man wrong, but you know it's wrong...
And yea, I'm going to keep downloading the occasional file off P2P. But I'm not going to pretend it's not stealing- it is. I'm a gangsta like that.;-) Petty, 99-cent-theft, would-a-never-bought-it-at-full-price gangsta...
Ok, to be fair, we're freeloaders who'd like to get something free, tinker with it until wet think we've made it better, then let everyone else pick up the changes we've made for free... did I get that right?
OSS, mashups, DIY hacks... that's us, right ? You're talking about the crowd that would rather build a MythTV box than subscribe to TiVo, and would rather spend time getting KDE set up just right than use OS X. Yes, we're freeloaders. Duh.
Well, a significant portion of us are 'freeloaders', anyway. People are like that.
On the othe hand, lot of us would like a world where we can make a good living via our computer skills, so we appreciate that companies might need to make money off of their services. Thus, a lot of the responses we've seen on this article seem to say "yea, they should charge for it, there's value", while at the same time some say "other services offer some of the same stuff for cheaper" and "hey, couldn't you set up a server to provide a lot of what.Mac provides? Didn't I see a story on that like, what, a year ago?"... and they're all typical slashdot responses.
I have valid reasons, other than the license, for not being an OS X fan but if I mention those it means getting flamed. Questioning the quality of OS X's UI is about as deadly as questioning Linux's development model (which I am a fan of but recognize it isn't perfect). It seems Windows is only safe OS to be critical of though even it has it's defenders (twisted sad souls that they are).
I don't know about that. I've ranted here many, many times about the top-of-the-screen menu bar. Those posts got the typical "it's an easy target to hit because your cursor stops at the edge of the screen" argument from people ( great, but if the window was in the middle of the screen, and my screen is modern-size, I just moved that cursor a long damn way, and will have to move it back, I say )... but anyway, point is I got those posts, but no Flamebait mods. I mean, I personally think focus-follows-pointer is over-rated, but I'll grant that it's not something reasonably doable in OS X ( short of setting it up with an alternate window manager somehow )... the best anyone can do is rate that a personal preference, ( like in-window menus ) and one OS X doesn't support. I think you mentioned suspend-to-disk, which is a valid beef, too, I guess...
However, it does sound like your key beef surrounds the not-open nature of the product, which ties into the not-fully-customizable issues you have. I use OSS software under OS X all the time ( Fink is great and many other OSS packages 'just work' under OS X ), but I understand your issues with OS X ( as would, I argue, most folks on slashdot ), and I encourage you to keep using Linux.
In forum posts as in email, though, it always pays to be clear... if you really, really like OSS and prefer not to use proprietary system A, it's better to say "I'd prefer to use something OSS rather than system A" than "I don't like system A"... doing so prevents people from thinking you're just baiting "system A" fans.
Which is why I like to not use Windows either. I'm against all software that isn't opensource. If OS X was opensourced I'd be more interested in it but would still probably not use it until other desktops were available - I really am not a fan of the GUI in OS X. Just not my style.
I'd mention Darwin, but really at that point I'm not sure why you wouldn't just use Linux... and there's a whole lot of OS X that you *don't* get with Darwin.
But my original point to you stands: just say "I prefer open source operating systems", instead of "I don't like MasOS". If all you do is say you don't like MacOS on an Apple-specific forum, folks might think you like Windows... and mark your post as a Troll. Note, I don't think your post was a troll, but... it's hard to tell. You should could have added "... because I only like Open Source operating systems" or something like that, and you would have been better understood and not ( as likely ) modded down...
Prediction: Linux will be running on these Mac Intel machines before a shipping version of Windows is.
How good is the LCD in the Dell? Does it have a backlit keyboard? Built in camera? Handy power connector that is less prone to damaged? And you dismiss the software as if it's not a big feature. OS X is half (if not most) of the reason to get a Mac.
Did your reply get attached to the wrong post? Because I absolutely agree with every statement you made.
