It doesn't matter when they started supporting it. Even when they introduced the homosexually colored iMacs they were still including just single button mice. So, since 1997 you had to go out and buy more hardware to get up to the same level of functionality everyone else had been enjoying since day one. You're an Apple apologist, so it was never an issue for you. For everyone else with a much wider computing history it's one of Apples biggest mistakes among many.
Apple's research clearly showed that novice users preferred and understood a one-button-mouse significantly better than a multi-button mouse. This has been verified again and again.
Honestly, how many times have you had a novice (and sometimes not-so-novice) Windows user ask "Which 'Click' ?" Right button or Left button?
Well guess what? When there is only ONE button, that question, for some odd reason, just never comes up. This removes a "mental speedbump" for the user.
And if you honestly want to call purchasing a bog-standard, $10 USB mouse "buy[ing] more hardware", you don't need to even OWN a computer. You just undermine your own argument with silly bullshit like that.
Just like the 1 button mouse.... or black and white displays, or completely removing SD card slots from all mobile devices. Not! Meanwhile, the future will prove that Macs4all is a stupid motherfucker. You're a 60 year old limp-dick asshole who's dumped so much of your retirement savings into Apple shitware that you couldn't possibly dig yourself out. I bet you want to be buried underneath Steve Jobs and rotated 180 degrees so you can lick his asshole in the afterlife. Go fuck yourself, deluded zealot.
Seriously? A one-button mouse meme? In 2016?
And Macs moved on from B&W displays in 1986; so again, we're talking pretty damned ancient history.
And as far as SD slots, Apple still sells at least one laptop with an SD slot. They have removed them because their research showed that only a tiny percentage of users (mostly photogs) used them on anything even remotely resembling a "regular basis". And since you can get a macOS-compatible USB 3.0 SD card reader/writer for the princely sum of $6.99 on Amazon, I would imagine that those who want/need the occasional SD card accessed, can do so without significant hardship.
Anecdotally, my MacBook Pro has an SD slot, which I was happy for. Wanna know how many times I've used it in the 3.5 years I've had that laptop? ONCE. And that was more to see if it actually worked than any "real" need for it.
Before that, I had a USB card-reader. Wanna know how many times I used that in the nearly 10 years I had it before I bought the abovementioned MBP? TWICE.
Same thing with my MBP's Optical Drive. Even though I chose that model partially because it was one of the last Mac laptops with a built-in Optical Drive, I can count on one hand the number of times I have used it in 3 years.
Compared to what? The C64 had a bit of graphics hardware acceleration, the Amiga had quite a lot, maybe the Atari ST too.
But on the PC side, it was the same as on Apple's side. Hercules, CGA, EGA and the first VGA cards had no acceleration either AFAIK.
All 3 of your mentioned computers had Jay Miner chipsets in them, to which Apple had no access. But as I said above, the dirty little secret with those designs is that they clock-stretched the CPU to allow the graphics chips time on the data and address busses. This means they achieved "graphics ACcleration" at the expense of constant "computational DEceleration". Kinda makes it a "meh" tradeoff.
And I believe you are correct when you say that the typical Hercules and Trident CGA, EGA and early VGA graphics cards had no graphics acceleration, and more importantly if we're talking about GUIs, no "hardware" Bit/Blt capabilities whatsoever.
"Best monochrome"... that's almost an oxymoron itself. The real nail in Lisa's coffin was the fact that it, like the Mac garbage that Apple pooped out later, had no custom chips for rendering graphics, so the overtaxed 68000 had to do all the work. Idiotic and stupid, even by the standards of the day. But that's what happens when a hardware company relies entirely on "off the shelf" components.
No. "Best Monochrome" monitor was absolutely a viable option in 1983 (and even more so in 1978 when the Lisa was first designed).
BTW, those "custom graphics chips" in the Jay Miner designs (not taking anything away from the genius of Jay Miner, who I respect and admire greatly!) ended up not exactly doing their jobs at zero "cost", throughput-wise. In fact, they tended to "cycle steal" from the 68k CPUs, by manipulating the DTAK signal to essentially do "clock stretching", in order to get time on the common memory bus. This actually made the CPUs slower than their clock-speeds would indicate. So an 8 MHz 68k in a system with a Copper or Blitter chip, operated more like a 6 MHz one. And that wasn't just during "drawing", it was ALL the time.
