Ok, I may not be able to spell, but there is nothing wrong with my punctuation. Unless you are suggesting I have an overuse of commas. But then you've done the same in your comment and I am sure pots and kettles wouldn't come to mind.
Yeah, but he didn't submit a story to/. You should be held to a higher standard than a random commenter.
Thanks for the well thought out response. I am determined to give Leopard a fair shake and give it at least 6 months of daily usage before I declare it fit or unfit for my style of computing. I know it can take a long time to get use to a different way of doing things.
However, I'm glad you brought up the "It just works" catch phrase and it's something I sort of hinted at, but meant to be more explicit about.
So far, the "It just works" mentality is absolutely, completely, 100% bogus. It's a steaming pile of bullshit. I have had more trouble with the Mac in terms of software and hardware failing to run than I have with Windows XP (I don't use Vista on a regular basis, so I won't compare it to that. After using Vista for awhile, I went back to XP, since Vista offered me nothing advantageous over XP.)
Just some examples of "It just doesn't work" with the Mac:
Samba - 100% broken in OSX when trying to share out files to a Windows box with User level security. You can access public stuff, but whoa unto you if you try to access private data with a username and password. It's acknowledged as broken, it "Just doesn't work."
ITunes - You can't sort a playlist arbitrarily. You have to sort it by a field. I can't click and drag songs into specific a specific order - "It just doesn't work."
Printer - Can't use my Epson CX3810 with the Mac. I realize Epson doesn't provide the driver and there's a third party driver, but it doesn't seem to work quite right, especially if it's over the network (where it doesn't work at all) - So while the ultimate fault lies with Epson, it still "Just doesn't work."
Safari - No effective, free adblock software that I can find. Switching to Firefox obviously solves this, but for the Mac and their homebrew application, it "Just doesn't work."
iDVD - This is by far the best example of things not working. I can't even figure out what this program is for, since it doesn't appear to do anything useful. I tried to make a simple DVD with it. I dragged my video files into the tree, it showed them there. Clicking preview gave me a black screen with the stock theme audio playing, but no menu. So I tried to burn the disc... the little burn iris opened up, it beeped once and then shut again. There was no error message, nothing at all to indicate why it didn't/wouldn't/couldn't burn the disc. There's no information on why I can't preview the video, etc... The program "Just doesn't work." It's crazy that there's not even an error dialog that pops up when something isn't done correctly.
I actually have been keeping a list of the things I think "Just don't work." in OSX and things that I find exceedingly annoying. There are many examples of common things that "Just don't work" in OSX, but work just fine on Windows... whereas I have yet to find anything that Just Doesn't Work on Windows, but yet works on the Mac. This is probably because Windows is catered to more than the Mac, so that's not necessarily a fair comparison, but none the less it's reality.
My Leopard install has locked up a couple times requiring a hard reboot... I wasn't doing anything strange or unusual, just installing some software or something... I don't recall what. I've had similar things happen in Windows on occasion on other machines... but again, the Mac is suppose to be more robust than that... but it's just as robust as a Windows install. I have yet to hard lock any of my Linux machines, necessitating a hard reboot. However, I admittedly don't put as much of a GUI demand on my Linux machines as I do on my Windows and Mac machines, so it's entirely possible I'd run into the same problems on Linux if I were to use it as a daily workhorse.
Anyway, my point is, everything that's been said about the Mac in terms of stability, compatibility, etc... has been complete hype. There's nothing to back it up from my empirical evidence. While I understand my single datapoint may not be representative, I don't think I've asked the machine or software to do too much an
So although the windows and the mac user base will both have a degree of "make the interrupting box go away" mentality, a lot more os x users stop and read the box when it pops up, because they're not used to being harassed constantly by it and have an actual interest in seeing what it's about.
I have found this to be completely false. In fact, I was rather surprised at the amount of pop-up permission elevation boxes that have popped up after installing and using Leopard for the first time.
I have recently (within the last 3 weeks) started using OSX. To give it a fair shot, I have replaced my primary machine with a Mac running Leopard and use it on a daily basis. So far, it's been just as annoying as Vista with the amount of popups required. Dinging Vista for the UAC box while Leopard simultaneously has at least 85% as many pop-up's as Vista does is ludicrous and hypocritical.
My other unrelated point is developer assumptions. I have, to date, ran into three pieces of OS X software that REQUIRE you to be logged in as an admin to either install, or to run, their software. In all other cases, they will either install or run if you provide an administrator's login and password.
