I think most people that end up disappointed are missing the point of the movie.
The movie is about the people caught up in the attack, not the monster or the military or the government. It's strictly about the people at Ground Zero.
Luckily, I don't suffer from any form of motion sickness so the shakycam effect didn't phase me at all. If anything, my main gripe was that I wish Hud, the cameraman, would've just panned around during certain key moments when I knew some stuff was going down just off camera.
I accept the fact that we still don't know about the monster at the end because the characters we followed the whole movie didn't. I sincerely hope the rumors are true that Abrams and crew have an option for a follow up and get to tell the story from another perspective to shed more light on the monster and it's origins.
Either I'm wrong and I do posess extraordinary ability in that I can mouse with either left or right hands, fret my guitar and drive with my left hand, or the "lefties" out there who cannot adapt and learn, have retarded ability because they cannot adapt and learn to use both hands for various functions. So which is it? Are lefties retarded? Or am I just gifted and tallented? I can't see how it can be both or neither really.
You're completely missing the point. Speaking as a leftie, I've adapted to doing a lot of things the 'right-handed' way: driving a car, playing guitar and piano, using a can opener, using a computer. But once you've 'adapted' it's extremely hard to switch over. I've tried learning guitar left-handed now that I know it right...habit and muscle memory make it even more difficult than learning in the first place. I'm learning drums left-sided now to take advantage of my dominant side and avoid complications in the future of trying to keep precision timing with my weak side.
The OP specified he uses a tablet and stylus that he has already adapted to in crossing over to the right side where the scrollbar is. His issue isn't one of an inability or difficulty of performing the task; it's that when he does, it blocks the screen. Changing his habit requires more in this instance than just learning to access the scrollbar with his right hand instead. To remain efficient, he'd have to completely change everything from holding the tablet in his dominant hand (giving up it's use) to using his right hand for ALL of his navigation and primary interaction, not just the scrollbars. Telling him to 'learn to use his right hand' or to 'flip the screen upside down', as others have suggested, is not an effective solution to address a limitation of accessibility.
The last time I checked, we 'lefties' were not crippled or in any way incapable of using our right hand, we simply gravitate to using them in an assistive capacity.
Newsflash: Apple uses the exact same drives as the rest of the computer market, there's nothing proprietary about them. I seriously doubt the veracity of your statement but the laws of physics dictate that mechanical devices with moving parts will eventually break down.
That being said, the complaints most people have with Apple products are typically perception issues: too hot, too noisy, scratches too easily. Everyone has their own tolerance of what they will accept and despite the limitations of current technology, Apple users typically expect Apple to wave a magic wand and make a superquiet, supercool, indestructable device that will last for infinity, despite that no one in the industry can do this. And even though every other company faces the same limitations with heat, noise, and wear and tear, Apple complainers are typically the noisiest about it.
But dissatisfied customers have a tendency to argue from an emotional standpoint than a logical standpoint. Scratches on an iPod? That's a non-issue... buy a case. MacBook too hot/noisy? Get an Etch-A-Sketch. No, seriously, get a cooling pad for the heat, IT'S NOT A LAPTOP DESPITE YOUR INSISTENCE IT MUST BE. Get some headphones and music if electrical or fan noise bothers you that much. Do you bitch about your air conditioner and TV, too? I'm not ranting about anyone specifically but these are the big things people like to complain about nowadays in regards to Apple products. Now iBook G3 video issues, there was a legitimate complaint. Thermal paste? FUD, plain and simple. Been common practice since the powerbooks and never was an issue until people complained about the heat of 2.0 ghz CoreDuo procs. Better too much than too little. People are just wishing that their issue was as easy as too much thermal paste.
There's not an issue here. Someone without a clue heard a rumor, saw a picture that seemed to back up the rumor they heard and then did a 'science experiment' and drew a conclusion with only one control set, whose results are inconclusive. Any amount of adequate reserach would've shown that the amount of thermal paste used in the MacBook Pros is the same as what was used in the prior lines of PowerBooks over several revisions and those machines certainly had no 'overheating' issue. Furthermore, you WANT the heat from the computer to dissipate through the case, it means the heatsink is working and transferring the heat from inside the machine correctly. Fans can only do so much with modern processors. If the case is cooler, then the heat is getting trapped inside and the internal components will wear out faster and have issues. As long as you understand that you are not purchasing a 'laptop' and that the bottom of the computer is not intended to come in contact with you for any extended period of time while in use, you should be ok. If you have a PowerBook G4 as you mentioned, then your should already be familiar with how the case is designed to dissipate heat, mostly through the bottom and above the keyboard near the hinges.
Color me stupid, but isn't a reduction of the case temperature a bad sign? Wouldn't you want the heat to be transferred away from the chip? The computer uses a certain amount of power, regardless of the way it's cooled. That energy is transformed into heat which must be removed. If the heat is transferred away from the CPU efficiently, you'd expect it to be where it can be removed from the system, i.e. the case or the air. A hot cooler is a sign of a good energy transport from the CPU to the cooling system. Making the cooler less hot without increasing the energy transport from the cooling system to the environment is bad.
Here's exactly why Apple constantly defends it's confidential or internal information. A picture like the one currently circulating from the Service manual leaks out, associated by a post from someone who thinks they know something about computers, and with little more than rumor and hearsay, and their little science experiment using one computer, they conclude they must know more about the design of Apple's computers than Apple's engineers do. This information starts circulating through major tech sites and the majority of people whose familiarity with thermal paste is recalling how much they've put on the AMD processors of their homebrewed systems, which isn't nearly as much. It's FUD from people that don't really know what they are talking about. [b]It seems like a lot but it's actually the same amount as used in the previous lines of PowerBooks, which never had an overheating issue or negative rumor mill circulation of such behaviour.[/b] The only reason this is an issue is people that want the latest, greatest and most powerful machines don't understand that the price for that technology is a machine that runs hotter overall than their older, less powerful system they are comparing it to.
