"I think it failed not because most people who want to listen to music aren't techies and they're happy...with Windows Media Player , winamp or whatever else cool kids are using to play music these days..."
People who want to listen to music want to listen to music, not pollute the process with tribalist nonsense such as this. People have better things to do than engage in nerd wars over music players. How many plugins does a music player need? None.
It's sad that so many people value what "team" they are on so highly.
Firewire lost out but not for this reason. Firewire had other design faults, too, as did USB but a consortium of companies with disparate agendas weren't going to be successful competing against a monolithic Intel that would integrate support for the opposition in every chipset for free.
Indeed, there isn't any repeated misinformation here other than my own.;)
If only the people who are such experts in this topic were even around back then. Unlike the ACs here, I actually used this stuff when it came out and was actively involved in technical development of products that used 1394 competition (SSA and FC back then). 1394 is just another area of deliberate misinformation that suits Apple's agenda. Technically speaking, 1394 is actually embarassingly bad.
Once again, this does not contradict what I have said. There's a huge gap of time between 1986 and 1995, some of which Firewire was abandoned and there's no evidence that "an alternative to SCSI" was its intention in the 80's. Firewire came about in the mid-90's *because* Sony needed it for DV. There were no applications for 1394 other than DV originally.
"Why waste space with internal drives and connectors that are slower than the external ones?"
Ignoring the fact that they wouldn't be, you are suggesting that this would be unacceptable yet attaching your storage "over the network" is a good answer? Seriously?
"The bandwidth in thunderbolt 2 should be enough for some serious raid configurations, right?"
This is a dumb question with no answer. What defines "serious"? Why only bandwidth? In what moment in time? Thunderbolt is enough bandwidth to scale to a certain point. You can attach disk which means you can attach RAID. That isn't the question nor is it the complaint.
"External disk makers are going to be very happy:)"
And fanboys are ecstatic.
How many 4K Thunderbolt monitors are there? None. How many hardware platforms allow you to create additional monitor connections based on the resolution of your existing displays? None.
Wow, this reads like it's written by someone who knows nothing.
"...still a waste at $500+ add on for only SATA quality..."
SATA is not a measure of quality. SATA is not "worse" than SAS.
"...Fibre Channel external arrays that are heavily managed, RAIDed, and backed up to tape."
Like this is universally a good thing or that desktops need "heavily managed" drives...or RAID.
"These new Mac Pros are perfect to suck down a few hundred gig of video and process on the workstation at high speed. Then push the finished work back to the SAN at almost "RAM" speed via Thunderbolt 2."
No, they aren't because they have no storage, because Thunderbolt runs nowhere near "RAM" speed, because the connection to the SAN is slower still than even Thunderbolt, and because combining SANs and desktop content creation is dumb. Video creation involves working with large amounts of transitory data. Backing this with RAID would be of low value and would either be costly with mirroring or terribly slow with parity schemes. SAN makes this worse still. The idea is stupid though I have no doubt that some do it. There are plenty of stupid people, many of them posting here.
How are cloud platforms relevant in a discussion of PCIe SSD, or are you trying to simply imply that the new Mac Pro is somehow the king of cloud servers too? Funny how people are only now talking about PCIe SSD because Apple integrated it into a new machine, just like how no one would accept a workstation platform with no integral storage except that Apple just introduced it. This isn't about what the right answer is, it's about how Apple can't do wrong.
The new machine would have much broader appeal if it (1) could have some degree of GPU configurability for those that don't need that much GPU, (2) could take internal drives for those with modest storage needs beyond SSD, and (3) wasn't made to be an expensive, disposable appliance. If the shape weren't round the system could be of similar size and still offer some internal storage. This is, once again, Apple sacrificing function for style. Frankly, 4 internal 2.5" bays would be trivial to add, aesthetics aside. Then you could add spindles OR a massive SSD bank internally. Apple isn't creative or innovative, they are predictable and really pretty dumb, just less dumb than the competition.
