Yeah, amazing graphics are one thing, but games are really where it's at.
if it comes down to the PS3 with 6 sequels of PS2 games with better graphics, and the Xbox2 with 4 sequels of Xbox games... and the Nintendo thing with 3 brand new games that are a hell of a lot of fun, I'd have to side with Nintendo.
I have more fun playing Pikmin than I ever have playing GTA games.
Oh, no need to think -- you're dead on. The PSP is definitely targetted towards an older audience, and there's 2 big examples that are easily applicable:
1. Games are targetted towards an older demographic
2. The thing costs $250 for a unit with no games.
Sony's counting on that older audience to keep the PSP afloat. The fact that it's missing its targets probably shows that the reason the GBA has done so well is that it targets kids as well as teens/adults.
The PSP is going after the gadget/gamer crowd. While there's definitely money there, in no way is it goign to be greater than the gadget+kid crowd.
Why is this informative? IE for Mac was permanently discontinued over a year ago, and was based on the IE 5 codebase which, in software terms, is nearly ancient.
Yeah, I don't think "speed limits" are so much a threat as aggressive driving and disregard for safety in general. I agree that someone going 50 in a lane where everyone is going 65 is as dangerous as the reverse, although I think that has to do more with poor labeling of "speed limits."
they really should be "Recommended Speed" signs that allow for people to go, say, 10% faster or slower, and teach people that if you're going the recommended speed or slower, stay to the right, and if you're going above it, stay left. Telling everyone to "stay under the limit" isn't realistic, especially given American's desire for powerful cars, and the limits are often much too slow for certain stretches of road.
Of course, a change such as that would likely make sense, so it's unlikely we'll see it happen.
I had a honda civic from '86 when I was a teenager and it didn't have power anything. I agree that it was not impossible to steer/brake. Perhaps I should change my argument to state that having such a change suddenly will likely cause problems, due to the sudden decrease in sensitivity.
So yeah, if you're familiar with non-power steering/brakes and can adjust for it, you can get by. Having it go out all of a sudden is a recipe for disaster for many drivers, though.
Apple currently uses ethernet for Xgrid on a consumer scale, I believe, although I'm not sure whether they let it be accessed on non-gigabyte-ethernet network connections.
I'd imagine FW800 would be fast enough for distributed computing. Of course, that depends on the speed of the chips involved
I'd imagine that those serious about distributing CPU load among multiple computers would be investing in fibre channel connections. I'm not sure how much demand there is for putting it on the FW bus.
It certainly would work, and I'd imagine if you're networking using Firewire then Xgrid would default to the FW connection. But as most people use standard ethernet instead of FW...
If I had a computer at home to test out (since you need 2) Xgrid, I'd try it over FW. I imagine it would work...
From what I've read, cameras/printers do that by having the printer use an auto-sensing port to switch it from client to host mode. If it's not plugged into a computer, then it can sense a camera and switch to host mode.
To most people, they won't notice any real difference. However, it does mean that in order to use it without your computer, you need to unplug it from the computer and plug the camera in its place.
If it was Firewire, you could simply plug in a camera somewhere on the FW chain and it would work the same, without messing with plugs or setup. But due to price and slow uptake on the periphery market, USB developers were able to hack something together that has similar functionality. To many consumers, they see little difference. To those of us with Firewire, we've been angrily waving fists in the general direction of hardware companies from the comfort of our computer chairs for years.
Oh, in no way am I saying that you can't* put a faster HDD in the mini, laptops, SFF desktops. Hell, I've got a Powermac because I want fast drives.
I just think that Apple's point with the mini isn't to create a cheap computer for everyone, including the geeks who like to put together power machines for super-cheap. Rather, for the people who just want a computer to do computery "stuff." To them, they likely won't notice a difference for the harddrive, and they'll probably feel that the computer is faster overall compared to their older windows machine. sure, that's because the windows machine is infested with so much virus and spyware because they never run scans nor updates, but those people still buy and use computers.
You can daisy-chain FW devices without connecting to a hub is the biggie -- you can simply plug them in to one another, and *every* FW devices is built this way.
