Home Theatre Secrets DVD benchmark shows the Oppo players as being one of the best, if not the best, and they are sub $200 players that outrank $2000 players.
I find it interesting that the most critically acclaimed DVD decks of the last couple of years were left out of this comparison...
My Macbook (not pro) has been perfect as well. The SMC update did make it a bit cooler (10 degrees C on average), but I didn't have a complaint about the heat before. While it was hot, it wasn't hotter than any other notebook I've seen.
I never shut my Macbook down, so I've never had a chance to see if I suffer the crash! Sleep mode works so well the only time I've really done a shutdown was to install RAM. Other than that it has been sleeps and restarts for updates. One keynote/sleep related crash made me do a force shutdown, but I've never crashed from closing the lid.
The current line of Apple laptops, back through the last one or two generation of G4, do hibernate as well, although it is in a slightly modified fashion.
When the Mac goes to sleep, it goes into standby mode and also saves the RAM contents to disk to set up hibernate mode.
If power is lost, the Mac boots and uses the hibernate files to instantly go back to where it was when it went to sleep. Apple calls this 'Safe Sleep'
If one is adventurous they can find 3rd party utilities to do hibernate be default on the Macs, but when the Mac is asleep it uses so little power I haven't had a need for that yet.
Also, I did have a Gateway laptop at one point that Hibernate worked fine in Windows, but puked in Suse.
Sleep works on Windows as well. Perhaps you should try it some time.
On the very few PC laptops I have used, I've never had an issue with it. But based on the friends, family, coworkers, associates, and tech forums I've dealt with in the past it seems this is very model by model dependent. Is it a windows problem or a crappy motherboard problem? I don't know. Does it matter? Not really. It gives Wintel a reputation of sleep issues. Mactel's sleep functionality works almost as well as the PPC Macs did (the exception is the lid close crash when shutting down), hence they have a good reputation.
1st reason, if you mute the sound, the startup chime is also muted.
2nd reason, sleep actually works very well on Mac models, and most Mac laptop users don't shut their machines down often. This of course is not true of 100% of the population, but it is true of a very large portion. As one example the Macbook has a bug where if you shut it down and close the lid, it crashes and doesn't shut down. While this is a known issue, very few Macbook users report it or complain about it.
I have only shut down my Macbook once, and that was to upgrade the RAM, since then it has been sleep only when it was not in use.
Did you not read the summary or the article? This exchange program is for the older lithium-ion batteries in the discontinued G4 portables, not the lithium-polymer batteries in the new Intel portables.
Yes, but the GP is referring to the fact that a couple of months ago there was a recall for Macbook Pros as well, due to the swelling problem they had. He was also pointing out the different URLs for those with different machines.
No consumer OS by Apple has ever used CD keys AFAIK. OS X definitely does not. OS X Server definitely does, and with Tiger it checks the local network to make sure you are only using one copy, unless you have a special code for a site license (not common, but found at Universities sometimes).
As far as the install disks. With Mac OS X, and some machine under OS 8 and 9, there were specific builds of the OS when those machines where shipped that supported those machines, and that is typically the OS on that disk, although they do upgrade those disks when new OS versions come out. It is also to help slow down piracy. A retail box OS will install on anything though (well not currently Intel machines but that will change with Leopard), all the way back to a B&W G3. Apparently if you pay the $129 retail, or $69 edu price they are less concerned with piracy... (that was a joke).
Start --> Control Panel --> Add/Remove Programs --> Add/Remove Windows Components. Uncheck "Internet Explorer."
That removes the icons in the Start Menu and other places, but doesn't actually uninstall anything. Nice try though. The same applies to Outlook Express and Messenger.
How the fuck is somebody innocently calling a wrong number "harassment"?
I had a friend have this happen once. If all of the calls were actually from the same person, it could be the same sort of situation.
In his situation the previous owner of the number had a lot of things go to collection. They obviously either just dropped service, or changed to a new number to avoid collections. In some systems his caller ID still had the old name on it.