The software is a huge feature- OS X is *the* reason to use a Macintosh, IMHO. With OS X and iLife, you're talking about at least $225 worth of software there, and I hadn't even thought of the built-in camera, that's a big deal. The backlit keyboard and magnetic-latch power connector are just icing on the cake, but they're really cool icing, definitely a better couple of features than 4 USB ports that will probably never be used.
Really, my comparison was minimal and I was trying to be kind to the Wintel crowd while simply pointing out the fact that Apple's laptop is very competitively priced... setting the stage for guys like you to say "actually, the Apple laptop is looking like the better deal even with a smaller screen because...".
Dude, if you want to say "I just prefer Linux", just say "I just prefer Linux"... we're on Slashdot, last time I checked that kind of sentiment is OK here...
MacOS thrashes about swapping with 768 MB of RAM after about 2h of work. When I have even a modest compile job I leave it thrashing around overnight rather than face the waiting
what kind of work are you doing and what sort of compile jobs are you doing... seriously, that sounds like BS unless you're using a 333Mhz G3...
Honesly I prefer gnome or even KDE these days to slow-as-molasses, full of silly eye-candy you can't turn off, no way to get focus-follow-mouse Aqua
Oh, you're one of THOSE.;-) Well, you can always just say "I prefer Linux", you know. Or kill the Finder and run X11, but that's clearly not going to work for you. Which is fine, really. Buy Yellow Dog Linux and get back to work.
Poor compatibility. At my workplace and in general in my field, very few people run OS/X for the above reasons, and almost everyone runs Linux.
I'm torn between asking how OS X isn't compatable with Linux ( huh? In what way now? ) and asking where you work that almost everyone runs Linux, because we all want jobs there. Must be the JPL, huh?
I was amazed that to see that most things were there but that Apple had seen fit to make the N/S interface builder format incompatible and unreadable (and not for lack of trying). I could recompile none of my old apps. As a result I completely gave up on XCode.
Without even trying to open your IB files and re-create your NIBs? How complicated were your interfaces? You must have really loved those old apps to have tried so hard... if you *really* want, I have an old NeXT machine sitting here, we could try too reconstruct those UIs...
Actually, what I meant to compare was the 1.83Ghz Inspiron to the 1.83Ghz MacBook.
I just kinda screwed up and gave the lower-spec Inspiron page... it looks like you can't really get the 'full specs' page for the higher-end Inspiron on it's own. Very much to Dell's credit, probably ( though I know some like their notebooks smaller, and MacBook is smaller ), it has the larger screen size in fully-decked-out-mode. But it is also actually more expensive, by over $190, and I'm not sure everyone would agree that the larger screen and 4 more USB ports are worth that, especially if you factor in the OS X/iLife difference...
But my point is this: as much as many of us think of it as expensive, it's not. It's *exactly* comparable to a similar laptop from Dell. It's time for folks like the original poster on this thread to wake up and realize that Apple is simply re-branding Intel hardware like everyone else, and surprise, surprise, charging the same mark-ups on that hardware as everyone else.
BTW, I'm not overly fanatic about Apple *hardware*, although I do think it's above-average; I'd be very happy for someone to point out a Core Duo laptop with all the stuff the MacBook has for less. It's just that I saw the OP's claim, noticed that it lacked anything to back it up, and decided to check Dell's website for Core Duo laptops... and did not find anything that made the MacBook look really overpriced. Really, I'm a bit shocked I found that to be the case... I thought for sure the Dell would be $200 cheaper, not $200 more expensive.
What's really interesting to me is that both Dell and Apple have exactly one laptop using the Core Duo processors ( the Inspiron and MacBook, respectively ), and that they're priced almost identically in two different configurations ( $1999 and well, almost identically : $2690/$2499 )... the only difficulty in comparing the laptops really is that the Dell has a larger screen, doesn't come with DVD+-R in the $1999 version, uses only the 1.8Ghz speed, and... who needs six USB ports on their laptop, what's that all about??
