[blockquote]Mice are significantly different than humans: for example, a 5 ft/lbs blow to the chest isn't much to a human, but it's death to a mouse.[/blockquote] Wasn't this the primary conclusion Jeffrey Dahmer reached his his PhD thesis entitled "I like hurting animals"?
Good, than they can go bankrupt. At least 80% of the iPod and iTV sales will be coming from PC consumers, they control Apple now.
So, in your mind, this is what will happen when people are deciding whether they want to upgrade to Vista:
Potential Upgrader: Hmm... this new Windows Vista sure is getting a lot of hype in the press. Bill Gates was on The Daily Show and he said I should buy it. Bill Gates sure is smart. I better do what he says. <p> *PU goes to the local Best Buy and encounters Best Buy Employee* <p> PU: Hi there, BBE. Bill Gates told me I should upgrade to Vista. What do you think?<br> BBE: Vista is absolutely amazing. It's secure, fast, and pretty. I recommend everyone upgrade to Vista!! There is a problem though... Do you have an iPod?<br> PU: Of course I do. What do you think I am? Some kind of loser?<br> BBE: Unfortunately, iPods don't work with Vista right now.<br> PU: Hmm, that's not good.<br> BBE: But don't worry! I can turn that frown upside down! Why don't you pick up that >$100 box of software and accompany me to our super MP3 department. I'm sure we'll find a nice alternative to the iPod.<br> PU: BBE, you're my hero!
That's interesting, because in my mind, it goes more like this:
BBE: But don't worry! I can turn that frown upside down! Why don't you pick up that >$100 box of software and accompany me to our super MP3 department. I'm sure we'll find a nice alternative to the iPod.<br> PU: Uh, hold your horses there, cowboy. I just spent $200 on an iPod and another $50 on songs from the iTunes Store. Now you're telling me I have to buy a new MP3 player and then find all of those songs again? This >$100 upgrade just turned into a >$300 upgrade. <br> BBE: Actually, you'll probably want to upgrade your video card too -- better tack another $200 on to that total.<br> PU: No thanks, I think I'll stick with XP.
Hell, the company runs Intel. The think different campaign has passed as they are owned by Intel now.
You might want to double-check your sources on that one. I don't think Intel owns Apple.
PC users will never buy OSX (period), they do not want to pay a luxury tax for a system that they can do less with.
"Can do less with"? Wow. I never thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right. There are so many things I can't do with my Mac. I can't have a meaningful conversation with it, toss the frisbee around, wear it as a jacket, or use it to trim my nosehair. Excuse me while I go throw it in the trash.
Please. Macs can do the same things Windows & Linux PCs can. Sure, there are some applications that are better/actually existent on one platform or another, but for most users they all accomplish the same thing: mail, web, photos, word processing. Grow a real argument.
If I was Apple I would just switch to selling nice PC boxes with Vista (or Linux) and can OSX.
I'm sure when Jobs retires you'll be first on the shareholders' list.
I've read that "Repair Permissions" is there because of interactions between the OS 9 (i.e., Classic) environment and OS X. The argument goes like this: OS 9 doesn't respect Unix file permissions and sometimes it would modify a file and set them to 777. Repair Permissions exists to correct this kind of error. If you run Classic, you may find it resolves some issues. If you don't, it's probably just a placebo.
I hate this kind of reply because it boils down to my anecdotal evidence versus yours, but I routinely have about 10 apps open at once and I don't experience much in the way of slow down. This is on a 667 G4 with 1 GB of RAM. The one thing I've noticed is that OS X is more RAM-hungry than Windows or Linux. I know this is hardly the solution most people want to hear after they've already paid a (ever-diminishing) premium for their Mac, but maybe you should advise your clients to install more RAM.
Anyway, Windows isn't exempt from the close != quit phenomenon. I'm typing on a ThinkPad right now and there are 21 icons in my system tray. At least 10 (arguably as many as 15, but some of them are very small applications) of them represent applications for which I have no window open. What's worse, the default behavior for XP is to autohide infrequently used icons, so people won't even know the applications are running.
Adding a "quit" application widget is a pretty bad idea in my opinion. I think you just need to explain the difference to your clients. There are two ways to interact with the application instead of a window belonging to the application: The Dock icon and the application menu. You can quit an application using either.
Are you serious? I think OS X has much more visual feedback than Windows. If a Windows application doesn't have a splash screen, your only visual cue that it's launching it the hourglass, and that disappears the second you switch to another application. In OS X you get the bouncing Dock icon to let you know something's going on. If the icon stops bouncing, there's a black triangle under it, and you haven't seen a window yet, it's time to poke around in the menu. I'll grant you that that's not the most intuitive behavior, but the only application I've seen that does this is XCode. Do you use XCode?
