I work for a very large transportation company. We have computers of every imaginable type and size. We also have hundreds of production systems that run on Sun Hardware (Their Enterprise line of servers). We have experienced no major systems failures from any of our production systems that run on Sun's machines. About 1/2 of my department has a Sun workstation on their desk, the rest of us have HP-UX workkstations. Additionally, most everyone has a PC running Windows 95/98 or NT. Guess which machines cause the most problems.... that's right... the PCs. There are occasional (rare) problems with the Unix machines, but not near as many as the PCs.
I wish that Sun or someone else would post a simialr site showing all the many short somings of Windows and other Microsoft Technologies.
Of course, these opinions are purely my own and are not official statements from my employer.
You are definitely right about dual monitors, I've got two on my G3 and it's fantastic.
Some of the older PowerBooks had the ability to run dual monitors built in (ie. the 5300). I think that all or at least most of the newer models only support video mirroring, unless you use a PC card.
I'm a Macintosh Guy, so my opinions are biased in that direction. However, ever since the PowerBook 3400, Apple's PowerBooks have made great desktop replacements. I've owned three different PowerBooks, starting with a PB 5300, then a 3400 and eventually a 1998 model G3 (292 Mhz with DVD). Of the three that I have owned, the 1998 Model was the best. It had pretty much everything that a desktop machine has, except for good hardware 3D acceleration and the ability to change monitor resolutions. That machine has a 14.1" display that has a viewable area that seems larger than an iMac's and is not much smaller than the viewable area on my 17" Studio Display. Of course, it lacked internal PCI expandability... but there is a company that sells an external box that will allow you to install a PCI card and connect the box to the PowerBook via the PC card slot. I do not know how well it works but at least it exists.
For my needs, I think that a Desktop replacement should include: a big display (14"), crisp and clear minimum of 64 meg ram and expandability to at least 512 meg 8-10 gig hard drive minimum ethernet built-in modem DVD video out USB/firewire ports
That pretty much meets my needs, of course, your mileage my vary:)
On one hand, it seems that this is no different from your personal hard-copy files from beind searched in the case of a lawsuit, but it does sort of give me a chill. I can see this "power" being abused. How is "Business Speech" defined? It is really sort of sickening to see that the courts are saying that "you can't bad mouth a company". That is extreamly disturbing. If I think that a company or their products are terrible, I should be ablke to say so. If I think that the management at a particular company is trerrible, I should be able to say so. Doesn't the "press" do this all the time?
If indeed this rumor has any merit, the R&D department is probaby just taking a look at what might be done with the processor. Maybe they are looking at it for use in a handheld or an iBook-like portable?
Who knows what might be behind this.. Apple has managed to keep a pretty tight lid on their R&D group lately, they managed to keep the Aqua interface completely hidden from public view until Steve Jobs's keynote at MacWorld.
I was not able to get to the MOSR site to read the full rumor, so this is all my speculation of speculation and based on what everyone else has posted. I've been reading MacOS Rumors for a couple of years now, sometiumes they have a story with a bit of truth, but often the rumors never turn out to be true.
I think that one of the biggest drawbacks to the commercialization of Linux and other Open Source projects is that commercialization tends to promote mediocrity. Men in suits and women in scarves who know how to poke around in a spreadsheet are not entirely interested in putting out the best product... they are only interested in putting out something that is "good enough". Take a look at the majority of commercial software- for ALL platforms. There are some good things, but there is an awful lot of junk. Take a look at what has happened to the internet and what is continuing to happen. Take a look at music- do you think that Britney Spears or the Spice Girls would have a music career if so many corporations did not push for mediocrity?;-)
LinuxOne is a pretty good example of the dumbing-down of the Open Source world, they are leaching off the efforts of other companies and individuals without contriubting anything useful.
Things will level off eventually, and several main-stream "pundits" will pronounce Linux to be a failure because it did not manage to take over the computing world. Fortunately, there are enough true-believers around. The true-believers can sit back and laugh at the suits and scarves as they flock around The Next Big Thing.
I have a copy of this book and think it makes a pretty good "style guide". It's not really written for a technical audience but can be very helpful for people designing a GUI for an application. It is not as detailed, however, as the Apple Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, though.
