Those are the two biggest things I'd want in a Chromebook that I find to be indispensable parts of my experience with Thinkpads: a trackpoint and an RJ-45 connector. If their new Chromebook had those, I'd be first in line to get one.
An HDMI port? More than 2 USB connectors? Yawn. Given me wired Ethernet and a Trackpoint and I'd be first in line to get one. They could make me forgive those way-too-wide aspect ratios that screens have nowadays.
Sorry, but you should be prepared to be disappointed from here on out.
So, you can either sit there and stamp your widdle feet, or just realize that, after a time, you just can't purchase that buggy-whip you like anymore, and move on, like the rest of us have.
Why couldn't you develop in C# from your W7 Bootcamp install?
There's no reason I couldn't have stayed on Windows 7. I figured that I might as well upgrade to Windows 10 since that is what I would use at work if I were helping out on a C# project.
A simple "zoom" button next to the trackball fixes that. Touch the button while you roll the ball, same motion but more accurate. I use a Logitech M570 an have one of the "extra" buttons programmed this way.
That's the same sort of thing that Macs have supported with Control-Scroll for a long time in OS X. That's what I normally use; but I accidentally did the Pinch-Zoom "gesture" on my MBP's Trackpad the other day, and was pleasantly surprised that it "Just Worked".
Kinda handy to have Gestures in common, like the "Natural Scroll" Direction, for those people who go back and forth between an iPad and a Mac. It's one of those things that you don't notice until you use a computer that isn't designed to be "considerate" right out of the box.
Give me a trackpoint and I will buy it. Touchpads suck, period. I don't care who makes them I have never seen a touchpad that was anywhere near as good as the trackpoints I have had on my laptops over the years.
Never owned a MacBook Pro then, have you?
My wife owns one, I use it only when I have no better option. She uses a mouse when she has real work to do as the touchpad on there sucks for her work. For me the only pointing device that is a bigger impediment to work than a touchpad is a touchscreen.
Some people just don't grok Touchpads, I guess. But I have never had problems with my MBP's Trackpad. Now my work Samsung's Trackpad is TOTALLY unusable, and I have a mouse plugged into it; but I have never been tempted to plug that into my MacBook.
Who cares. If you want that then get a touchscreen or a tablet.
Actually, I didn't even know that my MacBook Pro's Trackpad even did that, until I just accidently "Did it" (I own an iPad, too) when I wanted to Zoom something on the screen, and it Just Worked.
I agree, their most recent update tricks have been a little more nasty than usual (again, see iOS which is almost as bad), but this lady's suit clearly originated long before the recent trickery.
While I agree that the iOS 9 Updates have gotten a little "pushy" for my tastes; they are NOWHERE in the "I will TRICK you into Updates" nor are they the "So, what time today shall we Update this?" that MS has done with Windows 10.
True, they have the "I will REMIND you Tomorrow" (or on next Restart); but you NEVER have the "I AM DOING THIS LIKE IT OR NOT" or the "Clicking NO doesn't mean NO" MALWARE TACTICS that MS has resorted to.
So don't EVEN call iOS' "prodding" "almost as bad" as what MS is doing. No way.
Funnily enough even with all of that turned on, you're still going to send telemetry on every click of the start menu that at the very least ties your current IP to unique identifiers. Makes it kind of trivial to track someone's VPN usage and uncloak them when you have a minute-by-minute
EXACTLY the kind of thing the NSA would want in an OS, don'tcha think?
Pray, tell, how do you turn all of it off?
Short of buying a Windows Server to run as a domain controller, and only use Windows Enterprise Edition for the desktops and laptops, and constantly research, write and push your own group policy objects to whack the latest mole, I don't think you can.
Turning most of the spyware off is like removing most of the human droppings from your soup.
I upgraded my bootcamp partition on my personal Macbook Pro to Windows 10 from Windows 7 Pro. It was pretty trivial to disable everything. I was a little hesitant to perform the upgrade but I wanted to play around with some C# for a little side project I am doing for fun and I rarely boot that machine into windows anyway.
