"PB owners will wait a few more months for an even more powerful Intel chip (64-bit, dual core), and the pro apps to come with them, such as Adobe CS3."
There are enough other PB buyers to make it worthwhile to release the PowerBook now, rather than waiting. The powerbook is not limited to graphics people, it's also a business machine, a grownup machine. People put too much weight on the "pro" rhetoric as if the powerbook was only sold to design and video pros and EVERYBODY else buys the iBook. Not true.
The pro apps users will be stuck waiting either way, and if Apple ships a PB, they'd be able to buy an Intel PB after the 1st release kinks have been ironed out, and possibly with a better processor.
There are probably plenty of G4 powerbooks in the channel to serve the few people forced to buy a new G4 in the meantime.
If push comes to shove, people who need a PPC Mac would be able to forgo portability for a while and buy a G5 of some sort.
I can't see Apple holding up the Intel machines until Adobe ships universal binaries. Nor can I see Apple holding up the Intel machines until all the Pro apps are on Intel. (There's no way they're going to keep shipping slow G4 powerbooks until the relatively few Shake users can get a native build...)
Nothing will encourage Adobe to ship fat versions of their apps more than a shipping Intel Powerbook and a population of users dying to use Photoshop on them.
It's a classic chicken-and-the-egg problem, and the solution is for Apple to act, not to wait for everyone else to move first.
On the other hand, it's *always* been a bad idea to buy *now* - right before MacWorld Expo.
Re:Who cares about the pro users?
on
The Odds at Macworld
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's not like this wouldn't be known up-front. Further, I would expect the very fact that so much runs, and so well, that any apps not ready yet won't be given much weight. And, they'd be shipping early.
Do you honestly think Apple is going to sit on their hands until Adobe gets their act together and ships?
"A bit jumpy with the conclusions, aren't we? Just because an activity is illegal by oue (US) laws, or immoral by your standards, doesn't mean there is any mob influence."
Do you really think the Russian mob would see a business spinning money like that, essentially a legal piracy operation without the cost of physical materials, and not pressure them for a cut?
"Nice little operation you've got here, it'd be a shame if anything happened to it."
The mob may or may not have been involved in setting it up, but I'd be very surprised if AllOfMP3 isn't sending significant amounts of money to the mob.
"Again, if someone can show me (a half believable) link that says "yep, allofmp3.com is illegal" I'll accept that, but until then, I have to believe that Russian law permits this..."
For the record, I never said it was illegal.
I don't think the Russian mob would let that kind of a cash cow operate without interference, but that doesn't mean the business is illegal.
". I wonder if he tries to reconcile this in some consumerist branch of Buddhism."
Buddhism has a tenet known as "right livelihood", and for a layman selling consumer products doesn't violate it. Things like being a butcher, or selling intoxicants, or selling weapons would, but not the selling of computers, regardless of how pre-expo rumors can have a seemingly intoxicating effect on Mac fans.
Technically, it's the users doing it to themselves.
They'd certainly like to set *that* up. I was thinking more that they'd set things up so that "popular songs" are more expensive, and any song you buy must therefore (because you wanted to buy it) be popular (otherwise you wouldn't have bought it). Everything'd be $.49 until you click "Buy", at which point your action establishes the popularity of the song and the price jumps to $2.99 as soon as it hits your cart.
"The funny thing is that that sight is bringing true market dynamics to selling music "
Apart from not actually paying the creators. That part of the "market dynamics" are a wee bit distorted.
And some portion of AllOfMP3's money surely goes to the Russian mafia, also known for such delightful activities as human trafficking. I can't see the Russian mob failing to take a chunk of a money-spinning business like this.
O'Grady writes:"Hopefully it'll be the PowerBook nano I've been dreaming of. Unfortunately, it's not likely as the pro software (Final Cut, Creative Suite, etc.) isn't universal binary yet. Rosetta emulation isn't fun folks. Odds: 50-1."
So, basically, he's saying that because a certain segment of the userbase will be waiting a little while, EVERYONE should wait?
If Apple doesn't ship Intel Powerbooks now, these users are going to be waiting, because they certainly aren't going to buy G4 powerbooks unless they absolutely have to. If Apple does ship Intel Powerbooks now, these users are going to be waiting for their apps to be shipped as Universal binaries.
So, given that these customers are ogoing to be waiting either way, why shouldn't Apple get hardware on the market to serve the customers who *can* buy now? Customers for whom XCode is their main app, not Photoshop or Final Cut.
"Throughout that period of time, the weed is much more succeptable to things like drought, disease, and other chemicals (ie, it's weaker). Remove those pesticides from the environment, and the weed will revert to its natural state."
Um, no.
The plant is not necessarily weaker. The evolved resistance may be entirely passive and have no other effect on the plant than in removing the *weakness* exploited by the herbicide. If it's passive, then it doesn't sap any energy from other functions of the plant, and there's no reason for it to effect those functions, and there's no need for the resistance to ever go away.