Here's the thing, the systems are designed so that a significant amount of the heat is [b]supposed[/b] to dissipate through certain parts of the case, primarily the bottom, but also above the keyboard, where hands rarely are through typical use. This is an efficient design that allows the fans to run quieter and more efficiently, and not like a jet plane taking off, like some other portable computers do. Powerbooks have had this exact same design yet ran cooler overall because of the less powerful processors. Yet they still get hot, especially if you upgrade the RAM (ram slots on the bottom of the case) and run anything off an optical disc (play a cd or a dvd movie). These computers have not been laptops in quite awhile and the manual specifically states the bottom will get hot and not to be in contact with it for any extended length of time.
If you are doing anything to change that behaviour, you are trapping the heat inside the machine. Sure, it feels cooler but what's gonna happen when the CPU burns out in 6 months and these guys send it in to AppleCare for repair and it's discovered that they voided the warranty by removing the majority of the thermal paste that was supposed to be there? Please, everyone that's stating that this is too much thermal grease, as if they know something about it: do a little actual research, compare this process to the Powerbooks that came before and maybe get a job working as an Apple hardware designer so that you have some credibility when spouting off your 'expert' testimonial.
Seriously, this is a prime example of why internet sites have a hard time gaining credibility as responsible journalists, there was almost no fact-checking involved in determining the validity or accuracy of these claims that there's an 'overheating' issue with MacBook Pros, several sites just picked up the story and ran with it.
I imagine the rational is very easy. When watching a subtitled movie, a large part of your attention is directed to the portion of the screen where the subtitles are located. Your mind is split between processing this information and the visual information of the screen image. You can't fully focus on the cinematography when part of your brain is being dedicated to reading text off the screen. And if you DO get distracted by the visuals and miss a line or two of the text, you have to stop and go back in order to not miss what might be a crucial plot detail.
Dubbing isn't inherently bad, it's just typically been done in piss poor quality where the original dialogue track coupled with subtitle provided a less intrusive experience on the viewing than horrible voice acting.
I know that some PPC Linux distros had trouble controlling the fan speed on G5 PowerMacs, causing the fans to run at full-speed continuously. If cooling is maintained by OS X on these machines, would one really want to bother installing Windows on them?
As far as I understand, with any Mac System that has an SMU (Systems Management Unit) instead of a PMU (Power Management Unit) the optimization of the cooling system is indeed controlled by OS X (this includes most G5 based systems). If the SMU does not receive the expected commands from the OS within a couple of minutes, it defaults into fail-safe mode where the fans would all run at high speed to ensure the system does not overheat. The benefit is that if the system was ever left unattended and the OS locked up, the SMU would keep the machine from being fried. Running the machine for an extended period of time (several months or even weeks) outside of OS X could severely shorten the overall life-span of the system (the mechanical aspects of the cooling system would wear out faster than expected through typical use.)
Worst case scenario is that if someone chose to run Linux or Windows on such a machine and the machine has heat issues two years into the life, and through repair it was noted that the fans were excessively worn out and there was evidence of another bootable OS being installed on the system, the owner may be liable for repair costs, even if they had purchased APP. Sure, the owner may yell and scream that's it's a hardware issue but it would be a hardware issue caused by running a nonstandard OS on the system that did not provided complete support for the underlying hardware, voiding any sort of warranty. Not a likely scenario but that is the risk anyone that wants to run an alternative OS should account for.
Now, that's a worst case scenario that's applicable to existing PPC systems, the new intel macs use an SMC (Systems Management Controller) and EFI and so the cooling system may be handled differently and may actually controlled by EFI instead of the OS. There's a lot of speculation about what EFI can and cannot do so who knows?
One other interesting tidbit to know about the new Intel-based Macs is that Classic (OS 9 legacy support that runs within OS X) is no longer shipping with the systems or supported and supposedly is not Rosetta compatible. Yeah, it's off-topic but I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else so I thought I'd throw it in since it is slightly OS related.
I still think they should have a free version. Just give people who pay a lot more.
They do, it's called a trial.Mac account and it's free for 60 days with access to most features. But if you want an ongoing stable account whose username doesn't keep changing, you're gonna have to pay for it.
$99 a year is maybe too much for just email if that's all someone is gonna do with it but if you plan on taking advantage of all most or all of the.Mac features, it's definitely worth it. Just the webhosting alone breaks down to $8.25 a month, not much more than most other similar webhosting plans.
But the real beauty of.Mac is all of the synchronization features, which is hard to effectively describe to people without them experiencing it. Your address book, bookmarks, calendars and other items can be synchronized and accessed on.Mac from anywhere or even shared between multiple computers!
Ok, so I did RTFA but didn't understand a lot of it because I'm not a developer and ended up skimming through the parts I wasn't following.
But, how is this different from what Apple does with their BootRom?
I understand that in the realm of Windows-based PC architecture this is not common practice but I would not consider is new or groundbreaking and, in fact, it seems fairly obvious.
Someone please post a synopsis for us laymen of what makes this innovative.
I've actually participated in a traffic survey that was quite similar to this back in my days as a starving college student. The State of Kansas used a very similar method of license plate tracking to determine how best to improve their highway system.
Of course, back then, we college students just sat by the side of the road, baby-sitting Hi-8 cameras and reloading tapes in freezing cold and rainy weather.
