I like presentations, but I also believe that any more than a handful of words per slide will detract from the content being delivered by the speaker.
The real problem is that it's simple to make a crap presentation but hard to make a really good one. As with everything greatly simplified (DTP in the early days, Access databases, VB apps) the volume of awfulness created outweighs the volume of goodness.
(And what's wrong with wasting some time in the office? The idea that every second must be productive leads directly to burnt-out staff and high turnover, as well as some sort of monitoring regime better suited to prisons or battery hens than trusted workers. Allow some wasted time! It's good for everyone.)
The biggest things we see being thrown around easily are girders. You can lift an x-wing with concentration, and that's it. The force has its limits...
Yoda: "Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship."
Actually, that quote would be better written for Yoda as: "Size matters not. Look, me at. By my size, judge me, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. The Force, my ally is, and a powerful ally it is. Creates it, life does, makes it grow. Surrounds us, its energy does, binds us. Not this crude matter are we, no, luminous beings. The Force around you, you must feel: here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. The land and the ship even."
Mangled, his syntax is. Begun, my impression has. Difficult times lie ahead for my wife. Talk like this, I will.
(As an aside, the best Yoda impression I ever saw was a 6'4" Scotsman with a beard like a rhododendron who said that Yoda reminded him of a randy French dwarf in a porn movie. "Take this, you will. Hee hee hmm. On you face, it will be.")
Now I readily admit that people like me, who want to triple-boot Mac OS X with other operating systems, are such a small minority that it wouldn't be worth Apple's time to make Mac OS X available just to satisfy us alone. However, I would venture a guess that there are *many* people who have heard the buzz about how good Mac OS X is, especially when compared to Windows operating systems, and would be very interested in trying it out if it were only a couple-hundred-dollar piece of software, instead of a thousand-dollar-plus investment in new hardware.
Picture this: after shopping around for a good deal, average customer Joe Bloggs buys a computer for under $600 from a local dealer. It has everything he needs, a monitor and runs Windows Vista. He's looking for low prices because he knows computer hardware is a commodity market these days and vendors are more or less the same. He may not see it in those terms, but his shopping around indicates that he knows it at some level.
Now the question is: why should Joe Bloggs spend another $129 on OS X when Vista already launches the programs he uses, stores the files he creates, lets him use the Internet, email and so on? OS X won't give him any new functionality that Vista doesn't already have, although he will have heard about Apple's ease of use and stability. But Vista seems pretty easy and doesn't crash like his old Win98 machine did. He's heard that Vista's pretty secure, as is OS X. He can play all his old games on it too. Joe Bloggs likes to spend his money on other stuff, and while he does need a computer, he doesn't like to pay much for this tool. How can you convince him to spend a significant (compared to his PC cost) sum on OS X?
I see many anecdotes about how Apple literally betting their $160B company on OS X for generic PCs would take the world by storm. I've never seen any real data, surveys or analysis that doesn't base itself on assumptions and anecdotes. This would be a massive leap off a cliff for Apple, and if I were running the company, I'd want some pretty damned hard data before I made any such decision. It has a very strong likelihood of killing hardware sales instantly and irrevocably, yet no solid information on success exists.
Maybe the *only* thing holding millions of people back from buying MacOS is that it's tied to Mac hardware...
I've never seen any serious data on how many PC users would buy OS X to put on their existing machine. I've seen a lot of anecdotal stuff, but outside of a few tech websites there's no 'buzz' to speak of. I just don't believe people would flock to buy something that does pretty much what Windows already does (albeit prettier and less intrusively) when Windows comes with their machine "for free." Well, for no visible cost initially. People buying the cheapest PCs will put up with a lot before they shell out $129 to Apple for something providing very limited improvements over (say) Vista.
Claims that OS X for generic PCs will take the world by storm fall flat when there's no real data to show that Apple should literally bet the company on such a decision.
It appears that there's more to 10.2+ than just bug fixes and shiny new toys. That's become apparent to me since AppleFront layed the mod hammer down and struck down yet another dissident voice.
That really is the worst kind of trolling. You're lumping all Apple users on Slashdot together, you're positing yourself as the lone dissident (oh, brave soul) and you're mis-spelling common words (laid was the word you were looking for).
Today I read John Siracusa's review of OS X 10.5 and frankly you're such a piss-weak troll in comparison that you should just not post. It's embarrassing to see posts like yours on sites like Slashdot when such thoughtful and intelligent reviews are posted elsewhere, reviews that provide actual information and real points for debate. I'd be ashamed to post if I were you, but thankfully you're being modded correctly.
