I thought I heard something about an Apple ][ Mini. Pocket-size, VisiCalc, updated with AirPort and Bluetooth. Low power, ObjBASIC, 80x25 RSS feeds of PodCasts..
This is more like the Apple Human Interface Guidelines than "Aqua". Not to mention, this has none of the wow-factor, gloss, or novelty of Aqua's interface.
The RAZR is crap. It's svelte crap, but crap to be sure.
The UI is needlessly complex, compared to a NOKIA at least. The ringer volume is too low There are too many buttons & too many features The vibrate is too gentle
Bluetooth? Not on a simple phone.. MP3 ringtones? Not on a simple phone.. Camera? Not on a simple phone..
The problem is, to get a phone with few features, you're getting a phone that's ugly, big, and uses less-than-high-end components. It's free, there are plenty of cases & replacement batteries for it, but a crap phone is a crap phone.
Where's that high-end Finnish phone from a few years ago? Ultimately simplistic, and incredibly well-designed. Tone that down to meet the $299 price point, and I'm in!
It's early, but I might as well announce it..
flotsm.com:
Generates 'tokens' akin to MaxiCode based on file content; MP3, PNG, GIF, what have you, colorized/formatted according to file characteristics (file format, bpm, size/resolution, etc)
You can match existing 'tokens' for material you like against a database of potentially similar material.
The 'token' has a sample of the data stored steganographically, so it's playable, viewable, etc.
I am also religious. It's that fact that gives people the idea that he may actually *be* an (if not the) Antichrist.
He fits the profile..
The trouble is, his religion is not the religion of the people. It is the religion of the Rich, which keeps the poor from killing them and taking their jewels.
You sound like far-right-serving talk radio. You also sound like Homer Simpson.
That sort of reaction is what allows any traction on an issue to slip away.. You might think you're offering some kind of clarity, but what you're really doing is pumping liquified margarine under the wheels of action, when you should be delivering sand with prudence.
This woman was the president's former personal attorney. Make a joke out of that.
No, that's just as good as seeing one on display at the Autorama.
We're waiting for flying cars as a replacement for the snarls of modern traffic jams. We need to be able to take our briefcase into sky after a brief taxi around the corner.
We need to fly in formation with the Fellas that used to constitute our carpool.
Until that day comes, no dice. Same joke.
I'll tell you where our flying cars went - to sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, the me and the me, too generations. Left generations X, Y, and Z wondering WTF all those Science books from the 50's were leading up to.
Put the "innovative" interfaces in "Development" "UI Experiment" or "Whistler-type" builds.
The GIMP interface is a nightmare. It's one you can learn to deal with, but if you want to get in there and *DO WORK*, it's best if you get the crap outta the way.
Bad menus are Bad menus.
Unintutive entries ruin workflow. It's not about Photoshop vs Originality, it's about usability. If you want to erect (ha ha, I said erect) some exclusive "We Like the Kludgy GIMP Interface" club and whine about the perceived whining from Semi-Professional graphics people, go ahead. You'll only be disappointed by projects like these, and people like me who will include these sorts of features in their F/OSS distributions..
That'll show Apple! Microsoft is the only company who truly knows how to use gradients and glass effects! Look at how impressive each element is on it's own!
People don't know how to use computers, so the beast way to get them going is to help them focus on each item on its own. That's where the menu bar comes in. Who wants to worry about the last few decades of computer interface design?!
However, have you ever tested the intelligence of a chicken? Wily hunters they are not. They are good at pecking, and thinking about one thing at a time. Usually it's "what do i peck?" or "blink, eye"- then they peck. Then they think "what do I peck?" - then they peck again, or maybe they look in another direction or take a step, then it's back to picking a pecking target.
The system changed so much between Developer Releases that Apps for DR1 would not run on DR2, etc.
Major updates underneath between releases.
HOWEVER - this was when they were fleshing out the base of the OS. New libraries, new coding practices, new releases of major components that were incompatible with prior versions.
You could still coax some NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP apps to run, though. I imagine it's the same. Some Cocoa apps will run, some won't.
Is anything being done for straight ports of old X86 OPENSTEP code? It would be cool as rice to see a handful of the Unique apps (with source - no Lighthouse Suite, I know) running across the board (NS, OS, OSXPB, OSXPPC, OSX86).
I think it's more a matter of NeXT programming practice than anything. If the old version doesn't work, so be it - the old application doesn't need to go along for the ride anyway. Keeps people writing new software, keeps it fresh and in-tune with the theme of the system, & keeps the market alive.
Closed, supported, portable. Wrap any ol' thing around it, just don't ask them to replace it when you 'cat/dev/nastybits' into the iPod control routine.