Then later someone manually logged the license plates and times and fed the list into a computer that calculate where the heaviest traffic was and was the driving patterns were.
Of course, once the system is in place, it can have both positive and negative uses but for people to assume this means they are going to be victims of a big brother type system is absolutely absurd. There's not enough resources to monitor everyone by their license plate alone. Plus, in order to link the plate with a driver would take additional man-hours and research, possibly court involvement (not sure about UK but it would require a warrant in America), so I'm fairly sure this would only be used in the event of very dire crimes. Sure, this means that if your info pops up in the area where a significant event happened, you may be contacted by authorities, but much more likely as a possible witness than a suspect.
Point 1: Steve Jobs has publicly stated on several occasions that he opposes tiered pricing. Why? Because it's inconvenient and there's no legitimate reason other to line Record Labels pockets.
Point 2: It's been established that Record Labels are greedy, litigious and extremely unethical in their negotiations with their business partners (artists, brick-and-mortar retail stores)
Now, I have to rant on this because, as an independent musician, I've done more than my fair share of research. Right now, digital downloads are almost pure profit. There's no manufacturing and distribution costs and the price of a full album through a digital download is very close to what retail cost is for a physical product. What Apple has done is provide all the record labels a solution they could not come up with themselves to the problem of making money off of digital versions of their product using the internet. And what made it such a hit was the convenience involved, convenience designed by Apple to legitimately purchase music.
And what thanks and gratitude does Apple get from the labels? None. The only reason the labels think they can get more money is because cell phone providers have established that people are willing to pay $2.50 for a ringtone, which isn't even a full version of a song. What they fail to assess is that average cell phone users have no convenient method otherwise of obtaining those ringtones whereas typical computer users have several different methods of obtaining desired music other than legitimate or even Label endorsed channels.
Now, I'm a techie so when I upgraded my cell phone to one that could play audio ringtones, I got the software that interfaces with my phone so that I can create my own ringtones on my computer and upload them to my phone. That way, my phone can ring with my favorite Bon Jovi or System of a Down song that I own without me getting ripped off at $2.50 a pop. Even as an astute technical person, I found installing the software and getting it to interface with my phone was kind of a pain. But once a convenient alternative method of getting ringtones becomes available that the average cell phone user can figure out and follow, the ringtone market will bottom out. The only reason it hasn't done so yet is because cell phones are not computers and therefore their software interface is designed to be feature limited, providing only the options the user purchases. Computers don't have this limitation.
Don't they mean...that they just want people not to tamper with their code? I see no need for a patent. I recall a time when a patent was for something important: a novel idea or mechanism of some kind. Making a patent doesn't really do much, other than making it impossible for other people/companies to hack into osX 86. But then again, it was illegal anyway, so no one could (legally) hack osX x86 before this patent. Seems kind of redundant.
From the recent patent issues Apple has faced (mainly concerning the iTunes interface and iPod interface/design) I would speculate this is more of a defensive move for Apple. Because they did not move immediately to patent certain aspects of the iTunes interface and iPod, other companies moved in with patent applications and were granted patents. Even though there is prior art, it's gonna cost Apple a lot of money if those other companies claims Apple is infringing on their patents.
So, based on that, I see this as a pre-emptive move for Apple to protect it's interests and make sure no other company can move in and claim their technique, apply a patent for it and then milk Apple for money by suing them for patent infringement.
That is bullshit. Just, absolute, poppycock. I recently attended Ruxcon - the Australian equivalent of Defcon only without the money - and there was a presentation on MacOS X "security". One of the highlights was when one of the presenters showed a snippet of source code to dsidentity, which is a setuid tool, and it had getenv("USER"). I shit you not. The entire audience cracked up laughing.
http://www.drunkenbatman.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-comment s.cgi?entry_id=684
They also had a short session showing you how to find and exploit buffer overflows in the kernel and user space. It was a real eye-opener. They've got some brain-damaged shit in MacOS X that even the Linux folks had fixed more than a decade ago. Heap smashing, stack smashing, lack of bounds checking, it was all there. The presenter reckoned it was less secure than Windows; he cracks both for a living.
Secure? Not by my reckoning.
Wait, according to the link you referred us to, that bug was fixed as of the post date of Oct. 6th, over a month ago:
from the link:We reported this to apple before they removed the dsidentity suid.
Now granted, I'm not an app developer and have no idea why such terms as 'Heap Stashing' and 'Lack of Bounds Checking' have a negative connotation, but I have never seen credible evidence of a perfectly written app or OS with no possibility of exploits. No matter how well written any code is, all it takes is a different set of eyes to see the potential for creating an exploit to get the code to do something it wasn't intended to do.
The key here is that OS X is more secure because of more than just the underlying code. You also have to consider the default settings the OS is installed with and Apple's response to potential security problems.
As far as viruses on OS X and those who make the claim that they will become more prevalent with market growth or Mac would suffer the same attacks as Windows if market share were switched, that claim is completely ridiculous. Here's why:
First, Apple is much more responsive to addressing and fixing reported security holes in their software.
Second, there are such things as 'Proof-of-Concept' viruses that never/seldom get released into the wild but are documented and often reported to Antivirus companies and app/os developers. These illustrate that an exploit is possible and easily distributable and and one would think that even if viruses had trouble propagating, at least there would be evidence of these 'Proof-of-Concept' viruses existing. I only personally know of one that was written about 2 years ago and publicly reported that took advantage of a potential exploit in Finder. That exploit was promptly fixed by Apple within a week after the exploit was reported. While other such viruses could and probably do exist, we never hear of them. Hearing of them would at least provided some sort of credibility to otherwise empty claims.
