It's a matter of/. thread history to say that Microsoft must have jumped for joy when they first saw Mac OS X. I see nothing in the article to suggest they've really done anything genuinely new in the world of interface design with Vitsa since then. I'm not one of these Mac heads who knocks Microsoft for the sake of it, but it does stick in the craw a little when they're so blatant about where they get / steal their ideas from. Of course, Vista could be as bad as Win 3.1 in appearance and it will still dominate the market. None geeks (90% of the population of the world who use computers) think a computer IS Windows, they aren't going to not buy Vista just because it's a poor man's version of Mac OS aqua - they won't even know what they are looking at on their first days as a new Vista user is basically a skin and some bug fixes to XP.
As for the so called cost benefits of not having to reboot so many times - I dread to think what horrors lurk in store. I'll lay a £10 bet that it basically involves a dialogue box which reads something like "Do you want to reboot now or ignore this problem and continue"
iCal is good, but as someone has already pointed out you can't add to a calender 'owned' by someone else. I wanted to add TV schedule times to the Formula One Grand Prix iCal I subscribe to and I couldn't because I did'nt create it, which is dumb because my local copy of it should be 'mine' to alter, I didn't want everyone else to see my changes - although the idea of being able to do this if I had some sort of administrative privilages would be a nice update hopfully Apple have already thought of.
Well I say well done to the lad. The first thing I thought when I heard about the UFO angle was it sounded like some quick thinking when he was asked why he was doing it and anything sounded better than "because I can!" Surely the point the American authorities are missing here is that he was able to do this at all. How many more massive flaws in Windows are going to allow this kind of thing to happen? As far as I can see it serves the people who are suppose to know about these sort of things right for being dumb enough to entrust the security of NASA to Microsoft.
Whenever I have that same discussion many of us have had with a PC user, about the advantages Mac OS has over Windows XP, the main stumbling block in convincing them to at least try the Mac, before they dismiss it as something only photographers and musicians use, are issues of chip speed, availability of software titles and cost, we all know that. Intel make more chips for more customers than IBM and they run them cooler and with faster clock speeds and, because of their widespread use, they don't cost as much. They have a game plan for adhering to Moore's law far more advanced than that of IBM's and although the x86 architecture has an inferior floating point calculator to the PPC it is already supportive of all the major environments and, it now transpires, even Mac OS X was built to run on it from the ground up, albeit in secret for the first 5 years of it's development - which I think is a real stroke of genius and cunning on Apple's part. It goes to show how powerful Mac OS has been designed to be, from day one.
Software developers who have never considered, or have simply not had the resources or customer interest in porting their applications to a 'minority platform' before, have no more excuses. They can actually compile their existing x86 code as a Mac OS binary at the same time as those for Windows. Because this means they can ship the same installer CD-ROM / DVD-ROM for both platforms, the cost of shipping Apple software will go down, the availability of Apple software will go up and the visibility in the high street of the Apple / Mac brands will sky rocket beyond anything even the iPod could have achieved.
The more you think about the advantages this will bring to the Mac, who's followers have long waited for the chance to show, on a level playing field, what Mac OS can really do, the more you realise it may be the most important, in a series of very big steps, that Apple have taken towards their long term dream of actually dominating the home computer market, rather than simply leading it in terms of innovation, reliability and security.
On that point, let's face it, ease of use, security and availability of software mean everything to "the man in the street", who just wants to play games, surf the internet and send the odd e-mail without having to re-install his entire OS and / or spend a week's wages on the phone to someone in India just because he "accidentally" downloaded some porn. Because Mac brings him that security, stability and ease of use, now with cheeper hardware and greater software availability, it's finally realistic to actually say as much out loud, without being made to feel like a dreamer by those who think Intel is just another word for Windows, that within the next 3 to 4 years Mac may well be dominant over Windows in the home computer market.
If I was a Windows man, I'd be hoping Longhorn comes with a years free holiday in the Bahamas right now, because it's doubtful any of its features Microsoft have stolen from.. sorry "developed in partnership with" other people are anywhere near as stable as those which, it turns out, have been running on MacTel for the past 5 years!
--
Team America, world police is the funniest film ever made.
Not wanting to watch the BBC is by far and away the best reason to start paying more attention to it, you're clearly missing the point. The BBC isn't about Fame Academy and Porridge repeats, it's about the very definition of freedom and democracy. When Nelson Mandela was in prison for being black, one of the only personal possessions he was allowed to have in his cell was a radio, which could receive the world service. He sights it as one of the few things that kept him alive, to know people not only knew who he was, all the way around the world in London, but that they where fighting to free him, and all his people, from the evil oppression he was prepared to die fighting against. How many countless thousands of people around the world are listening to the British Broadcasting Corporation at this very moment, as their only solace, in similar if not worse circumstances than that?
