It is much quieter than the PB G4, especially in day-to-day use. There is a buzz, but it isn't the screen. It is probably the fan. The PB fan sounded like white noise (I kept thinking the speakers were crap; they were, but the hiss was from the fan); this one seems to have a much higher pitch.
That isn't a factor for any modern computer. Most OSes, including OS X, give priority to drivers over user apps and the amount of CPU required is pretty small. I've used dual G4/500s, dual G4/800s, dual G5/2.0 Ghz, iBook G4 1.2 Ghz, PB15 1.6 GHz, MPB Core Duo 1.87 Ghz, and a few others. They all get the same transfer speed. USB 2 sucks, but it sucks hardcore on OS X.
No. FireWire pretty regularly trumps USB2 in speed tests. The 400 Mb/s and 480 Mb/s is raw throughput, but then you have to subtract the bus overhead and FireWire usually comes out ahead. But even more important is that there is a really bad bug in OS X that limits USB2 transfer speeds. My new Mac Book Pro has an Intel chipset and it still suffers from the problem, so it must be software. And it is even worse than the article mentions, because on both my 15" PB and my new MBP, I can never get over 11 MB/s (same device gets over 30 MB/s through FW400). What is really odd is that if I hook up a USB2 hub so that I have multiple devices running through the same port, each of them can get 11 MB/s. Further evidence that it is a software problem. I haven't seen any explanation from Apple, but given that FireWire works so well, I can't imagine they have any excuse. But it is the same on my 10.3 boxes, so this has been around for a long, long time. Complete crap.
Maybe now that they are starting to phase out the importance of FireWire, they'll spend some time on their USB 2 drivers.
It is called "Region Code Enhancement", or RCE, and it works basically the way you have described. I would just note that as you implied, the difference is that region code checking is done in hardware, while RCE is done in software. So with normal region codes, the DVD player is supposed to check the region of the disc and not play if it doesn't support that region. Region-free DVD players just skip that check. WIth RCE, the software on the disc, the code that drives menus and whatnot, checks for the region code.
Originally everyone said the Ps2 was going to blow the doors off of the xbox, but then it turned out all that wierd hardware didn't really perform as well as everyone expected.
Umm, no one said that, because the Xbox didn't come out until a year and a half after the PlayStation2. When the PlayStation2 came out, the Xbox was just a twinkle in Bill Gates' eye.
You might want to check your facts before you post. The iMac comes with a DVI port and the ability to span across a second monitor. Supporting resolutions beyond 1920x1200 is a limitation that they use as a differentiator between the consumer and pro machines, but that is hardly unreasonable, especially considering that to go beyond that you would want dual-link DVI and I would guess that that is marginally more expensive that standard DVI.
Exactly. The real reason they aren't switching over CS 2 is because they can't. They've been using CodeWarrior forever and they would probably still be putting off moving away from it if it wasn't for the fact that they have to in order to support Universal Binaries. It'll take them to 2007 just getting it to build correctly.
Yeah, and why do we need Negros in these careers? For that matter, why do we need women or Negros in any high-paying careers? Is this really something we need to "fix"? If they wanted to do this stuff, they would. Are "civil rights" proponents saying modern Negros are incapable of making that decision for themselves? Do we need lab coats in traditional African colors? How about fried chicken with its own chemical formula on the side? Seriously. Do we want people whose direction in life is so easily influenced by the speechs of one minister?
And where is all the interest in getting more white males in these positions? They're obviously better at these jobs and want to do them more, because they have almost all of them currently.
Ah, cool, I hadn't seen that. I looked all over the site for the Mac Book when it came out trying to find an answer for that (and trying to find numbers on battery life), but I couldn't find anything. I never thought I'd learn something from reading a press release. It wasn't a deal breaker for me, but I do use it for time to time. It would make sense for them to include this, but with the rush to get these out, who knows.
You might want to read what you link to: The Apple DVI to Video Adapter is designed to work with the DVI port on the Mac mini and Power Mac G5 systems only.
Video out (versus VGA) is something that isn't in the DVI spec, so it is a proprietary extension by Apple. It is very possible that they didn't have enough time to customize the chipset. The Mac Book specs include this hopeful line: DVI to VGA adapter included (other adapters sold separately)
but so far, I have seen nothing announced and under Mac Book accessories, nothing is listed.
