Seriously, if this isn't just aping my coment, what market are you in? I have NEVER seen a video production studio or post house where only one guy knows anything about the Mac. In Houston, Austin, San Franscico, Santa Clara, and L.A. every video studio I have ever seen has used mainly Macs, unless it was an SGI shop (which have all gone Linux now). I have even done work for Intel and AMD where the people doing the video insisted on using Macs! Now in pure 3D animation and game development studios it is a whole different deal (somewhat understandably so), but with video, I have never worked in a single market where PCs were the presumptive standard.
I think the Treo is too thick. I don't like the external antenna, as it often catches on things as I pull it in and out of my bag or coat pocket. I don't care for how small the buttons are when you are trying to quickly dial a number in a situation, like being on a train, or walking down the street. During long conversations it gets very hot against your ear. I don't like that there is nothing to protect the screen without putting it in a case that makes it even harder to use when you need to answer a call quickly. Also, I found that oddly enough all the PDA-style smartphones I tried (Blackberry, Sidekick, Treo) were all very hard to use as a phone walking down a busy street with a lot of traffic. Either I couldn't hear the person I was talking to because the volume was really low if you didn't have it by your ear just right, or they couldn't hear me over the background noise, or neither of us could hear anything because of all the wind noise the mic was picking up, or something. I haven't had those problems with any of the flip phones I have used.
To give you an idea, the Motorola RAZR is my idea of the perfect phone. Big buttons, a couple days of battery life with moderate use, slim enough to fit in any pocket, good reception and sound quality, easily replaceable battery so that I can have an extra in my bag and quickly swap them.
It is true that in theory, a Bluetooth headset (or any headset for that matter) should somewhat mitigate the ergonomics of the phone. However in practice it (at least for me) doesn't work that way. I don't want to walk around all day with a headset in my ear. I think it is uncomfortable, looks kind of dumb, and isn't really all that practical. So, a headset just means an annoying two-step process. When the phone starts ringing, I have to pull it out, and look to see who is calling, then if I want to answer it, I have to start digging around for my headset, get it in my ear, adjust it, and then answer the call. I find that much more annoying than just looking at the external display on my phone, and if I want to answer it, just open the phone, put it to my ear, and start talking. If it looks like it is going to be a long call, then I will tell them to hang on a second while I switch to the headphone. However when I am walking down a busy street, and someone is just calling to check if I am running late or not, it is nice to just flip open the phone, talk to them close the phone, and slip it back in my pocket.
On the other side, I think that the Treo has too small a screen to make an optimal PDA, and the size makes the keyboard so small that a big guy like me (I am 6' 4" with pretty big hands) has a bit of a hard time getting any better data entry from the tiny keyboard than I would from handwriting recognition.
The Treo is very well designed for what it is, which is a combo unit. However I think that a phone/PDA combo works about as well as a gas/electric hybrid SUV.
My problem with this is not about processing power, or memory, or anything like that, but simply about form factor. Any device that makes a comfortable and easy to carry phone, makes for an awful PDA, and any device that makes a good PDA, is uncomfortable as a phone.
A PDA needs to be mostly screen, and input area. That always makes for having to talk with a brick to your head. In my opinion, all the best mobile phones have been clamshell designs, which retain a comfortable angle between the earpiece and the microphone. I had a BlackBerry, a Sidekick, a Treo, and got tired of all of them because they were crap phones! They were all quite capable PDAs, but just a pain for using as a phone. Now I have a phone with 'smartphone' features, and it drives me nuts trying to put in text on a numeric keypad, trying to use a postage-stamp screen, and having to navigate with unlikely button combinations to read and reply to emails.
I really think there will always be a need for a phone, and a need for a PDA-like device. The form factor requirements between the two are just too different. Perhaps when we have real, working, rollable color screens, and 100% accurate voice recognition that can run on a mobile processor, then things might change, but at the current level of technology, I don't see the need for a little touchscreen you can hold in your hand, and a little device you can hold up to your ear meshing very well.
I'm not even sure how many articles I have seen talking about how the poor guys at NASA are being suppressed, and every time people have thought it was a worthy topic of discussion, and sworn up and down that anyone who had issue with global warming theories was obviously some corporate stooge who didn't know anything about science.
Now there is an article about someone more qualified to discuss the topic than anyone on/. saying that anyone who disagrees with the majority opinion is suppressed, and suddenly this is a shameful example of people clouding the scientific issues with politics, and is not worthy of discussion.
Great! Oh, and by the way, I love how he is a corporate stooge too. Of course, since he has the opinion we always attribute to corporate stooges, he must be a corporate stooge, since only a corporate stooge would hold corporate stooge opinions! He can't be a reputable scientist, because all reputable scientists agree that global warming is a huge problem, and caused by our SUVs. Of course what do you expect from some hack working at some technical college in the middle of nowhere anyway? Everybody knows that all the most important climate research happens in New York and L.A. Why I heard Susan Sarandon and Al Franken giving their latests findings on TV just the other day, and they didn't even mention this guy, and they are names I know.
I think that more than anything, it is just an issue of image. Back when I did everything on SGI systems, every shop I worked for was always trying to get me to take an office in their facility, so that they could trot the client in and show off the fancy SGI system, and let the client know that their account was being serviced on big, fancy, special hardware. Once I moved to PC, they were all quite happy to let me work from home, so my custom-built "frankenstien" as they always called it, wouldn't give the client the impression that their account was being serviced by some machine thrown together from spare parts.
What I think a lot of people don't uderstand, is that in a lot of creative markets, Apple has marketshare for exactly the same reason that Microsoft has marketshare in the IT sector. No artist ever got in trouble or fired for buying a Mac, just like no IT guy was ever fired for going Microsoft. If in the middle of an important deadline your Mac crashes, the attitude is "what can you do? Shit happens!" However, same situation with a Windows box and the immediate response is "that's what you get for using a PC! This wouldn't happen if you were working on a Mac." Truth be told, both Macs, and PCs are really unreliable when you start dealing with uncompressed video. That is a lot of information, and crashes just happen more than any of us would like. However, my experience has been that a well maintained PC will crash less in graphics applications than a well maintained Mac. The perception is quite different though, because the Mac is the presumptive standard when it comes to graphics.
I have to agree with this 100%! I have a friend who has done a lot of work for some big studios, who swears that everything is always done on a Mac, and is QUITE proud of the fact that he wouldn't even know how to open an email on a PC. He takes it as a sign of what a good designer he is that he has never had to work for a company so "lame and boring" they would make him use a PC.
By the way, I have also been in situations where I was asked to hide my PC before the client came in, so they wouldn't know I had done their work on a PC.
Bingo! As much as people might like to point out that Windows is the majority platform in the world in general, you would never have any inkling of that working here in the entertainment industry in L.A.
