> but maybe that's only because we will have the right combination of diminished expectations and technical know-how to not be disappointed in one of these devices.
Summed it up nicely there. To some (rare but vociferous and/.ing) people, design is invisible, practicality invisible, and usability downright contemptuous. Oddly enough, many tech companies have staff with just this same point of view and wind up selling next to no product.
The iPhone is going to be more than huge. And OS X will ride it all the way. All good news to me.
Apple have hardly given up on computers. If anything, they are now the OS X company!
Re:If the Amiga had lived, I might be working in I
on
AmigaOS 4
·
· Score: 1
You sum it up quite nicely there.
I feel the same way about my Mac today. Know it much better than the pc's I used before, can do much more with it, and take part online and in person with the userbase. You don't get that with Windows. The closest you can approach it is just talking about single apps, i.e. games.
An old friend of mine was really into Amigas back in the day too (I never was, I had a 286 Amstrad and ran GEM without realising how much it stunk thanks to being a kid!) and he used to be the über geek among us who did 3D renders and mixed up module music. He eventually switched to Windows and basically became a normal user much like you, getting his geek on with games instead of the tech itself.
Interesting perspective.
Re:Windows will continue to dominate
on
Leopard Vs. Vista
·
· Score: 2, Informative
"There's an irony, Apple is often viewed by the general public as not serious and yet they have a superior suite of work applications while not having anywhere near the number of games available for windows. Windows is seen as the machine for work while having a mediocre suite of work apps and a killer selection of games."
So true. That's the only time I find myself looking to Windows. The point being I should really just finally decide between getting a games console or giving up games full stop!
Smug sounding but true: the 3rd party software selection on OS X may be narrower than Windows but there's so much less crud there it's actually a comparative pleasure. Fresh app hunting seems to be the most popular game on the Mac these days if my observations are anything to go by...
I have a friend who's under the delusion that Carmack *is* Romero. Keeps getting them confused when we discuss the evolution of games and their culture. Clearly this misapprehension requires resolution. I may just have to make him my bitch.
In the three years I've been using my Mac, my PC has been stuck with its 2003 hardware and besides the Battlefield series it's not been seeing much in the way of games.
I used to play a lot more before i got my PowerBook. But the buggyness, loudness and the feeling that my computer was getting in the way of my work made me contemplate the switch and then go with it.
I think a similar tale is often found with switchers. Your habits change over the first few months with your new machine and you find yourself at a distance from your older kit. There's nothing essentially wrong with my PC (well... Vista beta on an Athlon XP could be wrong in some people's eyes!) but I've less and less use for it. With an Intel Mac around now too, the PC's main purpose is as a fileserver with a copious stack of old hard drives.
Does Apple own my soul? Have I bought into a cult? Nah. I think it's more about the interdependence between what hardware you have and what you actually wind up doing with it. In the old days games were what I did, as they actually behaved better than the desktop itself a lot of the time anyway. Since then, yeah I'm a bit busier and don't want to play as much anyway, but also I don't really feel compelled to. I'm fine with my computer doing whatever. It's like a need has finally been satisfied.
Not the sort of statement to make on Slashdot I know... but ask any switcher and you may get the same kind of thing from them. Even if they still love mixing Mac with PC.
Interstellar travel and space elevators are anything but just around the corner. But we're geeks, and don't go telling us what we can and cannot dream! Unless you learn to duck!
In 1900 the mainstream scientific view was that we'd nailed all of the fundamentals and all we had left to do in physics was measure the details. Like a thunderbolt, Einstein struck - not to mention a veritable renaissance - and the idea looked like the despicable ignorance it was.
Predicting the future is... well let's put it this way: for every flying car we don't have today, we have a personal supercomputer no one thought we'd need.
Whenever someone mutters "is science finished?" I yell a brick and I keep a clean conscience.
Worldwind is a great companion app to Google Earth. I find its interface more intuitive when looking for visuals instead of just using text searches, and having a choice of imagery is a big bonus.
Google Earth's eye for aerial detail is great, but Worldwind is definitely not to be overlooked.
The Completely Random and Arbitrary Point System!(TM) works as follows:
* For each benchmark, the "best score" is determined by locating the lowest non-zero score. (This is done for CPU, Memory, and LOC scores.)