In the end, the truth is, comparing 1.8Ghz Core Duo laptops from Apple and Dell... the DELL is more expensive, even though it gives you less software! All that you can say in Dell's defense is they give you a larger screen ( and a heavier laptop ) and more USB ports... am I missing something, or are those the differences ?
The alert is probably because most journalists seeing Intel-hardware prices this high would otherwise assume they've drunk themselves into a coma over "lunch" and woken in the 1980's.
Are you saying this Dell Inspiron is priced too high? Because it looks somewhat comprable to the specs of the MacBook, except that it includes much less software ( nothing at all like iLife, for example ), no Bluetooth, and that $1999 price doesn't give you a DVD-R drive even. I mean, you can quibble about the details, Apple's ATI X1600 vs Dell's Invidia 7800, etc, but... they look like comprable offerings at... the *exact* same price!
Did I check that right? I can order either a Dell top-of-the-line notebook, or an Apple top-of-the-line notebook, and they cost EXACTLY the same amount ? Damn, now what do I do?!?
Actually, businesses might find other needs; you need to run that in-house contractor-written software that some jerk decided to write in VB; you need to run that oddball Windows-only third-party app that the developers for whatever reason are just to cheap to port.
Preferably, of course, Mac users won't be booting into Windows so much as they'll be running Windows inside of OS X somehow.
They could have avoided a lot of complaints if they had simply made a feature you could enable--not a feature you have to disable.
Yea, except, you know what? They probably thought about it a lot, asked a lot of people and found out- surprise! Normal people don't care. You could just ask us what music we like, we'd tell you.
Apple and Amazon want to track our listening and purchasing to suggest things we might like? Cool!
I'm much more concerned about people tracking my web searches, to be honest, and... I'm tempted to not be too concerned about that, either.
edit video on either my G4/450 dual processor or my G4/400 TiBook, I was able to capture video OK but when I tried playing it back it was jerky to the point of unusability
Uh, 450 and 400 Mhz G4s? In video playback, dual processors isn't going to help... how much memory did these systems have? Were any other programs running?
It could simply be that the CPU wasn't quite up to the task at hand, or that there wasn't enough available memory to keep the video fully updated. In any event, it certainly isn't likely that Firewire figured into the equation at all, unless the video was on an external FW drive, and even then... it sounds like processor, disk, or memory are more likely issues. Just guesses, of course.
Maybe the next generation of PowerBooks will have Fibre Channel adapters? That seems like the next logical step.
For what, running a network server on your laptop? Mabye someone might make an ExpressCard/34 adapter for that, but... talk about overkill... nah. No need for all of that. You're hard-pressed to use up FW800's bandwidth.
I do salivate at the dual core processors on the new model. I doubt that it would benchmark all that much faster
Well, on multi-threaded benchmarks, it should be nearly twice as fast, really...
If, like you said, you have an HDTV then you're probably not going to want to play PS2 games anymore
I don't know about that. Even if I had any number of newer games, I'm *definitely* going to go back and play San Andreas... I still haven't had time to finish the damn thing!
But maybe that's just a matter of personal taste. I still occasionally fire up my Sega Genesis. No lie. Earthworm Jim is just that fun... there is no way I'm going to stop playing PS2 games just because I get a nice display.
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If the answer is yes, they didn't break a thing. If the answer is no, they have a bug. That may not be *technically* correct, but that's what the end user is going to think.
Either way, can someone tell me why this is being cast as something maliciously done? As far as I can tell, there aren't many RSS readers that this doesn't work for. Why assume this was malicious, when it seems more likely that a developer coded this stuff up, some testers checked that it worked with well-known RSS readers? Whiner, eh?
Sure, Apple needs to patch up their XML so it's more correct... but let's not pretend this is some sort of Microsoftian embrace-and-extend strategy from Apple. When Apple wants to create an incompatable technology, they create something proprietary. These are bugs in a 1.0 product, folks. File bug reports... save your freak out for the next release if the problems aren't fixed.
