I think the point is that community is, or at least should be, important.
By extension: where does a Linux user go for help? Well, there's always the local LUG, and Apple has had user groups for some time. If you're a Windows user, and you need help, you can try a local teenager, anonymous online help forums, your vendor, or MS itself; the latter 2 most likely require your credit card. Community is important because it provides a source of free, hopefully helpful support.
Second: OK, admittedly, a group of people getting together and talking about Word macros seems a little silly. But since Microsoft is so (cough) innovative, shouldn't there be groups of people who get together to push forward this innovation, sharing and promoting the general use and utility of the platform? It is kinda hard when you can't share your source code, and not everyone can easily afford the compiler suite. Although that's just my opinion. But the real point is, don't Windows users do things *besides* play video games and type Word documents? Don't people want to share things like security techniques, usability improvements, "howtos", and other stuff? Aren't there Windows users out there doing really innovative things with their hardware and software, and want to share and enjoy?
I suppose not; community in the Windows world comes at a price. Involvement in the platform is non-existant. It is, after all, just an operating system, not a lifestyle, and there's plenty of community to be had (and opinion to be decided for me) from ZDnet and the rest.
Still; I've met lots of really cool people at LUGs, and I'm sure there's people with similar feelings about Apple user groups. Too bad for Windows; you're just another product activation key in the pool.
Re:If this was a regular PC company...
on
New iMac Announced
·
· Score: 2
I respectfully submit that Apple is no longer targeting Grandma. It seems right now, they're targeting expatriate Win32 users who are tired of Dell/Gateway/Compaq. I, for one, am sorely tired of buying a Wintel PC. Servers, sheesh, that's easy, but desktop, it's a frigging dance I don't want to deal with anymore. They're aiming at people like me.
At the same time, yes, I agree that strictly speaking, no one REALLY needs writeable DVD, but I also think that's because no one has really made a killer app for it. It hasn't hit the masses very hard, so people aren't dying to get one. Apple's counting on 2 things: being there when it happens, and being there first.
Look at it like this: if Apple DIDN'T release a DVD burner, at all, and then Dell *did*, that would be bad. For Apple anyway.
Apple is the R&D Dept. and test market for the entire PC industry.... if DVD writers turn the Mac faithful into amateur Spielbergs, then Dell will ship them cheap and in quantity. If no one ever really finds a strong use for it, then they'll just kinda be one of those things that the Mac die-hards use as "we're better than you" fodder.:)
Re:If this was a regular PC company...
on
New iMac Announced
·
· Score: 2
Which PC maker has a DVD burner shipping standard? Just curious, not trying to be smartass.
First, it would mean ostracising all those old-school, "megahertz means nothing" PowerPC addicts with MacClassics hot-rodded to run OSX. It would really be a bad scene, as well, having to maintain 2 versions of their code. Yes, Darwin is portable to i386, but big deal; NT4 was portable to PowerPC too. Didn't see many Blue-And-White's running NT4. (look on your NT4 disks to see the MIPS, PPC, etc. directories!)
Second, one of the nice things about the Mac platform is the integration between hardware and software. Software can control the bootloader and nvram dynamically. I have not seen anything on x86 that lets you, for example, change the boot device. This may seem like a trivial example, but it means a lot when dealing with hardware, drivers, etc.
I had the notion that, perhaps, there is nothing unique about x86. It's a processor. Perhaps Apple has contracted with someone to build an x86-based mobo, that uses OpenFirmware? In other words, bring all the coolness of the Mac hardware to the PC world. The problem is, of course, its not a PC anymore, except that you will be able to swap cards between machines without flashing the BIOS of the card. It's possible, but I would think someone would have mentioned it.
Although clever wording "it's not a PC" could really be useful here. It's an Intel based machine, with more-or-less commodity hardware, that's not a PC. Might be interesting, but I doubt it'll happen.
Re:Only a few more days...
on
Apple PDA?
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· Score: 2
But it's BORING!! People have been talking about flat-panel iMacs for like a year now. I understand Apple is doing marketing with all their "way beyond the rumor sites" stuff, but they should be smart enough to know they have to live up to the hype. If they don't, they'll get slaughtered in the press. If they get slaughtered in the press.... well, its something they don't need right now.