This is often why you'll see computers with only 1 FW port -- it's really all you need. I have a harddrive enclosure, dvd-drive, FW audio device, and ending in an iPod dock all plugged into one FW port and it doesn't mind.
The other biggie is that since there's no client/host model, you don't need a computer for them to work. That means that you could setup a device to function off firewire and interface with other FW devices (harddrives, cd-burners, whatever) and it would work. USB can do that to some degree (such as camera printers) but it's not built into the protocol.
Some people I know who are long-time Apple zealots can list off more reasons, but those are the big ones that I encounter every day in pretty standard use.
3 things:
Laptop resolution -- Apple has stated that the reason their laptops remain at the resolution they do is so that they maintain a 100dpi resolution. So it is intentional. You can disagree with that if you like -- not many people need to run 15" screens at super-high resolutions, as they can often make text difficult to read.
64 bit OSs -- It's more useful for consumers to introduce 64bit code for processes that can use it more effectively than simply dropping everything into it. Why? Mostly so that you can still use the operating system with the benefits of 64bit code without relying on getting all new programs. Most importantly, though, are drivers. Yes, Microsoft has released a 64bit version of Windows. As they release very little hardware on their own, though, you'd be hard pressed to get a system operational and crash-free on 64bit XP -- the drivers simply aren't there, and the ones that are tend to be buggy. Therefore it's smarter at this point to release an OS that can utilize 64bit elements if it finds it and scales back if they're not there, than simply dump a release out there with no real support so people don't go through the trouble of using it. As it is, it's more worthwhile for people with 64bit chips to continue running 32bit XP.
"triple core PPC chip" is in no way analogous to "triple core G4 or G5 chips." PPC is approprately compared to x86, not a specific model, so there's no reason to assume that the Xbox's CPU isn't the x86 equivalent of a 3 core celeron (or worse) at 3.2ghz, built in PPC architecture. Believe me, it's not because IBM suddenly had a breakthrough and could mass-produce triple-core G5s with no heating problems.
This way he doesn't need to open up the mini, nor does he need to deal with the excess heat.
Normal operation on a mini is fanless. Occasionally it comes on during heavy loads or when the room is hot. Otherwise, it's off. With a hotter drive, it would be on pretty much all the time, turning an otherwise silent computer into a moderately noisy one.
That and the 7200 RPM hitachis are more expensive than an 3.5" IDE drive and an enclosure...
Apple was one of the main companies to push USB as a major periphery. Not so much by selling tons of computers, but by releasing computers with no PS2 or parallel ports and just USB, and, well, not having any problems with it. I've got 4-5 of those stupid usb/ps2 adapters in a box, despite not having any PS2 ports in the entire apartment...
Still, FW is definitely used on the Windows side -- it's the dominant video transfer format (USB isn't even present for video editing, it's not good enough), Apple has tons of useful Firewire stuff built into the OS (like booting up as a FW drive) and FW is just all around a better protocol for high-bandwidth usage (I personally like it because it doesn't use a host/client model).
Given that there are numerous FW enclosures, FW audio devices, and more, all of which, thanks to the bandwidth advantage that FW has over USB, will likely keep FW around for a very long time. It may not reach critical mass as much as USB, but given that every Mac comes with ports and a FW card on a PC costs $15, but I don't think it's going away any time soon.
And it just got an update with FW800, which, unlike USB2.0, is fully backwards compatible without reducing the bandwidth to FW800 devices. Meaning that if you have a hub/repeater that fans out to 4 FW devices, 2 of which are FW800 and 2 are FW400, you won't cause the FW800 drives to be knocked down.
they can also talk to one another without relying on the host CPU.
Part of it's fashion, but another part of it is form factor and noise.
The mini is damn small. You can put it next to your monitor, like an external CD drive, and that's your entire computer. Get one with wireless/bluetooth and the only cable you need is to the monitor, right next to it.
That's a far cry from a huge, loud box that sits under the desk. Even the smaller shuttle PCs are big compared to the mini, and much louder (I know, I've had the shuttle PCs, and sold it off because it was too loud).