Why couldn't you develop in C# from your W7 Bootcamp install?
Crash reports and other maintenance based telemetry helps identify issues that needs to be fixed.
So does decent pre-release testing, Public Betas, etc.
As a Windows Applications Developer, I can tell you that, Company-Wide, it is OBVIOUSLY something that Microsoft sees absolutely NO value in these days. instead, they just release stuff RIGHT "off the bench" and let the Users do the "testing".
No, really. MS was always kinda bad about that; but it has gotten DRAMATICALLY worse in the past few years.
What's baffling to me is that Microsoft took what should have been a golden PR opportunity (free Windows upgrade), and turned it into a PR disaster.
The ONLY reason they did the "Free" Upgrade was that, with the move from Apple to make Mavericks (and above) a Free Upgrade to OS X/macOS, they suddenly realized that with OS X/macOS and Linux both being Free, they were the only remaining major OS Player that was still charging directly for their OS.
The fact that the NSA likely underwrote the entire "Free" Upgrade and designed the Telemetry system and "forced upgrade" concept is beside the point...;-)
I was forced to revert from 10 to 7 in an older desktop because 10 didn't work properly with the Realtek sound chip and drivers, which have to work right for some sound restoration jobs I do.
That's what you get for using a Non-Mac for Pro Audio work.
Yes they do. My Focusrite Firewire interface will NOT work with Windows 10. If they update my Windows (with I explicitly said I do not want) I am left with an expensive piece of hardware that is effectively bricked. And I am not the only one!
That's what you get for using a Non-Mac for Pro Audio work.
I find trackpoints utterly unusable. Using them to guide the pointer is like trying to guide a drunk across a busy road using sign language from 2 miles away. A trackpad is much better, but the small trackballs that used to be incorporated into laptops back in the day are far superior to both.
Kinda hard to do Pinch-to-Zoom on that Trackball...
Give me a trackpoint and I will buy it. Touchpads suck, period. I don't care who makes them I have never seen a touchpad that was anywhere near as good as the trackpoints I have had on my laptops over the years.
Unfortunately the very nature of services like Cortana, Alexa, and Google Now *require* you to send them your data in order for them to work. How is Google Now supposed to advise me of my flight tomorrow being delayed if it doesn't know about the flight in the first place.
These services are incredibly useful and powerful and get more useful and powerful all the time, yet, Apple has none of them. This is what analysts are concerned about. People will willingly sacrifice a bit of their data if it makes their lives infinitely simpler - I know I have no problem with it because Google Now is *just that good*.
Aw ww, that's cute; you really believe all that gratuitous data mining is NECESSARY...
Well, Siri seems to do just fine without it, and as shown in the WWDC Keynote a week or so ago, is going to get much smarter with iOS 10 and now coming to MacOS Sierra. And all this WITHOUT making you a data donor.
Pretty nice specs. But still has a freaky trash can case. The thing is never getting mounted in a rack.
But who has a 19" relay rack on their desk? Heck, most small businesses don't even have racks, and if they happen to have any Rackmount equipment, it just sits on a shelf, taking up as much space as SIX Mac Pros...
And with SIX TB2 ports, (soon to be SIX USB-C/TB3 ports with the rumored update coming this year), fully realized, the Mac Pro can be
One BEAST of a system!
Despite being a Linux user for many years, I'm really beginning to trust Apple more and more each day. Unlike certain other companies, I know how they make their money from me: I pay it to them. I can see why they don't need to collect private information about me. I can see why they don't need to know when I urinate, when I defecate, how much of each I've made, and how they both smell. Apple isn't trying to advertise other companies' junk to me. They're just providing top-notch products. The higher-than-usual cost reflects how these products are better, and this premium helps avoid the need to collect and sell data. When the next edition of the rMBP hardware comes out, I'm going to buy one. I've had enough of Linux. I've had enough of systemd. Yeah, a Mac won't be cheap. But I'll trust it and its software more than I will the alternatives.