Actually, I am an Apple fan, but some of the craziness about the iPhone is getting silly. There are many strawmen used in arguments, but generally a skeptical approach to anything brand new is a good thing.
Don't worry about security - I can handle anyone who types "M$" or who uses the phrase "From hell's heart in my parent's basement, I stab at thee!"
(Irritating teenager in an Apple store grasps for iPhone, bugs parents and then just takes one from the stand.) (Lights flash, teenager freezes mid-grasp.) (A group of small, odd men enter from a previously unnoticed doorway under the iMac stand.)
Oompa Loompa doopity do I've got an iPhone here for you. Oompa Loompa doopity day Sign here and here and take it away.
What do you get when you follow a craze? Buying everything to the end of your days. What do you do when you're nose-deep in debt? You will pay all your wages, that's a certain bet.
I don't like the look of it.
Oompa Loompa doopity dah If you are cautious you will go far. You can live in happiness too Without credit like the Oompa Loompas doopity do!
(Irritating teenager is sucked down a pipe, parents watch in horror and are led away by an Oompa Loompa)
Oh, you're one of those people. So Apple is the most evil corporation you can find, eh? Either you're not game to attack bigger targets or targets whose customers might shoot you, or the world is a really great place where the worst corporate abuser of the people is the Apple corporation.
I don't like your politics. You reek of cowardice and intellectual failure. Attack the real causes, not trivial side issues.
Well, you are. Don't get all "everyone's against me" here, just don't post really dumb questions that have been answered many, many times in the past seven years. And yes, your history is irrelevant because your question makes it so. It may seem harsh, but you were modded correctly.
I installed WinXP from an original disc and has a hell of a time getting it to find my wireless router, or even the wireless dongle plugged into it (and that was after I installed the driver)! After a while I wiped it and played around with Linux for a bit.
When I installed WinXP from an SP2 disc it was far, far better at working out how to connect to wireless networks. It just went off and found them. That alone made the whole thing less painful.
(Oddly enough, Vista on my MBP was a massive pain to set up with my wireless network. To this day I'm not sure what I did to make it work, as it suddenly connected after another in the seemingly-endless series of 'Can't locate network' dialogues was cancelled. It's fine now, but I really hope I never have to reinstall the damned thing.)
Either you're trolling, or you just haven't kept up with the last seven years. Maybe you're stuck in some mental pre-2000 age or have been living under a rock. Help is at hand though! There's this really cool thing on the Internet called "Google" which can help you find out stuff, and there's even an online encyclopaedia which people can edit called "Wikipedia" that has stuff like this in it! Yes, you can correct your woeful education with a modicum of effort and time.
Good luck with it. Soon, you'll be able to talk intelligently about things like OS X and won't that be just lovely?
As a left-handed person, I use the mouse with my right hand. It's not a simple dominant hand thing, as I split most activities between my hands. Oddly enough I write and draw with my left hand, but paint better with my right hand. Some sports I play left-handed, most I play right-handed.
I think you'll find that left-handed mousers can work it out without confusion, just as right-handed mousers can.
Ah, but the difference is that in Windows you can guarantee that a user will have a right mouse button so developers can ignore that guideline with impunity. On the Mac the devs can't make any such assumption, and are forced to put their functionality in the menus, with contextual menus as a secondary thing for more advanced users. I'd argue that this results in better UI design by forcing devs down a single path.
(Actually, these days you pretty much can assume a second mouse button on OS X, especially in a more advanced application.)
I installed it last night. There were no anti-piracy controls, no serial numbers to type in, nothing like that at all. Just a simple installation like all the previous Apple operating systems.
You'll definitely hear about any change to this policy - I imagine it would receive short shrift around here.
There was a lot of good stuff in the pre-OS X days, but multi-tasking and memory management were not good at all. I agree with you on those, as I remember looking for obscure bugs and watching my crashing app take down the entire system. OS X was heaven for development in comparison.
You're overstating the case though. Outside of the two issues you mention, the earlier OS has solid graphics APIs, good file handling, a very nice event model and all sorts of other goodness (interprocess communication springs to mind).
OS X far outstrips its earlier cousin, but that's not to say everything before it was bad.
You'd be pleased with Leopard then. On my MacBook Pro it's snappier than both Vista (the secondary OS) and Tiger. Apple seem to have rewritten the Finder, it's noticeably smoother and more responsive.
How does OGG compare to AAC though? That's where the comptition's moved to these days. In a world of cheap drive space I encode at 256kbps AAC and I'm hard-pressed to hear any difference between that and the CD.