I fact, here it is pretty much the assumption that if you are using anything but a Mac, it has to be because you are a cheap bastard who isn't really a professional, even if the PC you are using cost more than any Mac! You have to go out of your way to justify buying a PC, and have to be prepared to fight for a PC if that is what you want to use at anything but the biggest studios (who are all going Linux). At any small to medium shop, it is just assumed that everyone is going to be using a Mac. It is what they teach you in school, it is what all the other artists use, and most people will swear that it is what everything is done on.
I know a lot of people working in the games industry, from every level from little independent companies, all the way up to people working at some of the biggest publishers. I have even worked at one small (read as a 3 people) game company and one huge (read as one of the biggest game publishers in the world) game company. Outside of bargain bin specialty games like Deer Hunter, this is the first time I have ever even heard Wal-Mart's name in conjunction with the creation of a game.
I do not know any employee at any game company who, at any phase of development, says "is this going to be OK with Wal-Mart?" I am sure their are some companies that for one reason or another decide that courting Wal-Mart gives them an advantage, but even working on games that are right up Wal-Mart's alley like a licensed car racing franchise title I won't mention, the developers and publisher never once stopped an said "how is this going to play at Wal-Mart?"
Quite frankly I think this article is incredibly overblown, and paints the picture that Wal-Mart has far more influence on the content that it really does. Sure, everyone wants to sell there. I'm sure they loom very large for the people responsible for getting the game on the shelf, but I have never heard, or personally seen any example of that entering into the creative process on a game designed to sell in the general gaming market.
Actually, Quark has been available on PCs for over a decade. Also, most of the Apple branded professional apps originally were cross-platform apps that only became Mac-only after Apple bought them. Shake, for example, still runs on Linux even though Apple killed the Windows version.
I am not aware of a single third party professional graphics app that is Mac-only.
I have worked with a LOT of designers, artists, video professionals, and even web developers who have REFUSED to ever work on anything but a Mac, and have never used Windows for more than a few minutes. It always amazes me, but I have found myself in situations more times that I can count, where as the one guy in the studio who has ever touched a PC, I have to explain all sorts of simple things, because they don't know the first thing about Windows.
No need to get snippy. I would personally just rather read a story about some company actually making new standards that will make next years computers even better than they are now, rather than some tired article about what OEM is claiming to have driven what standard in the past.
It isn't that I so much object to the *actual* political stories that effect technology, but rather these "geek club politics" kind of stories. They always seem to boil down to some variant of:
Dell is stupid.
Microsoft is evil.
As is Sony.
But Google isn't.
Open source will save the world.
DRM will destroy the world.
Standards are the world.
Apple invented the world.
This season's fashion report on what all the best coders are using.
It seems like a lot of these stories aren't really even news stories at all, but just another excuse to forward one of the above arguments. There is plenty going on in the world that could excite some really interesting discussion that geeks might be interested in aside from these rather well beaten paths. I don't really think there is much of value left to say on any of these subjects, since they all get weekly coverage, if not daily coverage. You might think it is interesting to have the same conversation about different aspects of the same subjects over and over and over again, but I find it pretty boring.
It might be just me, but it really seems like/. is becoming less a site for tech news for geeks, and more a site for geek politics. It seems like every day there are fewer and fewer stories about any actual tech, and they are all being replaced with stories about the politics of "geek" culture. I'm not really saying it is a bad thing, but just in my opinion a little boring.
Unfortunately, this really has nothing to do with porn. The government has been archiving and filtering all electronic communications including email and web traffic for years now, under the name of the war on terror. This is not some crazy conspiracy theory, it is exactly what they admit to doing in this whole NSA spying case right now.
At the moment they are getting pressure to go through the courts to follow up on leads they get from this rounding up of information, which they really don't want to do. By gathering up all your personal information from your ISP in one database at the DOJ, and then just cross referencing that with the archive at the NSA, they can now see exactly who is saying what on the Internet, without having to go through the hassle of getting a warrant to find out which user is associated with which IP address.
Pornography is just a really easy excuse, because it is one of those things that a large number of people are interested in, but no one will openly admit to being interested in. Plus it gives them the great option of asking anyone who opposes the move "why are you so eager to protect child pornographers?"
You know, actually I don't agree with your statement at all. On the surface it sounds good, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. If you ask any 'sexy' celebrity, model, singer, or whatever, what they think are the most important issues, I guarantee you every single one of them will have "the enviroment" or "global warming" on their top 5. I would be surprised if a single one of them had space exploration anywhere on their list.
I actually think that environmentalism/global warming/pollution is a very 'sexy' issue, in that it is something that anyone with any cultural influence feels we 'should' spend money on. Space exploration, moon bases, space stations, and all that, on the other hand, are decidedly 'geeky' not 'sexy' and as such always fall in the category of "we can't even feed everyone on Earth, why should we be spending money on space."
Actually, I wouldn't agree that it isn't possible to rewrite 60% of the code, or even that it is a bad thing. I have no idea what is going on at MS right now, but I can imagine a very plausible, and even positive scenario where 60% of the code is working, but poorly implemented. Someone high up who knows what they are doing looks at the code and says "this works, but it is crap. We need to rewrite this."
It is a lot faster to rewrite code to make it more elegant, efficient, and stable, once it has already been prototyped. You don't have to spend all that time hammering out functionality, and trying to figure out what you are doing, you just need to make it do what it is doing better and more reliably. In my experience it actually isn't all that uncommon on large teams, that you will have some of your weaker programmers working on minor features, while your stronger programmers tackle the bigger issues. Once the big guns are free, they go back, look at what the weaker programmers have done, and decide to rewrite large section of the code to make it work better.
Now I am not saying this is what is happening at MS, they might just be in a spiral of stupidity and confusion. However, I don't see major rewrites as proof of disaster.
And why don't they just shut down the CIA, and several other agencies that give them information they don't like? The reason we elect the president, and not all the people working at NASA, or the CIA, is because the president is the one who takes all the advice from the various agencies, and makes the decision as to what to do about it. If Hansen doesn't like how the president decides to use the research, then perhaps he should run for president, or at the very least go somewhere where his research will be represented in the way he wants.
As I said, there is no dispute about the bad track record this administration has for dealing with information they don't want to hear. However, that isn't the point.
The point is that other people employed by the government accepted that if they didn't like the policies of the current administration, then they needed to stop taking a government paycheck before they spoke out against the administration. That is what people all the way from the CIA down to the most boring and mundane governmental office have done. Resign, then go out and let people know about the problems that forced you to have to resign. You can't expect to be taken seriously as you villify an administration, all the while pocketing their money.
I have no sympathy for a government employee whining about the presidential administration doing what they choose with work paid for by the same administration. If you think that what they are doing is so horrible, then you should resign, and go elsewhere. Don't ask me to feel for your plight, when it is obviously not so bad that you will refuse a paycheck! I'm sure than many of the nations that actually signed the Kyoto accord would be more than happy to support Hansen's work, and would agree not to edit his reports. It is like some RIAA lawyer complaining about the evils of DRM, while suing grannies for pirating music!
I mean, how does that conversation go?