Finally! Someone who understands the difference between Price and Value!
Apps for learning to program that allow sharing your work with other users (execute code rule)
Not sure if all of these qualify; but at least some of them do. And this list is somewhat old. And a Search of the iOS App Store came up with an impressive list of Programming utilities and IDEs for a wide variety of languages. So, I'm not sure what the problem is.
Launcher replacements for persons with disabilities
WLAN utilities, such as utilities for troubleshooting your wireless network or for contributing to a collaborative map of wireless networks (Apple deems AP enumeration in iOS to be private)
Web browsers that implement HTML features that Apple has left out of Safari (WebKit rule)
Not sure what the big deal is: Mobile Safari seems to "Check the Boxes" as well as almost any other browser. And it looks like a couple of things that Mobile Safari has left out would have run afoul of some other iOS rule.
As for the rest of it, meh.
I admit that Trials would be nice; but most iOS Apps are cheap enough that it hardly matters.
A few iPhone apps have contained malware, but nothing anywhere near the amount on Android. Sure, it's less than Android because the App Store Approval Process works quite well, but it has happened once or twice, although never with clearly malicious intent.
Slashdot Mirror
Those are the two biggest things I'd want in a Chromebook that I find to be indispensable parts of my experience with Thinkpads: a trackpoint and an RJ-45 connector. If their new Chromebook had those, I'd be first in line to get one.
An HDMI port? More than 2 USB connectors? Yawn. Given me wired Ethernet and a Trackpoint and I'd be first in line to get one. They could make me forgive those way-too-wide aspect ratios that screens have nowadays.
Sorry, but you should be prepared to be disappointed from here on out.
So, you can either sit there and stamp your widdle feet, or just realize that, after a time, you just can't purchase that buggy-whip you like anymore, and move on, like the rest of us have.
Why couldn't you develop in C# from your W7 Bootcamp install?
There's no reason I couldn't have stayed on Windows 7. I figured that I might as well upgrade to Windows 10 since that is what I would use at work if I were helping out on a C# project.
Oops!
By chance, do you happen to work for the Department of Redundancy Department?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
No, nor do I work for the Former Youths In Asia, nor the Lost Electrical Reclamation League.
Now, if you get both of those References, you'll understand how they relate to your comment...
A simple "zoom" button next to the trackball fixes that. Touch the button while you roll the ball, same motion but more accurate. I use a Logitech M570 an have one of the "extra" buttons programmed this way.
That's the same sort of thing that Macs have supported with Control-Scroll for a long time in OS X. That's what I normally use; but I accidentally did the Pinch-Zoom "gesture" on my MBP's Trackpad the other day, and was pleasantly surprised that it "Just Worked".
Kinda handy to have Gestures in common, like the "Natural Scroll" Direction, for those people who go back and forth between an iPad and a Mac. It's one of those things that you don't notice until you use a computer that isn't designed to be "considerate" right out of the box.
Give me a trackpoint and I will buy it. Touchpads suck, period. I don't care who makes them I have never seen a touchpad that was anywhere near as good as the trackpoints I have had on my laptops over the years.
Never owned a MacBook Pro then, have you?
My wife owns one, I use it only when I have no better option. She uses a mouse when she has real work to do as the touchpad on there sucks for her work. For me the only pointing device that is a bigger impediment to work than a touchpad is a touchscreen.
Some people just don't grok Touchpads, I guess. But I have never had problems with my MBP's Trackpad. Now my work Samsung's Trackpad is TOTALLY unusable, and I have a mouse plugged into it; but I have never been tempted to plug that into my MacBook.
Who cares. If you want that then get a touchscreen or a tablet.
Actually, I didn't even know that my MacBook Pro's Trackpad even did that, until I just accidently "Did it" (I own an iPad, too) when I wanted to Zoom something on the screen, and it Just Worked.
