In the '90s I was mostly into Amigas and PCs, but I still loved Macs. But they just weren't practical own for me then. What I take away from those days is a feeling of resentment on the part of many Macintosh users against retailers, computer magazines, and the geek elite. I met more Linux fanatics that I would liked to have hit with a car and left for dead, but very rarely did I ever meet a Linux fanatic who was actually angry at Microsoft and Windows. But I met many Apple fanatics who are hated Apple as much as they loved Apple. It was just a very rough decade for us macheads.:D
But honestly, I've met none that I've hated more than the "Dude, you're getting a Dell" kid.
My understanding is that Windows 95 didn't have true preemptive multitasking. Like Mac OS, Windows 95 used a hybrid cooperative multitasking. You got preemptive multitasking only for its 32-bit applications, which in those early days weren't as numerous as the 16-bit apps. Amiga had real preemptive multitasking, as did Apple Lisa, and OS/2.
I still remember the Windows 95 days well. For its problems, I really liked it. And yeah, I felt it was more like Amiga than Macintosh too.
You know what, screw you and your hypothetical $40 Nirvana CD. I paid $80 for Wall of Voodoo's Seven Days in Sammystown just to have "Blackboard Sky" and "Far Side of Crazy"!!!
Microsoft did become a monopoly by force, chiefly by using exclusionary licensing agreements in order to compel OEMs to only offer Microsoft system software. For example, in OEMs were forced to pay for Windows licenses on every PC sold whether it shipped without an operating system or even with a competing operating system such as PC-DOS or OS/2. Many people who bought Microsoft products en masse did so because they had no alternative.
I guess I might be one of the Google faithful since I do use GMail, Groups, News, Earth, and Maps. For sake of argument, I'll bite and say Google is evil, and is compromising my privacy on a daily basis. But does that mean that Yahoo, Microsoft, Lycos, and all the countless other free email/search engine companies are better? As the Parent has said, Google has fought the government in the past. Is there an example of a search company which rates very highly for privacy?
Yay! Yet another place where I can play checkers, hearts, or some rip-off of Scrabble that still isn't Scrabble. Games.com used to be really good. I could play Sorry!, Monopoly and other boardgames with friends online, but now it's mostly a portal for demo downloads of single player games. Give me an online web service that allows me to play Monopoly, Clue, Life, Trivial Pursuit, and Stratego on a virtual game board against friends OVER the Internet and without downloading Windows software; and I will happily pay a subscription. Otherwise, I hope this site crashes and burns. Yes, new free game portals actually does anger me.
Yes, it did. However, what MPW offered was really just a programming environment. It did have some extensions that allowed you to control the Mac OS GUI, but as never meant to be 1:1 with the DOS Prompt or sh (although it was based loosely around csh). You wouldn't have used the command line to run a zip utility, or move files around, or telnet over to another system to check your email. Also, MPW was expensive at its height. Most Mac users wouldn't have had it. Now, there *might* have been a third party terminal type app which came with a full area of utilities so that you could effectively give Mac OS a command line, but OS X was the first to get one officially.
Only in the initial purchase of hardware, which is not the context of the discussion.
Years ago when there were all these competing domains (PowerPC, IBM-PC, Alpha, 68040, etc.) this was true because marketing Windows meant also marketing the IBM-PC platform; but I don't think it's as true anymore, it at all. I think most Windows users anticipate changing their hardware with each major Windows upgrade. Maybe they think buying a new computer gives them a new Windows for free; or maybe they actively think about hardware incompatibilities. I think it's not uncommon for a person looking to run a new operating system to think "Do I buy this new PC to run Vista, or do I buy this new Apple to run Mac OS X?" My point being, for most consumers, every purchase of a new iteration of Windows is associated closely with the purchase of new hardware. Most consumers probably don't get hung up on Mac OS being tied to a single computer brand; after all, consumers already have years of experience with exclusivity in consumer electronics (PDAs, cell phones, sat-radio).
I agree with you on MS Office, but I'll add this: to Microsoft and the cadre of rich corporate suits, Macintosh is a "legitimate" platform, whereas Linux is not. Microsoft has spent a lot of resources to make Linux seem like an unqualified, amateur platform, certainly not something appropriate for business. If Microsoft were to port one of its flagship products to Linux, Microsoft effectively undoes those efforts and gives a nod to Linux.
Because it often is personal. Many Apple fans no longer regard reviews from certain sources as unbiased journalism but as veiled insults. Factoring out the honest criticism and the good-natured ribbing, Apple fans still have to endure an absurd amount of BS from tech writers. Apple has managed to remain innovative and relevant for some 32 years without vanishing from its original business or being swallowed by another company. Yet. every time Apple releases a new product or does something unconventional, someone on Wall Street or in the tech journalism business writes about how the ending is fscking nigh; that Apple is doomed, that there is absolutely no way forward from this mistake. And each time, Apple has the last laugh. Yet, the death sentences continue.
