I've been a Mac faithful for about 15 years. I have owned every high-end apple laptop since the G3 Wall Street. The reason I have owned every high end laptop is that one of them always seems to have a major problem a year into using it. It could be a bad hard drive, motherboard, screen problems, or an OS upgrade that doesn't upgrade well and kills my system so many times, that I say f'it and get a new machine.
If it's not a machine going down, it's the lovely hanging mac. Some app has a problem, and you get the endless rainbow of death, or better yet, a frozen screen. Now all OS' have issues, and I have always loved my Mac(s), but the time has come for me to part ways with Apple (well, except for my iPhone).
I guess the reason is their PC vs Mac ads. Yup, that is the MAIN reason. When these first came out, they made me incredibly angry due to the fact that Apple gave insinuations that the Mac never crashes, or freezes (this constantly happened to me with 10.4 and my machine died when upgrading to Leopard). Or comments about how the Mac is impervious to viruses (which we all know by know is not the case). Apple just took a bunch of stereotypes about Mac and PCs (many of which are completely wrong), and threw them in a commercial, even though most of the stuff they were saying was complete BS.
So I am done now. I am moving on and sold my dead MacBook Pro and am in the process of selling my G5 tower, and will now be using Windows newest piece of crap... Vista. So long Mac news, how I loved thee, but I can't take the smug anymore.
The point is, with Photoshop, it would be practically impossible to create a thin, easy to use UI because of all the functionality.
The reason it is so difficult to change the size of a file in Photoshop, is because of all the final output options you have for different mediums, and the power that level of control gives you. If you were to just click on a resize button, what would you want to resize? One of many layers? The pixel aspect ratio? the image dimensions? The canvas? The overall image size?
Do you want to create for web (72ppi square pixel, RGB), or create a screen for display on Standard def TV (720 x 480, 72ppi, DV/D1 NTSC 0.9, RGB) or High Def (1080 x 1900 72ppi, DV/D1 NTSC Widescreen 1.2, RGB)? Do you want to size for print (300dpi, 133 dpi, 72dpi, square pixel, CMYK).
How do you intuitively ask the user if they want to scale their styles, or leave them as is on resizing, but size the rest of the layer? What about scaling an image proportionately when using square pixels at 720 x 480 when the final output is going to a 640 x 480 screen? How do you think the image should scale the pixels if up sizzed? Bicubic / Nearest Neighbor?
IMHO, the need for the multiple resizing methods is necessary, and it would greatly effect the creation speed, and output if all those methods were not there. They did a good job identifying the categorization, and once you use the resize tools, you'll see that they are all in the same location, except for free transform which effects a layer, and crop.
My point is, this is an expert level application with a TON of functionality, and if you are having problems with resizing, cropping, or whatever, then you *SHOULD* pick up a manual. You might learn something that you didn't know before. Photoshop is an expert level app and what might be intuitive to you, might not be to the next person.
It's easy to say it should be more intuitive; so should 4 way stops, and I see people messing those up all the time.
TThe question is, do you really need to pay more for the jewel case, the cover art, and the pressed CD? Especially if you are going to rip it anyway? Generally full albums cost $11.99 and up, then you add shipping and wait time to the equation, and the cost goes up even more. It's not only a convenience thing, but also a cost thing. I can buy a full album at iTMS for $9.99 with 20 songs, or a can drive to the mall (gas $ and time), and generally spend more on the actual album (store markup).
You get protected AAC files that sound just as good as a CD (well at least I can't tell the difference), and if you are ripping the disc, you are going to add some form of lossy compression anyway. You can easily get around the DRM by burning the disc, then re-ripping it (remember, you were going to do this anyway), and know you have all your music ready to play, transfer, or rip in one location. You don't have to worry about scratched discs, or someone breaking into your car and stealing your entire music library. Oh, and one other thing, you did get cover art when you buy from the iTMS (Edit > Show Artwork). You can even add your own, for each individual song if you choose.
Maybe I am dense, but I have had a large CD library and it was way more of a hassle than using iTMS, and I can honestly say iTMS kicks ass over anything else out there (again, in my humble opinion).
