The PPC system is, even if it was the last PPC system produced, at least 4.5 years old. The PowerMac G5 was last produced in July/August of 2006. It's now January 2011.
So let's look at the facts: 1) The App Store is not the only way to get software. It will *never* be the *only* way to get software for your Mac. There is NO reason to believe it will *ever* be the *only* way to get software for your Mac.
2) It's been known since 2005 that PPC macs would eventually be unsupported.
3) If you want to continue running your PowerPC system, you can keep running whatever release of 10.4 or 10.5 is on it just fine. You can also install new software whenever you like: just not through the Mac App store.
So how are you being "forced" to upgrade your hardware by this patch? Pray tell, how is Apple going to lock down your system and prevent you from installing or doing whatever you like with your PowerPC system?
(Hint: They can't do a single thing to it, other than 'end support' for it. Which means you can keep running it until the hardware self-destructs if you want.)
Please allow me to rephrase: What handheld general-purpose computer is recommended? And what set-top general-purpose computer is recommended?
I'll ask again: Are you daft?
You seem to be suggesting that, if Apple doesn't sell a particular product, it doesn't exist, or people have to choose the "closest thing that sort of works how they want it to." This is a patently stupid claim. If Apple's products don't address your needs, then don't buy an Apple product. The Nokia N900, from all the stuff I read about it here on/., seems to be a ridiculously powerful handheld computer that runs Linux. A small system (hell, buy a refurbed or used Mac Mini - attractive case, quiet, compact) running Linux & MythTV works quite nicely as a general-purpose set-top computer. Apple doesn't sell refrigerators, either... so I bought my refrigerator from GE instead, rather than let all my food spoil, which seems to be the approach you're suggesting as the only option.
Good luck fitting Oracle JRE and your app into a reasonably sized install package.
The fact that Oracle produces a large JRE has no bearing on whether or not Java is "deprecated" on the Mac. If you want (or need) to write your code in Java, then you need to deal with the fact that it's an optional technology on the Mac, which means that you need to do one of the following: 1) provide the JRE to your users as part of your install package; 2) provide instructions to your users about how to find & install the JRE; 3) leave it up to your users to figure out what they need and let them find it;
Either way, Apple is not preventing, or even discouraging you, from running Java apps on your Mac.
And if you want to install Snow Leopard on an MBA, you will need one of those (or perhaps a similar external DVD drive), or another system capable of sharing *its* DVD drive for a networked install.
10.5 and 10.4 users are only being left behind if they opt not to spend the $29 to purchase an upgrade to Snow Leopard. The hardware has nothing to do with it. There is no Intel mac released since the transition to Intel chips (early 2006) which will not run Snow Leopard - though in fairness, some of the early mac minis with integrated Intel graphics chips, will not be able to take advantage of *all* of the graphical bells & whistles, but that has everything to do with hardware *capability*.
Now please enlighten us, what purpose does that question serve, other than to try and distract from the fact that you're an idiot and backpedaling furiously in an attempt to preserve your point, which is simply untenable?
I'd guess at your political persuasion, but I'm afraid I don't know which party morons typically belong to. Should I godwin the thread, in an attempt to outdo your ad hominem? Or would you prefer to rant a little more about something you clearly have no clue about?
Apple has chosen not to make a low-end netbook; instead, it makes the iPad. So people looking for an Apple product below MacBook Air are forced to either choose an appliance instead of a general-purpose computer or drop Apple.
Are you daft? If you need a cheap netbook, then get a cheap netbook. There are dozens of models available - if you need a cheap netbook, and you refuse to get one because you "must buy an Apple computer, and Apple doesn't offer one," then you're an idiot. It's really that simple.
What alternative to the iPod touch or Apple TV should I choose if I want a general-purpose computer?
This question doesn't even make sense. iPod touch and Apple TV are not general purpose computers. If you want a general purpose computer, get a general purpose computer. If you want an iPod touch or an Apple TV, get an iPod Touch or an Apple TV. There are general purpose computers that can do everything that the Apple TV and iPod touch can do; Apple TVs and iPod Touches cannot do everything that those general purpose computers can do. Some people prefer the flexibility and power of the general-purpose computer; Others prefer the simplicity and ease of a purpose-built device. Ain't the free market grand?
From page 3 [scribd.com]: "Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta) will be rejected."