Stop me if I sound like a flamer, but dude - wake up! The BBC is the only way WE have of telling people around the world, who hate us for Iraq, our continuing support for Israel, our support for Bush and the countless other things the government do in our name but without our support, that actually normal British people care very much about them, regardless of what they might otherwise think where it not for the voice of the BBC. Since when did Rupert Murdoch ever do something as powerful and positive as that? The day the BBC is paid for by adverts and / or a "smart card" pay TV model is the day all that ends. What if, one day, the person in that cell was you, or your son or daughter? Would you still be so sanguine about it?
It makes me quite proud when I read things like this my USian friend. It never fails to amaze me how many non-UK residents use "our" BBC to find out about their part of the world. As you probably know the BBC is paid for though a fee, payable by anyone who plans on being within earshot of a radio or eyeline of TV set at some point during the coming year. Some say it's an information tax and should be replaced with adverts, I say anything is better than the American model of news broadcasting, no offence, but we get FOX too and BOY is it dumbed down. What's that guy, Neil Cavato? Forget about it! You should see Jeramy Paxman on Newsnight go! You can stream last night's Newsnight everyday on the bbc.co.uk/newsnight web site if you're so inclined y the way. Peace.
Short answer IMHO is yes.
I think you have to factor in that consoles are already doing, and will continue to get better at doing what most people want a "PC" to do anyway. Pretty soon the "PC" will be just for us people who 'enjoy' looking at a terminal window full of long, illegable text strings, for days on end, waiting for buildlock errors. I can't wait!
As a European I can say that it is true we have little understanding of what open source can offer. Americans have always had a much clearer understanding of what a computer is supposed to do, provide productive results efficiantly. The approach here tends to be "Does it "do" Windows? OK we'll take 50".
"..You can't not run on IE.."
I take the point, but personally I can't imagine ever pandying to internet explorer ever again as long as I live. I couldn't care less if my "errors" cause people who use my sites difficulty, that's there look out for being stupid enough to use Windows in the first place. Buy a proper computer that runs proper software by people who know how to write good code, end of problem.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a matter of /. thread history to say that Microsoft must have jumped for joy when they first saw Mac OS X. I see nothing in the article to suggest they've really done anything genuinely new in the world of interface design with Vitsa since then.
I'm not one of these Mac heads who knocks Microsoft for the sake of it, but it does stick in the craw a little when they're so blatant about where they get / steal their ideas from.
Of course, Vista could be as bad as Win 3.1 in appearance and it will still dominate the market. None geeks (90% of the population of the world who use computers) think a computer IS Windows, they aren't going to not buy Vista just because it's a poor man's version of Mac OS aqua - they won't even know what they are looking at on their first days as a new Vista user is basically a skin and some bug fixes to XP.
As for the so called cost benefits of not having to reboot so many times - I dread to think what horrors lurk in store. I'll lay a £10 bet that it basically involves a dialogue box which reads something like "Do you want to reboot now or ignore this problem and continue"
iCal is good, but as someone has already pointed out you can't add to a calender 'owned' by someone else. I wanted to add TV schedule times to the Formula One Grand Prix iCal I subscribe to and I couldn't because I did'nt create it, which is dumb because my local copy of it should be 'mine' to alter, I didn't want everyone else to see my changes - although the idea of being able to do this if I had some sort of administrative privilages would be a nice update hopfully Apple have already thought of.
Well I say well done to the lad. The first thing I thought when I heard about the UFO angle was it sounded like some quick thinking when he was asked why he was doing it and anything sounded better than "because I can!" Surely the point the American authorities are missing here is that he was able to do this at all. How many more massive flaws in Windows are going to allow this kind of thing to happen? As far as I can see it serves the people who are suppose to know about these sort of things right for being dumb enough to entrust the security of NASA to Microsoft.