And in the days of the Lisa, and the tasks for which it was designed (which was basically running the integrated 7/7 LisaOffice suite), the fact that each and every pixel was lovingly manipulated by the CPU was not a big deal, and in fact, was likely the only way at the time the Lisa was designed to achieve the Bit/Blt operations necessary for overlapping windows.
The Amiga had the advantage of coming several years after the Lisa, and also had Jay Miner's very much custom-chips for help.
Oh, and as far as the Mac goes, it, too, was designed in 1981, before there was commonly-available graphics acceleration hardware that could do Bit/Blt; so again, absent the "outlier" that was Jay Miner, anyone who was doing a GUI at that time (which, outside of PARC, was, um, APPLE and..., and...?), was doing it with the CPU. The term "GPU" really hadn't even been coined yet.
Because that's just what I need, a bunch of peripherals and cables on my desk, when I could have it all in a big case instead.
...With a bunch of cables coming out of the "big case".
Really, you realize you're bitching about what would likely end up being 1 to 3 small TB cables (roughly the diameter of a typical USB cable), going to TB peripherals/card-cages that can then be stashed anywhere within a 10 foot (3 m) radius of the mothership, right? Doesn't sound any more onerous than everything having to come to the "big case".
The ONLY thing that is substantially different would be if you used multiple internal hard drives in the "big case". And that is easily handled with a single TB cable over to an external RAID box. Big Fucking Deal. Everything else is a wash, cable-wise.
IOW, the "clutter" meme against TB is a complete and utter strawman argument.
You're totally right. From what I hear products like Alexa are pretty impressive, and as everything becomes more connected- hopefully with fewer problems than we're dealing with now- and more functions are offloaded to AI assistants there'll definitely less reason to have a phone on hand. I don't think Apple's oblivious to that either. Apple's positioning Siri more forwardly and the Watch has room to grow. One Alexa on your wrist (or in your ear or on your glasses or hell let's wear Star Trek communicators) is better than several scattered around your home.
But Apple has a big advantage ther with HomeKit. It is already pretty well-established, and has many advantages over other IoT implementations. Security being the biggest one.
It will be interesting to see whether Apple continues to position the Apple TV as their HomeKit Hub, or whether they actually have a more advanced Home Server product in the works. But either way, it will rely heavily on the convergence of Siri and HomeKit technologies, IMHO.
Apple's Q4 has been the weakest or second weakest quarter since 2012. New iPhones are released only during the final month of the quarter and are supply-constrained, limiting the revenue that can be pulled from there. Cook said that Q1 2017 (Oct-Dec 2016 for reasons only known to accountants) will see a return to profitability, and Apple has consistently been spot-on with their numbers. Q1 has consistently been Apple's biggest since the iPhone eclipsed the Mac in revenue.
Now, if Apple undershoots its targets for Q1 (entirely possible), then I'd start watching for sweating Apple execs.
Um, I don't think there will be any sweating at 1 Infinite Loop.
The original Mac under Jobs' tenure was an utter failure. Lots of press, disappointing sales. Many years after the Mac's introduction the Apple II was still paying the bills at Apple, carrying the Mac project. Jobs' Apple III (note 3 not 2) was a failure. Job's NeXTcube was a failure.
And of course the Lisa too.
The Lisa was a spectacular machine. Best monochrome monitor in history. A very well designed business-oriented computer. Just too damned expensive, and too far ahead of its time.
to bad the new mac pro missed the mark and they sat on it. They may of had planes to move faster on it but likely hit to the oh shit we F* up and we need to re plan it wall.
Really, the only real "fuckup" with the Mac Pro was in assuming that TB would catch in faster than it has. If there were a slew of reasonably-priced TB peripherals and TB card cages, people wouldn't be as inclined to diss it so much, and Apple likely would have poured a little more love into it.