Wow, I thought it was a lot less than that ( funny I don't know since I worked at NeXT at the time ), but it appears you are correct. gee, I wonder why that didn't catch on. All this time I've been blaming MSFT anti-compete OEM licenses.
Oh really? Well, first off, I'm not terribly sure that 'educational software' is really a market a truly small developer could easily tackle, depending on what we're talking about... but as a programmer who writes Cocoa-based Objective-C code most days, I'm *certainly* interested in learning about any gaps in the available OS X software. What are people still running in Classic mode that they can't find a suitable OS X replacement for ? Somehow I suspect it's software put out by Autodesk or some similar larger outfit that really actually wouldn't be too easy for one or two developers to slap together. That, or the end user doesn't want to pay for another copy of somethign they already own.
But really, I am curious because there do seem to be a good number of educational OS X programs... could you provide a link to the forums you're talking about, or give me the name or description of the software they're looking for ? I'd love to write it... just looking for that niche, you know...
Speaking of companies with a whole crapload of money and political influence, where do you think Microsoft is going to come down on this one ?
Yea, I don't know for sure, but I think Bells are going to find themselves managing to be the one force that will get Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, and, well... just about *any* company other than a U.S.-regulated telco to join forces against their cause.
At the end of the day, BS needs to figure out who their customers are. Frankly, I'm not sure if I mind them charging content providers, if it means end users pay nothing ( not a small fee, nothing ). But that's just it; either I'm a customer, or Google is a customer... we aren't *both* customers ( unless we both use BellSouth as our ISP, but that's still different; they don't get to charge either of us *again*, it's a dumb idea on the face of it ). Clearly the bosses aren't technology experts.
Do not mistake their resolve.
I don't... it's really a question of who is going to sue them and what it's going to look like when they finally find a few content providers who'll pay for "faster" data access, meaning everyone else's data is slowed down... is it possible to have a class action where companies are the plaintiffs? Or would we be looking at a RICO case ? That'd be rich, MSFT convincing the AG to take down BellSouth for a RICO or monopoloy violation... I'm almost looking forward to it, as long as it's BellSouth and I ( being in an SBC area ) don't catch the operational fallout...
Yea, and as we all know, Apple has never changed their motherboard design.
Granted, it would be a big deal, but still... it'd be much less of a big deal than the transition to Intel.
It's not even *really* crazy to think that at some point in the future there might be both Intel and AMD iMacs ( or, more likely different models ) being sold side-by-side by Apple.
Yes, it'd be a completely different motherboard, but I'm not really sure why that would preclude Apple from creating an AMD board with EFI and building OS X to run on it. It's not terribly likely, and they wouldn't do it without good reason, but... what if Apple wanted to offer some high-end 64-bit system and AMD had ( in some alternate reality ) a *huge* lead in performance there- Apple might do it. It's not terribly likely, but it's absolutely possible. That's the real thing about this Intel switch for Apple- it opens up a whole world of possiblilities.
Somehow I suspect this process took long enough and was complicated enough that you wouldn't want to do it every day. Emulating OS 9 "Classic" in OS X on Intel would be a little bit like that. Throwing in the 68k thing is how I know you're trying for a "funny" mod.
It's shocking enough to me that you actually *can* run some 68k apps on OS X on PPC today. Really. Think about that for a minute. That's crazy. But I've done it... not that I want to do it every day...
Now, Apple is shipping with processors from Intel. So, if the curse holds, AMD is going to be mopping the floor with Intel... at least until Apple decides to ship some machines with AMD processors as well...
The other read could be that, well, this story is BS because it's not counting online sales ( Dell, duh ). Although, it's true that AMD has been gaining a little ground, due to having cheap laptop chips on one end and hot, killer 64-bit gaming-rig CPUs on the other end.
Whatever. It's hardly as if Intel is "in trouble", they just aren't growing as fast as they ( or Wall Street ) would like. Let's hold of on talking about Intel's demise for a while... let's wait until Dell starts shipping AMD systems, or has chips running 30% faster than Intel's, before freaking out, OK ?