"Thunderbolt? Which even allows for external GPU expansion..."
So does USB...and serial for that matter. Whether one would want to is another matter. Thunderbolt is a small fraction of native x16 speeds and you'd laugh at anyone who suggested otherwise, except that it's coming from Apple. Considering what will be built in, nothing attached to Thunderbolt would be meaningful.
"It's not three displays, it's up to three *4K" displays (4096 x 2160). Where you really driving six displays of that resolution before? You could drive more displays with lower resolution."
Where is your evidence of this? Making crap up to toot your fanboy horn as usual. Name one system EVER where you could subtract pixels from one display and magically be allowed to connect another. You are such a stooge.
"Basically it seems like you didn't bother to even read the specs [apple.com] for even a moment."
Those aren't specs, it's an ad and you're a lying sack. Nowhere does it say that more than displays are supported.
USB was on ALL new motherboards before Microsoft supported it in Windows. Microsoft required it for certification and then grossly missed their end of the deal.
USB was ubiquitous in PCs when the iMac was announced but was unknown because of MS's failure. Apple simply grabbed mature technology off the shelf and claimed to be the visionary.
The irony was that USB's primary reason for existence was to replace legacy IO yet Apple claimed to be the forward-thinking company that invented the concept. Legacy-free was the idea that gave birth to USB and it was fully formed and mature when Apple swiped it.
Firewire's reason for existence was far less grand than people like to imply. Apple was looking for ways to overcome their horrible disadvantage in processor technology and they were researching MP interconnects. They eventually abandoned Firewire but Sony found a need in their new DV standard. Sony wanted peer connectivity because editing was largely done outside of computing in those days. Firewire was never envisioned as a high speed serial IO connect, it just lucked into it.
Intel developed USB without the slightest concern for Firewire. The two were largely coincidental. Firewire came about because Sony wanted a serial interface for its new digital video standard and Apple had some old lab tech in the garbage heap. Sony made Firewire a success from spare parts while Intel developed their own from scratch. Apple lacked the leadership to deliver any of it but had the gonads to claim all of it.
Apple doesn't own 1394, only the Firewire name. Never underestimate ignorance and revisionist history.
Apple had nothing to do with USB other than taking credit for it. Furthermore, Apple was a bankrupt, meaningless player at the time willing to claim anything to impressionable fools to stay alive. Worked on you.
"And one larger fan draws more air per minute with lower power and, more importantly, significantly less noise than 4-8 fans."
Not at comparable airflow it won't, but "comparable" is always the enemy of Apple arguments. It's so convenient to define what is wanted by what Apple does, why not do it here too?
The single, large fan is great if it can provide enough flow for the job, but for such a supposed computing powerhouse it sure could stand being larger than it is. Just think, with the extra diameter needed for the larger fan they could have afforded to put a hard drive bay in there, but then it would threaten to be as utilitarian as it is pretentious now.
This is just like the mini has always been, clever packaging crippled by making it simply too small. Hell, even the mini can now take 2 hard drives, this thing is limited to the storage solution of a Macbook Air! Ridiculous.
Companies don't want to do Thunderbolt because the licensing fees are so high. There are many downsides to integrating PCIe AND DisplayPort into one standard where you can't make video optional and that's why a display-less competitor is being developed. Thunderbolt is questionable.
Sure, we "don't know pricing on anything yet" but we do know that it will be inherently more expensive for no good reason. With 6 of these connectors available, some could have been dedicated to video at lower cost. Bad decisions for vanity reasons, an Apple tradition.
Can't be too happy about the possibility of Fusion drives since they are required to be inside the chassis. Maybe this will mean Apple lifts that gratuitous restriction. I doubt it.
Nothing ruins the appearance of a small chassis faster than the external drive chassis beside it. Pretty much an existence proof for inadequacy.
"The bandwidth here is basically faster than 6 x8 slots."
Why don't you compare them to current PCIe? Oh yeah, because then you'd have nothing to say.