"I can't believe this, you edited my report. I won't stand for this!"
"Oh, you won't? That's too bad, because I have your paycheck right here. I guess I'll just tear it up."
"No, don't do that! I guess I'll stand for it, but I am going to complain a lot."
"Ok, whatever."
Wow, that is a really horrible situation, and we thought the Chinese government was repressive.
There are plenty of very real, very serious instances of this administration usurping power, lying about information, and perhaps even breaking the law. Why not focus on that, instead of repeated stories about how some guys at a NASA lab are having continuing problems with management, but not bad enough problems to quit over? If you want a story to highlight the administration taking extraordinary liberties to control the flow of information, there are plenty out there. This isn't it. This is a story of a spoiled brat complaining that after he ate all his cake, there was none left for him to keep.
Here's the thing, what you are describing not only isn't censorship, it is called having a job. I know plenty of engineers, researchers, artists and yes, even scientists who have to put their personal opinions about what the work means up on a shelf, because that opinion doesn't agree with the official line of the company/university/agency funding the work. That is why they give you a paycheck and pay your budget, so that they can use your research in whatever way they choose.
Now most of these people just have to suck it up, because 60 Minutes isn't calling them up for an interview about it, and if they did talk to a network, they would be immediately fired, and have to stop their work. These guys at this NASA lab have been incredibly vocal about how they think their research is being misused, and have been actively involved in opposing the policies of the government on this particular issue, yet they still have their jobs! In fact, it was the guy who was rewriting their reports who got fired, not them. I think that is pretty much the opposite of censorship, and a luxury most researchers would love to have. People working in the private sector certainly don't have that luxury. If a researcher for a pharmaceutical company was actively and publicly criticizing his employer, and working against the interests of that employer, they would have a hard time ever finding work again. If you want to maintain your autonomy, and make sure your research is untainted, and independent, then the first simple rule would be not to take money from people who have an agenda counter to the findings of your research. I don't think this is really that hard for most people to understand, so why are these geniuses at the NASA climate lab having such a problem grasping it?
Yes, it is a proven fact that the Bush administration has a penchant for misusing information to forward their agenda. However that was established a long time ago, and people still reelected them. Obviously people get the government they deserve. That doesn't somehow make it anything more than petty whining for these guys at the NASA lab to run all over the place crying because they don't like how the people paying their salary are using their research. If they have a problem with it, they can do what everyone else in the world does, and refuse to take the money, and try to go somewhere else where their research will be presented in the way they want.
What you are comparing isn't an issue that is endemic to a particular technology, but rather an issue of the responsiveness and competence of the developer. I have seen as many as three new build of complicated apps like a video game get put out in a single day, during the testing phase. It all depends on the developer, and how they are developing the application. There is absolutely nothing that keeps you from fixing bugs overnight with a desktop app. I have worked with some really gifted programmers who would start digging into the code and fixing it while you were describing the problem! I was working on one game project that was for Windows, Mac, Xbox, PS2, and GameCube, and between the all the versions, the testers found over 100 bugs. Overnight the developers fixed 90% of them.
Realistically, in a corporate environment, you are highly unlikely to ever see more than three OSs. In fact, the most common case is only having to support two OSs, and there are many clients who just don't care about anything but Windows. There are a plethora of tools that make coding for Windows/Mac/Linux a fairly straightforward proposition, and everything else comes down to the responsiveness of the developer.
As I said, there are certainly situations where a web tool is the best choice, but there are also situations where a desktop app is the best choice. Sure, if you have to support 18 different OSs (by the way, are there even 15 versions of UNIX left on the market these days?), then a web tool,might be the best approach. However, don't confuse the difference between a good developer and a bad developer with some technical limitation of the tools they use.
Woah there, slow down a second! In point #5 you just toss out the little tidbit that "Deploying an internal desktop app is expensive, difficult to support, etc. " Now I would absolutely love to hear how you figure that developing a desktop app is in any way more expensive, or more of a support headache than a web app?
Back when I was doing corporate work, I headed up quite a few projects that were internal company programs, some of them were web apps, some of them were HD-based, some of them were CD-based, and some of them used some combination of all three. I can not see any way in which you can make a blanket statement that an AJAX app is somehow magically easier to support, and cheaper to develop than a desktop app. If you were talking about a simple website that had guaranteed cross-browser compatibility, you might have a point, but as soon as you walk into AJAX land, you are going to have to spend just as much time testing with different browsers, and different net connections as you would need to in order to develop a desktop app. Hell, depending on the app, you could very quickly find yourself in a position where implementing an AJAX app, with attendant infrastructure, was astronomically more expensive than throwing together a little desktop program.
I have seen a lot of projects go seriously over budget, and massively over schedule because of exactly this sort of thinking. There are a lot of people out there who really like to push web technologies as the magic bullet to solve every problem, and make comments just like the one you just made about how it has to be cheaper, easier, faster, and better, because it uses the magic web technology. In reality, you have to look at every project as an isolated case, and figure out the best technology for that situation.
I find it funny how many stories are coming out of the same NASA lab about how they are constantly being censored, and aren't allowed to talk to anyone. OK, then how do these stories keep coming out?
I have no doubt that the Bush administration has manipulated information coming out of the lab for their own political benefit, since that is what politicians do. What gets me, is how many high-profile stories I keep seeing about how these people aren't allowed to do interviews. I mean, logic would say that if they aren't allowed to voice their opinion, then they wouldn't be on TV voicing their opinion.The definition of censorship has obviously been softened a lot recently, when you can go on TV and talk about how you are being censored, and what is being censored. I mean, I have been reading articles about how these people aren't allowed to say anything, pretty much since Bush got into office, yet they still seem to have websites up, and go to conferences, and make all sorts of press statements. It is certainly an insidious form of censorship.
I'm not even sure how you tell if someone is being censored any more. In the old days, you could tell because they weren't allowed to say anything. These days I guess you just have watch them on network TV so they can tell you how badly their free speech is being trampled.
Hmm, what's next, people launching $100,000,000 ad campaigns to let us know they don't have any money?
Apple has come out with 64-bit machines -- they're called G5s -- as you allude to in the last sentence quoted.
Yes, and people are running out in droves to buy a system that is essentially at the end of its life, while Apple markets the hell out of the faster the Intel chips! Come on, you know full well that it was implied that when I said "comes out with 64-bit systems" I meant 64-bit Intel systems. It is called context, and it is a basic part of the English language. I'm sure you have come across it before.
Apple released 32-bit computers because... they had no choice. Intel's available chip lines were 32-bit and given that Intel can't supply Apple with enough parts to meet MacBook demand, it seems unlikely that AMD would have been a viable alternative.