Quite handy, actually...
I agree, their most recent update tricks have been a little more nasty than usual (again, see iOS which is almost as bad), but this lady's suit clearly originated long before the recent trickery.
While I agree that the iOS 9 Updates have gotten a little "pushy" for my tastes; they are NOWHERE in the "I will TRICK you into Updates" nor are they the "So, what time today shall we Update this?" that MS has done with Windows 10.
True, they have the "I will REMIND you Tomorrow" (or on next Restart); but you NEVER have the "I AM DOING THIS LIKE IT OR NOT" or the "Clicking NO doesn't mean NO" MALWARE TACTICS that MS has resorted to.
So don't EVEN call iOS' "prodding" "almost as bad" as what MS is doing. No way.
Funnily enough even with all of that turned on, you're still going to send telemetry on every click of the start menu that at the very least ties your current IP to unique identifiers. Makes it kind of trivial to track someone's VPN usage and uncloak them when you have a minute-by-minute
EXACTLY the kind of thing the NSA would want in an OS, don'tcha think?
Sometimes it really IS a Conspiracy...
(it's simple to turn most of that crap off)
Pray, tell, how do you turn all of it off? Short of buying a Windows Server to run as a domain controller, and only use Windows Enterprise Edition for the desktops and laptops, and constantly research, write and push your own group policy objects to whack the latest mole, I don't think you can.
Turning most of the spyware off is like removing most of the human droppings from your soup.
I upgraded my bootcamp partition on my personal Macbook Pro to Windows 10 from Windows 7 Pro. It was pretty trivial to disable everything. I was a little hesitant to perform the upgrade but I wanted to play around with some C# for a little side project I am doing for fun and I rarely boot that machine into windows anyway.
Why couldn't you develop in C# from your W7 Bootcamp install?
Turning most of the spyware off is like removing most of the human droppings from your soup.
I believe their are legally allowable limits on both.
Unfortunately not so much for the Spyware, unfortunately...
Turning most of the spyware off is like removing most of the human droppings from your soup.
That is the BEST line of the day!
Crash reports and other maintenance based telemetry helps identify issues that needs to be fixed.
So does decent pre-release testing, Public Betas, etc.
As a Windows Applications Developer, I can tell you that, Company-Wide, it is OBVIOUSLY something that Microsoft sees absolutely NO value in these days. instead, they just release stuff RIGHT "off the bench" and let the Users do the "testing".
No, really. MS was always kinda bad about that; but it has gotten DRAMATICALLY worse in the past few years.
What's baffling to me is that Microsoft took what should have been a golden PR opportunity (free Windows upgrade), and turned it into a PR disaster.
The ONLY reason they did the "Free" Upgrade was that, with the move from Apple to make Mavericks (and above) a Free Upgrade to OS X/macOS, they suddenly realized that with OS X/macOS and Linux both being Free, they were the only remaining major OS Player that was still charging directly for their OS.
;-)
The fact that the NSA likely underwrote the entire "Free" Upgrade and designed the Telemetry system and "forced upgrade" concept is beside the point...
I was forced to revert from 10 to 7 in an older desktop because 10 didn't work properly with the Realtek sound chip and drivers, which have to work right for some sound restoration jobs I do.
That's what you get for using a Non-Mac for Pro Audio work.
Yes they do. My Focusrite Firewire interface will NOT work with Windows 10. If they update my Windows (with I explicitly said I do not want) I am left with an expensive piece of hardware that is effectively bricked. And I am not the only one!
That's what you get for using a Non-Mac for Pro Audio work.
I find trackpoints utterly unusable. Using them to guide the pointer is like trying to guide a drunk across a busy road using sign language from 2 miles away. A trackpad is much better, but the small trackballs that used to be incorporated into laptops back in the day are far superior to both.
Kinda hard to do Pinch-to-Zoom on that Trackball...
