I think you were modded for bringing up an argument that has time and time again been discredited. Practically everyone agrees (except you, evidently) that the "point" releases for OS X are equal, if not greater, in scope than the XP to Vista transition, or the Win2K to XP transition. The whole "point" naming scheme is so Apple can hang on to their stupid "OS X" moniker for just a while longer. Panther to Tiger was a pretty significant upgrade, and Tiger to Leopard looks to be a magnitude beyond it.
Macs have had right clicks since forever, and in fact Apple has been shipping their desktops with two-button mice for a few years now, and all laptops have a very nice gesture-based right click feature (which I find infinitely more comfortable than reaching for the other button). Methinks Apple should really invest in a "we have a right click, retards" ad campaign just to put this one to rest permanently.
I get the feeling from various MS employee blogs that the design of Windows wasn't very cohesive at all. Teams would have a feature farmed to them, and then be able to run amok with their own UI design decisions, resulting in the end parts of the system that feel very different in terms of interface (though, IMHO, not as bad as some Linux distros). This is also why Vista had some neat UI improvements, at the same time marred with UI ideas so stupid you have to wonder who came up with them - different teams working independently with very little force drawing them together.
The trick here with Apple is that all UI design decisions are unified under the iron fist of Jobs (or whoever he has deemed the UI expert of the day). This makes sure that the product that rolls out the door has a cohesive interface, and thus is less confusing and more pleasant to use, and respects the same design philosophies throughout. This is a much better way to do things.
Windows still doesn't grok laptop owners having multiple displays (haven't tried this on a desktop!). I would routinely have my nice big external hooked up, shut my laptop to go to work, and then open my laptop at work... and promptly blue screens when XP strangles itself trying to find my (now non-existent) external monitor. Seriously, this is such a common usage case that one wonders how it's STILL a bug!
Granted, this is an ATI card, maybe I should go blame AMD instead.
Well, there are two sides to this issue. First is that we're seemingly spending a lot of money in the wrong places. Of the huge amount of money spent on education, how much is going towards graduate research (where, ostensibly, most of the truly innovative economy-changing technologies are invented)?
Second is the general culture of the United States. Sure, the Apollo engineers were nerds by all measures, but they were respected members of society, and for the most part that community was made up of extremely dedicated people who had a real passion for what they did - otherwise they wouldn't be strapping a bunch of guys to a rocket and sending them to the moon.
Looking around in the engineering profession today you simply do not see that anymore. Engineers and technical people are being sidelined in an increasingly materialistic society, where EVERY kid out of school has their eyes on a big fat signing bonus, not the work that they are truly interested in (if they are interested in anything at ALL). This is true in my university, and indeed it was true way back when I was in high school. It's resulted, IMHO, from what I've seen in Canadian universities, an overwhelming rush to the financial sector, at the expense of every technical sector out there (including the pure sciences). Everybody wants to be a Wall Street trader, and nobody wants to invent and innovate.
Part of the problem is that we as a society have placed so much of a man's worth in how fat his wallet is, and also the lack of respect for people skilled in their trade. You can throw billions at basic research funding, but it will do no good if the intelligent students of your country are flocking towards commodities trading and not science. The Apollo era was before my time, but I've always been under the impression that there was a certain glamour to be associated with that program, and even the cutting edge engineering fields altogether. That clearly does not exist today.
The problem isn't so much Asia sending probes to the moon (or even men, for that matter), it's that these countries have demonstrated a willingness and ability to pour a significant chunk of their national consciousness to science and engineering, and we do not. This doesn't just apply to the space race, but also everything else we research. My brother is working on his Ph.D in evolutionary biology, and he elected to stay in Canada for his schooling, despite originally intending to go to the US. Why? Because many of the top researchers in his field have been lured away to other countries in recent years (including Canada), mostly owing to the fact that the Bush administration has been sabotaging the funding to their particular field of research (I wonder why?).
I myself am in engineering and I can see this effect also. I have had the pleasure to study under, and work with, many exceptionally skilled engineers, and while it once was the holy grail to teach and work in the USA, I find that most of my professors no longer have that wish, and in fact many adamantly stay out of the US. Many of them are Muslim, go figure.
