But let's put this in perspective: when ITunes first launched, you could authorize 5 computers to play their DRM protected files. Then Apple unilaterally changed this to only 3 authorized computers.
If anything's put into perspective by that part, it's your comment. The limit was originally 3, but it was later on raised to 5, which is also the current limit for DRM'd iTunes content. Please check your facts.
With Exposé, hitting "F10" does exactly what you want- it just shows the windows belonging to the current application. Hitting "tab" cycles to the next application, and so on. It's kind of hard to explain, but once you see it/use it, it quickly becomes an important part of your computer use style.
Agreed. I was praising the same feature a few posts earlier (I use it on a daily basis at home) and hoping a similar functionality would be available in Windows.
But lots of apps can have multiple child windows. If I had a way to quickly make all those windows visible simultaneously for picking the one I need, my days at work would be much more pleasant.
It's still missing the feature I use the most in Exposé: possibility to show the windows from the active application only. In other words, I don't have to look for a certain Terminal window, for example, amongst all open windows, but just amongst the other Terminal ones. And should I run into a "oh, shoot. I activated the mode with a wrong app active" situation, I can just hit tab or shift+tab to switch to the next or previous app and display the windows from that app only.
I couldn't agree more. My work computer is a XP/Vista dualboot, and the amount of confirmation prompts I'm facing when doing testing in Vista is beyond ridiculous. It's definitely not a good sign when you're about to do something trivial such as copying a file, and right before committing the operation you think "oh shit, here we go again" and prepare for a flood of confirmation prompts (one would think that a single prompt was sufficient, but that's not the case much too often). The idea behind UAC is great (although definitely not an MS idea originally), but the current implementation leaves me to wonder who on earth approved it for production and what is he/she getting paid for?
As a bonus, the OO experience is exactly the same on the Mac. MS office operates differently on the PC than it does on the Mac. This from a company that tries to force developers into the same "windows user experience" model.
I find it rather strange that you call the OOo experience being exactly the same on PC and Mac a bonus, as at least I can't stand software that doesn't adhere to platform conventions and guidelines at all. Although I use OOo on Linux and Windows on a PC, on Mac I use MS Office and NeoOffice (basically what the official OOo on Mac should be), as I can't stand the X11-based OOo for Mac. Having to launch the X11 environment in order to use OOo I could stand, but not the fact that it behaves completely differently than other apps regarding keyboard shortcuts (using ctrl instead of cmd). I can easily switch between systems so that when I sit in front of a Mac, I automatically use Mac keyboard shortcuts, and similarly PC keyboard shortcuts when I'm in front of a PC, but having to switch between keyboard shortcut paradigms between applications on the same platform is intolerable and highly unusable. So until they get OOo for Mac to behave like a native Mac application, I will be sticking to MS Office and NeoOffice on the Mac.
Heck, the first few versions of Mac OS X were just Apple trying to fix a lot of the stuff they broke since the transition from Mac OS 9... the Finder, print spooler, the ungodly slowness, a million and a half bugs in Classic.. I've been a Mac user regularly since 8.6, and I stuck with them (painfully) all the way through 10.2. When 10.3 was ready, I had enough of paying Apple $199 a year (to upgrade my 3 Apple computers) every single year to get a new version of the OS that would suck slightly less and not lock me out of installing stuff I need like patches to 3rd party software or printer drivers that required specific versions of OS X or required an expensive new Mac to not run dog slow because my completely unupgradeable iMac didn't have enough VRAM to take advantage of Quartz Extreme. I switched to Windows for good and haven't looked back.
You sure jumped ship a little too early, for 10.3 was a major improvement when it comes to the overall speed and there were also great features such as Exposé. I can understand how you were disappointed with OS X 10.0 through 10.2, as my first Mac was running 10.3, and then when I got to use 10.2. on approximately similar hardware (in fact, the 10.2 machine even had more RAM), it was running dog slow. The difference was remarkable. Fortunately I got to upgrade the 10.2 machine to 10.4, which brought the thing back into life (800MHz G4 iMAc with 768 megs or RAM). What comes to my 10.3 machine, it sure didn't need any new hardware when going from 10.3 to 10.4 (neither did the 10.2 one), but the upgrade felt as though I'd bought some new hardware as well. The speed improvement wasn't as immense as between 10.2 and 10.3, but it was noticeable still.