Give me a trackpoint and I will buy it. Touchpads suck, period. I don't care who makes them I have never seen a touchpad that was anywhere near as good as the trackpoints I have had on my laptops over the years.
Never owned a MacBook Pro then, have you?
I'm so thankful for being a Canadian, because we are smarter and better than the Europeans and Americans.
And you forget "Modest", too...
Rolls Eyes.
Unfortunately the very nature of services like Cortana, Alexa, and Google Now *require* you to send them your data in order for them to work. How is Google Now supposed to advise me of my flight tomorrow being delayed if it doesn't know about the flight in the first place.
These services are incredibly useful and powerful and get more useful and powerful all the time, yet, Apple has none of them. This is what analysts are concerned about. People will willingly sacrifice a bit of their data if it makes their lives infinitely simpler - I know I have no problem with it because Google Now is *just that good*.
Aw ww, that's cute; you really believe all that gratuitous data mining is NECESSARY...
Well, Siri seems to do just fine without it, and as shown in the WWDC Keynote a week or so ago, is going to get much smarter with iOS 10 and now coming to MacOS Sierra. And all this WITHOUT making you a data donor.
Pretty nice specs. But still has a freaky trash can case. The thing is never getting mounted in a rack.
But who has a 19" relay rack on their desk? Heck, most small businesses don't even have racks, and if they happen to have any Rackmount equipment, it just sits on a shelf, taking up as much space as SIX Mac Pros...
And with SIX TB2 ports, (soon to be SIX USB-C/TB3 ports with the rumored update coming this year), fully realized, the Mac Pro can be One BEAST of a system!
Despite being a Linux user for many years, I'm really beginning to trust Apple more and more each day. Unlike certain other companies, I know how they make their money from me: I pay it to them. I can see why they don't need to collect private information about me. I can see why they don't need to know when I urinate, when I defecate, how much of each I've made, and how they both smell. Apple isn't trying to advertise other companies' junk to me. They're just providing top-notch products. The higher-than-usual cost reflects how these products are better, and this premium helps avoid the need to collect and sell data. When the next edition of the rMBP hardware comes out, I'm going to buy one. I've had enough of Linux. I've had enough of systemd. Yeah, a Mac won't be cheap. But I'll trust it and its software more than I will the alternatives.
Finally! Someone who understands the difference between Price and Value!
I would agree if you restrict your audience to people
WTF?
LOL I knew someone would notice that!
Something ate the end of that sentence (probably an unclosed tag).
IIRC, I think I was saying "...if you restrict your audience to people who are at least somewhat computer literate."
The trick is disabling tap-to-click and using the left mouse button to click.
Fortunately, I don't personally have a problem with Tap to Click; but I know some people do.
Apps for learning to program that allow sharing your work with other users (execute code rule)
Not sure if all of these qualify; but at least some of them do. And this list is somewhat old. And a Search of the iOS App Store came up with an impressive list of Programming utilities and IDEs for a wide variety of languages. So, I'm not sure what the problem is.
Launcher replacements for persons with disabilities
I guess Cromulent Labs' "Launcher" must be misnamed, then.
WLAN utilities, such as utilities for troubleshooting your wireless network or for contributing to a collaborative map of wireless networks (Apple deems AP enumeration in iOS to be private)
Really, I have a few on my iPhone and iPad. My favorite is "Fing".
Web browsers that implement HTML features that Apple has left out of Safari (WebKit rule)
Not sure what the big deal is: Mobile Safari seems to "Check the Boxes" as well as almost any other browser. And it looks like a couple of things that Mobile Safari has left out would have run afoul of some other iOS rule.
As for the rest of it, meh.
I admit that Trials would be nice; but most iOS Apps are cheap enough that it hardly matters.
A few iPhone apps have contained malware, but nothing anywhere near the amount on Android. Sure, it's less than Android because the App Store Approval Process works quite well, but it has happened once or twice, although never with clearly malicious intent.
FTFY.