No, they will be supporting the PowerPC for quite awhile. They will still be selling G5 boxes well into 2006 and they will primarily be selling them to their professional users. If they burn their large professional customers (who are very slow to move; some are still pissed off about Apple completely dropping OS 9 boot support) by dropping support, a large number of those customers will simply switch to Windows PCs.
For example, we just picked up 12 PowerMac G5s and we will probably pick up another bunch of G5s when they announce the Intel-based PowerMacs. If we could buy Intel-based PowerMacs today, we wouldn't and neither would any of their other professional users. Intel support isn't simply a recompile. It is only easy if you are using Xcode and even then it takes at least a little work. Obviously Apple's pro apps (Final Cut, etc.) are developed in Xcode and obviously they are having to do quite a bit of work to transition them. If it were a simple recompile, don't you think they would have announced support when they introduced the first Intel Macs rather than a couple months from now? And a bunch of the other large apps aren't using Xcode. Adobe was using Codewarrior exclusively and are switching primarily because of this transition (they would have had to anyway as Codewarrior is dead, but it would have been a lot slower). Microsoft is another example and there are a ton of apps in vertical markets that are going to be very slow to transition over (some of them still run in OS 9!).
1. Select "WMV Player", which will open WMV files in QuickTime and even gives the files the QuickTime icon.
2. I don't notice anything unusual with this. WMV has always sucked for seeking, in my experience, but I've been able to scrub fairly well in mine.
3. Again, not something I've had problems with. Is it possible it is a certain type of file (video/audio codec) that isn't working?
4. Some files may trip it up, but it handles WMV3 (Media Player 9 and later) and nothing else on the Mac does (Mplayer and VLC use binary codecs for playback on Windows machines). The biggest weakest is with streams, which I have had a lot of problems with.
Hey, I agree with you. And I think Apple should have communicated it better. But I really don't think they thought this was going to be controversial in any way. I think they thought that it was pretty straight-forward and that customers wouldn't care; either they would like and use the feature, in which case they don't need to be bothered with the implementation details, or they would turn it off, it which case there is nothing to worry about. I really think they were right.
And the spyware accusation just really galled me. It was such a huge overstatement, like calling Bush Hitler (he's just Hitler-like). This only sent data in response to user input, which is completely opposite of spyware.
Also, I think the cries of "Oh, but the average computer user has no idea!" were also extremely overblown. It only took my dad a minute. "Whoa, that's weird. The ministore showed Simon & Garkunkel songs just as I was listening to Simon & Garfunkel. Wait, now it is showing Pink Martini. Either they are reading my mind, or iTunes is getting songs for the artist I'm listening to." It really isn't hard to figure out.
Apple definitely needed to communicate better how to turn it off. I'm sure there were people wondering, rightly so, whether it was still transmitting data if the ministore was turned off. And I absolutely support privacy advocates, just like I support the ACLU. Somebody has to be thinking about these issues and providing push-back, because most people just don't care (until it's too late). But this wasn't TPM and I really didn't appreciate the cries of "Oh, sure, people hate it when Kazaa and virus writers do it, but it's okay if it is Apple."
What is this crap about sending it to a third-party IP address? There was nothing about that in yesterday's article.
Apple COULD HAVE been sending ANYTHING to them.
Umm, yeah, and we COULD nuke China. But we don't. And apparently Apple doesn't send any identifying information and discards what it gets after returning the results. BFD.
The fact is, more and more applications are becoming integrated with the Internet. ITunes has had some integration since they included iTMS. Yes, there are some privacy concerns when it starts sending data back to the server automatically, but it turns out that it only sends data as a result on user input (selecting or playing a song), it doesn't send back identifying info and none of the information is stored, and it is very easy and natural to turn off (i.e., not hidden away in some preferences). I think that figuring out what it is doing (Apple was happy to clarify the point when asked) is a reasonable thing to do before flying off the handle and throwing terms like "spyware" and "adware" about.