Faster CPU? Ho-hum. Gigawire? yeah, cool, but FireWire is fast too. Is GigaWire SO MUCH FASTER that I will have to run out and buy a new machine? I already have lots of USB/USB2 and FireWire devices, why would I want to buy a new machine for Gigawire? Nothing I have has it.
as an earlier poster said...
on
Apple PDA?
·
· Score: 2, Redundant
Its a fake. Something the poster DIDN'T mention was the screwy cursor in the upper-left corner corner during the handwriting demo, which is what sold it for me; someone obviously didn't check closely enough before releasing.
Another thing that got me was the jog dial. It was OBVIOUSLY bolted on. Look at the iPod's dial: it lands perfectly under your thumb, and it is grouped closely with the controls. It is about 3/4 of the way up the device, putting it everything perfectly in reach. This thing, its on the bottom, and it PROTRUDES. In any configuration, it's in the wrong place, because you have to use the bottom button thing to actually anything. At least the iPaq's bottom-center button is a 4-way hat thing.
I wish it was true. Like the Ars Technica articles, "I want to believe".
Yes, but: there is always the idea that, in the event of MS Triangle(tm), you will know who to call: the number on the User Guide. It'll tell you to press "3" when you call. It'll put you in touch with someone know has a large, extensive script in how to deal with the fact that your angles aren't quite right, and by altering them, it changes the shade of blue, etc etc etc. AND, if your company has Large Money(tm), you can bribe^H^H^H^H^H contract with MS to have them give you priority for problems, by buying a bunch of incidents, etc.
Contrast with Linux. If you call Red Hat about Sendmail, for example, they can only go so far before they say, "Well, you'll have to call sendmail, Inc. This is a bug in their app." Oh no, there's a problem with Evolution; now I have to call Ximian. And so on. Although it is my personal opinion that 98% of Unix/Linux problems you'd call about are wacky configuration issues and honest bugs. Those happen a lot, but not in the "stable" versions of apps. Who knows, the same might be true with WIndows. Anyway, a company like Red Hat is hindered because they provide integration of the apps, but not support on the apps themselves. Although I belive one of the jobs of Alan Cox is to provide a "strike force" for kernel fixes, should someone call about it.
Lastly: look at the suing of MS like this. It might happen, in the current climate, if there was a highly publicised failure of an MS product; for example a security breach that led to something bad. The shareholders might actually say, "Look, we demand renumeration, because our stock took a nosedive after it was discovered that the default SQL Server password was left blank, which MS allows, and someone burned our customers badly w/ stolen CCs!" (pick your own compromise; yes, the blank password thing is the admins fault and not MS's, just dream something up, OK?) It isn't too likely - the press is too MS friendly (and MS too adept at manipulating it), but anything is possible.
This is, apparently, a bug of sorts. Hardware support is something that people are constantly bitching about. Near as I can tell, this sort of thing will come "soon", where "soon" is defined as "at some point in the future, before the heat-death of the universe". Who knows?
I have an entire list of rants about the mouse and keyboard in OSX. The keyboard is lame, it doesn't really perform well, and the mouse is useless; its like no one at Apple ever thought, the initial users of OSX are going to be the faithful who already have a ton of hardware they like. No one ever uses the goddamn hockey-puck for more than an hour, for example.
The other problem is: who exactly should fix the extra buttons? On OS9, IIRC, my MS Optimouse was configured by the MS driver, using what I assume was an extension API provided by MS. Given the serious changes in OSX, does it mean Apple has to write the new drivers, or is it once again MS's job? and if the latter is true, has Apple even published the specs/APIs sufficiently to allow them to do so?
There's little argument (well, I think so) over what constitutes a proprietary app, but a proprietary service?
In other words: Is Passport proprietary, just because its MS? I have heard that, for example, I can write my own "plugin" services for.NET and Passport and all that, so my serivces will use that back-end. (Or something like that anyway). Is that too open or closed?
Sounds like they need to neaten up thier terms, else their whole policy becomes -1, Flamebait.