Actually, aren't nearly all of the iLife programs now Universal Binary? With maybe the exception of GarageBand?
The Pro video apps are exactly what we shouldn't expect to be ported quickly, because they must rely heavily on optimized Altivec code... that's the segment of apps that will be most difficult to port.
There were lots of applications for the 680x0 systems, I sometimes had to search for those 486 applications. I assume we are headed back into that world.
Not on your life. There's a world of difference between NeXT in the early 90's and Apple today. Forget about the fact that Apple's market share and install base is something NeXT never dreamed of. The other important differences are :
- NeXT wasn't making it's own hardware. It was relying on OEMs to bundle NeXTStep with compatable Intel systems. Some users were buying the NeXTStep package and finding their hardware unsupported, as NeXT couldn't possibly support every hardware configuration used by PCs of the time.
- Microsoft was entering into licensing agreements with OEMs which included exclusive contracts ( later ruled to be in violation of anti-trust laws ) preventing them from marketing NeXTStep and other operating systems.
- Microsoft was not developing any products ( notably Word and Excel ) for NeXTStep, it's releasing Office on OS X ( for the next 5 years, even ).
- Developing for NeXTStep was actually quite expensive, if I remember... well, not horribly expensive, but you weren't going to pick up the developer kit if you were a student or just checking it out or building non-commercial software, that's for sure. Apple's developer kit? It's free.
- Microsoft had just released "Windows NT"... people were really, really excited about that, and NeXTStep Intel went up against that with a tiny install base, little OEM support, and a small developer base. Are people as excited about Vista after their experience with XP? Probably not.
I'm sure there are other key differences, these just seem like the more important ones to me. Another key difference: there are already a good number of Universal Binary applications. A partial list can be found on this MacRumors page, but it's *very* far from complete, as a search on Apple's "Downloads" web page using the term "Universal Binary" reveals, there are a good number of apps shipping with Universal Binaries today which aren't on the MacRumors list. Maybe there is a better list somewhere, I didn't look very hard.
As a side note, I just sold my G5 DP to someone looking to do video editing with FCP. Even with them knowing the Intel systems were coming out, they still wanted it.
If you want to do some work today, you use the applications and technology that are available today. That DP G5 is a great machine fully capable of just about any video editing task you'd want to throw at it, and it has the native software to do that work *today*, so it's an obvious choice. They'll be wishing they had the PowerMac replacement when it comes along, probably, and I'd expect the Pro apps to be ready when the PowerMac replacement is ready... but that's not today. Today, PowerMacs are what you want if you're editing video or audio... unlike the Amiga ( or the NeXT ), it's not because of some special-purpose vector-processing chip ( though you could make the case for Altivec ), it's because of the software. That same software will be available natively on the Intel versions, and the other problems that plagued NeXTStep on Intel aren't there for Apple.
There's no problem with hardware compatability- OS X is only supported on Apple hardware. There's no problem with OEMs- Apple is the only OEM. There's no problem with Apps- there are plenty Intel Native already, and non-Altivec apps largely just recompile. There is a large and healthy community of Apple developers, which includes even Microsoft
In your opinion, has Microsoft succeeded in changing its culture so that every developer now considers security first, features second?
I don't think that's _quite_ the right question to ask in relation to that quote, although it's not bad. How about "Please described what happened as a direct result of this security initiative. Did anything at all change? What specific things were different at Microsoft after this announcement ? Were any projects reviewed, shelved, or changed drastically as a result ?"
Have we not seen a large number of new features being added to Microsoft products, while at the same time also seeing a large number of security issues ?
How is the average individual, viewing things from outside of Microsoft, expected to think that this announcement was anything other than PR ? Would Microsoft security have really been that much worse without this initiative ?
Ok, maybe that's more than one question... but not really. We deserve an answer here- it seriously seems like that effort failed, if it was taken seriously... or did the effort apply to only new code, and all of the serious problems lately are in older code ? What happened ?