If you're a longtime Apple fan, you're often described as a retarded child who requires a smiling happy face to wink at you every time you do something right. You're also repeatedly told that you are on a road to nowhere; that you're stupid. And at least once, you've had a stranger tell you that you should get <i>a real</i> computer. At least now Apple is cool again; only you're now told that you can't possibly have chosen your Apple product because it meets your needs; surely, you only own an Apple product in order to look good and be popular, as there is no practical reason to ever own an Apple product. A couple of years, a friend and fellow Mac user asked me to help setup Thunderbird for use with his university's email and group discussion system. The Windows-only disc provided an executable for setting up Outlook Express only, so I called in to tech support to get the actual settings needed. The kid on the phone was adamant that I need a full computer to run the software. He was shocked that I understood such arcana as ports, IP addresses, LDAP, and NNTP. After I was done, he told me that I was smart "for a Mac user".
Apple fans are used to bigotry in the tech press. Apple Computer is used to bigotry in the financial press. After awhile, you get tired of it.
I bet you'll be able to sustain your XP system for a long time barring the need to run Vista-only software. I've owned many copies of Windows 98, but I never ran that OS. I did a pretty good job of holding on to MSDOS and Windows 95 and then NT 4.0 while everyone else was moving through '98, ME, and 2000. I was a big fan of XP when it first came out.
If it helps you, don't think about the Mac just as an OS in a pretty box. Macintosh is a very finely designed machine with excellent components and build quality, and it will reliably operate years after you've bought it. Part of the Macintosh computing experience lies in the quality craftsmanship Apple puts into these computers. Then you have the integration of the hardware with the system software. I came back to Apple after years of bland and then derivatively design PCs that always required some immediate upgrade, or which never lasted more than two years because the cheap electronics or shoddy assembly.
He might have been talking about Apple ][ which was CLI driven. The Macintosh didn't get a CLI until OS X; the absence of which made for some fun Apple ][ and DOS vs Macintosh arguments on Usenet. As I remember, I preferred the CLI because I could do batch operations like renaming with wildcards. Fun times.:D
Which free software is that? I thought Microsoft told VirtualDub to stop supporting WMV around the 1.3 era because of Microsoft's ASF patents.
Yes, Microsoft did tell Avery Lee to stop suppporting ASF, but that's not directly relative here. ASF support in Virtual Dub was just about making it possible to edit and transcode ASF video files. I was talking about the free tools that Microsoft has provided with Windows XP or as separate downloads: Movie Maker 2 which you can use to import your video and render as WMV, Windows Media Encoder for conversion to WMV from other formats, etc.
You can download them from here along with several other useful tools. Also, if you know your way around DirectShow and filter graphs you can do your own conversions. I lost interest in WMV after version 9 and settled on DivX, so I don't know what free tools are available for WMV 10 and WMV 11. Also, to my knowledge there aren't any free tools for creating WMV content off Windows.
Hollywood/TV is having problem with the simple fact the HDTV highlights the body in ways that makeup no longer covers.
Yeah, it is pretty embarrassing to celebs. Even on my EDTV plasma I can clearly see makeup lines and blemishes. In soap operas there's an ugly filter - that hazy vaseline on the lens effect that masks the true age of the beautiful actors. Luckily we can use digital air-brushing. Live television will suck though.:)
The adult industry actually isn't as affected by HD's truth-telling capabilities. For one, the industry is heavily slanted toward younger actresses anyway. Contrary to the plotlines, most of these actresses are not just off the bus from nebraska, but have been vetted through a year or more of dancing/stripping or modelling. These ancillary businesses serve as a kind of sieve for the video industry.
Also, the way adult films are segmented by both content and types of actresses makes it much easier to market imperfections. The dominant filmmaking style in the industry today is called "gonzo" as in gonzo journalism. There's a slant towards Reality (as in reality TV), so having actresses with a more natural imperfect look is a good thing. And if the actress is a total fugly - there's a genre for that too!
The industry does have some starlets that do more than films. They model in print and online, and make appearances at import tuning and electronic entertainment conventions. There is more pressure on them to look their best. However, these starlets benefit from digital air-brushing because they are worth the cost.
Finally, never underestimate the power of heavy MPEG and WMV compression to smooth out those rough spots;-)
Ok, so in reality the UMD is only there to stop piracy
Verizon Wireless has this music pack for current gen cell phones that play music. It's Windows software so I can't use it, but it allows you to convert your music (and maybe video) into Windows Media Audio (and maybe Video), and then transfer that music to your phone. Of course, you will certainly need the miniSD memory chip for your phone and a USB reader in order to do the actual transfers, but I believe the kit probably has its own proprietary USB-to-phone connection. It's not as smooth as what iPod + iTunes offers, but it's a lot better than nothing. However, I would have preferred just dragging MP3s over to my phone using Bluetooth. The WMAs are DRM'd.
