*checks prices* sweet.. well maybe I'm running out of reasons to not consider one then. I'm usually several years behind the times when it comes to hardware prices these days.. when I got my iRiver a few years ago, it had the same storage, twice the battery life + radio + microphone for less than an iPod.. and the Nanos had always been more pricey than alternatives, though the deal Apple did with Samsung meant that the storage capacities were much more attractive. The 16GB version is getting close to an acceptable level of storage, even though I've got well over 20GB of music these days (and yes I have listened to 99.5% of it, and legally own* 80-90% of it:P ). I tend to just listen to albums rather than my 'misc' folder these days, so 16GB should fit most of them in..
Don't suggest such an unholy union! I'm finding it hard enough to be excited about Apple handheld devices as it is without MS getting in on the act! Actually, the XBox 360 already uses a PPC processor huh. I do respect that they considered other options than just a PC clone this time round, though the whole cooling fiasco/RROD thing is such a schoolboy error..
Well, they haven't given any inclination that they are going to do such a thing again though - Apple is still keeping its options open so far with its universal binaries. Microsoft do do 32/64-bit, Windows Mobile, and Itanium I suppose, but they do tend to just play it safe and probably won't be supporting Cell or the like. The annoying thing is that I have to admit MS have occasionally made some decent products in the last decade - so now I'm amused and delighted that they've managed to screw up Vista, but I'm also really pissed about it because it means that if the Apple/Linux crowd don't capitalise on this mistake, then those of us who have to work with Windows will be left dealing with a steaming pile, unless they get Windows 7 out soon. That doesn't seem very likely after the Vista delays, although maybe they saw how much of a failure Vista was going to be, and started Windows 7 development alongside it..
When it is running Vista, there's no reaason to upgrade of course. If however there are operations you do in Photoshop that slow you down a lot, or you want to work on reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally massive pictures, and there was a computer that could do everything 10x faster, you'd probably consider it? If it was for a company at least. Upgrades to stuff like Photoshop would surely be cheaper than a decent new PC? I think the whole of the Adobe Design Collection was only about £600 a few years ago
IMO the lack of air-holes was a dead giveaway (pun intended, of course). You're the first to comment on my sig btw, I wonder how many people even get it..
Interesting, I didn't realise that WoW was out for the Mac (I've never played and I have no interest in getting addicted to it either!). I too used to pay over the odds for games like Quake and Duke Nukem too.. Dark Castle, what a game! Escape Velocity likewise excellent (I even got a registered version of Nova just to play on my MacBook Pro.. probably the first shareware I've ever registered, now that I have a job and all:p ).
Yep, I doubt Apple are going to be able to be much more innovative than Nintendo has already been with the DS and Wii (though multitouch does open up some more interesting possibilities for touchscreen gaming). Nintendo can also focus purely on gaming.
The nice outcome out of houses publishing their games for Mac OSX is that they can then presumably quite easily port them over to Linux too. Whether people are Apple fanboys or not, they should really encourage any efforts at getting gaming on the Mac going, because it will help to break down one of the main barriers that is stopping people from getting out of Windows land.
Consider that the x86 architecture is really a facade, that underneath this facade Intel is free to change from one modern RISC design to another, or to whatever is next, allowing them to increase performance without breaking compatibility. On the fly translation of x86 operations into RISC micro-ops combined with reordering and other technologies is going to be far harder to overcome than you suggest. Very good point.. shame that we can't just do that with a proper virtual instruction set then rather than a real instruction set that has become virtual, because again it would be more efficient:P But kind of spoils the whole point again because you lose backwards compatability with all previous compiled code.
Cool. The DS is already pretty capable of respectable 3D graphics (Nintendogs/Metroid/MarioKart are the examples that I've experienced myself). They should consider getting some decent games onto the iPod then, though they'll really need some buttons first! The extra cost of an iPod over any other media player would then be justified in my sight. Maybe there already are good games for it, I can't say I'm very in touch with my iSelf, I'm happy with my WM phone (which can do 3D okay, but the games I tried for it sucked, and Quake just hung at the menu - kinda like it used to on my ancient Mac, but at least the Mac pushed through after about 30 seconds.. the phone just stays there.. forevaaar!)