*
For each language, compute its score in logarithmic space:
score = 1 / (1 + log2(x / b))
where
x = current benchmark's score
b = best score for this benchmark
This yields a non-zero value from 0 to 1, which 1 being the "best score".
Each such score is then multiplied by the weight of the benchmark (a number between 0 and 5), yielding the language's score for that benchmark. If a language does not have an entry for a test its score is zero. (Again we do the same for Memory and LOC).
* Then the CPU/Memory/LOC scores are multiplied by their respective Mulipliers and the resulting scores are added together to the get final score.
* Add up all the scores for each language for each benchmark, and put them on this nice web page.
* And the result is CRAPS!(TM)
Nice one. I'd mod you funny too if I had points today!
Makes sense that they'd go with the same overall range of heat characteristics as the old PowerBook G4 I suppose.
Why I'm so interested in heat is because for laptops it dictates design. A PowerBook G5 could always have been made, but it would have been 2 inches thick and enough to make Steve cry! Not to mention the necessary lead-acid batteries...
I'm a total holdout when it comes to new hardware and my PB 12" Rev A. will do me until Apple have a pro laptop with BluRay and hopefully maybe a flash based drive in a form factor that just melts my heart like the iPod nano did. Less is definitely more in my book so long as basic performance comes with it and the rest can be easily networked!
The G4 was a real beast to cram into a laptop and Apple took a long time in doing it. The compromises we all know. So long as Intel are on the right track with their plans for mobile processor dominance, there'll be something to wrench my overworked PowerBook from my, um, HOT dead hands!
Indeed, the green LED on my early 2003 PowerBook is definitely of the olive variety!
Think the hissy noise might have something to do with the MBP's sound system? Mute the speakers and have a listen... or pop it on battery with all the power savings turned on, that ought to take the sound out of the way if it's coming from the speakers.
My other guess is the hard drive. If you have Xcode installed there's Spindown HD in the CHUD tools to play with to make drives sleep faster and you can troubleshoot it that way.
One more thing: if I really hit my Airport Extreme hard I can hear a very slight sound in extremely quiet conditions, which is definitely pegged to network activity. My brother's PowerBook makes hard drive noises when similarly active on the wireless.
Of course, I'm the sort of complaining bugger who hates graphics cards making refresh noises during scrolling when I've a desktop case open and tinkering with the guts inside. Damn digital electronics - be silent!!
Silent as in SILENT desktops are the holy grail Apple is likely to achieve with the Merom processors and --- SOLID STATE HARD DRIVES --- because I want a computer that's as silent as my iPod nano!
Yes, yes, platter drives have the huge lead in data size but never fear: a fast wireless network and a fileserver in the attic is here!
Damn, I only checked this one out because of the image which came to mind of a state's opposition to critics of the microkernel. Politics really needs some programming theocratic wars as well as the church kind!
I like my Athlon XP based system being rated a 2, it reminds me how little attention it's been getting since I jumped ship. Vista's pretty and all, for a Windows, but the disparity between its demands and what seriously intense games and other OS's can produce... is suspicious!
And I hate to play the spelling Nazi (usually I don't give a shit) but it's Jonathon Ive not Ives. Undoubtedly the most important person at Apple today besides Steve Job!:p
Bravo. One of the better cultural posts I've seen (yet alone on Slashdot) and a guaranteed +1 insightful if only my mod points had come today instead of Wednesday!
A lot of crazy babble is spoken about the Japanese by Americans especially, even/especially on the pro-Japanese side as though it were Narnia or something. It does everyone better to also occasionally let in some common sense and try to understand other people in the same way they do themselves.
Once those guys distribute what they've done, then all intrepid Intel Mac users need is the torrent and an XP cd to have a fast working (if not trivial to set up) copy of the evil on their otherwise tasty machines.
Slashdot Mirror
Bingo.
It'll be sweet when it comes. I'll be reading all about it from my Mac!
> but maybe that's only because we will have the right combination of diminished expectations and technical know-how to not be disappointed in one of these devices.
/.ing) people, design is invisible, practicality invisible, and usability downright contemptuous. Oddly enough, many tech companies have staff with just this same point of view and wind up selling next to no product.
... meet iPod.
Summed it up nicely there. To some (rare but vociferous and
Market
Hear hear. Another Apple fan!
The iPhone is going to be more than huge. And OS X will ride it all the way. All good news to me.
