I'd say it's newsworthy because Vista is being sold to the public as being a whole new OS with an improved security model.
The fact that they've imported decades of legacy Windows code, written for a period of time when security was designed for LAN environments rather than open access to public networks, seems a bit shocking even to people like me who already KNEW THIS.
Sometimes things you already know are newsworthy/shocking after you see them in print or hear them out loud.
Most tech people (heck, most business people) are uncharasmatic. That's why show biz people and get-shit-done people rarely pull from the same pool.
Ever been to an office presentation? Ever been to a non-Apple (non-Steve Jobs) tech presentation?
Notice how Microsoft hired performers (Ellen DeGeneris and the other pseudo-celeb) at their last rah-rah? Presenting stuff in an entertaining and interesting way is difficult.
Steve Jobs is a great presenter because he's excited about the technology and understands why it matters. But he also has a natural flair for mild drama and comedy. This is a gift. If you've only seen MacWorld presentations, you will of course be painfully disapointed with other tech shows.
It's even quite obvious at MacWorld Steve-notes how bad most CEOs are at charasmatic presentation. Remember the fuddling Sony bigwig last year? Or how about the iPod ROKR guy from Motorola (he was trying!), or the Intel boss this year? Ross Ho is a product manager, not a show off. I'm sure if she wasn't fairly competent at her job, we'd never see the fairly regular updates to Office that the Mac BU manages to poop out. But since we never hear from her apart from a regular "WE STILL SUPPORT MAC OFFICE" report at MacWorld, it's clear she's not cut out for a life on stage.
Ho didn't have anything to report, and didn't need to report anything other than a further commitment to Mac Office, because nothing else they are doing in the near future is that interesting. VirtualPC was a stated inevitability, and we don't really NEED Microsoft to allow us to run Windows on a Mac. There'll be 10 3rd party tools (7 free & open) next month that will boot XP on the Intel Macs. An even better prospect is Crossover providing tools to run Windows apps and games on Mac OS X/Intel Macs WITHOUT a copy of Windows. F-U Microsoft!
And thank you Microsoft for killing the outdated, buggy Windows Media 9 for Mac. I've been wishing they'd license Flip4Mac WMA codecs for Quicktime for a while now, but I'm blown away that they actually had the balls to do it. It's pretty much an announcement of failure for WMA as a cross platform... platform. It also dismisses the possiblity that locked down WMA files will ever work on Macs, and good riddence to that possibility. I'd much rather have defeatable Fairplay Quicktime files than a world run over by WMA evil.
What you describe is closer to a PVR appliance or a Windows TV-puter. I'm describing a home server that would be an archive, PBX, directory server, as well as a PVR.
The Mini most certainly does use cheap/light duty components, because it is designed to only run several hours at a time and be light, quiet and economical.
Server components are designed to run 24/7 (even if they accommodate power idling), and so are built to very different standards for durability and reliability. Being louder or larger are not issues if you have a server installed out of the way.
There most certainly is a PCI architecture in the Mac Mini, just as there is in the G4 Powerbooks and every other Mac prior to the Core Duos. CardBus, AGP graphics, remember? The abstraction of OF has little to do with the hardware design. Mac's are different from PC's, but I referred to the "PCI architecture" as a differentiation between the old PowerPC/PCI/MaxBus slow FSB and the new, faster Core Duo/PCIe designs. A slow Core processor on a faster, modern bus would have more effect on server performance than a faster G4 trying to pound bits through the super slow, pre-G5 bus architecture. Having said all that, for a low end server, a G4 might suffice, if Apple weren't so ready to get rid of anything PowerPC by the end of the year.
As for minimal graphics, well what server needs swooshing graphics? If executed properly, the XServe mini could be setup and administrated remotely, just like the embedded services in the Airport Basestation. Apple already has all the work done in Mac OS X Server. Condensing it into an appliance server would be trivial, and not require a graphic card at all.
You're right about the Mini having a fan. But it's a tiny fan in a tiny box packed full of components. Freed from having to be sleek and pretty, an Xserve mini could be larger and support parts and fans designed to let it run full duty. Basically, I'm imagining an Xserve scaled down (who has/needs a 1U server and a telco rack in their home?), whereas you are looking at the existing mini and beefing it up to serve new purposes.
It's fine if a desktop PC goes to sleep and takes some time to spin up, but if you have a home server, you'd want it to be ready to roll all the time. Plus, the XServe mini would be a more ideal fit for small businesses, for which the XServe is too large and a Mini is too little (and a PowerMac is ill-fitted by design: it's built to be a graphics workstation, not a headless server).
An XServe mini with bays for 2 Xserve drive modules would allow Apple to broaden the appeal of their existing Xserve line. A small company could install a short stack of Xserve minis, the same way that those types of businesses routinely run several random PC boxes running Windows Server. That market would expand upward underneath the market for a rack of full size 1U Xserves, in the same way that iBooks fit under Powerbooks ("MBPs").
I think a regular, light duty Mac Mini would serve better as a TV-puter. My "XServe mini" would be what stores everything: shared music/photo/movie libraries, data backups, CVS archives of all your documents, phone/fax/voicemail, etc.
So yes, put BT/Airport on the Mini and put it under the TV. But run a GigE cable (you installed Cat6 alongside your phone/cable wiring, right?) to your home server, and use it to run your home and/or small business network services.
I wasn't imagining a software switch on the Xserve mini, but rather just integrating a small GigE switch on the box. An external switch wouldn't make much of a difference.
Apple actually carved out a major chunk of the wireless market, particularly at first. They basically introduced wireless networks, and made lots of money on Airport Basestations and the Airport Express. Both are out of the way network devices, even if they do look nice.
Apple could seriously clean up the small business mini server market, and take the small business PBX industry over as well. Every ~100 employee business I've worked wit
- Have a standard HD (or preferably two, mirrored), not a 2.5" laptop drive - Have a ~650MHz FSB Core Duo/PCIe system architecture instead of a ~150MHz G4 PCI architecture. - Have the option to drive an "Xserve RAID mini," perhaps using FW or external SATA. - Drop fancy graphics for bare essential VGA - Drop BT and Airport, and possibly sport a 4 port GB switch instead - Be designed with a quiet fan and components designed to run 24/7, rather than light duty consumer parts and convection cooling - Be designed to be bolted into the closet or garage out of sight, rather than sit on your desk.