What comes to the licensing prices you mention, Windows does indeed offer upgrade prices, but according to a brief check on the price list of one of Finland's largest retailers, the upgrade license to XP Home already costs more than a full retail box of OS X, and with the XP Pro upgrade license cost you can get two full retail boxes of OS X, but as Apple offers the family pack option, any home user with two or more Macs should get the family pack as it's already cheaper that way. At least I don't have anything against having to buy a full license (i.e. no restrictions applied) instead of an upgrade license, if the full license is already reasonably priced. Regarding multi-license discounts, I don't think any individuals have got them, as to my knowledge they are aimed at businesses. Do correct me if I'm wrong about this.
When talking about choice, no one's preventing you from running Windows or Linux on your Intel Mac, but if I try to install OS X on my PC, I don't get to do that legally. Your "Mac users are communists" rants, on the other hand, are almost too stupid to comment on. I'm a right-wing guy, and I definitely value control over my own property, so I do like running an OS that doesn't have activation components telling me when I've installed it too many times. I also value getting some value for my money, which is why I'm not upgrading my XP Pro machine to Vista. Having tried the beta2 and RC1, there haven't been any new features I wouldn't have been using on Tiger for 1,5 years already, and when considering the latest EULA changes restricting the transferability of also the full licenses, I can't really find any justification for spending the amount money they're asking for it (assuming that there won't be any remarkable price drops compared to XP licenses). And in the case that hasn't become evident yet, I do have also a Windows machine at home (as well as a Linux box as a file server), so I don't have to desperately try to find reasons to use a Mac instead of my Windows machine. If something's more pleasant to do on a Windows box, I'll do it there. However, judging from the amount of use that box has got during the last 1,5 years, it seems I could easily do without it.
At least Microsoft has always provided service packs for free, unlike Apple, who release a point upgrade to Mac OS X (basically a service pack) every year or so and charge $130 a pop for it, no upgrader's discount, either! And forget about forgoing an upgrade to the latest OS X point release unless you want to forfeit being able to upgrade your other software, printer drivers, etc.
Is it now Apple's fault that Microsoft has a dog slow release cycle? What comes to service packs of Windows, they don't introduce new actual features that often (the Security Center of SP2 makes an exception, though), while the new OS X cats do. And if you take a look at the version numbers, Windows 2000 is NT 5.0, while Windows XP is NT 5.1, and that upgrade did indeed cost similarly as upgrade from OS X 10.3 Panther to OS X 10.4 Tiger. And guess for which one you can get a reasonably priced family pack for updating up to 5 computers in the same household? Maybe Apple should hide the version numbers better so we'd get rid of there "oh that's a service pack they charge for" posts. Or maybe Microsoft should display the actual version number more clearly.
I think the closest OS X equivalents to Windows service packs are the minor 10.X.Y releases, which are free of charge similarly as the service packs of Windows.
Example, if I have several IM windows open, and I want to drag/drop a file to one of them, how do I differentiate?
That's where the application windows mode comes handy. For example, start drag&drop, press F9 (the default button for the all windows mode), spot an IM window, take the mouse pointer above one and press F10 to switch to Exposé for application windows, where only the windows of the selected application are shown all at the same time. In that mode you can usually read the text in the windows sufficiently enough or identify the correct window based on avatars. Needless to say, this isn't 100% foolproof either, but most often it does the trick.
As I mentioned before, at work I am a Windows user, and I've lost the count of how many times I've wished that there was Exposé or something similar available in Windows as well. Especially the application windows mode would make my life much easier. So naturally I'm disappointed at what Microsoft did with Flip3D. They had all the possibilities to catch up with Exposé or go beyond it, but they chose to do a fancy tech demo instead.
In Windows, start your drag & drop, then either Alt-Tab to the destination window, or hover the cursor over the appropriate Taskbar button until the windows raises to the front.
This behaviour has been present since Windows 95.