I did not know that Microsoft was distributing Java with their Operating Systems at all (at least anymore). Am I mistaken? I know that they are no longer developing their VM for the Mac and have removed all traces of it from the MacOS version of Internet Exploiter, they make use of Apple's MRJ instead. The last few times I have upgraded/installed Java on my PC at work, I have downloaded the SDK & Runtime environments from Sun's web site.
This is probably offtopic, but it is sort of related. Anyway, it is something that I felt like complaining about.
MS is not the only company that is polluting Java or making it difficult to write code on one platform and deploy it on another... many of the IDE's that I've seen do the same thing. The auto-generated code makes use of classes that "wrap" the base Java stuff, resulting in source code that is only useable by the original IDE. Visual Cafe seems to be one of the worst offenders. A coworker of mine uses VC and she is constantly having problems with the autogenerated code and deployment on Solaris (she does her development on NT). She has had trouble getting applets to run under Solaris or HP-UX, even though they run on NT. The main cause seems to be some proprietary class that Visual Cafe includes. Some of the problems may be a result of her inexperience with Java, but I do not think that is the only reason.
I use Metrowerks CodeWarrior for Java on NT at work and on MacOS at home... it seems to be one of the best development environments around. I have not had any trouble getting applets or aplications developed in CodeWarrior to run on any of our target platforms. Even when using the RAD tools that generate code for you... the generated code seems a lot cleaner than the code generated by other IDE's. I keep the use of the RAD tools to a minimum, though. I have had less experience with IDEs like NetBeans and Simplicity for Java, however, from what I have seen, they generate pretty clean code as well.
I guess my main point is that I think its also important for the source code to be as portable as the resulting classes. Building a project in an IDE that ties you to that particular development environment is as bad as Microsoft's pollution of the basic language itself.
Things like this have always fascinated me, I wish that I had more free time to spend learning about astronomy.
A couple of years ago, I bought a set of Cosmos video tapes (the old Carl Sagan show). One episode discussed the creation of the universe and the origins of all the elements, etc. He made one quote that summed up my beliefs... "We are Star Stuff". Of course, I am not an astronomer nor an extert in nuclear physics, so I apologize in advance if I offend anyone (I have degrees in Civil Engineering).
Sagan talked about fusion and so forth as well as how gold and other heavier elements are created by exploding super novas (as opposed to champagne super novas ). There is a certain simplistic beauty in the life of a star. It spends billions of years fusing hydrogen molecules into helium then in its dying days, it squeezes the helium molecules into other elements and in a spectacular "swan song" it explodes, seeding space with the basic building blocks of everything around us.
I have often wished that I had enough time to research the parallels between astronomy and various religious beliefs. I think that there are some interesting things that can be concluded from that sort of research.
I worked briefly on a project with the Memphis/Shelby County 911 office. They wanted to develop an application that would pinpoint the location of a person making a call to 911 from a cellular phone. They have had troubles in the past locating people on cell phones, primarily because the person calling may not know the nearest address or street intersection. Another motive behind this project was to help filter calls from people about traffic accidents. In some cases they might get 30 calls from cell phone users concerning a single traffic incident. With the proper mapping technology, they could pinpoint the caller and send a message saying "if you are calling about the accident at such and such intersection, we are taking care of it. if you have an emergency, please stay on the line". Kind of interesting applications but I took another job before they got too far along in the development.
There a couple of more "opportunities" in the very near future: WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) in May, Seybold in February, etc. But you are correct, the recent MacWorld Expo would have been the perfect place for an announcement like this. Of course, they could always have a "Special Event" similar to the one they had when announcing the "original" G3s back in 1997.
Back in 1996 I bought a Newton MessagePad 120 "demo unit" and thought it was the most wonderful piece of technology I'd ever seen. I envied the MessagePad 2000's and 2100's when they came out but did not want to pay the $900 price tag.
My only major complaint with the Newton was its size. If the Apple-Palm device comes to pass, this is what I'd like to see....
1. A screen the size of the Newton's with the capability of rotating the display. On the 2000's and 2100's you could rotate the display so that the Pad could be held more comfprtably in either your left or right hand as well as "vertically".