Apple have hardly given up on computers. If anything, they are now the OS X company!
You sum it up quite nicely there.
I feel the same way about my Mac today. Know it much better than the pc's I used before, can do much more with it, and take part online and in person with the userbase. You don't get that with Windows. The closest you can approach it is just talking about single apps, i.e. games.
An old friend of mine was really into Amigas back in the day too (I never was, I had a 286 Amstrad and ran GEM without realising how much it stunk thanks to being a kid!) and he used to be the über geek among us who did 3D renders and mixed up module music. He eventually switched to Windows and basically became a normal user much like you, getting his geek on with games instead of the tech itself.
Interesting perspective.
"There's an irony, Apple is often viewed by the general public as not serious and yet they have a superior suite of work applications while not having anywhere near the number of games available for windows. Windows is seen as the machine for work while having a mediocre suite of work apps and a killer selection of games."
So true. That's the only time I find myself looking to Windows. The point being I should really just finally decide between getting a games console or giving up games full stop!
Smug sounding but true: the 3rd party software selection on OS X may be narrower than Windows but there's so much less crud there it's actually a comparative pleasure. Fresh app hunting seems to be the most popular game on the Mac these days if my observations are anything to go by...
I have a friend who's under the delusion that Carmack *is* Romero. Keeps getting them confused when we discuss the evolution of games and their culture. Clearly this misapprehension requires resolution. I may just have to make him my bitch.
ROFL at the "From the renders-a-million-tentacles-a-minute dept" ... nice choice!
In the three years I've been using my Mac, my PC has been stuck with its 2003 hardware and besides the Battlefield series it's not been seeing much in the way of games.
... Vista beta on an Athlon XP could be wrong in some people's eyes!) but I've less and less use for it. With an Intel Mac around now too, the PC's main purpose is as a fileserver with a copious stack of old hard drives.
... but ask any switcher and you may get the same kind of thing from them. Even if they still love mixing Mac with PC.
I used to play a lot more before i got my PowerBook. But the buggyness, loudness and the feeling that my computer was getting in the way of my work made me contemplate the switch and then go with it.
I think a similar tale is often found with switchers. Your habits change over the first few months with your new machine and you find yourself at a distance from your older kit. There's nothing essentially wrong with my PC (well
Does Apple own my soul? Have I bought into a cult? Nah. I think it's more about the interdependence between what hardware you have and what you actually wind up doing with it. In the old days games were what I did, as they actually behaved better than the desktop itself a lot of the time anyway. Since then, yeah I'm a bit busier and don't want to play as much anyway, but also I don't really feel compelled to. I'm fine with my computer doing whatever. It's like a need has finally been satisfied.
Not the sort of statement to make on Slashdot I know
Interstellar travel and space elevators are anything but just around the corner. But we're geeks, and don't go telling us what we can and cannot dream! Unless you learn to duck!
... well let's put it this way: for every flying car we don't have today, we have a personal supercomputer no one thought we'd need.
In 1900 the mainstream scientific view was that we'd nailed all of the fundamentals and all we had left to do in physics was measure the details. Like a thunderbolt, Einstein struck - not to mention a veritable renaissance - and the idea looked like the despicable ignorance it was.
Predicting the future is
Whenever someone mutters "is science finished?" I yell a brick and I keep a clean conscience.
Don't let Teh FEDS catch you looking for some of that red mercury now!
Tech like that is incompatible with being kept secret for any length of time.
Worldwind is a great companion app to Google Earth. I find its interface more intuitive when looking for visuals instead of just using text searches, and having a choice of imagery is a big bonus.
Google Earth's eye for aerial detail is great, but Worldwind is definitely not to be overlooked.
The Completely Random and Arbitrary Point System!(TM) works as follows:
* For each benchmark, the "best score" is determined by locating the lowest non-zero score. (This is done for CPU, Memory, and LOC scores.)
*
For each language, compute its score in logarithmic space:
score = 1 / (1 + log2(x / b))
where
x = current benchmark's score
b = best score for this benchmark
This yields a non-zero value from 0 to 1, which 1 being the "best score".
Each such score is then multiplied by the weight of the benchmark (a number between 0 and 5), yielding the language's score for that benchmark. If a language does not have an entry for a test its score is zero. (Again we do the same for Memory and LOC).