And the ideal software "killer app": an Asterix VoIP PBX with a cleverly simple UI
It's a video card feature for using a wide display, alternatively, as a tall display.
The same video cards do the same thing under Windows, when using the appropriate drivers.
This was available under System 7 when portrait/landscape switching displays arrived in the late 80's.
It requires nothing from the OS, and everything from the video driver. The Mac OS (like Windows) can accomodate plenty of screen resolutions and aspect ratios.
The real problem in supporting tablet or PDA screens is presenting a UI appropriate for small screens. A desktop that is workable at 1024x786 is cramped at less than 800x600, and very clumsy at 320x320 (Treo 650).
Apple developed an entirely new GUI and data soup for handheld use with the Newton. Microsoft simply crushed the Windows Start menu and windowing down to fit in WinCE/Windows Mobile. That's why people are hanging on to the memory of the Newton but always trying to forget the last version of Windows Mobile.
Mac OS X might scale down better than OS 9, but a phone or PDA really demands a re-thought-out interface to work well. Notice that the iPod makes no attempt to look like a Mac OS X desktop. The creators of the iPod OS came from Palm, which had itself developed a fresh idea of how to deliver an OS on a handheld PDA.
Running Mac OS X sideways is a far cry from being PDA ready.
To get the "full value from Mac" really means you have to pay for Adobe CS(n), Office 200x, the Final Cut Suite + Aperature, etc, which costs several thousands of dollars a year.
Also, to fill your iPod costs 99c times the 10,000 songs or so that will fit. (just ask Napster!)
This is why Mac users have to be affluent and have a higher education, because they spend close to 50,000 a year just to keep their Macs going.
When you buy a $500 Dell, you get all the software you need bundled, and it never needs to be upgraded. You can also buy the Dell DJ, which only cost $5/month from Yahoo to listen to all the music you can (well it did at one point anyway).
Of course, truely l33t users simply use Linux, which is free from any costs apart from the "free time" required to configure things, which is free and abundant prior to turning 25.
The peer to peer sync you describe (like rsync) would be an entirely different service and product than the sync services used by.Mac; your idea is closer to the Portable Home Directory sync built into Mac OS X Server, which is "free" for people who have access to a Mac OS X Server Open Directory.
When you sync using.Mac, your bookmarks, contacts, calendar, etc., are kept in a offsite location, and you can also access them from the web, from any machine. With.Mac, after hosing something in my sync engiine, I can upload a clean version from.Mac. If.Mac gets hosed, I can selectively upload/overwrite the broken bit from one of my client Macs. This has proven a livesaver to me several times.
If I rsync from Mac1 to Mac2 as you describe, and then Mac1 gets messed up, my system automatically contaminates Mac2.
I think Apple should productize an "Xserve mini" as a household server that provided central file storage, Directory Services, and Portable Home Directories. That would be cool.
Yep, all good points; all I was saying is that you have no access to Windows when using the laptop as a laptop.
Therefore, a KVM setup isn't much of a solution for people who need a laptop who also want to run Windows (or a few Windows apps). But sure, it's great for Windows users who might want a Mac to go.
My secret wish (unlikly to be realized) is a laptop with console in. Back in the day, we had serial ports on laptops and could serial console into a box. With Powerbooks, no such luck. If the box has networking running, you can ssh via Ethernet, but nothing on the console level. Today, it would be cool to have "console in," with USB and DVI inputs, which would allow you to use your laptop as a console for any machine. THAT I'd like. Of course, a simple serial console in would be nice too. Both are HIGHLY unlikely.
The problem isn't that "KVM isn't an option on a Mac," but that a KVM setup does nothing to solve the problem in question.
As you point out, a KVM supplies a K.V.& M. for two or more CPUs. Since the iMac and MacBook Pro have a built in display (and the latter, a K & M as well), a KVM wouldn't provide much point. Of course, I intended to write:
"the new iMac (which has 'no video INPUT' for your PC to drive its display)"... rather than "the new iMac (which has 'no video' for your PC to drive its display)... and that would have made it clearer that a KVM would be a completely pointless setup for getting Windows to run, display, or otherwise be available on your Mac as an alternative to dual booting or a VM like Virtual PC.
Of course, if you buy a laptop or an all-in-one PC, you likely had portability and/or form factor in mind, which would generally rule out obtaining Windows-availability via an additional PC box (and ANOTHER display).
If the Mac Mini were available with an Intel Core processor, then a KVM setup with another PC might make some sense as an alternative to running Windows using Virtual PC, slowly.
The question was "why would anyone bother with dual boot or VM, when you can just buy a cheap PC and add it with a KVM setup?"
The question was not something about hooking a Mac up to a KVM.
A cheap PC + an iMac would not do anything for you, unless you also bought an entirely new secondary display (and perhaps a DVI KVM), which wipes the "+ cheap PC" bit out.
Recall the intent was to run Windows on an Intel Mac. If the Mac you bought was an all-in-one, or a laptop (the only two options so far), the addition of another box, plus another display, fails to solve the problem. That is particularly the case if you bought your iMac or MacBook to use as designed: a sleek AIO or a portable.
The Mac Mini (currently without any Intel processor), would fit what you are talking about. If somebody needed Windows + Mac, that would currently be a cheaper option than getting an Intel Mac and then buying a PC on top.
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I apologize for taking so much time to spit out the obvious.
KVM isn't an option for the new iMac (which has 'no video' for your PC to drive its display) or the new MacBook (which has the same problem, in addition to the fact that having two laptops to lug about isn't ideal).
Apple hasn't even released an announcement of an Intel Mac that could support a KVM arrangement.
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It is likely that we'll have a boot loader that can launch Windows on an Intel Mac before the MacBook even ships next month. We also know CrossOver is working to deliver a VM to run Windows apps without even installing Windows, for Intel Macs.
I too racked up 20+ free songs with the Pepsi/iTunes promotion, and then forgot about them until they expired.
I was pissed, too, but to say they "expired [them] without warning" is a bit silly, since the details were plainly laid out, and there was clear notice that they would be usable through April 15 (or whatever).
It's like leaving money laying around, and then being angry that the rest of the world doens't find it and spare no expense to return it for you.
Haha, what, are you too young to remember or are so old you forgot?