I agree. Basically, the feature is just typing the name of the currently selected artist into the store for you. I find it annoying to suck up some of my library screen real-estate for it (especially since it isn't resizable), but it might be useful when I am looking for new music from my favorite artists. I really don't understand the outrage. They don't actively run in the background or anything, it only sends information in response to user interaction (clicking on a song) and it can easily be turned off. This isn't spyware, adware, or malware.
And yet, if you would have bought only yesterday, you'd already be up six and a third percent. Nobody knows how a company will do in the future, but if you think Apple will be able to realize a good chunk of the huge market upside to switching to Intel, the iPod halo effect, and being the first with a mainstream video download service, then buying Apple stock now makes sense. Of course you want to monitor it often and set an automatic sale point, but people were saying exactly what you were saying last year. The fact is, Apple has a huge ability to grow, whereas a company like Microsoft or Dell is finding it increasing difficult to find new markets to dominate.
I was joking.
And the brackets just point out my changes, changing the lowercase "i" to an uppercase, signifying I took it out of a sentence. The switch from "a" to "an" was because I pronounce MS as "em ess", requiring an "an" rather than an "a" article. Where are the grammatical errors?
Yes, I'm sure Microsoft said "Oh, you've already registered a domain? Well, shoot, guess we'll have to go with your name for this huge, multi-million dollar partnership."
Are you sure? I haven't seen a RW DL disk, but I see a bunch that call themselves Dual-Layer DVD+RW. Then in the small print, they mention they are write-once. Apparently, that is the name of the standard, the umbrella name for all of the discs. Sounds wrong, but if some marketing "people" had a say in the name.... I'll double-check when I get home, but I remember being really confused about that.
Well, I've got a gig and a quarter in my iBook and I still noticed a huge difference when I went to a 7K60. I got it for less than $150 a little over a year ago and I'm really glad I did (upgrading an iBook's hard drive is an afternoon's work). RAM is definitely great, but it isn't too hard to max it out in a laptop and upgrading the hard drive is really a complementary rather than alternate upgrade.
I love being able to copy files and start applications and do a variety of other disk I/O bound tasks faster on my 1 grand iBook than my brother can do on his 2.5 grand PowerBook.
I guess you answered my question, you are an idiot. And also a troll, apparently. Congratulations, you're getting one more post out of me.
All that link is saying is how Apple is launching iDVD
No, the first is about Jobs' 2002 Macworld keynote and doesn't even mention iDVD. The second is from Jobs' 2001 Macworld keynote and it does mention iDVD, but if you press CTRL-F, type "digital hub", and press enter, you will find two references to Jobs' Digital Hub discussion. Also, iDVD is for creating DVDs, not playing them.
Any "digital hub" that does not include TV functions is DOA
Apple's strategy takes a computer-centric approach, since that is where most people's digital media resides. Most people do not regularly record television, and only a tiny percentage do so digitally, so there isn't much to manage there. Obviously, Microsoft takes a different approach, but they are both heading to the same destination.
Dude, just because you did your "presentation" at Microsoft, that makes you an "insider" on MS' digital hub strategy? Give me a freakin break. I WORKED at Microsoft Home. Bill laid down the vision for the Media Hub strategy in early-mid 90's when he set his sights on video-on-demand.
I sincerely doubt you worked at the Home. Could you tell me where it is on the Microsoft campus? I believe when I left they were just finishing a new building to put it in to the west of what was then the current location. Perhaps you know where that is?
I didn't give a presentation at Microsoft, I did demos for Microsoft. I worked in the WebTV for Windows group, which was in the WebTV division. I never claimed to be an insider, but I do have some insight into their digital media strategy, having been a part of it. The 9 months I was a contractor there, I believe our group was re-orged three times.
For your information, XBOX (which you indicated was copying Apple's "digital hub strategy" by your "years" comment) was SHIPPED in 2001. And it had pretty much all the media capabilities that XBOX 360 will have (store music, watch DVD, MCE extender, etc.). A REALY digital hub, Windows Media Center shipped 2002 (after being in pipeline for more than 3 years).