It was. The only data point that I can offer is that I and a friend of mine edit video on external FW400 drives without issue using our 800Mhz and 1Ghz G4 iMacs. I can only assume that there's some issue with the firewire chipset on the laptop, or something else about the design of the system that caused this problem. Weird... this is the first time I've heard of anything like that, but then again... I can't think of anyone I know who has tried to use their laptop to edit video.
The solution to this problem? Remove it. It is not a supported application. There will be no future updates to it. You are not only fully within your rights as an administrator to remove the application from the machines you report, but to quote the linked Microsoft page :
Microsoft itself recommends that your Macinsosh users migrate to some other web browser, and at the end of this month you won't even be able to download I.E. for the Macintosh.
Print out that Mactopia page and post it near your OS X machines in your lab... your users really need to get used the idea that there are other, better web browsers to use on OS X.
You see, it's not so much that they *want* people to starve, it's just that when someone starves, it's not their problem, and giving away the secret that makes the company money doesn't make business sense. Google "Monsanto" for a case study. Or, for the flip side "nobody who sells a product wants people to die as a result", look at any tobacco company. The argument is extreme, but not a straw man- history is nothing if not full of examples of people willing to kill others to make a buck.
If you want to save some money by buying a cheap Intel PC at Wal-Mart and installing OSX on it rather than paying Apple's high margins, then groovy -- go for it, if that's what you want to do. This makes you a careful consumer, not some crusader for human rights. If you'd rather keep the money for yourself, than give it to some purveyor of computing hardware or operating system software or record company or film studio, and this fits with your moral compass, then you're simply looking out for your own bottom line. It's saving a few bucks, not the Montomery Freedom March.
Truth, brutha, truth. There's already enough intellectual dishonesty these days, without people stealing songs and software thinking of themselves as 'freedom fighters'. Stripping DRM off some file to make a backup or use it on a unrestricted device is cool, but as soon as you stick that software on a share point, as soon as you give someone else a copy, you know you're doing something wrong. Not invade-a-country-with-no-reason, kill-a-man wrong, but you know it's wrong...
And yea, I'm going to keep downloading the occasional file off P2P. But I'm not going to pretend it's not stealing- it is. I'm a gangsta like that. ;-) Petty, 99-cent-theft, would-a-never-bought-it-at-full-price gangsta...
Ok, to be fair, we're freeloaders who'd like to get something free, tinker with it until wet think we've made it better, then let everyone else pick up the changes we've made for free... did I get that right?
OSS, mashups, DIY hacks... that's us, right ? You're talking about the crowd that would rather build a MythTV box than subscribe to TiVo, and would rather spend time getting KDE set up just right than use OS X. Yes, we're freeloaders. Duh.
Well, a significant portion of us are 'freeloaders', anyway. People are like that.
On the othe hand, lot of us would like a world where we can make a good living via our computer skills, so we appreciate that companies might need to make money off of their services. Thus, a lot of the responses we've seen on this article seem to say "yea, they should charge for it, there's value", while at the same time some say "other services offer some of the same stuff for cheaper" and "hey, couldn't you set up a server to provide a lot of what .Mac provides? Didn't I see a story on that like, what, a year ago?"... and they're all typical slashdot responses.
I don't know about that. I've ranted here many, many times about the top-of-the-screen menu bar. Those posts got the typical "it's an easy target to hit because your cursor stops at the edge of the screen" argument from people ( great, but if the window was in the middle of the screen, and my screen is modern-size, I just moved that cursor a long damn way, and will have to move it back, I say )... but anyway, point is I got those posts, but no Flamebait mods. I mean, I personally think focus-follows-pointer is over-rated, but I'll grant that it's not something reasonably doable in OS X ( short of setting it up with an alternate window manager somehow )... the best anyone can do is rate that a personal preference, ( like in-window menus ) and one OS X doesn't support. I think you mentioned suspend-to-disk, which is a valid beef, too, I guess...