If this statement is true, it's pretty clear you are an average "I want to browse the web and look at my email" type of user, and not a user that actually does real computing with your Mac. This isn't surprising, because it's becoming more and more clear that the Mac is designed for just that kind of user. When you start trying to use the OS for real computing, it gets just as annoying as Windows in many, many areas... but has the drawback of legacy design methodologies that simply don't work in modern computing. (A perfect example of this is the menu bar being stuck on the primary monitor, regardless of which monitor the application is running in. When you have two (or three) 24 or 28" monitors attached to a system and your primary monitor is the far right monitor and the window is on the far left monitor, it makes working with that application almost impossible unless you know the hotkeys). This methodology is antique and hostile towards multi-display environments. If you look at the history of MacOS, you can immediately understand where it's coming from and why it's there... but if you look at it in the context of modern computers and modern computing, it's clear that the functionality is absolutely broke and hostile to the user. This is just one example.)
The rest of your comment(s) are fairly accurate. I am no windows Fanboi nor am I even apologetic to it. But after using OSX for almost three weeks now, going into it wanting to like Leopard, I am finding the limitations and design "features" of Leopard to be lacking and/or just as annoying as Windows in many cases - it's just annoying in a different way. From all the hype I had heard, I expected a LOT more from OSX, but what I'm getting is just a brand of "same old, same old... except you do it THIS way instead of THAT way." From a usability standpoint, OSX is no more or less usable than Windows except for the fact that hardware and software generally work and are compatible with Windows, whereas a lot of hardware is not compatible with OSX.
I am going to continue to use OSX for at least 6 months as my primary machine, possibly longer if I don't feel that I've fully explored it after that amount of time. But right now, 3 weeks into it, I don't see any compelling reason to choose a Mac over Windows from a usability standpoint unless all you do is email and web browsing. However, that said, my next big foray is going to be into the video editing realm, where I expect the Mac to excel, so my attitude towards is may shift dramatically. However, I was and am pleased with Adobe Premier Pro for Windows - we'll see if Final Cut 2 or Adobe Premier for Mac is any better. If it's not significantly better, then one of the major "advantages" of the Mac will also be shown to be a lot of PR and fluff with little substance, which is what I've found so far.
Images, html, css, content, media.. all of that takes up space. Firefox has to hold it in memory so it can display it quickly when you click on the tab.
How much would you be complaining if you had to wait 5 seconds every time you switched tabs so it could swap in from disk?
Hardly. I find it laughable that you get modded +5 insightful with your blathering stupidity about it being a user's fault for a programs memory usage. It just shows that the moderators know exactly dick about programming, just as you know exactly dick about it, yet you try to talk with authority.
The problem is those pages, even when fully rendered don't take up anywhere near that amount of space. Let's say worst case scenario each page takes up 5MB, which is about a 10x increase in actual average space used. That's a little over 110MB. Where's the extra 65MB going? Backend code is going to take up some of that, but 65MB?! I don't think so. This is all assuming each page is 5MB in size, which is ludicrous. Many of them are less than 20k in size, being mostly text, no ads, no flashy graphics, etc...
Top that off with the fact that other browsers are capable of displaying the same tabs in a much smaller memory footprint, and you've clearly got an issue.
So yes, there definitely is a PEBCAK error, and it's you sitting there trying to sound like you know what you're talking about when you know absolutely nothing about the problem.
I've been using the RC releases, and while I do like the new browser, the memory footprint is still a monster. Currently, it's using over 175MB of ram for the windows I have open (21 different pages) - and that seems excessive to me.
The new address bar - it's different, but I hadn't noticed that it's any better or worse than FF2.
However, I've run into no lockups, which I did often with FF2. The browser seems a bit more responsive as well. Overall, it's definitely an improvement and pretty much a required upgrade for those using FF2, since it improves on FF2 and doesn't seem to introduce any unwanted features, except perhaps the handling of bookmarks.
That's probably because most everyone wants to break everything up based on accounts. I tried to use Mail.app for awhile, but the severe lack of important features in the application make it pretty unusable. I never noticed the behavior you were talking about, but then again, I have all my accounts forwarded to one account on the server and don't have multiple accounts setup in the client (Why would you do this anyway? Why not have them all combined at the server level?) anyway.
It's an interesting feature, though... would be a good "addition" to Thunderbird, but I certainly wouldn't want it to replace the way Thunderbird handles accounts. At least not without using it for a bit. It's unfortunate Mail.app is so user-unfriendly or I'd use it for awhile and try out the functionality you're talking about.
Translation: Waaaa! I was proved wrong so I'm going to call names and throw a fit. Waaaa!
Rar decompression does not belong in a media player. The VLC devs are perfectly right in not implementing this. Get over it.
Unfortunately for you, media is distributed in RAR format. Like it or not, it's the way things are. As such, RAR decompression DOES belong in a media player, since media is distributed as such. The VLC devs are hypocritical morons and are completely wrong in not implementing it. Get over it.
I have a question. Why not decompress the RAR file and then play the movie? (or keep it in your archives)
Because it's a pain in the ass to decompress it and there's absolutely NO reason to. It's like asking why not burn it to DVD and watch it that way... because you don't want or need to. You can watch it directly from the hard drive.
Why decompress it? There's no need to, I can watch it directly from the RAR files with a properly written media player. VLC isn't a properly written media player.
