Hey, man, so when can I install Windows 3.1 on my new Sony Vaio that came with XP? Sorta the same deal, isn't it?
Wash your mouth out, sunshine! Round here, Linux is the ultimate OS. Macs are for girls, Windows is for losers. The only reason Linux isn't being used by 101% of the planet is marketing.
Okay, I'm being ironic, but the prevailing attitude on/. is centered in the ideology of the kernel. The essence of a consistent and usable GUI is usually dismissed as eye candy.
Now you're thinking! But that might mean cabling it up every day, or if leaving it under the desk overnight, the risk of the cleaners pushing it out and it being discovered.
And IT Managers are a suspicious lot, just look at the film Gattaca.
Since the mini came out, I've been hoping I can stuff it inside an old Apple IIGS (or, even better - a//e), just for giggles.
Anyone up to the challenge?
I'm game, but can we make it an LC II?
Ever since reading the rumor sites started reporting a cheap Mac, I've been thinking "pizza box" so I'd like to get an old Macintosh LC (or LC II or LC III) and spread out the guts of a Mini inside it.
Okay, I wasn't very clear. I was just making the point that a lot of the EARLY posts on new Slashdot articles, BEFORE they get (rightfully) modded to oblivion or removed are often very rude ones. You know, along the lines that all Mac users are homosexuals...
Does Microsoft actually care about Mac OS X at all, whether as a competitive threat or even a comparative yardstick?
At a recent university talk, Gates claimed that the only OSes that would be around in 10 years would be Windows and Linux. Now that could simply be a snub to Jobs, or it could indicate that he doesn't even consider Mac to be on the radar anymore. With less than 2% marketshare, Mac OS X is pretty much inconsequential in both the predominantly Windows consumer market, or Windows/Linux enterprise market.
The ironic thing is, that if Mac OS X *were* to be around in 10 years, Microsoft would likely to be making far more money off it than if it disappeared. Why? The high gross margins (80+%) from Office mean that Microsoft often makes more money from a Mac bought with Office than Apple does (the gross margin on a Mac is 20+%).
With only Linux as an alternative OS, Microsoft would likely make nothing, unless Microsoft plans to start selling software for Linux...
Personally I think Microsoft does actually pay attention to Apple and uses them as a sort of free R&D lab. However, publicly, Gates seems to deny they're relevant now, and not at all in the future.
Peter Seebach has been using computers for years and is gradually becoming acclimated. He still doesn't know why mice need to be cleaned so often, though.
Is he talking about the rollers around the ball? But aren't most mice optical these days?
I've rarely cleaned a mouse since optical mice came out about six years ago, and only then on an antique machine. I suppose I have always built my own machines and tend to choose quality input devices instead of the el-cheapo ones the shop ones supply.
Grumbling about lost CPU cycles is strange when he could save some time by simply upgrading the mouse.
It's the religious nutcases who can't understand it's just an entertaining potboiler and take it as a serious affront to their belief system, writing tracts of rebuttals, that are the real masters of pulp.
And as I said, I believe that we should have the freedom to take advantage of some nitwit that has made their internet connection available over a wireless network.
You may be right, but doesn't that just confirm what I said about lack of respect for other people's possessions...?
Some nitwit drops his wallet in the street, so of course we should have the legal freedom of "finders, keepers."
I mean, if he's too stupid to secure it in his back pocket and it's just lying there on the sidewalk - which is MY space since I've just stepped on it - it should be mine to strip the cash out of and toss the cards in the bin. You know, forget looking up his address and returning the wallet to him like a decent human being would do.
(Actually that gives me an idea: this wardriving map could be used for good: use it to email the admins and tell them their back pockets are open.)
If you don't want people piggybacking your wireless connection, configure it properly, don't whine about it to the DOJ. You only have yourself to blame.
If you don't want people ransacking your living room, install Chubb locks, bolt them securely every time you leave the house, don't whine about theft to the police.
Okay, common sense really. Every knows to lock their doors these days. It's just that in days gone by (or perhaps in other communities or countries, eg, New Zealand), people could leave their doors unlocked and be completely unaffected.
It seems that the complete loss of respect in society for other people's possessions has extended into the geek world too.
I guess this is proof that many geeks are really no more than petty thieves who steal bandwidth instead of VCRs...