Do you use the iMessage features? Do you use the emojis? Do you do the meme thing? Do you insert sounds and music? Do you and your friends and coworkers sit in a circle learning new iPhone tricks that look really cool? Do you do the group thing?
Or do you send an occasional text and maybe when you're playing it dangerous, a picture?
Are you assessing how children and teenagers use a technology based on how a adult uses it?
I'm not about to say "iPhone is the only way and they can't change". But, it has absolutely nothing to do with what I have to say. I'm a 41 year old man with thinning hair. I have to remember to trim my nose hair and ear hair which I often forget to do. What matters is what the cool people say... and let's be honest, you're here commenting on Slashdot... you're definitely excluded from that category. If the cool people use iPhone, then the kids use iPhone. The question is... which cool people do your kids want to copy?
You're right, and I get your point.
I am a 60 year old that tries to "keep up"; but certainly is much more likely to send all-text Texts than to have an entire Text composed only of Emojis. Although it has been known to happen occasionally. I'm not dead yet, LOL!
The biggest difference is that the iMessage-to-iMessage conversations consist of Blue bubbles
And are free (microscopic data usage charges notwithstanding), and you can play games through them, and send all manner of pointless images, animations, drawings and make the bubbles bounce up and down. Et-Effing-Cetera. AND:
The youngsters all use various types of vendor locked in technologies.
Is basically true.
Well, with the release of iOS 10, I must admit that there is getting to be more of a difference between what you can do with iMessage to iMessage "texts" vs. what is possible with plain ol' SMS/MMS. But I'm not sure that mist, if not all, of those "tricks" are still happening within the standard protocol, with just clever stuff happening at the "iMessage Editor" App-level.
The biggest difference is that the iMessage-to-iMessage conversations consist of Blue bubbles, and the regular SMS conversations have Green bubbles.
Those Blue bubbles don't show up on the phone bill:-)
Good point. But with unlimited Texts like I have (didn't specifically seek it out; it as just a nice feature), the Green bubbles don't cost me any more than the Blue ones.
Do you know what a typical Office environment is, what typical hardware is? Its more likely to be a small business that is getting a PC from a second tier supplier that is using second tier less expensive parts, a business without an IT department that does careful evaluations and selections.
Actually, That describes my work environment to a "T".
Do you work for Apple or what? I've never seen one apologist all over a single thread, Apple-splaining the rationale for a product change in dozens of comments, before.
Nope. Just bored at work, like most people on here...
The fact is, standards exist because when everything is the same people can use it more efficiently. Apple seems to be hell bent on being non-standard. Whether it is as cool as they think it is or not, having an ever shifting non-standard positioning of keys is going to force anyone working with the machine to stop and look down at the keyboard to use that key. There is no way that it can result in being more efficient for anyone.
No.
A "Standard" is some process or protocol that has been formally proposed, peer-reviewed, submitted for comment, voted-on, and finally ratified. It is NOT some laptop manufacturer saying "Hey! I've got an idea for how to use those worthless Function Keys!", and then everyone else SORT-OF copying the idea, but with their own variations. I am nearly positive that there isn't an actual, defined, official, ASCII code for "Launch Browser", or "Volume Up", REGARDLESS of how many OEMs have "adopted" each other's key selections.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a macbook air. Thanks for asking. Macs aren't very good. My first macbook will be my last.
Sorry for your negative impression. What exactly were you expecting that you feel wasn't fulfilled with that bottom-of-the-line Mac?
It doesn't matter when they started supporting it. Even when they introduced the homosexually colored iMacs they were still including just single button mice. So, since 1997 you had to go out and buy more hardware to get up to the same level of functionality everyone else had been enjoying since day one. You're an Apple apologist, so it was never an issue for you. For everyone else with a much wider computing history it's one of Apples biggest mistakes among many.
Apple's research clearly showed that novice users preferred and understood a one-button-mouse significantly better than a multi-button mouse. This has been verified again and again.
Honestly, how many times have you had a novice (and sometimes not-so-novice) Windows user ask "Which 'Click' ?" Right button or Left button?