I'm guessing you stopped using OS X before the release of Tiger. When I switched from Windows to OS X, I had trouble adapting to the new method of launching applications. I hated having a cluttered Dock but I still wanted quick access to every app on the machine. My solution was to put the Applications folder in the Dock, creating a crude replacement for Windows' start menu.
(aside: At the time I thought it was crude. After getting used to it, I found it more elegant than the start menu because it got right to the point. In XP, I'm presented with a monster of a "menu" when I click start. It has "pinned" apps on the left and a slew of folders on the right. Sometimes I actually have to hunt for the "All Programs" menu. I know I can change this, but I prefer "pinning" my frequently used applications to the QuickLaunch bar. Between the system tray and QuickLaunch, I've seen computers that only have space for maybe 4 programs in the task bar. Auto-hiding system tray icons and grouping task bar items is not a good solution for me. I've never found the start menu to be anything other than a user interface abortion.)
With the release of Tiger, I've found that I use Spotlight to launch applications that aren't in my Dock more and more. It's basically the same functionality you get from QuickSilver without all the fancy plugins. I know a lot of people can't live without QuickSilver, but I don't mind switching to iTunes when I want to play a new song, so I really don't feel the need.
Good idea. I'm gonna get off my lazy, liberal ass and start laying some damn fiber! I'll start by renting a backhoe so I can dig up my front lawn. Maybe I can save some money on that if my neighbors chip in. Hell, maybe I can get the whole city to pitch in a little bit to buy the fiber in bulk. We'll need some organized way to collect the money. Maybe the city can collect it once per year from every citizen -- that's a good idea. But if I'm gonna do the whole city, I'll need more than 1 backhoe. That means I'll need some qualified backhoe operators. I'll probably need to get some permits to dig up the roads and such too.
Man, this is a lot of work. Maybe instead of giving me the money the city can give it to some large conglomeration of people whose job it is to do this sort of thing. I know there are a few companies out there. Anyway, the government can give them a bunch of money -- probably in the billions -- to build up the infrastructure, and we'll be all set.
I'm so happy you spurred me into action. Things are gonna change! I can feel it!
Seriously though, you must be a conservative. You don't like books and big companies are never wrong.
Deep down, it's only because he's esentually using a glorified dvd player and thinking it's an actual computer. Kind of like linux users, thinking that Linux-HobbyOS Wicked cool version 2.0 will one day be a real desktop OS that someone outside of IT would actually want to use.
Please, the start menu is a total abortion. Here's a list of issues I have with the start menu:
Microsoft Office decides not to use a folder and instead adds 7 items to the root of the menu. Why?
If you have too many programs installed the menu has to make a second column. Then, when you try to use that second column, you accidentally expand a folder in the first column such that it covers the thing you wanted in the second column
Programs sometimes leave their icons there even after being uninstalled
Sometimes it adds new items in alphabetic order and sometimes just throws them at the bottom of the list. I'm constantly right clicking and sorting by name. My parents? Not so much. Their start menu is a hideously unorganized bag of random programs they (or Dell, in its infinite wisdom) installed but never use. Where's Firefox? Oh, silly me, it's third from the bottom of the first column. Right between the icon for Snood and the folder for McAfee Virus Scanner. I should have known.
Ok, I can't think of anymore. I've been using Spotlight to launch apps and it's definitely not perfect. If I type "VLC" the first hit is almost always "VLC.crash.log" instead of the application itself. I have to wait a few seconds for that to come up (thankfully, it inserts itself at the top of the list, so it's not all bad). But you know what? It never gives me a hit for the version of VLC I deleted 2 months ago. It never gives me a folder that expands to cover up other choices. For the most part, it just works.
>I know! I remember when Microsoft Outlook came out in the 90's with that.
Oh really? Do you remember when Outlook came free with every Windows computer? No, Outlook Express doesn't count because it doesn't have the feature you're talking about.
>> Spaces! Seems like the true virtual desktops that everyone has been asking for.
>How innovative!
I'll give you that. Linux has had multiple desktops for quite some time now. Of course, I wouldn't recommend Linux to anyone that doesn't enjoy editing arcane configuration files (I know, I know, it's gotten a lot better since the late '90s, but you still gotta edit those config files from time to time). Windows doesn't do multiple desktops without 3rd party add-ons, so this is the first time many people will be introduced to the concept.
Why all the Mac hate anyway? Can't we all just get along?