I never mentioned Xbox in my post. I was simply correcting your assertion that "years" means more than three. Maybe that is how you define it in SeattleGameboy-ese, but the rest of us understand it to mean more than one. How many people plug their digital camera into their Xbox? How many people edit video on their Windows Media Center PC? Is a digital hub something that you connect all of your digital devices to and manage them from or is it a computer you hook up to your television and watch DVDs and TV on? Apple thinks it is the former and that certainly sounds more like a "hub" to me.
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It is much quieter than the PB G4, especially in day-to-day use. There is a buzz, but it isn't the screen. It is probably the fan. The PB fan sounded like white noise (I kept thinking the speakers were crap; they were, but the hiss was from the fan); this one seems to have a much higher pitch.
That isn't a factor for any modern computer. Most OSes, including OS X, give priority to drivers over user apps and the amount of CPU required is pretty small. I've used dual G4/500s, dual G4/800s, dual G5/2.0 Ghz, iBook G4 1.2 Ghz, PB15 1.6 GHz, MPB Core Duo 1.87 Ghz, and a few others. They all get the same transfer speed. USB 2 sucks, but it sucks hardcore on OS X.
No. FireWire pretty regularly trumps USB2 in speed tests. The 400 Mb/s and 480 Mb/s is raw throughput, but then you have to subtract the bus overhead and FireWire usually comes out ahead. But even more important is that there is a really bad bug in OS X that limits USB2 transfer speeds. My new Mac Book Pro has an Intel chipset and it still suffers from the problem, so it must be software. And it is even worse than the article mentions, because on both my 15" PB and my new MBP, I can never get over 11 MB/s (same device gets over 30 MB/s through FW400). What is really odd is that if I hook up a USB2 hub so that I have multiple devices running through the same port, each of them can get 11 MB/s. Further evidence that it is a software problem. I haven't seen any explanation from Apple, but given that FireWire works so well, I can't imagine they have any excuse. But it is the same on my 10.3 boxes, so this has been around for a long, long time. Complete crap.
Maybe now that they are starting to phase out the importance of FireWire, they'll spend some time on their USB 2 drivers.
It is called "Region Code Enhancement", or RCE, and it works basically the way you have described. I would just note that as you implied, the difference is that region code checking is done in hardware, while RCE is done in software. So with normal region codes, the DVD player is supposed to check the region of the disc and not play if it doesn't support that region. Region-free DVD players just skip that check. WIth RCE, the software on the disc, the code that drives menus and whatnot, checks for the region code.
Oooh, Star Control on the Genesis. It cost $69.99, but it was sooo worth it. That game was a masterpiece.
Umm, no one said that, because the Xbox didn't come out until a year and a half after the PlayStation2. When the PlayStation2 came out, the Xbox was just a twinkle in Bill Gates' eye.
You might want to check your facts before you post. The iMac comes with a DVI port and the ability to span across a second monitor. Supporting resolutions beyond 1920x1200 is a limitation that they use as a differentiator between the consumer and pro machines, but that is hardly unreasonable, especially considering that to go beyond that you would want dual-link DVI and I would guess that that is marginally more expensive that standard DVI.
Exactly. The real reason they aren't switching over CS 2 is because they can't. They've been using CodeWarrior forever and they would probably still be putting off moving away from it if it wasn't for the fact that they have to in order to support Universal Binaries. It'll take them to 2007 just getting it to build correctly.
The federal government is not "any employer." It is far more limited in how it can restrict its employees Constitutional rights.
Yeah, and why do we need Negros in these careers? For that matter, why do we need women or Negros in any high-paying careers? Is this really something we need to "fix"? If they wanted to do this stuff, they would. Are "civil rights" proponents saying modern Negros are incapable of making that decision for themselves? Do we need lab coats in traditional African colors? How about fried chicken with its own chemical formula on the side? Seriously. Do we want people whose direction in life is so easily influenced by the speechs of one minister?
And where is all the interest in getting more white males in these positions? They're obviously better at these jobs and want to do them more, because they have almost all of them currently.
Ah, cool, I hadn't seen that. I looked all over the site for the Mac Book when it came out trying to find an answer for that (and trying to find numbers on battery life), but I couldn't find anything. I never thought I'd learn something from reading a press release. It wasn't a deal breaker for me, but I do use it for time to time. It would make sense for them to include this, but with the rush to get these out, who knows.