I was using 650MB CD-ROMS on a Mac IIsi in 1990, which had all of 80 MB hard drive.
It was a half decade or more before you could rip a CD to a hard drive, if you had the horsepower to shrink CD Audio down to MP3s. Recall that audio CDs were offering 650 MB of data before computers could even commonly read them.
CD-ROMs were phenomenally larger than any available hard drive, and were so for LONG time.
I agree: DVD and VHS were very different "new" things, and DVD is hardly in need of replacement.
VHS wasn't commonly in homes until the mid 80s. Being tape, it required long winding time to find content, and had an inherently limited lifespan. Being analog, it could not be copied or duplicated more than a generation or two. Videotape in general was introduced with less than broadcast audio and video quality, and as better technology came out, VHS slowly progressed toward being near broadcast.
DVD was introduced with CD quality sound and digital video significantly better than standard broadcast. DVD's are more convenient, durable and smaller than VHS tapes. DVD also offers perfect copies across generations.
DVD was also quickly integrated into computers; playing DVD's from a PC or laptop using VGA or DVI to a computer display offers a very high quality video, competitive with HDTV. Since common DVDs are better than commonly broadcast video quality, and since little HD content available, and since HD displays are not commonplace, there's hardly demand for a new HD media.
Satellite providers have had the capacity to deliver HD for some time now, and have instead chosen to deliver more content at standard resolution. If, as that suggests, there is scant market for HD video, why do we need an HD media disc to suddenly replace DVDs?
The only real benefit HD-DVD and BlueRay offer over DVD is in data storage capacity and in DRM, and consumers don't look particularly needy for either. They already have hard drive storage in excess of HD-DVD's (recall than when CD-ROM arrived, it offered FAR more storage than hard disks of the day).
CD's certainly didn't disapear for SACD, and in fact most consumers have never seen or heard of SACD. And remember when Phillips (and others) were presenting the "future of audio cassette," which was suposed to replace audio tapes the way that CD had replaced records? Those products bombed.
If anything, I think there is more growth potential in HardDrive based DVRs to replace and expand upon the functions of VCRs, a job that DVD isn't very well equiped to perform given its slow and finicky write technology.
New iterations of the iPod, as a DVR, have the potential to serve new markets better than bigger DVDs. And as broadband becomes more commonplace, and faster bandwidth arrives, larger discs may not be that necessary after all.
I can already:
-get iPod sized movies on demand (via iTMS) -get DVD quality movies on demand (via NetFlix) -get TV style episodes and shorts on demand (via Tivo)
I can see those services migrate toward HD slowly without any need for HD discs along the way. Think of NetFlix using downloads and hard disks instead of discs and postage, and its hard to imagine what problem a HD-DVD standard would solve.
I bought the first ever version of the Titanium Powerbook - 400 MHz in ~ 2000. It was a completely new industrial design and a new chipset architecture based on the G4, following the black plastic G3 PowerBooks (one of which I also owned).
I had zero problems with my TiBook, and used hard for the next 4 years as my constant companion. It migrated from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X beta to OS X 10.0, 10.2, 10.3 and now happily runs 10.4. Even after I broke the screen backlight in a motorcycle accident (I was hit by a towtruck making an illegal turn in San Francisco), I took the screen off and continue to use it as a directory server and public webserver. It even handilly survived a blizzard of traffic from a recent digg.com article!
I have clients who are still using the original iPod (4-5 years old), with no problems. I have the iPod 3, which was a new design: no problems in 3 years. I bought the first version of the entirely new PowerMac G5: 2 years, no problems. I set up an architectual office with the new iMac G5, an entirely new design: 1 year, no problems at all.
Are completely new designs likely to have rougher edges? That's the case most consumer products, from cars to software. But I'll have to call bullshit on your insinuation that Apple's new designs are greatly problematic and should be avoided. That's simply not the case.
You can't give me a grade because I already dropped your class : P
In any event, your overextended metaphor is not only lacking in insight, but also unnecessarily sensationalist.
Enslaved Africans weren't fed cotton.
Also, slavery and agricultural machines are hardly similar. One is a human pressed into servitude and stripped of opportunity, respect and dignity under an immoral system that treated fellow humans as animals; the other is a tool.
WTF - I don't know why you're masturbating to the British, and what that has to do with the price of tea in China (or ethanol), but you're scaring the children.
Reading your related postings reveals you to be an advocate of raping the land for our present day amusement and quick profiteering. You are the majority on the front, but I disagree in the wisdom of that, and I try to live according to my own values.
I'm not really interested in whatever further you have to say.
If suddenly out of left field, RC Cola came out with a product that grabbed 80% marketshare in the cola market, that fact that Coke & Pepsi were still selling some cola would not be good news for them.
Just 3-4 years ago, Apple was disregarded as a distant third player in the media category, with Microsoft poised to dominate audio in the unquestioned way they dominate desktop PC OS and Office app markets. Microsoft conspired with media labels to roll out exclusive, WMA locked down media and devices that would sap every penny possible from idiot consumers.
Suddenly Apple deliverd a product that kicked WMA's ass, destroyed the WMA stranglehold online music market, and syphoned off 80% of the player and content business. Apple not only took over sales, but changed the course for How Media Will Be Sold.
To suggest that since WMA subscriptions are still being sold, the "subscription" model is somehow not a failure is pretty disingenuous.
I am able to make an observation without passing a value judgement.
And you are wrong about me; I am part of that prosperous middle class. My parents were lower middle class, and their parents and grandparents toiled under the rich of a century ago. I'm not vilifying prosperity, I'm pointing out related baggage that comes with a me-first society.
I made the observation that the small wealthy class that ruled the world a century (or less) ago at least carried enough guilt to throw some of their obscene wealth downhill. Today's upwardly mobile middle class is not far obscenely wealthier than all the people around them however. We are all pretty much competing on a far more equal level. One result is that we mostly focus on entertaining and enritching ourselves.
With our self-consumed society, it's easy to wish for social benefits, health care, effective transportation and the like, but Americans (with much of the rest of the world following) are pursueing an agenda of "screw you, I'm only paying for my private healthcare, I'm driving an unnecessary huge vehicle 30 miles to work, and I'm living in the largest space I can afford to own."
You sound far to arrogant and privelaged to be calling yourself a member of the "despicable masses," so I think you are the judgemental hypocrite here.
