posted by Sean Rose on Wed 6th Aug 2003 00:59 UTC
"Switcher, Page 2"
When I said I'm a geek, I really meant it. I'm a computer nerd. I love to play with new hardware and try out different operating systems. It's one of the reasons why I keep an eye on OSNews so much. I loved BeOS. It was great. I've run many flavors of Linux and BSD. I've booted Darwin on x86 and played with Sun boxes. You name it, I like it. And I still have a mint Atari 800 running.
That said, I want to say - Unlike many Mac users, I'm not loyal to Apple in any way.
Is the new PC faster than my old P3? Yes. Is it almost four times as fast as the CPU clock speeds would make it seem? No. Does it blaze circles around my Mac like the PC guys swear it will? No way.
One of the first things I wanted to try out was my all time favorite game - Quake III. I have seen tons of benchmarks showing through-the-roof framerates on PCs running the demos. Numbers that make you think the PC does kill the Mac. I don't play a demo so I just fired up a map and started playing with the framerate displayed in the corner. I figure that's as close to actually playing the game as you can get.
I've got different sized LCDs so the PC was running at 1024x768 and the Mac at 1280x1024. Both in 32 bit color with maximum settings on all options. Running around and killing all the bots dishes out almost equal frame rates. They are so close there is no way to say one is better than the other, except for the fact that the Mac is running at a larger screen resolution so it does look better.
That's two 800Mhz G4s pitted against the 2.4Ghz x86 (of the inside variety). That really makes me believe the Megahertz myth firsthand.
How about everything else? It's good. That's about all I can say. Surfing the Internet in Mozilla on both OSs gives nearly identical results. I use Photoshop daily and the dual processors just burn the x86. That's not fake when Apple is showing that. That doesn't mean everything is faster on the Mac because it isn't.
Table of contents
- "Switcher, Page 1"
- "Switcher, Page 2"
- "Switcher, Page 3"
News
Linked by David Adams on 02/14/12 17:25 UTC, submitted by Anonymous
It looks like a new "locally integrated menu" will make it into Unity, starting with version 5.6.0. There's basically no information about the new locally integrated menubar, except for two bug reports which link to some custom Unity, Compiz, Metacity and Light Themes branches so to see "LIM" in action, I've compiled all these branches and here's the result. The "locally integrated menubar" can be displayed on the panel (for maximized windows) as well as in the window decoration (unmaximized windows). But it's not displayed on both in the same time.
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Linked by David Adams on 02/14/12 17:24 UTC
Today Samsung AV product lead Chris Moseley had comments about Apple's rumored entrance into the television marketplace that sound eerily similar to that which Palm CEO Ed Colligan's said a few years back about how Apple's ability to simply walk into this market and figure it out like they had managed to do after years of research.
Linked by snydeq on 02/14/12 17:23 UTC
What your interface communicates to users can be just as important as what your software does, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister in discussing the latest edition of the 'Microsoft Manual of Style,' a style guide aimed at designers and developers who create Microsoft software, as well as those who write about it. 'The gist of much of Microsoft's advice is that a user's relationship with computer software is a unique one, and it's important to craft the language of software UIs accordingly,' McAllister writes. 'Occasionally, Microsoft's recommendations verge on the absurd. For example, you might not think it necessary to admonish developers to "not use slang that may be considered profane or derogatory, such as 'pimp' or 'bitch,'" but apparently it is.'
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/14/12 1:07 UTC
"It's tough being a journalist, especially if you're covering technology and living in Silicon Valley, because it seems as if everyone around you is getting fabulously rich while you're stuck in a job that will never, ever make you wealthy. What's worse is that all these people who are getting rich don't seem to be any brighter than you are and in fact many of them don't seem very bright at all. So of course you get jealous. And then you start thinking maybe you could find a way to cash in on this gold rush. But how do you make gobs of money when your only marketable skill involves writing blog posts?" Absolutely brilliant down to the last letter. Coincidentally, I hold no shares, interests, or anything, in any company whatsoever. I'm a freelance translator by day. Not that anyone cares, but hey, full disclosure and all.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/13/12 23:51 UTC
"A hybrid solution that takes the best parts of iOS's one-by-one acceptance and Android's expressed and obvious intents seems like a proper model here. In fact, Apple has many of the pieces in place elsewhere." This is a big issue. Nor Android's model (just list a bunch of confusing permissions), nor Apple's model (individual modal dialogs for each permission) is particularly workable - I doubt regular users check them on Android before installing an application, and in the case of iOS, Apple didn't think it was necessary to secure the address book, so every application has access to it without alerting users. Justin Williams proposes a hybrid solution.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/13/12 23:44 UTC
"Although current discussion of the Linux desktop tends to focus on the disharmony around Unity and the GNOME shell, the true revolution on the desktop is taking place out of sight of users. The Wayland display server is expected to reach version 1.0 later this year, and is seen by many as the long term replacement for the X Window System, with real potential to improve and transform the performance of the desktop for Linux users."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/13/12 23:40 UTC
Mozilla has announced plans to integrate its Firefox web browser with Metro for Windows 8 - including Gecko. "Windows 8 contains two application environments, 'Classic' and 'Metro'. Classic is very similar to the Windows 7 environment at this time, it requires a simple evolution of the current Firefox Windows product. Metro is an entirely new environment and requires a new Firefox front end and system integration points. The feature goal here is a new Gecko based browser built for and integrated with the Metro environment. Firefox on Metro, like all other Metro apps will be full screen, focused on touch interactions, and connected to the rest of the Metro environment through Windows 8 contracts." I haven't checked - does Microsoft allow different rendering engines?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/12/12 23:23 UTC
"One of the things that the GNOME design crew have been focusing on recently is creating a new approach to application design for GNOME 3. We want GNOME applications to be thoroughly modern, and we want them to be attractive and a delight to use. That means that we have to do application design differently to how we've done it in the past."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/10/12 23:46 UTC
"This is the first real release of Wayland and Weston. Wayland is the protocol and IPC mechanism while Weston is the reference compositor implementation. The 0.85 branch in both repositories is going to be protocol and interface stable. We have a series of protocol changes on the table before 1.0 but this branch marks a stable point before we jump into that." Change is coming to the Linux world. And yes, I get the irony of using this particular icon, but it's the closest I could find.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/10/12 15:39 UTC
Well, this is good news. "Germany will not sign an international anti-piracy treaty, despite having already agreed to it in principal, government sources in Berlin said Friday, February 10." with Germany on the side of reason - for now - we're a huge step closer to stopping ACTA.More News »
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