Well guess what? When there is only ONE button, that question, for some odd reason, just never comes up. This removes a "mental speedbump" for the user.
And if you honestly want to call purchasing a bog-standard, $10 USB mouse "buy[ing] more hardware", you don't need to even OWN a computer. You just undermine your own argument with silly bullshit like that.
maybe if it was an original idea.
Well, it looks to be a significant improvement on what everyone else has tried; so I think that "counts".
Just like the 1 button mouse.... or black and white displays, or completely removing SD card slots from all mobile devices. Not! Meanwhile, the future will prove that Macs4all is a stupid motherfucker. You're a 60 year old limp-dick asshole who's dumped so much of your retirement savings into Apple shitware that you couldn't possibly dig yourself out. I bet you want to be buried underneath Steve Jobs and rotated 180 degrees so you can lick his asshole in the afterlife. Go fuck yourself, deluded zealot.
Seriously? A one-button mouse meme? In 2016?
And Macs moved on from B&W displays in 1986; so again, we're talking pretty damned ancient history.
And as far as SD slots, Apple still sells at least one laptop with an SD slot. They have removed them because their research showed that only a tiny percentage of users (mostly photogs) used them on anything even remotely resembling a "regular basis". And since you can get a macOS-compatible USB 3.0 SD card reader/writer for the princely sum of $6.99 on Amazon, I would imagine that those who want/need the occasional SD card accessed, can do so without significant hardship.
Anecdotally, my MacBook Pro has an SD slot, which I was happy for. Wanna know how many times I've used it in the 3.5 years I've had that laptop? ONCE. And that was more to see if it actually worked than any "real" need for it.
Before that, I had a USB card-reader. Wanna know how many times I used that in the nearly 10 years I had it before I bought the abovementioned MBP? TWICE.
Same thing with my MBP's Optical Drive. Even though I chose that model partially because it was one of the last Mac laptops with a built-in Optical Drive, I can count on one hand the number of times I have used it in 3 years.
Compared to what? The C64 had a bit of graphics hardware acceleration, the Amiga had quite a lot, maybe the Atari ST too.
But on the PC side, it was the same as on Apple's side. Hercules, CGA, EGA and the first VGA cards had no acceleration either AFAIK.
All 3 of your mentioned computers had Jay Miner chipsets in them, to which Apple had no access. But as I said above, the dirty little secret with those designs is that they clock-stretched the CPU to allow the graphics chips time on the data and address busses. This means they achieved "graphics ACcleration" at the expense of constant "computational DEceleration". Kinda makes it a "meh" tradeoff.
And I believe you are correct when you say that the typical Hercules and Trident CGA, EGA and early VGA graphics cards had no graphics acceleration, and more importantly if we're talking about GUIs, no "hardware" Bit/Blt capabilities whatsoever.
"Best monochrome"... that's almost an oxymoron itself. The real nail in Lisa's coffin was the fact that it, like the Mac garbage that Apple pooped out later, had no custom chips for rendering graphics, so the overtaxed 68000 had to do all the work. Idiotic and stupid, even by the standards of the day. But that's what happens when a hardware company relies entirely on "off the shelf" components.
No. "Best Monochrome" monitor was absolutely a viable option in 1983 (and even more so in 1978 when the Lisa was first designed).
BTW, those "custom graphics chips" in the Jay Miner designs (not taking anything away from the genius of Jay Miner, who I respect and admire greatly!) ended up not exactly doing their jobs at zero "cost", throughput-wise. In fact, they tended to "cycle steal" from the 68k CPUs, by manipulating the DTAK signal to essentially do "clock stretching", in order to get time on the common memory bus. This actually made the CPUs slower than their clock-speeds would indicate. So an 8 MHz 68k in a system with a Copper or Blitter chip, operated more like a 6 MHz one. And that wasn't just during "drawing", it was ALL the time.
And in the days of the Lisa, and the tasks for which it was designed (which was basically running the integrated 7/7 LisaOffice suite), the fact that each and every pixel was lovingly manipulated by the CPU was not a big deal, and in fact, was likely the only way at the time the Lisa was designed to achieve the Bit/Blt operations necessary for overlapping windows.