He started getting a lot of calls for that person, even though the number had been not in service for some time (at least a few months), and it turned out to be a collection agency. But they played a game where they pretended to be a concerned friend looking for the person who used to have the number that they 'lost touch with a while back.'
They did everything they could to get him to give them some sort of information, new phone number, address, etc. The interesting part is that they weren't trying to get the old owner's info, but his current info, so they could transition the account to him.
All that is precisely what makes the settlement so brilliant. Everyone won.
Microsoft got a get out of jail free card, plus a way to make a profit on their settlement.
Microsoft also got rights to keep Internet Explorer 5 as the Mac default browser (this was before Safari), and as wacky as it sounds, it was the best browser on the platform at that time.
Apple got to show a commitment from one of their largest developers that was rather long (5 year commitment for software). Plus they got to show off by having a company that is supposedly their #1 enemy say that the Mac platform was so great that they were willing to do all of those things.
This is one case were Steve's Reality Distortion Field worked in both Apple's and Microsoft's favor.
Conveniently most people don't remember, or never realized at the time that there was a patent dispute. Part of the $150 million deal was a patent cross licensing deal.
So let's look at facts:
Microsoft buys $150 million in non-voting stock
Apple had way more money in cash at the time (thus rumors of their demise were...)
Apple gets access to Microsoft Patents and Microsoft gets access to Apple patents (which is one reason why Microsoft can make their new apps look a lot like Apple's I would guess)
This is what I think most people would refer to as an out of court settlement, politically twisted to look like a political gesture.
"... it's pretty weird to say that these sorts of API translation technologies will be "the way" to bring games to the Mac when Intel-based Macs are a tiny minority of the total Macintosh user base."
I've been told by those who do market research into such things that the overwhelming majority of game sales are transacted with people who have purchased a new system within the last 12 months. Assuming this is true (and it seems to be) then the relevant segment of the market for Mac OS X hosted game software will be almost entirely on the Intel based Macintosh models by February.
In addition to this, it is my understanding that developers and Mac sites that closely monitor their logs are seeing much larger adoption of Intel than they expected. It is reasonable to expect that there will be a rise in the figures for Intel since up to this week 3/4 of the Mac line was Intel, but even considering that the numbers have been growing quickly.
I personally wanted to upgrade for a long time, but I was able to put it off, especially when the Intel announcement came, as I was interested to see what would be brought to the table. For me it was the Macbook announcement that did it. I had waited long enough, and it fit into a great performance pocket for my use. Portable, powerful, rugged (compared to the pro), inexpensive (it cost less than any Mac I have ever bought, and is way more powerful and flexible), and it does everything I need with ease.
That coupled with the comfort factor for switchers (they can always put Windows on it and go back 'home') makes the Intel segment more considerable than one would initially think.
the main reason you hear more quality complaints from Mac users isn't that the quality is lower than Dell, but because the users expect more.
While I believe this is true, it doesn't fully cover the situation. There is a very vocal segment of Mac users, and they also tend to be the kind that upgrade to every new product. Seriously, if you go to the Apple Discussions Board and read the signatures, there are people there that have bought upwards of 5 machines in the last year or two. These people tend to be picky and loud mouthed when they are not totally pleased with a product.
This is probably one reason they upgrade so much, although in reality it is either to show off, and/or just part of their addiction.
More on topic, I have a 2Ghz White Macbook and it is the best machine I have ever owned. In the last month the only issue I had was waiting for my 2GB of RAM to arrive and dealing with slowness. After the upgrade all has been good. Technically I may have the moo, very occasionally, typically on battery, I hear the fans pulsing. It is very quiet though, and I would never try to get the machine replaced just for that.
I also have two friends with Macbook Pros, one has had his for several months, and the other for less than two months. The later is a switcher and bought it on my recommendation, so if anything goes wrong I'm certain to hear about it. So far neither has had any serious issue other than installing old software drivers or startup apps that caused lag or flakiness in specific applications.