The point is, though, that the reasons behind the developers rejecting this functionality is completely hypocritical and fallacious. If you support the concept behind Bittorrent ("Because it can be used for legitimate traffic") you must also support the concept of playing media from RAR files... "Because it can be used for legitimate traffic." The fact that the developers accept one and not the other shows them to be incredibly hypocritical and out of touch with reality.
VLC sucks, plain and simple. But it only sucks because the developers are morons, not from any technical standpoint(s) that can't be corrected.
Multiply the savings several thousand times and you have a non-trivial amount of space saved. The real issue, though, is the time it takes to unrar... and for what? Nothing. There's no reason to unrar it unless you are editing it.
Is it a big fucking problem to unrar those files? If you want, you can always create your own project VLCRAR.
Yes, it is a "big fucking problem." For a number of reasons. First and foremost, it takes a long fucking time to unrar a 4, 8 or 35GB file. I don't want to do that if I don't have it... and I don't have to using a properly designed media viewer. VLC is not a properly designed media viewer.
Also.. there's the space issue, which you wisely choose to not mention as being "trivial" when it clearly is not.
Do you really think that applying some lossless compression algorithm to a heavily compressed video file will save space? Un-rar your damn stuff. It doesn't get any smaller from being inside a.rar file.
Hey look at that! It's smaller! Now multiply that by 1000... or more. That's just on a 365MB file. The ratio goes up slightly on a larger file, say a 4 or 8GB file. The space savings, per file, is minimal, yes... however it adds up when you have 2 or 3 TB of video.
I don't consider 40 - 50 GB a trivial waste of space when there's NO reason not to save it. Keeping it in RAR format doesn't slow down viewing - the only thing it does is save space. If you're video editing, I suppose it would be a pain, but we aren't talking about that.
I've really tried to liked VLC. Everyone talks about how great it is... but it's interface is pretty poor. The deal breaker for me, however, is the fact that it does not (and will not EVER, according to the developers I've seen talk about it) play files directly from RAR's.
Their "excuse" for the lack of an extremely important feature (to me and many others, anyway) is that they don't want to support piracy. Well, just like the FOSS community always harps that BitTorrent is used for legitimate traffic, well so are video's distributed in RAR's. Yes, the majority of video's in multi-part RAR's are illegal video... but then again, so is most of the BitTorrent traffic.
To leave this feature out of VLC is ridiculous. Before anyone tells me to add it myself: I have offered to submit a patch and it's refused based on the grounds above.
VLC is pretty useless to me, since I have no desire to unrar all of my video. Not only does it waste time, it also wastes space.
Fortunately, XBMC is pretty stable under Linux now, at least for watching/streaming video... as such, it's the best media center/video player out on the market right now. It does everything VLC does, except it does it properly and works. In fact, XBMC does just about everything "right" when it comes to video watching. MythTV, VLC, etc... can learn a lot from the XBMC project.
I don't buy or play a lot of games... I choose carefully the ones I do want to spend time playing. Spore was definitely one of them, and Mass Effect had a good chance.
Unlike the old days, I do actually purchase the games I play a lot. Of all the security methods, I've always found a crack for my legitimately purchased software so I don't have to have the CD/DVD in the drive. Steam is about my limit for DRM techniques. If I absolutely *MUST* have an internet connection to play Spore or Mass Effect, then I absolutely WILL have a crack to play it. The fact that this is required really leads me to think it might just be less hassle to download a pirated copy and forgo buying it at all.
Are they losing a sale because I am pirating the copy? No. I won't buy it because of it's DRM. I will play the game and I will enjoy it - however, there's no sale lost because, if there were no other alternative than buying the DRM laden game, I wouldn't buy it.
Like many other people, I am happy to fork over my money for a game I can copy freely or use how I wish. I am not happy, and will not fork over money for a game that is hostile towards me in terms of my freedoms. A perfect example of how DRM generates a pirate and costs a sale, whereas no DRM gains a sale. How many sales are gained due to DRM? I'd imagine very few compared to how many are lost due to DRM.
Anybody who advocates NTFS has never worked with directories with a large number (>100,000) of files under one directory tree. Just deleting one file can make the disk seek for several seconds, during which the filesystem is completely frozen. I guess it's reshuffling its entire B-tree.
>100,000? What kind of system are you running? If I have more than a few thousand files in a directory and I want to do anything with the directory, it bogs down to a crawl. If it have 30k - 40k, I have to be very careful what I delete and select a lot of files at once to delete. Deleting them individually is suicide.
I wish I had mod points to mod you up. The "new" prefixes are ridiculous. I usually am all for clarity and useful jargon, but the new prefixes suck. They sound terrible and they don't really serve a very useful function for 99.9% of the people who use the words anyway.
Yes, they provide a slight bit of clarity, but in the instances that they do provide it, it's just as easy to say "A binary TB" to differentiate it from a decimal TB. It gets the point across and it doesn't add useless complexity to the jargon.