Yes, Java is an... wait for it... optionally installed technology. Java is alive and well on the Mac if you want to use it. They *deprecated* the Java-Cocoa bindings a few years back because barely anybody was using them, and it wasn't worth the effort of maintaining them. Java itself is an *optionally installed* package - one which they will not guarantee is on the system. Apps which require it are, therefore, not allowed in the app store. If you want to write & run a java app, go download the JDK package (updates will be coming from Oracle), write the code, and install and run your new Java app. You can put it up on a web site, sell DVDs, or create your own app store (or use something like appbodega.com) to distribute it. There are more ways that you CAN distribute your java app to a Mac OS system than there are that you *can't*.
True, the DVD is an install-time requirement only; if you want to install it on an MBA, you'll need the external superdrive or the remote install using a DVD drive shared from another system.
You're right, though I believe some of them (esp. the early Minis) don't fully support all Snow Leopard features - some of the video stuff, I believe, actually requires ATI or Nvidia graphics, and iirc, the early minis used the integrated Intel graphics.
Then perhaps the "appliance" term isn't quite the best fit. Let's try this: Stand-alone. iOS devices aren't intended to be *standalone* devices - they are designed to be companions, almost peripherals, to a general-purpose computer, which would be the Mac. If you can't look at the product lineup, and see that they are targeting very different use cases with Mac OS X and iOS, then again - you've fundamentally misunderstood their product lineup.
Also, there's a world of difference between "you can't install it this way" and "deprecated."
The Java-Cocoa bindings were deprecated back in 2005? 2006? The Java install is an *optional* install, because it's not controlled, developed, or released by Apple. As such, they can't guarantee that the package (or some specific version of that package) is installed on a given Mac, and as such, it's not suitable for distribution in the App Store.
You want to write Java Apps on a Mac? Go for it. You can, and it looks like Oracle is committing to continue maintaining Java on the Mac, so you will probably have a reasonable guarantee of being able to run it. The java apps run, and they run fine. They look a little clunky if they have a graphical UI, and that's about the only thing you'd notice that would tell you it's not a standard Cocoa app.
Deprecated means "going to be phased out and won't work in a future release," not "you can't distribute it via our app store."
Everybody who doesn't have 10.6 can continue installing software like they always have - they lose nothing by not installing this patch.
If you need an app that's only sold on the app store, and the developer totally refuses to sell it any other way, then do business with someone else, or consider whether or not it's time to upgrade to 10.6.
More and more software is being released "Snow Leopard only" because it takes advantage of features and frameworks that were added in Snow Leopard. At some point, getting "new stuff" will require you to have a system that's capable of running that "new stuff".
What the fuck are you on about? The Mac App Store has the same requirements as the Snow Leopard release:
1) Mac system running Intel processor; 2) 1 GB of RAM; 3) 5 GB of disk space; 4) DVD Drive
That's it. The entirety of the "required specs" to run Snow Leopard. There is no Intel mac that's been released since 2006 that doesn't have at least those specs, unless you ripped hardware out of it, or put together a Hackintosh of your own, and did it badly, and cheaply.
Or are you complaining because *you decided* not to upgrade to Snow Leopard, and now can't upgrade to the latest Snow Leopard patch, which includes the App Store?
OR, they can do their own thing, and continue distributing.dmg or.mpkg files over the internet, or on physical media, and avoid the App Store altogether!
You keep overlooking that little tidbit in your relentless whoring of your "ZOMG ITZ TEH EVILZ" post from yesterday's "Armageddon" article.
Don't like the Mac App Store, but like the repository concept? Install and use Bodega - http://www.appbodega.com./ They have no guidelines, and have said they're not going anywhere.
Or, you know, continue downloading and installing disk image and other installer files from the web like you've always done.
Yes, provided they also decide they will never again apply a patch to their install of 10.6, for whatever stupid reason. This isn't a "Leopard" to "Snow Leopard" upgrade. It's a routine patch, just like previous ones with security fixes, bug fixes, etc. Skipping it would basically mean you're not going to ever patch your system again.
But considering the "traditional software downloads area" was simply a directory with links to various development shops' websites, and not a repository run by Apple, I think it's very likely that people looking for Mac software will find it just fine using Google if they decide they just can't use the App Store.
Interesting point. How long do you think Google is going to last if everybody opts out of ads? How much would YOU pay for an ad that nobody will see?
Google sells your attention to advertisers. If they have nobody's attention to sell, they make no money. And then what happens to Gmail, Google Maps, and everything else?
And my point is that unless you give a sincere effort to help that manager improve, he's going to turn *into* a persistently clueless and incompetent moron who hates his employees, because every employee he's ever had has been telling him how awful a manager he is.
Shouting at him, undermining him, and basically telling everybody who will listen that he's an incompetent boob is not going to help you, and it won't help him. So what purpose does it serve, other than stroking the 'heretic's' ego, and making him feel smart & important?
