Actually, while there may be some things making it technically illegal, I think Apple have accepted Hackintosh.
With the release of Mountail Lion, it's no longer called Mac OS X, but OS X. This shows me that they are separating the Mac brand from the OS, which now (unofficially) runs on a lot of other hardware than Apple's Macintosh machines.
The only time they seem to take action is when people start trying to sell hardware commercially as OS X compatible. Or indeed sell anything which purports to get you a Mac on the cheap. They have taken *no* direct measures in their software to hinder installation on other hardware after switching to Intel. There's their TPM, and the SMC had to be faked / emulated, but those barriers were long since broken. Occasionally a release comes which breaks things momentarily, but these always seem to be honest changes, rather than (very) half-hearted attempts to thwart hobbyists.
I've been using Linux for the past 10 years or so. I choose Ubuntu as my Linux of choice.
How am I a moron for choosing an environment where most things work, out of the box, without me having to spend days fucking about? You can be sure that whatever I'm trying to actually achieve with the machine will take plenty time, so not having to configure everything about the OS is a distinct advantage.
My time is valuable to me, and Ubuntu saves me time. I fail to see how this is moronic.
It's extremely difficult to prove correctness in anything but very short programs. It's done for some critical embedded code, but is totally impractical for anything you're likely to run on a PC. Not to mention that the average programmer doesn't know how.
Now, preventing a program from hanging is pretty easy in most modern languages. Just put the whole program in an exception block. But that's probably not exactly what you want, is it?
It wouldn't work anyway. An exception is absolutely not equivalent to a hang (non-termination). Look:
try{
while(true){
{
sleep(1);
} } catch(Exception e){
System.out.println("this line will never print"); }
They actually wrote their own wrapper for DirectX to OpenGL. The user Rbarris on the Steam forums was / is involved in the development. It performs well according to their testing.
The point is that Apple only gets trigger-happy when the product is considered "as good as an iDevice" or better. They are trying to protect their premium image by trying to ban the better Android products while letting the shit ones through.
Why is this surprising?
Apple goes after infringing phones that aim at the same market segment as theirs. The ones in the other segments aren't going to be eating their revenue, so why spend money on them?
Google has already changed slide to unlock they used in Android 2.x to the new model in ICS, where you need to drag a thingy out of the circle (in any direction); no shiny text involved. That's what Galaxy Nexus uses. Apparently, that's still not good enough for Apple.
I had no idea Apple was pursuing slide to lock on devices where it isn't present. Would you care to provide proof of that, and perhaps suggest why they're being allowed to do so? Heck, perhaps even suggest what interest Apple have in doing it?
By your logic, since the first thing you encounter in a car is a steering wheel, whoever put it there first could have got a design patent on it as "one of the identifying features" of his product. This is an idiotic argument. Identifying features - if you want for them to actually be identifying - should be sufficiently different and notable. Slide to unlock isn't.
You're being intentionally obtuse, but that's nonetheless exactly right. Whoever put it there first could have taken a patent, and would have been idiotic not to do so if it was different to whatever contraptions were used to steer before the wheel. Although I feel quite deeply that the steering wheel and construction would be better suited as a patent, rather than a design patent, since it has rather more than just visual impact.
This hasn't stopped manufacturers from including this feature in their cars, or making their own patents based on it. But of course, an item on the steering wheel isn't actually the first thing you encounter on a car, is it? It's the exterior of the fucking car.
I digress, but my point stands... Slide to unlock isn't particularly more innovative than so many other ways of opening a touchscreen device. It's characteristic of iOS devices, and that's why Apple are going after it.
Like so many of their patents, it's about keeping the device recognizable. And frankly, I don't see the problem - if you can't come up with something equally functional that isn't the slider with the shining text, you're trying to copy their design. Or I should be doing your job.
Slide to unlock is the first thing you encounter. It's one of the identifying features of the product.
At least this time it gives them a chance of making a good, well-integrated product.
I've been a Windows hater for a very long time, because it's a shoddy product. That said, I'll easily be able to find respect for MS if they carry on doing interesting, useful things.
The whole problem with these UX designers is they forget that it is 2012 and EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS HOW TO USE COMPUTERS
You've missed the point really. Or, more likely, nobody's ever bothered to explain it.
Good UX usually relies upon the standard and accepted ways of interacting with the computer. So it doesn't patronize you by trying to show you what to do with a text input field - we can usually assume the user knows what they are looking at, as long as we lean on the accepted ways of presenting standard functionality.
