Its always apeared that its the apple apologists, not Apple, who make the excuse that grandma can use one button more easily.
Maybe, but I'm telling you, I tried a multi-button mouse out on both my mother-in-law and my three-year-old son; it pissed off both of them. Why is it hard to understand that a simple, one-button mouse has it's uses, or at least users ?
As far as the single-button mouse being a pain to use... I don't know what you're talking about there, seriously...
No, I don't use a single-button mouse myself... I use a multibutton trackpad with scroll feature...
WTF?? How does making two buttons look like one, make this more intuitive? Elegant, maybe; intuitive, no fucking way.
Since you're so quick and willing to find fault with this design without any insightful analysis of it, I'm sure you'll ignore me as being a 'fan boy' when I make these two points, but:
a) it's as intuitive as just about any left/right-button mouse in that you click on the left side for the left button and the right side for the right button. I'm not sure what's not intuitive about that. It'd be pretty hard not to know which side of the little scroll-ball you're clicking on, wouldn't it ? You'd be using different fingers, isn't that intuitive enough?
b) There is nothing inherently intuitive about left/right click behavior in general. Two and three year old children can figure out things that are truly intuitive; they're pretty well confused by a context-sensitive menu attached to a button on the right- as are older, reading-savy, but inexperienced users. Multi-button mice might be what someone is used to, and they might be extremely useful after user training, but it's just not right to imply that there's anything intuitive about them, as you have done.
That said, I of course use multi-button mice wherever I can- they provide additional useful functionality, when software supports them, especially scrollwheel mice.
However, I tried putting a multi-button mouse on my home computer once, and it pissed off my three-year-old, and my wife didn't use the extra buttons, so I gave up on it. A mouse like this, with it's multi-user-settings, would allow me to have my left/right/middle click ( and then some ) and yet allow my three-year-old to still make use of the machine without useless ( to him ) contextual menus popping up just because he hit the wrong button. Keep your Logitec mouse, it's a good one, but my pre-schooler and I will likely pick up one of these beauties.
Dude. Very few people are saying, "One Button Is Better." The people who are saying the one button mouse has merits are considering grandma and grandpa, who had to practice to learn to double click. No really, they actually did. For them, a single mouse button makes far more sense.
I'm also considering my two-year-old ( now three ). We tried a three-button mouse for a while, and it just pissed him off.
This thing, with it's per-user configurability, is just what the doctor ordered. Frankly, I have to think the looks-like-one-button, configure-how-you-want functionality is brilliant, especially when you have different types of users using the same machine.
well I'm gonna download it, especially since it was posted at 1pm - ish gmt, Today... so there wouldn't be that many completed downloads.
no, really, I mean it, let us know how it works for you. If this thing works, I fully expect to see a slashdot story "OS X Intel cracked"... actually, I expect to see that story at *some* point, it's just a matter of when and what sort of hardware it works on.
That's fascinating, really, but... there are 0 downloads and a bunch of posts ( notably one from a user "XISO" ) saying that this is a fake... let me know how that works out for you;-)
While Japan is real big on the "console that does everything" in a large part because apartments tend to be small, that's not such an issue in the states.
There is one thing we're pretty sensitive to here in the states, though- actually, much more sensitive to than the Japanese: being screwed over by being the early adopter. It's bad enough to know that HDTV prices are going to drop, which is certainly keeping a decent number of folks away from those; here we have an example of a product that not only might see superior competition released in another six months ( competition which will play all those PS2 games you have sitting around ), but definitely will be supplanted by a superior model in another 6 months. It's like buying a computer, except you don't _have_ to buy it to get your project done.
As such, if MS is worried they might not have a great supply of these things in the first 6 months, this might stem demand.
IF, on the other hand, they really want people to buy them the minute they're available, they need to spell out what the upgrade path is and make the cost known up-front. This makes me really NOT want to buy a 360. I was thinking about it before, but you know what? Maybe I'll wait until PS3s are available in the wild, and can be compared side-to-side with an Xbox 360 with HD-DVD, so I can make a more informed decision about which to buy.
An upgrade is certianly an option too, bring your box to an authorized dealer, they upgrade it, maybe for free, maybe for a small charge.
You're dreaming if you think a new HDDVD for the 360 will be a cheap option, and you're crazy if you think it's going to be free. Sorry, that's just silly to say.
It's just hard to generate that much data for a game. You can only develop so much content on a reasonable budget.
Who ever said anything about games developed on a resonable budget? Those will still be current-generation games, for the most part... this generation of console games are going to have budgets that dwarf those of many smaller movies, and are going to include lots and lots of HD movie content ( which, now that you mention it, isn't necessarily super-expensive to create, but these will be crazy-big-budget games). That'll fill up an HD-DVD real fast, all that HD video.
I think any disadvantage of having peopel wait will be compensated by being first to market.