So if I fill a balloon with Helium, carefully poke a hole in the top (in a way that doesn't destroy the balloon) and release the bottom opening (without tieing it shut)...the Helium will seep out the top, and air will rush in from the open bottom to reinflate it?
America has a prospering middle class, far more so than any other time I can think of in history. The USA is so bereft of a "lower class" we import illegal aliens and export menial tech jobs to India. The problem with prosperity is that everyone is hyper-consuming - more land for cheaper middle class housing and surrounding services.
It's not slavery that's destroying America, it's an overabundance of cheap goods and newfound wealth in search of status. When you have a small rich class self aggrandizing themselves, you end up with museums and libraries and hospitals and for the poor, adorned with the names of rich benefactors. When the majority of the country is well off and self aggrandizing, you end up with a nation of sprawling suburbs with pools and an SUV for every driver in the household. The "new rich" never have any class, and don't care too much about the poor around them.
Globalization is providing America with an outsourced service industry, agriculture and manufacturing workforce, and clearly there are problems related to the disparity of wealth and prosperity. I doubt using such a loaded word as "slavery" brings anything to the table but rash emotionalism.
People in the US and outside need to have a reason to show care and concern for their fellow humans. Until that happens, self interest will destroy us all, just not in any sort of fair, proportional way.
A quick Google search will confirm that you're not the only one who's thought of burning alcohol as a fuel.
Replacing oil with alcohol would not solve our problems.
Sure, it would invest in agriculture rather than exploiting technology to find, extract and refine crude oil. But It would replace the known problems associated with enriching arab states with a history of bad civil rights, with some unknown problems related to a huge mega-farm raising a monoculture crop. Pesticides, GMO, soil depletion are issues we know would be involved, but what else is involved with monobreed farming on that scale?
There's also the problem that American bio-energy fuel production could only generate a 10th of the fuel supply that the USA currently uses - and that's only gasoline. There are lots of products we get from crude oil that we can't press out of biomass: think about plastics, asphalt, lubricants.
Then there's the issue of what we're fueling in the first place: the realized dream of cheap fuel for vehicle freedom has resulted in a transportation engineering crisis that requires moving around and storing enormous cars rather than people. That creates sprawl that eats up farmland so we can have a parking lot around WalMart and sprawling acres of land devoted to roadways, driveways and freeways to link far flung suburban housing developments and equally sprawling office parks, and the previously mentioned WalMarts. Not to mention vehicle's polluting of the the environment.
And yes you can drink alcohol, but not the 85% Ethanol/15% Gasoline mix we create for cars. It also is only about 30% cleaner than burning raw gasoline, so you might not want to light up indoors. It's also significantly more expensive, even if you ignore the farming subsidies that artificially cheapen it.
Sometimes the simplest solution is also the least well thought out.
I would suggest determining the real problems before offering a solution. A nation designed around cars instead of people is definitely part of the problem, and alternative fuel doesn't solve that particular problem at all.
Pay per use is undesirable for consumers
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Motorola Unveils iRadio
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Pay per use is a great way to make money, but customers don't like it. Subscriptions paying for necessary utilities are tolerated, but entertainment subscriptions are a hard sell, unless they provide high value vs. the cost. Pop music does not qualify as a service people are willing to pay/minute for, rather than just carry around their CDs or their iPod.
I'd much rather pay a known cost upfront for something than "subscribe" to yet another ongoing cost. Does the rest of the world agree? Consider:
Subscriptions that work:
- Cable/Sat TV works because it offers things you simply can't get elsewhere; make those things available on DVD, and notice how people start collecting DVDs of the few shows they watch, and abandon 150 channels of nothing on. Users who want regional/sports/news content you can't get without a subscription may hang on to their cable.
- Magazines, Newspapers & other periodicals work because they offer a stream of new content you can't get elsewhere. These markets are being eaten alive by the availability of content on the open Internet however. MacWorld used to be a monthly book, now its a pretty skimpy magazine.
Subscriptions that failed miserably:
- Nobody's paying for Microsoft's WMA, now that there is iTunes and real audio CDs left (and not WMA-only CDs, as was the plan).
- Subscription software has been an extremely hard sell, despite Misrosoft's attempts at converting Windows and Office to subscription style licensing). Online games like WoW are selling subscriptions because they offer content and play otherwise unavailable elsewhere. That's why Blizzard guards its client so well. If you could plug into open "worlds" of entertainment, Blizard's game would die quickly.
- Pay per use subscriptions to Internet access were steamrolled by competition from fixed cost, all you can eat plans as soon as they became available.
So basically, I'd say that in order to sell a subscription with wide market appeal, you have to have exclusive, compelling content not generally available in any other form, and you have to actually get something, not just temporary access to it.
Pop music DOES NOT fit this model, and niche markets for audio content are not going to be made available for the cell phone market. Beyond the failure of the subscription model, who the heck is going to want to listen to radio on a cell phone? And who will want to continue to pay for it, particularly if they are billed even more for using it regularly?
And while service cutouts are a minor irritation when trying to have a conversation, dropouts and service unavailability are serious problems for people trying to listen to music live; waiting to download music using existing (SLOW) data services would be equally problematic. "Hey I want to listen to that song... look up... download....... continue downloading..." = sucks.
I don't think the significance of the win of iTMS over WMA has been absorbed by the music industry, from the labels to the would be distributors (cell phone providers). People overwhelmingly want to buy things they "own," and not to pay for the privelage to listen for a period of time.
Apple's win with the iPod came from offering a product that allowed users unfettered use of the music they already had (you don't pay a per miniute fee for having your iPod on), an easy path to get new music at a "known cost," and additionally, access to online music via iTMS at fixed, "known" costs. You aren't penalized for listening to an iPod for a longer time (per minute fees), or over a period of time (per month fees). That encourages iPod use, and makes it more rewarding as you use it more.
WMA and pay-per-listen cell phone plans ding you the more you use them, discouraging regular use. Guess why they aren't catching on?
Motorola, after delivering a poor iPod bundled in an unimpressive phone, now thinks they can turn the system upside down and shake money from their (potential) userbase by charging them per use.
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I'd say it's newsworthy because Vista is being sold to the public as being a whole new OS with an improved security model.
The fact that they've imported decades of legacy Windows code, written for a period of time when security was designed for LAN environments rather than open access to public networks, seems a bit shocking even to people like me who already KNEW THIS.