It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it would be much more than a gimmicky addition to an Apple branded PVR (assuming they even make one in the first place). I don't think Apple has the wherewithal to design and market a successful game console in an ecosystem that already contains several blood-thirsty, 800-pound gorillas, but they could easily add an "arcade" section to the iTMS for little time-killers like Tetris or Bejeweled. Simple games like that don't need sophisticated, force-feedback controllers. They can be played with a TV (or DVR) remote without much loss of control.
If there was any doubt, MS has already shown that this kind of idea can work with the 360 arcade. It seems as though the only games I hear about for the 360 are X-Box Arcade games like Geometry Wars and the aforementioned Bejeweled.
Of course, the truth is that Apple won't really produce anything like this. Much like the Mac tablet, the cube 2, and the iPhone, people will continue to expect the announcement of the MacDVR at the next big Mac conference only to be disappointed when Jobs' "one more thing" is just another bump to iPod capacity or a CPU upgrade for iMacs. Or maybe I'm just pessimistic.
I think we should amend Godwin's law. From now on, an argument on the Internet is over when one side is compared to either the Nazi's or sheep (or something equivalent), and the side that makes that comparison instantly loses the argument. Am I the only one that feels this way?
< Why is this a problem? I've been living with case-sensitive systems
< for years.
< Never been a problem before.
I've run into issues with a few poorly-coded applications that assume case insensitivity. For example, Big Bang Chess has issues loading textures on a case-sensitive HFS+ filesystem but none a case-insensitive one. So, yes, problems do exist, but they'd quickly go away if Apple forced case-senstivity on its users.
"Unfortunately, iTunes is the only online music store that works with the most popular brand of player (the iPod). This means Apple gets to call the shots."
Not true. In fact, the grandparent of your post mentioned another music store that is 100% iPod compatible:
The word is "cite" and your post is a bit of a strawman. He's saying Sony lied about the capabilities of their previous consoles. For example, the demos for the PS2 looked quite a bit better than any of the actual games. Likewise, the demos for the PS3 will, almost certainly, bear only the faintest resemblance to the actual games. Microsoft did the exact same thing with the 360 and probably the original XBox (I don't remember seeing any demos for that one though so I can't really comment).
Sony has definitely dominated the game console market since the PS1. Nobody's questioning that, so stop trying to defend it.
I hate to get involved in this discussion due to its religious nature and my more-or-less agnostic stance, but what the hell.
Blecch. You mean I have to re-type all the parameter names just because someone can't figure out how to use a modern IDE or an editor with tags support?
You don't actually have to retype all of the parameter names because your IDE will likely auto-complete them for you. XCode will write out the entire method inserting place-holders for the argument values. There's a key combo (which my head can't remember but my fingers can) that will highlight each of the place-holders in sequence so you can insert the actual parameters. This gives you the best of both worlds -- it cuts down on your typing while maintaining code readability.
I mean if you really must spell that out for people, you could always use *gasp* comments.
Of course you could use comments. The only problem is that I've never seen an IDE that will auto-complete a comment for you (OK, Eclipse will help you with Javadoc, but it won't describe the method for you [unless it's a getter/setter... damn it]). Also, the main reason CS professors harp on comments is because so many programmers don't write them. Methods with named parameters don't really give you a choice. You either say what the parameter is or you get an error.
Re:disappointed -- try the java cert exam
on
Java Puzzlers
·
· Score: 1
Err... putting a zero before a number is Java's syntax for octal number entry. I thought it was annoying at first, but then I remembered that I would never, ever use leading zeros.
Anyway, i1 = 123, i0 = octal 12 = 10
123 + 10 = 133
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[blockquote]Mice are significantly different than humans: for example, a 5 ft/lbs blow to the chest isn't much to a human, but it's death to a mouse.[/blockquote] Wasn't this the primary conclusion Jeffrey Dahmer reached his his PhD thesis entitled "I like hurting animals"?
So, in your mind, this is what will happen when people are deciding whether they want to upgrade to Vista:
That's interesting, because in my mind, it goes more like this:
You might want to double-check your sources on that one. I don't think Intel owns Apple.
"Can do less with"? Wow. I never thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right. There are so many things I can't do with my Mac. I can't have a meaningful conversation with it, toss the frisbee around, wear it as a jacket, or use it to trim my nosehair. Excuse me while I go throw it in the trash.Please. Macs can do the same things Windows & Linux PCs can. Sure, there are some applications that are better/actually existent on one platform or another, but for most users they all accomplish the same thing: mail, web, photos, word processing. Grow a real argument.
I'm sure when Jobs retires you'll be first on the shareholders' list.