And that's what this is about: the type of employee who sits there and tells everybody that the company is doomed because of "those morons" in management.
Lots of peoples' jobs look super-easy when you're not the one doing them. You can be a jerk about somebody who's not doing a good job, or you can be constructive. If you choose to be a jerk, don't be surprised when you're labeled the "argumentative asshole". If you choose to be constructive, you might be surprised at what the clueless & incompetent managers you run across are actually capable of.
Either way, the focus on Google based on an article about why Apple's idea is bad, is typical of what Apple fans do. They blame Apples failures on others. In this case, it is an attempt to make Apple's REALLY bad idea seem not so bad because Google's idea is worse.
This has nothing to do with "fanboys" bringing up anything.
If you read back up this section of the thread, you'll see that it was eldavojohn who brought up Apple's "being the greatest threat to internet freedom," while referencing an earlier Slashdot article, and tied that previous article to this "cloud OS" notion from Apple. That's what I responded to, because I find it curious that ANYBODY would consider Apple the greater threat when Google *already has* the opportunity, and a great deal more motive, to abuse users with ChromeOS.
I'd say pointing out the fact that Google is positioned far better to attack & restrict freedoms is entirely warranted, and entirely topical, considering it was a direct response to eldavojohn's commentary.
And the crucial difference between ignorant and clueless is . . . ?
And the crucial difference between ignorant and incompetent is . . . ?
He *was* clueless. He *was* incompetent. He *was not* capable of doing the job when he started. He was a business analyst who ended up trying to manage a fairly technical dev & infrastructure group. He simply didn't get what we did, just that "somehow," we provided market data to the team he used to work for over the network.
It seems like you want management to naturally be in opposition to employees, and as long as that's the case, your career will probably be full of managers you'll consider incompetent and horrible. Self fulfilling prophecies have a tendency to fulfill themselves, after all.
Incompetent, clueless, ignorant - call it what you want, it's your response to it that matters. If you throw your hands up and shout, "This guy is an incompetent dick and needs to be fired!!!!" then why would you ever be surprised that your manager would react negatively to that? If instead, you say "okay, he's incompetent / inexperienced, let's mold him," you might be surprised at how much better life can be.
Inexperienced, incompetent, clueless - they *very* rarely come about due to outright malice on the part of the manager in question. Behaving like an asshole to them will certainly provoke some malice, though.
Yes, and the idea that they would do what you're suggesting is foolish for lots of technical and business reasons.
RMS has said that he doesn't object to people making a living off of software. Do we jump from there to saying that he fully embraces proprietary software and thus has abandoned the FSF, GNU, and the GPL? It could happen TOMORROW!
And that's just about as likely as your Apple Doomsday scenario.
The problem is, you are *fundamentally misunderstanding* Apple's products. The iPad is *meant* to be an appliance. The iPod is *meant* to be an appliance. The AppleTV is *meant* to be an appliance. The MacBook and iMac and Mac Mini and Mac Pro lines are *meant* to be general-purpose computers.
They are two different sets of products for two complementary needs.
But I'm not surprised that, on Slashdot, where everything with a processor and memory MUST be 'open' and 'hackable,' that this nuance is completely lost on someone with a hate-on for Apple.
And as far as "java code being deprecated", that's bullshit and you know it. They decided they weren't going to continue supporting Java bindings for their UI frameworks because *almost nobody* was using them.
Java is alive and well on the Mac if you want to use it - In fact, I can and do run Eclipse just fine, javac works just fine, and a host of JNLP-based apps work just fine as well. Does it make your life harder than ObjC with native bindings? Perhaps. But how much time and effort should they be expected to expend on making sure that an unused part of their OS is kept up to date? Dev hours & budget are a limited resource.
And just to be clear, *good* managers "produce" leadership, direction, vision, and a whole lot of roadblock-clearing, and "produce" time for the engineers to do their work by acting as a liasion when their team needs something.
Your statement that they are an "expense" strongly implies that they are a *drain* on the overall process, rather than adding something useful to it. By this definition you're trying to weasel into after the fact, developers and everybody else is "an expense, a necessary evil."
If it's necessary, it's an investment in producing your product, it's not some sort of albatross you have to carry along with you just because somebody else decided that you have to spend an extra 200,000 dollars while producing your product.
I agree that it seems like a lousy idea, from any company.
What I'm pointing out is the funny thing about the fact that Apple is being labeled the "number one threat to internet freedom" because it's got some patent filing that mentions net booting a device, while Google *already has* ChromeOS running on hardware, *and* has every reason to want to violate your privacy & restrict your freedoms, and nobody's suggesting that it is somehow "the number 1" (or even number 2) threat to internet freedom.
