you just got me started.. actually read the article because of your comment
they forgot the golden rule of education, dictated by Einstein:
'Make it as simple as you can, but not simpler'
well, these asshats have made it a lot simpler than possible with their stupid little list of 'what' 'it' 'all' 'means'.
come on: PDF - portable document format, which means the file is in a format that can be read on any PC
that's simply not true. a simple matter of oversimplification turning fact into manure..
and this one: Megabytes - the amount of disc space on your computer and the amount of memory Gigabytes - also refers to disc space, but measures it in larger quantities
now is it so effing hard to actually write down the factor in which those gigathingies actually are larger than the megadingbats them computer nurds keep talking bout all the time?
these uninformed, poorly written articles filled with useless 'knowledge' to inform people that shouldn't need to truly understand the matter at hand totally completely piss me off!
@icWales and all the other 'popular' magazines:
either explain it right or stfu!
Well, lets assume the hypothetical situation that they do..
How in the heck would Apple, a brand that's built upon offering powerful features in a simple to understand way to its customers, market this generic x86 version of their os?
Would they put it in little letters on the side of the box? Hardware requirements:
chipset: one of the following: intel bla blabla bla bla bla bla
video card: one of the following: nvidea blabla bla, ati blablabla
usb controller: etc. etc etc
There's no way in hell that they'll be able to pull this one off, first thing is that people don't read manuals, let alone check if their dell pc matches the listed requirements. Simple because that's too much work for your average customer and secondly because people don't know + care what's in their machines.
Occasionally I get a customer who bought an iPod from our store or from some big electronics reseller and can't get it to work with their PoS pc because of the cheap-ass VIA usb controller in it or some other lame piece of hardware.
I don't have particularly bad people skills or something, but it's almost impossible for me to get them to understand that not all usb controllers are alike and that there's nothing wrong with the iPod, let alone make them understand that the fact that their PoS cheapest 17" ultrabrite superdualfcuklaptop they could find doesn't work with the brand new iPod does not make Apple an evil company for trying to sell their peripherals to windows users.
When they call our support dept. we often tell them plain honest that yes, there are a lot of problems with windows users and ipods, maybe we should not do that, because they always backfire with the idea that Apple should not market it for them if there are so many problems. But still, one should probably be honest about this stuff. The alternative is telling them it's their fault for not getting it to work.
Preferably I tell them to reinstall windows, get better hardware, or - if they don't want to do any of that - offer to give them their money back for the iPod. I still hate Apple for offering the iPod to windows users for this mess. Even if it goes alright >90% of the time, the few people for who it doesn't work out shout a lot louder then the rest.
Now extrapolate this to selling osx for generic x86 in shrink-wrap to the same people who got fed-up with windows messing up their pc's and lifes. Imagine what's going to happen then, with people buying it and not getting it to work on their pc's.
I think then it's time for me and any sane people left at the support dept. of any Apple Centre to quit our jobs before we go *completely* insane...
I work at the support department of the largest Apple reseller in the Netherlands and while I have taken in piles of G3 iBooks with the same logic board problem, I have seen only one (1) iBook G4 with similar issues the past year.
Well, for those amongst us who already own a stack of notebooks it's a relief to have something else to spend money on.;-)
Besides: if all you want to do on the road is watch movies the form factor is probably worth it (if you can stand such a small screen). I notice a really big difference in portability between my 12" and 15" powerbooks and as a consequence they both serve different tasks and get taken along on different occasions. So I can surely imagine that the difference between a 12" form-factor notebook and this device is at least as hefty.
The only thing I don't grok about this thing is that you're supposed to leave it at home to record tv-shows, while you're also supposed to take it with you to watch recorded stuff. That's extremely unpractical and therefore a fundamental design flaw. If I had one it would probably be retired in a drawer after a few months of agony fighting myself over wether to take it or leave it every time I leave the house.
I think the fact of the matter is the your average user is not willing to pay for than $50 for a wireless router. It is, of course, possible to make AES work fine with a router of that costs, but it is going to take good deal of economics of scale in action to make a 1,000,000-transistor chip for implementing AES affordable at that price point.
well perhaps if the vendor adds nifty features like wireless audio streaming and whatever else you can think of to it people will be willing to pay more for it. 802.11i can become a complementary feature, a bonus.
just maybe if apple puts 802.11i support in their next-gen low-end base station with some cool new features and corresponding high price tag...