"How does GM corn cross pollinate with weeds to produce the same weed, with it's weedlike properties, conferring only the GM aspect of herbicide resistance?"
Bees, butterflies, other insects.
Wind-blown pollen.
Really, plant sex is not like human sex. You might want to read up on it.
". How long before the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan get herbicide resistant opium poppies? "
Probably all they need to do is acquire GM seeds and plant the GM crops and poppies in alternating rows in the fields. After a few years, they'll probably get GM poppies.
"But does that mean the weed got the herbicide-resistant gene from the crops or did it evolve the gene on its own, the same way that bacteria that are exposed to low doses of antibiotics can develop resistance?"
The odds are pretty poor that the plant would naturally develop the exact same genetic modification.
Let alone that this would happen *by chance* in a field near GM crops modified to have the same resistance. The mutation conferring resistance would be equally probably in any field on earth where the herbicide is used. If wild plants near GM plants gain the resistance, it's infinitely more probable that the wild plants acquired the resistance via transfer from the GM plants rather than by chance mutation.
The comparison with bacteria is not very apt. Bacteria reproduce far, far, far faster than plants do, providing far more opportunities for mutation.
They said the same thing about the original Walkman-style bulky foam headphones in the 80s.
The thing they probably don't get about the in-ear headphones is that you probably don't need to turn them up as loud, because they block more external noise.
I think it's probably more likely that people will listen at lower, safer volume levels with in-ear headphones because of this.
The peak db levels in their ears won't be as high, because they won't need to crank the volume up to hear the quieter passages well.
IB still rocks, and I wish Sun had demostrated some intelligence when first designing Swing by investigating IB.
They could have used the Internet Foundation Classes and NetCode Constructor, which was probably the most IB-like Java UI builder. NetCode was a bunch of skilled ex-NeXT types, including the guys who now develop the two Cocoa apps NoteBook and NoteTaker.
Netscape bought NetCode, but their framework and gui builder got lost in the shuffle on the way to Swing.
Slashdot Mirror
"PB owners will wait a few more months for an even more powerful Intel chip (64-bit, dual core), and the pro apps to come with them, such as Adobe CS3."
There are enough other PB buyers to make it worthwhile to release the PowerBook now, rather than waiting. The powerbook is not limited to graphics people, it's also a business machine, a grownup machine. People put too much weight on the "pro" rhetoric as if the powerbook was only sold to design and video pros and EVERYBODY else buys the iBook. Not true.
The pro apps users will be stuck waiting either way, and if Apple ships a PB, they'd be able to buy an Intel PB after the 1st release kinks have been ironed out, and possibly with a better processor.
That would help keep the price down - they'd probably get the whole Centrino bundle of CPU, graphics, and wireless.
I dunno, VAIO laptops are pretty spiffy as Windows laptops go.
"
Practically anything worth doing on a Powerbook requires capabilities that are not provided by Rosetta, which only handles the G3 instruction set."
Oh please. Spare me the graphic designer primadonna act.
There are probably plenty of G4 powerbooks in the channel to serve the few people forced to buy a new G4 in the meantime.
If push comes to shove, people who need a PPC Mac would be able to forgo portability for a while and buy a G5 of some sort.
I can't see Apple holding up the Intel machines until Adobe ships universal binaries. Nor can I see Apple holding up the Intel machines until all the Pro apps are on Intel. (There's no way they're going to keep shipping slow G4 powerbooks until the relatively few Shake users can get a native build...)
Nothing will encourage Adobe to ship fat versions of their apps more than a shipping Intel Powerbook and a population of users dying to use Photoshop on them.
It's a classic chicken-and-the-egg problem, and the solution is for Apple to act, not to wait for everyone else to move first.
"If they want to keep their premium rep, they can't ship the new hardware until *all* of the new software is ready."
They didn't wait for all their pro software to be G5-optimized.
"So what should we do with a site that is sending money to help fund illegal operations in this instance?"
Do you honestly consider payola on the same level as human trafficking?
On the other hand, it's *always* been a bad idea to buy *now* - right before MacWorld Expo.
It's not like this wouldn't be known up-front. Further, I would expect the very fact that so much runs, and so well, that any apps not ready yet won't be given much weight. And, they'd be shipping early.
Do you honestly think Apple is going to sit on their hands until Adobe gets their act together and ships?
"A bit jumpy with the conclusions, aren't we? Just because an activity is illegal by oue (US) laws, or immoral by your standards, doesn't mean there is any mob influence."
Do you really think the Russian mob would see a business spinning money like that, essentially a legal piracy operation without the cost of physical materials, and not pressure them for a cut?
"Nice little operation you've got here, it'd be a shame if anything happened to it."
The mob may or may not have been involved in setting it up, but I'd be very surprised if AllOfMP3 isn't sending significant amounts of money to the mob.
"Again, if someone can show me (a half believable) link that says "yep, allofmp3.com is illegal" I'll accept that, but until then, I have to believe that Russian law permits this..."