I've read that "Repair Permissions" is there because of interactions between the OS 9 (i.e., Classic) environment and OS X. The argument goes like this: OS 9 doesn't respect Unix file permissions and sometimes it would modify a file and set them to 777. Repair Permissions exists to correct this kind of error. If you run Classic, you may find it resolves some issues. If you don't, it's probably just a placebo.
I hate this kind of reply because it boils down to my anecdotal evidence versus yours, but I routinely have about 10 apps open at once and I don't experience much in the way of slow down. This is on a 667 G4 with 1 GB of RAM. The one thing I've noticed is that OS X is more RAM-hungry than Windows or Linux. I know this is hardly the solution most people want to hear after they've already paid a (ever-diminishing) premium for their Mac, but maybe you should advise your clients to install more RAM. Anyway, Windows isn't exempt from the close != quit phenomenon. I'm typing on a ThinkPad right now and there are 21 icons in my system tray. At least 10 (arguably as many as 15, but some of them are very small applications) of them represent applications for which I have no window open. What's worse, the default behavior for XP is to autohide infrequently used icons, so people won't even know the applications are running. Adding a "quit" application widget is a pretty bad idea in my opinion. I think you just need to explain the difference to your clients. There are two ways to interact with the application instead of a window belonging to the application: The Dock icon and the application menu. You can quit an application using either.
The word is "apologists", not "apologetics".
Are you serious? I think OS X has much more visual feedback than Windows. If a Windows application doesn't have a splash screen, your only visual cue that it's launching it the hourglass, and that disappears the second you switch to another application. In OS X you get the bouncing Dock icon to let you know something's going on. If the icon stops bouncing, there's a black triangle under it, and you haven't seen a window yet, it's time to poke around in the menu. I'll grant you that that's not the most intuitive behavior, but the only application I've seen that does this is XCode. Do you use XCode?
(aside: At the time I thought it was crude. After getting used to it, I found it more elegant than the start menu because it got right to the point. In XP, I'm presented with a monster of a "menu" when I click start. It has "pinned" apps on the left and a slew of folders on the right. Sometimes I actually have to hunt for the "All Programs" menu. I know I can change this, but I prefer "pinning" my frequently used applications to the QuickLaunch bar. Between the system tray and QuickLaunch, I've seen computers that only have space for maybe 4 programs in the task bar. Auto-hiding system tray icons and grouping task bar items is not a good solution for me. I've never found the start menu to be anything other than a user interface abortion.)
With the release of Tiger, I've found that I use Spotlight to launch applications that aren't in my Dock more and more. It's basically the same functionality you get from QuickSilver without all the fancy plugins. I know a lot of people can't live without QuickSilver, but I don't mind switching to iTunes when I want to play a new song, so I really don't feel the need.
What possible agenda could they have?
I wondered where his anti-NYT vitriol was coming from too. Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh must be endorsing Sony or something.
The parent post reads like something a chat-bot might say. Does it make any sense to anyone?
20x, huh? Any sources?
Good idea. I'm gonna get off my lazy, liberal ass and start laying some damn fiber! I'll start by renting a backhoe so I can dig up my front lawn. Maybe I can save some money on that if my neighbors chip in. Hell, maybe I can get the whole city to pitch in a little bit to buy the fiber in bulk. We'll need some organized way to collect the money. Maybe the city can collect it once per year from every citizen -- that's a good idea. But if I'm gonna do the whole city, I'll need more than 1 backhoe. That means I'll need some qualified backhoe operators. I'll probably need to get some permits to dig up the roads and such too.
Man, this is a lot of work. Maybe instead of giving me the money the city can give it to some large conglomeration of people whose job it is to do this sort of thing. I know there are a few companies out there. Anyway, the government can give them a bunch of money -- probably in the billions -- to build up the infrastructure, and we'll be all set.
I'm so happy you spurred me into action. Things are gonna change! I can feel it!
Seriously though, you must be a conservative. You don't like books and big companies are never wrong.
Please, the start menu is a total abortion. Here's a list of issues I have with the start menu:
Ok, I can't think of anymore. I've been using Spotlight to launch apps and it's definitely not perfect. If I type "VLC" the first hit is almost always "VLC.crash.log" instead of the application itself. I have to wait a few seconds for that to come up (thankfully, it inserts itself at the top of the list, so it's not all bad). But you know what? It never gives me a hit for the version of VLC I deleted 2 months ago. It never gives me a folder that expands to cover up other choices. For the most part, it just works.
>> Moving ToDos into Mail is interesting.
>I know! I remember when Microsoft Outlook came out in the 90's with that.