The real task of good UX is to use present the domain the application is servicing in an easily understood and accessible manner. For example, a good system for doing tax returns might help the user to understand the terms the tax system uses and perhaps how to calculate those numbers.
I agree completely about the Office ribbon btw. MS' UX people clearly thought they could improve on the accepted patterns used for interacting with desktop applications... I think their solution is awful. Change *can* be a good thing though, and sometimes a fundamental change is needed to move things forward - I think that the paradigm shifts made in iOS are great, for example.
you have to get your apps only from Apple sources (iOS/Mac App Store) for them to have access to it.
I'll bite.
There's nothing stopping an application from being able to save to the local disk, is there now? You can save your files and use them in other apps just as you always have.
The fact that they're allegedly restricting the use of *their service* to apps which they have approved hardly seems to me like the catastrophe people here are making it out to be.
Steam for OS X, a big step forward though it was, hasn't delivered a massive amount of content.
I haven't got numbers to back that up, but often when I hear about a game being released on Steam (usually from a developer / publisher which isn't Valve) that I would like, I open the client and find out it's Windows-only. Which is a shame. Publishers still clearly think that Mac is a niche market. The situation with a Linux client is unlikely to be much better.
That said, having Valve's own stuff available is no bad thing. They have produced plenty of good content.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never understood the motivation in censoring racism online.
Posting slurs on Twitter is one of the least harmful things these morons could be spending their time doing.
Not on 'it':
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/its-or-its/
I'm running Mountain Lion without issue or hacks on an early 2008 Macbook Pro. That's 5 years service and counting.
Some machines do get left behind, but this doesn't seem to me like planned obsolescence, it's hardware that just can't do the job for whatever reason.
But hey! It's cool to tell everybody that Apple is evil. Rock on!
Actually, while there may be some things making it technically illegal, I think Apple have accepted Hackintosh.
With the release of Mountail Lion, it's no longer called Mac OS X, but OS X. This shows me that they are separating the Mac brand from the OS, which now (unofficially) runs on a lot of other hardware than Apple's Macintosh machines.
The only time they seem to take action is when people start trying to sell hardware commercially as OS X compatible. Or indeed sell anything which purports to get you a Mac on the cheap. They have taken *no* direct measures in their software to hinder installation on other hardware after switching to Intel. There's their TPM, and the SMC had to be faked / emulated, but those barriers were long since broken. Occasionally a release comes which breaks things momentarily, but these always seem to be honest changes, rather than (very) half-hearted attempts to thwart hobbyists.
It's a good attitude to the issue, imho.
Which forum? Did he identify himself, and was this confirmed?
Drug people tend not to reveal who they are on the internet, nor what activities they are engaging in. So this seems odd.
I've been using Linux for the past 10 years or so. I choose Ubuntu as my Linux of choice.
How am I a moron for choosing an environment where most things work, out of the box, without me having to spend days fucking about? You can be sure that whatever I'm trying to actually achieve with the machine will take plenty time, so not having to configure everything about the OS is a distinct advantage.
My time is valuable to me, and Ubuntu saves me time. I fail to see how this is moronic.
It's extremely difficult to prove correctness in anything but very short programs. It's done for some critical embedded code, but is totally impractical for anything you're likely to run on a PC. Not to mention that the average programmer doesn't know how.
Now, preventing a program from hanging is pretty easy in most modern languages. Just put the whole program in an exception block. But that's probably not exactly what you want, is it?
It wouldn't work anyway. An exception is absolutely not equivalent to a hang (non-termination). Look:
try{
while(true){
{
sleep(1);
}
} catch(Exception e){
System.out.println("this line will never print");
}
I lolled.
... for the Source engine that is.
They actually wrote their own wrapper for DirectX to OpenGL. The user Rbarris on the Steam forums was / is involved in the development. It performs well according to their testing.
The fact that Apple is suing over Galaxy Nexus is all over the news.
Yes, but we were talking about slide to unlock. So I went and checked for you - it isn't involved the the Galaxy Nexus case:
http://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-nexus-unlock-screen-not-targeted-apple-lawsuit-after-all
Get your facts straight instead of being hysterical perhaps?
I'm being intentionally obtuse because the patent in question is so obviously idiotic.
Good plan!
The point is that Apple only gets trigger-happy when the product is considered "as good as an iDevice" or better. They are trying to protect their premium image by trying to ban the better Android products while letting the shit ones through.
Why is this surprising?
Apple goes after infringing phones that aim at the same market segment as theirs. The ones in the other segments aren't going to be eating their revenue, so why spend money on them?