Thanks again for the info.
The Apple DVI to Video Adapter is designed to work with the DVI port on the Mac mini and Power Mac G5 systems only.
Video out (versus VGA) is something that isn't in the DVI spec, so it is a proprietary extension by Apple. It is very possible that they didn't have enough time to customize the chipset. The Mac Book specs include this hopeful line:
DVI to VGA adapter included (other adapters sold separately)
but so far, I have seen nothing announced and under Mac Book accessories, nothing is listed.
For example, we just picked up 12 PowerMac G5s and we will probably pick up another bunch of G5s when they announce the Intel-based PowerMacs. If we could buy Intel-based PowerMacs today, we wouldn't and neither would any of their other professional users. Intel support isn't simply a recompile. It is only easy if you are using Xcode and even then it takes at least a little work. Obviously Apple's pro apps (Final Cut, etc.) are developed in Xcode and obviously they are having to do quite a bit of work to transition them. If it were a simple recompile, don't you think they would have announced support when they introduced the first Intel Macs rather than a couple months from now? And a bunch of the other large apps aren't using Xcode. Adobe was using Codewarrior exclusively and are switching primarily because of this transition (they would have had to anyway as Codewarrior is dead, but it would have been a lot slower). Microsoft is another example and there are a ton of apps in vertical markets that are going to be very slow to transition over (some of them still run in OS 9!).
Exactly. Get back to us when there actually is a virus or spyware or whatever on OS X. Until then, these types of articles are pure FUD.
1. Select "WMV Player", which will open WMV files in QuickTime and even gives the files the QuickTime icon.
2. I don't notice anything unusual with this. WMV has always sucked for seeking, in my experience, but I've been able to scrub fairly well in mine.
3. Again, not something I've had problems with. Is it possible it is a certain type of file (video/audio codec) that isn't working?
4. Some files may trip it up, but it handles WMV3 (Media Player 9 and later) and nothing else on the Mac does (Mplayer and VLC use binary codecs for playback on Windows machines). The biggest weakest is with streams, which I have had a lot of problems with.
Hey, I agree with you. And I think Apple should have communicated it better. But I really don't think they thought this was going to be controversial in any way. I think they thought that it was pretty straight-forward and that customers wouldn't care; either they would like and use the feature, in which case they don't need to be bothered with the implementation details, or they would turn it off, it which case there is nothing to worry about. I really think they were right.
And the spyware accusation just really galled me. It was such a huge overstatement, like calling Bush Hitler (he's just Hitler-like). This only sent data in response to user input, which is completely opposite of spyware.
Also, I think the cries of "Oh, but the average computer user has no idea!" were also extremely overblown. It only took my dad a minute. "Whoa, that's weird. The ministore showed Simon & Garkunkel songs just as I was listening to Simon & Garfunkel. Wait, now it is showing Pink Martini. Either they are reading my mind, or iTunes is getting songs for the artist I'm listening to." It really isn't hard to figure out.
Apple definitely needed to communicate better how to turn it off. I'm sure there were people wondering, rightly so, whether it was still transmitting data if the ministore was turned off. And I absolutely support privacy advocates, just like I support the ACLU. Somebody has to be thinking about these issues and providing push-back, because most people just don't care (until it's too late). But this wasn't TPM and I really didn't appreciate the cries of "Oh, sure, people hate it when Kazaa and virus writers do it, but it's okay if it is Apple."
Apple COULD HAVE been sending ANYTHING to them.
Umm, yeah, and we COULD nuke China. But we don't. And apparently Apple doesn't send any identifying information and discards what it gets after returning the results. BFD.
The fact is, more and more applications are becoming integrated with the Internet. ITunes has had some integration since they included iTMS. Yes, there are some privacy concerns when it starts sending data back to the server automatically, but it turns out that it only sends data as a result on user input (selecting or playing a song), it doesn't send back identifying info and none of the information is stored, and it is very easy and natural to turn off (i.e., not hidden away in some preferences). I think that figuring out what it is doing (Apple was happy to clarify the point when asked) is a reasonable thing to do before flying off the handle and throwing terms like "spyware" and "adware" about.