Correct, but with lots of windows open it can take some scrolling with alt+tab, and in a crowded taskbar there might be only the icon visible for the window, so it is not always easy to tell whether it's the correct one. Of course you can go through those windows one at a time, but that does take more time than spotting the right one straight away. In addition, you need to have the correct folder open already, as Windows Explorer doesn't seem to support spring-loaded folders (or I just can't find the correct setting), but that's a Finder feature, not an Exposé one. My original point was that Exposé is useful not only for finding windows, but you can use it for fast drag & drop operations as well. It is true indeed that you can mostly achieve the same end result in Windows as well, but I personally find the drag & drop with Exposé faster and more convenient. YMMV.
Also, Exposé is also useful if I need to see both windows at once, like if I'm typing something based on something I'm reading (summarizing news articles in my case) or if I need to compare 2 or more images for some reason.
Good point. There's also one great Exposé feature which is often overlooked, and that is drag & drop support. Try this: start dragging a file from e.g. desktop, call Exposé while dragging, locate the target window and hover the file above that window for a moment, and Exposé brings that window forward. Now you can either drop the file there or keep on browsing elsewhere with the help of spring-loaded folders.
What comes to Flip3D, I'm a Windows user at work, and I was looking forward to it being a somewhat decent Exposé clone, as that functionality (especially the application windows one) would come really handy almost every day. Was I satisfied with what I saw when beta2 and RC1 came out? Hell no, it's only alt+tab with fancier appearance. If they couldn't do both usability improvements and bells & whistles, I sure wish they'd chosen usability improvements instead.
An interesting point is that the base 17-inch model no longer comes with an Apple Remote by default, you have to cough up another $29 to get that bit of Apple goodness.
The other 17" model does come with the remote, and that's the one that used to be the base model (it has an ATI X1600). The base model you're referring to now is the stripped-down model (Intel GMA950) that was previously sold only in the Apple Store for Education, and it didn't come with a remote back then either. So nothing has been done to the lineup remote-wise, it is just that the stripped-down model is now available to everyone instead of just students.
And can you point to an example where a MS product has been not "fully" working because it is running on a "lower" version?
On XP Home you can create only limited users or administrators, i.e. there's no possibility to promote a limited user to the Power Users group (like there is on XP Pro) with more rights, but still not full access to the system such as rights required for driver installations. So let's say your less than competent family members want to use a piece of software or play a game which due to bad design wants write access to Program Files (not too uncommon, sadly). With XP Home you need to give them full admin rights unless you completely prevent them from using the software/game in question. The first option starts a countdown to serious system fsck-up, the latter one causes your family to be mad at you. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
The publishers do everything in their power to piss off their once faithful customers, what do they really expect? It is much easier and safer for me to torrent a new album and burn it to a CD - not that, as said, I can find that much of value anymore. If I did, and I had some EASY SURE-PROOF way of knowing that it didn't contain any DRM, I'd much rather be buying it.
Amen to this, for this sounds extremely familiar with my situation. I, too, used to buy lots of records earlier, but first came the crippled (some say "copy-protected") non-standard CDs, and then came the new Finnish copyright law. With the former case I had to leave some records I would've otherwise bought to the store shelf as none of my equipment was 100% guaranteed to play them, and with the latter case I stopped buying records from all companies that signed a IFPI petition demanding the law to be accepted regardless of its known flaws.
So basically the industry managed to alienate yet another of its loyal (~50 records a year) customers by fighting piracy (yarr, sail the seven ISPs) with desperate attempts that didn't actually harm anyone else but those buying legitimate copies of their stuff. Actually, if a year ago someone had told me that by now I wouldn't have bought a single record for three months, I would've asked what was this apparently good sh*t they're smoking.
Why don't you people just try explaining the problems to your wife and get over it?
It's not always easy. Although I'm a lucky person considering that my gf prefers our Macs and the Linux box before the Windows box (actually, back in the days before we had OS X boxes, I had just upgraded the GPU on our desktop machine but had to go to a meeting before I got the Linux side configured for X. So I said to my gf that to use a graphical desktop she'd have to boot to Windows. Her comment to that is not suitable for printing), there are masses of people reluctant to ditch IE, let alone Windows.
Some of these reluctant persons are my relatives, but I found a good way to get them to use alternative browsers. I just said "fine, just keep on using IE, but it's not going to be me who's cleaning up your computer afterwards. OR you can stop shooting yourself in the foot , switch to Firefox, AND keep the free support". In fact, once they got used to Firefox, they realized it was far better browser anyway, and thanked me for the switch. Sometimes scare tactics do work.