My girlfriend has a mini and is pretty abusive to it, application-wise. She usually keeps 6-10 beefy apps up at any given time, and while there's some lagginess in opening programs, she's otherwise very happy with it *because* it's small and quiet and does just what she wants.
I've got a 733 G4 at work and I wish I had a mini instead -- the damn thing sounds like it's going to take off, and it's about 2 feet from my head. If I couldn't wear headphones at work I'd likely be crazy by now.
They're already very usable computers. The articles you're reading are by those who want to max out benchmarks and make it appear like a much beefier computer than it really is -- probably more because it's like a challenge than as real usage tests. But as someone who sits a few feet from someone's mac mini, I can say that if the only reason someone's disregarding a mac mini is because it's "not as powerful as a big loud desktop," they're missing the point.
Ultimately, I think we're agreeing but on different points. So don't interpret this as an angry rant -- just pointing out and clarifying from someone who is once removed from a very happy OOTB mini owner.
Depends. A lot of traffic accidents and general traffic problems are caused by individuals acting separate from the "herd" of cars that are obeying traffic laws.
Imagine if in 10 years, when there's a minor fender-bender, once the accident is off to the shoulder, traffic picks back up at a regular pace. Now, everyone gawks and traffic stays backed up for miles thanks to that.
Or even better, when someone misses an exit, they don't slam on the brakes in the middle of the expressway and back up to the exit.
There was an 8 car pileup with numerous fatalities last year on the Baltimore beltway thanks to someone in the middle lane cutting across 2 lanes of traffic at top speed to turn into those "Emergency turnaround" digouts between expressway lanes. If he literally was prevented from doing something that stupid thanks to his car, those people would still be alive. Sure, he'd be 5 minutes later to where he was going...
Bring on cars that don't let people be idiots. The rest of us who do a good job of obeying traffic laws will be that much safer thanks to it.
As far as software controlling much of our cars, we're already mostly there. Power locks lock you out of your car if they fail. Power steering makes your car nearly unturnable if that fails. Power breaks provide so much extra breaking power that if they fail, your car is basically going to be nearly brake-less anyway.
A browser that has only reached 7% over years of hard work and being offered for absolutely free with no catches.
IE is only "free" if you're on a Mac. Oh, wait, they stopped making that version.
It's pretty traumatic when your phone gets hijacked. Imagine your phone getting hijacked and then having to deal with some obtuse method of getting all of your music working again.
Imagine a company making a CD-Burning program that spit out a coaster 50% of the time and garbled data, resulting in 20% corrupt files of the "good" 50% discs.
Of course, there were settings you could change that would fix that. They were in Advanced>Settings>Options>Burning>Defaults>Input. You just had to uncheck "Always burn with error correction (may cause some discs to burn slower)" which simply fixed the garbled data, and "Always burn with high-precision laser" (so you don't get coasters). Checking those 2 boxes results in the application working perfectly every time.
Would anyone use that? No! People would laugh it off and comment on just how stupid it is. Why IE gets a free pass for almost the same transgressions is beyond me. Oh, wait, no it isn't -- it's because people started using it years ago and are afraid of changing to something better because it's "different." "I've already got those boxes checked."
Nothing is more apparent as proof of Microsoft's "good enough" system than the fact that IE was stuck on version 6 with absolutely no sign of an update... until FireFox came out and started making waves. Now the IE7 news is all "Gates had to reform the IE development group..."
Wait... IE is a major Windows app. Why was there no dedicated development group working on it as a matter of course?
Oh yeah. MS stops important development on applications once they have no competition...
If anything, Java is almost supported in too many places. Supporting all of those platform likely slows the development of the "core" platforms a bit. Although I have no idea to how much of an extent, if any.
But I agree, the "But it's tied to the JVM" argument is almost identical to "it's not GPL'd!" cries.
About 2 years ago, Nintendo dumped a few million dollars into this company. Outside of being a useful technology on its own, it's basically being developed so that Nintendo can continue to use cartridges for their handheld consoles.
Remember how the DS has a maximum cartridge size of 1GBit? Yet nothing out now currently uses that? Hmm... awful convenient...
Anyway, that's exactly what it's being used for -- portable game consoles. No doubt it will work its way into other technology that values size and battery life, though.