Now, going by prior examples, how long would it take Microsoft to patch a similar exploit in Windows? How long before a similar exploit was fixed in Linux or KDE or Gnome? How effective is the method either use to push updates to users and how easy is it to get and install the updates?
I'll stick with Apple because at least I know they are concerned with and respond promptly to potential security issues. Until I see evidence of at least 'Proof-of-Concept' viruses or other malware existing for OS X, then such potential threats are non-existent.
Plenty of other companies have done this, including Slashdot's favorite company, Apple.
wrong. Most of Apple's shortages would be because of greater than anticipated demand and supply issues with parts vendors. They don't intentially limit supply because they know it makes them look bad.
For instance, the PMG5 and iMac G5 were mostly backordered for such long times because IBM couldn't crank out the processors fast enough to keep up the production line.
There's a fine line between anticipated sales and actual sales. Companies typically forecast using prior sales data to anticipate how much of something to make. If they overproduce they lose money . When a companies growth and demand for than product is greater than what they are able to forecast, like in Apple's case, they typically incur a shortage if there's a bottleneck anywhere in the production pipeline.
I remember Dell having a very similar problem about 5-6 years ago when RamBus came out and they had supply issues from the RamBus vendors. Luckily, in most other cases the components that make up their machine are so generic they can substitute another chipset/videocard/modem or whatever if they ever have supply issues, and it's unlikely Intel will ever present them with a processor shortage.
Part of it is their fault. When they found out that part of their inventory was faulty, they should have immediately issued a recall for all products with that particular problem. If it was really less than 1% of the Nanos sold, then this shouldn't have been that big of a deal to do.
Their failure to issue a recall, and to basically ignore the problem, opened them up to these sorts of lawsuits, and more importantly to a PR hit.
Recalls typically only happen when an identified defect in a product is such that damage to life or property could happen and it's the percentage of affected products is very high or unknown. That why you typically see this with cars and devices like batteries which could potentially catch fire or explode.
Moreover, Apple's warranties typically state that cosmetic damage is not covered, only hardware issues that affect the functionality of the unit would be replaced under warranty. Cosmetic issues can be addressed, only at the user's cost. Apple should not be faulted because people cannot be bothered to read their user's manual or warranty.
Spoken like a true Mac cultist. Those who know a lot about technology build their own machines and, nowadays, are putting GNU/Linux and other free software OSes on them.
hmm...well, I consider myself to be a person that knows a lot about technology, I currently have about four homebuilt PCs up and running, 3 with Windows, one with Linux. I also have an Apple powerbook. Guess which one I use the most? My powerbook. Why? Because at least half my time with Windows machines is troubleshooting something that won't work the way it's supposed to or dealing with spyware crap. My Linux box is experimental, Linux is a pain to configure compile and update and too all over the map with different distros and I can't use it for day to day tasks until something gets stabilized. One of my PCs running Windows is for my old audio studio (collecting dust since I started using the powerbook for this), another is for surfing the net, checking email and other general things and the third is for my roommate's to use and also serve as a PVR in our living room.
In fact, I've met tech journalists that hate Apple and all that they stand for. Apple computers have never been geared toward the tech savvy; they have always been marketed to the artistic technophobe.
You've obviously missed the literature on Apple's higher end offerings:
Xcode is marketed to developers. Useful APIs integrated right into OS X.
Xsan, Remote Desktop 2, OS X Server and Unix underpinnings are marketed to IT Professionals.
Xgrid and Unix are marketed to scientists.
And, as a computer hardware expert, I will attest to the fact that Macintosh computers are no better engineered or manufactured than Dell systems, and in fact I would actually put them a cut below Dell because of the problems their overstyled chassis designs cause. You have it completely backwards.
And I, as a computer hardware expert, will attest to the fact that you are incorrect. Apple typically uses higher end components to maximize the extended life of a system which is one of the reasons they are more expensive upfront. Dell and other PC manufacturers typically use lower end components to build machines that aren't expected to last 3 years, in a sense, disposable. Granted, Apple has had occasional unforeseen hardware issues, just like every manufacturer, but very few issues with Macs have anything to do with the chassis design, unless it's people bitching about smudging and scratching. You have it completely backwards.
I am a technology writer, and I know a lot of technology writers. Most use Linux or Windows because that's their beat and it's hard to write about a platform that you don't use. But unless they write for an Apple-centric pub, tech journalists do not usually use Macs, especially the most tech-savvy of the lot.
I would imagine the most tech-savvy would opt for the easiest to use system because they'd realize they be more productive using a system they didn't have to constantly twiddle with. But I guess "tech-savvy" doesn't necessarily equal "smart."
Personally, I used PCs for years before I got a Mac. I use a Mac now because I can plug it in and it works, rarely has issues and I know I can trust it to get stuff done. I use PCs running Mac and Windows to keep up with technology related issues since it's my profession.
But maybe I'm just biased because I'm writing this on a Mac.
It's definitely real.
It's similar to photoshop in that it has a main image window, a tools window and a window for 'other stuff' (brushes, layers, etc.) This is how all macs based apps are supposed to be. Container windows, imho, are for people that want their desktop real estate to be completely inefficient.
I just had time so far to open it, make sure it was legit and observe the basics but it is no photoshop. Similar yet different enough to withstand accusations of being a clone if the developer weren't blatantly hyping it as such.
The best thing though is that the installation went a heck of a lot smoother than the first few times I installed gimp on a mac. It's been a few months but I'm glad the install has been simplified.
But the interface is what drove me away from the Gimp before, maybe now I'll use it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think most people that end up disappointed are missing the point of the movie.