Unfortunately at least Spinefarm when speaking of more or less metal-oriented labels. You can see a local IFPI branch appeal in favor of the new legislation here. Even though the page is in Finnish, you can see the record companies some of signees represent. However, the listing may not be 100% accurate, as for the first time the listing appeared, it included also Sara Nunes in the group of signees, but as she stated on her web site, she does not agree with the appeal and her name was used without her permission. So you can only guess who else have unwillingly "signed" the appeal.
I forgot to mention that the youth organizations of nine different parties, i.e. all the significant parties from left to right were supporting the demonstration on Tuesday and opposing the new legislation. One could easily think that this extremely rare mutual agreement between youth organizations of parties with completely opposing political viewpoints would give the older (read: computer-illiterate) MPs a signal that there is something badly wrong with the new legislation. Did they get the hint? Obviously they didn't. Lobbyers 1 - Common sense & consumer rights 0.
Actually, according to the new legislation, it is a lesser offense to download an illegal than to rip a copy-protected CD-wannabe (as we all know, those lookalike thingies don't conform to the standards) you have paid for. To top all that, we get the restriction on discussing copy protection circumvention techniques. This is a really sad day for all us Finns, but at least we don't give up without a fight. According to all the IRC discussions I've been following, there seems to be a major uproar building up. In the meantime I have stopped buying records from all record companies that were demanding this law to be adopted. And I am far from alone with my boycott. Not to forget the fact that I used to buy rather many records (many times above the average consumption) on a yearly basis.
Previously I have more or less despised P2P networks, but now that the government is giving the signal that it's more OK to download an illegal copy than to apply fair use policy into stuff you've paid for, it seems like I'll have to start getting my music from illegal sources. Sure it's an offense in the new legislation too, but at least I'm not getting fined or jailed for that like I could get if I ripped a copy-protected record to my iPod.
This new legislation clearly shows what you can expect when you have the former Miss Finland as the Minister of Culture (no, I'm not kidding). I hope we can get a decent government in the next election. At least the voting statistics related to this law give us rather good guidelines on who not to vote. Meanwhile, as the government has regulated: Let the warez flow, but don't you dare to circumvent a copy protection, no matter how weak the so-called protection is.
Of course, this is a Finish comment, so their law may work differently. But this idea of "privledges" sure as hell doesn't jive with US law.
We Finns are as dumbfounded as you are. For after all, we've been looking at the recent U.S. copyright laws such as DMCA feeling "WTF, luckily we have things better around here", but it seems like that fun is about to end. Make some room, we're immigrating to the World of Shit, too.
Seems like the record collection of over 500 original titles me and my girlfriend own isn't going to make it to 600 due to music producers being so f-word arrogant and downright stupid to make us not want to buy a record anymore. I was supposed to buy a new record today, but I didn't. I ordered two EFFI (Electronic Frontier Finland, a Finnish equivalent to EFF) t-shirts [effi.org] instead. At least I don't feel like funding this Kyyrä idiot and his mates at all. Seems like I'm down to my existing record collection, live gigs, and my guitar when it comes to enjoying music. Well, I'll have to find out some other use for the three-figure sum of Euros I used to spend on records on a yearly basis. Thanks a lot, IFPI and the rotten part of the parliament. Don't come crying to me when record sales are dropping, for it's your own f-king grave you've dug. Treat me as a respectable customer instead of a gullible part of revenue stream and I might actually buy a record again.
Samsung's AWFUL support for their printers (can't use my 1 year old ML-2250 under Mac OS X, but you can under Windows and Linux, sheesh).
Have you checked whether Samsung's site has OS X drivers available? The retail box of my ML-1710P listed only Windows and Linux as supported environments, but when I checked Samsung's site (prior to the purchase of course), it had 10.3 drivers available for download. Now the printer is hooked up to my Tiger-powered Mini and it works flawlessly. In addition, my iBook as well as Linux and Windows boxes print to it over my home network.
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But let's put this in perspective: when ITunes first launched, you could authorize 5 computers to play their DRM protected files. Then Apple unilaterally changed this to only 3 authorized computers.