If only someone could come up with a device that can do repetitive work without error and without getting bored. Some sort of electronic mechanism that could look at a certain field in an electronic document and then put the associated text into an electronic bucket labeled for an individual.
Thanks! You pretty much summed up what I was trying to say. All the current choices suck (old and tired, new and flashy) - I want something in between.
I'm sure I could cobble together something with applications and themes out there... but why can't there be one out of the box? That's pretty much what I'm asking.
I seem to have failed to get my point across properly, so I'm going to try again.
In the responses, the lions share seemed to be under the impression I was looking for a minimalist approach; I am not. I am looking for a slick, efficient, smooth approach. Minimalist does not have what I would want on a desktop theme. Think Stealth Fighter with a little more rounded edges... maybe Stealth Bomber. It can be insanely complicated, but it's still usable. It does what I want while still looking "cool." Every line and function has a reason to be there.
In one of the replies, someone mentioned the XP (Luna) theme as being all that - it's not. It's partially that - but it's still bubbly and Fisher-Price-esque in a number of very prominent areas (Start button, giant icons, etc). Using the plane analogy, it's a 747 with a cartoon paint job. It gets a lot of people where they want to be, but you don't want to be seen pulling up to the tarmac in it when the people you're meeting are arriving in a private jet.
Another point someone brought up was a sarcastic bit about there being a market for elaborate set of keystrokes and Dennis Leary, Sam Kinison, etc... berating you for making a mistake. In other words - an unforgiving, exacting window manager. That's not what I'm talking about at all. I want bells and whistles, but I want them to have a useful function, not just there for eye candy. I want it to be fast and responsive - yes I want both, eye candy but not garish eye candy (I'm looking at you Luna and KDE), and I want that eye candy to be responsive (I'm looking at you KDE and Gnome).
Someone else said I should get over it (and mentioned it's a clean, functional, nice-looking interface - but neglected to mention which one they were talking about) - Well, why should I get over it? I can't tweak Gnome how I like, since there doesn't seem to be a way to tweak it in that manner. Perhaps it's there, but I have yet to find it. KDE is the same way. XP - don't even get me started. I don't use a Mac, so I can't speak to that. This person goes on to mention that they enjoy staring at Fisher-Price colors and graphics all day because it's not harsh on the eyes. Maybe not, but it sure as hell is harsh on the adult brain.
Maybe it's just me... but is anyone else really tired of the Fisher-Price trending in desktop operating systems.
It started with Windows XP, but it wasn't *too* bad... but then Gnome showed up with full blown Fisher-Pricey-ness. KDE has always been halfway there, and with KDE 4, it looks like they have completed their journey. OS/X showed up to the party with the Teddy Ruxpin of desktop graphics. A little more sophisticated, but still clearly for kids.
So, we have all the major operating systems/window managers fully in the Fisher-Price camp. Clearly this is what the consumer wants (or is it?) - but what I don't understand is why. Am I the only person who wants my OS Desktop to look "cool" and not "cute" right out of the box? I realize "cool" (and "cute") is subjective, but I think some themes that cater to both camps out of the box would be a welcome addition.
Now, I know Gnome does not have anything of which I speak, and KDE 3 does not. I don't know about OS/X, but I've never seen a "stock" theme for OS/X that looks like something a working person would use, just the Fisher-Price-esque desktop.
I realize there are third party applications and themes to correct this... but I have yet to find something I like; They always look like something a teenager designed or something a kid would use. I have absolutely no doubt something "cool" and "utilitarian" is out there, but I have yet to find it.
The whole point of my post, though, is why the Fisher-Price trend in Desktops? What is so appealing about making the desktop look like a toy?
While in most genres I'd agree with you, you're forgetting one of the staples of competitive gaming, fighting games. Ever tried playing Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, and the like on a keyboard? It's not fun. At all.
I agree, the PC isn't the place for that. However, neither is the couch. I've tried playing those games on the console, sitting on the couch. It's really uncomfortable... I much prefer to stand and have a stable joystick to work with. The hand held controllers don't seem to provide that.
My desktop PC was manufactured in 2000. You're right that I have added RAM and a new video card for more performance and more features (such as TV output). But do they still make graphics cards for PCs with a years-old CPU and years-old motherboard? I guess not, as that would be analogous to a change in console generations. But where are the video upgrades for laptop PCs?
Of course they still make graphics cards? Are you an idiot? Have you even bothered to look or are you just trolling? You can still by PCI graphics card for christ sake. You are likely using AGP for a machine built in 2000; there's a plethora of AGP graphics cards still available.
What the FUCK does a video upgrade for a laptop have to do with anything? This clearly indicates you are trolling.
lollers! What about my Toshiba 1000 laptop with passive display?! Why can't I play Crysis on it? What a stupid fucking question. 99.999% of laptops are not built to play games. That's like asking why you can't watch TV on your microwave... cause it's not built for it, duh!