Well, fair point, I think the only games that have ever come with Apples are the little sliding puzzle things, and jigsaws..:p The shareware scene for Macs used to be amazing:/ You don't need high powered graphics to have fun (he says, after recently buying a PS3 *cough*)
No, IANAmicroprocessordesignengineer, I did used to read up a lot on the differences between 68k/PPC/x86, though that was a long time ago, and a year or two on/. was reading about the DEC Alpha and how far ahead of its time it was, doing things that x86 has only caught up to in the last few years. I understand that it's impractical to move to new architectures just because most software is tied to Windows, but arguments like "it doesn't take much to emulate x86" are pretty crap. Companies like the one in TFA (admittedly by the same guy that was leading the Alpha design team, so maybe it's just because he's a genius) show that it is possible to do a lot better in terms of power and computational efficiency than we are with x86. Thankfully Intel were forced to get their arses in gear by AMD a couple of years ago, and they've made some nice advances with x86, though they're probably going to get lazy again in a few years.
The whole thing is still kind of moot while we're tied to Windows though. They've not even made Vista 64-bit only! If backwards compatibility and such really is the reason that Windows is such a mess, then why not make a clean break? The whole situation with software and hardware architectures being limited by monopolistic practices/market forces is just a huge PITA. Maybe I am just a retard who isn't aware of the strides that Intel are making in processor design (I have read a couple of things about predictive branching and such in more recent processors which sounds pretty cool, and a good use of multicore architectures if it's using the extra cores instead of just doing branch prediction on each core, though the distances involved there may negate possible performance benefits..), but hearing stuff about amazingly efficient processors that probably aren't going to see mainstream desktop use just pisses me off, because we don't even have a choice. We shouldn't always be using 'modern processor designs' just to interpret legacy code, we should be able to get apps compiled specifically for our architecture.
Aye. I recently took Guitar Hero to my uncle's house and he switched it off because my aunt "doesn't like that kind of music on a Sunday", having been brought up in a very traditional little island community on the west coast of Scotland. The stupid thing is that the other games they were playing had rock music in the background. Very hypocritical and nonsensical.. it's things like that that depress me and I've been going to church less too, though usually I still go to the evening service on a sunday. It was actually my first gf that hurt my faith most though just because of her actions when we broke up, and I was like "how could a Christian do that?", but we're all fallable I suppose, and I was being quite the jerk myself back then..
Huh? Apple computers and OSes have always been excellent IMO. Very polished and stable, and basically just a pleasure to use. I've used them at least since I was 8, which was around 1990-91, I remember typing up my homework in Claris Works and printing it out on a dot matrix type printer:P
I've extensively used Amiga OS, Mac OS, Windows, and dabbled in Linux, and I can safely say that Mac OS 'works' just as well as any of them, so I don't know what you are talking about tbh.
Well, yeah I should have RTFA, but they do specialise in efficient/low power designs, which does lend itself very well to mobile devices at least. Works well in embedded applications too of course. Basically that sort of design philosophy suits any application:) Interesting that it's the lead designer of the Alpha chip that is the head of the company. I heard some great things about the Alpha here on/. Apple are one of the few companies positioned to introduce an entirely new architecture into the mainstream, since they control both their OS and their hardware... I think they should wait a couple more years until more users and developers are drawn over to OSX a before trying something crazy like that though. Yeah, I'm a bit of an idealist, but I likes my dreams..