If anything's put into perspective by that part, it's your comment. The limit was originally 3, but it was later on raised to 5, which is also the current limit for DRM'd iTunes content. Please check your facts.With Exposé, hitting "F10" does exactly what you want- it just shows the windows belonging to the current application. Hitting "tab" cycles to the next application, and so on. It's kind of hard to explain, but once you see it/use it, it quickly becomes an important part of your computer use style.
Agreed. I was praising the same feature a few posts earlier (I use it on a daily basis at home) and hoping a similar functionality would be available in Windows.
But lots of apps can have multiple child windows. If I had a way to quickly make all those windows visible simultaneously for picking the one I need, my days at work would be much more pleasant.
It's still missing the feature I use the most in Exposé: possibility to show the windows from the active application only. In other words, I don't have to look for a certain Terminal window, for example, amongst all open windows, but just amongst the other Terminal ones. And should I run into a "oh, shoot. I activated the mode with a wrong app active" situation, I can just hit tab or shift+tab to switch to the next or previous app and display the windows from that app only.
I couldn't agree more. My work computer is a XP/Vista dualboot, and the amount of confirmation prompts I'm facing when doing testing in Vista is beyond ridiculous. It's definitely not a good sign when you're about to do something trivial such as copying a file, and right before committing the operation you think "oh shit, here we go again" and prepare for a flood of confirmation prompts (one would think that a single prompt was sufficient, but that's not the case much too often). The idea behind UAC is great (although definitely not an MS idea originally), but the current implementation leaves me to wonder who on earth approved it for production and what is he/she getting paid for?
bash doesn't come on OS X and BSD but /bin/sh works
Umm, it does. It actually became the default shell on OS X 10.3 Panther.
As a bonus, the OO experience is exactly the same on the Mac. MS office operates differently on the PC than it does on the Mac. This from a company that tries to force developers into the same "windows user experience" model.
I find it rather strange that you call the OOo experience being exactly the same on PC and Mac a bonus, as at least I can't stand software that doesn't adhere to platform conventions and guidelines at all. Although I use OOo on Linux and Windows on a PC, on Mac I use MS Office and NeoOffice (basically what the official OOo on Mac should be), as I can't stand the X11-based OOo for Mac. Having to launch the X11 environment in order to use OOo I could stand, but not the fact that it behaves completely differently than other apps regarding keyboard shortcuts (using ctrl instead of cmd). I can easily switch between systems so that when I sit in front of a Mac, I automatically use Mac keyboard shortcuts, and similarly PC keyboard shortcuts when I'm in front of a PC, but having to switch between keyboard shortcut paradigms between applications on the same platform is intolerable and highly unusable. So until they get OOo for Mac to behave like a native Mac application, I will be sticking to MS Office and NeoOffice on the Mac.Heck, the first few versions of Mac OS X were just Apple trying to fix a lot of the stuff they broke since the transition from Mac OS 9... the Finder, print spooler, the ungodly slowness, a million and a half bugs in Classic.. I've been a Mac user regularly since 8.6, and I stuck with them (painfully) all the way through 10.2. When 10.3 was ready, I had enough of paying Apple $199 a year (to upgrade my 3 Apple computers) every single year to get a new version of the OS that would suck slightly less and not lock me out of installing stuff I need like patches to 3rd party software or printer drivers that required specific versions of OS X or required an expensive new Mac to not run dog slow because my completely unupgradeable iMac didn't have enough VRAM to take advantage of Quartz Extreme. I switched to Windows for good and haven't looked back.
You sure jumped ship a little too early, for 10.3 was a major improvement when it comes to the overall speed and there were also great features such as Exposé. I can understand how you were disappointed with OS X 10.0 through 10.2, as my first Mac was running 10.3, and then when I got to use 10.2. on approximately similar hardware (in fact, the 10.2 machine even had more RAM), it was running dog slow. The difference was remarkable. Fortunately I got to upgrade the 10.2 machine to 10.4, which brought the thing back into life (800MHz G4 iMAc with 768 megs or RAM). What comes to my 10.3 machine, it sure didn't need any new hardware when going from 10.3 to 10.4 (neither did the 10.2 one), but the upgrade felt as though I'd bought some new hardware as well. The speed improvement wasn't as immense as between 10.2 and 10.3, but it was noticeable still.