The movie is about the people caught up in the attack, not the monster or the military or the government. It's strictly about the people at Ground Zero.
Luckily, I don't suffer from any form of motion sickness so the shakycam effect didn't phase me at all. If anything, my main gripe was that I wish Hud, the cameraman, would've just panned around during certain key moments when I knew some stuff was going down just off camera.
I accept the fact that we still don't know about the monster at the end because the characters we followed the whole movie didn't. I sincerely hope the rumors are true that Abrams and crew have an option for a follow up and get to tell the story from another perspective to shed more light on the monster and it's origins.
Either I'm wrong and I do posess extraordinary ability in that I can mouse with either left or right hands, fret my guitar and drive with my left hand, or the "lefties" out there who cannot adapt and learn, have retarded ability because they cannot adapt and learn to use both hands for various functions. So which is it? Are lefties retarded? Or am I just gifted and tallented? I can't see how it can be both or neither really.
You're completely missing the point. Speaking as a leftie, I've adapted to doing a lot of things the 'right-handed' way: driving a car, playing guitar and piano, using a can opener, using a computer. But once you've 'adapted' it's extremely hard to switch over. I've tried learning guitar left-handed now that I know it right...habit and muscle memory make it even more difficult than learning in the first place. I'm learning drums left-sided now to take advantage of my dominant side and avoid complications in the future of trying to keep precision timing with my weak side.
The OP specified he uses a tablet and stylus that he has already adapted to in crossing over to the right side where the scrollbar is. His issue isn't one of an inability or difficulty of performing the task; it's that when he does, it blocks the screen. Changing his habit requires more in this instance than just learning to access the scrollbar with his right hand instead. To remain efficient, he'd have to completely change everything from holding the tablet in his dominant hand (giving up it's use) to using his right hand for ALL of his navigation and primary interaction, not just the scrollbars. Telling him to 'learn to use his right hand' or to 'flip the screen upside down', as others have suggested, is not an effective solution to address a limitation of accessibility.
The last time I checked, we 'lefties' were not crippled or in any way incapable of using our right hand, we simply gravitate to using them in an assistive capacity.
Newsflash: Apple uses the exact same drives as the rest of the computer market, there's nothing proprietary about them. I seriously doubt the veracity of your statement but the laws of physics dictate that mechanical devices with moving parts will eventually break down.
That being said, the complaints most people have with Apple products are typically perception issues: too hot, too noisy, scratches too easily. Everyone has their own tolerance of what they will accept and despite the limitations of current technology, Apple users typically expect Apple to wave a magic wand and make a superquiet, supercool, indestructable device that will last for infinity, despite that no one in the industry can do this. And even though every other company faces the same limitations with heat, noise, and wear and tear, Apple complainers are typically the noisiest about it.
But dissatisfied customers have a tendency to argue from an emotional standpoint than a logical standpoint. Scratches on an iPod? That's a non-issue... buy a case. MacBook too hot/noisy? Get an Etch-A-Sketch. No, seriously, get a cooling pad for the heat, IT'S NOT A LAPTOP DESPITE YOUR INSISTENCE IT MUST BE. Get some headphones and music if electrical or fan noise bothers you that much. Do you bitch about your air conditioner and TV, too? I'm not ranting about anyone specifically but these are the big things people like to complain about nowadays in regards to Apple products. Now iBook G3 video issues, there was a legitimate complaint. Thermal paste? FUD, plain and simple. Been common practice since the powerbooks and never was an issue until people complained about the heat of 2.0 ghz CoreDuo procs. Better too much than too little. People are just wishing that their issue was as easy as too much thermal paste.
There's not an issue here. Someone without a clue heard a rumor, saw a picture that seemed to back up the rumor they heard and then did a 'science experiment' and drew a conclusion with only one control set, whose results are inconclusive. Any amount of adequate reserach would've shown that the amount of thermal paste used in the MacBook Pros is the same as what was used in the prior lines of PowerBooks over several revisions and those machines certainly had no 'overheating' issue. Furthermore, you WANT the heat from the computer to dissipate through the case, it means the heatsink is working and transferring the heat from inside the machine correctly. Fans can only do so much with modern processors. If the case is cooler, then the heat is getting trapped inside and the internal components will wear out faster and have issues. As long as you understand that you are not purchasing a 'laptop' and that the bottom of the computer is not intended to come in contact with you for any extended period of time while in use, you should be ok. If you have a PowerBook G4 as you mentioned, then your should already be familiar with how the case is designed to dissipate heat, mostly through the bottom and above the keyboard near the hinges.
Color me stupid, but isn't a reduction of the case temperature a bad sign? Wouldn't you want the heat to be transferred away from the chip? The computer uses a certain amount of power, regardless of the way it's cooled. That energy is transformed into heat which must be removed. If the heat is transferred away from the CPU efficiently, you'd expect it to be where it can be removed from the system, i.e. the case or the air. A hot cooler is a sign of a good energy transport from the CPU to the cooling system. Making the cooler less hot without increasing the energy transport from the cooling system to the environment is bad.
Here's exactly why Apple constantly defends it's confidential or internal information. A picture like the one currently circulating from the Service manual leaks out, associated by a post from someone who thinks they know something about computers, and with little more than rumor and hearsay, and their little science experiment using one computer, they conclude they must know more about the design of Apple's computers than Apple's engineers do. This information starts circulating through major tech sites and the majority of people whose familiarity with thermal paste is recalling how much they've put on the AMD processors of their homebrewed systems, which isn't nearly as much. It's FUD from people that don't really know what they are talking about. [b]It seems like a lot but it's actually the same amount as used in the previous lines of PowerBooks, which never had an overheating issue or negative rumor mill circulation of such behaviour.[/b] The only reason this is an issue is people that want the latest, greatest and most powerful machines don't understand that the price for that technology is a machine that runs hotter overall than their older, less powerful system they are comparing it to.