For the record, I never said it was illegal.
I don't think the Russian mob would let that kind of a cash cow operate without interference, but that doesn't mean the business is illegal.
". I wonder if he tries to reconcile this in some consumerist branch of Buddhism."
Buddhism has a tenet known as "right livelihood", and for a layman selling consumer products doesn't violate it. Things like being a butcher, or selling intoxicants, or selling weapons would, but not the selling of computers, regardless of how pre-expo rumors can have a seemingly intoxicating effect on Mac fans.
Technically, it's the users doing it to themselves.
They'd certainly like to set *that* up. I was thinking more that they'd set things up so that "popular songs" are more expensive, and any song you buy must therefore (because you wanted to buy it) be popular (otherwise you wouldn't have bought it). Everything'd be $.49 until you click "Buy", at which point your action establishes the popularity of the song and the price jumps to $2.99 as soon as it hits your cart.
"The funny thing is that that sight is bringing true market dynamics to selling music "
Apart from not actually paying the creators. That part of the "market dynamics" are a wee bit distorted.
And some portion of AllOfMP3's money surely goes to the Russian mafia, also known for such delightful activities as human trafficking. I can't see the Russian mob failing to take a chunk of a money-spinning business like this.
The music industry would, I'm sure, like to have a tiered structure set up like so:
Tier 1: Music you don't buy: $.49
Tier 2: Music you do buy: $2.99
O'Grady writes :"Hopefully it'll be the PowerBook nano I've been dreaming of. Unfortunately, it's not likely as the pro software (Final Cut, Creative Suite, etc.) isn't universal binary yet. Rosetta emulation isn't fun folks. Odds: 50-1."
So, basically, he's saying that because a certain segment of the userbase will be waiting a little while, EVERYONE should wait?
If Apple doesn't ship Intel Powerbooks now, these users are going to be waiting, because they certainly aren't going to buy G4 powerbooks unless they absolutely have to. If Apple does ship Intel Powerbooks now, these users are going to be waiting for their apps to be shipped as Universal binaries.
So, given that these customers are ogoing to be waiting either way, why shouldn't Apple get hardware on the market to serve the customers who *can* buy now? Customers for whom XCode is their main app, not Photoshop or Final Cut.
"Throughout that period of time, the weed is much more succeptable to things like drought, disease, and other chemicals (ie, it's weaker). Remove those pesticides from the environment, and the weed will revert to its natural state."
Um, no.
The plant is not necessarily weaker. The evolved resistance may be entirely passive and have no other effect on the plant than in removing the *weakness* exploited by the herbicide. If it's passive, then it doesn't sap any energy from other functions of the plant, and there's no reason for it to effect those functions, and there's no need for the resistance to ever go away.
"How does GM corn cross pollinate with weeds to produce the same weed, with it's weedlike properties, conferring only the GM aspect of herbicide resistance?"
Bees, butterflies, other insects.
Wind-blown pollen.
Really, plant sex is not like human sex. You might want to read up on it.
". How long before the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan get herbicide resistant opium poppies? "
Probably all they need to do is acquire GM seeds and plant the GM crops and poppies in alternating rows in the fields. After a few years, they'll probably get GM poppies.
"But does that mean the weed got the herbicide-resistant gene from the crops or did it evolve the gene on its own, the same way that bacteria that are exposed to low doses of antibiotics can develop resistance?"
The odds are pretty poor that the plant would naturally develop the exact same genetic modification.
Let alone that this would happen *by chance* in a field near GM crops modified to have the same resistance. The mutation conferring resistance would be equally probably in any field on earth where the herbicide is used. If wild plants near GM plants gain the resistance, it's infinitely more probable that the wild plants acquired the resistance via transfer from the GM plants rather than by chance mutation.
The comparison with bacteria is not very apt. Bacteria reproduce far, far, far faster than plants do, providing far more opportunities for mutation.
So why didn't your mother scoot the punk back away from it?
You mean like the European regulations that limit the number of hours symphony members can work because the noise levels can cause hearing damage?
They said the same thing about the original Walkman-style bulky foam headphones in the 80s.
The thing they probably don't get about the in-ear headphones is that you probably don't need to turn them up as loud, because they block more external noise.
I think it's probably more likely that people will listen at lower, safer volume levels with in-ear headphones because of this.
The peak db levels in their ears won't be as high, because they won't need to crank the volume up to hear the quieter passages well.
I wonder how many of those "women" are actually middle-aged male cops pretending to be girls in chat rooms.
IB still rocks, and I wish Sun had demostrated some intelligence when first designing Swing by investigating IB.
They could have used the Internet Foundation Classes and NetCode Constructor, which was probably the most IB-like Java UI builder. NetCode was a bunch of skilled ex-NeXT types, including the guys who now develop the two Cocoa apps NoteBook and NoteTaker.
Netscape bought NetCode, but their framework and gui builder got lost in the shuffle on the way to Swing.