Well this is just bad logic. Intel is supplying Core Duos to Dell, Gateway, Sony, HP, Lenovo, Fujitsu, and every other major manufacturer on the market, as well as Apple. AMD is supplying chips to several smaller vendors like Sun, Alienware, Boxx, and a few big guys like HP and Fujitsu. There is just really no clear reasoning that says that the company supplying a number of smaller vendors would not have been able to handle the capacity of yet another small vendor, just because the company supplying all the large vendors can't keep up with demand. Yes, AMD has a smaller production capacity that Intel, but then it isn't like Apple is selling tens of millions of systems a year. In fact, it could be argued that had Apple gone with AMD, they would have been one of AMD's largest contracts, so would have had a better pick of the production yield, whereas with Intel, Apple is one of their smallest customers, so has to wait behind the big boys. Also where do you people keep getting this idea that Intel only makes 32-bit chips? They have several 64-bit chips shipping right now.
Is supporting EFI in Vista such a difficult thing to do, or is Microsoft nervous about the impact on marketshare of dual-booting Macs?
Once again, this makes no logical sense. Allowing people to install Vista on Macs wouldn't hurt Windows marketshare, because it would mean people were installing Vista on Macs! Right now, people buy Macs, and MS doesn't get any money, unless they buy Office or something. If more people buy Macs, so that they can dual-boot Vista and OSX, they are still buying a copy of Vista! MS is getting MORE money than they would have otherwise.
As far as supporting EFI being a hard thing to do, I keep saying the article is just plain wrong. MS is supporting, and even requiring EFI support in all their 64-bit OSs already. Look, here is a quote from the MS website:
EFI is a new standard for the interface provided by the firmware that boots PCs, based on the Extensible Firmware Interface Specification, Version 1.02 (Intel Corporation). Microsoft supports EFI as the only firmware interface for booting 64-bit Windows operating systems.
Because 64-bit Windows will not boot with BIOS or with System Abstraction Layer alone, EFI is a requirement for all Intel Itanium-based systems.
In addition to protocols required in the EFI specification, Microsoft recommends that the firmware also support PXE_BC (remote/network boot), SERIAL_IO, and SIMPLE_NETWORK protocols as defined in the EFI specification. Support for these protocols is required by the "Designed for Windows" logo program for 64-bit systems.
This whole notion that MS is somehow daunted by EFI is just insane! EFI started in the PC world, it is supported in the PC world, and that means it is supported by MS. I don't know if the guy in the arti
Ok, let me try this again, because you are obviously missing the point. Here is the quote you used with some emphasis added to illustrate my point.
Ritz admitted that EFI support won't be seen in any version of Windows until the release of Longhorn Server.
This is obviously either a misquote, or someone who got very confused, because EFI booting is supported in Windows XP 64 and 2003 64 RIGHT NOW! If a quote flatly says that something that is on the market right now, won't be on the market for some time, then the quote is not only questionable, but flat-out wrong. Let me ask you, if EFI isn't supported by any version of Windows, and won't be until the release of Longhorn Server, what OS is running on all those Itaniums that are already in the field?
Here is a quote off the Microsoft site:
EFI is a new standard for the interface provided by the firmware that boots PCs, based on the Extensible Firmware Interface Specification, Version 1.02 (Intel Corporation). Microsoft supports EFI as the only firmware interface for booting 64-bit Windows operating systems.
Because 64-bit Windows will not boot with BIOS or with System Abstraction Layer alone, EFI is a requirement for all Intel Itanium-based systems.
In addition to protocols required in the EFI specification, Microsoft recommends that the firmware also support PXE_BC (remote/network boot), SERIAL_IO, and SIMPLE_NETWORK protocols as defined in the EFI specification. Support for these protocols is required by the "Designed for Windows" logo program for 64-bit systems.
Hmm, according to the Microsoft page, it is not only supported, it is required for any 64-bit installation on an IA-64 system. So some guy at Microsoft either misspeaks, or gets confused or whatever, and says that no version of Windows will support something that is not only supported, but required by Microsoft on all current 64-bit Windows OSs, and the/. crowd uses this as an excuse to go on about how incompetent and behind the times MS is.
But I am spreading FUD, because I point out the quote is wrong?
1) Yeah, ok, it is technically the same OS, as is Linux 64 an XP 64. However, it isn't really the same OS. That is unless OSX isn't really a 64-bit OS, but is just has a few tweaks to take advantage of larger memory. I am going to give it the benefit of the doubt though, and assume there really is a 64-bit implementation of OSX. Just because it is on the same disk, doesn't mean the same code is being installed. 64-bit computing isn't just a matter of telling your 32-bit code to be twice as big.
2) "Pro level" or not, the machines being put on the market right now, are being given "pro level" tasks. As one example, every day on my way to the gym, I walk right by a film school where they have ten iMacs running Final Cut, editing DV and some HDV video. Why iMacs? I asked them, and it is because their Apple rep told them that the new iMacs are twice as fast as the G5s they had before. Now you can kibitz all you want about how those aren't desktop machines, but you would have a pretty hard time dragging those HDV decks and the computer around in your backpack.
3) You must not have much experience with Intel! Just because Intel puts the same branding on a chip, doesn't mean it is the same feature set, especially these days, and especially going from 32-bit to 64-bit. That just isn't how Intel does things, at least not recently. Right now, Intel is all over the place, and there is honestly no telling what they are likely to do next. You need a spreadsheet and a PR person just to keep up with which core is ending up in which branding, and what features are there. Gone are the days where they just churn out the same chip at a faster clock speed. None of this matters too much at the application level, but at the OS level, you have a lot of tweaking to do to get the most out of a given chip. Otherwise you are going to get mediocre performance.
I do think it is rather trollish, because it is only looking at it from one side. Yes, Microsoft has seen things that work on the Apple platform and emulated them, but Apple has done the same thing. That is the nature of the computer industry. I mean, there really isn't much in OSX that is actually original to start with. Most of what Next did was copy SGI, and then OSX was built on top of that, and took a lot of ideas from what was going on with Linux.
I don't know how many times I have seen some technology or feature that comes from one company, end up in the product of another company. It is just the way things work. Yet the popular telling of the story is that Apple invents everything, and Microsoft just follows along ripping it off. For example, for years, Apple maintained that Windows wasn't even a "real GUI OS" because it was just a presentation shell running on top of a text mode OS. Well, here we sit today, and XP is a full GUI OS, and OSX is just a presentation shell on top of a text mode OS. PCI(as well as X and E), USB, right click menus, multibutton mice, DVI, these are all PC standards that Apple ended up adopting after failed attempts to promote their own alternative. For years, Apple maintained that no one needed preemptive multitasking (like Windows NT or UNIX), because cooperative multitasking was more efficient, the whole time working feverishly to try and copy the feature, then they bought an OS that had it and suddenly it was the cat's pajamas. For years, Apple and it's followers scoffed at the command line interfaces and scripting in general as an inelegant solution for nerds. Now they promote their command line and scripting tools as one of the biggest strengths of their OS.
As far as the Vista GUI goes, there is no denying that the look and feel is a ripoff of the OSX GUI, but if you look under the hood at what Microsoft is doing with the Windows Presentation Foundation, you will see that actually the technology is totally different than anything Apple has ever done, and quite impressive.