Here's the thing, the systems are designed so that a significant amount of the heat is [b]supposed[/b] to dissipate through certain parts of the case, primarily the bottom, but also above the keyboard, where hands rarely are through typical use. This is an efficient design that allows the fans to run quieter and more efficiently, and not like a jet plane taking off, like some other portable computers do. Powerbooks have had this exact same design yet ran cooler overall because of the less powerful processors. Yet they still get hot, especially if you upgrade the RAM (ram slots on the bottom of the case) and run anything off an optical disc (play a cd or a dvd movie). These computers have not been laptops in quite awhile and the manual specifically states the bottom will get hot and not to be in contact with it for any extended length of time.
If you are doing anything to change that behaviour, you are trapping the heat inside the machine. Sure, it feels cooler but what's gonna happen when the CPU burns out in 6 months and these guys send it in to AppleCare for repair and it's discovered that they voided the warranty by removing the majority of the thermal paste that was supposed to be there? Please, everyone that's stating that this is too much thermal grease, as if they know something about it: do a little actual research, compare this process to the Powerbooks that came before and maybe get a job working as an Apple hardware designer so that you have some credibility when spouting off your 'expert' testimonial.
Seriously, this is a prime example of why internet sites have a hard time gaining credibility as responsible journalists, there was almost no fact-checking involved in determining the validity or accuracy of these claims that there's an 'overheating' issue with MacBook Pros, several sites just picked up the story and ran with it.
I imagine the rational is very easy. When watching a subtitled movie, a large part of your attention is directed to the portion of the screen where the subtitles are located. Your mind is split between processing this information and the visual information of the screen image. You can't fully focus on the cinematography when part of your brain is being dedicated to reading text off the screen. And if you DO get distracted by the visuals and miss a line or two of the text, you have to stop and go back in order to not miss what might be a crucial plot detail.
Dubbing isn't inherently bad, it's just typically been done in piss poor quality where the original dialogue track coupled with subtitle provided a less intrusive experience on the viewing than horrible voice acting.
I know that some PPC Linux distros had trouble controlling the fan speed on G5 PowerMacs, causing the fans to run at full-speed continuously. If cooling is maintained by OS X on these machines, would one really want to bother installing Windows on them?
As far as I understand, with any Mac System that has an SMU (Systems Management Unit) instead of a PMU (Power Management Unit) the optimization of the cooling system is indeed controlled by OS X (this includes most G5 based systems). If the SMU does not receive the expected commands from the OS within a couple of minutes, it defaults into fail-safe mode where the fans would all run at high speed to ensure the system does not overheat. The benefit is that if the system was ever left unattended and the OS locked up, the SMU would keep the machine from being fried. Running the machine for an extended period of time (several months or even weeks) outside of OS X could severely shorten the overall life-span of the system (the mechanical aspects of the cooling system would wear out faster than expected through typical use.)
Worst case scenario is that if someone chose to run Linux or Windows on such a machine and the machine has heat issues two years into the life, and through repair it was noted that the fans were excessively worn out and there was evidence of another bootable OS being installed on the system, the owner may be liable for repair costs, even if they had purchased APP. Sure, the owner may yell and scream that's it's a hardware issue but it would be a hardware issue caused by running a nonstandard OS on the system that did not provided complete support for the underlying hardware, voiding any sort of warranty. Not a likely scenario but that is the risk anyone that wants to run an alternative OS should account for.
Now, that's a worst case scenario that's applicable to existing PPC systems, the new intel macs use an SMC (Systems Management Controller) and EFI and so the cooling system may be handled differently and may actually controlled by EFI instead of the OS. There's a lot of speculation about what EFI can and cannot do so who knows?
One other interesting tidbit to know about the new Intel-based Macs is that Classic (OS 9 legacy support that runs within OS X) is no longer shipping with the systems or supported and supposedly is not Rosetta compatible. Yeah, it's off-topic but I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else so I thought I'd throw it in since it is slightly OS related.
I still think they should have a free version. Just give people who pay a lot more.
.Mac account and it's free for 60 days with access to most features. But if you want an ongoing stable account whose username doesn't keep changing, you're gonna have to pay for it.
.Mac features, it's definitely worth it. Just the webhosting alone breaks down to $8.25 a month, not much more than most other similar webhosting plans.
.Mac is all of the synchronization features, which is hard to effectively describe to people without them experiencing it. Your address book, bookmarks, calendars and other items can be synchronized and accessed on .Mac from anywhere or even shared between multiple computers!
They do, it's called a trial
$99 a year is maybe too much for just email if that's all someone is gonna do with it but if you plan on taking advantage of all most or all of the
But the real beauty of
Ok, so I did RTFA but didn't understand a lot of it because I'm not a developer and ended up skimming through the parts I wasn't following.
But, how is this different from what Apple does with their BootRom?
I understand that in the realm of Windows-based PC architecture this is not common practice but I would not consider is new or groundbreaking and, in fact, it seems fairly obvious.
Someone please post a synopsis for us laymen of what makes this innovative.
I've actually participated in a traffic survey that was quite similar to this back in my days as a starving college student. The State of Kansas used a very similar method of license plate tracking to determine how best to improve their highway system.
Of course, back then, we college students just sat by the side of the road, baby-sitting Hi-8 cameras and reloading tapes in freezing cold and rainy weather.
Then later someone manually logged the license plates and times and fed the list into a computer that calculate where the heaviest traffic was and was the driving patterns were.