I'm wondering if he disconnected the keyboard after starting the uptime-logging script.
these usb keyboards draw something like 350 MAh from the USB port and the USB ports' regulated 5VDC is probably just that: regulated. so there will probably be some excess generation of heat going on while an USB device is connected.
the keyboard should cost around 2 tot 2.5 Watts.
It might also be possible to save some extra power by removing the USB voltage regulator altogether from the logic board. And while you're at it you might try to remove some other excessive stuff like the built-in analog modem. That probably saves some extra milliwatts.. (although that one is probably built in to the main controller chip)
RAM size might also have a (minimal) effect on power usage.
it would be nice to see how far you can go bringing down the power.
anyone else have some ideas on bringing down those watts?
(too bad Apple's Developer Notes don't dig as deep as they used to some ten years ago, older developer notes really went into great detail concerning the electrics of those machine.)
My mother once spilt half a can of coke over the back of my PowerBook 540c and it continued to work flawlessly over the next 3 months.
After those months, it refused to start up all of a sudden. So I opened it up, removed all of the sticky stuff in the back of the powerbook with alcohol and it booted up again..
A few years later it stopped working again so I thought the effects of the Coke digesting enough of the inside of the PowerBook had finally made it fail.. About a year after that I found that the power supply had broken down and that the powerbook itself was still fine.
So coke is not *that* bad for a computer.. or maybe it's just that it didn't enter through the keyboard in this case;-)
haha, after re-reading my post I can't imagine other people going through thát amount of trouble to read it..:-)
just skipped a night and yes, exactly, I'm no native speaker, how'd you guess?;-)
Re:expect... No, they DO ask it all the time
on
Mac OS X Tiger Goes Gold
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Au contraire,
The number one question asked by 'the archetypical mini-buyer' - and of course the tons of other people that ask for a mini who sometimes have some similarity with this mythical person - is 'Will I get Tiger for free when I but my mini now?'
The archetypical mac-mini switcher (subset of a-mm-buyer) is not the complete computer-n00b we would all love to go out and buy a mac, only because then we might actually get to benchmarks the actual stand-by time of our mobile phones, that type of user still uses the windows pc they've had for years because they don't care about computers, don't read the articles about them in the press, skip conversations about computers in social events because they're biased to think they won't understand any of it anyway and are thereby still highly unaware of the other options out there besides using their windows 95 OSR 2 box with 16 megs of ram till death.
The typical switcher we get - I work in a big Apple Centre in the Netherlands - is the slightly geeky guy on a budget. The type that cares a bit above average about computers, never used Linux because they couldn't figure out how to install it in the amount of time they wanted to commit themselves to it and besides that just mature enough to be tempted by the idea that *it* might JustWork(TM)
-- above passage not intended as linux-is-too-difficult-for-'normal'-people-flame-b ait but merely to describe the type of user whe're talking about here--
The second most important typical mini-buyer is the user that already has -at least one- mac, looking for an extra machine to fulfill some specific task(s) , or unable to resist the mac mini coolness factor and getting one while not having the faintest clue why they would need it, or to replace for instance a dying iMac they've been using as a file- and print-server on a budget or likewise
Besides that, all the linux-geeks I know either want one, already have one or don't need one since they've gotten themselves an iBook. but that's not such a large part of the people we get in our store.
All of those categories of customers actually care *a lot* about whether or not Tiger will be included with their minimac.
PS: I'm not in sales but in tech support, so I might miss a few of those potential customers..
especially the article on Design Considerations (M4.1) makes a nice read:
"If the computer must be opened for any reason other than repair (for which our prospective user must be assumed incompetent) even at the dealer's, then it does not meet our requirements.
Seeing the guts is taboo. Things in sockets is taboo (unless to make servicing cheaper without imposing too large an initial cost). Billions of keys on the keyboard is taboo. Computerese is taboo. Large manuals, or many of them (large manuals are a sure sign of bad design) is taboo. Self- instructional programs are NOT taboo.
There must not be a plethora of configurations. It is better to offer a variety of case colors than to have variable amounts of memory. It is better to manufacture versions in Early American, Contemporary, and Louis XIV than to have any external wires beyond a power cord.
And you get ten points if you can eliminate the power cord."