Your music experience should not depend on the codecs you have, but on the music you're listening to.
All I ask from my music collection is convenience, ie close to hand and not to have to worry about codecs or screw around with formats and transcoding.
OGG, mp3, AAC, I don't actually care so long as I can play them on my Mac and my wife can use them in her iPod.
No, actually, you cannot, that is illegal, that is in violation of the GPL, and if you could do that in the past, Stallman would have revised the GPL the next day to stop you.
Impossible.
RMS could revise the GPL all he likes, but it wouldn't affect the already-existing software released under the previous version. You can't just change a contract and expect to enforce the new version on parties who haven't agreed with it.
I'm not commenting on whether the original post was possible or not, but changing contracts after acceptance is not possible.
Exactly how can Apple "lose" money? Are they selling the software below the cost of the CD-ROM it was supplied on?
I'm going from memory here, but Apple were posting losses each quarter in those days, and the reason was that their hardware sales had dropped significantly. Since they are primarily a hardware company, they decided to stop the cloning programme, bringing control of the hardware back into Apple. From that point their hardware sales recovered and here we are today.
You're missing the point though. Why torture someone? If it's to get a confession at all costs, then you're likely to let the real perpetrators of actions like Sep-11 get away scot free because you're focusing on some bozo who puts his hand up mostly because he doesn't want his family tortured. Shouldn't the focus be on finding the guilty instead of manufacturing them through forced confessions?
Torture is a hopeless means of extracting intelligence, and anything gained must be checked and verified independantly, which raises the question of why bother with the torture if you have to get the information through another, more trustworthy means anyway.
Lastly, the justification that "they do it to us" isn't good enough to throw away your nation's proud history of upholding rights and setting the benchmark for the rest of the world.
I look forward to seeing the USA as an ally and friend again, instead of the worrying nation it has become.
Slashdot Mirror
Keynote ... Create LOL Cats in Record Time
And on reflective black glass surfaces! Ooh!
They're in ur presentation, eating ur clipartz!
I think I need a shower now. (shudder)
I like presentations, but I also believe that any more than a handful of words per slide will detract from the content being delivered by the speaker.
The real problem is that it's simple to make a crap presentation but hard to make a really good one. As with everything greatly simplified (DTP in the early days, Access databases, VB apps) the volume of awfulness created outweighs the volume of goodness.
(And what's wrong with wasting some time in the office? The idea that every second must be productive leads directly to burnt-out staff and high turnover, as well as some sort of monitoring regime better suited to prisons or battery hens than trusted workers. Allow some wasted time! It's good for everyone.)
The biggest things we see being thrown around easily are girders. You can lift an x-wing with concentration, and that's it. The force has its limits...
Yoda: "Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship."
Actually, that quote would be better written for Yoda as:
"Size matters not. Look, me at. By my size, judge me, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. The Force, my ally is, and a powerful ally it is. Creates it, life does, makes it grow. Surrounds us, its energy does, binds us. Not this crude matter are we, no, luminous beings. The Force around you, you must feel: here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. The land and the ship even."
Mangled, his syntax is. Begun, my impression has. Difficult times lie ahead for my wife. Talk like this, I will.
(As an aside, the best Yoda impression I ever saw was a 6'4" Scotsman with a beard like a rhododendron who said that Yoda reminded him of a randy French dwarf in a porn movie. "Take this, you will. Hee hee hmm. On you face, it will be.")
I'll have a try!
Now I readily admit that people like me, who want to triple-boot Mac OS X with other operating systems, are such a small minority that it wouldn't be worth Apple's time to make Mac OS X available just to satisfy us alone. However, I would venture a guess that there are *many* people who have heard the buzz about how good Mac OS X is, especially when compared to Windows operating systems, and would be very interested in trying it out if it were only a couple-hundred-dollar piece of software, instead of a thousand-dollar-plus investment in new hardware.
Picture this: after shopping around for a good deal, average customer Joe Bloggs buys a computer for under $600 from a local dealer. It has everything he needs, a monitor and runs Windows Vista. He's looking for low prices because he knows computer hardware is a commodity market these days and vendors are more or less the same. He may not see it in those terms, but his shopping around indicates that he knows it at some level.
Now the question is: why should Joe Bloggs spend another $129 on OS X when Vista already launches the programs he uses, stores the files he creates, lets him use the Internet, email and so on? OS X won't give him any new functionality that Vista doesn't already have, although he will have heard about Apple's ease of use and stability. But Vista seems pretty easy and doesn't crash like his old Win98 machine did. He's heard that Vista's pretty secure, as is OS X. He can play all his old games on it too. Joe Bloggs likes to spend his money on other stuff, and while he does need a computer, he doesn't like to pay much for this tool. How can you convince him to spend a significant (compared to his PC cost) sum on OS X?