Sony likely saw the potential messiness involved - both for the consumers and for the lawyers, and nixed the idea of just allowing people to load the PSP like a USB thumb drive on your computer. UMD offers some convenience. UMD discs are cheaper to manufacture than memory chips and cartridges (ever see those videos on GBA carts). With UMD, you don't need to know how to rip the videos yourself. I think what drove Sony's decision on UMD was first, Sony's desire to own their own format (something that is ingrained in Sony cullture) and second, the fear of consumers getting comfortable with ripping DVDs on their PCs.
Instead, I have a device which has become a bit of a white elephant. Some of the games are good. I'd like to watch films on it, but can't be arsed to buy anything as they're a) too expensive and b) the titles are crap, but also because c) like Minidiscs they take up so much damn room! Consequently, my PSP normally gets left behind on a trip in favour of my iPod. Sony need to fix that in order to make the PSP really take off, especially for film watching.
Ouch. That is exactly the bullet I wanted to dodge. I went Nintendo DS and iPod Shuffle, and am very happy. I can carry all my DS carts in a single game box. I'm heavily invested in GBA development tools anyway, so I use my linker to copy my GBA cartridges over to a single GBA flash cart, which means I carry very little when I want to game. DS still has its problems though. In you case, maybe you want to look at the PSP homebrew community and see what kinds of options you have avaible for really expanding your PSP. I use my DS to take notes for example using a very primitive text editor. And for the life of me, I can't understand why Nintendo hasn't put out a nice PIM app for the DS.:)
You're actually correct that one of the big reasons Betamax died was because it wasn't adopted by the adult film industry. I don't remember if Sony actively blocked it though. VHS was cheaper and had a higher capacity, and Porn Valley is very cost-conscious.
I just mentioned the industry in an earlier post. Many people underestimate the role that the adult film industry has had in make video technologies popular. Some of the earliest silent films were porn. The same can be said for "talkies" and later with the home video market, digital video, streaming media, VCD, and interactive video. The dirty little secret is that mainstream film/video industry has always watched Porn Valley for innovation. Adult film studios are substantially smaller, tend to have more cash on hand for investments in new distribution channels, and have *ahem* the balls to do it.
I haven't seen any UMD adult titles, but I'm sure they exist. Most pornographers making content for distribution online have standardized on Windows Media Video and MPEG-2. MPEG-1 and Real Video is mostly legacy. There's very little MPEG-4 going on, and most of the time it's QuickTime. There's some DivX, but it's mostly used by third-party distributors. WMV is very popular, partly because it's on most systems, but also because it produces smaller files than MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, and the software for producing WMV content is free. The industry is very Windows-centric.
There is no doubt in my mind that had UMD been adopted wholesale we would be seeing more mainstream distributors try to bring movies to the format. Porn was the major factor in putting VCRs into most American homes during the early 80s. Of course, UMD's problems go well beyond a lack of adoption. UMD is so intimately linked to the PSP that the PSP's own failures to revolutionize handheld gaming weakened UMD's own success.
Re:PSP in general was just a huge mistake
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I think it would still be pretty bad, because even if there was no PSP or UMD, there was still Beta, MiniDisc, ATRAC3, MemoryStick, DRM, rootkits, etc.
Betamax didn't hurt the public perception of Sony except in the eyes of people who preferred VHS and laughed at the Beta people. The format was a good one, and it continued evolving after VHS dominated. It certainly deserves more credit than to be associated with blunders like ATRAC and rootkits. I'm still on the fence with MiniDisc. I like them, and I know people who swear by them even in the era of cheap Korean fabbed MP3 players; but c'mon!
If there were an open media format with a multitude of player in that size, I think you'd find a LOT more takers.
There are portable media players out there than can handle multiple formats (WMV + a couple of MPEG formats). Archos makes a few devices including some that act as a portable DVR. Unfortunately, these devices are pricey - more expensive than the PSP without all its addons certainly. I'd stake my money on Apple evolving a full fledged video player out of the iPod. Until then, I will wait until there's a video player for my beloved DS that doesn't make the device even more of a brick.
UMD failed because there is nothing worthwile to watch anymore; I am down to watching one movie a week and I still go to Blockbuster and spend most of my time wondering who approved a movie where Carrot Top is the President.
The artistic quality of the content has never had anything to do with adoption of the medium. Eight Track didn't die because of the success of K.C. and the Sunshine Band. UMD just offered very little value proposition. The first rule of any medium is that it be useful. To the consumer, UMD looks like DVDs, acts like DVDs, but is not DVDs; and yet does not offer more value over a DVD. UMD is portable sure, but so is MPEG4, and MPEG4 doesn't require any special media for DRM-protected distribution. UMD was limited to the PSP and a few other Sony products, so consumers were forced to weigh the ubiquity of DVDs vs. the exclusivity of the UMD. Arguably, even Video on GBA seemed more intriguing.