Game console history is littered with the dead, forgotten bodies of the first-to-market. Knowing a more capable XBox will be released in 6 months or so of the original, and that games might be released that the original can't play... those are concepts that make me really NOT want to buy an Xbox. Sure, if I have plenty of cash burning a hole in my pocket, maybe... but maybe I'd sink it into a gaming PC or graphics card instead. As it is, I'm like most Americans, and I can't afford to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on every game console that comes out, just to line Microsoft's pockets... I'll be waiting and watching, looking to compare the Xbox 360 HD-DVD directly with the PS3 Blu-Ray. No, it won't be about the disc format, it'll be about the games... but even if I had been thinking I'd for sure buy the 360, I think knowing the HD-DVD version would be out within a year might make me think twice...
...to wake up to, if you're on the Shuttle in orbit! That has just GOT to be a major morale booster for the people currently in space.
And their families back on the ground...
Seriously, I'd hate to be the one who has to answer the question "Is daddy going to be OK?".
Of course, you have to think, yea, they checked out their ship, yea kid, they'll be fine, we just have something to work on before we do our next launch, it's no big deal... and yea, this is just fairly normal stress for families of astronauts ( it's not like they're serving in Iraq or Afganistan or living in downtown D.C. or anything ) but all the same... not exactly the news you want to hear. That supersonic plane you're flying? We just recalled it. Have a nice flight...
Rather than providing a list of every single type of printer you might consider avoiding, how about a list of every single type of printer you might consider purchasing? Wouldn't that be a more useful list?
I can just see someone down at the local computer store now, with a stack of 400 pages containing a printout of all of these printers 'nope, not this one, nope, on the list too...hey, they're *all* here! Drat!'...
I guess they can't very well put an Intel inside something called a Powerbook, can they?
Head exploding... I think you're the first person I've seen point that out... name changes for the PowerBook and PowerMac class machines when they're finally replaced with 64-bit Intel chips ??? It... seems so... likely.
I mean, I was just repeating what Apple said when they announced the Intel switch ( migration over two years, starting with low-end machines first ), but... while they will of course keep calling them "iBooks" and "eMacs" and "iMacs", it does seem somehow not right that they'd keep calling them "PowerBooks" and "PowerMacs"... and yet I find the name change concept somehow more disturbing than the CPU change...
I'm still having trouble figuring out if/why anybody would want to hook up a $3000 display to a $700 computer.
That actually made me laugh out loud, I hadn't thought of that and it's a hell of a good point... although I think the OP was thinking of playing some game that recommended 64MB of video RAM minimum. Not that I can think of what game that might be. Seems like an odd requirement for a Mac game that you could play on a G4.
how many of those are going to be able or willing to "just do a recompile" - and not link it (the recompile) with versions, features, or new licensing opportunities. The chances that all of those vendors are going to just cooperate and make everybody's lives simpler are pretty low.
Woah, there's a load of difference between developers supporting a platform and developers releasing a bunch of new binaries to existing customers without charge. Sure, Apple developers are going to recompile their apps, and some of them are going to take advantage of the opportunity to add a few features and make your Intel-native version a paid upgrade. Users who find the overhead incurred by Rosetta are going to come up with the extra cash ( or pirate the native version while cursing the developer, or find a cheaper competing product ).
Either way, few, if any, current OS X developers are going to look at the Intel transition and say "this is way too hard to do with my existing code base, I don't see opportunity here, I'm going to go code for ( Windows/Linux/Solaris/BeOS/SCOUnix/etc ) instead."... That's all that matters for Apple in the long term. In the short term, it's a little annoying for users, and it's an opportunity for enterprising developers to snatch business from competing products by offering better product or cheaper prices to users faced with a paid upgrade, and/or gain user loyalty by providing free Intel Native updates, like some are already doing.
NeXT had OpenStep which was originally going to be pushed forward with OS X, as "Yellow Box" - theoretically, a set of runtime DLLs could have been installed on a Windows box, and the same code could run on either platform. (I don't remember if it was a common binary, fat binary, or recompile).
OpenStep is a specification. GNUStep is an implementation of that specification, which works on Intel now- even Windows if you're willing to use Cygwin or MingW and don't mind an app that doesn't look like a windows app. I never got into OpenStep Toolkit for Windows development ( I *think* that was the implementation ), but if there are DLLs involved, they're probably for windowing and other such similar basic functionality that would be used by any app? The app itself would be a binary, 'fat' only if compiled for multiple platforms of course. If you were careful enough not to use Apple-only features, you could do the same thing with GNUStep today.
Certainly code written in Carbon is going to have no common technology with NeXT. Maybe apps written with Cocoa code take advantage of what used to be Yellow Box.
Other than Altivec code ( which, espeically if older, will almost always need a complete rewrite), Carbon code is going to be the toughest to port to Intel, from what I understand. I'm not talking about single-line carbon library calls, those are probably no problem, I'm talking about Carbon windows, controls, and real serious amounts of legacy stuff. On the other hand, if Microsoft can move Office, everyone else can get going and start moving that Carbon code to Cocoa. It's not hard. Hire me to do it for you. Really. What are you waiting for... I don't waste THAT much time posting to/., I swear...
Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing fewer apps with weird Carbon behavior that mistakenly claim the computer is out of memory and don't know the right path name. They're actually pretty rare already, and I'm not going to miss them.
Several orders of magnatude FEWER software vendors to deal with there. . .