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Comes Firefox 95!
Nope, it will be 3.11 and FWG... THEN we can get to 95, though I'm probably going to wait until FF98 if past experience is a guide.
Ok, I may not be able to spell, but there is nothing wrong with my punctuation. Unless you are suggesting I have an overuse of commas. But then you've done the same in your comment and I am sure pots and kettles wouldn't come to mind.
Yeah, but he didn't submit a story to /. You should be held to a higher standard than a random commenter.
Seriously, this is ridiculous.
Oh come now, you and I both know it's really rediculous ... Spair me.
Thanks for the well thought out response. I am determined to give Leopard a fair shake and give it at least 6 months of daily usage before I declare it fit or unfit for my style of computing. I know it can take a long time to get use to a different way of doing things.
However, I'm glad you brought up the "It just works" catch phrase and it's something I sort of hinted at, but meant to be more explicit about.
So far, the "It just works" mentality is absolutely, completely, 100% bogus. It's a steaming pile of bullshit. I have had more trouble with the Mac in terms of software and hardware failing to run than I have with Windows XP (I don't use Vista on a regular basis, so I won't compare it to that. After using Vista for awhile, I went back to XP, since Vista offered me nothing advantageous over XP.)
Just some examples of "It just doesn't work" with the Mac:
Samba - 100% broken in OSX when trying to share out files to a Windows box with User level security. You can access public stuff, but whoa unto you if you try to access private data with a username and password. It's acknowledged as broken, it "Just doesn't work."
ITunes - You can't sort a playlist arbitrarily. You have to sort it by a field. I can't click and drag songs into specific a specific order - "It just doesn't work."
Printer - Can't use my Epson CX3810 with the Mac. I realize Epson doesn't provide the driver and there's a third party driver, but it doesn't seem to work quite right, especially if it's over the network (where it doesn't work at all) - So while the ultimate fault lies with Epson, it still "Just doesn't work."
Safari - No effective, free adblock software that I can find. Switching to Firefox obviously solves this, but for the Mac and their homebrew application, it "Just doesn't work."
iDVD - This is by far the best example of things not working. I can't even figure out what this program is for, since it doesn't appear to do anything useful. I tried to make a simple DVD with it. I dragged my video files into the tree, it showed them there. Clicking preview gave me a black screen with the stock theme audio playing, but no menu. So I tried to burn the disc... the little burn iris opened up, it beeped once and then shut again. There was no error message, nothing at all to indicate why it didn't/wouldn't/couldn't burn the disc. There's no information on why I can't preview the video, etc... The program "Just doesn't work." It's crazy that there's not even an error dialog that pops up when something isn't done correctly.
I actually have been keeping a list of the things I think "Just don't work." in OSX and things that I find exceedingly annoying. There are many examples of common things that "Just don't work" in OSX, but work just fine on Windows... whereas I have yet to find anything that Just Doesn't Work on Windows, but yet works on the Mac. This is probably because Windows is catered to more than the Mac, so that's not necessarily a fair comparison, but none the less it's reality.
My Leopard install has locked up a couple times requiring a hard reboot... I wasn't doing anything strange or unusual, just installing some software or something... I don't recall what. I've had similar things happen in Windows on occasion on other machines... but again, the Mac is suppose to be more robust than that... but it's just as robust as a Windows install. I have yet to hard lock any of my Linux machines, necessitating a hard reboot. However, I admittedly don't put as much of a GUI demand on my Linux machines as I do on my Windows and Mac machines, so it's entirely possible I'd run into the same problems on Linux if I were to use it as a daily workhorse.
Anyway, my point is, everything that's been said about the Mac in terms of stability, compatibility, etc... has been complete hype. There's nothing to back it up from my empirical evidence. While I understand my single datapoint may not be representative, I don't think I've asked the machine or software to do too much an
So although the windows and the mac user base will both have a degree of "make the interrupting box go away" mentality, a lot more os x users stop and read the box when it pops up, because they're not used to being harassed constantly by it and have an actual interest in seeing what it's about.
I have found this to be completely false. In fact, I was rather surprised at the amount of pop-up permission elevation boxes that have popped up after installing and using Leopard for the first time.
I have recently (within the last 3 weeks) started using OSX. To give it a fair shot, I have replaced my primary machine with a Mac running Leopard and use it on a daily basis. So far, it's been just as annoying as Vista with the amount of popups required. Dinging Vista for the UAC box while Leopard simultaneously has at least 85% as many pop-up's as Vista does is ludicrous and hypocritical.
My other unrelated point is developer assumptions. I have, to date, ran into three pieces of OS X software that REQUIRE you to be logged in as an admin to either install, or to run, their software. In all other cases, they will either install or run if you provide an administrator's login and password.