I agree. Basically, the feature is just typing the name of the currently selected artist into the store for you. I find it annoying to suck up some of my library screen real-estate for it (especially since it isn't resizable), but it might be useful when I am looking for new music from my favorite artists. I really don't understand the outrage. They don't actively run in the background or anything, it only sends information in response to user interaction (clicking on a song) and it can easily be turned off. This isn't spyware, adware, or malware.
And yet, if you would have bought only yesterday, you'd already be up six and a third percent. Nobody knows how a company will do in the future, but if you think Apple will be able to realize a good chunk of the huge market upside to switching to Intel, the iPod halo effect, and being the first with a mainstream video download service, then buying Apple stock now makes sense. Of course you want to monitor it often and set an automatic sale point, but people were saying exactly what you were saying last year. The fact is, Apple has a huge ability to grow, whereas a company like Microsoft or Dell is finding it increasing difficult to find new markets to dominate.
I was joking.
And the brackets just point out my changes, changing the lowercase "i" to an uppercase, signifying I took it out of a sentence. The switch from "a" to "an" was because I pronounce MS as "em ess", requiring an "an" rather than an "a" article. Where are the grammatical errors?
Yes, I'm sure Microsoft said "Oh, you've already registered a domain? Well, shoot, guess we'll have to go with your name for this huge, multi-million dollar partnership."
Are you sure? I haven't seen a RW DL disk, but I see a bunch that call themselves Dual-Layer DVD+RW. Then in the small print, they mention they are write-once. Apparently, that is the name of the standard, the umbrella name for all of the discs. Sounds wrong, but if some marketing "people" had a say in the name.... I'll double-check when I get home, but I remember being really confused about that.
I love being able to copy files and start applications and do a variety of other disk I/O bound tasks faster on my 1 grand iBook than my brother can do on his 2.5 grand PowerBook.
All that link is saying is how Apple is launching iDVD
No, the first is about Jobs' 2002 Macworld keynote and doesn't even mention iDVD. The second is from Jobs' 2001 Macworld keynote and it does mention iDVD, but if you press CTRL-F, type "digital hub", and press enter, you will find two references to Jobs' Digital Hub discussion. Also, iDVD is for creating DVDs, not playing them.
Any "digital hub" that does not include TV functions is DOA
Apple's strategy takes a computer-centric approach, since that is where most people's digital media resides. Most people do not regularly record television, and only a tiny percentage do so digitally, so there isn't much to manage there. Obviously, Microsoft takes a different approach, but they are both heading to the same destination.
Dude, just because you did your "presentation" at Microsoft, that makes you an "insider" on MS' digital hub strategy? Give me a freakin break. I WORKED at Microsoft Home. Bill laid down the vision for the Media Hub strategy in early-mid 90's when he set his sights on video-on-demand.
I sincerely doubt you worked at the Home. Could you tell me where it is on the Microsoft campus? I believe when I left they were just finishing a new building to put it in to the west of what was then the current location. Perhaps you know where that is?
I didn't give a presentation at Microsoft, I did demos for Microsoft. I worked in the WebTV for Windows group, which was in the WebTV division. I never claimed to be an insider, but I do have some insight into their digital media strategy, having been a part of it. The 9 months I was a contractor there, I believe our group was re-orged three times.
For your information, XBOX (which you indicated was copying Apple's "digital hub strategy" by your "years" comment) was SHIPPED in 2001. And it had pretty much all the media capabilities that XBOX 360 will have (store music, watch DVD, MCE extender, etc.). A REALY digital hub, Windows Media Center shipped 2002 (after being in pipeline for more than 3 years).
I never mentioned Xbox in my post. I was simply correcting your assertion that "years" means more than three. Maybe that is how you define it in SeattleGameboy-ese, but the rest of us understand it to mean more than one. How many people plug their digital camera into their Xbox? How many people edit video on their Windows Media Center PC? Is a digital hub something that you connect all of your digital devices to and manage them from or is it a computer you hook up to your television and watch DVDs and TV on? Apple thinks it is the former and that certainly sounds more like a "hub" to me.
I think you are confusing John Dvorak with Walter Mossberg.