Parody may be protected, but trademark violations are not. From what we've seen the content of the game remains unchanged, but EA has been forced to change the chapter's name from "Grand Theft Scratchy" to "Mob Rules". Rockstar is clearly using the trademark violation line to do this, not a "don't parody us" sort of thing.
That being said... I thought "grand theft auto" was a very standard English word with a lot of history prior to Rockstar's usage, can they REALLY claim trademark on it?
The idea was that if you could use a word processor, spreadsheet, and touch type, then you'd be prepared for the careers of tomorrow.
Not so bullshit really. Try getting a job without knowing how to do the above. I don't think anybody ever implied that data processing was *all* you needed to know for your future career, but going without it certainly wasn't going to help.
I think you are confusing the definition of literacy. Someone that can read is literate, he doesn't need to know how to pen a novel, nor does he even need to be able to analyze the grammatical structure of someone's writing - all they need to do is be able to read and understand. The same is true for technology literacy - if they can operate a computer and do everyday tasks with ease, then they're "literate" by all reasonable standards.
Being able to code is not tech literacy, it's something else altogether.
TF2 is impeccably balanced, but that being said, MegaTF was before my time, and I've never played it - but in terms of raw fun TF2 trumps TFC by a WIDE margin.
The game is now much more rock-paper-scissors between classes. Pyros are the anti-spy, spies are the anti-engineer (and anti-sniper), and engineers are anti-everyone else. They've toned down the ease of exposing spies, making the spy an actually viable class for players who can imitate the patterns of their disguise class. In fact, a chokepoint held down by multiple turrets practically calls for a spy (who can temporarily disable turrets without losing their disguise).
HW guy is no longer quite as invincible as he used to be, and all of the major combat classes (demo, soldier, and heavy) now require constant medic support if they hope to win a game. IMHO well organized teams with good medic communication has become the deciding factor in most games. A few well-timed medic ubercharges (temporary god mode, for about 5-8 seconds) is the only way to push past a well defended checkpoint.
The keyboard is very much a matter of getting used to it. I had a lot of trouble with the keyboard until I learned to just trust it. It works very, very well for dictionary words, though you still have to slow down for foreign words. Just trust it, and your text will come out 99% fine.
I imagine if it had a blackberry's ease of use for typing (which would be hard given the design), and was free of AT&T contracts, it would sell in the hundreds of millions
Doubtful. Blackberry's main selling point is its integration into enterprise networks. Unless Apple came up with a better backend (it has to be better, not just as good, otherwise there is no incentive to switch), the iPhone will never draw away the Blackberry demographic.
I know many people from my university who currently work at RIM, and they have free Blackberries. Having borrowed these on more than one occasion, I felt no desire to have one. This is mostly because I'm a UI freak, I think, and the Blackberry UI was just too clunky (though admittedly functional) for me to ever desire one.
Not to mention the Blackberry doesn't have the media (video/audio) features that I wanted, so no, Blackberries were never a serious consideration. Being accessible remotely is a Nice Thing to have for my job, but not required, so I wouldn't invest in a device JUST so I can surf remotely. There had to be a BIG selling point besides it.
Expensive proprietary system? o_O Sure, it's infinitely more expensive than your OSS solution (technically), but a $150 price tag for the entirety of Leopard seems like a reasonably good deal to me. I think this is more of a "it's better than what we've got" feature than a "this is a guaranteed fool-proof backup solution". Of course it will start losing files if you push your disk capacity to its limits - but that's true for ANY backup method. If you ran out of CDs and had no means to get more, you'd start "losing data" pretty quickly also.
IMHO this is clearly designed for people who currently have *no* backup solution in place, and is a method with a very low barrier to entry that will lend a lot more data protection than people currently enjoy. That's it in a nutshell, nothing more and nothing less.
The review states that TFC, built on top of the Half-Life engine, was among the first to demonstrate class-based team play on the PC. This is not true, especially since Team Fortress started as a Quake mod!
And the "plug charger" that it comes with is really just a standard Apple charger with a USB power output, which is great, since anything that charges via USB (which is a lot of stuff these days) will just work with it:D
And the uber-bonus is that the charger is standard Apple, meaning the plug detaches and can be swapped out for a longer extension, if you need the length or just don't want the brick to take up space on your wall!