From what I can tell, having researched the Macbook for a while before i bought mine, and reading up everything I can, the Macbook and Macbook Pro both have failure/defect rates similar or lower than other companies, and even other Apple products historically. The issue at hand has more to do with the vocal users, and a lot more switchers at this time who are also vocal as to their disappointment. For some reference, Macintouch recently did a survey on these machines. Just take that info with a grain of salt, as the vocal elite and a number of vocal switchers are involved, and many people not having any problems have a tendency not to respond to these sorts of things.
It's just a "delete doesn't really mean delete" feature.
Actually it is versioning. Something not announced during the keynote, but mentioned in part of another announcement is that Subversion is a standard part of the OS in Leopard. Time Machine is very likely using Subversion on a whole filesystem level, and with an API so that your own application can tie in easily.
From what they said, and what the demos show I think it works like this:
Any changes you make in a Time Machine aware app, or in the finder do commits to a SVN repository
By default, at midnight and with an external drive configured as a backup drive, the commits for the day are saved to the backup drive. Probably freeing up space on the internal/boot drive so that it isn't filled up just by svn commits.
So it is probable that during the day you can see any changes you have made even without your backup drive online, and with the drive online you can see changes back to when you started backing up to the external drive.
This is an amazing feature, plus having svn available system wide may lead more people to use it that may not have previously. I just started using it for a web site development project I have been working on, and while I'm new at it, and right now it slows me down more than really helps me, I can certainly see the benefits of being able to better track my changes.
apple doesn't run any of the applications I use often.
So either you:
are misinformed/confused
mainly run games
mainly run viruses and spyware
I keed, I keed...:P
Seriously though, Parallels and/or Bootcamp is your friend. Learn a friendly, powerful, and clean system, while maintaining the ability to run your malware^H^H^H^H^H^H^HWindows Software at the same time.
This may not be something you are interested in, but I believe anyone doing any serious video work should have an eRAID system. I used one of these for a year and a half as the storage system for a server at a university. While you would not be able to use the SATA capability, it is no slouch via Firewire or USB 2.0 High Speed. It also allows for hardware RAID5 so you can have a bit of redundancy if you suffer a drive failure, and when I tested its degraded mode, the server ran fine with 24 users attached and hitting files constantly. And yes, some of them were dealing with video, others with 3D animation work. We replaced this bad boy with an Xserve RAID due to its expanded feature set and getting special funds from a dean to make it happen.
If you are concerned about drive heat, which another poster was, the eRaid has a good cooling system, and the drives feel pretty cool when you pull them out. That said the thing is loud, so you would want to stuff it in a closet.
Instead I'm torturing myself waiting for the new Intel desktop Mac announcement
Notice he is not planning on buying a G5, he only stated he would buy one if it could do both PPC & Intel. So either way he will be getting a machine that may not run his current software.
I'm curious though what software you have run across that the Intel's do not run. A lot of stuff is available as Universal Binaries, some items are available in separate PPC or Intel versions (Protools is one example), and a heck of a lot of software runs under Rosetta just fine. The largest market for people wanting to stay with PPC are those that are using Classic apps, and quite frankly there is no need to upgrade to use Classic, as most of those apps have not been upgraded in years, Classic has been deprecated for over 5 years now.
My general use machine at home is a Blue & White G3 upgraded to a 550 MHz G4.
If you have been putting up with a G3 that has been upgraded to a G4 (so it still has an ancient memory/ATA/system controllers) then why are you under the impression you need a Quad to replace it??
Any current Intel machine will blow that so far out of the water it just isn't funny. I have a G4 933 (QS 2002) and just got a Macbook. The Macbook is portable, uses less power, and spanks my G4 around the block as far as performance goes. Even with Parallels running and 2 VM's going. Seriously a MB or Mini Mac Intel would more than be a super upgrade for you. Obviously you don't need wiz-bang if you have been living with the B&W that long. Especially since we have definitely entered the realm of most new computers being capable of way more then you will typically ever use. I even use Protools regularly, and on the Macbook it has plenty of power for most of the sessions I run. I'll never have a deskop again, except in very special circumstances (perhaps an installed machine in a studio, but that isn't necessarily considered a general purpose computer anymore).