What comes to the licensing prices you mention, Windows does indeed offer upgrade prices, but according to a brief check on the price list of one of Finland's largest retailers, the upgrade license to XP Home already costs more than a full retail box of OS X, and with the XP Pro upgrade license cost you can get two full retail boxes of OS X, but as Apple offers the family pack option, any home user with two or more Macs should get the family pack as it's already cheaper that way. At least I don't have anything against having to buy a full license (i.e. no restrictions applied) instead of an upgrade license, if the full license is already reasonably priced. Regarding multi-license discounts, I don't think any individuals have got them, as to my knowledge they are aimed at businesses. Do correct me if I'm wrong about this.
When talking about choice, no one's preventing you from running Windows or Linux on your Intel Mac, but if I try to install OS X on my PC, I don't get to do that legally. Your "Mac users are communists" rants, on the other hand, are almost too stupid to comment on. I'm a right-wing guy, and I definitely value control over my own property, so I do like running an OS that doesn't have activation components telling me when I've installed it too many times. I also value getting some value for my money, which is why I'm not upgrading my XP Pro machine to Vista. Having tried the beta2 and RC1, there haven't been any new features I wouldn't have been using on Tiger for 1,5 years already, and when considering the latest EULA changes restricting the transferability of also the full licenses, I can't really find any justification for spending the amount money they're asking for it (assuming that there won't be any remarkable price drops compared to XP licenses). And in the case that hasn't become evident yet, I do have also a Windows machine at home (as well as a Linux box as a file server), so I don't have to desperately try to find reasons to use a Mac instead of my Windows machine. If something's more pleasant to do on a Windows box, I'll do it there. However, judging from the amount of use that box has got during the last 1,5 years, it seems I could easily do without it.
At least Microsoft has always provided service packs for free, unlike Apple, who release a point upgrade to Mac OS X (basically a service pack) every year or so and charge $130 a pop for it, no upgrader's discount, either! And forget about forgoing an upgrade to the latest OS X point release unless you want to forfeit being able to upgrade your other software, printer drivers, etc.
Is it now Apple's fault that Microsoft has a dog slow release cycle? What comes to service packs of Windows, they don't introduce new actual features that often (the Security Center of SP2 makes an exception, though), while the new OS X cats do. And if you take a look at the version numbers, Windows 2000 is NT 5.0, while Windows XP is NT 5.1, and that upgrade did indeed cost similarly as upgrade from OS X 10.3 Panther to OS X 10.4 Tiger. And guess for which one you can get a reasonably priced family pack for updating up to 5 computers in the same household? Maybe Apple should hide the version numbers better so we'd get rid of there "oh that's a service pack they charge for" posts. Or maybe Microsoft should display the actual version number more clearly.
I think the closest OS X equivalents to Windows service packs are the minor 10.X.Y releases, which are free of charge similarly as the service packs of Windows.
Example, if I have several IM windows open, and I want to drag/drop a file to one of them, how do I differentiate?
That's where the application windows mode comes handy. For example, start drag&drop, press F9 (the default button for the all windows mode), spot an IM window, take the mouse pointer above one and press F10 to switch to Exposé for application windows, where only the windows of the selected application are shown all at the same time. In that mode you can usually read the text in the windows sufficiently enough or identify the correct window based on avatars. Needless to say, this isn't 100% foolproof either, but most often it does the trick.
As I mentioned before, at work I am a Windows user, and I've lost the count of how many times I've wished that there was Exposé or something similar available in Windows as well. Especially the application windows mode would make my life much easier. So naturally I'm disappointed at what Microsoft did with Flip3D. They had all the possibilities to catch up with Exposé or go beyond it, but they chose to do a fancy tech demo instead.
In Windows, start your drag & drop, then either Alt-Tab to the destination window, or hover the cursor over the appropriate Taskbar button until the windows raises to the front. This behaviour has been present since Windows 95.