Battery life has been great for me so far. On the odd week where I don't use the iPod features much, the phone goes for 3-4 days on standby, which is on par with the phone I had previously, though certainly not long lasting phone by any stretch.
I've also had hour-long calls with the SO, and there's no noticeable hit to the battery for that - so I'm convinced the talking power on a full charge is pretty high, though I've certainly never pushed it to the limit (even whilst having 2 hour calls, I'm pretty impressed).
Listening to the iPod all day at work, along with standing by on phone functionality, generally necessitates a recharge every two days, though I also use it a lot as a general surfing tool while out, so YMMV.
The iPhone charges through USB cable - there are quite a few USB-batteries on the market these days (one showed up on Engadget yesterday that I'm keenly interested in), so if you want a backup for the road those will do just fine.
One of the problems with the Blackberry, or other similarly "mobile web" equipped phones is that their user interface would not allow for a "full" browser even if the machine could run it. Look at your average Motorola/Sony phone - the closest thing a pointing device you have is that little 4-directional joystick on the front, which allows you to skip slowly down a list of links, and that's about it. Zooming? I'd hate to see how that's implemented.
I have a hard time imagining how a full browser can be implemented on anything BUT a touchscreen (at least stylus), and even then it would have to have some very solid gesture input (like the iPhone, with pinch-to-zoom and double-tap-to-zoom, which are ESSENTIAL features).
Yes. I mean, who else right? There is no other GSM carrier here:P (Fido doesn't count, they're owned by Rogers).
If you need any help with getting an iPhone in Canada, let me know. Just keep in mind *right now* is probably a bad time (phones were updated to 1.1.1, there is no unlock for that version yet).
Well, if you're looking at the whole "paying more for electronics despite having the stronger dollar" then yes, it's very unfortunate I live in Canada. In all other senses though, thank God I live in Canada;)
Rogers sells, at the maximum, a 500MB plan for $210. That's some $217 US for our American cousins;) But yes, we seem to be getting the royal shaft - 500MB of data for $210, where Americans get UNLIMITED for $30. If you guys thought YOUR telcos were bad, wait till you come to Canada, where Rogers is the *only* GSM carrier (and by virtue of that, the only one worth a damn).
Here's another perspective (as opposed to the other one already extolled by another poster above):
I'm among the 250K iPhone buyers who bought to unlock. I, unfortunately, live in Canada, but the feature set appeared solid enough (and my iPod had the good grace to suddenly die on me) that I decided to make the jump. I don't regret it one bit and here is why:
- Full email access on the go is very nice. A Blackberry does this also, but very few other phones do. I've never realized how nice it is to have email access on the road - airline reservation number? No need to bring a sticky note, or anything else for that matter, it's all cached on the phone.
- The full web browser is a bigger feature than people give it credit for. I communicate heavily via forums, wiki, etc, for work, and being able to check these in a non-crippled (like a Blackberry, or every other phone really) phone is really, really, really nice.
- It is, in the end, just a phone and iPod slammed together. But it is also the nicest phone I've ever used, bar none. The interface is intuition, the buttons are easy to hit (which can't be said for Sony Ericsson phones, which used to be my favored brand - they have nice software, but poor physical UI).
- It's ridiculously nice not having to carry a phone AND an iPod. I tried this before with other music phones and I'd been disappointed each time. I was wary about this at first, having such problems with convergence devices before, but so far the iPhone has been a dream in that regard. The iPhone is the first "all in one" device I've used that doesn't suck.
Which sadly, is typical of investors. Which is why an investor-run company is generally a bad idea - they lack the savvy in the field, and most refuse to leave management to more capable hands, instead second guessing their appointees' decisions every step of the way. What would be interesting is seeing how many of these iPhones end up in places where AT&T has no presence (i.e. non-USA), and how many are being bought by people intending to bring it to another US carrier. If the latter number is high enough, it represents a very real problem for ATT.
Yes, because your anecdotal (and apparently minority) evidence proves that Nintendo is talking out of their ass, and that the vast majority of the world is just like you and don't use their mod chips for piracy. Yeeeeeeeees.
So what happened to the other (100-55=45) 45 customers I had previously?
Maybe they kept their machines? I for one don't buy a new machine every quarter...
The numbers are pretty clear - Apple's hardware market share is increasing at a time when PC manufacturers are doing poorly. This directly translates into increased OS X market share at the expense of Windows.