2. Airport/wireless capability.
3. IR support.
4. Seemless desktop synchronization (the current HotSync application works great on the Mac though)
5. A "slate" form-factor- Newton-sized screen with the thickness of a Palm V. I would not mind the device being larger than the current Palms as long as it was not much heavier.
6. Built-in USB port for desktop connectivity rather than using a cradle like the current Palms.
7. More ram.
8. Natural handwriting recognition in addition to or instead of Grafitti.
Knowing Apple, it seems that they would do something different with the case design. I can't see them releasing a PalmOS device with the "traditional" case design with an Apple logo on it.
After reading this article and thinking about the recent changes in Apple's hardware... I'm beginning to think that the Apple-Palm device might be some sort of a Palm VII with Airport capabilities- rather than the wireless technology that Palm is using right now. That would be pretty cool, although it would be more limited than the current wireless technology. You think that it might be possible for the device to support both?
I'm really looking forward to seeing what (if anything) develops out of this story.
Apple has been slowly selling off all of its ARM stock, though. Each quarter when they release their financial results, they post a "one time gain" of $XXX million due to the sale of ARM stock. I doubt if they will be using any ARM processors in a PDA. BTW, isn't ARM owned by Intel now?
From all the "rumors" floating around the web, it seems that you will be able to access a CLI in the consumer version of OSX. It does include (or at least it is _supposed_ to include) a full blown version of BSD. Let's hope that all the rumors are true.
I think that the new interface is beautiful. It's refreshing to see that Apple is giving the MacOS a GUI "makeover". I'm looking forward to getting a copy of MacOS X.
Yes, I agree with this. Inexpensive high speed Internat access and an ISP that is willing to work with local companies to help employees gain access to the company intranet.
The company I work for (a large express shipping corporation;-) ) is pretty good about helping employees work from home, but it would be much better if the connection between home and work was a lot faster.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for posting that link
I work for a very large transportation company. We have computers of every imaginable type and size. We also have hundreds of production systems that run on Sun Hardware (Their Enterprise line of servers). We have experienced no major systems failures from any of our production systems that run on Sun's machines. About 1/2 of my department has a Sun workstation on their desk, the rest of us have HP-UX workkstations. Additionally, most everyone has a PC running Windows 95/98 or NT. Guess which machines cause the most problems.... that's right... the PCs. There are occasional (rare) problems with the Unix machines, but not near as many as the PCs.
I wish that Sun or someone else would post a simialr site showing all the many short somings of Windows and other Microsoft Technologies.
Of course, these opinions are purely my own and are not official statements from my employer.
You are definitely right about dual monitors, I've got two on my G3 and it's fantastic.
Some of the older PowerBooks had the ability to run dual monitors built in (ie. the 5300). I think that all or at least most of the newer models only support video mirroring, unless you use a PC card.
I'm a Macintosh Guy, so my opinions are biased in that direction. However, ever since the PowerBook 3400, Apple's PowerBooks have made great desktop replacements. I've owned three different PowerBooks, starting with a PB 5300, then a 3400 and eventually a 1998 model G3 (292 Mhz with DVD). Of the three that I have owned, the 1998 Model was the best. It had pretty much everything that a desktop machine has, except for good hardware 3D acceleration and the ability to change monitor resolutions. That machine has a 14.1" display that has a viewable area that seems larger than an iMac's and is not much smaller than the viewable area on my 17" Studio Display. Of course, it lacked internal PCI expandability... but there is a company that sells an external box that will allow you to install a PCI card and connect the box to the PowerBook via the PC card slot. I do not know how well it works but at least it exists.
:)
For my needs, I think that a Desktop replacement should include:
a big display (14"), crisp and clear
minimum of 64 meg ram and expandability to at least 512 meg
8-10 gig hard drive minimum
ethernet
built-in modem
DVD
video out
USB/firewire ports
That pretty much meets my needs, of course, your mileage my vary
On one hand, it seems that this is no different from your personal hard-copy files from beind searched in the case of a lawsuit, but it does sort of give me a chill. I can see this "power" being abused. How is "Business Speech" defined? It is really sort of sickening to see that the courts are saying that "you can't bad mouth a company". That is extreamly disturbing. If I think that a company or their products are terrible, I should be ablke to say so. If I think that the management at a particular company is trerrible, I should be able to say so. Doesn't the "press" do this all the time?