Of course, once the system is in place, it can have both positive and negative uses but for people to assume this means they are going to be victims of a big brother type system is absolutely absurd. There's not enough resources to monitor everyone by their license plate alone. Plus, in order to link the plate with a driver would take additional man-hours and research, possibly court involvement (not sure about UK but it would require a warrant in America), so I'm fairly sure this would only be used in the event of very dire crimes. Sure, this means that if your info pops up in the area where a significant event happened, you may be contacted by authorities, but much more likely as a possible witness than a suspect.
Yeah, this is really gonna work out well considering that the vast majority of pirating and illegal duplication takes place outside of USA.
By 'they, I mean the Record Labels, of course.
Point 1: Steve Jobs has publicly stated on several occasions that he opposes tiered pricing. Why? Because it's inconvenient and there's no legitimate reason other to line Record Labels pockets.
Point 2: It's been established that Record Labels are greedy, litigious and extremely unethical in their negotiations with their business partners (artists, brick-and-mortar retail stores)
Now, I have to rant on this because, as an independent musician, I've done more than my fair share of research. Right now, digital downloads are almost pure profit. There's no manufacturing and distribution costs and the price of a full album through a digital download is very close to what retail cost is for a physical product. What Apple has done is provide all the record labels a solution they could not come up with themselves to the problem of making money off of digital versions of their product using the internet. And what made it such a hit was the convenience involved, convenience designed by Apple to legitimately purchase music.
And what thanks and gratitude does Apple get from the labels? None. The only reason the labels think they can get more money is because cell phone providers have established that people are willing to pay $2.50 for a ringtone, which isn't even a full version of a song. What they fail to assess is that average cell phone users have no convenient method otherwise of obtaining those ringtones whereas typical computer users have several different methods of obtaining desired music other than legitimate or even Label endorsed channels.
Now, I'm a techie so when I upgraded my cell phone to one that could play audio ringtones, I got the software that interfaces with my phone so that I can create my own ringtones on my computer and upload them to my phone. That way, my phone can ring with my favorite Bon Jovi or System of a Down song that I own without me getting ripped off at $2.50 a pop. Even as an astute technical person, I found installing the software and getting it to interface with my phone was kind of a pain. But once a convenient alternative method of getting ringtones becomes available that the average cell phone user can figure out and follow, the ringtone market will bottom out. The only reason it hasn't done so yet is because cell phones are not computers and therefore their software interface is designed to be feature limited, providing only the options the user purchases. Computers don't have this limitation.
Don't they mean...that they just want people not to tamper with their code? I see no need for a patent. I recall a time when a patent was for something important: a novel idea or mechanism of some kind. Making a patent doesn't really do much, other than making it impossible for other people/companies to hack into osX 86. But then again, it was illegal anyway, so no one could (legally) hack osX x86 before this patent. Seems kind of redundant.
From the recent patent issues Apple has faced (mainly concerning the iTunes interface and iPod interface/design) I would speculate this is more of a defensive move for Apple. Because they did not move immediately to patent certain aspects of the iTunes interface and iPod, other companies moved in with patent applications and were granted patents. Even though there is prior art, it's gonna cost Apple a lot of money if those other companies claims Apple is infringing on their patents.
So, based on that, I see this as a pre-emptive move for Apple to protect it's interests and make sure no other company can move in and claim their technique, apply a patent for it and then milk Apple for money by suing them for patent infringement.
That is bullshit. Just, absolute, poppycock. I recently attended Ruxcon - the Australian equivalent of Defcon only without the money - and there was a presentation on MacOS X "security". One of the highlights was when one of the presenters showed a snippet of source code to dsidentity, which is a setuid tool, and it had getenv("USER"). I shit you not. The entire audience cracked up laughing. http://www.drunkenbatman.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-comment s.cgi?entry_id=684
They also had a short session showing you how to find and exploit buffer overflows in the kernel and user space. It was a real eye-opener. They've got some brain-damaged shit in MacOS X that even the Linux folks had fixed more than a decade ago. Heap smashing, stack smashing, lack of bounds checking, it was all there. The presenter reckoned it was less secure than Windows; he cracks both for a living.
Secure? Not by my reckoning.
Wait, according to the link you referred us to, that bug was fixed as of the post date of Oct. 6th, over a month ago:
from the link: We reported this to apple before they removed the dsidentity suid.
Now granted, I'm not an app developer and have no idea why such terms as 'Heap Stashing' and 'Lack of Bounds Checking' have a negative connotation, but I have never seen credible evidence of a perfectly written app or OS with no possibility of exploits. No matter how well written any code is, all it takes is a different set of eyes to see the potential for creating an exploit to get the code to do something it wasn't intended to do.
The key here is that OS X is more secure because of more than just the underlying code. You also have to consider the default settings the OS is installed with and Apple's response to potential security problems.
As far as viruses on OS X and those who make the claim that they will become more prevalent with market growth or Mac would suffer the same attacks as Windows if market share were switched, that claim is completely ridiculous. Here's why:
First, Apple is much more responsive to addressing and fixing reported security holes in their software. Second, there are such things as 'Proof-of-Concept' viruses that never/seldom get released into the wild but are documented and often reported to Antivirus companies and app/os developers. These illustrate that an exploit is possible and easily distributable and and one would think that even if viruses had trouble propagating, at least there would be evidence of these 'Proof-of-Concept' viruses existing. I only personally know of one that was written about 2 years ago and publicly reported that took advantage of a potential exploit in Finder. That exploit was promptly fixed by Apple within a week after the exploit was reported. While other such viruses could and probably do exist, we never hear of them. Hearing of them would at least provided some sort of credibility to otherwise empty claims.