To find out, get an $725 Dell, download a 2 hour movie from your digital camcoder, add some music, watermark captions and video transitions and burn it to DVD. Report your experience here.
Dell owner: "I couldn't give a **** about stuff like that, but I have fired up Access and klutzed up a half-assed database for you! Now I'm going to kick back and frag some jackals."
[Seriously, the sad problem for Apple has always been that the stuff they do well is stuff that the majority of people do not want to do.]
Yes, but why didn't it take off? A programmer's "really good idea" is sometimes an end-user's "cool but I don't need it."
What if no one cared about it then and for the same reasons won't care about it now?
I'm sure someone, *somewhere* has done a 3D spreadsheet that sold about 50 copies then went bust.
Reviving the concept doesn't mean it would sell any more now though, even if marketed better.
Still, you could be right - there could be really good ideas that just didn't make it because the GUI was bad or something. I just don't accept that all the good stuff has been thought of. New technologies create new possibilities.
PS I'm going to come back in an hour and find a descendant post linking to "World Famous 3D Spreadsheet Corporation, with annual revenues of 50 billion!"
1. Make sure it's impossible to use.
2. Make sure it's buggy.
3. Make sure it's unsecure.
4. Market the hell out of it. (Making sure to state how great and secure it is.)
5. ???
6. Profit!
Very interesting, but you've clearly cut & pasted that from Microsoft's employees manual, in violation of your NDA.
Prepare for a visit from the lawyers.
That myth is cracking me up!
on
Top 10 Apple Flops
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· Score: 2, Informative
For those who don't remember, the Cubes would occasionally develop these "cracks," for lack of a better term. IIRC, owners started to see hairline fissures slowly appear underneath the ploycarbonate surface.
I don't know whether you're serious or not?! You've used "IIRC" (which you don't) so I actually think you are being serious!
As a cube owner, I've described what the cracks actually were in a post above.
I have to say, it's very funny what some people can be made to believe.
The Cube, of which I have one powering my plasma 42" as a "photowall" and DVD player, was more a marketing flop than a technological one.
Alone, or especially when combined with a still new and pricey LCD flat panel, it was perceived as very expensive for what it was - a miniaturized desktop with no slots.
Petite computers hadn't been around for long (I think Shuttle actually came after, maybe in fact inspired by the Cube) and in the US market, the Cube was a radical approach going against the "gas guzzling SUV paradigm," where most male computer buyers still equate bigger with better.
It also had a significant number of detractors in the press, who all gleefully reported the "cracks" (scratches on the lucite moulding for the first batch) as if the thing was going to split open like a lizard egg.
Still, they sold 100,000, created a loyal following of uber-elite modders, contributed R&D to the iMac G4 and Mac mini, and were responsible for the coolest (pun intended) press release signaling its termination: "Apple is putting the Cube on ice."
Development on OSX is frustrating because of one thing. There is virtually zero documentation. APIs are half-published. Example code is poorly written. And Apple prevents google from indexing their developer site so finding the little information that *is* published is a pain in the ass.
I rarely do this on Slashdot, but I'm calling pure BULLSHIT on this one.
The interactive documentation built into Xcode is a pure delight. Double-click on a Cocoa/Carbon/QuickTime/Java method or function call and you get an instant lookup to extremely comprehensive documentation.
Every method in the class, full description of all params, cross-referencing to related methods, historical notes on version compatibility.
As to its highly organized and fully up to date web site documentation: Apple *uses* Google for its web site searches. It is fast and efficient.
Google does index Apple dev. I've many times found links to just the right posting in an Apple hosted Cocoa/Carbon/OpenGL mailing list or other article simply by entering the function name in the Google search box.
In short, you simply don't know what you are talking about. Maybe you're just innocently ignorant, but I really don't know what people like you gain from contributing such misinformation. You've made at least one Mac OS X developer mighty annoyed at the fiction you're trying to spread.
The fact that you've been moderated +5 Interesting shows that the people who have mod points today are as clueless as you. Don't think I'll bother to read any more of/. today.
They never did make a keyboard for DOS, did they? You know, one with an "Any" key that would have stopped people searching their keyboards for hours so they could hit it to continue.