Current PCIe is 10GT/s PER LANE. Oh yeah, and Gen1 PCIe is 2.5 GT/s per lane, not 2 like you quoted. You can't even get obsolete technology right without lying about it.
These 6 ports are cumulatively slower than a single x16 slot. I suggest you stop posting.
Sure, ignore what you don't understand. If you don't know it. it can't possibly matter, right?
Energy density is fine but it's the final product that matters. Packaging is a significant penalty for LiIon, it's important to know the difference here rather than pretend it's all rosy.
"But if I'm building a system for someone who mostly does web surfing, Office, and occasionally some light gaming like WoW and The Sims,..."
Then who cares about the "price/performance perspective" either? When performance doesn't really matter, there's no reason to consider it in the equation at all.
But with Agile there is no outcome, just process. Agile does not work toward an end nor does it invest in understanding when there might be one. It is optimized for projects for which the intent is a continuous stream of incremental deliverables of little or no value and no completion. Great for sustainable billing and the pretense of interchangeable man-months, bullshit for anything worth doing.
There are three things that each Scrum team member is expected to relate in turn: - What they have done since the last standup - What they are working on now - Any impediments that are getting in their way
Of course, such meetings aren't unique to Agile and aren't what makes Agile suck. There are other, far worse, problems.
Slashdot Mirror
"I think it failed not because most people who want to listen to music aren't techies and they're happy ...with Windows Media Player , winamp or whatever else cool kids are using to play music these days..."
People who want to listen to music want to listen to music, not pollute the process with tribalist nonsense such as this. People have better things to do than engage in nerd wars over music players. How many plugins does a music player need? None.
It's sad that so many people value what "team" they are on so highly.
Firewire lost out but not for this reason. Firewire had other design faults, too, as did USB but a consortium of companies with disparate agendas weren't going to be successful competing against a monolithic Intel that would integrate support for the opposition in every chipset for free.
You don't see because you don't want to. This was the GP's claim...
"USB came about because Apple wanted to charge other manufacturers a royalty rate on firewire that was higher than they could stomach."
So first, Apple bashing could not have been my motivation because the GP was Apple bashing in his comment.
Second, the GP is wrong because "Firewire", the thing Apple licenses, is not required for 1394.
Third, the fundamental point the GP claimed was the origins of USB. He is completely wrong on that.
But, of course you can't see that. Nice post, AC.
Indeed, there isn't any repeated misinformation here other than my own. ;)
If only the people who are such experts in this topic were even around back then. Unlike the ACs here, I actually used this stuff when it came out and was actively involved in technical development of products that used 1394 competition (SSA and FC back then). 1394 is just another area of deliberate misinformation that suits Apple's agenda. Technically speaking, 1394 is actually embarassingly bad.
Once again, this does not contradict what I have said. There's a huge gap of time between 1986 and 1995, some of which Firewire was abandoned and there's no evidence that "an alternative to SCSI" was its intention in the 80's. Firewire came about in the mid-90's *because* Sony needed it for DV. There were no applications for 1394 other than DV originally.
Indeed, revisionist history is easy to find on Wikipedia.
The text you quoted is entirely consistent with what I said and with the actual history of Firewire.
As ignorant as your summary is, SuperKendall, it's more flattering than a summary of any of your posts would be.
"Why waste space with internal drives and connectors that are slower than the external ones?"
Ignoring the fact that they wouldn't be, you are suggesting that this would be unacceptable yet attaching your storage "over the network" is a good answer? Seriously?
"The bandwidth in thunderbolt 2 should be enough for some serious raid configurations, right?"
This is a dumb question with no answer. What defines "serious"? Why only bandwidth? In what moment in time? Thunderbolt is enough bandwidth to scale to a certain point. You can attach disk which means you can attach RAID. That isn't the question nor is it the complaint.
"External disk makers are going to be very happy :)"
And fanboys are ecstatic.
How many 4K Thunderbolt monitors are there? None. How many hardware platforms allow you to create additional monitor connections based on the resolution of your existing displays? None.