I think you'll see this happen more than once, in some form or fashion; someone will kick W2k or XP out of the datacenter, and it'll be a high-profile linux win.
BUT: I don't see it as a linux win. It'll be a Red Hat win, or an IBM win (or Suse, or Debian, whatever, I'm not playing favorites here). Linux will not, per se, win the day. The services and "value adds" and all that crap will be what gets written about; the pundits (read: ZDNet) will talk about how so-and-so (Red Hat, IBM, whomever) sent in armies of consultants, promised to tailor things to their hardware, etc etc. In other words they'll downplay Linux.
It'll be a win, but everyone (most of all MS) will try to convince the world that it was a different game.
Yeah, but back in my day, we didn't need these fancy "computers" with their "render farms". We just had a guy named Ted, and he drew pictures, on toliet paper, with chalk, and held it up to the camera, and we LIKED it!
5 dollars would buy the whole crew food for a month, and we'd still have enough left over to put our kids through college. We didn't have trailers, and props, and sets, and we LIKED it!
Props, yeah, we didn't have all these fancy props, your "phasers" and your "pulse pistols". We just stuck out hands out, painted them silver, and went "pew, pew, pow" with out mouths. And the silver paint made you impotent, and no one would talk to you because someone started a rumour that Communists had silver hands, but we LIKED it.
hardware is cheap, but bumping up the hardware requirements when you're talking about pushing out your new code to several hundred machines in a hosted data center will quickly kill that Xmas bonus you were hoping for...
OK, so when I play it in my Discman, it's OK; (even if i go to Radio Shack and buy a couple bucks worth of cable, 'line in' to my sound card, and record)
But if I play it on a Sony CDROM drive in my computer, it's bad?
First, how *exactly* does it know? As my dad used to say, "A laser is just a laser".
Prepare for massive consumer backlash. Even if people don't want to ever "rip, mix, and burn" (thank you Apple 'Dont Steal Music' Computer) they want to listen to their CDs when and where they want to.
(Outside of an Al Queda recruitment center)
"OK, people. Line to the left is suicide bombers, center line is front line soldiers, right-hand, nefarious computer geeks."
or
(2 terrorists meet to discuss their accomplishments)
"I have struck a great blow against Satan! I have planted bombs and anthrax!"
"I, too, have stuck a great blow!"
"What did you do?"
"Improper bounds checking in msetl23.dll! I used my own hasty, roll-your-own strcpy()! And as a final coup de gras*, I stole 3 product activation keys and gave them to Best Buy employees"
Please.
* terrorists may not actually use phrases like this. Consult your manual.
Java applications that only run on Windows are *bad*, and Cocoa-Java apps are... well, no one said they are good per se, but you'd think Sun would have to object on the same grounds. 'Cept that it is Apple.
But you'd think it's Unix, too, so it potentially steals market share...
I want to see two things in `configure` - a 'make uninstall` target being mandatory, and having part of `make install` copy the configure.status (or whatever script it is that holds the current configure string) to somewhere. The 'package' (source tarball) need not be aware of the existence of this script, really, just that it exists automatically as part of the install. That way, I can run it with some target like --uninstall and remove the binaries/man/etc stuff, or drop it into the source tree when I download from scratch (and have removed the original source tree).
I work in the data center for a moderately large company that sells banner ad software (using a hosted model). All this and more is coming to a web page near you, based on the things our esteemed customers are trying out.
I don't know if this is truly relevant or a correct answer, but... a buddy of mine works at a place that does embedded stuff, and until recently they were still
1)Buying MSDOS for purposes of embedding
2)calling MS support for dealing with code problems
From what I hear, there are still people out there with things that run embedded MSDOS, so they probably left it in circulation as long as possible. Now, they (MS) can push WinCE or embedded NT/XP, so they (MS) just EOL the old product.
The most important...
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 2, Redundant
The most important part of this is the "just think about stopping" part, the advanced system that mimics human movement.
While I predict this will be at BEST a fad, we can now finally take the core technology and start building robotic war mecha.
Slashdot Mirror
Riddle me this, then: Why would anyone WANT to buy WinME, since W2k and XP are out? IIRC WinME was more-or-less universally reviled, anyway.