* Then the CPU/Memory/LOC scores are multiplied by their respective Mulipliers and the resulting scores are added together to the get final score.
* Add up all the scores for each language for each benchmark, and put them on this nice web page.
* And the result is CRAPS!(TM)
Nice one. I'd mod you funny too if I had points today!
Makes sense that they'd go with the same overall range of heat characteristics as the old PowerBook G4 I suppose.
Why I'm so interested in heat is because for laptops it dictates design. A PowerBook G5 could always have been made, but it would have been 2 inches thick and enough to make Steve cry! Not to mention the necessary lead-acid batteries...
I'm a total holdout when it comes to new hardware and my PB 12" Rev A. will do me until Apple have a pro laptop with BluRay and hopefully maybe a flash based drive in a form factor that just melts my heart like the iPod nano did. Less is definitely more in my book so long as basic performance comes with it and the rest can be easily networked!
The G4 was a real beast to cram into a laptop and Apple took a long time in doing it. The compromises we all know. So long as Intel are on the right track with their plans for mobile processor dominance, there'll be something to wrench my overworked PowerBook from my, um, HOT dead hands!
Tried Temperature Monitor by Marcel Bresink? I think he's got Core Duo compatibility. It's updated often enough.
http://www.bresink.de/osx/TemperatureMonitor.html
I'm interested in whether these new Macs are indeed cooler, to go along with their ace performance. (Lap heating early PowerBook G4 user speaking!)
MBP has two and so does the new Mac Mini.
Indeed, the green LED on my early 2003 PowerBook is definitely of the olive variety!
... or pop it on battery with all the power savings turned on, that ought to take the sound out of the way if it's coming from the speakers.
Think the hissy noise might have something to do with the MBP's sound system? Mute the speakers and have a listen
My other guess is the hard drive. If you have Xcode installed there's Spindown HD in the CHUD tools to play with to make drives sleep faster and you can troubleshoot it that way.
One more thing: if I really hit my Airport Extreme hard I can hear a very slight sound in extremely quiet conditions, which is definitely pegged to network activity. My brother's PowerBook makes hard drive noises when similarly active on the wireless.
Of course, I'm the sort of complaining bugger who hates graphics cards making refresh noises during scrolling when I've a desktop case open and tinkering with the guts inside. Damn digital electronics - be silent!!
Silent as in SILENT desktops are the holy grail Apple is likely to achieve with the Merom processors and --- SOLID STATE HARD DRIVES --- because I want a computer that's as silent as my iPod nano!
Yes, yes, platter drives have the huge lead in data size but never fear: a fast wireless network and a fileserver in the attic is here!
Yes, I've been doing this since Panther when they changed it. Do a repair permissions on your hard drive with Disk Utility though of course.
Those kexts are a bonus because the fan issue was a real horror story for me for a day!
Damn, I only checked this one out because of the image which came to mind of a state's opposition to critics of the microkernel. Politics really needs some programming theocratic wars as well as the church kind!
I like my Athlon XP based system being rated a 2, it reminds me how little attention it's been getting since I jumped ship. Vista's pretty and all, for a Windows, but the disparity between its demands and what seriously intense games and other OS's can produce ... is suspicious!
Quite right.
:p
And I hate to play the spelling Nazi (usually I don't give a shit) but it's Jonathon Ive not Ives. Undoubtedly the most important person at Apple today besides Steve Job!
Bravo. One of the better cultural posts I've seen (yet alone on Slashdot) and a guaranteed +1 insightful if only my mod points had come today instead of Wednesday!
A lot of crazy babble is spoken about the Japanese by Americans especially, even/especially on the pro-Japanese side as though it were Narnia or something. It does everyone better to also occasionally let in some common sense and try to understand other people in the same way they do themselves.
Avast ye!
The good pirate knows the legal status of his port, arr.
Best be keeping ye out of the United Nasties for now then.
Damn, I was about to post that link!
Once those guys distribute what they've done, then all intrepid Intel Mac users need is the torrent and an XP cd to have a fast working (if not trivial to set up) copy of the evil on their otherwise tasty machines.
Next up: Vista.
Yes, yes it is.
... what else do you think those are for?)
Firefox is the tool of a global elite who seek to avoid the international community's monitoring (IE+ActiveX
How dare they! We'll have them in the comfy chair for this one, along with the Macintosh weilders!
MS Akhbar!