If Apple is being panned for a lousy idea, Google should be receiving the same treatment for being *closer to implementation* of the same idea, and that just isn't happening. You keep saying that the idea is being "equally panned" from both parties: the fact is, if you read the commentary on articles here, you will see they are absolutely not both being panned.
If you want to talk about Googles core business of advertising it is one thing.
You mean their SOLE business, right?
FY 2007: 98.9% of their revenues were from advertising. FY 2008: 96.9% of their revenues were from advertising. FY 2009: 96.7% of their revenues were from advertising. Q1 2010 - Q3 2010: 96.1% of their revenues were from advertising.
Google is an advertising company. Do you think they run Gmail out of the goodness of their hearts? No, they are harvesting data about you, and from your emails, and using that to display targeted ads so they can make money. Do you think they run Google maps, or their search engine, or any of their other web properties as charity? Again, no, they are harvesting your data and selling it to advertisers so they can turn a profit. And by giving things away free, they effectively make it impossible for anybody else to compete with them in that market, solidifying their control.
Frankly, I'd rather have a company whose motivation is to write software in order to help sell hardware (Apple) making a "cloud" service, than have a company whose motivation is to write software which will be free, but will also collect and sell my data to advertisers (Google) making a "cloud" service.
Google has every reason to want you in the cloud: the more of your life you entrust to them, the more money they make because their profiles of you get that much better. And while I'm sure Apple wouldn't mind making some extra money off advertising, that is not their primary business, and not their primary revenue stream by a long shot - the hardware sales are where they make their money.
So yes, the idea itself of a "cloud OS" is probably bad; The notion that Apple is the, and I quote, "number one threat to internet freedom" is just flat-out stupid.
How many times have you honestly had a manager that made you that much more productive?
You tell me. How many times have you ever had no manager and had to: budget, purchasing, strategic planning, handle legal, handle customers, handle clients, handle vendors, and all the other things that management ends up doing? Think doing all that might add up to 20% longer workdays for you? I bet it would easily add an hour or two on to every day you work, and you know it would too.
No, management is an expense, a necessary evil.
No such thing. If the role were not valuable enough to an organization to justify their existence, they would not exist. There are definitely individuals who are poor managers, and do not fufill the duties of their role. There are definitely poorly defined or unnecessary "boss' nephew" management roles that get created in organizations. But "management" as a skill is very much a necessary part of an organization, and calling it nothing more than an evil and a drag on productivity is a tremendously dishonest practice.
*Bad* managers are a drag. *Incompetent* managers are a drag. That doesn't mean that "management" is unnecessary or useless.
Saying that the actual work of management has little to do with the work of production is like saying that the actual work of architects has very little to do with the work of building. All the architects do is just push around bits of paper and drawings all day. How does *that* help us erect a skyscraper??!!
If you're that smart, then you find a way to approach the problem constructively. At risk of sounding like a PHB myself, learn to "manage upwards".
I've worked for a (newly promoted) manager who was *absolutely clueless* about what my team did for him, and what our role was supposed to do. He was absolutely incompetent to manage us, and provided no "leadership" that was recognizable as such to my group. He was a business analyst trying to get experience in the technical side of the division for a run at a higher management position.
So, we educated him. And not by undermining him, making him look foolish, and getting him replaced: by presenting our case at every opportunity, by highlighting the risks and benefits of various projects we wanted to work on, by basically pushing him and making it look like he was leading us. He grew as a manager as a result, and we ended up being the guys with a good reputation for working well with customers & other teams, and coming up with excellent solutions, and all of us got promotions for our efforts, because this manager realized that we were helping him and making his department look good.
We could have gone the other way, and bitched about him non-stop, and been the heretics. But it would have simply burned career bridges for us, and turned the clueless boss into a jerk, and we would've ended up drawing the same pay we started with. If your entire management chain is absolutely, profoundly clueless, then your workplace is doomed, and you should seek employment elsewhere. If it's one or two clueless managers, learn how to deal with them and you'll make a couple friends for life.
If you're lucid enough to think to check & clear a browser history, you're lucid enough to understand that "making it look like the person who committed suicide was murdered by me is not in my best interest."
There's no jail time for knowing someone who commits suicide. There certainly *is* jail time for murdering someone.
This sort of thinking is exactly the same sort of shit that was spouted here when Hans Reiser was accused of killing his wife. That there is *some odd, bizarre, incredibly unlikely* chain of events that would lead a man to develop an interest in crime scene forensics, remove a seat from his car, use a hose to try and clean the interior of his car, and numerous other circumstantial but incredibly suspicious activities, just after his wife happens to disappear does not mean he is less likely to be guilty. In fact, it often means exactly the opposite - that he had something to do with her disappearance, and that his suspicious behavior is exactly what it looks like: an attempt to cover his trail.