I do think that MSDOS should be free.
I think the point is that community is, or at least should be, important.
By extension: where does a Linux user go for help? Well, there's always the local LUG, and Apple has had user groups for some time. If you're a Windows user, and you need help, you can try a local teenager, anonymous online help forums, your vendor, or MS itself; the latter 2 most likely require your credit card. Community is important because it provides a source of free, hopefully helpful support.
Second: OK, admittedly, a group of people getting together and talking about Word macros seems a little silly. But since Microsoft is so (cough) innovative, shouldn't there be groups of people who get together to push forward this innovation, sharing and promoting the general use and utility of the platform? It is kinda hard when you can't share your source code, and not everyone can easily afford the compiler suite. Although that's just my opinion. But the real point is, don't Windows users do things *besides* play video games and type Word documents? Don't people want to share things like security techniques, usability improvements, "howtos", and other stuff? Aren't there Windows users out there doing really innovative things with their hardware and software, and want to share and enjoy?
I suppose not; community in the Windows world comes at a price. Involvement in the platform is non-existant. It is, after all, just an operating system, not a lifestyle, and there's plenty of community to be had (and opinion to be decided for me) from ZDnet and the rest.
Still; I've met lots of really cool people at LUGs, and I'm sure there's people with similar feelings about Apple user groups. Too bad for Windows; you're just another product activation key in the pool.
I respectfully submit that Apple is no longer targeting Grandma. It seems right now, they're targeting expatriate Win32 users who are tired of Dell/Gateway/Compaq. I, for one, am sorely tired of buying a Wintel PC. Servers, sheesh, that's easy, but desktop, it's a frigging dance I don't want to deal with anymore. They're aiming at people like me.
:)
At the same time, yes, I agree that strictly speaking, no one REALLY needs writeable DVD, but I also think that's because no one has really made a killer app for it. It hasn't hit the masses very hard, so people aren't dying to get one. Apple's counting on 2 things: being there when it happens, and being there first.
Look at it like this: if Apple DIDN'T release a DVD burner, at all, and then Dell *did*, that would be bad. For Apple anyway.
Apple is the R&D Dept. and test market for the entire PC industry.... if DVD writers turn the Mac faithful into amateur Spielbergs, then Dell will ship them cheap and in quantity. If no one ever really finds a strong use for it, then they'll just kinda be one of those things that the Mac die-hards use as "we're better than you" fodder.
Which PC maker has a DVD burner shipping standard? Just curious, not trying to be smartass.
the answer should be obvious:
iCe.
Thank you, be sure and tip your waitress.
Won't happen.
First, it would mean ostracising all those old-school, "megahertz means nothing" PowerPC addicts with MacClassics hot-rodded to run OSX. It would really be a bad scene, as well, having to maintain 2 versions of their code. Yes, Darwin is portable to i386, but big deal; NT4 was portable to PowerPC too. Didn't see many Blue-And-White's running NT4. (look on your NT4 disks to see the MIPS, PPC, etc. directories!)
Second, one of the nice things about the Mac platform is the integration between hardware and software. Software can control the bootloader and nvram dynamically. I have not seen anything on x86 that lets you, for example, change the boot device. This may seem like a trivial example, but it means a lot when dealing with hardware, drivers, etc.
I had the notion that, perhaps, there is nothing unique about x86. It's a processor. Perhaps Apple has contracted with someone to build an x86-based mobo, that uses OpenFirmware? In other words, bring all the coolness of the Mac hardware to the PC world. The problem is, of course, its not a PC anymore, except that you will be able to swap cards between machines without flashing the BIOS of the card. It's possible, but I would think someone would have mentioned it.
Although clever wording "it's not a PC" could really be useful here. It's an Intel based machine, with more-or-less commodity hardware, that's not a PC. Might be interesting, but I doubt it'll happen.
But it's BORING!! People have been talking about flat-panel iMacs for like a year now. I understand Apple is doing marketing with all their "way beyond the rumor sites" stuff, but they should be smart enough to know they have to live up to the hype. If they don't, they'll get slaughtered in the press. If they get slaughtered in the press.... well, its something they don't need right now.