What makes Ars Technica think that Apple "blew the description of its aural feedback and "touch sensitivity out of proportion". From the product description page on Apples website (Might Mouse)? From the large graphic that says "Click", or the one that says "Squeeze"? I think that the statement from the article is what is being blown out of proportion. The rest of the article seemed to be a solid review, and should be taken into consideration, however, blasting Apple for how they are advertising this product seems to be a little ridiculous. "Touch sensitivity", could just as easily mean click, as could "pressure sensitive", or "just apply pressure". I mean c'mon. The real relevance of this article as it pertains to/. should be what the rest of the article is saying, not one assumtion made by the reviewers as to Apple's advertising verbaige.
Re:What about Apple's Video Game System..
on
Apple's First Flops
·
· Score: 1
The system was called the Apple Pippin. It was released in '95 and released approximately 40,000 units world wide (don't know how many actually made it to homes). A lot of this system appears to have been the inspiration for much of the Dreamcast. This is just speculation on my part, but considering that both companies had a strong association with Bandai at the time, it just makes sense. And hey, they also look very similar.
One of my friends bought a complete system, still in the box a few months ago on eBay. It was the Japanese version, but still really neat to see.
This system was marketed as a cheap computer, however, it was only cheap compared to other Apple computers. The graphics were sub-par compared to other consoles at the time, such as Nintendo, and Apple really didn't have any support for this system. Here is the technical breakdown:
Hardware
66MHz PowerPC 603 RISC Microprocessor
Superscaler, 3 instructions per clock cycle
8 kByte data and 8 kByte instruction caches
IEEE standard Single & Double Precision Floating Point Unit
6 MB combined System & Video Memory, advanced architecture
I completely agree with your methodolgy with new Mac operating systems. I work with numerous experienced Mac users and am one myself, and if there is anything that we have all seen since OS 9 came out is, "don't jump in too soon." I think a lot of people new to a Mac will be suprised by this, but that's just the way it is (Apple and WIndows). I installed Tiger on one of my computers, just because I wanted to play with the new features, however, I will wait to put it on my work computers until there is a solid release. And although it is painful to say, others would be smart to do the same.
There are sure a lot of retarded comments on this post. Why would Adobe want Macromedia?
To finally get a real jump in the interactive world. Dreamweaver is the best WYSWIG editor out there and way better than Go-Live. Flash is definetly the web standard for vector based interactive on the web and kicks ass over SVG, which might be widely supported (if you down load the plug-in), but does not have a lot of support from web developers. Cold Fusion is just as solid as ASP, and can can be integrated easily to Flash using Flash Remoting.
Adobe will finally have a solid stake in the web world, which will now give them control over print AND interactive mediums. The only thing left for Adobe is to try and buy the Final Cut suite from Apple (of course that's not gonna happen).
I also read about people comparing Adobe to MS. What in the world are you thinking? There are other options out there! Adobe software just far outperforms all the others. It's not like they have a monoply on in the market then let their products go to shit (i.e. MS). Photoshop, illustrator and indesign all have had major competition in the past. Anyone remember that not long ago, Quark had a strangle hold on the desktop publishing market? And to you people who think Gimp holds a candle to Photoshop, need to wake the fuck up. I think open-source software is great, and Gimp is a solid program, but come on, if you really know what your doing, it is not even close.
Microsoft buys up good software, then either scraps it, or sells it with little to no improvements. Microsoft software sucks.
Adobe does a great job with their user interfaces, which is why Macromedia was using the same structure. In 2000, right before Flash 5 was released, Adobe won a lawsuit against Macromedia for infringing its patent: http://news.com.com/2100-1040-898061.html?tag=fd_t op.
Either way, there are numerous reasons for Adobe to want to purchase Macromedia. There are also probably a lot of reasons why MS would want to own Macromedia, but who cares, they didn't, so why stir the pot with a BS story with with no proof?
This isn't something new. How many of you/.'s out there have been in a conversation with someone with basic computer understanding, and have started talking geek lingo? I bet you all have had someone look at you and say, "Huh."