Slashdot Mirror
The PPC system is, even if it was the last PPC system produced, at least 4.5 years old. The PowerMac G5 was last produced in July/August of 2006. It's now January 2011.
So let's look at the facts:
1) The App Store is not the only way to get software. It will *never* be the *only* way to get software for your Mac. There is NO reason to believe it will *ever* be the *only* way to get software for your Mac.
2) It's been known since 2005 that PPC macs would eventually be unsupported.
3) If you want to continue running your PowerPC system, you can keep running whatever release of 10.4 or 10.5 is on it just fine. You can also install new software whenever you like: just not through the Mac App store.
So how are you being "forced" to upgrade your hardware by this patch? Pray tell, how is Apple going to lock down your system and prevent you from installing or doing whatever you like with your PowerPC system?
(Hint: They can't do a single thing to it, other than 'end support' for it. Which means you can keep running it until the hardware self-destructs if you want.)
I'll ask again: Are you daft?
You seem to be suggesting that, if Apple doesn't sell a particular product, it doesn't exist, or people have to choose the "closest thing that sort of works how they want it to." This is a patently stupid claim. If Apple's products don't address your needs, then don't buy an Apple product. The Nokia N900, from all the stuff I read about it here on /., seems to be a ridiculously powerful handheld computer that runs Linux. A small system (hell, buy a refurbed or used Mac Mini - attractive case, quiet, compact) running Linux & MythTV works quite nicely as a general-purpose set-top computer. Apple doesn't sell refrigerators, either... so I bought my refrigerator from GE instead, rather than let all my food spoil, which seems to be the approach you're suggesting as the only option.
The fact that Oracle produces a large JRE has no bearing on whether or not Java is "deprecated" on the Mac. If you want (or need) to write your code in Java, then you need to deal with the fact that it's an optional technology on the Mac, which means that you need to do one of the following:
1) provide the JRE to your users as part of your install package;
2) provide instructions to your users about how to find & install the JRE;
3) leave it up to your users to figure out what they need and let them find it;
Either way, Apple is not preventing, or even discouraging you, from running Java apps on your Mac.
Oh my god, you're so clever!
Actually yes, Macbook Airs *do* have a DVD drive. It just happens to be an external peripheral, known as the External SuperDrive.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC684ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA2Nw&mco=MTk0MjUxMjc
And if you want to install Snow Leopard on an MBA, you will need one of those (or perhaps a similar external DVD drive), or another system capable of sharing *its* DVD drive for a networked install.
10.5 and 10.4 users are only being left behind if they opt not to spend the $29 to purchase an upgrade to Snow Leopard. The hardware has nothing to do with it. There is no Intel mac released since the transition to Intel chips (early 2006) which will not run Snow Leopard - though in fairness, some of the early mac minis with integrated Intel graphics chips, will not be able to take advantage of *all* of the graphical bells & whistles, but that has everything to do with hardware *capability*.
I'm not a Republican, in fact.
Now please enlighten us, what purpose does that question serve, other than to try and distract from the fact that you're an idiot and backpedaling furiously in an attempt to preserve your point, which is simply untenable?
I'd guess at your political persuasion, but I'm afraid I don't know which party morons typically belong to. Should I godwin the thread, in an attempt to outdo your ad hominem? Or would you prefer to rant a little more about something you clearly have no clue about?
Then that simply underscores the fact that C64_love is lying through his teeth in a blatant attempt at trolling:
There is NO 4-year-old intel Mac (early 2007) that "does not meet the requirements" for Snow Leopard.
Are you daft? If you need a cheap netbook, then get a cheap netbook. There are dozens of models available - if you need a cheap netbook, and you refuse to get one because you "must buy an Apple computer, and Apple doesn't offer one," then you're an idiot. It's really that simple.
This question doesn't even make sense. iPod touch and Apple TV are not general purpose computers. If you want a general purpose computer, get a general purpose computer. If you want an iPod touch or an Apple TV, get an iPod Touch or an Apple TV. There are general purpose computers that can do everything that the Apple TV and iPod touch can do; Apple TVs and iPod Touches cannot do everything that those general purpose computers can do. Some people prefer the flexibility and power of the general-purpose computer; Others prefer the simplicity and ease of a purpose-built device. Ain't the free market grand?