As another note, I have no idea what you are talking about with the $30 discount for Parallels with Windows, and I have checked their site. Their typical $30 discount, however, expires Tomorrow. So if you think you might go Intel in the near future you probably should act on it.
How about making Firefox look like Outlook express?
Wow... I mean... Wow
I'm not sure how you think making a web browser look like an email client will do anyone any good.
I won't even go into what I personally think of the Outlook Express interface, as that is just opinion.
You know now that I think of it you are on to something here, OSS needs this kind of thinking to really take off. We need Open Office to be designed to look just like Nero. And if only Evolution looked just like Windows Movie Maker. That will make adoption so much easier!
Actually if you look at the pictures (not sure if these articles have the full pictures, I RTFA'd earlier when it was posted on the Apple forums) the paper is held in a small circular indent above the battery. The battery holds it in place and it should not escape, unless Macbook batteries start swelling like the Macbook Pro batteries and push some gap into the mix.
Okay, I can certainly see digging at the editors for not being the most professional editors in the world, but this is a bit silly.
Anyone who has ever seen/. before knows that the blurbs are user submitted, and in many articles and the FAQ itself Taco has stated that the only editing they do is either in dire need or malformed html.
As such it is pretty obvious, especially with the new quoted view with the CSS that the price information was written up by the submitter, and the mention that it isn't actually available yet was added as additional information by the editor. Is this syntactically incorrect, as a whole without context yes, but in the framework presented, no.
the new compulsory license governs all nondramatic musical works and does not permit copyright owners to opt-out
Sounds more to me like they are trying to rip off artists with this bill than end users or music services. The RIAA and associated companies are already well known for collecting royalties and not distributing them to the artists. This could let them dip into the independent artists pockets which are mostly inaccessible to them at this time.
Linux is enormously widely used at universities, in research labs, in retail desktop applications, and on corporate desktops (and that's not even counting all the embedded consumer applications). The presence of OS X in all those areas is at best modest.
While Mac OS is not as widely deployed these days at Universities as it has been in the past, calling its presence modest is not entirely genuine either.
I have worked for many universities in the last few years, I'm working at one now, and my previous job was at one (and before that I worked for other universities as well).
At each university Mac deployment was quite a bit larger than linux deployment. It was also more public (i.e. Macs in labs and classrooms), rather than hidden in research type areas.
Of course every University is different, but I have yet to see a campus with a large linux deployment outside of one or two departments.
Fine, if you want to be snippy about it, modify it to:
Create a new deployment image with Master Browser service disabled.
Or any of a dozen other methods you could use.
Sometimes people just use conversational english. It is quick and easy, and personally I assume that the people in that situation know good ways to deploy the solution. If you need to be hand held all the way through, might I suggest Google?
Slashdot Mirror
Home Theatre Secrets DVD benchmark shows the Oppo players as being one of the best, if not the best, and they are sub $200 players that outrank $2000 players.
I find it interesting that the most critically acclaimed DVD decks of the last couple of years were left out of this comparison...
My Macbook (not pro) has been perfect as well. The SMC update did make it a bit cooler (10 degrees C on average), but I didn't have a complaint about the heat before. While it was hot, it wasn't hotter than any other notebook I've seen.
I never shut my Macbook down, so I've never had a chance to see if I suffer the crash! Sleep mode works so well the only time I've really done a shutdown was to install RAM. Other than that it has been sleeps and restarts for updates. One keynote/sleep related crash made me do a force shutdown, but I've never crashed from closing the lid.
These are amazing machines.
The current line of Apple laptops, back through the last one or two generation of G4, do hibernate as well, although it is in a slightly modified fashion.
When the Mac goes to sleep, it goes into standby mode and also saves the RAM contents to disk to set up hibernate mode.
If power is lost, the Mac boots and uses the hibernate files to instantly go back to where it was when it went to sleep. Apple calls this 'Safe Sleep'
If one is adventurous they can find 3rd party utilities to do hibernate be default on the Macs, but when the Mac is asleep it uses so little power I haven't had a need for that yet.
Also, I did have a Gateway laptop at one point that Hibernate worked fine in Windows, but puked in Suse.