The reason NeXT's switch to Intel was more smooth for developers than Apple's switch to PPC had less to do with the number of vendors and more to do with the software technology involved.
This time around, Apple has ( almost ) exactly NeXT's technology, and again, for most developers, it's just a recompile.
The powermac line (that is, the machines that are supposed to be the fastest they make), STILL come with 256MB RAM in the single-cpu model. An iMac has more memory. This is stupid.
What is stupid is Apple not updating that tech specs page to remove the single-CPU PowerMac model. Maybe they still have it there because you can buy them refurbished? You sure can't buy them new, check the store. Only 3 models, no single-CPU model. I think that happened a while ago, is the really stupid thing.
The tech spec page does say the dual-CPU PowerMacs come with 512 MB, though.
The fact that they are not able to bump of the speed of the Mac Mini might speak volumes more about the Mini chassis' ability to disipate heat.
Do you really think that's true, or are you speculating ? Have you ever had a mini apart, or run ThermographX on a mini ? They actually are able to cool themselves pretty darn well, though the fans run hard enough to make some actual noise when they do get warm, it's hard to make them really do it.
I suspect there's plenty of ability for the mini to take a little more heat ( though not G5 amounts of heat ). Here is the chart of G4-class processors from Freescale; the 7447 is ( I think ) the one in the mini. I'm not exactly sure why the clock speeds are 1.25GHz and 1.47GHz when the Freescale site says 1.33GHz and 1.67GHz, but I suspect that's the difference between Freescale marketing and a stable system, not a difference imposed by the mini design. Or it could be that the chips that can run at higher clockspeeds reliably are going into PowerBooks which probably more importantly for the Apple to Intel decision are locked down to the maximum 1.67GHz speed. Maybe Apple doesn't want it's consumer-grade Mac mini to catch up to it's pro-grade PowerBook in performance. Or maybe those 1.67GHz G4s don't come cheap, easy and plentiful. I'm going to guess it's a combination of these three factors, but I have no way of knowing. I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with the design of the mini, though- it's more likely it's marketing position relative to the PowerBook and, possibly to a lesser extent, yields of stable chips.
Yeah that will surely do it. Don't get the Athlon64 X2 4800+ and a Nivida 7800 GTX 256MB for the same amount of cash, more likely lower;)
Should I just say "yea, unless you want to run OS X", or leave it to someone else to feed your troll;)
I actually want to take your off-hand witticism seriously, but first I want to make a point which I'm pretty sure you probably understand : If you can't run OS X on the hardware you're talking about, it's useless to someone who wants to run OS X. It doesn't matter how cheap or fast it is, it doesn't run OS X, so it's not relevant to the discussion, unless the discussion is "why you should stop using OS X and use something else". I don't mean to sound harsh or be annoying when I say that, but think about it for a minute- there's something really lame about your post, at least in the context of this thread. The lame thing is that your post is completely off-topic. It adds nothing useful to the discussion as written. Include the words "forget about OS X" and suddenly your post is less lame, somehow, though still slightly off-topic.
Really, if you want to run Linux, and not have the option of OS X, I agree with you completely... although, that's a pretty expensive chip and graphic card, so depending on what other components you put in your system, it's not likely to be less than $2500 anyway, and as such not *much* less expensive... please don't tell me your spending over $1500 on a CPU and graphics card and less than $1000 on everything ( mobo, memory, HD, DVD-R, power supply, case, sound card, keyboard, mouse, etc ) else in the system combined... or if you do, please tell me you didn't skimp on the power supply and motherboard, at least...
again, I don't disagree ( given the whole implicit "don't want to run OS X" thing ) but the 'more likely lower price' thing isn't a sure bet. On the other hand, it is somewhat nice to be able to pick-and-choose your own components, but doing so is rarely about price...
Heck, why build your own. Stuff like this $1999 pre-built system look pretty tempting. Of course, you still have to add in a DVD-RW and a few other goodies, and toss out the Radeon X800 they throw in, but it comes with a gig of RAM, so what the heck. Of course, still no OS X. You know, it's a real shame that M$ had to crush NeXTStep Intel with those anticompetitive OEM licensing agreements, or we might not have this problem.
I also applaud your choice of AMD over Intel, but Tom's found the Intel Pentium 840 Extreme Edition to be a bit better with regard to actual multi-application performance. If you're looking to run a single app, like a game, though, the AMD is clearly the better choice. It's what I'd go with, except for a couple of details. I'm not looking to spend a couple thousand dollars on a high-end machine to run either Linux or Windows. I'm looking to run Linux on my old PII, and looking to avoid Windows as much as possible. If I want to get real work done, most of my tasks aren't too CPU intensive, so my several-years-old flat-panel iMac gets the job done quite nicely. Some day after my kid gets out of college, I'll pick up a machine 20x as powerful as any of these for a couple hundred bucks and slip it into my wallet... and be glad I didn't blow my cash on hardware I didn't need. But I don't want to deal with a sea of viruses and worms, and I don't want to have the system my wife and 3-year-old son use be a custom build job, so I'm not using Windows and I'm not using Linux on that machine. I'm using OS X, and your suggestion is, in that context a useless troll, as well-meaning and humorous as it might otherwise be.