If this statement is true, it's pretty clear you are an average "I want to browse the web and look at my email" type of user, and not a user that actually does real computing with your Mac. This isn't surprising, because it's becoming more and more clear that the Mac is designed for just that kind of user. When you start trying to use the OS for real computing, it gets just as annoying as Windows in many, many areas... but has the drawback of legacy design methodologies that simply don't work in modern computing. (A perfect example of this is the menu bar being stuck on the primary monitor, regardless of which monitor the application is running in. When you have two (or three) 24 or 28" monitors attached to a system and your primary monitor is the far right monitor and the window is on the far left monitor, it makes working with that application almost impossible unless you know the hotkeys). This methodology is antique and hostile towards multi-display environments. If you look at the history of MacOS, you can immediately understand where it's coming from and why it's there... but if you look at it in the context of modern computers and modern computing, it's clear that the functionality is absolutely broke and hostile to the user. This is just one example.)
The rest of your comment(s) are fairly accurate. I am no windows Fanboi nor am I even apologetic to it. But after using OSX for almost three weeks now, going into it wanting to like Leopard, I am finding the limitations and design "features" of Leopard to be lacking and/or just as annoying as Windows in many cases - it's just annoying in a different way. From all the hype I had heard, I expected a LOT more from OSX, but what I'm getting is just a brand of "same old, same old... except you do it THIS way instead of THAT way." From a usability standpoint, OSX is no more or less usable than Windows except for the fact that hardware and software generally work and are compatible with Windows, whereas a lot of hardware is not compatible with OSX.
I am going to continue to use OSX for at least 6 months as my primary machine, possibly longer if I don't feel that I've fully explored it after that amount of time. But right now, 3 weeks into it, I don't see any compelling reason to choose a Mac over Windows from a usability standpoint unless all you do is email and web browsing. However, that said, my next big foray is going to be into the video editing realm, where I expect the Mac to excel, so my attitude towards is may shift dramatically. However, I was and am pleased with Adobe Premier Pro for Windows - we'll see if Final Cut 2 or Adobe Premier for Mac is any better. If it's not significantly better, then one of the major "advantages" of the Mac will also be shown to be a lot of PR and fluff with little substance, which is what I've found so far.
hat's a PEBCAK error, not a fault with Firefox.
Images, html, css, content, media.. all of that takes up space. Firefox has to hold it in memory so it can display it quickly when you click on the tab.
How much would you be complaining if you had to wait 5 seconds every time you switched tabs so it could swap in from disk?
Hardly. I find it laughable that you get modded +5 insightful with your blathering stupidity about it being a user's fault for a programs memory usage. It just shows that the moderators know exactly dick about programming, just as you know exactly dick about it, yet you try to talk with authority.
The problem is those pages, even when fully rendered don't take up anywhere near that amount of space. Let's say worst case scenario each page takes up 5MB, which is about a 10x increase in actual average space used. That's a little over 110MB. Where's the extra 65MB going? Backend code is going to take up some of that, but 65MB?! I don't think so. This is all assuming each page is 5MB in size, which is ludicrous. Many of them are less than 20k in size, being mostly text, no ads, no flashy graphics, etc...
Top that off with the fact that other browsers are capable of displaying the same tabs in a much smaller memory footprint, and you've clearly got an issue.
So yes, there definitely is a PEBCAK error, and it's you sitting there trying to sound like you know what you're talking about when you know absolutely nothing about the problem.
I've been using the RC releases, and while I do like the new browser, the memory footprint is still a monster. Currently, it's using over 175MB of ram for the windows I have open (21 different pages) - and that seems excessive to me.
The new address bar - it's different, but I hadn't noticed that it's any better or worse than FF2.
However, I've run into no lockups, which I did often with FF2. The browser seems a bit more responsive as well. Overall, it's definitely an improvement and pretty much a required upgrade for those using FF2, since it improves on FF2 and doesn't seem to introduce any unwanted features, except perhaps the handling of bookmarks.
That's probably because most everyone wants to break everything up based on accounts. I tried to use Mail.app for awhile, but the severe lack of important features in the application make it pretty unusable. I never noticed the behavior you were talking about, but then again, I have all my accounts forwarded to one account on the server and don't have multiple accounts setup in the client (Why would you do this anyway? Why not have them all combined at the server level?) anyway.
It's an interesting feature, though... would be a good "addition" to Thunderbird, but I certainly wouldn't want it to replace the way Thunderbird handles accounts. At least not without using it for a bit. It's unfortunate Mail.app is so user-unfriendly or I'd use it for awhile and try out the functionality you're talking about.
You forgot the last reason. You're a whiny bitch.
Translation: Waaaa! I was proved wrong so I'm going to call names and throw a fit. Waaaa!
Rar decompression does not belong in a media player. The VLC devs are perfectly right in not implementing this. Get over it.
Unfortunately for you, media is distributed in RAR format. Like it or not, it's the way things are. As such, RAR decompression DOES belong in a media player, since media is distributed as such. The VLC devs are hypocritical morons and are completely wrong in not implementing it. Get over it.