While trojan, phishing and spam is common terminology in our world, where we read/. everyday, and stay up on geek lingo, most people do not. I find many colleagues of mine who live in a bubble and assume everyone should know what they know.
This is hardly the case.
Before calling these people stupid, we should look at why they don't understand.
The influx of the internet is truly the main reason there are so many people out there who own PC's now-a-days, and these people are using them for recreation. To them the internet is what a computer is all about, and they have no reason to think they could be running into problems by using the same program that they have been using for the past 2 years.
I think that is the role of all the geeks out there to make it easier for the people who don't know what they're doing, by dumbing down the lingo, and really spelling out how certain things work with a computer. A lot of the posts here seem to be talking about computer servicing. This is another case where you don't have to do the work without getting paid if you don't want to, but if you explain things the right way, the user should feel more comfortable with having a professional do it.
Instead of bashing people for what you all are calling "ignorance", consider what you know nothing about (although there are a lot of know-it-all's on/.), and rethink your approach to terminololgy, and they way you speak to non-experts. And who knows, maybe the gap can be bridged in the future because of the changes we make now.
Screw me once, shame on you.
Screw me twice, shame on me.
Now wouldn't it appear that the people who keep getting crapped on by Microsoft would actually fall under the second line.
Better yet, it sounds like you know nothing about the Mac OS, Unix or any of the other apps that run on a Mac.
And hey, who cares how usable an operating system is? I'll tell you who, people who are dumb enough to keep getting punched in the face by MS.
I am curious if anyone knows of a good learning resource for small project managment out there? I work in a large corporation with a lot of politics. Our team of only 3 developers is constantly overworked, however, there is constant pressure to incorporate a process into everything we do. It used to be "get the job done", but now, it's "tell me how you are going to do it, document it, get approvals, etc.".
I have been expected to define these processes, but do not really know where to start. I am sure that there are some/.'s out there who know there stuff. I would really appreciate any suggestions.
Search google using ---> site:www.apple.com "powerbook g5" --. You can see that there have been other powerbook G5 typos on their sites. Make sure you translate the pages. But either way, they are old pages and clearly someone accidently typed 5 instead of 4. Where were you on that one Register?
Fred, your lucky that you have gotten 1:1 for so long. I have multiple Macs, and have had nothing but problems with my 15" pb since installing 10.3 when it first came out. I get a kernel error once about every 2 weeks. This has not subsided since installing 10.3.7.
I don't have nearly as many problems with my desktops though (dual 800 g4, dual 1.25 g4). I don't know all the technical mumbo jumbo, but when my computer crashes and it alerts me with a kernel error, that raises an eyebrow. I think it might be the version of hardware that has a lot to do with it.
The real question should be, why is Apple suing these people? Is it because they broke the NDA, a publicity stunt, or does it really have an impact on their business?
To break it down:
Apple prides itself on being innovators. To be first to announce a new product is a VERY big deal in their customers eyes (whether or not it actually is sold first is cleary another thing).
Apple has chosen to go after individuals who have leaked this information, at the price of potentially proving these rumors are true an impacting the "next big thing" product announcement. Why would they do this?
- Apple might be making an example out of individuals who have broken the NDA
- Apple might be doing this to create a buzz in the "Geek" world (we are all discussing this aren't we) for their new product
- Apple might be concerned that a competitor might start developing a product to match the Apple product. This product might be better or worse, but either way, could cannibalize their sales.
From a customer relations stand point, I can honestly say that I don't know why Apple would actually sue any one for these "leaks", but there does seem to be many valid business reasons.
Also, will Apple settle for the return of documents, and the removal of information posting, or are they looking for monetary compensation from the offenders. I think that will tell the real story.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been a Mac faithful for about 15 years. I have owned every high-end apple laptop since the G3 Wall Street. The reason I have owned every high end laptop is that one of them always seems to have a major problem a year into using it. It could be a bad hard drive, motherboard, screen problems, or an OS upgrade that doesn't upgrade well and kills my system so many times, that I say f'it and get a new machine.