Correct, but with lots of windows open it can take some scrolling with alt+tab, and in a crowded taskbar there might be only the icon visible for the window, so it is not always easy to tell whether it's the correct one. Of course you can go through those windows one at a time, but that does take more time than spotting the right one straight away. In addition, you need to have the correct folder open already, as Windows Explorer doesn't seem to support spring-loaded folders (or I just can't find the correct setting), but that's a Finder feature, not an Exposé one. My original point was that Exposé is useful not only for finding windows, but you can use it for fast drag & drop operations as well. It is true indeed that you can mostly achieve the same end result in Windows as well, but I personally find the drag & drop with Exposé faster and more convenient. YMMV.
Also, Exposé is also useful if I need to see both windows at once, like if I'm typing something based on something I'm reading (summarizing news articles in my case) or if I need to compare 2 or more images for some reason.
Good point. There's also one great Exposé feature which is often overlooked, and that is drag & drop support. Try this: start dragging a file from e.g. desktop, call Exposé while dragging, locate the target window and hover the file above that window for a moment, and Exposé brings that window forward. Now you can either drop the file there or keep on browsing elsewhere with the help of spring-loaded folders.
What comes to Flip3D, I'm a Windows user at work, and I was looking forward to it being a somewhat decent Exposé clone, as that functionality (especially the application windows one) would come really handy almost every day. Was I satisfied with what I saw when beta2 and RC1 came out? Hell no, it's only alt+tab with fancier appearance. If they couldn't do both usability improvements and bells & whistles, I sure wish they'd chosen usability improvements instead.
The other 17" model does come with the remote, and that's the one that used to be the base model (it has an ATI X1600). The base model you're referring to now is the stripped-down model (Intel GMA950) that was previously sold only in the Apple Store for Education, and it didn't come with a remote back then either. So nothing has been done to the lineup remote-wise, it is just that the stripped-down model is now available to everyone instead of just students.
And can you point to an example where a MS product has been not "fully" working because it is running on a "lower" version?
On XP Home you can create only limited users or administrators, i.e. there's no possibility to promote a limited user to the Power Users group (like there is on XP Pro) with more rights, but still not full access to the system such as rights required for driver installations. So let's say your less than competent family members want to use a piece of software or play a game which due to bad design wants write access to Program Files (not too uncommon, sadly). With XP Home you need to give them full admin rights unless you completely prevent them from using the software/game in question. The first option starts a countdown to serious system fsck-up, the latter one causes your family to be mad at you. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
That sounds perfectly reasonable with me being a Finn. For after all, 'EI' is Finnish for 'NO', and that's what I say to this "browser" all the time.
The publishers do everything in their power to piss off their once faithful customers, what do they really expect? It is much easier and safer for me to torrent a new album and burn it to a CD - not that, as said, I can find that much of value anymore. If I did, and I had some EASY SURE-PROOF way of knowing that it didn't contain any DRM, I'd much rather be buying it.
Amen to this, for this sounds extremely familiar with my situation. I, too, used to buy lots of records earlier, but first came the crippled (some say "copy-protected") non-standard CDs, and then came the new Finnish copyright law. With the former case I had to leave some records I would've otherwise bought to the store shelf as none of my equipment was 100% guaranteed to play them, and with the latter case I stopped buying records from all companies that signed a IFPI petition demanding the law to be accepted regardless of its known flaws.
So basically the industry managed to alienate yet another of its loyal (~50 records a year) customers by fighting piracy (yarr, sail the seven ISPs) with desperate attempts that didn't actually harm anyone else but those buying legitimate copies of their stuff. Actually, if a year ago someone had told me that by now I wouldn't have bought a single record for three months, I would've asked what was this apparently good sh*t they're smoking.
Try OS X for a while and you'll see that Microsoft still has a long way to go regarding HCI.
It's not always easy. Although I'm a lucky person considering that my gf prefers our Macs and the Linux box before the Windows box (actually, back in the days before we had OS X boxes, I had just upgraded the GPU on our desktop machine but had to go to a meeting before I got the Linux side configured for X. So I said to my gf that to use a graphical desktop she'd have to boot to Windows. Her comment to that is not suitable for printing), there are masses of people reluctant to ditch IE, let alone Windows.
Some of these reluctant persons are my relatives, but I found a good way to get them to use alternative browsers. I just said "fine, just keep on using IE, but it's not going to be me who's cleaning up your computer afterwards. OR you can stop shooting yourself in the foot , switch to Firefox, AND keep the free support". In fact, once they got used to Firefox, they realized it was far better browser anyway, and thanked me for the switch. Sometimes scare tactics do work.