There are no copyright laws to enact for private works -- someone's personal diary never goes public domain, family photos never go public domain.
However, for someone to publish something, they release it to the public. They put it out there to consume by a general or specific audience. They create copies and say "hear, enjoy this thing I made."
Copyright limits the person who can make the copies to the original individual for a time, so that person can be appropriately rewarded. However, as they are benefiting from the public by adding to the general public culture, so the public is rewarded by their own right to copy public works.
It's exceedingly similar to the "no penalties for humming something you hear or repeating someone else's comments or popular sayings" and other random stuff. Once it's part of the public sphere, the public has free reign with it. If you don't want it to be public, then don't put it out in the public -- it's easy to do, most of us keep things private quite naturally. For those that do put things out in public, though, there's copyright, so you can control who is doing the copying for a [supposedly short] period of time.
Definitely easier to remove than most Windows Ad/spyware, but still a pain in the butt. Just goes to show that making something painless for the user can often lead to the technology being abused by more nefarious individuals.
I know that Windows usually posts security fixes and doesn't address spyware exploits specifically in many cases -- it'll be interesting to see if Apple addresses this in 10.4.1 or if we see a patch sooner (or later!)
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if it comes down to the PS3 with 6 sequels of PS2 games with better graphics, and the Xbox2 with 4 sequels of Xbox games... and the Nintendo thing with 3 brand new games that are a hell of a lot of fun, I'd have to side with Nintendo.
I have more fun playing Pikmin than I ever have playing GTA games.
1. Games are targetted towards an older demographic
2. The thing costs $250 for a unit with no games.
Sony's counting on that older audience to keep the PSP afloat. The fact that it's missing its targets probably shows that the reason the GBA has done so well is that it targets kids as well as teens/adults.
The PSP is going after the gadget/gamer crowd. While there's definitely money there, in no way is it goign to be greater than the gadget+kid crowd.
Why is this informative? IE for Mac was permanently discontinued over a year ago, and was based on the IE 5 codebase which, in software terms, is nearly ancient.
they really should be "Recommended Speed" signs that allow for people to go, say, 10% faster or slower, and teach people that if you're going the recommended speed or slower, stay to the right, and if you're going above it, stay left. Telling everyone to "stay under the limit" isn't realistic, especially given American's desire for powerful cars, and the limits are often much too slow for certain stretches of road.
Of course, a change such as that would likely make sense, so it's unlikely we'll see it happen.
So yeah, if you're familiar with non-power steering/brakes and can adjust for it, you can get by. Having it go out all of a sudden is a recipe for disaster for many drivers, though.
I'd imagine FW800 would be fast enough for distributed computing. Of course, that depends on the speed of the chips involved
I'd imagine that those serious about distributing CPU load among multiple computers would be investing in fibre channel connections. I'm not sure how much demand there is for putting it on the FW bus.
It certainly would work, and I'd imagine if you're networking using Firewire then Xgrid would default to the FW connection. But as most people use standard ethernet instead of FW...
If I had a computer at home to test out (since you need 2) Xgrid, I'd try it over FW. I imagine it would work...
To most people, they won't notice any real difference. However, it does mean that in order to use it without your computer, you need to unplug it from the computer and plug the camera in its place.
If it was Firewire, you could simply plug in a camera somewhere on the FW chain and it would work the same, without messing with plugs or setup. But due to price and slow uptake on the periphery market, USB developers were able to hack something together that has similar functionality. To many consumers, they see little difference. To those of us with Firewire, we've been angrily waving fists in the general direction of hardware companies from the comfort of our computer chairs for years.
I just think that Apple's point with the mini isn't to create a cheap computer for everyone, including the geeks who like to put together power machines for super-cheap. Rather, for the people who just want a computer to do computery "stuff." To them, they likely won't notice a difference for the harddrive, and they'll probably feel that the computer is faster overall compared to their older windows machine. sure, that's because the windows machine is infested with so much virus and spyware because they never run scans nor updates, but those people still buy and use computers.
This is often why you'll see computers with only 1 FW port -- it's really all you need. I have a harddrive enclosure, dvd-drive, FW audio device, and ending in an iPod dock all plugged into one FW port and it doesn't mind.