Unless movies suddenly start improving I suspect that both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will fail to become adopted because people have better things to do than watch third rate movies staring Paris Hilton.
I think we're looking at a VHS vs. Betamax type of war with Blue-Ray and HD-DVD. I'm placing my money on HD-DVD dominating personally. It will take a while for either to get adopted just because of the heavy investment in DVD. Then it will play out just like it did with the shift from VHS to DVD and audio cassette to CD. As soon as we start seeing entire back-catalogs released on HD-DVD/Blue-Ray there will be a compelling reason to stop collecting DVDs and start collecting the new discs.
Porn. That what drives innovation in video technologies. The porn industry did it all before anyone did. VHS, VideoCD, DVD, streaming video, video on demand - all of it. Many people don't realize that Hollywood does watch what Porn Valley does when it comes to content distribution. Had consumers been able to get their erotica on UMD, who knows?
Why should we assume Microsoft or any OS maker (cause others have been guilty too) are printing realistic reqs that are based on OS + apps when more than two decades of desktop computing say otherwise?
Sure, maybe that bootleg Vista beta didn't require 1GB of RAM, but maybe the retail release will. If I'm not mistaken, Vista is doing a lot under the hood outside of graphics that XP did not. If this 1GB *is* based on OS + apps, how did Microsoft reach that conclusion? I doubt it would be Vista + various AnalogX and TinyApp programs. Would it be Vista + MS Office 2008 or Vista + nextgen FPS game?
I did a fair amount of video processing on an XP machine with less than a 1GB of RAM. It kinda sucked, so playing Devil's Advocate here, I suppose that 1GB could have in mind a lot of MPEG2 and WMV transcoding.
It's interesting that Shimp says Oracle's main competition is the file cabinet. I wonder if he's just being figurative, or if he sees Oracle as steering us away from the desktop metaphor and its information management problems, and moving toward something instantly contextual like David Gelernter's Lifestreams where information is queried as a contextual, time-ordered stream using filters. Hopefully, it'll be more than just simply indexing labels and keywords.
Wasn't this the same issue with the DS when it first launched?
Yes, The DS is a just a concept car. CDROM was a gimmick once too. Luckily for us DS gamers, because we have native GBA cart support, we had many titles available to us in lieu of interesting native DS releases. That's really made me feel better about having jumped the gun on the DS.
I fully intend on picking one up on or near launch (which I've never done for anything).
Aside from my DS purchase, my strategy has been never to purchase video game consoles on or near launch. I prefer to wait a revision or two so that all the kinks are worked out of the system. By then, the hardware is cheaper, there are many more third-party titles, usually a few blockbusters, and several titles selling at discounted prices or bargain-binned. To satisfy the collector in me, I use eBay for when I absolutely have to have a first edition console. Yes, I am a bad member of the gaming community.;-)
Nobody was more surprised than Atari, who in 1983 spent millions bringing their biggest title to market, a game based on the movie ET...
I hear this a lot from people who think they know more about the crash of '83 than they actually do. ET did not contribute to the crash, nor did it spark it.
ET was a failure before it left the factory. It had an impossibly short development schedule (almost 7 weeks). Howard S. Warshaw, who wrote Yar's Revenge and Raiders of the Lost Ark, had to rush the project in order to get it out in time for the Christmas shopping season. The rush job left the code base so buggy that sometimes, bugs that surfaced made it impossible for player's to complete the game's tasks. Gameplay itself left a lot to be desired.
Atari's mistake was not in being optimistic about the stength of the ET brand in pushing sales; the mistake was in assuming that the strength of the movie license was enough to compensate for the game's design problems. It, of course, wasn't. Atari's bankruptcy was due in part to the failure of ET in light of the company's financial expectations; however, a bankrupt Atari would not have collapsed an entire industry. There was still Intellivision and several other companies.
By 1982 the video game market was so saturated with games, consoles, and arcades that one could twirl blind through any American suburb and end up in front of a Pac-Man machine. I remember the impact the glut would have on some of my favorite arcades like Pirate's Cove (Monterey Park, CA). It wasn't easy to make money on new arcade cabinets because they were everywhere; and everyone who wanted a console pretty much had one.
Companies were releasing too many derivative game designs. Business customers had only so much room for arcade cabinets in their businesses. Players matured and demanded more innovative gameplay - "simulation" became the new hot trend. C64, Amiga, and other computers began offering more value to players.
No other console became popular in its place, not for years.
Somewhat correct, but Intellivsion continued to sell up until the early 90s, and Nintendo arguably had the mindshare of the 90s generation.