If indeed this rumor has any merit, the R&D department is probaby just taking a look at what might be done with the processor. Maybe they are looking at it for use in a handheld or an iBook-like portable?
Who knows what might be behind this.. Apple has managed to keep a pretty tight lid on their R&D group lately, they managed to keep the Aqua interface completely hidden from public view until Steve Jobs's keynote at MacWorld.
I was not able to get to the MOSR site to read the full rumor, so this is all my speculation of speculation and based on what everyone else has posted. I've been reading MacOS Rumors for a couple of years now, sometiumes they have a story with a bit of truth, but often the rumors never turn out to be true.
I think that one of the biggest drawbacks to the commercialization of Linux and other Open Source projects is that commercialization tends to promote mediocrity. Men in suits and women in scarves who know how to poke around in a spreadsheet are not entirely interested in putting out the best product... they are only interested in putting out something that is "good enough". Take a look at the majority of commercial software- for ALL platforms. There are some good things, but there is an awful lot of junk. Take a look at what has happened to the internet and what is continuing to happen. Take a look at music- do you think that Britney Spears or the Spice Girls would have a music career if so many corporations did not push for mediocrity? ;-)
LinuxOne is a pretty good example of the dumbing-down of the Open Source world, they are leaching off the efforts of other companies and individuals without contriubting anything useful.
Things will level off eventually, and several main-stream "pundits" will pronounce Linux to be a failure because it did not manage to take over the computing world. Fortunately, there are enough true-believers around. The true-believers can sit back and laugh at the suits and scarves as they flock around The Next Big Thing.
If you are truly "well respected" you would post using your real name rather than as an anonymous coward.
I have a copy of this book and think it makes a pretty good "style guide". It's not really written for a technical audience but can be very helpful for people designing a GUI for an application. It is not as detailed, however, as the Apple Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, though.
I did not know that Microsoft was distributing Java with their Operating Systems at all (at least anymore). Am I mistaken? I know that they are no longer developing their VM for the Mac and have removed all traces of it from the MacOS version of Internet Exploiter, they make use of Apple's MRJ instead.
The last few times I have upgraded/installed Java on my PC at work, I have downloaded the SDK & Runtime environments from Sun's web site.
This is probably offtopic, but it is sort of related. Anyway, it is something that I felt like complaining about.
MS is not the only company that is polluting Java or making it difficult to write code on one platform and deploy it on another... many of the IDE's that I've seen do the same thing. The auto-generated code makes use of classes that "wrap" the base Java stuff, resulting in source code that is only useable by the original IDE. Visual Cafe seems to be one of the worst offenders. A coworker of mine uses VC and she is constantly having problems with the autogenerated code and deployment on Solaris (she does her development on NT). She has had trouble getting applets to run under Solaris or HP-UX, even though they run on NT. The main cause seems to be some proprietary class that Visual Cafe includes. Some of the problems may be a result of her inexperience with Java, but I do not think that is the only reason.
I use Metrowerks CodeWarrior for Java on NT at work and on MacOS at home... it seems to be one of the best development environments around. I have not had any trouble getting applets or aplications developed in CodeWarrior to run on any of our target platforms. Even when using the RAD tools that generate code for you... the generated code seems a lot cleaner than the code generated by other IDE's. I keep the use of the RAD tools to a minimum, though. I have had less experience with IDEs like NetBeans and Simplicity for Java, however, from what I have seen, they generate pretty clean code as well.
I guess my main point is that I think its also important for the source code to be as portable as the resulting classes. Building a project in an IDE that ties you to that particular development environment is as bad as Microsoft's pollution of the basic language itself.
Anyway, sorry for the rambling.
Things like this have always fascinated me, I wish that I had more free time to spend learning about astronomy.
A couple of years ago, I bought a set of Cosmos video tapes (the old Carl Sagan show). One episode discussed the creation of the universe and the origins of all the elements, etc. He made one quote that summed up my beliefs... "We are Star Stuff". Of course, I am not an astronomer nor an extert in nuclear physics, so I apologize in advance if I offend anyone (I have degrees in Civil Engineering).