Google has already changed slide to unlock they used in Android 2.x to the new model in ICS, where you need to drag a thingy out of the circle (in any direction); no shiny text involved. That's what Galaxy Nexus uses. Apparently, that's still not good enough for Apple.
I had no idea Apple was pursuing slide to lock on devices where it isn't present. Would you care to provide proof of that, and perhaps suggest why they're being allowed to do so? Heck, perhaps even suggest what interest Apple have in doing it?
By your logic, since the first thing you encounter in a car is a steering wheel, whoever put it there first could have got a design patent on it as "one of the identifying features" of his product. This is an idiotic argument. Identifying features - if you want for them to actually be identifying - should be sufficiently different and notable. Slide to unlock isn't.
You're being intentionally obtuse, but that's nonetheless exactly right. Whoever put it there first could have taken a patent, and would have been idiotic not to do so if it was different to whatever contraptions were used to steer before the wheel. Although I feel quite deeply that the steering wheel and construction would be better suited as a patent, rather than a design patent, since it has rather more than just visual impact.
A very quick google found a patent for steering-wheel mounted controls for things in your car:
http://www.google.com/patents/US5855144
This hasn't stopped manufacturers from including this feature in their cars, or making their own patents based on it. But of course, an item on the steering wheel isn't actually the first thing you encounter on a car, is it? It's the exterior of the fucking car.
I digress, but my point stands... Slide to unlock isn't particularly more innovative than so many other ways of opening a touchscreen device. It's characteristic of iOS devices, and that's why Apple are going after it.
Really.
Like so many of their patents, it's about keeping the device recognizable. And frankly, I don't see the problem - if you can't come up with something equally functional that isn't the slider with the shining text, you're trying to copy their design. Or I should be doing your job.
Slide to unlock is the first thing you encounter. It's one of the identifying features of the product.
"It's an emergency as these phones make the 4S look quite out of date."
The apple fanbois wouldn't care - they'd buy a week old turd if it had an apple logo stamped on it.
(Score:5, Informative)
Now that's just sad.
Or, perhaps, those particular high-profile products actually do infringe on their patents?
A crazy suggestion, I know!
Which has precisely nothing to do with the ACs whining about the restrictions on iOS software installs.
And exaggerate more - if they were blocking all competing products, you wouldn't be able to buy anything else.
Which you were fully aware of when you bought it.
At least this time it gives them a chance of making a good, well-integrated product.
I've been a Windows hater for a very long time, because it's a shoddy product. That said, I'll easily be able to find respect for MS if they carry on doing interesting, useful things.
I've got a feeling the AC was saying that Amiga OS is 'only used by hobbyists in lala land'...
The whole problem with these UX designers is they forget that it is 2012 and EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS HOW TO USE COMPUTERS
You've missed the point really. Or, more likely, nobody's ever bothered to explain it.
Good UX usually relies upon the standard and accepted ways of interacting with the computer. So it doesn't patronize you by trying to show you what to do with a text input field - we can usually assume the user knows what they are looking at, as long as we lean on the accepted ways of presenting standard functionality.
The real task of good UX is to use present the domain the application is servicing in an easily understood and accessible manner. For example, a good system for doing tax returns might help the user to understand the terms the tax system uses and perhaps how to calculate those numbers.
I agree completely about the Office ribbon btw. MS' UX people clearly thought they could improve on the accepted patterns used for interacting with desktop applications... I think their solution is awful. Change *can* be a good thing though, and sometimes a fundamental change is needed to move things forward - I think that the paradigm shifts made in iOS are great, for example.
Actually, I don't expect that I'll ever need that much computer assistance for my daily shit.
Computerized laxatives - the digital future of constipation treatment.
you have to get your apps only from Apple sources (iOS/Mac App Store) for them to have access to it.
I'll bite.
There's nothing stopping an application from being able to save to the local disk, is there now? You can save your files and use them in other apps just as you always have.
The fact that they're allegedly restricting the use of *their service* to apps which they have approved hardly seems to me like the catastrophe people here are making it out to be.
Steam for OS X, a big step forward though it was, hasn't delivered a massive amount of content.
I haven't got numbers to back that up, but often when I hear about a game being released on Steam (usually from a developer / publisher which isn't Valve) that I would like, I open the client and find out it's Windows-only. Which is a shame. Publishers still clearly think that Mac is a niche market. The situation with a Linux client is unlikely to be much better.
That said, having Valve's own stuff available is no bad thing. They have produced plenty of good content.
MYTHS!: https://vms.drweb.com/myths/
They also sell virus protection. These guys seem top notch.