I'm extremely skeptical about our public servants, so I thought maybe you were trying to be funny, but it turns out it looks like you're absolutely right. The guy *almost* manages to make lawyers look good.
Now it's the judge I'm wondering about;-)
Of course, a settlement in a case like this might make things much worse for Sony if, in the future, they're found to have broken the terms of the agreement, so that may have been the largest goal, along with helping to build precedent for similar future cases.
Why can't they just bump it up to 64MB so that it can support all the nice graphical effects of the dashboard?!?
Why bother? It's not like you're going to play Doom3 on these machines.
Hey, the mini can't support dual 30-inch cinema displays, either! What a rip! If you really care about performance, buy a dual-G5 Powermac and a ATI Radeon 9650. Otherwise, recognize that you're making a choice to have a lower-than-maximum-performance machine.
Yes, I realize you're making a point that for the price of a little extra R&D and a small amount of money per machine, you could get an added dashboard effect... but you know what? Someone decided having that wasn't too important and isn't going to sell more Mac minis, and probably they asked a lot of people their opinions on the matter before making the decision. You might be the only person who noticed the mini didn't do whatever dashboard effect you're talking about.
The really big news is that Apple now offers 512 MB of memory *standard*, across ( very nearly ) their entire line of computers. There is only one configuration I could find that by default ships with less- the eMac Combo Drive, which I guess is OK, you know you're going the cheap all-in-one route there. Even that machine should really get 512MB, though- there is a noticable difference in real-world use between OS X running 256MB and 512MB.
The other thing I noticed is that clock speeds seem pretty much the same, which makes me think : hey, aren't these the same class of machines that are supposed to be switched to Intel first ? Need anyone wonder why ?
While the processor has the same clock speed, in every day use that 512MB does indeed make the machine quite a bit quicker. We should all be applauding Apple for finally putting 512MB standard in their machines.
That processor clock speed thing ? Apple's limited by the chips they are able to buy in that regard, and the fact that they aren't able to bump up the speeds speaks volumes as to why they're switching to Intel. Until the switch- which will likely happen first in the machines that were updated today - only folks who want OS X and iBook or Mac mini form factors will buy these machines. Not that they're too slow to be useful; they're extremely practical computers. You just wouldn't play Doom3 on them...
However, there is nothing (except for possibly the DMCA) stopping some wizards from trying to trick Mac OS X into thinking that it is running on an "Apple Certified(TM) Machine," where inactuality it is really running on a $299 blue-light special Dell.
To be sure, someone somewhere will find a way to do it, but... it might not be worth it. Remember, Apple is working closely with Intel, the king of Trusted(sic) Computing. We might be talking something on the order of a hardware hack, which might make your $299 Dell more like $499, at which point why not buy an Apple. Not to mention driver issues ( if you have to buy an nVidia card for that Dell because you can't use the on-board video, same deal, the price just went up ).
Then again, maybe Apple won't care as much as we think, on the theory that pirated copies of their software will only make you want the Real Thing somewhere down the road. It isn't certain that running OS X on $299 Dells will be easy to do any time soon, though... I wouldn't get your hopes up too much.
I'd love to turn my four-year-old PC into an OS X box, myself, but I'm going to have to content myself with running Linux on it, I'm afraid...
So wait. You think of OS X has a stepping stone to Linux?
Why go any further? OS X has just about everything you'd want. Plus it runs Office. Woohoo!
Seriously, I think OS X is way less daunting than Linux.
That last bit about OS X being less daunting is a bit of an understatement.
There is one single reason why I'd still run Linux, though. I still have a PC at home that I haven't decided yet to get rid of. I never use it, because I have a iMac, but... hmmm... maybe I'll throw Linux on it and tinker. But it's just that- a hobby kind of thing, thus not something a non-programmer type is going to do. Me, though, I'll do it. When I get some spare time...
I guess I just backed up your argument pretty well there, didn't I ? I originally though "hey, he's wrong, *I* will still use Linux"... sigh...
Where are those Fortune 500 companies that have announced rollouts of Macs as replacements for their IBM and Dell Wintel machines?
Where did you get that? The article said nothing of the sort. It said
In Businesses that had 10,000 or more employees, 21 percent of employees used Mac OS X on their desktop work computer.
That's 21 percent of employees in a group of business with 10,000 employees or more each.
I'll give you that it's a fairly odd way to put it; just one very large company could make up the majority of these users. However, that's not likely the way it works; one company is about half OS X, another company is all-Wintel, the average is 21% of employees. Still, it seems that you either don't understand what the article said or didn't read it, if you think it implies entire Fortune 500 companies have gone *all* Mac OS X. Although, there's no real reason why not. We've been all OS X on desktops for years now ( not that we're a big company... ); there's little keeping your desktops from being OS X, and plenty of incentive to move in that direction.
Still, if some Fortune 500 company decides to go all-Apple, they'd be wise to chat with Apple about P.R. and related procurement pricing, don' t you think? The MacWorld article would be about that Fortune 500 company, not this report.