I agree but disagree with you. Those are people who the Mac ethos has always appealed to, but in the mid-80s a Mac cost more than a small car. So while they liked the Mac, they used them at work, because corporations (or the very financially well-off hobbyists) were the only ones who could afford them.
It was the LaserWriter and Macintosh Office which made the Mac a success. Combined, the cost was enormous. Only a company could afford it.
Also, from a marketing position (the parent post was talking about "suits" after all), for a long time Apple was dead against having the Macintosh appear as a games machine and discouraged all developers from making games for it. That's hardly a strategy to sell into the home, now is it.
It was later that the Mac became more of an educational thing, with all the good hackers on it from the universities (Dartmouth had a huge Mac following) and with more affordable models (and heavily discounted educational prices - those were the days!)
I don't think we're necessarily at odds, just talking different timescales. I feel my suit-to-turtleneck analogy was quite appropriate.
As to the decline in fortunes: Apple has enough billions to survive now, but relative to what other companies make it is small change. Look at Dell: the most innovative thing Michael Dell ever pulled out of a bag was a cheaply made clone assembled from parts from the lowest cost vendor. But Dell's quarterly revenue is four times that of Apple's, even with lower gross margins.
Look at Microsoft: it was assisted by Apple to write Word and Excel (programs that came out on the Mac in 1985) and indeed licensed to use Mac GUI elements in them (which is why Apple lost the look & feel lawsuit).
Today, sales from a single upgrade would make Apple sales look like a kid's lemonade stand.
I'd call that a decline in fortunes, relatively speaking!
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, man, so when can I install Windows 3.1 on my new Sony Vaio that came with XP? Sorta the same deal, isn't it?
Wash your mouth out, sunshine! Round here, Linux is the ultimate OS. Macs are for girls, Windows is for losers. The only reason Linux isn't being used by 101% of the planet is marketing.
Okay, I'm being ironic, but the prevailing attitude on /. is centered in the ideology of the kernel. The essence of a consistent and usable GUI is usually dismissed as eye candy.
Because the hard drive is slow (4200 RPM)
Some are 5400 RPM. Luck of the draw I heard.
Now you're thinking! But that might mean cabling it up every day, or if leaving it under the desk overnight, the risk of the cleaners pushing it out and it being discovered. And IT Managers are a suspicious lot, just look at the film Gattaca.
I'm game, but can we make it an LC II?
Ever since reading the rumor sites started reporting a cheap Mac, I've been thinking "pizza box" so I'd like to get an old Macintosh LC (or LC II or LC III) and spread out the guts of a Mini inside it.
Sacrilege aside, putting a Mac Mini in a PC case has one key definite advantage:
It would let you sneak a Mac into workplaces whose IT Manager(s) have a "no Macs ever, over my dead body" policy.
Just think: you could have a larger case containing a regular PC, but with the guts of a Mac Mini placed in the space around empty drive/PSU bays.
Hide a KVM switch somewhere and bingo... Windows/Linux when the PHB/IT Manager is around, Mac OS X when you want to get some work done!
Okay, I wasn't very clear. I was just making the point that a lot of the EARLY posts on new Slashdot articles, BEFORE they get (rightfully) modded to oblivion or removed are often very rude ones. You know, along the lines that all Mac users are homosexuals...
Hard to tell, but are you being ironic, or moronic?
Dell Dimensions and HP LaserJets didn't put a dent in the universe.
This product did.
If nothing else, it started Microsoft scrambling to put something very similar on everyone's desktop... 1 billion computer users and growing.
No Mac...?
(A)bort (R)etry (F)ail
Nope...
Mac 128K, 512K = 400K 3.5" drive
Mac Plus, SE = 800K 3.5" drive
Mac SE/30, II, etc = 1.4MB 3.5 drive
HFS too, so get you FAT ass back in the kitchen and make me some pie. (Apologies to Cartman)
Usually this early in on a new article all the posts would suggest you throw your Mac back in the trashcan and boot up XP.
(And why is it all the potty mouths just happen to be Windows users? Is there something about that OS which encourages profanity?)
Good luck getting the Mac SE going, and if not, a fishtank mod awaits!
Does Microsoft actually care about Mac OS X at all, whether as a competitive threat or even a comparative yardstick?