If it's not a machine going down, it's the lovely hanging mac. Some app has a problem, and you get the endless rainbow of death, or better yet, a frozen screen. Now all OS' have issues, and I have always loved my Mac(s), but the time has come for me to part ways with Apple (well, except for my iPhone).
I guess the reason is their PC vs Mac ads. Yup, that is the MAIN reason. When these first came out, they made me incredibly angry due to the fact that Apple gave insinuations that the Mac never crashes, or freezes (this constantly happened to me with 10.4 and my machine died when upgrading to Leopard). Or comments about how the Mac is impervious to viruses (which we all know by know is not the case). Apple just took a bunch of stereotypes about Mac and PCs (many of which are completely wrong), and threw them in a commercial, even though most of the stuff they were saying was complete BS.
So I am done now. I am moving on and sold my dead MacBook Pro and am in the process of selling my G5 tower, and will now be using Windows newest piece of crap... Vista. So long Mac news, how I loved thee, but I can't take the smug anymore.
The point is, with Photoshop, it would be practically impossible to create a thin, easy to use UI because of all the functionality.
The reason it is so difficult to change the size of a file in Photoshop, is because of all the final output options you have for different mediums, and the power that level of control gives you. If you were to just click on a resize button, what would you want to resize? One of many layers? The pixel aspect ratio? the image dimensions? The canvas? The overall image size?
Do you want to create for web (72ppi square pixel, RGB), or create a screen for display on Standard def TV (720 x 480, 72ppi, DV/D1 NTSC 0.9, RGB) or High Def (1080 x 1900 72ppi, DV/D1 NTSC Widescreen 1.2, RGB)? Do you want to size for print (300dpi, 133 dpi, 72dpi, square pixel, CMYK).
How do you intuitively ask the user if they want to scale their styles, or leave them as is on resizing, but size the rest of the layer? What about scaling an image proportionately when using square pixels at 720 x 480 when the final output is going to a 640 x 480 screen? How do you think the image should scale the pixels if up sizzed? Bicubic / Nearest Neighbor?
IMHO, the need for the multiple resizing methods is necessary, and it would greatly effect the creation speed, and output if all those methods were not there. They did a good job identifying the categorization, and once you use the resize tools, you'll see that they are all in the same location, except for free transform which effects a layer, and crop.
My point is, this is an expert level application with a TON of functionality, and if you are having problems with resizing, cropping, or whatever, then you *SHOULD* pick up a manual. You might learn something that you didn't know before. Photoshop is an expert level app and what might be intuitive to you, might not be to the next person.
It's easy to say it should be more intuitive; so should 4 way stops, and I see people messing those up all the time.
TThe question is, do you really need to pay more for the jewel case, the cover art, and the pressed CD? Especially if you are going to rip it anyway? Generally full albums cost $11.99 and up, then you add shipping and wait time to the equation, and the cost goes up even more. It's not only a convenience thing, but also a cost thing. I can buy a full album at iTMS for $9.99 with 20 songs, or a can drive to the mall (gas $ and time), and generally spend more on the actual album (store markup).
You get protected AAC files that sound just as good as a CD (well at least I can't tell the difference), and if you are ripping the disc, you are going to add some form of lossy compression anyway. You can easily get around the DRM by burning the disc, then re-ripping it (remember, you were going to do this anyway), and know you have all your music ready to play, transfer, or rip in one location. You don't have to worry about scratched discs, or someone breaking into your car and stealing your entire music library. Oh, and one other thing, you did get cover art when you buy from the iTMS (Edit > Show Artwork). You can even add your own, for each individual song if you choose.
Maybe I am dense, but I have had a large CD library and it was way more of a hassle than using iTMS, and I can honestly say iTMS kicks ass over anything else out there (again, in my humble opinion).