1st reason, if you mute the sound, the startup chime is also muted.
2nd reason, sleep actually works very well on Mac models, and most Mac laptop users don't shut their machines down often. This of course is not true of 100% of the population, but it is true of a very large portion. As one example the Macbook has a bug where if you shut it down and close the lid, it crashes and doesn't shut down. While this is a known issue, very few Macbook users report it or complain about it.
I have only shut down my Macbook once, and that was to upgrade the RAM, since then it has been sleep only when it was not in use.
As far as the install disks. With Mac OS X, and some machine under OS 8 and 9, there were specific builds of the OS when those machines where shipped that supported those machines, and that is typically the OS on that disk, although they do upgrade those disks when new OS versions come out. It is also to help slow down piracy. A retail box OS will install on anything though (well not currently Intel machines but that will change with Leopard), all the way back to a B&W G3. Apparently if you pay the $129 retail, or $69 edu price they are less concerned with piracy... (that was a joke).
In his situation the previous owner of the number had a lot of things go to collection. They obviously either just dropped service, or changed to a new number to avoid collections. In some systems his caller ID still had the old name on it.
He started getting a lot of calls for that person, even though the number had been not in service for some time (at least a few months), and it turned out to be a collection agency. But they played a game where they pretended to be a concerned friend looking for the person who used to have the number that they 'lost touch with a while back.'
They did everything they could to get him to give them some sort of information, new phone number, address, etc. The interesting part is that they weren't trying to get the old owner's info, but his current info, so they could transition the account to him.
It took a call from a lawyer to get it to stop.
Microsoft got a get out of jail free card, plus a way to make a profit on their settlement.
Microsoft also got rights to keep Internet Explorer 5 as the Mac default browser (this was before Safari), and as wacky as it sounds, it was the best browser on the platform at that time.
Apple got to show a commitment from one of their largest developers that was rather long (5 year commitment for software). Plus they got to show off by having a company that is supposedly their #1 enemy say that the Mac platform was so great that they were willing to do all of those things.
This is one case were Steve's Reality Distortion Field worked in both Apple's and Microsoft's favor.
So let's look at facts:
- Microsoft buys $150 million in non-voting stock
- Apple had way more money in cash at the time (thus rumors of their demise were...)
- Apple gets access to Microsoft Patents and Microsoft gets access to Apple patents (which is one reason why Microsoft can make their new apps look a lot like Apple's I would guess)
This is what I think most people would refer to as an out of court settlement, politically twisted to look like a political gesture.I personally wanted to upgrade for a long time, but I was able to put it off, especially when the Intel announcement came, as I was interested to see what would be brought to the table. For me it was the Macbook announcement that did it. I had waited long enough, and it fit into a great performance pocket for my use. Portable, powerful, rugged (compared to the pro), inexpensive (it cost less than any Mac I have ever bought, and is way more powerful and flexible), and it does everything I need with ease.
That coupled with the comfort factor for switchers (they can always put Windows on it and go back 'home') makes the Intel segment more considerable than one would initially think.
This is probably one reason they upgrade so much, although in reality it is either to show off, and/or just part of their addiction.
More on topic, I have a 2Ghz White Macbook and it is the best machine I have ever owned. In the last month the only issue I had was waiting for my 2GB of RAM to arrive and dealing with slowness. After the upgrade all has been good. Technically I may have the moo, very occasionally, typically on battery, I hear the fans pulsing. It is very quiet though, and I would never try to get the machine replaced just for that.
I also have two friends with Macbook Pros, one has had his for several months, and the other for less than two months. The later is a switcher and bought it on my recommendation, so if anything goes wrong I'm certain to hear about it. So far neither has had any serious issue other than installing old software drivers or startup apps that caused lag or flakiness in specific applications.
From what I can tell, having researched the Macbook for a while before i bought mine, and reading up everything I can, the Macbook and Macbook Pro both have failure/defect rates similar or lower than other companies, and even other Apple products historically. The issue at hand has more to do with the vocal users, and a lot more switchers at this time who are also vocal as to their disappointment. For some reference, Macintouch recently did a survey on these machines. Just take that info with a grain of salt, as the vocal elite and a number of vocal switchers are involved, and many people not having any problems have a tendency not to respond to these sorts of things.