Ya I know, Windows could do with a complete re-write though;) If they really are rewriting it to be more modular for Windows Seven, then this would be a good time to consider other architectures. I'd like if they dumped their backwards compatibility in a new OS release anyway, it gives linux more of a chance:P
Not directly maybe, but if they use the already established iPod brand as a base for handheld gaming, they could do okay. I'm not saying they will or should, but the fact that they have applied for a patent for "Toys, games and playthings, namely, hand-held units for playing electronic games; hand-held units for playing video games; stand alone video game machines; electronic games other than those adapted for use with television receivers only; LCD game machines; electronic educational game machines; toys, namely battery-powered computer games" ( http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77388864 ), suggests that they are thinking about it. There isn't much competition in handheld gaming at the moment, it's the DS or the PSP. If Apple started selling games on iTunes direct to iPods then they could do pretty well. The DS and Wii have shown that you just need a gimmick.. uh.. I mean.. oh whatever (note: I'm only kidding, I have both a DS and a Wii, they're good systems, though most of the games I've bought for them are a bit short or lacking sufficient depth to keep me interested). I think it's quite likely that Apple are seriously considering competing in the mobile gaming arena since they're basically dominating the media player arena, and have made a decent attempt at entry into the mobile communications arena..
Random Note: I don't want an iPod or iPhone, and I don't see myself wanting one anytime soon. I also think iTunes sucks as a media player. I have however always liked Apple's actual computers, and I am happy to see them succeed in other areas as long as it spurs on development of their desktop and laptop machines...
Well, they do have the iPod and the iPhone, that's a good base for starting a handheld games console at least. Maybe they'll turn the iPod into a more gaming capable device *shrug*
I doubt that at this point in time. This chip company specialises in low power chips for small devices, not desktop chips. Though introducing a super efficient desktop processor would be nice. We need to move away from x86 to a modern design, rather than one that has gradually been modified beyond all recognition and hacked to gain 32 bit then 64 bit compatibility, etc. As an Amiga/Mac user for most of my early life, I've always thought of x86 as an inferior and inefficient chip design. Apple has demonstrated twice now how well they can adapt their OS for any architecture. Would be nice if Microsoft took up the challenge..
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*checks prices* sweet.. well maybe I'm running out of reasons to not consider one then. I'm usually several years behind the times when it comes to hardware prices these days.. when I got my iRiver a few years ago, it had the same storage, twice the battery life + radio + microphone for less than an iPod.. and the Nanos had always been more pricey than alternatives, though the deal Apple did with Samsung meant that the storage capacities were much more attractive. The 16GB version is getting close to an acceptable level of storage, even though I've got well over 20GB of music these days (and yes I have listened to 99.5% of it, and legally own* 80-90% of it :P ). I tend to just listen to albums rather than my 'misc' folder these days, so 16GB should fit most of them in..
* well, maybe not according to the RIAA
Don't suggest such an unholy union! I'm finding it hard enough to be excited about Apple handheld devices as it is without MS getting in on the act! Actually, the XBox 360 already uses a PPC processor huh. I do respect that they considered other options than just a PC clone this time round, though the whole cooling fiasco/RROD thing is such a schoolboy error..
Hehehe.. excellent.. didn't know Red vs Blue did stuff like that.
Well, they haven't given any inclination that they are going to do such a thing again though - Apple is still keeping its options open so far with its universal binaries. Microsoft do do 32/64-bit, Windows Mobile, and Itanium I suppose, but they do tend to just play it safe and probably won't be supporting Cell or the like. The annoying thing is that I have to admit MS have occasionally made some decent products in the last decade - so now I'm amused and delighted that they've managed to screw up Vista, but I'm also really pissed about it because it means that if the Apple/Linux crowd don't capitalise on this mistake, then those of us who have to work with Windows will be left dealing with a steaming pile, unless they get Windows 7 out soon. That doesn't seem very likely after the Vista delays, although maybe they saw how much of a failure Vista was going to be, and started Windows 7 development alongside it..
When it is running Vista, there's no reaason to upgrade of course. If however there are operations you do in Photoshop that slow you down a lot, or you want to work on reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally massive pictures, and there was a computer that could do everything 10x faster, you'd probably consider it? If it was for a company at least. Upgrades to stuff like Photoshop would surely be cheaper than a decent new PC? I think the whole of the Adobe Design Collection was only about £600 a few years ago
IMO the lack of air-holes was a dead giveaway (pun intended, of course). You're the first to comment on my sig btw, I wonder how many people even get it..