As for the spotlight feature, you mean Apple's ripoff of the Google desktop search feature? Well, I don't know how long Apple worked on that, but I know I was hearing about that feature of Longhorn well before Apple came out with their tool. Of course it was supposed to work with their new file system (which got cut from the final release of Vista), but the feature was still being talked about years before Apple had put out theirs. That in and of itself is funny, because Finder sucked. When MS started puting more complicated search and indexing tools in their OSs, the Apple reaction was that they didn't need them, because the OS was so intuitive that users "just knew where their files were" instead of having to look through a bunch of directories for where they had put them. I heard all sorts of criticisms from macheads about how many systems resources got chewed up by Windows constantly indexing everything, when on the Apple you "just knew where your files were." Now we come full circle, and MS is being accused of stealing the idea of an indexed search feature from OSX.
My point is that while you could just see it as the natural evolution of the market (as most people do with most companies) whenever Apple is involved, suddenly people start talking about how things were "ripped off" or "stolen" from Apple, as though they are the only company in the world that ever came up with an original idea.
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Well, for the music industry there is some hope. I know one audio engineer who uses all PC equipment, and happens to have 9 grammys!
http://www.larryseyer.com/
So, you could always point that out to people who claim that PCs are toys.
Seriously, if this isn't just aping my coment, what market are you in? I have NEVER seen a video production studio or post house where only one guy knows anything about the Mac. In Houston, Austin, San Franscico, Santa Clara, and L.A. every video studio I have ever seen has used mainly Macs, unless it was an SGI shop (which have all gone Linux now). I have even done work for Intel and AMD where the people doing the video insisted on using Macs! Now in pure 3D animation and game development studios it is a whole different deal (somewhat understandably so), but with video, I have never worked in a single market where PCs were the presumptive standard.
I think the Treo is too thick. I don't like the external antenna, as it often catches on things as I pull it in and out of my bag or coat pocket. I don't care for how small the buttons are when you are trying to quickly dial a number in a situation, like being on a train, or walking down the street. During long conversations it gets very hot against your ear. I don't like that there is nothing to protect the screen without putting it in a case that makes it even harder to use when you need to answer a call quickly. Also, I found that oddly enough all the PDA-style smartphones I tried (Blackberry, Sidekick, Treo) were all very hard to use as a phone walking down a busy street with a lot of traffic. Either I couldn't hear the person I was talking to because the volume was really low if you didn't have it by your ear just right, or they couldn't hear me over the background noise, or neither of us could hear anything because of all the wind noise the mic was picking up, or something. I haven't had those problems with any of the flip phones I have used.
To give you an idea, the Motorola RAZR is my idea of the perfect phone. Big buttons, a couple days of battery life with moderate use, slim enough to fit in any pocket, good reception and sound quality, easily replaceable battery so that I can have an extra in my bag and quickly swap them.
It is true that in theory, a Bluetooth headset (or any headset for that matter) should somewhat mitigate the ergonomics of the phone. However in practice it (at least for me) doesn't work that way. I don't want to walk around all day with a headset in my ear. I think it is uncomfortable, looks kind of dumb, and isn't really all that practical. So, a headset just means an annoying two-step process. When the phone starts ringing, I have to pull it out, and look to see who is calling, then if I want to answer it, I have to start digging around for my headset, get it in my ear, adjust it, and then answer the call. I find that much more annoying than just looking at the external display on my phone, and if I want to answer it, just open the phone, put it to my ear, and start talking. If it looks like it is going to be a long call, then I will tell them to hang on a second while I switch to the headphone. However when I am walking down a busy street, and someone is just calling to check if I am running late or not, it is nice to just flip open the phone, talk to them close the phone, and slip it back in my pocket.
On the other side, I think that the Treo has too small a screen to make an optimal PDA, and the size makes the keyboard so small that a big guy like me (I am 6' 4" with pretty big hands) has a bit of a hard time getting any better data entry from the tiny keyboard than I would from handwriting recognition.
The Treo is very well designed for what it is, which is a combo unit. However I think that a phone/PDA combo works about as well as a gas/electric hybrid SUV.
My problem with this is not about processing power, or memory, or anything like that, but simply about form factor. Any device that makes a comfortable and easy to carry phone, makes for an awful PDA, and any device that makes a good PDA, is uncomfortable as a phone.
A PDA needs to be mostly screen, and input area. That always makes for having to talk with a brick to your head. In my opinion, all the best mobile phones have been clamshell designs, which retain a comfortable angle between the earpiece and the microphone. I had a BlackBerry, a Sidekick, a Treo, and got tired of all of them because they were crap phones! They were all quite capable PDAs, but just a pain for using as a phone. Now I have a phone with 'smartphone' features, and it drives me nuts trying to put in text on a numeric keypad, trying to use a postage-stamp screen, and having to navigate with unlikely button combinations to read and reply to emails.
I really think there will always be a need for a phone, and a need for a PDA-like device. The form factor requirements between the two are just too different. Perhaps when we have real, working, rollable color screens, and 100% accurate voice recognition that can run on a mobile processor, then things might change, but at the current level of technology, I don't see the need for a little touchscreen you can hold in your hand, and a little device you can hold up to your ear meshing very well.
I'm not even sure how many articles I have seen talking about how the poor guys at NASA are being suppressed, and every time people have thought it was a worthy topic of discussion, and sworn up and down that anyone who had issue with global warming theories was obviously some corporate stooge who didn't know anything about science.
/. saying that anyone who disagrees with the majority opinion is suppressed, and suddenly this is a shameful example of people clouding the scientific issues with politics, and is not worthy of discussion.
Now there is an article about someone more qualified to discuss the topic than anyone on
Great! Oh, and by the way, I love how he is a corporate stooge too. Of course, since he has the opinion we always attribute to corporate stooges, he must be a corporate stooge, since only a corporate stooge would hold corporate stooge opinions! He can't be a reputable scientist, because all reputable scientists agree that global warming is a huge problem, and caused by our SUVs. Of course what do you expect from some hack working at some technical college in the middle of nowhere anyway? Everybody knows that all the most important climate research happens in New York and L.A. Why I heard Susan Sarandon and Al Franken giving their latests findings on TV just the other day, and they didn't even mention this guy, and they are names I know.
I think that more than anything, it is just an issue of image. Back when I did everything on SGI systems, every shop I worked for was always trying to get me to take an office in their facility, so that they could trot the client in and show off the fancy SGI system, and let the client know that their account was being serviced on big, fancy, special hardware. Once I moved to PC, they were all quite happy to let me work from home, so my custom-built "frankenstien" as they always called it, wouldn't give the client the impression that their account was being serviced by some machine thrown together from spare parts.