The author's basic thesis is that video gaming is a novelty. He suggests that the Crash of '83 was due, at least in part, to the novelty of video games. Were we discussing Magnovox and Ralph Baer, I'd willingly toss around the word "novelty"; but by the time the home consoles were big in the '82, video gaming was past being a novelty.
I think the PS3 is a gamble for Sony considering the company's dependency on Playstation for profits, but I don't think a crash is inevitable for a couple of reasons: 1) the technological state each console on the market means it is possible to produce unique, immersive gaming experiences that will be very satisfying to players; and 2) gaming has long since past being a novelty. It's not even an occasional diversion anymore. Video gaming is as incidental to recreation as television viewing. I just can't take this guy seriously.
Both very good points (parent and grandparent). I am a news junkie. Google News plays a primary role in my news consumption precisely because it is an aggregator of news from a sample of newspapers and news stations around the world. Since Google News acts as a conduit rather than a repackager of news products, I get more localized opinions in my news, which helps my understanding of issues from multiple perspectives. I find this especially invaluable when reading news from foriegn countries. I even find that I am reading news from sources I would ordinarily ignore such as Christian Science Monitor. I do wish news blogging sites were listed as well, but that raises quality concerns. Add to your list of quality news services, ITN and Knight Ridder as well as newswire sources listed here.
I am pretty open in my disdain for cable news. I find cable news to be the poorest source for news because the business model cable news networks operate on is closer to entertainment television than traditional news (big three nightly evening news). The model is successful numbers-wise, but this has been at the cost of quality. Too much of the news product is fluff, slanted political op-eds disguised as news, or legitimate pieces that have been factored down to their most sensationalist elements. One of the causes that I have complained about a lot, is the use of former congressmen/politicos, talk show hosts, attorneys, and other talking heads as substitutes for traditional news anchors with professional journalism backgrounds. News figures that come from professional advocacy backgrounds quite naturally twist news stories, going beyong merely reporting.
So ask for Linux versions. If you don't get them, you'll take your business somewhere else. If you need the software *that* badly you can probably pay someone to write it for less than the cost of all those Microsoft licence fees.
While this may be an option for (typically large) companies that have a relationship with custom software design houses or that maintain their own software design house, the vast majority of commercial companies don't have the necessary access or internal foresight and knowledge to pull this off.
Since they can't just contract for custom written software and have no one who can educate them on alternatives, they are left with what remains, Microsoft and Windows.
The difference is, instead of paying $2000+ for a laptop, it was $1000.
At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I would argue that the Macintosh is the most innovative, most consistently well crafted, and the best designed computer I have used since Amiga. In the last three years alone, I have watched two $2000+ HP notebooks (two different product lines) suffer catastrophic electrical failures because of poorly designed and poorly implemented power adapter ports. I have seen numerous PC laptops have fans or processors die.
Apple is really going downhill. The Macbook isn't really much better than the generics that are $1000 less.
How is Apple going downhill? Why do people compare the MacBook to a generic PC anyway? The MacBook, despite being an x86, is for Mac users. We get the added advantage of running Windows, and that will benefit PC gamers and switchers; but really, you shouldn't even be looking at a MacBook if you're just in the market for a new Windows machine.
Safari is the most unstable web browser I've ever used.
Moreso than Camino or Netscape on Windows? Safari is based on WebKit, an open source core that is based on KHTML, another open source project. What is so unstable about Safari? Are you using one of the nightly WebKit builds or one of the official releases? I use the nightly builds, and those often crash on me.
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In the '90s I was mostly into Amigas and PCs, but I still loved Macs. But they just weren't practical own for me then. What I take away from those days is a feeling of resentment on the part of many Macintosh users against retailers, computer magazines, and the geek elite. I met more Linux fanatics that I would liked to have hit with a car and left for dead, but very rarely did I ever meet a Linux fanatic who was actually angry at Microsoft and Windows. But I met many Apple fanatics who are hated Apple as much as they loved Apple. It was just a very rough decade for us macheads. :D
But honestly, I've met none that I've hated more than the "Dude, you're getting a Dell" kid.
My understanding is that Windows 95 didn't have true preemptive multitasking. Like Mac OS, Windows 95 used a hybrid cooperative multitasking. You got preemptive multitasking only for its 32-bit applications, which in those early days weren't as numerous as the 16-bit apps. Amiga had real preemptive multitasking, as did Apple Lisa, and OS/2.
I still remember the Windows 95 days well. For its problems, I really liked it. And yeah, I felt it was more like Amiga than Macintosh too.
You know what, screw you and your hypothetical $40 Nirvana CD. I paid $80 for Wall of Voodoo's Seven Days in Sammystown just to have "Blackboard Sky" and "Far Side of Crazy"!!!
But ditto on that 20 buck Nickelback CD.... Argh!