If a device requires a "fair bit of fiddling" to do what it is supposed to do, it is not the device I want in control of life-sustaining services on a flying coffin.
Jesus or any of Vishnu's other avatars can save you from a lot. But WinCE on a JumboJet?!
Even the Trash-80 allowed use of a semicolon (from 8bit-micro.com):
If you end your PRINT statement with a semicolon, the next PRINT statement (or INPUT statement) will continue on the same line, rather than starting on the next line. e.g. PRINT"HELLO ";:PRINT"THERE" will print the message "HELLO THERE" on a single line.
You can also combine PRINT statements with the semicolon. For example A=3:PRINT"A=";A will print the message "A= 3 ". (There is a space between the equal sign and the 3 as that is where the sign would go if the number were negative.)
Not to mention the use of a comma on the end with the C64 print statement. Way better machine for PRINT hackery, with the graphic characters and colors at your fingertips. Plus, '?' was much quicker to type than 'PRINT'.
I guess it's the difference in experience that creates the partition between generations of games.
Pinball-1976: Non-immersive, physical, mechanical, metal ball/bumpers
1979-1994: Non-immersive, still have to use your imagination to get into the game, pixels/sprites
1995-today: Fully immersive, makes you part of the game in ways never before possible (3-D goggles, halo-headsets, as many polygons in a game as stars in the sky) --
They're all useless bores if the act of manipulating the controls fails to excite the brain.
In my view, we should be training today's game developers in fine motor skills and hand/eye/brain intercommunication.
If your experience halts upon the screen's surface, you need a little coaching.
Turn your attention to the interaction between screen elements (sprites) and their sounds. That's where the gameplay happens.
(You might have to get a real 2600 for this to work properly, but it's easy now, with the 2600 & more available at Wal-Mart & such)
The thing that makes new machines great - even the NES, is the incredibly simplistic graphics on the old systems. Inversely, the thing that makes the older systems *good* in the first place, is how inventively and captivatingly they work within the contraints of a tiny memory space, 2-axis, 1-button controls, and 480 lines of 60Hz video.
What your mind experiences as "gameplay" is a combination of the feedback from your hands/fingers on the control, the visual triggers from that blocky pixel bouncing into/around/over the static area. When the "blocky pixel" becomes a biplane-shaped sprite, and the static area a vaguely "barn-shaped" color area, and you have to use this little stick with one button to manoeuvre the "biplane" through the "barn", you have a Game.
Making the game "Fun" is another challenge altogether. You have a single channel, voltage controlled synthesizer with which to generate happy sounds, mean sounds, ambient sounds, and triumphant sounds. You have the stick with button. You have hardware limits in storage, code execution speed, etc. Line up alll those pieces, and because you had to make sacrifices, each interaction becomes something meaningful.
Because compared to blocks & mud, it's no fun. Why? Because there are too many rules and roadblocks, and paraphernalia. Freeze tag, go-fish, war, jumprope, hopscotch, etc, all have extremely low entry ceiling.
Fun games all have that quality - whether based on the meat-plane or in Cyberspace.
The ability to GET IN AND PLAY is what keeps your play center titillated. Q3 Deathmatch: Prime example. Ms Pacman, Donkey Kong, Mario, Poke(shudder)mon, Kirby, and the Prince in Katamari Damacy all know this.
Slashdot Mirror
They plurted or came clawing through their own Mothers and Grandmothers.
Grandma Jeanne and Grandpa Monroe were just doing what came naturally, as their Grandparents did.
None of them crafted or came up with anything. The whole "God" thing is not to say "He" did it with "His" hands, but that said prior art is "God".
I thought I heard something about an Apple ][ Mini. Pocket-size, VisiCalc, updated with AirPort and Bluetooth. Low power, ObjBASIC, 80x25 RSS feeds of PodCasts..
This is more like the Apple Human Interface Guidelines than "Aqua". Not to mention, this has none of the wow-factor, gloss, or novelty of Aqua's interface.
r ience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/index.htmli delines/HIGuidelines-2.html
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExpe
and
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/mac/HIGu
It's a corner of the box defining Free Software interfaces that recommends the use of braindead icons.
I thought that - I was wrong.
The RAZR is crap. It's svelte crap, but crap to be sure.
The UI is needlessly complex, compared to a NOKIA at least.
The ringer volume is too low
There are too many buttons & too many features
The vibrate is too gentle
Bluetooth? Not on a simple phone..
MP3 ringtones? Not on a simple phone..
Camera? Not on a simple phone..
The problem is, to get a phone with few features, you're getting a phone that's ugly, big, and uses less-than-high-end components. It's free, there are plenty of cases & replacement batteries for it, but a crap phone is a crap phone.