2 ^ 1.58497 gives you approximately three processors.
If I could remember anything about maths I could probably give you a more precise number
If they hate me, then they must have some un-dead life.. and if they are undead braiiiins, are they going to go cannibalistic and eat themselves?
Flamebait? Hah :) That's not flamebait. Your mom sucks harder than a GNOME user trying to edit xorg.conf! Now that's flamebait.
Interesting, I didn't realise that WoW was out for the Mac (I've never played and I have no interest in getting addicted to it either!). I too used to pay over the odds for games like Quake and Duke Nukem too.. Dark Castle, what a game! Escape Velocity likewise excellent (I even got a registered version of Nova just to play on my MacBook Pro.. probably the first shareware I've ever registered, now that I have a job and all :p ).
Yep, I doubt Apple are going to be able to be much more innovative than Nintendo has already been with the DS and Wii (though multitouch does open up some more interesting possibilities for touchscreen gaming). Nintendo can also focus purely on gaming.
The nice outcome out of houses publishing their games for Mac OSX is that they can then presumably quite easily port them over to Linux too. Whether people are Apple fanboys or not, they should really encourage any efforts at getting gaming on the Mac going, because it will help to break down one of the main barriers that is stopping people from getting out of Windows land.
faile
Cool. The DS is already pretty capable of respectable 3D graphics (Nintendogs/Metroid/MarioKart are the examples that I've experienced myself). They should consider getting some decent games onto the iPod then, though they'll really need some buttons first! The extra cost of an iPod over any other media player would then be justified in my sight. Maybe there already are good games for it, I can't say I'm very in touch with my iSelf, I'm happy with my WM phone (which can do 3D okay, but the games I tried for it sucked, and Quake just hung at the menu - kinda like it used to on my ancient Mac, but at least the Mac pushed through after about 30 seconds.. the phone just stays there.. forevaaar!)
Well, fair point, I think the only games that have ever come with Apples are the little sliding puzzle things, and jigsaws.. :p The shareware scene for Macs used to be amazing :/ You don't need high powered graphics to have fun (he says, after recently buying a PS3 *cough*)
No, IANAmicroprocessordesignengineer, I did used to read up a lot on the differences between 68k/PPC/x86, though that was a long time ago, and a year or two on /. was reading about the DEC Alpha and how far ahead of its time it was, doing things that x86 has only caught up to in the last few years. I understand that it's impractical to move to new architectures just because most software is tied to Windows, but arguments like "it doesn't take much to emulate x86" are pretty crap. Companies like the one in TFA (admittedly by the same guy that was leading the Alpha design team, so maybe it's just because he's a genius) show that it is possible to do a lot better in terms of power and computational efficiency than we are with x86. Thankfully Intel were forced to get their arses in gear by AMD a couple of years ago, and they've made some nice advances with x86, though they're probably going to get lazy again in a few years.
The whole thing is still kind of moot while we're tied to Windows though. They've not even made Vista 64-bit only! If backwards compatibility and such really is the reason that Windows is such a mess, then why not make a clean break? The whole situation with software and hardware architectures being limited by monopolistic practices/market forces is just a huge PITA. Maybe I am just a retard who isn't aware of the strides that Intel are making in processor design (I have read a couple of things about predictive branching and such in more recent processors which sounds pretty cool, and a good use of multicore architectures if it's using the extra cores instead of just doing branch prediction on each core, though the distances involved there may negate possible performance benefits..), but hearing stuff about amazingly efficient processors that probably aren't going to see mainstream desktop use just pisses me off, because we don't even have a choice. We shouldn't always be using 'modern processor designs' just to interpret legacy code, we should be able to get apps compiled specifically for our architecture.