Faster CPU? Ho-hum. Gigawire? yeah, cool, but FireWire is fast too. Is GigaWire SO MUCH FASTER that I will have to run out and buy a new machine? I already have lots of USB/USB2 and FireWire devices, why would I want to buy a new machine for Gigawire? Nothing I have has it.
Its a fake. Something the poster DIDN'T mention was the screwy cursor in the upper-left corner corner during the handwriting demo, which is what sold it for me; someone obviously didn't check closely enough before releasing.
Another thing that got me was the jog dial. It was OBVIOUSLY bolted on. Look at the iPod's dial: it lands perfectly under your thumb, and it is grouped closely with the controls. It is about 3/4 of the way up the device, putting it everything perfectly in reach. This thing, its on the bottom, and it PROTRUDES. In any configuration, it's in the wrong place, because you have to use the bottom button thing to actually anything. At least the iPaq's bottom-center button is a 4-way hat thing.
I wish it was true. Like the Ars Technica articles, "I want to believe".
They could have called it "Quake 2 1/2" and it would have still sucked sweaty donkey balls.
Yes, but: there is always the idea that, in the event of MS Triangle(tm), you will know who to call: the number on the User Guide. It'll tell you to press "3" when you call. It'll put you in touch with someone know has a large, extensive script in how to deal with the fact that your angles aren't quite right, and by altering them, it changes the shade of blue, etc etc etc. AND, if your company has Large Money(tm), you can bribe^H^H^H^H^H contract with MS to have them give you priority for problems, by buying a bunch of incidents, etc.
Contrast with Linux. If you call Red Hat about Sendmail, for example, they can only go so far before they say, "Well, you'll have to call sendmail, Inc. This is a bug in their app." Oh no, there's a problem with Evolution; now I have to call Ximian. And so on. Although it is my personal opinion that 98% of Unix/Linux problems you'd call about are wacky configuration issues and honest bugs. Those happen a lot, but not in the "stable" versions of apps. Who knows, the same might be true with WIndows. Anyway, a company like Red Hat is hindered because they provide integration of the apps, but not support on the apps themselves. Although I belive one of the jobs of Alan Cox is to provide a "strike force" for kernel fixes, should someone call about it.
Lastly: look at the suing of MS like this. It might happen, in the current climate, if there was a highly publicised failure of an MS product; for example a security breach that led to something bad. The shareholders might actually say, "Look, we demand renumeration, because our stock took a nosedive after it was discovered that the default SQL Server password was left blank, which MS allows, and someone burned our customers badly w/ stolen CCs!" (pick your own compromise; yes, the blank password thing is the admins fault and not MS's, just dream something up, OK?) It isn't too likely - the press is too MS friendly (and MS too adept at manipulating it), but anything is possible.
This is, apparently, a bug of sorts. Hardware support is something that people are constantly bitching about. Near as I can tell, this sort of thing will come "soon", where "soon" is defined as "at some point in the future, before the heat-death of the universe". Who knows?
I have an entire list of rants about the mouse and keyboard in OSX. The keyboard is lame, it doesn't really perform well, and the mouse is useless; its like no one at Apple ever thought, the initial users of OSX are going to be the faithful who already have a ton of hardware they like. No one ever uses the goddamn hockey-puck for more than an hour, for example.
The other problem is: who exactly should fix the extra buttons? On OS9, IIRC, my MS Optimouse was configured by the MS driver, using what I assume was an extension API provided by MS. Given the serious changes in OSX, does it mean Apple has to write the new drivers, or is it once again MS's job? and if the latter is true, has Apple even published the specs/APIs sufficiently to allow them to do so?
There's little argument (well, I think so) over what constitutes a proprietary app, but a proprietary service?
.NET and Passport and all that, so my serivces will use that back-end. (Or something like that anyway). Is that too open or closed?
In other words: Is Passport proprietary, just because its MS? I have heard that, for example, I can write my own "plugin" services for
Sounds like they need to neaten up thier terms, else their whole policy becomes -1, Flamebait.
I for one will sleep because I work 3rd shift and could not get New Years (eve or day) off, so I'll be sleeping all day.
Business as usual for the NOC crew.