Sagan talked about fusion and so forth as well as how gold and other heavier elements are created by exploding super novas (as opposed to champagne super novas ). There is a certain simplistic beauty in the life of a star. It spends billions of years fusing hydrogen molecules into helium then in its dying days, it squeezes the helium molecules into other elements and in a spectacular "swan song" it explodes, seeding space with the basic building blocks of everything around us.
I have often wished that I had enough time to research the parallels between astronomy and various religious beliefs. I think that there are some interesting things that can be concluded from that sort of research.
I worked briefly on a project with the Memphis/Shelby County 911 office. They wanted to develop an application that would pinpoint the location of a person making a call to 911 from a cellular phone. They have had troubles in the past locating people on cell phones, primarily because the person calling may not know the nearest address or street intersection. Another motive behind this project was to help filter calls from people about traffic accidents. In some cases they might get 30 calls from cell phone users concerning a single traffic incident. With the proper mapping technology, they could pinpoint the caller and send a message saying "if you are calling about the accident at such and such intersection, we are taking care of it. if you have an emergency, please stay on the line". Kind of interesting applications but I took another job before they got too far along in the development.
Do you honestly believe that a company like Microsoft or NBC would not jump at the chance of "owning the conduit and the content"?
There a couple of more "opportunities" in the very near future: WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) in May, Seybold in February, etc. But you are correct, the recent MacWorld Expo would have been the perfect place for an announcement like this. Of course, they could always have a "Special Event" similar to the one they had when announcing the "original" G3s back in 1997.
"It's the end of the world as we know it"
Back in 1996 I bought a Newton MessagePad 120 "demo unit" and thought it was the most wonderful piece of technology I'd ever seen. I envied the MessagePad 2000's and 2100's when they came out but did not want to pay the $900 price tag.
My only major complaint with the Newton was its size. If the Apple-Palm device comes to pass, this is what I'd like to see....
1. A screen the size of the Newton's with the capability of rotating the display. On the 2000's and 2100's you could rotate the display so that the Pad could be held more comfprtably in either your left or right hand as well as "vertically".
2. Airport/wireless capability.
3. IR support.
4. Seemless desktop synchronization (the current HotSync application works great on the Mac though)
5. A "slate" form-factor- Newton-sized screen with the thickness of a Palm V. I would not mind the device being larger than the current Palms as long as it was not much heavier.
6. Built-in USB port for desktop connectivity rather than using a cradle like the current Palms.
7. More ram.
8. Natural handwriting recognition in addition to or instead of Grafitti.
A device like this would be "just dreamy".
Knowing Apple, it seems that they would do something different with the case design. I can't see them releasing a PalmOS device with the "traditional" case design with an Apple logo on it.
Better USB support is probably a given.
After reading this article and thinking about the recent changes in Apple's hardware... I'm beginning to think that the Apple-Palm device might be some sort of a Palm VII with Airport capabilities- rather than the wireless technology that Palm is using right now. That would be pretty cool, although it would be more limited than the current wireless technology. You think that it might be possible for the device to support both?
I'm really looking forward to seeing what (if anything) develops out of this story.
Apple has been slowly selling off all of its ARM stock, though. Each quarter when they release their financial results, they post a "one time gain" of $XXX million due to the sale of ARM stock. I doubt if they will be using any ARM processors in a PDA. BTW, isn't ARM owned by Intel now?
From all the "rumors" floating around the web, it seems that you will be able to access a CLI in the consumer version of OSX. It does include (or at least it is _supposed_ to include) a full blown version of BSD. Let's hope that all the rumors are true.
The kernel is Open Source (check out Darwin on the Apple site), not the GUI.
I think that the new interface is beautiful. It's refreshing to see that Apple is giving the MacOS a GUI "makeover". I'm looking forward to getting a copy of MacOS X.
Yes, I agree with this. Inexpensive high speed Internat access and an ISP that is willing to work with local companies to help employees gain access to the company intranet.
;-) ) is pretty good about helping employees work from home, but it would be much better if the connection between home and work was a lot faster.
The company I work for (a large express shipping corporation
happy new year!
"Inside Mac Games" comes only on CDROM.