Sometimes things you already know are newsworthy/shocking after you see them in print or hear them out loud.
Most tech people (heck, most business people) are uncharasmatic. That's why show biz people and get-shit-done people rarely pull from the same pool.
... platform. It also dismisses the possiblity that locked down WMA files will ever work on Macs, and good riddence to that possibility. I'd much rather have defeatable Fairplay Quicktime files than a world run over by WMA evil.
Ever been to an office presentation? Ever been to a non-Apple (non-Steve Jobs) tech presentation?
Notice how Microsoft hired performers (Ellen DeGeneris and the other pseudo-celeb) at their last rah-rah? Presenting stuff in an entertaining and interesting way is difficult.
Steve Jobs is a great presenter because he's excited about the technology and understands why it matters. But he also has a natural flair for mild drama and comedy. This is a gift. If you've only seen MacWorld presentations, you will of course be painfully disapointed with other tech shows.
It's even quite obvious at MacWorld Steve-notes how bad most CEOs are at charasmatic presentation. Remember the fuddling Sony bigwig last year? Or how about the iPod ROKR guy from Motorola (he was trying!), or the Intel boss this year? Ross Ho is a product manager, not a show off. I'm sure if she wasn't fairly competent at her job, we'd never see the fairly regular updates to Office that the Mac BU manages to poop out. But since we never hear from her apart from a regular "WE STILL SUPPORT MAC OFFICE" report at MacWorld, it's clear she's not cut out for a life on stage.
Ho didn't have anything to report, and didn't need to report anything other than a further commitment to Mac Office, because nothing else they are doing in the near future is that interesting. VirtualPC was a stated inevitability, and we don't really NEED Microsoft to allow us to run Windows on a Mac. There'll be 10 3rd party tools (7 free & open) next month that will boot XP on the Intel Macs. An even better prospect is Crossover providing tools to run Windows apps and games on Mac OS X/Intel Macs WITHOUT a copy of Windows. F-U Microsoft!
And thank you Microsoft for killing the outdated, buggy Windows Media 9 for Mac. I've been wishing they'd license Flip4Mac WMA codecs for Quicktime for a while now, but I'm blown away that they actually had the balls to do it. It's pretty much an announcement of failure for WMA as a cross platform
What you describe is closer to a PVR appliance or a Windows TV-puter. I'm describing a home server that would be an archive, PBX, directory server, as well as a PVR.
The Mini most certainly does use cheap/light duty components, because it is designed to only run several hours at a time and be light, quiet and economical.
Server components are designed to run 24/7 (even if they accommodate power idling), and so are built to very different standards for durability and reliability. Being louder or larger are not issues if you have a server installed out of the way.
There most certainly is a PCI architecture in the Mac Mini, just as there is in the G4 Powerbooks and every other Mac prior to the Core Duos. CardBus, AGP graphics, remember? The abstraction of OF has little to do with the hardware design. Mac's are different from PC's, but I referred to the "PCI architecture" as a differentiation between the old PowerPC/PCI/MaxBus slow FSB and the new, faster Core Duo/PCIe designs. A slow Core processor on a faster, modern bus would have more effect on server performance than a faster G4 trying to pound bits through the super slow, pre-G5 bus architecture. Having said all that, for a low end server, a G4 might suffice, if Apple weren't so ready to get rid of anything PowerPC by the end of the year.
As for minimal graphics, well what server needs swooshing graphics? If executed properly, the XServe mini could be setup and administrated remotely, just like the embedded services in the Airport Basestation. Apple already has all the work done in Mac OS X Server. Condensing it into an appliance server would be trivial, and not require a graphic card at all.
You're right about the Mini having a fan. But it's a tiny fan in a tiny box packed full of components. Freed from having to be sleek and pretty, an Xserve mini could be larger and support parts and fans designed to let it run full duty. Basically, I'm imagining an Xserve scaled down (who has/needs a 1U server and a telco rack in their home?), whereas you are looking at the existing mini and beefing it up to serve new purposes.
It's fine if a desktop PC goes to sleep and takes some time to spin up, but if you have a home server, you'd want it to be ready to roll all the time. Plus, the XServe mini would be a more ideal fit for small businesses, for which the XServe is too large and a Mini is too little (and a PowerMac is ill-fitted by design: it's built to be a graphics workstation, not a headless server).
An XServe mini with bays for 2 Xserve drive modules would allow Apple to broaden the appeal of their existing Xserve line. A small company could install a short stack of Xserve minis, the same way that those types of businesses routinely run several random PC boxes running Windows Server. That market would expand upward underneath the market for a rack of full size 1U Xserves, in the same way that iBooks fit under Powerbooks ("MBPs").
I think a regular, light duty Mac Mini would serve better as a TV-puter. My "XServe mini" would be what stores everything: shared music/photo/movie libraries, data backups, CVS archives of all your documents, phone/fax/voicemail, etc.
So yes, put BT/Airport on the Mini and put it under the TV. But run a GigE cable (you installed Cat6 alongside your phone/cable wiring, right?) to your home server, and use it to run your home and/or small business network services.
I wasn't imagining a software switch on the Xserve mini, but rather just integrating a small GigE switch on the box. An external switch wouldn't make much of a difference.
Apple actually carved out a major chunk of the wireless market, particularly at first. They basically introduced wireless networks, and made lots of money on Airport Basestations and the Airport Express. Both are out of the way network devices, even if they do look nice.
Apple could seriously clean up the small business mini server market, and take the small business PBX industry over as well. Every ~100 employee business I've worked wit
The Mac Mini is designed to be a cheap desktop.
An "Xserve mini" would ideally:
- Have a standard HD (or preferably two, mirrored), not a 2.5" laptop drive
- Have a ~650MHz FSB Core Duo/PCIe system architecture instead of a ~150MHz G4 PCI architecture.
- Have the option to drive an "Xserve RAID mini," perhaps using FW or external SATA.
- Drop fancy graphics for bare essential VGA
- Drop BT and Airport, and possibly sport a 4 port GB switch instead
- Be designed with a quiet fan and components designed to run 24/7, rather than light duty consumer parts and convection cooling
- Be designed to be bolted into the closet or garage out of sight, rather than sit on your desk.