Yes, Java is an... wait for it... optionally installed technology. Java is alive and well on the Mac if you want to use it. They *deprecated* the Java-Cocoa bindings a few years back because barely anybody was using them, and it wasn't worth the effort of maintaining them. Java itself is an *optionally installed* package - one which they will not guarantee is on the system. Apps which require it are, therefore, not allowed in the app store. If you want to write & run a java app, go download the JDK package (updates will be coming from Oracle), write the code, and install and run your new Java app. You can put it up on a web site, sell DVDs, or create your own app store (or use something like appbodega.com) to distribute it. There are more ways that you CAN distribute your java app to a Mac OS system than there are that you *can't*.
True, the DVD is an install-time requirement only; if you want to install it on an MBA, you'll need the external superdrive or the remote install using a DVD drive shared from another system.
You're right, though I believe some of them (esp. the early Minis) don't fully support all Snow Leopard features - some of the video stuff, I believe, actually requires ATI or Nvidia graphics, and iirc, the early minis used the integrated Intel graphics.
Then perhaps the "appliance" term isn't quite the best fit. Let's try this: Stand-alone. iOS devices aren't intended to be *standalone* devices - they are designed to be companions, almost peripherals, to a general-purpose computer, which would be the Mac. If you can't look at the product lineup, and see that they are targeting very different use cases with Mac OS X and iOS, then again - you've fundamentally misunderstood their product lineup.
Also, there's a world of difference between "you can't install it this way" and "deprecated."
The Java-Cocoa bindings were deprecated back in 2005? 2006? The Java install is an *optional* install, because it's not controlled, developed, or released by Apple. As such, they can't guarantee that the package (or some specific version of that package) is installed on a given Mac, and as such, it's not suitable for distribution in the App Store.
You want to write Java Apps on a Mac? Go for it. You can, and it looks like Oracle is committing to continue maintaining Java on the Mac, so you will probably have a reasonable guarantee of being able to run it. The java apps run, and they run fine. They look a little clunky if they have a graphical UI, and that's about the only thing you'd notice that would tell you it's not a standard Cocoa app.
Deprecated means "going to be phased out and won't work in a future release," not "you can't distribute it via our app store."
Everybody who doesn't have 10.6 can continue installing software like they always have - they lose nothing by not installing this patch.
If you need an app that's only sold on the app store, and the developer totally refuses to sell it any other way, then do business with someone else, or consider whether or not it's time to upgrade to 10.6.
More and more software is being released "Snow Leopard only" because it takes advantage of features and frameworks that were added in Snow Leopard. At some point, getting "new stuff" will require you to have a system that's capable of running that "new stuff".
What the fuck are you on about? The Mac App Store has the same requirements as the Snow Leopard release:
1) Mac system running Intel processor;
2) 1 GB of RAM;
3) 5 GB of disk space;
4) DVD Drive
That's it. The entirety of the "required specs" to run Snow Leopard. There is no Intel mac that's been released since 2006 that doesn't have at least those specs, unless you ripped hardware out of it, or put together a Hackintosh of your own, and did it badly, and cheaply.
Or are you complaining because *you decided* not to upgrade to Snow Leopard, and now can't upgrade to the latest Snow Leopard patch, which includes the App Store?
OR, they can do their own thing, and continue distributing .dmg or .mpkg files over the internet, or on physical media, and avoid the App Store altogether!
You keep overlooking that little tidbit in your relentless whoring of your "ZOMG ITZ TEH EVILZ" post from yesterday's "Armageddon" article.
Don't like the Mac App Store, but like the repository concept? Install and use Bodega - http://www.appbodega.com./ They have no guidelines, and have said they're not going anywhere.
Or, you know, continue downloading and installing disk image and other installer files from the web like you've always done.
Yes, provided they also decide they will never again apply a patch to their install of 10.6, for whatever stupid reason. This isn't a "Leopard" to "Snow Leopard" upgrade. It's a routine patch, just like previous ones with security fixes, bug fixes, etc. Skipping it would basically mean you're not going to ever patch your system again.
But considering the "traditional software downloads area" was simply a directory with links to various development shops' websites, and not a repository run by Apple, I think it's very likely that people looking for Mac software will find it just fine using Google if they decide they just can't use the App Store.
Interesting point. How long do you think Google is going to last if everybody opts out of ads? How much would YOU pay for an ad that nobody will see?
Google sells your attention to advertisers. If they have nobody's attention to sell, they make no money. And then what happens to Gmail, Google Maps, and everything else?
I'll tell you what: Hope you've got backups!
And my point is that unless you give a sincere effort to help that manager improve, he's going to turn *into* a persistently clueless and incompetent moron who hates his employees, because every employee he's ever had has been telling him how awful a manager he is.