Microsoft did become a monopoly by force, chiefly by using exclusionary licensing agreements in order to compel OEMs to only offer Microsoft system software. For example, in OEMs were forced to pay for Windows licenses on every PC sold whether it shipped without an operating system or even with a competing operating system such as PC-DOS or OS/2. Many people who bought Microsoft products en masse did so because they had no alternative.
I guess I might be one of the Google faithful since I do use GMail, Groups, News, Earth, and Maps. For sake of argument, I'll bite and say Google is evil, and is compromising my privacy on a daily basis. But does that mean that Yahoo, Microsoft, Lycos, and all the countless other free email/search engine companies are better? As the Parent has said, Google has fought the government in the past. Is there an example of a search company which rates very highly for privacy?
Yay! Yet another place where I can play checkers, hearts, or some rip-off of Scrabble that still isn't Scrabble. Games.com used to be really good. I could play Sorry!, Monopoly and other boardgames with friends online, but now it's mostly a portal for demo downloads of single player games. Give me an online web service that allows me to play Monopoly, Clue, Life, Trivial Pursuit, and Stratego on a virtual game board against friends OVER the Internet and without downloading Windows software; and I will happily pay a subscription. Otherwise, I hope this site crashes and burns. Yes, new free game portals actually does anger me.
Yes, it did. However, what MPW offered was really just a programming environment. It did have some extensions that allowed you to control the Mac OS GUI, but as never meant to be 1:1 with the DOS Prompt or sh (although it was based loosely around csh). You wouldn't have used the command line to run a zip utility, or move files around, or telnet over to another system to check your email. Also, MPW was expensive at its height. Most Mac users wouldn't have had it. Now, there *might* have been a third party terminal type app which came with a full area of utilities so that you could effectively give Mac OS a command line, but OS X was the first to get one officially.
Only in the initial purchase of hardware, which is not the context of the discussion.
Years ago when there were all these competing domains (PowerPC, IBM-PC, Alpha, 68040, etc.) this was true because marketing Windows meant also marketing the IBM-PC platform; but I don't think it's as true anymore, it at all. I think most Windows users anticipate changing their hardware with each major Windows upgrade. Maybe they think buying a new computer gives them a new Windows for free; or maybe they actively think about hardware incompatibilities. I think it's not uncommon for a person looking to run a new operating system to think "Do I buy this new PC to run Vista, or do I buy this new Apple to run Mac OS X?" My point being, for most consumers, every purchase of a new iteration of Windows is associated closely with the purchase of new hardware. Most consumers probably don't get hung up on Mac OS being tied to a single computer brand; after all, consumers already have years of experience with exclusivity in consumer electronics (PDAs, cell phones, sat-radio).
I agree with you on MS Office, but I'll add this: to Microsoft and the cadre of rich corporate suits, Macintosh is a "legitimate" platform, whereas Linux is not. Microsoft has spent a lot of resources to make Linux seem like an unqualified, amateur platform, certainly not something appropriate for business. If Microsoft were to port one of its flagship products to Linux, Microsoft effectively undoes those efforts and gives a nod to Linux.
Because it often is personal. Many Apple fans no longer regard reviews from certain sources as unbiased journalism but as veiled insults. Factoring out the honest criticism and the good-natured ribbing, Apple fans still have to endure an absurd amount of BS from tech writers. Apple has managed to remain innovative and relevant for some 32 years without vanishing from its original business or being swallowed by another company. Yet. every time Apple releases a new product or does something unconventional, someone on Wall Street or in the tech journalism business writes about how the ending is fscking nigh; that Apple is doomed, that there is absolutely no way forward from this mistake. And each time, Apple has the last laugh. Yet, the death sentences continue.
If you're a longtime Apple fan, you're often described as a retarded child who requires a smiling happy face to wink at you every time you do something right. You're also repeatedly told that you are on a road to nowhere; that you're stupid. And at least once, you've had a stranger tell you that you should get <i>a real</i> computer. At least now Apple is cool again; only you're now told that you can't possibly have chosen your Apple product because it meets your needs; surely, you only own an Apple product in order to look good and be popular, as there is no practical reason to ever own an Apple product. A couple of years, a friend and fellow Mac user asked me to help setup Thunderbird for use with his university's email and group discussion system. The Windows-only disc provided an executable for setting up Outlook Express only, so I called in to tech support to get the actual settings needed. The kid on the phone was adamant that I need a full computer to run the software. He was shocked that I understood such arcana as ports, IP addresses, LDAP, and NNTP. After I was done, he told me that I was smart "for a Mac user".
Apple fans are used to bigotry in the tech press. Apple Computer is used to bigotry in the financial press. After awhile, you get tired of it.
I bet you'll be able to sustain your XP system for a long time barring the need to run Vista-only software. I've owned many copies of Windows 98, but I never ran that OS. I did a pretty good job of holding on to MSDOS and Windows 95 and then NT 4.0 while everyone else was moving through '98, ME, and 2000. I was a big fan of XP when it first came out.