Aye. I recently took Guitar Hero to my uncle's house and he switched it off because my aunt "doesn't like that kind of music on a Sunday", having been brought up in a very traditional little island community on the west coast of Scotland. The stupid thing is that the other games they were playing had rock music in the background. Very hypocritical and nonsensical.. it's things like that that depress me and I've been going to church less too, though usually I still go to the evening service on a sunday. It was actually my first gf that hurt my faith most though just because of her actions when we broke up, and I was like "how could a Christian do that?", but we're all fallable I suppose, and I was being quite the jerk myself back then..
Huh? Apple computers and OSes have always been excellent IMO. Very polished and stable, and basically just a pleasure to use. I've used them at least since I was 8, which was around 1990-91, I remember typing up my homework in Claris Works and printing it out on a dot matrix type printer :P
I've extensively used Amiga OS, Mac OS, Windows, and dabbled in Linux, and I can safely say that Mac OS 'works' just as well as any of them, so I don't know what you are talking about tbh.
Well, yeah I should have RTFA, but they do specialise in efficient/low power designs, which does lend itself very well to mobile devices at least. Works well in embedded applications too of course. Basically that sort of design philosophy suits any application :) Interesting that it's the lead designer of the Alpha chip that is the head of the company. I heard some great things about the Alpha here on /. Apple are one of the few companies positioned to introduce an entirely new architecture into the mainstream, since they control both their OS and their hardware... I think they should wait a couple more years until more users and developers are drawn over to OSX a before trying something crazy like that though. Yeah, I'm a bit of an idealist, but I likes my dreams..
Ya I know, Windows could do with a complete re-write though ;) If they really are rewriting it to be more modular for Windows Seven, then this would be a good time to consider other architectures. I'd like if they dumped their backwards compatibility in a new OS release anyway, it gives linux more of a chance :P
Ya. I tried Rockbox on my old iHP120. I was just meaning they may be wanting to make it more capable, like into DS territory capable.
Not directly maybe, but if they use the already established iPod brand as a base for handheld gaming, they could do okay. I'm not saying they will or should, but the fact that they have applied for a patent for "Toys, games and playthings, namely, hand-held units for playing electronic games; hand-held units for playing video games; stand alone video game machines; electronic games other than those adapted for use with television receivers only; LCD game machines; electronic educational game machines; toys, namely battery-powered computer games" ( http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77388864 ), suggests that they are thinking about it. There isn't much competition in handheld gaming at the moment, it's the DS or the PSP. If Apple started selling games on iTunes direct to iPods then they could do pretty well. The DS and Wii have shown that you just need a gimmick.. uh.. I mean.. oh whatever (note: I'm only kidding, I have both a DS and a Wii, they're good systems, though most of the games I've bought for them are a bit short or lacking sufficient depth to keep me interested). I think it's quite likely that Apple are seriously considering competing in the mobile gaming arena since they're basically dominating the media player arena, and have made a decent attempt at entry into the mobile communications arena..
Random Note: I don't want an iPod or iPhone, and I don't see myself wanting one anytime soon. I also think iTunes sucks as a media player. I have however always liked Apple's actual computers, and I am happy to see them succeed in other areas as long as it spurs on development of their desktop and laptop machines...
Well, they do have the iPod and the iPhone, that's a good base for starting a handheld games console at least. Maybe they'll turn the iPod into a more gaming capable device *shrug*
I doubt that at this point in time. This chip company specialises in low power chips for small devices, not desktop chips. Though introducing a super efficient desktop processor would be nice. We need to move away from x86 to a modern design, rather than one that has gradually been modified beyond all recognition and hacked to gain 32 bit then 64 bit compatibility, etc. As an Amiga/Mac user for most of my early life, I've always thought of x86 as an inferior and inefficient chip design. Apple has demonstrated twice now how well they can adapt their OS for any architecture. Would be nice if Microsoft took up the challenge..
One bright little commenter on El Reg suggested that another reason for Apple buying this company could be for a console release, as Apple recently acquired a patent which could be for console gaming.
Well, since I have control over the blacklist, I don't mind it :P
NIMP troll. Yay for the content filter on the company's firewall :)