Wow, this reads like it's written by someone who knows nothing.
"...still a waste at $500+ add on for only SATA quality..."
SATA is not a measure of quality. SATA is not "worse" than SAS.
"...Fibre Channel external arrays that are heavily managed, RAIDed, and backed up to tape."
Like this is universally a good thing or that desktops need "heavily managed" drives...or RAID.
"These new Mac Pros are perfect to suck down a few hundred gig of video and process on the workstation at high speed. Then push the finished work back to the SAN at almost "RAM" speed via Thunderbolt 2."
No, they aren't because they have no storage, because Thunderbolt runs nowhere near "RAM" speed, because the connection to the SAN is slower still than even Thunderbolt, and because combining SANs and desktop content creation is dumb. Video creation involves working with large amounts of transitory data. Backing this with RAID would be of low value and would either be costly with mirroring or terribly slow with parity schemes. SAN makes this worse still. The idea is stupid though I have no doubt that some do it. There are plenty of stupid people, many of them posting here.
How are cloud platforms relevant in a discussion of PCIe SSD, or are you trying to simply imply that the new Mac Pro is somehow the king of cloud servers too? Funny how people are only now talking about PCIe SSD because Apple integrated it into a new machine, just like how no one would accept a workstation platform with no integral storage except that Apple just introduced it. This isn't about what the right answer is, it's about how Apple can't do wrong.
The new machine would have much broader appeal if it (1) could have some degree of GPU configurability for those that don't need that much GPU, (2) could take internal drives for those with modest storage needs beyond SSD, and (3) wasn't made to be an expensive, disposable appliance. If the shape weren't round the system could be of similar size and still offer some internal storage. This is, once again, Apple sacrificing function for style. Frankly, 4 internal 2.5" bays would be trivial to add, aesthetics aside. Then you could add spindles OR a massive SSD bank internally. Apple isn't creative or innovative, they are predictable and really pretty dumb, just less dumb than the competition.
"Thunderbolt? Which even allows for external GPU expansion..."
So does USB...and serial for that matter. Whether one would want to is another matter. Thunderbolt is a small fraction of native x16 speeds and you'd laugh at anyone who suggested otherwise, except that it's coming from Apple. Considering what will be built in, nothing attached to Thunderbolt would be meaningful.
"It's not three displays, it's up to three *4K" displays (4096 x 2160). Where you really driving six displays of that resolution before? You could drive more displays with lower resolution."
Where is your evidence of this? Making crap up to toot your fanboy horn as usual. Name one system EVER where you could subtract pixels from one display and magically be allowed to connect another. You are such a stooge.
"Basically it seems like you didn't bother to even read the specs [apple.com] for even a moment."
Those aren't specs, it's an ad and you're a lying sack. Nowhere does it say that more than displays are supported.
USB was on ALL new motherboards before Microsoft supported it in Windows. Microsoft required it for certification and then grossly missed their end of the deal.
USB was ubiquitous in PCs when the iMac was announced but was unknown because of MS's failure. Apple simply grabbed mature technology off the shelf and claimed to be the visionary.
The irony was that USB's primary reason for existence was to replace legacy IO yet Apple claimed to be the forward-thinking company that invented the concept. Legacy-free was the idea that gave birth to USB and it was fully formed and mature when Apple swiped it.
Firewire's reason for existence was far less grand than people like to imply. Apple was looking for ways to overcome their horrible disadvantage in processor technology and they were researching MP interconnects. They eventually abandoned Firewire but Sony found a need in their new DV standard. Sony wanted peer connectivity because editing was largely done outside of computing in those days. Firewire was never envisioned as a high speed serial IO connect, it just lucked into it.
Intel developed USB without the slightest concern for Firewire. The two were largely coincidental. Firewire came about because Sony wanted a serial interface for its new digital video standard and Apple had some old lab tech in the garbage heap. Sony made Firewire a success from spare parts while Intel developed their own from scratch. Apple lacked the leadership to deliver any of it but had the gonads to claim all of it.