The other biggie is that since there's no client/host model, you don't need a computer for them to work. That means that you could setup a device to function off firewire and interface with other FW devices (harddrives, cd-burners, whatever) and it would work. USB can do that to some degree (such as camera printers) but it's not built into the protocol.
Some people I know who are long-time Apple zealots can list off more reasons, but those are the big ones that I encounter every day in pretty standard use.
Laptop resolution -- Apple has stated that the reason their laptops remain at the resolution they do is so that they maintain a 100dpi resolution. So it is intentional. You can disagree with that if you like -- not many people need to run 15" screens at super-high resolutions, as they can often make text difficult to read.
64 bit OSs -- It's more useful for consumers to introduce 64bit code for processes that can use it more effectively than simply dropping everything into it. Why? Mostly so that you can still use the operating system with the benefits of 64bit code without relying on getting all new programs. Most importantly, though, are drivers. Yes, Microsoft has released a 64bit version of Windows. As they release very little hardware on their own, though, you'd be hard pressed to get a system operational and crash-free on 64bit XP -- the drivers simply aren't there, and the ones that are tend to be buggy. Therefore it's smarter at this point to release an OS that can utilize 64bit elements if it finds it and scales back if they're not there, than simply dump a release out there with no real support so people don't go through the trouble of using it. As it is, it's more worthwhile for people with 64bit chips to continue running 32bit XP.
"triple core PPC chip" is in no way analogous to "triple core G4 or G5 chips." PPC is approprately compared to x86, not a specific model, so there's no reason to assume that the Xbox's CPU isn't the x86 equivalent of a 3 core celeron (or worse) at 3.2ghz, built in PPC architecture. Believe me, it's not because IBM suddenly had a breakthrough and could mass-produce triple-core G5s with no heating problems.
Normal operation on a mini is fanless. Occasionally it comes on during heavy loads or when the room is hot. Otherwise, it's off. With a hotter drive, it would be on pretty much all the time, turning an otherwise silent computer into a moderately noisy one.
That and the 7200 RPM hitachis are more expensive than an 3.5" IDE drive and an enclosure...
Still, FW is definitely used on the Windows side -- it's the dominant video transfer format (USB isn't even present for video editing, it's not good enough), Apple has tons of useful Firewire stuff built into the OS (like booting up as a FW drive) and FW is just all around a better protocol for high-bandwidth usage (I personally like it because it doesn't use a host/client model).
Given that there are numerous FW enclosures, FW audio devices, and more, all of which, thanks to the bandwidth advantage that FW has over USB, will likely keep FW around for a very long time. It may not reach critical mass as much as USB, but given that every Mac comes with ports and a FW card on a PC costs $15, but I don't think it's going away any time soon.
And it just got an update with FW800, which, unlike USB2.0, is fully backwards compatible without reducing the bandwidth to FW800 devices. Meaning that if you have a hub/repeater that fans out to 4 FW devices, 2 of which are FW800 and 2 are FW400, you won't cause the FW800 drives to be knocked down.
they can also talk to one another without relying on the host CPU.
The mini is damn small. You can put it next to your monitor, like an external CD drive, and that's your entire computer. Get one with wireless/bluetooth and the only cable you need is to the monitor, right next to it.
That's a far cry from a huge, loud box that sits under the desk. Even the smaller shuttle PCs are big compared to the mini, and much louder (I know, I've had the shuttle PCs, and sold it off because it was too loud).
My girlfriend has a mini and is pretty abusive to it, application-wise. She usually keeps 6-10 beefy apps up at any given time, and while there's some lagginess in opening programs, she's otherwise very happy with it *because* it's small and quiet and does just what she wants.
I've got a 733 G4 at work and I wish I had a mini instead -- the damn thing sounds like it's going to take off, and it's about 2 feet from my head. If I couldn't wear headphones at work I'd likely be crazy by now.
They're already very usable computers. The articles you're reading are by those who want to max out benchmarks and make it appear like a much beefier computer than it really is -- probably more because it's like a challenge than as real usage tests. But as someone who sits a few feet from someone's mac mini, I can say that if the only reason someone's disregarding a mac mini is because it's "not as powerful as a big loud desktop," they're missing the point.