And the ideal software "killer app": an Asterix VoIP PBX with a cleverly simple UI
It's a video card feature for using a wide display, alternatively, as a tall display.
The same video cards do the same thing under Windows, when using the appropriate drivers.
This was available under System 7 when portrait/landscape switching displays arrived in the late 80's.
It requires nothing from the OS, and everything from the video driver. The Mac OS (like Windows) can accomodate plenty of screen resolutions and aspect ratios.
The real problem in supporting tablet or PDA screens is presenting a UI appropriate for small screens. A desktop that is workable at 1024x786 is cramped at less than 800x600, and very clumsy at 320x320 (Treo 650).
Apple developed an entirely new GUI and data soup for handheld use with the Newton. Microsoft simply crushed the Windows Start menu and windowing down to fit in WinCE/Windows Mobile. That's why people are hanging on to the memory of the Newton but always trying to forget the last version of Windows Mobile.
Mac OS X might scale down better than OS 9, but a phone or PDA really demands a re-thought-out interface to work well. Notice that the iPod makes no attempt to look like a Mac OS X desktop. The creators of the iPod OS came from Palm, which had itself developed a fresh idea of how to deliver an OS on a handheld PDA.
Running Mac OS X sideways is a far cry from being PDA ready.
To get the "full value from Mac" really means you have to pay for Adobe CS(n), Office 200x, the Final Cut Suite + Aperature, etc, which costs several thousands of dollars a year.
Also, to fill your iPod costs 99c times the 10,000 songs or so that will fit. (just ask Napster!)
This is why Mac users have to be affluent and have a higher education, because they spend close to 50,000 a year just to keep their Macs going.
When you buy a $500 Dell, you get all the software you need bundled, and it never needs to be upgraded. You can also buy the Dell DJ, which only cost $5/month from Yahoo to listen to all the music you can (well it did at one point anyway).
Of course, truely l33t users simply use Linux, which is free from any costs apart from the "free time" required to configure things, which is free and abundant prior to turning 25.
Cox isn't providing:
WebDAV
Sync services
Web access to synced bookmarks and contacts
Various software bundles and other poop
and if you hosted pics or webpages get any traffic, your site goes down.
If those don't matter to you, then continue to play with your Cox.
The peer to peer sync you describe (like rsync) would be an entirely different service and product than the sync services used by .Mac; your idea is closer to the Portable Home Directory sync built into Mac OS X Server, which is "free" for people who have access to a Mac OS X Server Open Directory.
.Mac, your bookmarks, contacts, calendar, etc., are kept in a offsite location, and you can also access them from the web, from any machine. With .Mac, after hosing something in my sync engiine, I can upload a clean version from .Mac. If .Mac gets hosed, I can selectively upload/overwrite the broken bit from one of my client Macs. This has proven a livesaver to me several times.
When you sync using
If I rsync from Mac1 to Mac2 as you describe, and then Mac1 gets messed up, my system automatically contaminates Mac2.
I think Apple should productize an "Xserve mini" as a household server that provided central file storage, Directory Services, and Portable Home Directories. That would be cool.
The other option would be "No," apparently.
Yep, all good points; all I was saying is that you have no access to Windows when using the laptop as a laptop.
Therefore, a KVM setup isn't much of a solution for people who need a laptop who also want to run Windows (or a few Windows apps). But sure, it's great for Windows users who might want a Mac to go.
My secret wish (unlikly to be realized) is a laptop with console in. Back in the day, we had serial ports on laptops and could serial console into a box. With Powerbooks, no such luck. If the box has networking running, you can ssh via Ethernet, but nothing on the console level. Today, it would be cool to have "console in," with USB and DVI inputs, which would allow you to use your laptop as a console for any machine. THAT I'd like. Of course, a simple serial console in would be nice too. Both are HIGHLY unlikely.
The problem isn't that "KVM isn't an option on a Mac," but that a KVM setup does nothing to solve the problem in question.
... rather than ... and that would have made it clearer that a KVM would be a completely pointless setup for getting Windows to run, display, or otherwise be available on your Mac as an alternative to dual booting or a VM like Virtual PC.
As you point out, a KVM supplies a K.V.& M. for two or more CPUs. Since the iMac and MacBook Pro have a built in display (and the latter, a K & M as well), a KVM wouldn't provide much point. Of course, I intended to write:
"the new iMac (which has 'no video INPUT' for your PC to drive its display)"
"the new iMac (which has 'no video' for your PC to drive its display)
Of course, if you buy a laptop or an all-in-one PC, you likely had portability and/or form factor in mind, which would generally rule out obtaining Windows-availability via an additional PC box (and ANOTHER display).
If the Mac Mini were available with an Intel Core processor, then a KVM setup with another PC might make some sense as an alternative to running Windows using Virtual PC, slowly.
The question was "why would anyone bother with dual boot or VM, when you can just buy a cheap PC and add it with a KVM setup?"
The question was not something about hooking a Mac up to a KVM.
A cheap PC + an iMac would not do anything for you, unless you also bought an entirely new secondary display (and perhaps a DVI KVM), which wipes the "+ cheap PC" bit out.
Recall the intent was to run Windows on an Intel Mac. If the Mac you bought was an all-in-one, or a laptop (the only two options so far), the addition of another box, plus another display, fails to solve the problem. That is particularly the case if you bought your iMac or MacBook to use as designed: a sleek AIO or a portable.
The Mac Mini (currently without any Intel processor), would fit what you are talking about. If somebody needed Windows + Mac, that would currently be a cheaper option than getting an Intel Mac and then buying a PC on top.
--
I apologize for taking so much time to spit out the obvious.
KVM isn't an option for the new iMac (which has 'no video' for your PC to drive its display) or the new MacBook (which has the same problem, in addition to the fact that having two laptops to lug about isn't ideal).
Apple hasn't even released an announcement of an Intel Mac that could support a KVM arrangement.
--
It is likely that we'll have a boot loader that can launch Windows on an Intel Mac before the MacBook even ships next month.
We also know CrossOver is working to deliver a VM to run Windows apps without even installing Windows, for Intel Macs.
I too racked up 20+ free songs with the Pepsi/iTunes promotion, and then forgot about them until they expired.
I was pissed, too, but to say they "expired [them] without warning" is a bit silly, since the details were plainly laid out, and there was clear notice that they would be usable through April 15 (or whatever).