At a recent university talk, Gates claimed that the only OSes that would be around in 10 years would be Windows and Linux. Now that could simply be a snub to Jobs, or it could indicate that he doesn't even consider Mac to be on the radar anymore. With less than 2% marketshare, Mac OS X is pretty much inconsequential in both the predominantly Windows consumer market, or Windows/Linux enterprise market.
The ironic thing is, that if Mac OS X *were* to be around in 10 years, Microsoft would likely to be making far more money off it than if it disappeared. Why? The high gross margins (80+%) from Office mean that Microsoft often makes more money from a Mac bought with Office than Apple does (the gross margin on a Mac is 20+%).
With only Linux as an alternative OS, Microsoft would likely make nothing, unless Microsoft plans to start selling software for Linux...
Personally I think Microsoft does actually pay attention to Apple and uses them as a sort of free R&D lab. However, publicly, Gates seems to deny they're relevant now, and not at all in the future.
Interesting...
Peter Seebach has been using computers for years and is gradually becoming acclimated. He still doesn't know why mice need to be cleaned so often, though.
Is he talking about the rollers around the ball? But aren't most mice optical these days?
I've rarely cleaned a mouse since optical mice came out about six years ago, and only then on an antique machine. I suppose I have always built my own machines and tend to choose quality input devices instead of the el-cheapo ones the shop ones supply.
Grumbling about lost CPU cycles is strange when he could save some time by simply upgrading the mouse.
What's wrong with da Vinci?
It's the religious nutcases who can't understand it's just an entertaining potboiler and take it as a serious affront to their belief system, writing tracts of rebuttals, that are the real masters of pulp.
Ever done a lexical analysis of a sermon?
You may be right, but doesn't that just confirm what I said about lack of respect for other people's possessions...?
Some nitwit drops his wallet in the street, so of course we should have the legal freedom of "finders, keepers."
I mean, if he's too stupid to secure it in his back pocket and it's just lying there on the sidewalk - which is MY space since I've just stepped on it - it should be mine to strip the cash out of and toss the cards in the bin. You know, forget looking up his address and returning the wallet to him like a decent human being would do.
(Actually that gives me an idea: this wardriving map could be used for good: use it to email the admins and tell them their back pockets are open.)
If you don't want people ransacking your living room, install Chubb locks, bolt them securely every time you leave the house, don't whine about theft to the police.
Okay, common sense really. Every knows to lock their doors these days. It's just that in days gone by (or perhaps in other communities or countries, eg, New Zealand), people could leave their doors unlocked and be completely unaffected.
It seems that the complete loss of respect in society for other people's possessions has extended into the geek world too.
I guess this is proof that many geeks are really no more than petty thieves who steal bandwidth instead of VCRs...
Dell owner: "I couldn't give a **** about stuff like that, but I have fired up Access and klutzed up a half-assed database for you! Now I'm going to kick back and frag some jackals."
[Seriously, the sad problem for Apple has always been that the stuff they do well is stuff that the majority of people do not want to do.]
Yes, but why didn't it take off? A programmer's "really good idea" is sometimes an end-user's "cool but I don't need it."
What if no one cared about it then and for the same reasons won't care about it now?
I'm sure someone, *somewhere* has done a 3D spreadsheet that sold about 50 copies then went bust.
Reviving the concept doesn't mean it would sell any more now though, even if marketed better.
Still, you could be right - there could be really good ideas that just didn't make it because the GUI was bad or something. I just don't accept that all the good stuff has been thought of. New technologies create new possibilities.
PS I'm going to come back in an hour and find a descendant post linking to "World Famous 3D Spreadsheet Corporation, with annual revenues of 50 billion!"
That's a good point. The "Automator" could become the "|" pipe for a GUI system.
Instead of a CLI approach like:
funkyimageprocessor *.tif | morefunkyeffects > ~/processedimages/
It becomes a drag & drop thing for real GUI apps... Interesting stuff. I'm going to have to find out more about the Automator.
Very interesting, but you've clearly cut & pasted that from Microsoft's employees manual, in violation of your NDA.
Prepare for a visit from the lawyers.
For those who don't remember, the Cubes would occasionally develop these "cracks," for lack of a better term. IIRC, owners started to see hairline fissures slowly appear underneath the ploycarbonate surface.