Unfortunately at least Spinefarm when speaking of more or less metal-oriented labels. You can see a local IFPI branch appeal in favor of the new legislation here. Even though the page is in Finnish, you can see the record companies some of signees represent. However, the listing may not be 100% accurate, as for the first time the listing appeared, it included also Sara Nunes in the group of signees, but as she stated on her web site, she does not agree with the appeal and her name was used without her permission. So you can only guess who else have unwillingly "signed" the appeal.
I forgot to mention that the youth organizations of nine different parties, i.e. all the significant parties from left to right were supporting the demonstration on Tuesday and opposing the new legislation. One could easily think that this extremely rare mutual agreement between youth organizations of parties with completely opposing political viewpoints would give the older (read: computer-illiterate) MPs a signal that there is something badly wrong with the new legislation. Did they get the hint? Obviously they didn't. Lobbyers 1 - Common sense & consumer rights 0.
Actually, according to the new legislation, it is a lesser offense to download an illegal than to rip a copy-protected CD-wannabe (as we all know, those lookalike thingies don't conform to the standards) you have paid for. To top all that, we get the restriction on discussing copy protection circumvention techniques. This is a really sad day for all us Finns, but at least we don't give up without a fight. According to all the IRC discussions I've been following, there seems to be a major uproar building up. In the meantime I have stopped buying records from all record companies that were demanding this law to be adopted. And I am far from alone with my boycott. Not to forget the fact that I used to buy rather many records (many times above the average consumption) on a yearly basis.
Previously I have more or less despised P2P networks, but now that the government is giving the signal that it's more OK to download an illegal copy than to apply fair use policy into stuff you've paid for, it seems like I'll have to start getting my music from illegal sources. Sure it's an offense in the new legislation too, but at least I'm not getting fined or jailed for that like I could get if I ripped a copy-protected record to my iPod.
This new legislation clearly shows what you can expect when you have the former Miss Finland as the Minister of Culture (no, I'm not kidding). I hope we can get a decent government in the next election. At least the voting statistics related to this law give us rather good guidelines on who not to vote. Meanwhile, as the government has regulated: Let the warez flow, but don't you dare to circumvent a copy protection, no matter how weak the so-called protection is.
Of course, this is a Finish comment, so their law may work differently. But this idea of "privledges" sure as hell doesn't jive with US law.
We Finns are as dumbfounded as you are. For after all, we've been looking at the recent U.S. copyright laws such as DMCA feeling "WTF, luckily we have things better around here", but it seems like that fun is about to end. Make some room, we're immigrating to the World of Shit, too.
Seems like the record collection of over 500 original titles me and my girlfriend own isn't going to make it to 600 due to music producers being so f-word arrogant and downright stupid to make us not want to buy a record anymore. I was supposed to buy a new record today, but I didn't. I ordered two EFFI (Electronic Frontier Finland, a Finnish equivalent to EFF) t-shirts [effi.org] instead. At least I don't feel like funding this Kyyrä idiot and his mates at all. Seems like I'm down to my existing record collection, live gigs, and my guitar when it comes to enjoying music. Well, I'll have to find out some other use for the three-figure sum of Euros I used to spend on records on a yearly basis. Thanks a lot, IFPI and the rotten part of the parliament. Don't come crying to me when record sales are dropping, for it's your own f-king grave you've dug. Treat me as a respectable customer instead of a gullible part of revenue stream and I might actually buy a record again.
Of course, the lawyers would need to clean up the language quite a bit, but you get the gist.
Lawyers to produce clean and comprehensible language? Wake me up when it snows in Hell.
Samsung's AWFUL support for their printers (can't use my 1 year old ML-2250 under Mac OS X, but you can under Windows and Linux, sheesh).
Have you checked whether Samsung's site has OS X drivers available? The retail box of my ML-1710P listed only Windows and Linux as supported environments, but when I checked Samsung's site (prior to the purchase of course), it had 10.3 drivers available for download. Now the printer is hooked up to my Tiger-powered Mini and it works flawlessly. In addition, my iBook as well as Linux and Windows boxes print to it over my home network.