I see many anecdotes about how Apple literally betting their $160B company on OS X for generic PCs would take the world by storm. I've never seen any real data, surveys or analysis that doesn't base itself on assumptions and anecdotes. This would be a massive leap off a cliff for Apple, and if I were running the company, I'd want some pretty damned hard data before I made any such decision. It has a very strong likelihood of killing hardware sales instantly and irrevocably, yet no solid information on success exists.
Maybe the *only* thing holding millions of people back from buying MacOS is that it's tied to Mac hardware...
I've never seen any serious data on how many PC users would buy OS X to put on their existing machine. I've seen a lot of anecdotal stuff, but outside of a few tech websites there's no 'buzz' to speak of. I just don't believe people would flock to buy something that does pretty much what Windows already does (albeit prettier and less intrusively) when Windows comes with their machine "for free." Well, for no visible cost initially. People buying the cheapest PCs will put up with a lot before they shell out $129 to Apple for something providing very limited improvements over (say) Vista.
Claims that OS X for generic PCs will take the world by storm fall flat when there's no real data to show that Apple should literally bet the company on such a decision.
My favourite is moving things around in the Start menu. From memory I got three alerts for every item I'd move.
I'm all for better security in Windows, but that was ridiculous!
It appears that there's more to 10.2+ than just bug fixes and shiny new toys. That's become apparent to me since AppleFront layed the mod hammer down and struck down yet another dissident voice.
That really is the worst kind of trolling. You're lumping all Apple users on Slashdot together, you're positing yourself as the lone dissident (oh, brave soul) and you're mis-spelling common words (laid was the word you were looking for).
Today I read John Siracusa's review of OS X 10.5 and frankly you're such a piss-weak troll in comparison that you should just not post. It's embarrassing to see posts like yours on sites like Slashdot when such thoughtful and intelligent reviews are posted elsewhere, reviews that provide actual information and real points for debate. I'd be ashamed to post if I were you, but thankfully you're being modded correctly.
Actually, I am an Apple fan, but some of the craziness about the iPhone is getting silly. There are many strawmen used in arguments, but generally a skeptical approach to anything brand new is a good thing.
Don't worry about security - I can handle anyone who types "M$" or who uses the phrase "From hell's heart in my parent's basement, I stab at thee!"
(Irritating teenager in an Apple store grasps for iPhone, bugs parents and then just takes one from the stand.)
(Lights flash, teenager freezes mid-grasp.)
(A group of small, odd men enter from a previously unnoticed doorway under the iMac stand.)
Oompa Loompa doopity do
I've got an iPhone here for you.
Oompa Loompa doopity day
Sign here and here and take it away.
What do you get when you follow a craze?
Buying everything to the end of your days.
What do you do when you're nose-deep in debt?
You will pay all your wages, that's a certain bet.
I don't like the look of it.
Oompa Loompa doopity dah
If you are cautious you will go far.
You can live in happiness too
Without credit like the Oompa Loompas doopity do!
(Irritating teenager is sucked down a pipe, parents watch in horror and are led away by an Oompa Loompa)
Couldn't it be that people are simply deciding that the benefits to them outweigh the financial costs?
Sure, they might pay more but if they believe they are getting more, the extra cost may seem reasonable.
(And I am not paying the extra costs, nor are non-iPhone AT&T users. Be clear on that. The people paying more are the ones with iPhones.)
Oh, you're one of those people. So Apple is the most evil corporation you can find, eh? Either you're not game to attack bigger targets or targets whose customers might shoot you, or the world is a really great place where the worst corporate abuser of the people is the Apple corporation.
I don't like your politics. You reek of cowardice and intellectual failure. Attack the real causes, not trivial side issues.
So you're going to enjoy being beaten to within an inch of your life and sued the rest of the way?
Cool! Put it on Youtube! People might enjoy watching you get the complete crap kicked out of you.
Nah... I'm obviously a troll.
Well, you are. Don't get all "everyone's against me" here, just don't post really dumb questions that have been answered many, many times in the past seven years. And yes, your history is irrelevant because your question makes it so. It may seem harsh, but you were modded correctly.
I installed WinXP from an original disc and has a hell of a time getting it to find my wireless router, or even the wireless dongle plugged into it (and that was after I installed the driver)! After a while I wiped it and played around with Linux for a bit.