Ultimately, I think we're agreeing but on different points. So don't interpret this as an angry rant -- just pointing out and clarifying from someone who is once removed from a very happy OOTB mini owner.
That's probably why laptop manufacturers simply don't "make the laptops a little thicker" to accomodate larger drives.
Imagine if in 10 years, when there's a minor fender-bender, once the accident is off to the shoulder, traffic picks back up at a regular pace. Now, everyone gawks and traffic stays backed up for miles thanks to that.
Or even better, when someone misses an exit, they don't slam on the brakes in the middle of the expressway and back up to the exit.
There was an 8 car pileup with numerous fatalities last year on the Baltimore beltway thanks to someone in the middle lane cutting across 2 lanes of traffic at top speed to turn into those "Emergency turnaround" digouts between expressway lanes. If he literally was prevented from doing something that stupid thanks to his car, those people would still be alive. Sure, he'd be 5 minutes later to where he was going...
Bring on cars that don't let people be idiots. The rest of us who do a good job of obeying traffic laws will be that much safer thanks to it.
As far as software controlling much of our cars, we're already mostly there. Power locks lock you out of your car if they fail. Power steering makes your car nearly unturnable if that fails. Power breaks provide so much extra breaking power that if they fail, your car is basically going to be nearly brake-less anyway.
A browser that has only reached 7% over years of hard work and being offered for absolutely free with no catches. IE is only "free" if you're on a Mac. Oh, wait, they stopped making that version.
It's pretty traumatic when your phone gets hijacked. Imagine your phone getting hijacked and then having to deal with some obtuse method of getting all of your music working again.
It doesn't help that, like most things, Sony was holding out for exorbitant licensing fees in order for companies to use the thing.
Of course, there were settings you could change that would fix that. They were in Advanced>Settings>Options>Burning>Defaults>Input. You just had to uncheck "Always burn with error correction (may cause some discs to burn slower)" which simply fixed the garbled data, and "Always burn with high-precision laser" (so you don't get coasters). Checking those 2 boxes results in the application working perfectly every time.
Would anyone use that? No! People would laugh it off and comment on just how stupid it is. Why IE gets a free pass for almost the same transgressions is beyond me. Oh, wait, no it isn't -- it's because people started using it years ago and are afraid of changing to something better because it's "different." "I've already got those boxes checked."
Wait... IE is a major Windows app. Why was there no dedicated development group working on it as a matter of course?
Oh yeah. MS stops important development on applications once they have no competition...
But I agree, the "But it's tied to the JVM" argument is almost identical to "it's not GPL'd!" cries.
Also, the surface area of the brain is greater than the surface area of the skull.
About 2 years ago, Nintendo dumped a few million dollars into this company. Outside of being a useful technology on its own, it's basically being developed so that Nintendo can continue to use cartridges for their handheld consoles.
Remember how the DS has a maximum cartridge size of 1GBit? Yet nothing out now currently uses that? Hmm... awful convenient...
Anyway, that's exactly what it's being used for -- portable game consoles. No doubt it will work its way into other technology that values size and battery life, though.
However, for someone to publish something, they release it to the public. They put it out there to consume by a general or specific audience. They create copies and say "hear, enjoy this thing I made."
Copyright limits the person who can make the copies to the original individual for a time, so that person can be appropriately rewarded. However, as they are benefiting from the public by adding to the general public culture, so the public is rewarded by their own right to copy public works.
It's exceedingly similar to the "no penalties for humming something you hear or repeating someone else's comments or popular sayings" and other random stuff. Once it's part of the public sphere, the public has free reign with it. If you don't want it to be public, then don't put it out in the public -- it's easy to do, most of us keep things private quite naturally. For those that do put things out in public, though, there's copyright, so you can control who is doing the copying for a [supposedly short] period of time.
I know that Windows usually posts security fixes and doesn't address spyware exploits specifically in many cases -- it'll be interesting to see if Apple addresses this in 10.4.1 or if we see a patch sooner (or later!)