Shouting at him, undermining him, and basically telling everybody who will listen that he's an incompetent boob is not going to help you, and it won't help him. So what purpose does it serve, other than stroking the 'heretic's' ego, and making him feel smart & important?
And that's what this is about: the type of employee who sits there and tells everybody that the company is doomed because of "those morons" in management.
Lots of peoples' jobs look super-easy when you're not the one doing them. You can be a jerk about somebody who's not doing a good job, or you can be constructive. If you choose to be a jerk, don't be surprised when you're labeled the "argumentative asshole". If you choose to be constructive, you might be surprised at what the clueless & incompetent managers you run across are actually capable of.
This has nothing to do with "fanboys" bringing up anything.
If you read back up this section of the thread, you'll see that it was eldavojohn who brought up Apple's "being the greatest threat to internet freedom," while referencing an earlier Slashdot article, and tied that previous article to this "cloud OS" notion from Apple. That's what I responded to, because I find it curious that ANYBODY would consider Apple the greater threat when Google *already has* the opportunity, and a great deal more motive, to abuse users with ChromeOS.
I'd say pointing out the fact that Google is positioned far better to attack & restrict freedoms is entirely warranted, and entirely topical, considering it was a direct response to eldavojohn's commentary.
And the crucial difference between ignorant and clueless is . . . ?
And the crucial difference between ignorant and incompetent is . . . ?
He *was* clueless. He *was* incompetent. He *was not* capable of doing the job when he started. He was a business analyst who ended up trying to manage a fairly technical dev & infrastructure group. He simply didn't get what we did, just that "somehow," we provided market data to the team he used to work for over the network.
It seems like you want management to naturally be in opposition to employees, and as long as that's the case, your career will probably be full of managers you'll consider incompetent and horrible. Self fulfilling prophecies have a tendency to fulfill themselves, after all.
Incompetent, clueless, ignorant - call it what you want, it's your response to it that matters. If you throw your hands up and shout, "This guy is an incompetent dick and needs to be fired!!!!" then why would you ever be surprised that your manager would react negatively to that? If instead, you say "okay, he's incompetent / inexperienced, let's mold him," you might be surprised at how much better life can be.
Inexperienced, incompetent, clueless - they *very* rarely come about due to outright malice on the part of the manager in question. Behaving like an asshole to them will certainly provoke some malice, though.
Yes, and the idea that they would do what you're suggesting is foolish for lots of technical and business reasons.
RMS has said that he doesn't object to people making a living off of software. Do we jump from there to saying that he fully embraces proprietary software and thus has abandoned the FSF, GNU, and the GPL? It could happen TOMORROW!
And that's just about as likely as your Apple Doomsday scenario.
The problem is, you are *fundamentally misunderstanding* Apple's products. The iPad is *meant* to be an appliance. The iPod is *meant* to be an appliance. The AppleTV is *meant* to be an appliance. The MacBook and iMac and Mac Mini and Mac Pro lines are *meant* to be general-purpose computers.
They are two different sets of products for two complementary needs.
But I'm not surprised that, on Slashdot, where everything with a processor and memory MUST be 'open' and 'hackable,' that this nuance is completely lost on someone with a hate-on for Apple.
And as far as "java code being deprecated", that's bullshit and you know it. They decided they weren't going to continue supporting Java bindings for their UI frameworks because *almost nobody* was using them.
Java is alive and well on the Mac if you want to use it - In fact, I can and do run Eclipse just fine, javac works just fine, and a host of JNLP-based apps work just fine as well. Does it make your life harder than ObjC with native bindings? Perhaps. But how much time and effort should they be expected to expend on making sure that an unused part of their OS is kept up to date? Dev hours & budget are a limited resource.
And just to be clear, *good* managers "produce" leadership, direction, vision, and a whole lot of roadblock-clearing, and "produce" time for the engineers to do their work by acting as a liasion when their team needs something.
Your statement that they are an "expense" strongly implies that they are a *drain* on the overall process, rather than adding something useful to it. By this definition you're trying to weasel into after the fact, developers and everybody else is "an expense, a necessary evil."
If it's necessary, it's an investment in producing your product, it's not some sort of albatross you have to carry along with you just because somebody else decided that you have to spend an extra 200,000 dollars while producing your product.
I agree that it seems like a lousy idea, from any company.
What I'm pointing out is the funny thing about the fact that Apple is being labeled the "number one threat to internet freedom" because it's got some patent filing that mentions net booting a device, while Google *already has* ChromeOS running on hardware, *and* has every reason to want to violate your privacy & restrict your freedoms, and nobody's suggesting that it is somehow "the number 1" (or even number 2) threat to internet freedom.