The Amiga had the advantage of coming several years after the Lisa, and also had Jay Miner's very much custom-chips for help.
Oh, and as far as the Mac goes, it, too, was designed in 1981, before there was commonly-available graphics acceleration hardware that could do Bit/Blt; so again, absent the "outlier" that was Jay Miner, anyone who was doing a GUI at that time (which, outside of PARC, was, um, APPLE and..., and...?), was doing it with the CPU. The term "GPU" really hadn't even been coined yet.
Because that's just what I need, a bunch of peripherals and cables on my desk, when I could have it all in a big case instead.
...With a bunch of cables coming out of the "big case".
Really, you realize you're bitching about what would likely end up being 1 to 3 small TB cables (roughly the diameter of a typical USB cable), going to TB peripherals/card-cages that can then be stashed anywhere within a 10 foot (3 m) radius of the mothership, right? Doesn't sound any more onerous than everything having to come to the "big case".
The ONLY thing that is substantially different would be if you used multiple internal hard drives in the "big case". And that is easily handled with a single TB cable over to an external RAID box. Big Fucking Deal. Everything else is a wash, cable-wise.
IOW, the "clutter" meme against TB is a complete and utter strawman argument.
You're totally right. From what I hear products like Alexa are pretty impressive, and as everything becomes more connected- hopefully with fewer problems than we're dealing with now- and more functions are offloaded to AI assistants there'll definitely less reason to have a phone on hand. I don't think Apple's oblivious to that either. Apple's positioning Siri more forwardly and the Watch has room to grow. One Alexa on your wrist (or in your ear or on your glasses or hell let's wear Star Trek communicators) is better than several scattered around your home.
But Apple has a big advantage ther with HomeKit. It is already pretty well-established, and has many advantages over other IoT implementations. Security being the biggest one.
It will be interesting to see whether Apple continues to position the Apple TV as their HomeKit Hub, or whether they actually have a more advanced Home Server product in the works. But either way, it will rely heavily on the convergence of Siri and HomeKit technologies, IMHO.
Apple's Q4 has been the weakest or second weakest quarter since 2012. New iPhones are released only during the final month of the quarter and are supply-constrained, limiting the revenue that can be pulled from there. Cook said that Q1 2017 (Oct-Dec 2016 for reasons only known to accountants) will see a return to profitability, and Apple has consistently been spot-on with their numbers. Q1 has consistently been Apple's biggest since the iPhone eclipsed the Mac in revenue.
Now, if Apple undershoots its targets for Q1 (entirely possible), then I'd start watching for sweating Apple execs.
Um, I don't think there will be any sweating at 1 Infinite Loop.
The original Mac under Jobs' tenure was an utter failure. Lots of press, disappointing sales. Many years after the Mac's introduction the Apple II was still paying the bills at Apple, carrying the Mac project. Jobs' Apple III (note 3 not 2) was a failure. Job's NeXTcube was a failure.
And of course the Lisa too.
The Lisa was a spectacular machine. Best monochrome monitor in history. A very well designed business-oriented computer. Just too damned expensive, and too far ahead of its time.
to bad the new mac pro missed the mark and they sat on it. They may of had planes to move faster on it but likely hit to the oh shit we F* up and we need to re plan it wall.
Really, the only real "fuckup" with the Mac Pro was in assuming that TB would catch in faster than it has. If there were a slew of reasonably-priced TB peripherals and TB card cages, people wouldn't be as inclined to diss it so much, and Apple likely would have poured a little more love into it.
Do you use the iMessage features? Do you use the emojis? Do you do the meme thing? Do you insert sounds and music? Do you and your friends and coworkers sit in a circle learning new iPhone tricks that look really cool? Do you do the group thing? Or do you send an occasional text and maybe when you're playing it dangerous, a picture? Are you assessing how children and teenagers use a technology based on how a adult uses it? I'm not about to say "iPhone is the only way and they can't change". But, it has absolutely nothing to do with what I have to say. I'm a 41 year old man with thinning hair. I have to remember to trim my nose hair and ear hair which I often forget to do. What matters is what the cool people say... and let's be honest, you're here commenting on Slashdot... you're definitely excluded from that category. If the cool people use iPhone, then the kids use iPhone. The question is... which cool people do your kids want to copy?