Slashdot Mirror
you just got me started.. actually read the article because of your comment
/rant
they forgot the golden rule of education, dictated by Einstein:
'Make it as simple as you can, but not simpler'
well, these asshats have made it a lot simpler than possible with their stupid little list of 'what' 'it' 'all' 'means'.
come on:
PDF - portable document format, which means the file is in a format that can be read on any PC
that's simply not true. a simple matter of oversimplification turning fact into manure..
and this one:
Megabytes - the amount of disc space on your computer and the amount of memory
Gigabytes - also refers to disc space, but measures it in larger quantities
now is it so effing hard to actually write down the factor in which those gigathingies actually are larger than the megadingbats them computer nurds keep talking bout all the time?
these uninformed, poorly written articles filled with useless 'knowledge' to inform people that shouldn't need to truly understand the matter at hand totally completely piss me off!
@icWales and all the other 'popular' magazines:
either explain it right or stfu!
haha :-)
Sure you're not mixing up podpulling and podjacking?
BUT...someone slap the marketing flunky who came up with "podcasting" because the content is actually pulled by clients (like RSS).
okay, we'll just call it podpulling from now on then..
exactly,
first it's:
'Oh wow video!', 'I didn't know my phone did video..', 'Neat!'
then it quickly becomes:
'oh sod off'
me too 1!!1!!eleven!! (sorry, morning coffee hasn't had it's effects yet)
Well, lets assume the hypothetical situation that they do..
How in the heck would Apple, a brand that's built upon offering powerful features in a simple to understand way to its customers, market this generic x86 version of their os?
Would they put it in little letters on the side of the box?
Hardware requirements:
chipset: one of the following: intel bla blabla bla bla bla bla
video card: one of the following: nvidea blabla bla, ati blablabla
usb controller: etc. etc etc
There's no way in hell that they'll be able to pull this one off, first thing is that people don't read manuals, let alone check if their dell pc matches the listed requirements. Simple because that's too much work for your average customer and secondly because people don't know + care what's in their machines.
Occasionally I get a customer who bought an iPod from our store or from some big electronics reseller and can't get it to work with their PoS pc because of the cheap-ass VIA usb controller in it or some other lame piece of hardware.
I don't have particularly bad people skills or something, but it's almost impossible for me to get them to understand that not all usb controllers are alike and that there's nothing wrong with the iPod, let alone make them understand that the fact that their PoS cheapest 17" ultrabrite superdualfcuklaptop they could find doesn't work with the brand new iPod does not make Apple an evil company for trying to sell their peripherals to windows users.
When they call our support dept. we often tell them plain honest that yes, there are a lot of problems with windows users and ipods, maybe we should not do that, because they always backfire with the idea that Apple should not market it for them if there are so many problems. But still, one should probably be honest about this stuff. The alternative is telling them it's their fault for not getting it to work.
Preferably I tell them to reinstall windows, get better hardware, or - if they don't want to do any of that - offer to give them their money back for the iPod. I still hate Apple for offering the iPod to windows users for this mess. Even if it goes alright >90% of the time, the few people for who it doesn't work out shout a lot louder then the rest.
Now extrapolate this to selling osx for generic x86 in shrink-wrap to the same people who got fed-up with windows messing up their pc's and lifes. Imagine what's going to happen then, with people buying it and not getting it to work on their pc's.
I think then it's time for me and any sane people left at the support dept. of any Apple Centre to quit our jobs before we go *completely* insane...
Sorry, but that's simply not true.
I work at the support department of the largest Apple reseller in the Netherlands and while I have taken in piles of G3 iBooks with the same logic board problem, I have seen only one (1) iBook G4 with similar issues the past year.
Well, for those amongst us who already own a stack of notebooks it's a relief to have something else to spend money on. ;-)
Besides: if all you want to do on the road is watch movies the form factor is probably worth it (if you can stand such a small screen). I notice a really big difference in portability between my 12" and 15" powerbooks and as a consequence they both serve different tasks and get taken along on different occasions. So I can surely imagine that the difference between a 12" form-factor notebook and this device is at least as hefty.
The only thing I don't grok about this thing is that you're supposed to leave it at home to record tv-shows, while you're also supposed to take it with you to watch recorded stuff. That's extremely unpractical and therefore a fundamental design flaw. If I had one it would probably be retired in a drawer after a few months of agony fighting myself over wether to take it or leave it every time I leave the house.
I think the fact of the matter is the your average user is not willing to pay for than $50 for a wireless router. It is, of course, possible to make AES work fine with a router of that costs, but it is going to take good deal of economics of scale in action to make a 1,000,000-transistor chip for implementing AES affordable at that price point.
well perhaps if the vendor adds nifty features like wireless audio streaming and whatever else you can think of to it people will be willing to pay more for it. 802.11i can become a complementary feature, a bonus.
just maybe if apple puts 802.11i support in their next-gen low-end base station with some cool new features and corresponding high price tag...