Now that I mention it, the first Fortune 500 company to do this might be doing a really smart thing, and not just from a picking-the-better-tool perspective... they'd get a ton of press.
What does the actual score mean?
The higher your number, the more online third-degree connections you have. Your score isn't an exact number of your third-degree connections. Rather, it shows how many connections you have relative to other AIM users.
Which I agree completely conflicts with the answer to number two. So which is it, the exact number of third-degree connections, or how many connections you have relative to other AIM users? On inspection, it looks like the first, but then what does this "actual score" answer mean?
My favorite thing to do in GTA:VC is steal a cop uniform, then steal an Apache helicopter, then fly around blowing up cars.
A close second is grabbing a chainsaw and hacking the hell out of gang members.
What a great frickin' game. I mean, I love Katamari Damacy, but every now and then, I just have to put it down and go back to Vice City for a little antidote... there are just so many ways to create mayhem...
They don't really say how they calculate the score, do they? "Your score is relative to other AIM users?" What the hell does that mean? Why isn't it just the number of third-degree connections, what's wrong with using that number?
That is truly weird. I swear I only ever, ever IM with my wife. Just so she won't have to bug the secretary here at work, really. And yet, my score is over a thousand. I must be in the buddy list of some seriously indescriminate folks. Like spambots or something...
My wife has two accounts, one of which has two-thirds the score I have, and one which really *should* be defunct ( she closed an account fairly recently, thus the screen name is locked up, not taken, and should only be in the buddy lists of a few people who failed to remove it ). It still scores a 20. If it was even in a few lists, you'd think the score there would be higher. I mean, we know teenagers... do you have a minimum score of 20 or something?
Why am I even thinking about this stupid-ass thing? I don't know. I guess I'm wondering who would bother to put my AIM address in their buddy list since I almost never IM anyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe, but I'm telling you, I tried a multi-button mouse out on both my mother-in-law and my three-year-old son; it pissed off both of them. Why is it hard to understand that a simple, one-button mouse has it's uses, or at least users ?
As far as the single-button mouse being a pain to use... I don't know what you're talking about there, seriously...
No, I don't use a single-button mouse myself... I use a multibutton trackpad with scroll feature...
Since you're so quick and willing to find fault with this design without any insightful analysis of it, I'm sure you'll ignore me as being a 'fan boy' when I make these two points, but :
a) it's as intuitive as just about any left/right-button mouse in that you click on the left side for the left button and the right side for the right button. I'm not sure what's not intuitive about that. It'd be pretty hard not to know which side of the little scroll-ball you're clicking on, wouldn't it ? You'd be using different fingers, isn't that intuitive enough?
b) There is nothing inherently intuitive about left/right click behavior in general. Two and three year old children can figure out things that are truly intuitive; they're pretty well confused by a context-sensitive menu attached to a button on the right- as are older, reading-savy, but inexperienced users. Multi-button mice might be what someone is used to, and they might be extremely useful after user training, but it's just not right to imply that there's anything intuitive about them, as you have done.
That said, I of course use multi-button mice wherever I can- they provide additional useful functionality, when software supports them, especially scrollwheel mice.
However, I tried putting a multi-button mouse on my home computer once, and it pissed off my three-year-old, and my wife didn't use the extra buttons, so I gave up on it. A mouse like this, with it's multi-user-settings, would allow me to have my left/right/middle click ( and then some ) and yet allow my three-year-old to still make use of the machine without useless ( to him ) contextual menus popping up just because he hit the wrong button. Keep your Logitec mouse, it's a good one, but my pre-schooler and I will likely pick up one of these beauties.
I'm also considering my two-year-old ( now three ). We tried a three-button mouse for a while, and it just pissed him off.
This thing, with it's per-user configurability, is just what the doctor ordered. Frankly, I have to think the looks-like-one-button, configure-how-you-want functionality is brilliant, especially when you have different types of users using the same machine.
no, really, I mean it, let us know how it works for you. If this thing works, I fully expect to see a slashdot story "OS X Intel cracked"... actually, I expect to see that story at *some* point, it's just a matter of when and what sort of hardware it works on.
That was quick.
That's fascinating, really, but... there are 0 downloads and a bunch of posts ( notably one from a user "XISO" ) saying that this is a fake... let me know how that works out for you ;-)
There is one thing we're pretty sensitive to here in the states, though- actually, much more sensitive to than the Japanese: being screwed over by being the early adopter. It's bad enough to know that HDTV prices are going to drop, which is certainly keeping a decent number of folks away from those; here we have an example of a product that not only might see superior competition released in another six months ( competition which will play all those PS2 games you have sitting around ), but definitely will be supplanted by a superior model in another 6 months. It's like buying a computer, except you don't _have_ to buy it to get your project done.
As such, if MS is worried they might not have a great supply of these things in the first 6 months, this might stem demand.
IF, on the other hand, they really want people to buy them the minute they're available, they need to spell out what the upgrade path is and make the cost known up-front. This makes me really NOT want to buy a 360. I was thinking about it before, but you know what? Maybe I'll wait until PS3s are available in the wild, and can be compared side-to-side with an Xbox 360 with HD-DVD, so I can make a more informed decision about which to buy.