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I think you were modded for bringing up an argument that has time and time again been discredited. Practically everyone agrees (except you, evidently) that the "point" releases for OS X are equal, if not greater, in scope than the XP to Vista transition, or the Win2K to XP transition. The whole "point" naming scheme is so Apple can hang on to their stupid "OS X" moniker for just a while longer. Panther to Tiger was a pretty significant upgrade, and Tiger to Leopard looks to be a magnitude beyond it.
Macs have had right clicks since forever, and in fact Apple has been shipping their desktops with two-button mice for a few years now, and all laptops have a very nice gesture-based right click feature (which I find infinitely more comfortable than reaching for the other button). Methinks Apple should really invest in a "we have a right click, retards" ad campaign just to put this one to rest permanently.
I get the feeling from various MS employee blogs that the design of Windows wasn't very cohesive at all. Teams would have a feature farmed to them, and then be able to run amok with their own UI design decisions, resulting in the end parts of the system that feel very different in terms of interface (though, IMHO, not as bad as some Linux distros). This is also why Vista had some neat UI improvements, at the same time marred with UI ideas so stupid you have to wonder who came up with them - different teams working independently with very little force drawing them together.
The trick here with Apple is that all UI design decisions are unified under the iron fist of Jobs (or whoever he has deemed the UI expert of the day). This makes sure that the product that rolls out the door has a cohesive interface, and thus is less confusing and more pleasant to use, and respects the same design philosophies throughout. This is a much better way to do things.
Windows still doesn't grok laptop owners having multiple displays (haven't tried this on a desktop!). I would routinely have my nice big external hooked up, shut my laptop to go to work, and then open my laptop at work... and promptly blue screens when XP strangles itself trying to find my (now non-existent) external monitor. Seriously, this is such a common usage case that one wonders how it's STILL a bug!
Granted, this is an ATI card, maybe I should go blame AMD instead.
Well, there are two sides to this issue. First is that we're seemingly spending a lot of money in the wrong places. Of the huge amount of money spent on education, how much is going towards graduate research (where, ostensibly, most of the truly innovative economy-changing technologies are invented)?
Second is the general culture of the United States. Sure, the Apollo engineers were nerds by all measures, but they were respected members of society, and for the most part that community was made up of extremely dedicated people who had a real passion for what they did - otherwise they wouldn't be strapping a bunch of guys to a rocket and sending them to the moon.
Looking around in the engineering profession today you simply do not see that anymore. Engineers and technical people are being sidelined in an increasingly materialistic society, where EVERY kid out of school has their eyes on a big fat signing bonus, not the work that they are truly interested in (if they are interested in anything at ALL). This is true in my university, and indeed it was true way back when I was in high school. It's resulted, IMHO, from what I've seen in Canadian universities, an overwhelming rush to the financial sector, at the expense of every technical sector out there (including the pure sciences). Everybody wants to be a Wall Street trader, and nobody wants to invent and innovate.
Part of the problem is that we as a society have placed so much of a man's worth in how fat his wallet is, and also the lack of respect for people skilled in their trade. You can throw billions at basic research funding, but it will do no good if the intelligent students of your country are flocking towards commodities trading and not science. The Apollo era was before my time, but I've always been under the impression that there was a certain glamour to be associated with that program, and even the cutting edge engineering fields altogether. That clearly does not exist today.
The problem isn't so much Asia sending probes to the moon (or even men, for that matter), it's that these countries have demonstrated a willingness and ability to pour a significant chunk of their national consciousness to science and engineering, and we do not. This doesn't just apply to the space race, but also everything else we research. My brother is working on his Ph.D in evolutionary biology, and he elected to stay in Canada for his schooling, despite originally intending to go to the US. Why? Because many of the top researchers in his field have been lured away to other countries in recent years (including Canada), mostly owing to the fact that the Bush administration has been sabotaging the funding to their particular field of research (I wonder why?).
I myself am in engineering and I can see this effect also. I have had the pleasure to study under, and work with, many exceptionally skilled engineers, and while it once was the holy grail to teach and work in the USA, I find that most of my professors no longer have that wish, and in fact many adamantly stay out of the US. Many of them are Muslim, go figure.