If it helps you, don't think about the Mac just as an OS in a pretty box. Macintosh is a very finely designed machine with excellent components and build quality, and it will reliably operate years after you've bought it. Part of the Macintosh computing experience lies in the quality craftsmanship Apple puts into these computers. Then you have the integration of the hardware with the system software. I came back to Apple after years of bland and then derivatively design PCs that always required some immediate upgrade, or which never lasted more than two years because the cheap electronics or shoddy assembly.
He might have been talking about Apple ][ which was CLI driven. The Macintosh didn't get a CLI until OS X; the absence of which made for some fun Apple ][ and DOS vs Macintosh arguments on Usenet. As I remember, I preferred the CLI because I could do batch operations like renaming with wildcards. Fun times. :D
The adult industry actually isn't as affected by HD's truth-telling capabilities. For one, the industry is heavily slanted toward younger actresses anyway. Contrary to the plotlines, most of these actresses are not just off the bus from nebraska, but have been vetted through a year or more of dancing/stripping or modelling. These ancillary businesses serve as a kind of sieve for the video industry.
Also, the way adult films are segmented by both content and types of actresses makes it much easier to market imperfections. The dominant filmmaking style in the industry today is called "gonzo" as in gonzo journalism. There's a slant towards Reality (as in reality TV), so having actresses with a more natural imperfect look is a good thing. And if the actress is a total fugly - there's a genre for that too!
The industry does have some starlets that do more than films. They model in print and online, and make appearances at import tuning and electronic entertainment conventions. There is more pressure on them to look their best. However, these starlets benefit from digital air-brushing because they are worth the cost.
Finally, never underestimate the power of heavy MPEG and WMV compression to smooth out those rough spots
Sony likely saw the potential messiness involved - both for the consumers and for the lawyers, and nixed the idea of just allowing people to load the PSP like a USB thumb drive on your computer. UMD offers some convenience. UMD discs are cheaper to manufacture than memory chips and cartridges (ever see those videos on GBA carts). With UMD, you don't need to know how to rip the videos yourself. I think what drove Sony's decision on UMD was first, Sony's desire to own their own format (something that is ingrained in Sony cullture) and second, the fear of consumers getting comfortable with ripping DVDs on their PCs. Ouch. That is exactly the bullet I wanted to dodge. I went Nintendo DS and iPod Shuffle, and am very happy. I can carry all my DS carts in a single game box. I'm heavily invested in GBA development tools anyway, so I use my linker to copy my GBA cartridges over to a single GBA flash cart, which means I carry very little when I want to game. DS still has its problems though. In you case, maybe you want to look at the PSP homebrew community and see what kinds of options you have avaible for really expanding your PSP. I use my DS to take notes for example using a very primitive text editor. And for the life of me, I can't understand why Nintendo hasn't put out a nice PIM app for the DS.
You're actually correct that one of the big reasons Betamax died was because it wasn't adopted by the adult film industry. I don't remember if Sony actively blocked it though. VHS was cheaper and had a higher capacity, and Porn Valley is very cost-conscious.
I just mentioned the industry in an earlier post. Many people underestimate the role that the adult film industry has had in make video technologies popular. Some of the earliest silent films were porn. The same can be said for "talkies" and later with the home video market, digital video, streaming media, VCD, and interactive video. The dirty little secret is that mainstream film/video industry has always watched Porn Valley for innovation. Adult film studios are substantially smaller, tend to have more cash on hand for investments in new distribution channels, and have *ahem* the balls to do it.
I haven't seen any UMD adult titles, but I'm sure they exist. Most pornographers making content for distribution online have standardized on Windows Media Video and MPEG-2. MPEG-1 and Real Video is mostly legacy. There's very little MPEG-4 going on, and most of the time it's QuickTime. There's some DivX, but it's mostly used by third-party distributors. WMV is very popular, partly because it's on most systems, but also because it produces smaller files than MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, and the software for producing WMV content is free. The industry is very Windows-centric.
There is no doubt in my mind that had UMD been adopted wholesale we would be seeing more mainstream distributors try to bring movies to the format. Porn was the major factor in putting VCRs into most American homes during the early 80s. Of course, UMD's problems go well beyond a lack of adoption. UMD is so intimately linked to the PSP that the PSP's own failures to revolutionize handheld gaming weakened UMD's own success.
Porn. That what drives innovation in video technologies. The porn industry did it all before anyone did. VHS, VideoCD, DVD, streaming video, video on demand - all of it. Many people don't realize that Hollywood does watch what Porn Valley does when it comes to content distribution. Had consumers been able to get their erotica on UMD, who knows?
Why should we assume Microsoft or any OS maker (cause others have been guilty too) are printing realistic reqs that are based on OS + apps when more than two decades of desktop computing say otherwise?