An upgrade is certianly an option too, bring your box to an authorized dealer, they upgrade it, maybe for free, maybe for a small charge.
You're dreaming if you think a new HDDVD for the 360 will be a cheap option, and you're crazy if you think it's going to be free. Sorry, that's just silly to say.
It's just hard to generate that much data for a game. You can only develop so much content on a reasonable budget.
Who ever said anything about games developed on a resonable budget? Those will still be current-generation games, for the most part... this generation of console games are going to have budgets that dwarf those of many smaller movies, and are going to include lots and lots of HD movie content ( which, now that you mention it, isn't necessarily super-expensive to create, but these will be crazy-big-budget games). That'll fill up an HD-DVD real fast, all that HD video.
I think any disadvantage of having peopel wait will be compensated by being first to market.
Game console history is littered with the dead, forgotten bodies of the first-to-market. Knowing a more capable XBox will be released in 6 months or so of the original, and that games might be released that the original can't play... those are concepts that make me really NOT want to buy an Xbox. Sure, if I have plenty of cash burning a hole in my pocket, maybe... but maybe I'd sink it into a gaming PC or graphics card instead. As it is, I'm like most Americans, and I can't afford to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on every game console that comes out, just to line Microsoft's pockets... I'll be waiting and watching, looking to compare the Xbox 360 HD-DVD directly with the PS3 Blu-Ray. No, it won't be about the disc format, it'll be about the games... but even if I had been thinking I'd for sure buy the 360, I think knowing the HD-DVD version would be out within a year might make me think twice...
And their families back on the ground...
Seriously, I'd hate to be the one who has to answer the question "Is daddy going to be OK?".
Of course, you have to think, yea, they checked out their ship, yea kid, they'll be fine, we just have something to work on before we do our next launch, it's no big deal... and yea, this is just fairly normal stress for families of astronauts ( it's not like they're serving in Iraq or Afganistan or living in downtown D.C. or anything ) but all the same... not exactly the news you want to hear. That supersonic plane you're flying? We just recalled it. Have a nice flight...
I can just see someone down at the local computer store now, with a stack of 400 pages containing a printout of all of these printers 'nope, not this one, nope, on the list too...hey, they're *all* here! Drat!'...
Head exploding... I think you're the first person I've seen point that out... name changes for the PowerBook and PowerMac class machines when they're finally replaced with 64-bit Intel chips ??? It... seems so... likely.
I mean, I was just repeating what Apple said when they announced the Intel switch ( migration over two years, starting with low-end machines first ), but... while they will of course keep calling them "iBooks" and "eMacs" and "iMacs", it does seem somehow not right that they'd keep calling them "PowerBooks" and "PowerMacs"... and yet I find the name change concept somehow more disturbing than the CPU change...
That actually made me laugh out loud, I hadn't thought of that and it's a hell of a good point... although I think the OP was thinking of playing some game that recommended 64MB of video RAM minimum. Not that I can think of what game that might be. Seems like an odd requirement for a Mac game that you could play on a G4.
Woah, there's a load of difference between developers supporting a platform and developers releasing a bunch of new binaries to existing customers without charge. Sure, Apple developers are going to recompile their apps, and some of them are going to take advantage of the opportunity to add a few features and make your Intel-native version a paid upgrade. Users who find the overhead incurred by Rosetta are going to come up with the extra cash ( or pirate the native version while cursing the developer, or find a cheaper competing product ).
Either way, few, if any, current OS X developers are going to look at the Intel transition and say "this is way too hard to do with my existing code base, I don't see opportunity here, I'm going to go code for ( Windows/Linux/Solaris/BeOS/SCOUnix/etc ) instead."... That's all that matters for Apple in the long term. In the short term, it's a little annoying for users, and it's an opportunity for enterprising developers to snatch business from competing products by offering better product or cheaper prices to users faced with a paid upgrade, and/or gain user loyalty by providing free Intel Native updates, like some are already doing.
NeXT had OpenStep which was originally going to be pushed forward with OS X, as "Yellow Box" - theoretically, a set of runtime DLLs could have been installed on a Windows box, and the same code could run on either platform. (I don't remember if it was a common binary, fat binary, or recompile).
OpenStep is a specification. GNUStep is an implementation of that specification, which works on Intel now- even Windows if you're willing to use Cygwin or MingW and don't mind an app that doesn't look like a windows app. I never got into OpenStep Toolkit for Windows development ( I *think* that was the implementation ), but if there are DLLs involved, they're probably for windowing and other such similar basic functionality that would be used by any app? The app itself would be a binary, 'fat' only if compiled for multiple platforms of course. If you were careful enough not to use Apple-only features, you could do the same thing with GNUStep today.
Certainly code written in Carbon is going to have no common technology with NeXT. Maybe apps written with Cocoa code take advantage of what used to be Yellow Box.