What I think a lot of people don't uderstand, is that in a lot of creative markets, Apple has marketshare for exactly the same reason that Microsoft has marketshare in the IT sector. No artist ever got in trouble or fired for buying a Mac, just like no IT guy was ever fired for going Microsoft. If in the middle of an important deadline your Mac crashes, the attitude is "what can you do? Shit happens!" However, same situation with a Windows box and the immediate response is "that's what you get for using a PC! This wouldn't happen if you were working on a Mac." Truth be told, both Macs, and PCs are really unreliable when you start dealing with uncompressed video. That is a lot of information, and crashes just happen more than any of us would like. However, my experience has been that a well maintained PC will crash less in graphics applications than a well maintained Mac. The perception is quite different though, because the Mac is the presumptive standard when it comes to graphics.
I have to agree with this 100%! I have a friend who has done a lot of work for some big studios, who swears that everything is always done on a Mac, and is QUITE proud of the fact that he wouldn't even know how to open an email on a PC. He takes it as a sign of what a good designer he is that he has never had to work for a company so "lame and boring" they would make him use a PC.
By the way, I have also been in situations where I was asked to hide my PC before the client came in, so they wouldn't know I had done their work on a PC.
Bingo! As much as people might like to point out that Windows is the majority platform in the world in general, you would never have any inkling of that working here in the entertainment industry in L.A.
I fact, here it is pretty much the assumption that if you are using anything but a Mac, it has to be because you are a cheap bastard who isn't really a professional, even if the PC you are using cost more than any Mac! You have to go out of your way to justify buying a PC, and have to be prepared to fight for a PC if that is what you want to use at anything but the biggest studios (who are all going Linux). At any small to medium shop, it is just assumed that everyone is going to be using a Mac. It is what they teach you in school, it is what all the other artists use, and most people will swear that it is what everything is done on.
I know a lot of people working in the games industry, from every level from little independent companies, all the way up to people working at some of the biggest publishers. I have even worked at one small (read as a 3 people) game company and one huge (read as one of the biggest game publishers in the world) game company. Outside of bargain bin specialty games like Deer Hunter, this is the first time I have ever even heard Wal-Mart's name in conjunction with the creation of a game.
I do not know any employee at any game company who, at any phase of development, says "is this going to be OK with Wal-Mart?" I am sure their are some companies that for one reason or another decide that courting Wal-Mart gives them an advantage, but even working on games that are right up Wal-Mart's alley like a licensed car racing franchise title I won't mention, the developers and publisher never once stopped an said "how is this going to play at Wal-Mart?"
Quite frankly I think this article is incredibly overblown, and paints the picture that Wal-Mart has far more influence on the content that it really does. Sure, everyone wants to sell there. I'm sure they loom very large for the people responsible for getting the game on the shelf, but I have never heard, or personally seen any example of that entering into the creative process on a game designed to sell in the general gaming market.
Actually, Quark has been available on PCs for over a decade. Also, most of the Apple branded professional apps originally were cross-platform apps that only became Mac-only after Apple bought them. Shake, for example, still runs on Linux even though Apple killed the Windows version.
I am not aware of a single third party professional graphics app that is Mac-only.
I have worked with a LOT of designers, artists, video professionals, and even web developers who have REFUSED to ever work on anything but a Mac, and have never used Windows for more than a few minutes. It always amazes me, but I have found myself in situations more times that I can count, where as the one guy in the studio who has ever touched a PC, I have to explain all sorts of simple things, because they don't know the first thing about Windows.
No need to get snippy. I would personally just rather read a story about some company actually making new standards that will make next years computers even better than they are now, rather than some tired article about what OEM is claiming to have driven what standard in the past.
It isn't that I so much object to the *actual* political stories that effect technology, but rather these "geek club politics" kind of stories. They always seem to boil down to some variant of:
Dell is stupid.
Microsoft is evil.
As is Sony.
But Google isn't.
Open source will save the world.
DRM will destroy the world.
Standards are the world.
Apple invented the world.
This season's fashion report on what all the best coders are using.
It seems like a lot of these stories aren't really even news stories at all, but just another excuse to forward one of the above arguments. There is plenty going on in the world that could excite some really interesting discussion that geeks might be interested in aside from these rather well beaten paths. I don't really think there is much of value left to say on any of these subjects, since they all get weekly coverage, if not daily coverage. You might think it is interesting to have the same conversation about different aspects of the same subjects over and over and over again, but I find it pretty boring.
It might be just me, but it really seems like /. is becoming less a site for tech news for geeks, and more a site for geek politics. It seems like every day there are fewer and fewer stories about any actual tech, and they are all being replaced with stories about the politics of "geek" culture. I'm not really saying it is a bad thing, but just in my opinion a little boring.
Unfortunately, this really has nothing to do with porn. The government has been archiving and filtering all electronic communications including email and web traffic for years now, under the name of the war on terror. This is not some crazy conspiracy theory, it is exactly what they admit to doing in this whole NSA spying case right now.
At the moment they are getting pressure to go through the courts to follow up on leads they get from this rounding up of information, which they really don't want to do. By gathering up all your personal information from your ISP in one database at the DOJ, and then just cross referencing that with the archive at the NSA, they can now see exactly who is saying what on the Internet, without having to go through the hassle of getting a warrant to find out which user is associated with which IP address.
Pornography is just a really easy excuse, because it is one of those things that a large number of people are interested in, but no one will openly admit to being interested in. Plus it gives them the great option of asking anyone who opposes the move "why are you so eager to protect child pornographers?"
You know, actually I don't agree with your statement at all. On the surface it sounds good, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. If you ask any 'sexy' celebrity, model, singer, or whatever, what they think are the most important issues, I guarantee you every single one of them will have "the enviroment" or "global warming" on their top 5. I would be surprised if a single one of them had space exploration anywhere on their list.
I actually think that environmentalism/global warming/pollution is a very 'sexy' issue, in that it is something that anyone with any cultural influence feels we 'should' spend money on. Space exploration, moon bases, space stations, and all that, on the other hand, are decidedly 'geeky' not 'sexy' and as such always fall in the category of "we can't even feed everyone on Earth, why should we be spending money on space."
Actually, I wouldn't agree that it isn't possible to rewrite 60% of the code, or even that it is a bad thing. I have no idea what is going on at MS right now, but I can imagine a very plausible, and even positive scenario where 60% of the code is working, but poorly implemented. Someone high up who knows what they are doing looks at the code and says "this works, but it is crap. We need to rewrite this."
It is a lot faster to rewrite code to make it more elegant, efficient, and stable, once it has already been prototyped. You don't have to spend all that time hammering out functionality, and trying to figure out what you are doing, you just need to make it do what it is doing better and more reliably. In my experience it actually isn't all that uncommon on large teams, that you will have some of your weaker programmers working on minor features, while your stronger programmers tackle the bigger issues. Once the big guns are free, they go back, look at what the weaker programmers have done, and decide to rewrite large section of the code to make it work better.
Now I am not saying this is what is happening at MS, they might just be in a spiral of stupidity and confusion. However, I don't see major rewrites as proof of disaster.