However, it does sound like your key beef surrounds the not-open nature of the product, which ties into the not-fully-customizable issues you have. I use OSS software under OS X all the time ( Fink is great and many other OSS packages 'just work' under OS X ), but I understand your issues with OS X ( as would, I argue, most folks on slashdot ), and I encourage you to keep using Linux.
In forum posts as in email, though, it always pays to be clear... if you really, really like OSS and prefer not to use proprietary system A, it's better to say "I'd prefer to use something OSS rather than system A" than "I don't like system A"... doing so prevents people from thinking you're just baiting "system A" fans.
I'd mention Darwin, but really at that point I'm not sure why you wouldn't just use Linux... and there's a whole lot of OS X that you *don't* get with Darwin.
But my original point to you stands: just say "I prefer open source operating systems", instead of "I don't like MasOS". If all you do is say you don't like MacOS on an Apple-specific forum, folks might think you like Windows... and mark your post as a Troll. Note, I don't think your post was a troll, but... it's hard to tell. You should could have added "... because I only like Open Source operating systems" or something like that, and you would have been better understood and not ( as likely ) modded down...
Prediction: Linux will be running on these Mac Intel machines before a shipping version of Windows is.
Did your reply get attached to the wrong post? Because I absolutely agree with every statement you made.
The software is a huge feature- OS X is *the* reason to use a Macintosh, IMHO. With OS X and iLife, you're talking about at least $225 worth of software there, and I hadn't even thought of the built-in camera, that's a big deal. The backlit keyboard and magnetic-latch power connector are just icing on the cake, but they're really cool icing, definitely a better couple of features than 4 USB ports that will probably never be used.
Really, my comparison was minimal and I was trying to be kind to the Wintel crowd while simply pointing out the fact that Apple's laptop is very competitively priced... setting the stage for guys like you to say "actually, the Apple laptop is looking like the better deal even with a smaller screen because...".
Dude, if you want to say "I just prefer Linux", just say "I just prefer Linux"... we're on Slashdot, last time I checked that kind of sentiment is OK here...
MacOS thrashes about swapping with 768 MB of RAM after about 2h of work. When I have even a modest compile job I leave it thrashing around overnight rather than face the waiting
what kind of work are you doing and what sort of compile jobs are you doing... seriously, that sounds like BS unless you're using a 333Mhz G3...
Honesly I prefer gnome or even KDE these days to slow-as-molasses, full of silly eye-candy you can't turn off, no way to get focus-follow-mouse Aqua
Oh, you're one of THOSE. ;-) Well, you can always just say "I prefer Linux", you know. Or kill the Finder and run X11, but that's clearly not going to work for you. Which is fine, really. Buy Yellow Dog Linux and get back to work.
Poor compatibility. At my workplace and in general in my field, very few people run OS/X for the above reasons, and almost everyone runs Linux.
I'm torn between asking how OS X isn't compatable with Linux ( huh? In what way now? ) and asking where you work that almost everyone runs Linux, because we all want jobs there. Must be the JPL, huh?
I was amazed that to see that most things were there but that Apple had seen fit to make the N/S interface builder format incompatible and unreadable (and not for lack of trying). I could recompile none of my old apps. As a result I completely gave up on XCode.
Without even trying to open your IB files and re-create your NIBs? How complicated were your interfaces? You must have really loved those old apps to have tried so hard... if you *really* want, I have an old NeXT machine sitting here, we could try too reconstruct those UIs...
If you don't like the OS X license, man, how must you feel about the Windows XP license! Yikes!
;-)
I just kinda screwed up and gave the lower-spec Inspiron page... it looks like you can't really get the 'full specs' page for the higher-end Inspiron on it's own. Very much to Dell's credit, probably ( though I know some like their notebooks smaller, and MacBook is smaller ), it has the larger screen size in fully-decked-out-mode. But it is also actually more expensive, by over $190, and I'm not sure everyone would agree that the larger screen and 4 more USB ports are worth that, especially if you factor in the OS X/iLife difference...