I don't know whether you're serious or not?! You've used "IIRC" (which you don't) so I actually think you are being serious!
As a cube owner, I've described what the cracks actually were in a post above.
I have to say, it's very funny what some people can be made to believe.
The Cube, of which I have one powering my plasma 42" as a "photowall" and DVD player, was more a marketing flop than a technological one.
Alone, or especially when combined with a still new and pricey LCD flat panel, it was perceived as very expensive for what it was - a miniaturized desktop with no slots.
Petite computers hadn't been around for long (I think Shuttle actually came after, maybe in fact inspired by the Cube) and in the US market, the Cube was a radical approach going against the "gas guzzling SUV paradigm," where most male computer buyers still equate bigger with better.
It also had a significant number of detractors in the press, who all gleefully reported the "cracks" (scratches on the lucite moulding for the first batch) as if the thing was going to split open like a lizard egg.
Still, they sold 100,000, created a loyal following of uber-elite modders, contributed R&D to the iMac G4 and Mac mini, and were responsible for the coolest (pun intended) press release signaling its termination: "Apple is putting the Cube on ice."
Not a total flop.
I love the hockey puck mouse!
It was a very precise little pointing instrument, and I used to specifically plug one in when I had pixel accurate point selection to do.
Admittedly, I may have smaller hands than most.
I much preferred it to the current BAR OF SOAP, which I've given away to relative / friends, but I've kept the hockey puck.
I rarely do this on Slashdot, but I'm calling pure BULLSHIT on this one.
The interactive documentation built into Xcode is a pure delight. Double-click on a Cocoa/Carbon/QuickTime/Java method or function call and you get an instant lookup to extremely comprehensive documentation.
Every method in the class, full description of all params, cross-referencing to related methods, historical notes on version compatibility.
As to its highly organized and fully up to date web site documentation: Apple *uses* Google for its web site searches. It is fast and efficient.
Google does index Apple dev. I've many times found links to just the right posting in an Apple hosted Cocoa/Carbon/OpenGL mailing list or other article simply by entering the function name in the Google search box.
In short, you simply don't know what you are talking about. Maybe you're just innocently ignorant, but I really don't know what people like you gain from contributing such misinformation. You've made at least one Mac OS X developer mighty annoyed at the fiction you're trying to spread.
The fact that you've been moderated +5 Interesting shows that the people who have mod points today are as clueless as you. Don't think I'll bother to read any more of /. today.
They never did make a keyboard for DOS, did they? You know, one with an "Any" key that would have stopped people searching their keyboards for hours so they could hit it to continue.
Getting older by the minute that joke is. Maybe try it out in Korea.
I agree but disagree with you. Those are people who the Mac ethos has always appealed to, but in the mid-80s a Mac cost more than a small car. So while they liked the Mac, they used them at work, because corporations (or the very financially well-off hobbyists) were the only ones who could afford them.
It was the LaserWriter and Macintosh Office which made the Mac a success. Combined, the cost was enormous. Only a company could afford it.
Also, from a marketing position (the parent post was talking about "suits" after all), for a long time Apple was dead against having the Macintosh appear as a games machine and discouraged all developers from making games for it. That's hardly a strategy to sell into the home, now is it.
It was later that the Mac became more of an educational thing, with all the good hackers on it from the universities (Dartmouth had a huge Mac following) and with more affordable models (and heavily discounted educational prices - those were the days!)
I don't think we're necessarily at odds, just talking different timescales. I feel my suit-to-turtleneck analogy was quite appropriate.
As to the decline in fortunes: Apple has enough billions to survive now, but relative to what other companies make it is small change. Look at Dell: the most innovative thing Michael Dell ever pulled out of a bag was a cheaply made clone assembled from parts from the lowest cost vendor. But Dell's quarterly revenue is four times that of Apple's, even with lower gross margins.
Look at Microsoft: it was assisted by Apple to write Word and Excel (programs that came out on the Mac in 1985) and indeed licensed to use Mac GUI elements in them (which is why Apple lost the look & feel lawsuit).
Today, sales from a single upgrade would make Apple sales look like a kid's lemonade stand.
I'd call that a decline in fortunes, relatively speaking!