And why don't they just shut down the CIA, and several other agencies that give them information they don't like? The reason we elect the president, and not all the people working at NASA, or the CIA, is because the president is the one who takes all the advice from the various agencies, and makes the decision as to what to do about it. If Hansen doesn't like how the president decides to use the research, then perhaps he should run for president, or at the very least go somewhere where his research will be represented in the way he wants.
As I said, there is no dispute about the bad track record this administration has for dealing with information they don't want to hear. However, that isn't the point.
The point is that other people employed by the government accepted that if they didn't like the policies of the current administration, then they needed to stop taking a government paycheck before they spoke out against the administration. That is what people all the way from the CIA down to the most boring and mundane governmental office have done. Resign, then go out and let people know about the problems that forced you to have to resign. You can't expect to be taken seriously as you villify an administration, all the while pocketing their money.
I have no sympathy for a government employee whining about the presidential administration doing what they choose with work paid for by the same administration. If you think that what they are doing is so horrible, then you should resign, and go elsewhere. Don't ask me to feel for your plight, when it is obviously not so bad that you will refuse a paycheck! I'm sure than many of the nations that actually signed the Kyoto accord would be more than happy to support Hansen's work, and would agree not to edit his reports. It is like some RIAA lawyer complaining about the evils of DRM, while suing grannies for pirating music!
I mean, how does that conversation go?
"I can't believe this, you edited my report. I won't stand for this!"
"Oh, you won't? That's too bad, because I have your paycheck right here. I guess I'll just tear it up."
"No, don't do that! I guess I'll stand for it, but I am going to complain a lot."
"Ok, whatever."
Wow, that is a really horrible situation, and we thought the Chinese government was repressive.
There are plenty of very real, very serious instances of this administration usurping power, lying about information, and perhaps even breaking the law. Why not focus on that, instead of repeated stories about how some guys at a NASA lab are having continuing problems with management, but not bad enough problems to quit over? If you want a story to highlight the administration taking extraordinary liberties to control the flow of information, there are plenty out there. This isn't it. This is a story of a spoiled brat complaining that after he ate all his cake, there was none left for him to keep.
Here's the thing, what you are describing not only isn't censorship, it is called having a job. I know plenty of engineers, researchers, artists and yes, even scientists who have to put their personal opinions about what the work means up on a shelf, because that opinion doesn't agree with the official line of the company/university/agency funding the work. That is why they give you a paycheck and pay your budget, so that they can use your research in whatever way they choose.
Now most of these people just have to suck it up, because 60 Minutes isn't calling them up for an interview about it, and if they did talk to a network, they would be immediately fired, and have to stop their work. These guys at this NASA lab have been incredibly vocal about how they think their research is being misused, and have been actively involved in opposing the policies of the government on this particular issue, yet they still have their jobs! In fact, it was the guy who was rewriting their reports who got fired, not them. I think that is pretty much the opposite of censorship, and a luxury most researchers would love to have. People working in the private sector certainly don't have that luxury. If a researcher for a pharmaceutical company was actively and publicly criticizing his employer, and working against the interests of that employer, they would have a hard time ever finding work again. If you want to maintain your autonomy, and make sure your research is untainted, and independent, then the first simple rule would be not to take money from people who have an agenda counter to the findings of your research. I don't think this is really that hard for most people to understand, so why are these geniuses at the NASA climate lab having such a problem grasping it?
Yes, it is a proven fact that the Bush administration has a penchant for misusing information to forward their agenda. However that was established a long time ago, and people still reelected them. Obviously people get the government they deserve. That doesn't somehow make it anything more than petty whining for these guys at the NASA lab to run all over the place crying because they don't like how the people paying their salary are using their research. If they have a problem with it, they can do what everyone else in the world does, and refuse to take the money, and try to go somewhere else where their research will be presented in the way they want.
What you are comparing isn't an issue that is endemic to a particular technology, but rather an issue of the responsiveness and competence of the developer. I have seen as many as three new build of complicated apps like a video game get put out in a single day, during the testing phase. It all depends on the developer, and how they are developing the application. There is absolutely nothing that keeps you from fixing bugs overnight with a desktop app. I have worked with some really gifted programmers who would start digging into the code and fixing it while you were describing the problem! I was working on one game project that was for Windows, Mac, Xbox, PS2, and GameCube, and between the all the versions, the testers found over 100 bugs. Overnight the developers fixed 90% of them.
Realistically, in a corporate environment, you are highly unlikely to ever see more than three OSs. In fact, the most common case is only having to support two OSs, and there are many clients who just don't care about anything but Windows. There are a plethora of tools that make coding for Windows/Mac/Linux a fairly straightforward proposition, and everything else comes down to the responsiveness of the developer.
As I said, there are certainly situations where a web tool is the best choice, but there are also situations where a desktop app is the best choice. Sure, if you have to support 18 different OSs (by the way, are there even 15 versions of UNIX left on the market these days?), then a web tool,might be the best approach. However, don't confuse the difference between a good developer and a bad developer with some technical limitation of the tools they use.
Woah there, slow down a second! In point #5 you just toss out the little tidbit that "Deploying an internal desktop app is expensive, difficult to support, etc. " Now I would absolutely love to hear how you figure that developing a desktop app is in any way more expensive, or more of a support headache than a web app?
Back when I was doing corporate work, I headed up quite a few projects that were internal company programs, some of them were web apps, some of them were HD-based, some of them were CD-based, and some of them used some combination of all three. I can not see any way in which you can make a blanket statement that an AJAX app is somehow magically easier to support, and cheaper to develop than a desktop app. If you were talking about a simple website that had guaranteed cross-browser compatibility, you might have a point, but as soon as you walk into AJAX land, you are going to have to spend just as much time testing with different browsers, and different net connections as you would need to in order to develop a desktop app. Hell, depending on the app, you could very quickly find yourself in a position where implementing an AJAX app, with attendant infrastructure, was astronomically more expensive than throwing together a little desktop program.
I have seen a lot of projects go seriously over budget, and massively over schedule because of exactly this sort of thinking. There are a lot of people out there who really like to push web technologies as the magic bullet to solve every problem, and make comments just like the one you just made about how it has to be cheaper, easier, faster, and better, because it uses the magic web technology. In reality, you have to look at every project as an isolated case, and figure out the best technology for that situation.
I find it funny how many stories are coming out of the same NASA lab about how they are constantly being censored, and aren't allowed to talk to anyone. OK, then how do these stories keep coming out?
I have no doubt that the Bush administration has manipulated information coming out of the lab for their own political benefit, since that is what politicians do. What gets me, is how many high-profile stories I keep seeing about how these people aren't allowed to do interviews. I mean, logic would say that if they aren't allowed to voice their opinion, then they wouldn't be on TV voicing their opinion.The definition of censorship has obviously been softened a lot recently, when you can go on TV and talk about how you are being censored, and what is being censored. I mean, I have been reading articles about how these people aren't allowed to say anything, pretty much since Bush got into office, yet they still seem to have websites up, and go to conferences, and make all sorts of press statements. It is certainly an insidious form of censorship.