Whenever I have that same discussion many of us have had with a PC user, about the advantages Mac OS has over Windows XP, the main stumbling block in convincing them to at least try the Mac, before they dismiss it as something only photographers and musicians use, are issues of chip speed, availability of software titles and cost, we all know that. Intel make more chips for more customers than IBM and they run them cooler and with faster clock speeds and, because of their widespread use, they don't cost as much. They have a game plan for adhering to Moore's law far more advanced than that of IBM's and although the x86 architecture has an inferior floating point calculator to the PPC it is already supportive of all the major environments and, it now transpires, even Mac OS X was built to run on it from the ground up, albeit in secret for the first 5 years of it's development - which I think is a real stroke of genius and cunning on Apple's part. It goes to show how powerful Mac OS has been designed to be, from day one. Software developers who have never considered, or have simply not had the resources or customer interest in porting their applications to a 'minority platform' before, have no more excuses. They can actually compile their existing x86 code as a Mac OS binary at the same time as those for Windows. Because this means they can ship the same installer CD-ROM / DVD-ROM for both platforms, the cost of shipping Apple software will go down, the availability of Apple software will go up and the visibility in the high street of the Apple / Mac brands will sky rocket beyond anything even the iPod could have achieved. The more you think about the advantages this will bring to the Mac, who's followers have long waited for the chance to show, on a level playing field, what Mac OS can really do, the more you realise it may be the most important, in a series of very big steps, that Apple have taken towards their long term dream of actually dominating the home computer market, rather than simply leading it in terms of innovation, reliability and security. On that point, let's face it, ease of use, security and availability of software mean everything to "the man in the street", who just wants to play games, surf the internet and send the odd e-mail without having to re-install his entire OS and / or spend a week's wages on the phone to someone in India just because he "accidentally" downloaded some porn. Because Mac brings him that security, stability and ease of use, now with cheeper hardware and greater software availability, it's finally realistic to actually say as much out loud, without being made to feel like a dreamer by those who think Intel is just another word for Windows, that within the next 3 to 4 years Mac may well be dominant over Windows in the home computer market. If I was a Windows man, I'd be hoping Longhorn comes with a years free holiday in the Bahamas right now, because it's doubtful any of its features Microsoft have stolen from.. sorry "developed in partnership with" other people are anywhere near as stable as those which, it turns out, have been running on MacTel for the past 5 years! -- Team America, world police is the funniest film ever made.
You're an idiot then? Well done.
Not wanting to watch the BBC is by far and away the best reason to start paying more attention to it, you're clearly missing the point. The BBC isn't about Fame Academy and Porridge repeats, it's about the very definition of freedom and democracy. When Nelson Mandela was in prison for being black, one of the only personal possessions he was allowed to have in his cell was a radio, which could receive the world service. He sights it as one of the few things that kept him alive, to know people not only knew who he was, all the way around the world in London, but that they where fighting to free him, and all his people, from the evil oppression he was prepared to die fighting against. How many countless thousands of people around the world are listening to the British Broadcasting Corporation at this very moment, as their only solace, in similar if not worse circumstances than that? Stop me if I sound like a flamer, but dude - wake up! The BBC is the only way WE have of telling people around the world, who hate us for Iraq, our continuing support for Israel, our support for Bush and the countless other things the government do in our name but without our support, that actually normal British people care very much about them, regardless of what they might otherwise think where it not for the voice of the BBC. Since when did Rupert Murdoch ever do something as powerful and positive as that? The day the BBC is paid for by adverts and / or a "smart card" pay TV model is the day all that ends. What if, one day, the person in that cell was you, or your son or daughter? Would you still be so sanguine about it?
It makes me quite proud when I read things like this my USian friend. It never fails to amaze me how many non-UK residents use "our" BBC to find out about their part of the world. As you probably know the BBC is paid for though a fee, payable by anyone who plans on being within earshot of a radio or eyeline of TV set at some point during the coming year. Some say it's an information tax and should be replaced with adverts, I say anything is better than the American model of news broadcasting, no offence, but we get FOX too and BOY is it dumbed down. What's that guy, Neil Cavato? Forget about it! You should see Jeramy Paxman on Newsnight go! You can stream last night's Newsnight everyday on the bbc.co.uk/newsnight web site if you're so inclined y the way. Peace.
Short answer IMHO is yes. I think you have to factor in that consoles are already doing, and will continue to get better at doing what most people want a "PC" to do anyway. Pretty soon the "PC" will be just for us people who 'enjoy' looking at a terminal window full of long, illegable text strings, for days on end, waiting for buildlock errors. I can't wait!
As a European I can say that it is true we have little understanding of what open source can offer. Americans have always had a much clearer understanding of what a computer is supposed to do, provide productive results efficiantly. The approach here tends to be "Does it "do" Windows? OK we'll take 50".
"..You can't not run on IE.." I take the point, but personally I can't imagine ever pandying to internet explorer ever again as long as I live. I couldn't care less if my "errors" cause people who use my sites difficulty, that's there look out for being stupid enough to use Windows in the first place. Buy a proper computer that runs proper software by people who know how to write good code, end of problem.