It's like leaving money laying around, and then being angry that the rest of the world doens't find it and spare no expense to return it for you.
Haha, what, are you too young to remember or are so old you forgot?
I was using 650MB CD-ROMS on a Mac IIsi in 1990, which had all of 80 MB hard drive.
It was a half decade or more before you could rip a CD to a hard drive, if you had the horsepower to shrink CD Audio down to MP3s. Recall that audio CDs were offering 650 MB of data before computers could even commonly read them.
CD-ROMs were phenomenally larger than any available hard drive, and were so for LONG time.
I agree: DVD and VHS were very different "new" things, and DVD is hardly in need of replacement.
VHS wasn't commonly in homes until the mid 80s. Being tape, it required long winding time to find content, and had an inherently limited lifespan. Being analog, it could not be copied or duplicated more than a generation or two. Videotape in general was introduced with less than broadcast audio and video quality, and as better technology came out, VHS slowly progressed toward being near broadcast.
DVD was introduced with CD quality sound and digital video significantly better than standard broadcast. DVD's are more convenient, durable and smaller than VHS tapes. DVD also offers perfect copies across generations.
DVD was also quickly integrated into computers; playing DVD's from a PC or laptop using VGA or DVI to a computer display offers a very high quality video, competitive with HDTV. Since common DVDs are better than commonly broadcast video quality, and since little HD content available, and since HD displays are not commonplace, there's hardly demand for a new HD media.
Satellite providers have had the capacity to deliver HD for some time now, and have instead chosen to deliver more content at standard resolution. If, as that suggests, there is scant market for HD video, why do we need an HD media disc to suddenly replace DVDs?
The only real benefit HD-DVD and BlueRay offer over DVD is in data storage capacity and in DRM, and consumers don't look particularly needy for either. They already have hard drive storage in excess of HD-DVD's (recall than when CD-ROM arrived, it offered FAR more storage than hard disks of the day).
CD's certainly didn't disapear for SACD, and in fact most consumers have never seen or heard of SACD. And remember when Phillips (and others) were presenting the "future of audio cassette," which was suposed to replace audio tapes the way that CD had replaced records? Those products bombed.
If anything, I think there is more growth potential in HardDrive based DVRs to replace and expand upon the functions of VCRs, a job that DVD isn't very well equiped to perform given its slow and finicky write technology.
New iterations of the iPod, as a DVR, have the potential to serve new markets better than bigger DVDs. And as broadband becomes more commonplace, and faster bandwidth arrives, larger discs may not be that necessary after all.
I can already:
-get iPod sized movies on demand (via iTMS)
-get DVD quality movies on demand (via NetFlix)
-get TV style episodes and shorts on demand (via Tivo)
I can see those services migrate toward HD slowly without any need for HD discs along the way. Think of NetFlix using downloads and hard disks instead of discs and postage, and its hard to imagine what problem a HD-DVD standard would solve.
I bought the first ever version of the Titanium Powerbook - 400 MHz in ~ 2000. It was a completely new industrial design and a new chipset architecture based on the G4, following the black plastic G3 PowerBooks (one of which I also owned).
I had zero problems with my TiBook, and used hard for the next 4 years as my constant companion. It migrated from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X beta to OS X 10.0, 10.2, 10.3 and now happily runs 10.4. Even after I broke the screen backlight in a motorcycle accident (I was hit by a towtruck making an illegal turn in San Francisco), I took the screen off and continue to use it as a directory server and public webserver. It even handilly survived a blizzard of traffic from a recent digg.com article!
I have clients who are still using the original iPod (4-5 years old), with no problems.
I have the iPod 3, which was a new design: no problems in 3 years.
I bought the first version of the entirely new PowerMac G5: 2 years, no problems.
I set up an architectual office with the new iMac G5, an entirely new design: 1 year, no problems at all.
Are completely new designs likely to have rougher edges? That's the case most consumer products, from cars to software. But I'll have to call bullshit on your insinuation that Apple's new designs are greatly problematic and should be avoided. That's simply not the case.
You can't give me a grade because I already dropped your class : P
In any event, your overextended metaphor is not only lacking in insight, but also unnecessarily sensationalist.
Enslaved Africans weren't fed cotton.
Also, slavery and agricultural machines are hardly similar. One is a human pressed into servitude and stripped of opportunity, respect and dignity under an immoral system that treated fellow humans as animals; the other is a tool.
WTF - I don't know why you're masturbating to the British, and what that has to do with the price of tea in China (or ethanol), but you're scaring the children.
Reading your related postings reveals you to be an advocate of raping the land for our present day amusement and quick profiteering. You are the majority on the front, but I disagree in the wisdom of that, and I try to live according to my own values.
I'm not really interested in whatever further you have to say.
Failure can be relative.
If suddenly out of left field, RC Cola came out with a product that grabbed 80% marketshare in the cola market, that fact that Coke & Pepsi were still selling some cola would not be good news for them.
Just 3-4 years ago, Apple was disregarded as a distant third player in the media category, with Microsoft poised to dominate audio in the unquestioned way they dominate desktop PC OS and Office app markets. Microsoft conspired with media labels to roll out exclusive, WMA locked down media and devices that would sap every penny possible from idiot consumers.
Suddenly Apple deliverd a product that kicked WMA's ass, destroyed the WMA stranglehold online music market, and syphoned off 80% of the player and content business. Apple not only took over sales, but changed the course for How Media Will Be Sold.
To suggest that since WMA subscriptions are still being sold, the "subscription" model is somehow not a failure is pretty disingenuous.
I am able to make an observation without passing a value judgement.
And you are wrong about me; I am part of that prosperous middle class. My parents were lower middle class, and their parents and grandparents toiled under the rich of a century ago. I'm not vilifying prosperity, I'm pointing out related baggage that comes with a me-first society.
I made the observation that the small wealthy class that ruled the world a century (or less) ago at least carried enough guilt to throw some of their obscene wealth downhill. Today's upwardly mobile middle class is not far obscenely wealthier than all the people around them however. We are all pretty much competing on a far more equal level. One result is that we mostly focus on entertaining and enritching ourselves.
With our self-consumed society, it's easy to wish for social benefits, health care, effective transportation and the like, but Americans (with much of the rest of the world following) are pursueing an agenda of "screw you, I'm only paying for my private healthcare, I'm driving an unnecessary huge vehicle 30 miles to work, and I'm living in the largest space I can afford to own."