Parody may be protected, but trademark violations are not. From what we've seen the content of the game remains unchanged, but EA has been forced to change the chapter's name from "Grand Theft Scratchy" to "Mob Rules". Rockstar is clearly using the trademark violation line to do this, not a "don't parody us" sort of thing.
That being said... I thought "grand theft auto" was a very standard English word with a lot of history prior to Rockstar's usage, can they REALLY claim trademark on it?
Not so bullshit really. Try getting a job without knowing how to do the above. I don't think anybody ever implied that data processing was *all* you needed to know for your future career, but going without it certainly wasn't going to help.
I think you are confusing the definition of literacy. Someone that can read is literate, he doesn't need to know how to pen a novel, nor does he even need to be able to analyze the grammatical structure of someone's writing - all they need to do is be able to read and understand. The same is true for technology literacy - if they can operate a computer and do everyday tasks with ease, then they're "literate" by all reasonable standards.
Being able to code is not tech literacy, it's something else altogether.
Nonetheless, the original TF came out long before TFC.
TF2 is impeccably balanced, but that being said, MegaTF was before my time, and I've never played it - but in terms of raw fun TF2 trumps TFC by a WIDE margin.
The game is now much more rock-paper-scissors between classes. Pyros are the anti-spy, spies are the anti-engineer (and anti-sniper), and engineers are anti-everyone else. They've toned down the ease of exposing spies, making the spy an actually viable class for players who can imitate the patterns of their disguise class. In fact, a chokepoint held down by multiple turrets practically calls for a spy (who can temporarily disable turrets without losing their disguise).
HW guy is no longer quite as invincible as he used to be, and all of the major combat classes (demo, soldier, and heavy) now require constant medic support if they hope to win a game. IMHO well organized teams with good medic communication has become the deciding factor in most games. A few well-timed medic ubercharges (temporary god mode, for about 5-8 seconds) is the only way to push past a well defended checkpoint.
*whoooooosh* That's the sound of THAT joke going RIGHT over your head.
The keyboard is very much a matter of getting used to it. I had a lot of trouble with the keyboard until I learned to just trust it. It works very, very well for dictionary words, though you still have to slow down for foreign words. Just trust it, and your text will come out 99% fine.
I imagine if it had a blackberry's ease of use for typing (which would be hard given the design), and was free of AT&T contracts, it would sell in the hundreds of millionsDoubtful. Blackberry's main selling point is its integration into enterprise networks. Unless Apple came up with a better backend (it has to be better, not just as good, otherwise there is no incentive to switch), the iPhone will never draw away the Blackberry demographic.
I know many people from my university who currently work at RIM, and they have free Blackberries. Having borrowed these on more than one occasion, I felt no desire to have one. This is mostly because I'm a UI freak, I think, and the Blackberry UI was just too clunky (though admittedly functional) for me to ever desire one.
Not to mention the Blackberry doesn't have the media (video/audio) features that I wanted, so no, Blackberries were never a serious consideration. Being accessible remotely is a Nice Thing to have for my job, but not required, so I wouldn't invest in a device JUST so I can surf remotely. There had to be a BIG selling point besides it.
Expensive proprietary system? o_O Sure, it's infinitely more expensive than your OSS solution (technically), but a $150 price tag for the entirety of Leopard seems like a reasonably good deal to me. I think this is more of a "it's better than what we've got" feature than a "this is a guaranteed fool-proof backup solution". Of course it will start losing files if you push your disk capacity to its limits - but that's true for ANY backup method. If you ran out of CDs and had no means to get more, you'd start "losing data" pretty quickly also.
IMHO this is clearly designed for people who currently have *no* backup solution in place, and is a method with a very low barrier to entry that will lend a lot more data protection than people currently enjoy. That's it in a nutshell, nothing more and nothing less.
The review states that TFC, built on top of the Half-Life engine, was among the first to demonstrate class-based team play on the PC. This is not true, especially since Team Fortress started as a Quake mod!
And the "plug charger" that it comes with is really just a standard Apple charger with a USB power output, which is great, since anything that charges via USB (which is a lot of stuff these days) will just work with it :D
And the uber-bonus is that the charger is standard Apple, meaning the plug detaches and can be swapped out for a longer extension, if you need the length or just don't want the brick to take up space on your wall!