Other than Altivec code ( which, espeically if older, will almost always need a complete rewrite), Carbon code is going to be the toughest to port to Intel, from what I understand. I'm not talking about single-line carbon library calls, those are probably no problem, I'm talking about Carbon windows, controls, and real serious amounts of legacy stuff. On the other hand, if Microsoft can move Office, everyone else can get going and start moving that Carbon code to Cocoa. It's not hard. Hire me to do it for you. Really. What are you waiting for... I don't waste THAT much time posting to /., I swear...
Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing fewer apps with weird Carbon behavior that mistakenly claim the computer is out of memory and don't know the right path name. They're actually pretty rare already, and I'm not going to miss them.
The reason NeXT's switch to Intel was more smooth for developers than Apple's switch to PPC had less to do with the number of vendors and more to do with the software technology involved.
This time around, Apple has ( almost ) exactly NeXT's technology, and again, for most developers, it's just a recompile.
What is stupid is Apple not updating that tech specs page to remove the single-CPU PowerMac model. Maybe they still have it there because you can buy them refurbished? You sure can't buy them new, check the store. Only 3 models, no single-CPU model. I think that happened a while ago, is the really stupid thing.
The tech spec page does say the dual-CPU PowerMacs come with 512 MB, though.
Do you really think that's true, or are you speculating ? Have you ever had a mini apart, or run ThermographX on a mini ? They actually are able to cool themselves pretty darn well, though the fans run hard enough to make some actual noise when they do get warm, it's hard to make them really do it.
I suspect there's plenty of ability for the mini to take a little more heat ( though not G5 amounts of heat ). Here is the chart of G4-class processors from Freescale; the 7447 is ( I think ) the one in the mini. I'm not exactly sure why the clock speeds are 1.25GHz and 1.47GHz when the Freescale site says 1.33GHz and 1.67GHz, but I suspect that's the difference between Freescale marketing and a stable system, not a difference imposed by the mini design. Or it could be that the chips that can run at higher clockspeeds reliably are going into PowerBooks which probably more importantly for the Apple to Intel decision are locked down to the maximum 1.67GHz speed. Maybe Apple doesn't want it's consumer-grade Mac mini to catch up to it's pro-grade PowerBook in performance. Or maybe those 1.67GHz G4s don't come cheap, easy and plentiful. I'm going to guess it's a combination of these three factors, but I have no way of knowing. I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with the design of the mini, though- it's more likely it's marketing position relative to the PowerBook and, possibly to a lesser extent, yields of stable chips.
Should I just say "yea, unless you want to run OS X", or leave it to someone else to feed your troll ;)
I actually want to take your off-hand witticism seriously, but first I want to make a point which I'm pretty sure you probably understand : If you can't run OS X on the hardware you're talking about, it's useless to someone who wants to run OS X. It doesn't matter how cheap or fast it is, it doesn't run OS X, so it's not relevant to the discussion, unless the discussion is "why you should stop using OS X and use something else". I don't mean to sound harsh or be annoying when I say that, but think about it for a minute- there's something really lame about your post, at least in the context of this thread. The lame thing is that your post is completely off-topic. It adds nothing useful to the discussion as written. Include the words "forget about OS X" and suddenly your post is less lame, somehow, though still slightly off-topic.
Really, if you want to run Linux, and not have the option of OS X, I agree with you completely... although, that's a pretty expensive chip and graphic card, so depending on what other components you put in your system, it's not likely to be less than $2500 anyway, and as such not *much* less expensive... please don't tell me your spending over $1500 on a CPU and graphics card and less than $1000 on everything ( mobo, memory, HD, DVD-R, power supply, case, sound card, keyboard, mouse, etc ) else in the system combined... or if you do, please tell me you didn't skimp on the power supply and motherboard, at least...
again, I don't disagree ( given the whole implicit "don't want to run OS X" thing ) but the 'more likely lower price' thing isn't a sure bet. On the other hand, it is somewhat nice to be able to pick-and-choose your own components, but doing so is rarely about price...
Heck, why build your own. Stuff like this $1999 pre-built system look pretty tempting. Of course, you still have to add in a DVD-RW and a few other goodies, and toss out the Radeon X800 they throw in, but it comes with a gig of RAM, so what the heck. Of course, still no OS X. You know, it's a real shame that M$ had to crush NeXTStep Intel with those anticompetitive OEM licensing agreements, or we might not have this problem.
I also applaud your choice of AMD over Intel, but Tom's found the Intel Pentium 840 Extreme Edition to be a bit better with regard to actual multi-application performance. If you're looking to run a single app, like a game, though, the AMD is clearly the better choice. It's what I'd go with, except for a couple of details. I'm not looking to spend a couple thousand dollars on a high-end machine to run either Linux or Windows. I'm looking to run Linux on my old PII, and looking to avoid Windows as much as possible. If I want to get real work done, most of my tasks aren't too CPU intensive, so my several-years-old flat-panel iMac gets the job done quite nicely. Some day after my kid gets out of college, I'll pick up a machine 20x as powerful as any of these for a couple hundred bucks and slip it into my wallet... and be glad I didn't blow my cash on hardware I didn't need. But I don't want to deal with a sea of viruses and worms, and I don't want to have the system my wife and 3-year-old son use be a custom build job, so I'm not using Windows and I'm not using Linux on that machine. I'm using OS X, and your suggestion is, in that context a useless troll, as well-meaning and humorous as it might otherwise be.