But my point is this: as much as many of us think of it as expensive, it's not. It's *exactly* comparable to a similar laptop from Dell. It's time for folks like the original poster on this thread to wake up and realize that Apple is simply re-branding Intel hardware like everyone else, and surprise, surprise, charging the same mark-ups on that hardware as everyone else.
BTW, I'm not overly fanatic about Apple *hardware*, although I do think it's above-average; I'd be very happy for someone to point out a Core Duo laptop with all the stuff the MacBook has for less. It's just that I saw the OP's claim, noticed that it lacked anything to back it up, and decided to check Dell's website for Core Duo laptops... and did not find anything that made the MacBook look really overpriced. Really, I'm a bit shocked I found that to be the case... I thought for sure the Dell would be $200 cheaper, not $200 more expensive.
What's really interesting to me is that both Dell and Apple have exactly one laptop using the Core Duo processors ( the Inspiron and MacBook, respectively ), and that they're priced almost identically in two different configurations ( $1999 and well, almost identically : $2690/$2499 )... the only difficulty in comparing the laptops really is that the Dell has a larger screen, doesn't come with DVD+-R in the $1999 version, uses only the 1.8Ghz speed, and... who needs six USB ports on their laptop, what's that all about??
In the end, the truth is, comparing 1.8Ghz Core Duo laptops from Apple and Dell... the DELL is more expensive, even though it gives you less software! All that you can say in Dell's defense is they give you a larger screen ( and a heavier laptop ) and more USB ports... am I missing something, or are those the differences ?
Are you saying this Dell Inspiron is priced too high? Because it looks somewhat comprable to the specs of the MacBook, except that it includes much less software ( nothing at all like iLife, for example ), no Bluetooth, and that $1999 price doesn't give you a DVD-R drive even. I mean, you can quibble about the details, Apple's ATI X1600 vs Dell's Invidia 7800, etc, but... they look like comprable offerings at... the *exact* same price!
Did I check that right? I can order either a Dell top-of-the-line notebook, or an Apple top-of-the-line notebook, and they cost EXACTLY the same amount ? Damn, now what do I do?!?
Actually, businesses might find other needs; you need to run that in-house contractor-written software that some jerk decided to write in VB; you need to run that oddball Windows-only third-party app that the developers for whatever reason are just to cheap to port.
Preferably, of course, Mac users won't be booting into Windows so much as they'll be running Windows inside of OS X somehow.
Yea, except, you know what? They probably thought about it a lot, asked a lot of people and found out- surprise! Normal people don't care. You could just ask us what music we like, we'd tell you.
Apple and Amazon want to track our listening and purchasing to suggest things we might like? Cool!
I'm much more concerned about people tracking my web searches, to be honest, and... I'm tempted to not be too concerned about that, either.
I don't like Mac OS either, but fortunately they came out with OS X... ;-)
what's not to like about OS X that you can't change, though, seriously ?
Uh, 450 and 400 Mhz G4s? In video playback, dual processors isn't going to help... how much memory did these systems have? Were any other programs running?
It could simply be that the CPU wasn't quite up to the task at hand, or that there wasn't enough available memory to keep the video fully updated. In any event, it certainly isn't likely that Firewire figured into the equation at all, unless the video was on an external FW drive, and even then... it sounds like processor, disk, or memory are more likely issues. Just guesses, of course.
Maybe the next generation of PowerBooks will have Fibre Channel adapters? That seems like the next logical step.
For what, running a network server on your laptop? Mabye someone might make an ExpressCard/34 adapter for that, but... talk about overkill... nah. No need for all of that. You're hard-pressed to use up FW800's bandwidth.
I do salivate at the dual core processors on the new model. I doubt that it would benchmark all that much faster
Well, on multi-threaded benchmarks, it should be nearly twice as fast, really...
I don't know about that. Even if I had any number of newer games, I'm *definitely* going to go back and play San Andreas... I still haven't had time to finish the damn thing!
But maybe that's just a matter of personal taste. I still occasionally fire up my Sega Genesis. No lie. Earthworm Jim is just that fun... there is no way I'm going to stop playing PS2 games just because I get a nice display.