I have a question. Why not decompress the RAR file and then play the movie? (or keep it in your archives)
Because it's a pain in the ass to decompress it and there's absolutely NO reason to. It's like asking why not burn it to DVD and watch it that way... because you don't want or need to. You can watch it directly from the hard drive.
Why decompress it? There's no need to, I can watch it directly from the RAR files with a properly written media player. VLC isn't a properly written media player.
The point is, though, that the reasons behind the developers rejecting this functionality is completely hypocritical and fallacious. If you support the concept behind Bittorrent ("Because it can be used for legitimate traffic") you must also support the concept of playing media from RAR files... "Because it can be used for legitimate traffic." The fact that the developers accept one and not the other shows them to be incredibly hypocritical and out of touch with reality.
VLC sucks, plain and simple. But it only sucks because the developers are morons, not from any technical standpoint(s) that can't be corrected.
And you think you're gaining disk space raring videos?
Yes. Yes I do. See above.
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 365255320 2007-03-05 00:00 battlestar.galactica.s03e17.avi
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 362100230 2007-04-18 16:42 battlestar.galactica.s03e17.rar
Multiply the savings several thousand times and you have a non-trivial amount of space saved. The real issue, though, is the time it takes to unrar... and for what? Nothing. There's no reason to unrar it unless you are editing it.
Is it a big fucking problem to unrar those files? If you want, you can always create your own project VLCRAR.
Yes, it is a "big fucking problem." For a number of reasons. First and foremost, it takes a long fucking time to unrar a 4, 8 or 35GB file. I don't want to do that if I don't have it... and I don't have to using a properly designed media viewer. VLC is not a properly designed media viewer.
Also.. there's the space issue, which you wisely choose to not mention as being "trivial" when it clearly is not.
Gonna double post this, because you are a fucking idiot:
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 365255320 2007-03-05 00:00 battlestar.galactica.s03e17.avi
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 362100230 2007-04-18 16:42 battlestar.galactica.s03e17.rar
Look! Smaller! Wow, that was hard to test. Multiplied by 1000 or more times, you have quite a bit of space saved. Imagine that. Idiot.
Do you really think that applying some lossless compression algorithm to a heavily compressed video file will save space? Un-rar your damn stuff. It doesn't get any smaller from being inside a .rar file.
Hmm... lets see:
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 365255320 2007-03-05 00:00 battlestar.galactica.s03e17.avi
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 362100230 2007-04-18 16:42 battlestar.galactica.s03e17.rar
Hey look at that! It's smaller! Now multiply that by 1000... or more. That's just on a 365MB file. The ratio goes up slightly on a larger file, say a 4 or 8GB file. The space savings, per file, is minimal, yes... however it adds up when you have 2 or 3 TB of video.
I don't consider 40 - 50 GB a trivial waste of space when there's NO reason not to save it. Keeping it in RAR format doesn't slow down viewing - the only thing it does is save space. If you're video editing, I suppose it would be a pain, but we aren't talking about that.
Who the hell rar's videos/torrents except newbs?
Umm... pretty much everyone distributing video over the internet that isn't streamed?
I've really tried to liked VLC. Everyone talks about how great it is... but it's interface is pretty poor. The deal breaker for me, however, is the fact that it does not (and will not EVER, according to the developers I've seen talk about it) play files directly from RAR's.
Their "excuse" for the lack of an extremely important feature (to me and many others, anyway) is that they don't want to support piracy. Well, just like the FOSS community always harps that BitTorrent is used for legitimate traffic, well so are video's distributed in RAR's. Yes, the majority of video's in multi-part RAR's are illegal video... but then again, so is most of the BitTorrent traffic.
To leave this feature out of VLC is ridiculous. Before anyone tells me to add it myself: I have offered to submit a patch and it's refused based on the grounds above.
VLC is pretty useless to me, since I have no desire to unrar all of my video. Not only does it waste time, it also wastes space.
Fortunately, XBMC is pretty stable under Linux now, at least for watching/streaming video... as such, it's the best media center/video player out on the market right now. It does everything VLC does, except it does it properly and works. In fact, XBMC does just about everything "right" when it comes to video watching. MythTV, VLC, etc... can learn a lot from the XBMC project.
I don't buy or play a lot of games... I choose carefully the ones I do want to spend time playing. Spore was definitely one of them, and Mass Effect had a good chance.
Unlike the old days, I do actually purchase the games I play a lot. Of all the security methods, I've always found a crack for my legitimately purchased software so I don't have to have the CD/DVD in the drive. Steam is about my limit for DRM techniques. If I absolutely *MUST* have an internet connection to play Spore or Mass Effect, then I absolutely WILL have a crack to play it. The fact that this is required really leads me to think it might just be less hassle to download a pirated copy and forgo buying it at all.