Oh really? Do you remember when Outlook came free with every Windows computer? No, Outlook Express doesn't count because it doesn't have the feature you're talking about.
>> Spaces! Seems like the true virtual desktops that everyone has been asking for.
>How innovative!
I'll give you that. Linux has had multiple desktops for quite some time now. Of course, I wouldn't recommend Linux to anyone that doesn't enjoy editing arcane configuration files (I know, I know, it's gotten a lot better since the late '90s, but you still gotta edit those config files from time to time). Windows doesn't do multiple desktops without 3rd party add-ons, so this is the first time many people will be introduced to the concept.
Why all the Mac hate anyway? Can't we all just get along?
Got sources for any of this?
It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it would be much more than a gimmicky addition to an Apple branded PVR (assuming they even make one in the first place). I don't think Apple has the wherewithal to design and market a successful game console in an ecosystem that already contains several blood-thirsty, 800-pound gorillas, but they could easily add an "arcade" section to the iTMS for little time-killers like Tetris or Bejeweled. Simple games like that don't need sophisticated, force-feedback controllers. They can be played with a TV (or DVR) remote without much loss of control.
If there was any doubt, MS has already shown that this kind of idea can work with the 360 arcade. It seems as though the only games I hear about for the 360 are X-Box Arcade games like Geometry Wars and the aforementioned Bejeweled.
Of course, the truth is that Apple won't really produce anything like this. Much like the Mac tablet, the cube 2, and the iPhone, people will continue to expect the announcement of the MacDVR at the next big Mac conference only to be disappointed when Jobs' "one more thing" is just another bump to iPod capacity or a CPU upgrade for iMacs. Or maybe I'm just pessimistic.
My 40GB iPod is about half-full. That's 20GB of music, not a single byte of which is protected by any kind of DRM. So, uh, what are you talking about?
For everyone who thinks the parent is too long, here's the executive summary: "I've never used a Mac. Ever."
I think we should amend Godwin's law. From now on, an argument on the Internet is over when one side is compared to either the Nazi's or sheep (or something equivalent), and the side that makes that comparison instantly loses the argument. Am I the only one that feels this way?
<< "UFS is case-sensitive"
< Why is this a problem? I've been living with case-sensitive systems
< for years.
< Never been a problem before.
I've run into issues with a few poorly-coded applications that assume case insensitivity. For example, Big Bang Chess has issues loading textures on a case-sensitive HFS+ filesystem but none a case-insensitive one. So, yes, problems do exist, but they'd quickly go away if Apple forced case-senstivity on its users.
"Unfortunately, iTunes is the only online music store that works with the most popular brand of player (the iPod). This means Apple gets to call the shots."
Not true. In fact, the grandparent of your post mentioned another music store that is 100% iPod compatible:
"Personally I like emusic (www.emusic.com)."
For real, man. Sports are totally lame. Unless they're played with joysticks and shit. Jocks are so mean, amirite?
The word is "cite" and your post is a bit of a strawman. He's saying Sony lied about the capabilities of their previous consoles. For example, the demos for the PS2 looked quite a bit better than any of the actual games. Likewise, the demos for the PS3 will, almost certainly, bear only the faintest resemblance to the actual games. Microsoft did the exact same thing with the 360 and probably the original XBox (I don't remember seeing any demos for that one though so I can't really comment).
Sony has definitely dominated the game console market since the PS1. Nobody's questioning that, so stop trying to defend it.
I hate to get involved in this discussion due to its religious nature and my more-or-less agnostic stance, but what the hell.
Blecch. You mean I have to re-type all the parameter names just because someone can't figure out how to use a modern IDE or an editor with tags support?
You don't actually have to retype all of the parameter names because your IDE will likely auto-complete them for you. XCode will write out the entire method inserting place-holders for the argument values. There's a key combo (which my head can't remember but my fingers can) that will highlight each of the place-holders in sequence so you can insert the actual parameters. This gives you the best of both worlds -- it cuts down on your typing while maintaining code readability.
I mean if you really must spell that out for people, you could always use *gasp* comments.
Of course you could use comments. The only problem is that I've never seen an IDE that will auto-complete a comment for you (OK, Eclipse will help you with Javadoc, but it won't describe the method for you [unless it's a getter/setter... damn it]). Also, the main reason CS professors harp on comments is because so many programmers don't write them. Methods with named parameters don't really give you a choice. You either say what the parameter is or you get an error.
Err... putting a zero before a number is Java's syntax for octal number entry. I thought it was annoying at first, but then I remembered that I would never, ever use leading zeros. Anyway, i1 = 123, i0 = octal 12 = 10 123 + 10 = 133