I'm wondering if he disconnected the keyboard after starting the uptime-logging script.
these usb keyboards draw something like 350 MAh from the USB port and the USB ports' regulated 5VDC is probably just that: regulated. so there will probably be some excess generation of heat going on while an USB device is connected.
the keyboard should cost around 2 tot 2.5 Watts.
It might also be possible to save some extra power by removing the USB voltage regulator altogether from the logic board. And while you're at it you might try to remove some other excessive stuff like the built-in analog modem. That probably saves some extra milliwatts.. (although that one is probably built in to the main controller chip)
RAM size might also have a (minimal) effect on power usage.
it would be nice to see how far you can go bringing down the power.
anyone else have some ideas on bringing down those watts?
(too bad Apple's Developer Notes don't dig as deep as they used to some ten years ago, older developer notes really went into great detail concerning the electrics of those machine.)
My mother once spilt half a can of coke over the back of my PowerBook 540c and it continued to work flawlessly over the next 3 months.
;-)
After those months, it refused to start up all of a sudden. So I opened it up, removed all of the sticky stuff in the back of the powerbook with alcohol and it booted up again..
A few years later it stopped working again so I thought the effects of the Coke digesting enough of the inside of the PowerBook had finally made it fail..
About a year after that I found that the power supply had broken down and that the powerbook itself was still fine.
So coke is not *that* bad for a computer.. or maybe it's just that it didn't enter through the keyboard in this case
haha, after re-reading my post I can't imagine other people going through thát amount of trouble to read it.. :-)
;-)
just skipped a night and yes, exactly, I'm no native speaker, how'd you guess?
Au contraire,
b ait but merely to describe the type of user whe're talking about here--
The number one question asked by 'the archetypical mini-buyer' - and of course the tons of other people that ask for a mini who sometimes have some similarity with this mythical person - is 'Will I get Tiger for free when I but my mini now?'
The archetypical mac-mini switcher (subset of a-mm-buyer) is not the complete computer-n00b we would all love to go out and buy a mac, only because then we might actually get to benchmarks the actual stand-by time of our mobile phones, that type of user still uses the windows pc they've had for years because they don't care about computers, don't read the articles about them in the press, skip conversations about computers in social events because they're biased to think they won't understand any of it anyway and are thereby still highly unaware of the other options out there besides using their windows 95 OSR 2 box with 16 megs of ram till death.
The typical switcher we get - I work in a big Apple Centre in the Netherlands - is the slightly geeky guy on a budget. The type that cares a bit above average about computers, never used Linux because they couldn't figure out how to install it in the amount of time they wanted to commit themselves to it and besides that just mature enough to be tempted by the idea that *it* might JustWork(TM)
-- above passage not intended as linux-is-too-difficult-for-'normal'-people-flame-
The second most important typical mini-buyer is the user that already has -at least one- mac, looking for an extra machine to fulfill some specific task(s) , or unable to resist the mac mini coolness factor and getting one while not having the faintest clue why they would need it, or to replace for instance a dying iMac they've been using as a file- and print-server on a budget or likewise
Besides that, all the linux-geeks I know either want one, already have one or don't need one since they've gotten themselves an iBook. but that's not such a large part of the people we get in our store.
All of those categories of customers actually care *a lot* about whether or not Tiger will be included with their minimac.
PS: I'm not in sales but in tech support, so I might miss a few of those potential customers..
And in the words of his captain:
"Shoot at Will!"
poor Will.. he should have kept his mouth shut
probably because he's not a segway enthousiast, whereas the Woz is. http://www.woz.org/seg/
The following documents provide a nice insight in the man's work at Apple on the Mac project:i ndex.html/
http://library.stanford.edu/mac/primary/docs/bom/
especially the article on Design Considerations (M4.1) makes a nice read:
"If the computer must be opened for any reason other than repair (for which our prospective user must be assumed incompetent) even at the dealer's, then it does not meet our requirements. Seeing the guts is taboo. Things in sockets is taboo (unless to make servicing cheaper without imposing too large an initial cost). Billions of keys on the keyboard is taboo. Computerese is taboo. Large manuals, or many of them (large manuals are a sure sign of bad design) is taboo. Self- instructional programs are NOT taboo.
There must not be a plethora of configurations. It is better to offer a variety of case colors than to have variable amounts of memory. It is better to manufacture versions in Early American, Contemporary, and Louis XIV than to have any external wires beyond a power cord.
And you get ten points if you can eliminate the power cord."