You're right, and I get your point.
I am a 60 year old that tries to "keep up"; but certainly is much more likely to send all-text Texts than to have an entire Text composed only of Emojis. Although it has been known to happen occasionally. I'm not dead yet, LOL!
The biggest difference is that the iMessage-to-iMessage conversations consist of Blue bubbles
And are free (microscopic data usage charges notwithstanding), and you can play games through them, and send all manner of pointless images, animations, drawings and make the bubbles bounce up and down. Et-Effing-Cetera. AND:
The youngsters all use various types of vendor locked in technologies.
Is basically true.
Well, with the release of iOS 10, I must admit that there is getting to be more of a difference between what you can do with iMessage to iMessage "texts" vs. what is possible with plain ol' SMS/MMS. But I'm not sure that mist, if not all, of those "tricks" are still happening within the standard protocol, with just clever stuff happening at the "iMessage Editor" App-level.
Ummm No and another No.
History will prove you wrong.
Mac users probably don't use the Escape key too much, let alone the function keys.
THIS Mac user uses the Esc key all the time to dismiss OS X/macOS Dialogs.
Which may be why there's something labeled "Cancel" at the left edge of the touch bar in one of the images from TFA.
(And THIS Mac user uses the Esc key all the time to start commands in microEmacs in Terminal, but I digress....)
Good catch! I didn't see that; but I'll bet that generates an "ESC" key code.
Not necessarily.
I've been inside of numerous non-Apple laptops that had capacitive buttons for such features.
It's probably cheaper than switches, too.
Well, if he described "wear out" , I would be surprised if that was a Capacitive Switch.
this meme should be replaced with stupidity of putting a charging port on the bottom of a mouse meme
Citation?
I have AT&T, and I don't think Texts ( regardless of Bubble-color) actually count against my data quota, just like FaceTime doesn't.
The biggest difference is that the iMessage-to-iMessage conversations consist of Blue bubbles, and the regular SMS conversations have Green bubbles.
Those Blue bubbles don't show up on the phone bill :-)
Good point. But with unlimited Texts like I have (didn't specifically seek it out; it as just a nice feature), the Green bubbles don't cost me any more than the Blue ones.
Do you know what a typical Office environment is, what typical hardware is? Its more likely to be a small business that is getting a PC from a second tier supplier that is using second tier less expensive parts, a business without an IT department that does careful evaluations and selections.
Actually, That describes my work environment to a "T".
Doubt it will make any difference.
The pixel has arrived at just the right time to pick up all those note owners.
That's a laugh; and it still doesn't help Samsung...
Do you work for Apple or what? I've never seen one apologist all over a single thread, Apple-splaining the rationale for a product change in dozens of comments, before.
Nope. Just bored at work, like most people on here...
The fact is, standards exist because when everything is the same people can use it more efficiently. Apple seems to be hell bent on being non-standard. Whether it is as cool as they think it is or not, having an ever shifting non-standard positioning of keys is going to force anyone working with the machine to stop and look down at the keyboard to use that key. There is no way that it can result in being more efficient for anyone.
No.
A "Standard" is some process or protocol that has been formally proposed, peer-reviewed, submitted for comment, voted-on, and finally ratified. It is NOT some laptop manufacturer saying "Hey! I've got an idea for how to use those worthless Function Keys!", and then everyone else SORT-OF copying the idea, but with their own variations. I am nearly positive that there isn't an actual, defined, official, ASCII code for "Launch Browser", or "Volume Up", REGARDLESS of how many OEMs have "adopted" each other's key selections.
Damn,, we should all worship apple
I'll just settle for credit for a good idea.
Is the market rate of iPhones really that high in the US?
Apple holds about 30% of the smart phone new sales in Aus but that is falling rapidly year on year.
Not after the S7 debacle they aren't...