Now it's the judge I'm wondering about ;-)
Of course, a settlement in a case like this might make things much worse for Sony if, in the future, they're found to have broken the terms of the agreement, so that may have been the largest goal, along with helping to build precedent for similar future cases.
Why bother? It's not like you're going to play Doom3 on these machines.
Hey, the mini can't support dual 30-inch cinema displays, either! What a rip! If you really care about performance, buy a dual-G5 Powermac and a ATI Radeon 9650. Otherwise, recognize that you're making a choice to have a lower-than-maximum-performance machine.
Yes, I realize you're making a point that for the price of a little extra R&D and a small amount of money per machine, you could get an added dashboard effect... but you know what? Someone decided having that wasn't too important and isn't going to sell more Mac minis, and probably they asked a lot of people their opinions on the matter before making the decision. You might be the only person who noticed the mini didn't do whatever dashboard effect you're talking about.
The other thing I noticed is that clock speeds seem pretty much the same, which makes me think : hey, aren't these the same class of machines that are supposed to be switched to Intel first ? Need anyone wonder why ?
While the processor has the same clock speed, in every day use that 512MB does indeed make the machine quite a bit quicker. We should all be applauding Apple for finally putting 512MB standard in their machines.
That processor clock speed thing ? Apple's limited by the chips they are able to buy in that regard, and the fact that they aren't able to bump up the speeds speaks volumes as to why they're switching to Intel. Until the switch- which will likely happen first in the machines that were updated today - only folks who want OS X and iBook or Mac mini form factors will buy these machines. Not that they're too slow to be useful; they're extremely practical computers. You just wouldn't play Doom3 on them...
To be sure, someone somewhere will find a way to do it, but... it might not be worth it. Remember, Apple is working closely with Intel, the king of Trusted(sic) Computing. We might be talking something on the order of a hardware hack, which might make your $299 Dell more like $499, at which point why not buy an Apple. Not to mention driver issues ( if you have to buy an nVidia card for that Dell because you can't use the on-board video, same deal, the price just went up ).
Then again, maybe Apple won't care as much as we think, on the theory that pirated copies of their software will only make you want the Real Thing somewhere down the road. It isn't certain that running OS X on $299 Dells will be easy to do any time soon, though... I wouldn't get your hopes up too much.
I'd love to turn my four-year-old PC into an OS X box, myself, but I'm going to have to content myself with running Linux on it, I'm afraid...
Why go any further? OS X has just about everything you'd want. Plus it runs Office. Woohoo!
Seriously, I think OS X is way less daunting than Linux.
That last bit about OS X being less daunting is a bit of an understatement.
There is one single reason why I'd still run Linux, though. I still have a PC at home that I haven't decided yet to get rid of. I never use it, because I have a iMac, but... hmmm... maybe I'll throw Linux on it and tinker. But it's just that- a hobby kind of thing, thus not something a non-programmer type is going to do. Me, though, I'll do it. When I get some spare time...
I guess I just backed up your argument pretty well there, didn't I ? I originally though "hey, he's wrong, *I* will still use Linux"... sigh...
Where did you get that? The article said nothing of the sort. It said
That's 21 percent of employees in a group of business with 10,000 employees or more each.I'll give you that it's a fairly odd way to put it; just one very large company could make up the majority of these users. However, that's not likely the way it works; one company is about half OS X, another company is all-Wintel, the average is 21% of employees. Still, it seems that you either don't understand what the article said or didn't read it, if you think it implies entire Fortune 500 companies have gone *all* Mac OS X. Although, there's no real reason why not. We've been all OS X on desktops for years now ( not that we're a big company... ); there's little keeping your desktops from being OS X, and plenty of incentive to move in that direction.
Still, if some Fortune 500 company decides to go all-Apple, they'd be wise to chat with Apple about P.R. and related procurement pricing, don' t you think? The MacWorld article would be about that Fortune 500 company, not this report.
Now that I mention it, the first Fortune 500 company to do this might be doing a really smart thing, and not just from a picking-the-better-tool perspective... they'd get a ton of press.
A close second is grabbing a chainsaw and hacking the hell out of gang members.
What a great frickin' game. I mean, I love Katamari Damacy, but every now and then, I just have to put it down and go back to Vice City for a little antidote... there are just so many ways to create mayhem...
That is truly weird. I swear I only ever, ever IM with my wife. Just so she won't have to bug the secretary here at work, really. And yet, my score is over a thousand. I must be in the buddy list of some seriously indescriminate folks. Like spambots or something...
My wife has two accounts, one of which has two-thirds the score I have, and one which really *should* be defunct ( she closed an account fairly recently, thus the screen name is locked up, not taken, and should only be in the buddy lists of a few people who failed to remove it ). It still scores a 20. If it was even in a few lists, you'd think the score there would be higher. I mean, we know teenagers... do you have a minimum score of 20 or something?
Why am I even thinking about this stupid-ass thing? I don't know. I guess I'm wondering who would bother to put my AIM address in their buddy list since I almost never IM anyone.