Battery life has been great for me so far. On the odd week where I don't use the iPod features much, the phone goes for 3-4 days on standby, which is on par with the phone I had previously, though certainly not long lasting phone by any stretch.
I've also had hour-long calls with the SO, and there's no noticeable hit to the battery for that - so I'm convinced the talking power on a full charge is pretty high, though I've certainly never pushed it to the limit (even whilst having 2 hour calls, I'm pretty impressed).
Listening to the iPod all day at work, along with standing by on phone functionality, generally necessitates a recharge every two days, though I also use it a lot as a general surfing tool while out, so YMMV.
The iPhone charges through USB cable - there are quite a few USB-batteries on the market these days (one showed up on Engadget yesterday that I'm keenly interested in), so if you want a backup for the road those will do just fine.
One of the problems with the Blackberry, or other similarly "mobile web" equipped phones is that their user interface would not allow for a "full" browser even if the machine could run it. Look at your average Motorola/Sony phone - the closest thing a pointing device you have is that little 4-directional joystick on the front, which allows you to skip slowly down a list of links, and that's about it. Zooming? I'd hate to see how that's implemented.
I have a hard time imagining how a full browser can be implemented on anything BUT a touchscreen (at least stylus), and even then it would have to have some very solid gesture input (like the iPhone, with pinch-to-zoom and double-tap-to-zoom, which are ESSENTIAL features).
Yes. I mean, who else right? There is no other GSM carrier here :P (Fido doesn't count, they're owned by Rogers).
If you need any help with getting an iPhone in Canada, let me know. Just keep in mind *right now* is probably a bad time (phones were updated to 1.1.1, there is no unlock for that version yet).
Well, if you're looking at the whole "paying more for electronics despite having the stronger dollar" then yes, it's very unfortunate I live in Canada. In all other senses though, thank God I live in Canada ;)
Rogers sells, at the maximum, a 500MB plan for $210. That's some $217 US for our American cousins ;) But yes, we seem to be getting the royal shaft - 500MB of data for $210, where Americans get UNLIMITED for $30. If you guys thought YOUR telcos were bad, wait till you come to Canada, where Rogers is the *only* GSM carrier (and by virtue of that, the only one worth a damn).
Here's another perspective (as opposed to the other one already extolled by another poster above):
I'm among the 250K iPhone buyers who bought to unlock. I, unfortunately, live in Canada, but the feature set appeared solid enough (and my iPod had the good grace to suddenly die on me) that I decided to make the jump. I don't regret it one bit and here is why:
- Full email access on the go is very nice. A Blackberry does this also, but very few other phones do. I've never realized how nice it is to have email access on the road - airline reservation number? No need to bring a sticky note, or anything else for that matter, it's all cached on the phone.
- The full web browser is a bigger feature than people give it credit for. I communicate heavily via forums, wiki, etc, for work, and being able to check these in a non-crippled (like a Blackberry, or every other phone really) phone is really, really, really nice.
- It is, in the end, just a phone and iPod slammed together. But it is also the nicest phone I've ever used, bar none. The interface is intuition, the buttons are easy to hit (which can't be said for Sony Ericsson phones, which used to be my favored brand - they have nice software, but poor physical UI).
- It's ridiculously nice not having to carry a phone AND an iPod. I tried this before with other music phones and I'd been disappointed each time. I was wary about this at first, having such problems with convergence devices before, but so far the iPhone has been a dream in that regard. The iPhone is the first "all in one" device I've used that doesn't suck.
Which sadly, is typical of investors. Which is why an investor-run company is generally a bad idea - they lack the savvy in the field, and most refuse to leave management to more capable hands, instead second guessing their appointees' decisions every step of the way. What would be interesting is seeing how many of these iPhones end up in places where AT&T has no presence (i.e. non-USA), and how many are being bought by people intending to bring it to another US carrier. If the latter number is high enough, it represents a very real problem for ATT.
Yes, because your anecdotal (and apparently minority) evidence proves that Nintendo is talking out of their ass, and that the vast majority of the world is just like you and don't use their mod chips for piracy. Yeeeeeeeees.
Maybe they kept their machines? I for one don't buy a new machine every quarter...
The numbers are pretty clear - Apple's hardware market share is increasing at a time when PC manufacturers are doing poorly. This directly translates into increased OS X market share at the expense of Windows.