Where's that high-end Finnish phone from a few years ago? Ultimately simplistic, and incredibly well-designed. Tone that down to meet the $299 price point, and I'm in!
It's early, but I might as well announce it.. flotsm.com: Generates 'tokens' akin to MaxiCode based on file content; MP3, PNG, GIF, what have you, colorized/formatted according to file characteristics (file format, bpm, size/resolution, etc) You can match existing 'tokens' for material you like against a database of potentially similar material. The 'token' has a sample of the data stored steganographically, so it's playable, viewable, etc.
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features. aspx/featured_desktop2?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
$679
After $50 Off Instantly!
Only an 80GB HD, but there's the bonus of a 17" LCD..
"pointing out details" using satire is like educating children with sarcasm. They get the satire bit, but completely miss out on the lesson.
It's all anecdotal, my friend. Why add to it when all we really need is some clarity?
I am also religious. It's that fact that gives people the idea that he may actually *be* an (if not the) Antichrist.
He fits the profile..
The trouble is, his religion is not the religion of the people. It is the religion of the Rich, which keeps the poor from killing them and taking their jewels.
You sound like far-right-serving talk radio. You also sound like Homer Simpson.
That sort of reaction is what allows any traction on an issue to slip away.. You might think you're offering some kind of clarity, but what you're really doing is pumping liquified margarine under the wheels of action, when you should be delivering sand with prudence.
This woman was the president's former personal attorney. Make a joke out of that.
No, that's just as good as seeing one on display at the Autorama.
We're waiting for flying cars as a replacement for the snarls of modern traffic jams. We need to be able to take our briefcase into sky after a brief taxi around the corner.
We need to fly in formation with the Fellas that used to constitute our carpool.
Until that day comes, no dice. Same joke.
I'll tell you where our flying cars went - to sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, the me and the me, too generations. Left generations X, Y, and Z wondering WTF all those Science books from the 50's were leading up to.
Put the "innovative" interfaces in "Development" "UI Experiment" or "Whistler-type" builds.
The GIMP interface is a nightmare. It's one you can learn to deal with, but if you want to get in there and *DO WORK*, it's best if you get the crap outta the way.
Bad menus are Bad menus.
Unintutive entries ruin workflow. It's not about Photoshop vs Originality, it's about usability. If you want to erect (ha ha, I said erect) some exclusive "We Like the Kludgy GIMP Interface" club and whine about the perceived whining from Semi-Professional graphics people, go ahead. You'll only be disappointed by projects like these, and people like me who will include these sorts of features in their F/OSS distributions..
That's *GOOD* UI design! Best I've seen yet!
That'll show Apple! Microsoft is the only company who truly knows how to use gradients and glass effects! Look at how impressive each element is on it's own!
People don't know how to use computers, so the beast way to get them going is to help them focus on each item on its own. That's where the menu bar comes in. Who wants to worry about the last few decades of computer interface design?!
Let's slicken it up for crissakes!
Those chickens aren't wild. No chicken is.
However, have you ever tested the intelligence of a chicken? Wily hunters they are not. They are good at pecking, and thinking about one thing at a time. Usually it's "what do i peck?" or "blink, eye"- then they peck. Then they think "what do I peck?" - then they peck again, or maybe they look in another direction or take a step, then it's back to picking a pecking target.
Chicken: Bug? >peckstrutblink
Cat: prey. must. get. low. stalk. and. KILL!!!!
The system changed so much between Developer Releases that Apps for DR1 would not run on DR2, etc.
Major updates underneath between releases.
HOWEVER - this was when they were fleshing out the base of the OS. New libraries, new coding practices, new releases of major components that were incompatible with prior versions.
You could still coax some NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP apps to run, though. I imagine it's the same. Some Cocoa apps will run, some won't.
Is anything being done for straight ports of old X86 OPENSTEP code? It would be cool as rice to see a handful of the Unique apps (with source - no Lighthouse Suite, I know) running across the board (NS, OS, OSXPB, OSXPPC, OSX86).
I think it's more a matter of NeXT programming practice than anything. If the old version doesn't work, so be it - the old application doesn't need to go along for the ride anyway. Keeps people writing new software, keeps it fresh and in-tune with the theme of the system, & keeps the market alive.
All it takes is an Apple Official lib_ipod_io.so
/dev/nastybits' into the iPod control routine.
Closed, supported, portable. Wrap any ol' thing around it, just don't ask them to replace it when you 'cat
What if iTunes 5 is on an encapsulated runtime?
I assumed all the other versions were kind of doing that.
If a device requires a "fair bit of fiddling" to do what it is supposed to do, it is not the device I want in control of life-sustaining services on a flying coffin.