Apple doesn't own 1394, only the Firewire name. Never underestimate ignorance and revisionist history.
Apple had nothing to do with USB other than taking credit for it. Furthermore, Apple was a bankrupt, meaningless player at the time willing to claim anything to impressionable fools to stay alive. Worked on you.
"And one larger fan draws more air per minute with lower power and, more importantly, significantly less noise than 4-8 fans."
Not at comparable airflow it won't, but "comparable" is always the enemy of Apple arguments. It's so convenient to define what is wanted by what Apple does, why not do it here too?
The single, large fan is great if it can provide enough flow for the job, but for such a supposed computing powerhouse it sure could stand being larger than it is. Just think, with the extra diameter needed for the larger fan they could have afforded to put a hard drive bay in there, but then it would threaten to be as utilitarian as it is pretentious now.
This is just like the mini has always been, clever packaging crippled by making it simply too small. Hell, even the mini can now take 2 hard drives, this thing is limited to the storage solution of a Macbook Air! Ridiculous.
"The right-angle PCIe slot for the flash is enough of a standard that I have a genuine Intel mini-ITX Atom motherboard with one."
No, you don't though you may have a board with a mini-PCIe card slot which is not the same thing.
Companies don't want to do Thunderbolt because the licensing fees are so high. There are many downsides to integrating PCIe AND DisplayPort into one standard where you can't make video optional and that's why a display-less competitor is being developed. Thunderbolt is questionable.
Sure, we "don't know pricing on anything yet" but we do know that it will be inherently more expensive for no good reason. With 6 of these connectors available, some could have been dedicated to video at lower cost. Bad decisions for vanity reasons, an Apple tradition.
Can't be too happy about the possibility of Fusion drives since they are required to be inside the chassis. Maybe this will mean Apple lifts that gratuitous restriction. I doubt it.
Nothing ruins the appearance of a small chassis faster than the external drive chassis beside it. Pretty much an existence proof for inadequacy.
"The bandwidth here is basically faster than 6 x8 slots."
Why don't you compare them to current PCIe? Oh yeah, because then you'd have nothing to say.
Current PCIe is 10GT/s PER LANE. Oh yeah, and Gen1 PCIe is 2.5 GT/s per lane, not 2 like you quoted. You can't even get obsolete technology right without lying about it.
These 6 ports are cumulatively slower than a single x16 slot. I suggest you stop posting.
"Not on my watch."
Of course, Anonymous Cowards aren't on watch. People who matter aren't such douchebags.
"Plus a little more for the casing."
Sure, ignore what you don't understand. If you don't know it. it can't possibly matter, right?
Energy density is fine but it's the final product that matters. Packaging is a significant penalty for LiIon, it's important to know the difference here rather than pretend it's all rosy.
"But if I'm building a system for someone who mostly does web surfing, Office, and occasionally some light gaming like WoW and The Sims, ..."
Then who cares about the "price/performance perspective" either? When performance doesn't really matter, there's no reason to consider it in the equation at all.
"...talk about outcome, not process."
But with Agile there is no outcome, just process. Agile does not work toward an end nor does it invest in understanding when there might be one. It is optimized for projects for which the intent is a continuous stream of incremental deliverables of little or no value and no completion. Great for sustainable billing and the pretense of interchangeable man-months, bullshit for anything worth doing.
"The daily standups should be about 5 minutes and are mainly for communicating problems encountered, if any."
You are incorrect, though "You're doing it wrong" is the standard comeback for anyone who criticizes Agile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-up_meeting
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/daily-scrum/
http://agile.dzone.com/articles/agile-health-check-daily-stand
There are three things that each Scrum team member is expected to relate in turn:
- What they have done since the last standup
- What they are working on now
- Any impediments that are getting in their way
Of course, such meetings aren't unique to Agile and aren't what makes Agile suck. There are other, far worse, problems.
Deep thinking AC.
Except they aren't portable and macs don't support them.