What makes Ars Technica think that Apple "blew the description of its aural feedback and "touch sensitivity out of proportion". From the product description page on Apples website (Might Mouse)? From the large graphic that says "Click", or the one that says "Squeeze"? I think that the statement from the article is what is being blown out of proportion. The rest of the article seemed to be a solid review, and should be taken into consideration, however, blasting Apple for how they are advertising this product seems to be a little ridiculous. "Touch sensitivity", could just as easily mean click, as could "pressure sensitive", or "just apply pressure". I mean c'mon. The real relevance of this article as it pertains to /. should be what the rest of the article is saying, not one assumtion made by the reviewers as to Apple's advertising verbaige.
One of my friends bought a complete system, still in the box a few months ago on eBay. It was the Japanese version, but still really neat to see.
This system was marketed as a cheap computer, however, it was only cheap compared to other Apple computers. The graphics were sub-par compared to other consoles at the time, such as Nintendo, and Apple really didn't have any support for this system. Here is the technical breakdown:
Hardware
- 66MHz PowerPC 603 RISC Microprocessor
- Superscaler, 3 instructions per clock cycle
- 8 kByte data and 8 kByte instruction caches
- IEEE standard Single & Double Precision Floating Point Unit
- 6 MB combined System & Video Memory, advanced architecture
- 4X CDROM drive
- 64 kbyte SRAM Store/Restore Backup
- Aftermarket easy memory expansion cards 2, 4 and 8 MB increments
Video- 8 bit and 16 bit video support
- Dual Frame Buffers for superior frame to frame animation
- Support for NTSC & PAL composite, S-Video and VGA (640x480) monitors
- Up to 16.7M colors
Audio- Stereo 16 bit 44 kHz sampled output
- Stereo 16 bit 44 kHz sampled input
I just found this interesting and wanted to share.I completely agree with your methodolgy with new Mac operating systems. I work with numerous experienced Mac users and am one myself, and if there is anything that we have all seen since OS 9 came out is, "don't jump in too soon." I think a lot of people new to a Mac will be suprised by this, but that's just the way it is (Apple and WIndows). I installed Tiger on one of my computers, just because I wanted to play with the new features, however, I will wait to put it on my work computers until there is a solid release. And although it is painful to say, others would be smart to do the same.
There are sure a lot of retarded comments on this post. Why would Adobe want Macromedia?
t op.
To finally get a real jump in the interactive world. Dreamweaver is the best WYSWIG editor out there and way better than Go-Live. Flash is definetly the web standard for vector based interactive on the web and kicks ass over SVG, which might be widely supported (if you down load the plug-in), but does not have a lot of support from web developers. Cold Fusion is just as solid as ASP, and can can be integrated easily to Flash using Flash Remoting.
Adobe will finally have a solid stake in the web world, which will now give them control over print AND interactive mediums. The only thing left for Adobe is to try and buy the Final Cut suite from Apple (of course that's not gonna happen).
I also read about people comparing Adobe to MS. What in the world are you thinking? There are other options out there! Adobe software just far outperforms all the others. It's not like they have a monoply on in the market then let their products go to shit (i.e. MS). Photoshop, illustrator and indesign all have had major competition in the past. Anyone remember that not long ago, Quark had a strangle hold on the desktop publishing market? And to you people who think Gimp holds a candle to Photoshop, need to wake the fuck up. I think open-source software is great, and Gimp is a solid program, but come on, if you really know what your doing, it is not even close.
Microsoft buys up good software, then either scraps it, or sells it with little to no improvements. Microsoft software sucks.
Adobe does a great job with their user interfaces, which is why Macromedia was using the same structure. In 2000, right before Flash 5 was released, Adobe won a lawsuit against Macromedia for infringing its patent: http://news.com.com/2100-1040-898061.html?tag=fd_
Either way, there are numerous reasons for Adobe to want to purchase Macromedia. There are also probably a lot of reasons why MS would want to own Macromedia, but who cares, they didn't, so why stir the pot with a BS story with with no proof?
This isn't something new. How many of you /.'s out there have been in a conversation with someone with basic computer understanding, and have started talking geek lingo? I bet you all have had someone look at you and say, "Huh."
/. everyday, and stay up on geek lingo, most people do not. I find many colleagues of mine who live in a bubble and assume everyone should know what they know.