You sound far to arrogant and privelaged to be calling yourself a member of the "despicable masses," so I think you are the judgemental hypocrite here.
So if I fill a balloon with Helium, ...the Helium will seep out the top, and air will rush in from the open bottom to reinflate it?
carefully poke a hole in the top (in a way that doesn't destroy the balloon)
and release the bottom opening (without tieing it shut)
I would expect that not to be the case.
Slave economy?
America has a prospering middle class, far more so than any other time I can think of in history. The USA is so bereft of a "lower class" we import illegal aliens and export menial tech jobs to India. The problem with prosperity is that everyone is hyper-consuming - more land for cheaper middle class housing and surrounding services.
It's not slavery that's destroying America, it's an overabundance of cheap goods and newfound wealth in search of status. When you have a small rich class self aggrandizing themselves, you end up with museums and libraries and hospitals and for the poor, adorned with the names of rich benefactors. When the majority of the country is well off and self aggrandizing, you end up with a nation of sprawling suburbs with pools and an SUV for every driver in the household. The "new rich" never have any class, and don't care too much about the poor around them.
Globalization is providing America with an outsourced service industry, agriculture and manufacturing workforce, and clearly there are problems related to the disparity of wealth and prosperity. I doubt using such a loaded word as "slavery" brings anything to the table but rash emotionalism.
People in the US and outside need to have a reason to show care and concern for their fellow humans. Until that happens, self interest will destroy us all, just not in any sort of fair, proportional way.
A quick Google search will confirm that you're not the only one who's thought of burning alcohol as a fuel.
Replacing oil with alcohol would not solve our problems.
Sure, it would invest in agriculture rather than exploiting technology to find, extract and refine crude oil. But It would replace the known problems associated with enriching arab states with a history of bad civil rights, with some unknown problems related to a huge mega-farm raising a monoculture crop. Pesticides, GMO, soil depletion are issues we know would be involved, but what else is involved with monobreed farming on that scale?
There's also the problem that American bio-energy fuel production could only generate a 10th of the fuel supply that the USA currently uses - and that's only gasoline. There are lots of products we get from crude oil that we can't press out of biomass: think about plastics, asphalt, lubricants.
Then there's the issue of what we're fueling in the first place: the realized dream of cheap fuel for vehicle freedom has resulted in a transportation engineering crisis that requires moving around and storing enormous cars rather than people. That creates sprawl that eats up farmland so we can have a parking lot around WalMart and sprawling acres of land devoted to roadways, driveways and freeways to link far flung suburban housing developments and equally sprawling office parks, and the previously mentioned WalMarts. Not to mention vehicle's polluting of the the environment.
And yes you can drink alcohol, but not the 85% Ethanol/15% Gasoline mix we create for cars. It also is only about 30% cleaner than burning raw gasoline, so you might not want to light up indoors. It's also significantly more expensive, even if you ignore the farming subsidies that artificially cheapen it.
Sometimes the simplest solution is also the least well thought out.
I would suggest determining the real problems before offering a solution. A nation designed around cars instead of people is definitely part of the problem, and alternative fuel doesn't solve that particular problem at all.
Pay per use is a great way to make money, but customers don't like it. Subscriptions paying for necessary utilities are tolerated, but entertainment subscriptions are a hard sell, unless they provide high value vs. the cost. Pop music does not qualify as a service people are willing to pay/minute for, rather than just carry around their CDs or their iPod.
... continue downloading..." = sucks.
I'd much rather pay a known cost upfront for something than "subscribe" to yet another ongoing cost. Does the rest of the world agree? Consider:
Subscriptions that work:
- Cable/Sat TV works because it offers things you simply can't get elsewhere; make those things available on DVD, and notice how people start collecting DVDs of the few shows they watch, and abandon 150 channels of nothing on. Users who want regional/sports/news content you can't get without a subscription may hang on to their cable.
- Magazines, Newspapers & other periodicals work because they offer a stream of new content you can't get elsewhere. These markets are being eaten alive by the availability of content on the open Internet however. MacWorld used to be a monthly book, now its a pretty skimpy magazine.
Subscriptions that failed miserably:
- Nobody's paying for Microsoft's WMA, now that there is iTunes and real audio CDs left (and not WMA-only CDs, as was the plan).
- Subscription software has been an extremely hard sell, despite Misrosoft's attempts at converting Windows and Office to subscription style licensing). Online games like WoW are selling subscriptions because they offer content and play otherwise unavailable elsewhere. That's why Blizzard guards its client so well. If you could plug into open "worlds" of entertainment, Blizard's game would die quickly.
- Pay per use subscriptions to Internet access were steamrolled by competition from fixed cost, all you can eat plans as soon as they became available.
So basically, I'd say that in order to sell a subscription with wide market appeal, you have to have exclusive, compelling content not generally available in any other form, and you have to actually get something, not just temporary access to it.
Pop music DOES NOT fit this model, and niche markets for audio content are not going to be made available for the cell phone market. Beyond the failure of the subscription model, who the heck is going to want to listen to radio on a cell phone? And who will want to continue to pay for it, particularly if they are billed even more for using it regularly?
And while service cutouts are a minor irritation when trying to have a conversation, dropouts and service unavailability are serious problems for people trying to listen to music live; waiting to download music using existing (SLOW) data services would be equally problematic. "Hey I want to listen to that song... look up... download....
I don't think the significance of the win of iTMS over WMA has been absorbed by the music industry, from the labels to the would be distributors (cell phone providers). People overwhelmingly want to buy things they "own," and not to pay for the privelage to listen for a period of time.
Apple's win with the iPod came from offering a product that allowed users unfettered use of the music they already had (you don't pay a per miniute fee for having your iPod on), an easy path to get new music at a "known cost," and additionally, access to online music via iTMS at fixed, "known" costs. You aren't penalized for listening to an iPod for a longer time (per minute fees), or over a period of time (per month fees). That encourages iPod use, and makes it more rewarding as you use it more.
WMA and pay-per-listen cell phone plans ding you the more you use them, discouraging regular use. Guess why they aren't catching on?
Motorola, after delivering a poor iPod bundled in an unimpressive phone, now thinks they can turn the system upside down and shake money from their (potential) userbase by charging them per use.