I'm not even sure how you tell if someone is being censored any more. In the old days, you could tell because they weren't allowed to say anything. These days I guess you just have watch them on network TV so they can tell you how badly their free speech is being trampled.
Hmm, what's next, people launching $100,000,000 ad campaigns to let us know they don't have any money?
Yes, and people are running out in droves to buy a system that is essentially at the end of its life, while Apple markets the hell out of the faster the Intel chips! Come on, you know full well that it was implied that when I said "comes out with 64-bit systems" I meant 64-bit Intel systems. It is called context, and it is a basic part of the English language. I'm sure you have come across it before.
Well this is just bad logic. Intel is supplying Core Duos to Dell, Gateway, Sony, HP, Lenovo, Fujitsu, and every other major manufacturer on the market, as well as Apple. AMD is supplying chips to several smaller vendors like Sun, Alienware, Boxx, and a few big guys like HP and Fujitsu. There is just really no clear reasoning that says that the company supplying a number of smaller vendors would not have been able to handle the capacity of yet another small vendor, just because the company supplying all the large vendors can't keep up with demand. Yes, AMD has a smaller production capacity that Intel, but then it isn't like Apple is selling tens of millions of systems a year. In fact, it could be argued that had Apple gone with AMD, they would have been one of AMD's largest contracts, so would have had a better pick of the production yield, whereas with Intel, Apple is one of their smallest customers, so has to wait behind the big boys. Also where do you people keep getting this idea that Intel only makes 32-bit chips? They have several 64-bit chips shipping right now.
Once again, this makes no logical sense. Allowing people to install Vista on Macs wouldn't hurt Windows marketshare, because it would mean people were installing Vista on Macs! Right now, people buy Macs, and MS doesn't get any money, unless they buy Office or something. If more people buy Macs, so that they can dual-boot Vista and OSX, they are still buying a copy of Vista! MS is getting MORE money than they would have otherwise. As far as supporting EFI being a hard thing to do, I keep saying the article is just plain wrong. MS is supporting, and even requiring EFI support in all their 64-bit OSs already. Look, here is a quote from the MS website:
If you still don't believe me, here is the link http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/64bi t/64bitsystems.mspx
This whole notion that MS is somehow daunted by EFI is just insane! EFI started in the PC world, it is supported in the PC world, and that means it is supported by MS. I don't know if the guy in the arti
Hmm, according to the Microsoft page, it is not only supported, it is required for any 64-bit installation on an IA-64 system. So some guy at Microsoft either misspeaks, or gets confused or whatever, and says that no version of Windows will support something that is not only supported, but required by Microsoft on all current 64-bit Windows OSs, and the /. crowd uses this as an excuse to go on about how incompetent and behind the times MS is.
But I am spreading FUD, because I point out the quote is wrong?1) Yeah, ok, it is technically the same OS, as is Linux 64 an XP 64. However, it isn't really the same OS. That is unless OSX isn't really a 64-bit OS, but is just has a few tweaks to take advantage of larger memory. I am going to give it the benefit of the doubt though, and assume there really is a 64-bit implementation of OSX. Just because it is on the same disk, doesn't mean the same code is being installed. 64-bit computing isn't just a matter of telling your 32-bit code to be twice as big.
2) "Pro level" or not, the machines being put on the market right now, are being given "pro level" tasks. As one example, every day on my way to the gym, I walk right by a film school where they have ten iMacs running Final Cut, editing DV and some HDV video. Why iMacs? I asked them, and it is because their Apple rep told them that the new iMacs are twice as fast as the G5s they had before. Now you can kibitz all you want about how those aren't desktop machines, but you would have a pretty hard time dragging those HDV decks and the computer around in your backpack.
3) You must not have much experience with Intel! Just because Intel puts the same branding on a chip, doesn't mean it is the same feature set, especially these days, and especially going from 32-bit to 64-bit. That just isn't how Intel does things, at least not recently. Right now, Intel is all over the place, and there is honestly no telling what they are likely to do next. You need a spreadsheet and a PR person just to keep up with which core is ending up in which branding, and what features are there. Gone are the days where they just churn out the same chip at a faster clock speed. None of this matters too much at the application level, but at the OS level, you have a lot of tweaking to do to get the most out of a given chip. Otherwise you are going to get mediocre performance.
I do think it is rather trollish, because it is only looking at it from one side. Yes, Microsoft has seen things that work on the Apple platform and emulated them, but Apple has done the same thing. That is the nature of the computer industry. I mean, there really isn't much in OSX that is actually original to start with. Most of what Next did was copy SGI, and then OSX was built on top of that, and took a lot of ideas from what was going on with Linux.
I don't know how many times I have seen some technology or feature that comes from one company, end up in the product of another company. It is just the way things work. Yet the popular telling of the story is that Apple invents everything, and Microsoft just follows along ripping it off. For example, for years, Apple maintained that Windows wasn't even a "real GUI OS" because it was just a presentation shell running on top of a text mode OS. Well, here we sit today, and XP is a full GUI OS, and OSX is just a presentation shell on top of a text mode OS. PCI(as well as X and E), USB, right click menus, multibutton mice, DVI, these are all PC standards that Apple ended up adopting after failed attempts to promote their own alternative. For years, Apple maintained that no one needed preemptive multitasking (like Windows NT or UNIX), because cooperative multitasking was more efficient, the whole time working feverishly to try and copy the feature, then they bought an OS that had it and suddenly it was the cat's pajamas. For years, Apple and it's followers scoffed at the command line interfaces and scripting in general as an inelegant solution for nerds. Now they promote their command line and scripting tools as one of the biggest strengths of their OS.
As far as the Vista GUI goes, there is no denying that the look and feel is a ripoff of the OSX GUI, but if you look under the hood at what Microsoft is doing with the Windows Presentation Foundation, you will see that actually the technology is totally different than anything Apple has ever done, and quite impressive.
As for the spotlight feature, you mean Apple's ripoff of the Google desktop search feature? Well, I don't know how long Apple worked on that, but I know I was hearing about that feature of Longhorn well before Apple came out with their tool. Of course it was supposed to work with their new file system (which got cut from the final release of Vista), but the feature was still being talked about years before Apple had put out theirs. That in and of itself is funny, because Finder sucked. When MS started puting more complicated search and indexing tools in their OSs, the Apple reaction was that they didn't need them, because the OS was so intuitive that users "just knew where their files were" instead of having to look through a bunch of directories for where they had put them. I heard all sorts of criticisms from macheads about how many systems resources got chewed up by Windows constantly indexing everything, when on the Apple you "just knew where your files were." Now we come full circle, and MS is being accused of stealing the idea of an indexed search feature from OSX.
My point is that while you could just see it as the natural evolution of the market (as most people do with most companies) whenever Apple is involved, suddenly people start talking about how things were "ripped off" or "stolen" from Apple, as though they are the only company in the world that ever came up with an original idea.