If Apple is being panned for a lousy idea, Google should be receiving the same treatment for being *closer to implementation* of the same idea, and that just isn't happening. You keep saying that the idea is being "equally panned" from both parties: the fact is, if you read the commentary on articles here, you will see they are absolutely not both being panned.
You mean their SOLE business, right?
FY 2007: 98.9% of their revenues were from advertising.
FY 2008: 96.9% of their revenues were from advertising.
FY 2009: 96.7% of their revenues were from advertising.
Q1 2010 - Q3 2010: 96.1% of their revenues were from advertising.
Check the numbers yourself: http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html
Google is an advertising company. Do you think they run Gmail out of the goodness of their hearts? No, they are harvesting data about you, and from your emails, and using that to display targeted ads so they can make money. Do you think they run Google maps, or their search engine, or any of their other web properties as charity? Again, no, they are harvesting your data and selling it to advertisers so they can turn a profit. And by giving things away free, they effectively make it impossible for anybody else to compete with them in that market, solidifying their control.
Frankly, I'd rather have a company whose motivation is to write software in order to help sell hardware (Apple) making a "cloud" service, than have a company whose motivation is to write software which will be free, but will also collect and sell my data to advertisers (Google) making a "cloud" service.
Google has every reason to want you in the cloud: the more of your life you entrust to them, the more money they make because their profiles of you get that much better. And while I'm sure Apple wouldn't mind making some extra money off advertising, that is not their primary business, and not their primary revenue stream by a long shot - the hardware sales are where they make their money.
So yes, the idea itself of a "cloud OS" is probably bad; The notion that Apple is the, and I quote, "number one threat to internet freedom" is just flat-out stupid.
You tell me. How many times have you ever had no manager and had to: budget, purchasing, strategic planning, handle legal, handle customers, handle clients, handle vendors, and all the other things that management ends up doing? Think doing all that might add up to 20% longer workdays for you? I bet it would easily add an hour or two on to every day you work, and you know it would too.
No such thing. If the role were not valuable enough to an organization to justify their existence, they would not exist. There are definitely individuals who are poor managers, and do not fufill the duties of their role. There are definitely poorly defined or unnecessary "boss' nephew" management roles that get created in organizations. But "management" as a skill is very much a necessary part of an organization, and calling it nothing more than an evil and a drag on productivity is a tremendously dishonest practice.
*Bad* managers are a drag. *Incompetent* managers are a drag. That doesn't mean that "management" is unnecessary or useless.
Saying that the actual work of management has little to do with the work of production is like saying that the actual work of architects has very little to do with the work of building. All the architects do is just push around bits of paper and drawings all day. How does *that* help us erect a skyscraper??!!
If you're that smart, then you find a way to approach the problem constructively. At risk of sounding like a PHB myself, learn to "manage upwards".
I've worked for a (newly promoted) manager who was *absolutely clueless* about what my team did for him, and what our role was supposed to do. He was absolutely incompetent to manage us, and provided no "leadership" that was recognizable as such to my group. He was a business analyst trying to get experience in the technical side of the division for a run at a higher management position.
So, we educated him. And not by undermining him, making him look foolish, and getting him replaced: by presenting our case at every opportunity, by highlighting the risks and benefits of various projects we wanted to work on, by basically pushing him and making it look like he was leading us. He grew as a manager as a result, and we ended up being the guys with a good reputation for working well with customers & other teams, and coming up with excellent solutions, and all of us got promotions for our efforts, because this manager realized that we were helping him and making his department look good.
We could have gone the other way, and bitched about him non-stop, and been the heretics. But it would have simply burned career bridges for us, and turned the clueless boss into a jerk, and we would've ended up drawing the same pay we started with. If your entire management chain is absolutely, profoundly clueless, then your workplace is doomed, and you should seek employment elsewhere. If it's one or two clueless managers, learn how to deal with them and you'll make a couple friends for life.
If you're lucid enough to think to check & clear a browser history, you're lucid enough to understand that "making it look like the person who committed suicide was murdered by me is not in my best interest."
There's no jail time for knowing someone who commits suicide. There certainly *is* jail time for murdering someone.
This sort of thinking is exactly the same sort of shit that was spouted here when Hans Reiser was accused of killing his wife. That there is *some odd, bizarre, incredibly unlikely* chain of events that would lead a man to develop an interest in crime scene forensics, remove a seat from his car, use a hose to try and clean the interior of his car, and numerous other circumstantial but incredibly suspicious activities, just after his wife happens to disappear does not mean he is less likely to be guilty. In fact, it often means exactly the opposite - that he had something to do with her disappearance, and that his suspicious behavior is exactly what it looks like: an attempt to cover his trail.