I think you'll see this happen more than once, in some form or fashion; someone will kick W2k or XP out of the datacenter, and it'll be a high-profile linux win.
BUT: I don't see it as a linux win. It'll be a Red Hat win, or an IBM win (or Suse, or Debian, whatever, I'm not playing favorites here). Linux will not, per se, win the day. The services and "value adds" and all that crap will be what gets written about; the pundits (read: ZDNet) will talk about how so-and-so (Red Hat, IBM, whomever) sent in armies of consultants, promised to tailor things to their hardware, etc etc. In other words they'll downplay Linux.
It'll be a win, but everyone (most of all MS) will try to convince the world that it was a different game.
Yeah, but back in my day, we didn't need these fancy "computers" with their "render farms". We just had a guy named Ted, and he drew pictures, on toliet paper, with chalk, and held it up to the camera, and we LIKED it!
5 dollars would buy the whole crew food for a month, and we'd still have enough left over to put our kids through college. We didn't have trailers, and props, and sets, and we LIKED it!
Props, yeah, we didn't have all these fancy props, your "phasers" and your "pulse pistols". We just stuck out hands out, painted them silver, and went "pew, pew, pow" with out mouths. And the silver paint made you impotent, and no one would talk to you because someone started a rumour that Communists had silver hands, but we LIKED it.
Jesus, now that its on the front page, I'm getting the movie via avian IP. Hey look a pixel, I think its a nose....
hardware is cheap, but bumping up the hardware requirements when you're talking about pushing out your new code to several hundred machines in a hosted data center will quickly kill that Xmas bonus you were hoping for...
Repeat after me:
Italics is the submitter.
Would you rather the editors alter your words?
OK, so when I play it in my Discman, it's OK; (even if i go to Radio Shack and buy a couple bucks worth of cable, 'line in' to my sound card, and record)
But if I play it on a Sony CDROM drive in my computer, it's bad?
First, how *exactly* does it know? As my dad used to say, "A laser is just a laser".
Prepare for massive consumer backlash. Even if people don't want to ever "rip, mix, and burn" (thank you Apple 'Dont Steal Music' Computer) they want to listen to their CDs when and where they want to.
(Outside of an Al Queda recruitment center)
"OK, people. Line to the left is suicide bombers, center line is front line soldiers, right-hand, nefarious computer geeks."
or
(2 terrorists meet to discuss their accomplishments)
"I have struck a great blow against Satan! I have planted bombs and anthrax!"
"I, too, have stuck a great blow!"
"What did you do?"
"Improper bounds checking in msetl23.dll! I used my own hasty, roll-your-own strcpy()! And as a final coup de gras*, I stole 3 product activation keys and gave them to Best Buy employees"
Please.
* terrorists may not actually use phrases like this. Consult your manual.
Java applications that only run on Windows are *bad*, and Cocoa-Java apps are... well, no one said they are good per se, but you'd think Sun would have to object on the same grounds. 'Cept that it is Apple.
But you'd think it's Unix, too, so it potentially steals market share...
I want to see two things in `configure` - a 'make uninstall` target being mandatory, and having part of `make install` copy the configure.status (or whatever script it is that holds the current configure string) to somewhere. The 'package' (source tarball) need not be aware of the existence of this script, really, just that it exists automatically as part of the install. That way, I can run it with some target like --uninstall and remove the binaries/man/etc stuff, or drop it into the source tree when I download from scratch (and have removed the original source tree).
I work in the data center for a moderately large company that sells banner ad software (using a hosted model). All this and more is coming to a web page near you, based on the things our esteemed customers are trying out.
I don't know if this is truly relevant or a correct answer, but... a buddy of mine works at a place that does embedded stuff, and until recently they were still
1)Buying MSDOS for purposes of embedding
2)calling MS support for dealing with code problems
From what I hear, there are still people out there with things that run embedded MSDOS, so they probably left it in circulation as long as possible. Now, they (MS) can push WinCE or embedded NT/XP, so they (MS) just EOL the old product.
The most important part of this is the "just think about stopping" part, the advanced system that mimics human movement.
While I predict this will be at BEST a fad, we can now finally take the core technology and start building robotic war mecha.