Are they losing a sale because I am pirating the copy? No. I won't buy it because of it's DRM. I will play the game and I will enjoy it - however, there's no sale lost because, if there were no other alternative than buying the DRM laden game, I wouldn't buy it.
Like many other people, I am happy to fork over my money for a game I can copy freely or use how I wish. I am not happy, and will not fork over money for a game that is hostile towards me in terms of my freedoms. A perfect example of how DRM generates a pirate and costs a sale, whereas no DRM gains a sale. How many sales are gained due to DRM? I'd imagine very few compared to how many are lost due to DRM.
Anybody who advocates NTFS has never worked with directories with a large number (>100,000) of files under one directory tree. Just deleting one file can make the disk seek for several seconds, during which the filesystem is completely frozen. I guess it's reshuffling its entire B-tree.
>100,000? What kind of system are you running? If I have more than a few thousand files in a directory and I want to do anything with the directory, it bogs down to a crawl. If it have 30k - 40k, I have to be very careful what I delete and select a lot of files at once to delete. Deleting them individually is suicide.
I wish I had mod points to mod you up. The "new" prefixes are ridiculous. I usually am all for clarity and useful jargon, but the new prefixes suck. They sound terrible and they don't really serve a very useful function for 99.9% of the people who use the words anyway.
Yes, they provide a slight bit of clarity, but in the instances that they do provide it, it's just as easy to say "A binary TB" to differentiate it from a decimal TB. It gets the point across and it doesn't add useless complexity to the jargon.
If only someone could come up with a device that can do repetitive work without error and without getting bored. Some sort of electronic mechanism that could look at a certain field in an electronic document and then put the associated text into an electronic bucket labeled for an individual.
Why hasn't someone invented something like this?
Thanks! You pretty much summed up what I was trying to say. All the current choices suck (old and tired, new and flashy) - I want something in between.
I'm sure I could cobble together something with applications and themes out there... but why can't there be one out of the box? That's pretty much what I'm asking.
I seem to have failed to get my point across properly, so I'm going to try again.
In one of the replies, someone mentioned the XP (Luna) theme as being all that - it's not. It's partially that - but it's still bubbly and Fisher-Price-esque in a number of very prominent areas (Start button, giant icons, etc). Using the plane analogy, it's a 747 with a cartoon paint job. It gets a lot of people where they want to be, but you don't want to be seen pulling up to the tarmac in it when the people you're meeting are arriving in a private jet.
Maybe it's just me... but is anyone else really tired of the Fisher-Price trending in desktop operating systems.
It started with Windows XP, but it wasn't *too* bad... but then Gnome showed up with full blown Fisher-Pricey-ness. KDE has always been halfway there, and with KDE 4, it looks like they have completed their journey. OS/X showed up to the party with the Teddy Ruxpin of desktop graphics. A little more sophisticated, but still clearly for kids.
So, we have all the major operating systems/window managers fully in the Fisher-Price camp. Clearly this is what the consumer wants (or is it?) - but what I don't understand is why. Am I the only person who wants my OS Desktop to look "cool" and not "cute" right out of the box? I realize "cool" (and "cute") is subjective, but I think some themes that cater to both camps out of the box would be a welcome addition.
Now, I know Gnome does not have anything of which I speak, and KDE 3 does not. I don't know about OS/X, but I've never seen a "stock" theme for OS/X that looks like something a working person would use, just the Fisher-Price-esque desktop.
I realize there are third party applications and themes to correct this... but I have yet to find something I like; They always look like something a teenager designed or something a kid would use. I have absolutely no doubt something "cool" and "utilitarian" is out there, but I have yet to find it.
The whole point of my post, though, is why the Fisher-Price trend in Desktops? What is so appealing about making the desktop look like a toy?
While in most genres I'd agree with you, you're forgetting one of the staples of competitive gaming, fighting games. Ever tried playing Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, and the like on a keyboard? It's not fun. At all.
I agree, the PC isn't the place for that. However, neither is the couch. I've tried playing those games on the console, sitting on the couch. It's really uncomfortable... I much prefer to stand and have a stable joystick to work with. The hand held controllers don't seem to provide that.
My desktop PC was manufactured in 2000. You're right that I have added RAM and a new video card for more performance and more features (such as TV output). But do they still make graphics cards for PCs with a years-old CPU and years-old motherboard? I guess not, as that would be analogous to a change in console generations. But where are the video upgrades for laptop PCs?
Of course they still make graphics cards? Are you an idiot? Have you even bothered to look or are you just trolling? You can still by PCI graphics card for christ sake. You are likely using AGP for a machine built in 2000; there's a plethora of AGP graphics cards still available.
What the FUCK does a video upgrade for a laptop have to do with anything? This clearly indicates you are trolling.
lollers! What about my Toshiba 1000 laptop with passive display?! Why can't I play Crysis on it? What a stupid fucking question. 99.999% of laptops are not built to play games. That's like asking why you can't watch TV on your microwave... cause it's not built for it, duh!