Sure, maybe that bootleg Vista beta didn't require 1GB of RAM, but maybe the retail release will. If I'm not mistaken, Vista is doing a lot under the hood outside of graphics that XP did not. If this 1GB *is* based on OS + apps, how did Microsoft reach that conclusion? I doubt it would be Vista + various AnalogX and TinyApp programs. Would it be Vista + MS Office 2008 or Vista + nextgen FPS game?
I did a fair amount of video processing on an XP machine with less than a 1GB of RAM. It kinda sucked, so playing Devil's Advocate here, I suppose that 1GB could have in mind a lot of MPEG2 and WMV transcoding.
It's interesting that Shimp says Oracle's main competition is the file cabinet. I wonder if he's just being figurative, or if he sees Oracle as steering us away from the desktop metaphor and its information management problems, and moving toward something instantly contextual like David Gelernter's Lifestreams where information is queried as a contextual, time-ordered stream using filters. Hopefully, it'll be more than just simply indexing labels and keywords.
Aside from my DS purchase, my strategy has been never to purchase video game consoles on or near launch. I prefer to wait a revision or two so that all the kinks are worked out of the system. By then, the hardware is cheaper, there are many more third-party titles, usually a few blockbusters, and several titles selling at discounted prices or bargain-binned. To satisfy the collector in me, I use eBay for when I absolutely have to have a first edition console. Yes, I am a bad member of the gaming community.
ET was a failure before it left the factory. It had an impossibly short development schedule (almost 7 weeks). Howard S. Warshaw, who wrote Yar's Revenge and Raiders of the Lost Ark, had to rush the project in order to get it out in time for the Christmas shopping season. The rush job left the code base so buggy that sometimes, bugs that surfaced made it impossible for player's to complete the game's tasks. Gameplay itself left a lot to be desired.
Atari's mistake was not in being optimistic about the stength of the ET brand in pushing sales; the mistake was in assuming that the strength of the movie license was enough to compensate for the game's design problems. It, of course, wasn't. Atari's bankruptcy was due in part to the failure of ET in light of the company's financial expectations; however, a bankrupt Atari would not have collapsed an entire industry. There was still Intellivision and several other companies.
By 1982 the video game market was so saturated with games, consoles, and arcades that one could twirl blind through any American suburb and end up in front of a Pac-Man machine. I remember the impact the glut would have on some of my favorite arcades like Pirate's Cove (Monterey Park, CA). It wasn't easy to make money on new arcade cabinets because they were everywhere; and everyone who wanted a console pretty much had one.
Companies were releasing too many derivative game designs. Business customers had only so much room for arcade cabinets in their businesses. Players matured and demanded more innovative gameplay - "simulation" became the new hot trend. C64, Amiga, and other computers began offering more value to players.
Somewhat correct, but Intellivsion continued to sell up until the early 90s, and Nintendo arguably had the mindshare of the 90s generation.
The author's basic thesis is that video gaming is a novelty. He suggests that the Crash of '83 was due, at least in part, to the novelty of video games. Were we discussing Magnovox and Ralph Baer, I'd willingly toss around the word "novelty"; but by the time the home consoles were big in the '82, video gaming was past being a novelty.
I think the PS3 is a gamble for Sony considering the company's dependency on Playstation for profits, but I don't think a crash is inevitable for a couple of reasons: 1) the technological state each console on the market means it is possible to produce unique, immersive gaming experiences that will be very satisfying to players; and 2) gaming has long since past being a novelty. It's not even an occasional diversion anymore. Video gaming is as incidental to recreation as television viewing. I just can't take this guy seriously.
Both very good points (parent and grandparent). I am a news junkie. Google News plays a primary role in my news consumption precisely because it is an aggregator of news from a sample of newspapers and news stations around the world. Since Google News acts as a conduit rather than a repackager of news products, I get more localized opinions in my news, which helps my understanding of issues from multiple perspectives. I find this especially invaluable when reading news from foriegn countries. I even find that I am reading news from sources I would ordinarily ignore such as Christian Science Monitor. I do wish news blogging sites were listed as well, but that raises quality concerns. Add to your list of quality news services, ITN and Knight Ridder as well as newswire sources listed here.
I am pretty open in my disdain for cable news. I find cable news to be the poorest source for news because the business model cable news networks operate on is closer to entertainment television than traditional news (big three nightly evening news). The model is successful numbers-wise, but this has been at the cost of quality. Too much of the news product is fluff, slanted political op-eds disguised as news, or legitimate pieces that have been factored down to their most sensationalist elements. One of the causes that I have complained about a lot, is the use of former congressmen/politicos, talk show hosts, attorneys, and other talking heads as substitutes for traditional news anchors with professional journalism backgrounds. News figures that come from professional advocacy backgrounds quite naturally twist news stories, going beyong merely reporting.