From what they said, and what the demos show I think it works like this:
This is an amazing feature, plus having svn available system wide may lead more people to use it that may not have previously. I just started using it for a web site development project I have been working on, and while I'm new at it, and right now it slows me down more than really helps me, I can certainly see the benefits of being able to better track my changes.
I keed, I keed... :P
Seriously though, Parallels and/or Bootcamp is your friend. Learn a friendly, powerful, and clean system, while maintaining the ability to run your malware^H^H^H^H^H^H^HWindows Software at the same time.
I also seem to be reminded of a certain character from 'Dead Man on Campus'
If you are concerned about drive heat, which another poster was, the eRaid has a good cooling system, and the drives feel pretty cool when you pull them out. That said the thing is loud, so you would want to stuff it in a closet.
I'm curious though what software you have run across that the Intel's do not run. A lot of stuff is available as Universal Binaries, some items are available in separate PPC or Intel versions (Protools is one example), and a heck of a lot of software runs under Rosetta just fine. The largest market for people wanting to stay with PPC are those that are using Classic apps, and quite frankly there is no need to upgrade to use Classic, as most of those apps have not been upgraded in years, Classic has been deprecated for over 5 years now.
Any current Intel machine will blow that so far out of the water it just isn't funny. I have a G4 933 (QS 2002) and just got a Macbook. The Macbook is portable, uses less power, and spanks my G4 around the block as far as performance goes. Even with Parallels running and 2 VM's going. Seriously a MB or Mini Mac Intel would more than be a super upgrade for you. Obviously you don't need wiz-bang if you have been living with the B&W that long. Especially since we have definitely entered the realm of most new computers being capable of way more then you will typically ever use. I even use Protools regularly, and on the Macbook it has plenty of power for most of the sessions I run. I'll never have a deskop again, except in very special circumstances (perhaps an installed machine in a studio, but that isn't necessarily considered a general purpose computer anymore).
As another note, I have no idea what you are talking about with the $30 discount for Parallels with Windows, and I have checked their site. Their typical $30 discount, however, expires Tomorrow. So if you think you might go Intel in the near future you probably should act on it.
I'm not sure how you think making a web browser look like an email client will do anyone any good.
I won't even go into what I personally think of the Outlook Express interface, as that is just opinion.
You know now that I think of it you are on to something here, OSS needs this kind of thinking to really take off. We need Open Office to be designed to look just like Nero. And if only Evolution looked just like Windows Movie Maker. That will make adoption so much easier!
[/tongue in cheek mode]
Actually if you look at the pictures (not sure if these articles have the full pictures, I RTFA'd earlier when it was posted on the Apple forums) the paper is held in a small circular indent above the battery. The battery holds it in place and it should not escape, unless Macbook batteries start swelling like the Macbook Pro batteries and push some gap into the mix.
Anyone who has ever seen /. before knows that the blurbs are user submitted, and in many articles and the FAQ itself Taco has stated that the only editing they do is either in dire need or malformed html.
As such it is pretty obvious, especially with the new quoted view with the CSS that the price information was written up by the submitter, and the mention that it isn't actually available yet was added as additional information by the editor. Is this syntactically incorrect, as a whole without context yes, but in the framework presented, no.
I have worked for many universities in the last few years, I'm working at one now, and my previous job was at one (and before that I worked for other universities as well).
At each university Mac deployment was quite a bit larger than linux deployment. It was also more public (i.e. Macs in labs and classrooms), rather than hidden in research type areas.
Of course every University is different, but I have yet to see a campus with a large linux deployment outside of one or two departments.
Create a new deployment image with Master Browser service disabled.
Or any of a dozen other methods you could use.
Sometimes people just use conversational english. It is quick and easy, and personally I assume that the people in that situation know good ways to deploy the solution. If you need to be hand held all the way through, might I suggest Google?