Now, going by prior examples, how long would it take Microsoft to patch a similar exploit in Windows? How long before a similar exploit was fixed in Linux or KDE or Gnome? How effective is the method either use to push updates to users and how easy is it to get and install the updates?
I'll stick with Apple because at least I know they are concerned with and respond promptly to potential security issues. Until I see evidence of at least 'Proof-of-Concept' viruses or other malware existing for OS X, then such potential threats are non-existent.
Plenty of other companies have done this, including Slashdot's favorite company, Apple.
wrong. Most of Apple's shortages would be because of greater than anticipated demand and supply issues with parts vendors. They don't intentially limit supply because they know it makes them look bad.
For instance, the PMG5 and iMac G5 were mostly backordered for such long times because IBM couldn't crank out the processors fast enough to keep up the production line.
There's a fine line between anticipated sales and actual sales. Companies typically forecast using prior sales data to anticipate how much of something to make. If they overproduce they lose money . When a companies growth and demand for than product is greater than what they are able to forecast, like in Apple's case, they typically incur a shortage if there's a bottleneck anywhere in the production pipeline.
I remember Dell having a very similar problem about 5-6 years ago when RamBus came out and they had supply issues from the RamBus vendors. Luckily, in most other cases the components that make up their machine are so generic they can substitute another chipset/videocard/modem or whatever if they ever have supply issues, and it's unlikely Intel will ever present them with a processor shortage.
Part of it is their fault. When they found out that part of their inventory was faulty, they should have immediately issued a recall for all products with that particular problem. If it was really less than 1% of the Nanos sold, then this shouldn't have been that big of a deal to do. Their failure to issue a recall, and to basically ignore the problem, opened them up to these sorts of lawsuits, and more importantly to a PR hit.
Recalls typically only happen when an identified defect in a product is such that damage to life or property could happen and it's the percentage of affected products is very high or unknown. That why you typically see this with cars and devices like batteries which could potentially catch fire or explode.
Moreover, Apple's warranties typically state that cosmetic damage is not covered, only hardware issues that affect the functionality of the unit would be replaced under warranty. Cosmetic issues can be addressed, only at the user's cost. Apple should not be faulted because people cannot be bothered to read their user's manual or warranty.
Spoken like a true Mac cultist. Those who know a lot about technology build their own machines and, nowadays, are putting GNU/Linux and other free software OSes on them.
hmm...well, I consider myself to be a person that knows a lot about technology, I currently have about four homebuilt PCs up and running, 3 with Windows, one with Linux. I also have an Apple powerbook. Guess which one I use the most? My powerbook. Why? Because at least half my time with Windows machines is troubleshooting something that won't work the way it's supposed to or dealing with spyware crap. My Linux box is experimental, Linux is a pain to configure compile and update and too all over the map with different distros and I can't use it for day to day tasks until something gets stabilized. One of my PCs running Windows is for my old audio studio (collecting dust since I started using the powerbook for this), another is for surfing the net, checking email and other general things and the third is for my roommate's to use and also serve as a PVR in our living room.
In fact, I've met tech journalists that hate Apple and all that they stand for. Apple computers have never been geared toward the tech savvy; they have always been marketed to the artistic technophobe.
You've obviously missed the literature on Apple's higher end offerings:
Xcode is marketed to developers. Useful APIs integrated right into OS X.
Xsan, Remote Desktop 2, OS X Server and Unix underpinnings are marketed to IT Professionals.
Xgrid and Unix are marketed to scientists.
And, as a computer hardware expert, I will attest to the fact that Macintosh computers are no better engineered or manufactured than Dell systems, and in fact I would actually put them a cut below Dell because of the problems their overstyled chassis designs cause. You have it completely backwards.
And I, as a computer hardware expert, will attest to the fact that you are incorrect. Apple typically uses higher end components to maximize the extended life of a system which is one of the reasons they are more expensive upfront. Dell and other PC manufacturers typically use lower end components to build machines that aren't expected to last 3 years, in a sense, disposable. Granted, Apple has had occasional unforeseen hardware issues, just like every manufacturer, but very few issues with Macs have anything to do with the chassis design, unless it's people bitching about smudging and scratching. You have it completely backwards.
I am a technology writer, and I know a lot of technology writers. Most use Linux or Windows because that's their beat and it's hard to write about a platform that you don't use. But unless they write for an Apple-centric pub, tech journalists do not usually use Macs, especially the most tech-savvy of the lot.
I would imagine the most tech-savvy would opt for the easiest to use system because they'd realize they be more productive using a system they didn't have to constantly twiddle with. But I guess "tech-savvy" doesn't necessarily equal "smart."
Personally, I used PCs for years before I got a Mac. I use a Mac now because I can plug it in and it works, rarely has issues and I know I can trust it to get stuff done. I use PCs running Mac and Windows to keep up with technology related issues since it's my profession.
But maybe I'm just biased because I'm writing this on a Mac.
It's definitely real. It's similar to photoshop in that it has a main image window, a tools window and a window for 'other stuff' (brushes, layers, etc.) This is how all macs based apps are supposed to be. Container windows, imho, are for people that want their desktop real estate to be completely inefficient. I just had time so far to open it, make sure it was legit and observe the basics but it is no photoshop. Similar yet different enough to withstand accusations of being a clone if the developer weren't blatantly hyping it as such. The best thing though is that the installation went a heck of a lot smoother than the first few times I installed gimp on a mac. It's been a few months but I'm glad the install has been simplified. But the interface is what drove me away from the Gimp before, maybe now I'll use it.