Jesus or any of Vishnu's other avatars can save you from a lot. But WinCE on a JumboJet?!
Mostly because of that. It's not just Anand that uses MySQL primarily. They could use Postgres, but the acronym exists for a reason.
You could have OSXAPP - OS X, Apache, Postgres, [Perl, PHP, Python, $P_Script_Language], but then you'd start wading into WebObjects waters..
Speaking of, where is WebObjects in all of this? Does it factor into the bias? Apple lists the following Database Servers:
* Microsoft SQL Server 2000 8.00.194 (?!)
* MySQL 4.1.10a
* OpenBase 8.0
* Oracle 10g Enterprise Edition
* Oracle 9i Enterprise Edition Sybase ASE 12.5
I know it will run on Windows, but still.. What does this mean?! I don't know!
Even the Trash-80 allowed use of a semicolon (from 8bit-micro.com):
Not to mention the use of a comma on the end with the C64 print statement. Way better machine for PRINT hackery, with the graphic characters and colors at your fingertips. Plus, '?' was much quicker to type than 'PRINT'.
--
Cold busted..
"turboed three cylinder 1.0 litre direct injection petrol engine."
They are both Auto Show "OOoh-inducers". Press tidbits. Just like the model that was named "MP3" with the MP3-capable stereo..
They need a piece of news to keep people interested in PPC Apple products.
Been to Fry's since the announcement? No electricity in the air.. Just a bunch of high-priced, under-equipped machinery.
Those G4 iBooks won't sell themselves, especially not when they are presumed to be the last of the breed. Who wants that?
I guess it's the difference in experience that creates the partition between generations of games.
Pinball-1976: Non-immersive, physical, mechanical, metal ball/bumpers
1979-1994: Non-immersive, still have to use your imagination to get into the game, pixels/sprites
1995-today: Fully immersive, makes you part of the game in ways never before possible (3-D goggles, halo-headsets, as many polygons in a game as stars in the sky)
--
They're all useless bores if the act of manipulating the controls fails to excite the brain.
In my view, we should be training today's game developers in fine motor skills and hand/eye/brain intercommunication.
If your experience halts upon the screen's surface, you need a little coaching.
0 0002HIK/ref=pd_bxgy_img_2/103-5231162-9433400?v=gl ance&s=music) at 50% the normal speed. You begin to see and appreciate all the "fun" interactions between the bits. The experience has time to dawn on you, and that makes all the difference.
Turn your attention to the interaction between screen elements (sprites) and their sounds. That's where the gameplay happens.
(You might have to get a real 2600 for this to work properly, but it's easy now, with the 2600 & more available at Wal-Mart & such)
The thing that makes new machines great - even the NES, is the incredibly simplistic graphics on the old systems. Inversely, the thing that makes the older systems *good* in the first place, is how inventively and captivatingly they work within the contraints of a tiny memory space, 2-axis, 1-button controls, and 480 lines of 60Hz video.
What your mind experiences as "gameplay" is a combination of the feedback from your hands/fingers on the control, the visual triggers from that blocky pixel bouncing into/around/over the static area. When the "blocky pixel" becomes a biplane-shaped sprite, and the static area a vaguely "barn-shaped" color area, and you have to use this little stick with one button to manoeuvre the "biplane" through the "barn", you have a Game.
Making the game "Fun" is another challenge altogether. You have a single channel, voltage controlled synthesizer with which to generate happy sounds, mean sounds, ambient sounds, and triumphant sounds. You have the stick with button. You have hardware limits in storage, code execution speed, etc. Line up alll those pieces, and because you had to make sacrifices, each interaction becomes something meaningful.
The best analogy I can come up with would be to listen to any of the meatier tracks on "I Care Because You Do" or "Drukqs - Disc 2" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0
Why don't children play golf?
Because compared to blocks & mud, it's no fun. Why? Because there are too many rules and roadblocks, and paraphernalia. Freeze tag, go-fish, war, jumprope, hopscotch, etc, all have extremely low entry ceiling.
Fun games all have that quality - whether based on the meat-plane or in Cyberspace.
The ability to GET IN AND PLAY is what keeps your play center titillated. Q3 Deathmatch: Prime example. Ms Pacman, Donkey Kong, Mario, Poke(shudder)mon, Kirby, and the Prince in Katamari Damacy all know this.
You insensitive clod, we know nothing of haunted childhood boardwalks.
Twilight Zone reruns OTOH...
BTW - Bob didn't invent the Theremin, it was Lev Sergeivitch Termen (later Leon Theremin)
perceptive reason vs reactive gloss
enlightened vs ignorant
admittant vs obstructive
preservation of truth vs preservation of ego
tao!