When I installed WinXP from an SP2 disc it was far, far better at working out how to connect to wireless networks. It just went off and found them. That alone made the whole thing less painful.
(Oddly enough, Vista on my MBP was a massive pain to set up with my wireless network. To this day I'm not sure what I did to make it work, as it suddenly connected after another in the seemingly-endless series of 'Can't locate network' dialogues was cancelled. It's fine now, but I really hope I never have to reinstall the damned thing.)
Either you're trolling, or you just haven't kept up with the last seven years. Maybe you're stuck in some mental pre-2000 age or have been living under a rock. Help is at hand though! There's this really cool thing on the Internet called "Google" which can help you find out stuff, and there's even an online encyclopaedia which people can edit called "Wikipedia" that has stuff like this in it! Yes, you can correct your woeful education with a modicum of effort and time.
Good luck with it. Soon, you'll be able to talk intelligently about things like OS X and won't that be just lovely?
As a left-handed person, I use the mouse with my right hand. It's not a simple dominant hand thing, as I split most activities between my hands. Oddly enough I write and draw with my left hand, but paint better with my right hand. Some sports I play left-handed, most I play right-handed.
I think you'll find that left-handed mousers can work it out without confusion, just as right-handed mousers can.
Ah, but the difference is that in Windows you can guarantee that a user will have a right mouse button so developers can ignore that guideline with impunity. On the Mac the devs can't make any such assumption, and are forced to put their functionality in the menus, with contextual menus as a secondary thing for more advanced users. I'd argue that this results in better UI design by forcing devs down a single path.
(Actually, these days you pretty much can assume a second mouse button on OS X, especially in a more advanced application.)
I installed it last night. There were no anti-piracy controls, no serial numbers to type in, nothing like that at all. Just a simple installation like all the previous Apple operating systems.
You'll definitely hear about any change to this policy - I imagine it would receive short shrift around here.
There was a lot of good stuff in the pre-OS X days, but multi-tasking and memory management were not good at all. I agree with you on those, as I remember looking for obscure bugs and watching my crashing app take down the entire system. OS X was heaven for development in comparison.
You're overstating the case though. Outside of the two issues you mention, the earlier OS has solid graphics APIs, good file handling, a very nice event model and all sorts of other goodness (interprocess communication springs to mind).
OS X far outstrips its earlier cousin, but that's not to say everything before it was bad.
You'd be pleased with Leopard then. On my MacBook Pro it's snappier than both Vista (the secondary OS) and Tiger. Apple seem to have rewritten the Finder, it's noticeably smoother and more responsive.
How does OGG compare to AAC though? That's where the comptition's moved to these days. In a world of cheap drive space I encode at 256kbps AAC and I'm hard-pressed to hear any difference between that and the CD.
Your music experience should not depend on the codecs you have, but on the music you're listening to.
All I ask from my music collection is convenience, ie close to hand and not to have to worry about codecs or screw around with formats and transcoding.
OGG, mp3, AAC, I don't actually care so long as I can play them on my Mac and my wife can use them in her iPod.
No, actually, you cannot, that is illegal, that is in violation of the GPL, and if you could do that in the past, Stallman would have revised the GPL the next day to stop you.
Impossible.
RMS could revise the GPL all he likes, but it wouldn't affect the already-existing software released under the previous version. You can't just change a contract and expect to enforce the new version on parties who haven't agreed with it.
I'm not commenting on whether the original post was possible or not, but changing contracts after acceptance is not possible.
Exactly how can Apple "lose" money? Are they selling the software below the cost of the CD-ROM it was supplied on?
I'm going from memory here, but Apple were posting losses each quarter in those days, and the reason was that their hardware sales had dropped significantly. Since they are primarily a hardware company, they decided to stop the cloning programme, bringing control of the hardware back into Apple. From that point their hardware sales recovered and here we are today.
You're missing the point though. Why torture someone? If it's to get a confession at all costs, then you're likely to let the real perpetrators of actions like Sep-11 get away scot free because you're focusing on some bozo who puts his hand up mostly because he doesn't want his family tortured. Shouldn't the focus be on finding the guilty instead of manufacturing them through forced confessions?
Torture is a hopeless means of extracting intelligence, and anything gained must be checked and verified independantly, which raises the question of why bother with the torture if you have to get the information through another, more trustworthy means anyway.
Lastly, the justification that "they do it to us" isn't good enough to throw away your nation's proud history of upholding rights and setting the benchmark for the rest of the world.
I look forward to seeing the USA as an ally and friend again, instead of the worrying nation it has become.