/.), and rethink your approach to terminololgy, and they way you speak to non-experts. And who knows, maybe the gap can be bridged in the future because of the changes we make now.
While trojan, phishing and spam is common terminology in our world, where we read
This is hardly the case.
Before calling these people stupid, we should look at why they don't understand.
The influx of the internet is truly the main reason there are so many people out there who own PC's now-a-days, and these people are using them for recreation. To them the internet is what a computer is all about, and they have no reason to think they could be running into problems by using the same program that they have been using for the past 2 years.
I think that is the role of all the geeks out there to make it easier for the people who don't know what they're doing, by dumbing down the lingo, and really spelling out how certain things work with a computer. A lot of the posts here seem to be talking about computer servicing. This is another case where you don't have to do the work without getting paid if you don't want to, but if you explain things the right way, the user should feel more comfortable with having a professional do it.
Instead of bashing people for what you all are calling "ignorance", consider what you know nothing about (although there are a lot of know-it-all's on
...Or maybe not, maybe everyone else is stupid!
Quick and easy:
Can I run my tax software on it?:
Intuit Turbo Tax
Tax Cut
Quicken
Can I run my tax software on it?
Windows 2004 for Mac OS X (includes Excel, Word, PPT, Entourage, Messenger)
Can play a few commercial video games
Way too many to list.
Apple.com/games/
Will I be able to VPN to the office and back again
Remote Desktop Connection
Old saying:
Screw me once, shame on you.
Screw me twice, shame on me.
Now wouldn't it appear that the people who keep getting crapped on by Microsoft would actually fall under the second line.
Better yet, it sounds like you know nothing about the Mac OS, Unix or any of the other apps that run on a Mac.
And hey, who cares how usable an operating system is? I'll tell you who, people who are dumb enough to keep getting punched in the face by MS.
I am curious if anyone knows of a good learning resource for small project managment out there? I work in a large corporation with a lot of politics. Our team of only 3 developers is constantly overworked, however, there is constant pressure to incorporate a process into everything we do. It used to be "get the job done", but now, it's "tell me how you are going to do it, document it, get approvals, etc.".
/.'s out there who know there stuff. I would really appreciate any suggestions.
I have been expected to define these processes, but do not really know where to start. I am sure that there are some
Thanks!
Search google using ---> site:www.apple.com "powerbook g5" --. You can see that there have been other powerbook G5 typos on their sites. Make sure you translate the pages. But either way, they are old pages and clearly someone accidently typed 5 instead of 4. Where were you on that one Register?
Fred, your lucky that you have gotten 1:1 for so long. I have multiple Macs, and have had nothing but problems with my 15" pb since installing 10.3 when it first came out. I get a kernel error once about every 2 weeks. This has not subsided since installing 10.3.7.
I don't have nearly as many problems with my desktops though (dual 800 g4, dual 1.25 g4). I don't know all the technical mumbo jumbo, but when my computer crashes and it alerts me with a kernel error, that raises an eyebrow. I think it might be the version of hardware that has a lot to do with it.
The real question should be, why is Apple suing these people? Is it because they broke the NDA, a publicity stunt, or does it really have an impact on their business?
To break it down:
Apple prides itself on being innovators. To be first to announce a new product is a VERY big deal in their customers eyes (whether or not it actually is sold first is cleary another thing).
Apple has chosen to go after individuals who have leaked this information, at the price of potentially proving these rumors are true an impacting the "next big thing" product announcement. Why would they do this?
- Apple might be making an example out of individuals who have broken the NDA
- Apple might be doing this to create a buzz in the "Geek" world (we are all discussing this aren't we) for their new product
- Apple might be concerned that a competitor might start developing a product to match the Apple product. This product might be better or worse, but either way, could cannibalize their sales.
From a customer relations stand point, I can honestly say that I don't know why Apple would actually sue any one for these "leaks", but there does seem to be many valid business reasons.
Also, will Apple settle for the return of documents, and the removal of information posting, or are they looking for monetary compensation from the offenders. I think that will tell the real story.