Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 4th Feb 2009 07:05 UTC
Apple has always been about moving forward, about pressing customers to buy the latest and greatest. Product pacing has been high in Cupertino (except for the Mac Mini, obviously), and this is obviously a good thing if you're an Apple bean counter. Most Apple fans more or less accept this planned obsolescence without question, but the company may have just gone a little too far.
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Member since:2005-06-29
Guess what? no one listened to me (and people like me) - and now this group of complainers are now swarming websites like this - pissing an moaning after being full warned as to the consequences of their purchasing decision. Please explain to me why the slightest bit of sympathy should be shed for those who went and purchased a massive upgrade knowing that there was a limited life span to it?
Exactly BECAUSE that limited lifespan is ARTIFICIAL. A PowerPC G5 machine was expensive then, and right now, they are still perfectly capable and fine machines, rivalling many cheap computers still sold today - with the dual G5/quad core models still being top-of-the-line performance-wise. In fact, even many G4 machines, especially the dual processor models, are still perfectly capable of powering ANYTHING Apple currently releases, yet Apple ARTIFICIALLY kills them off.
That is simply appalling, and it's one of the main reasons why I decided to buy a normal x86 a few weeks ago, instead of buying a Mac: what guarantee do I have that my investment will not be made obsolete by Apple's software police?
Edited 2009-02-04 10:45 UTC
Member since:2006-01-02
Member since:2005-07-06
Right. And let's say you bought a computer with Windows XP on it at the time that you bought your G4. Are you saying that you could have bought Vista Ultimate and ran EVERYTHING that is part of Ultimate and that you could run EVERY game that game out in the last year?
I'm knowledgeably saying no to both. No you wouldn't have been able to run everything in Vista and no you wouldn't have been able to run ALL of the newest games. So you would be limited either way.
You also KNEW that Apple wasn't going to be sticking with PowerPC chips when the G5 came out. The problems with IBM and Motorola updating the G5 chip for iMacs and Mac Pros, let alone laptops, was ALL over the web even before the G5 came out.
Which is why I didn't buy a G5. I also didn't buy an early Intel Mac because I was pretty certain that there would be bugs to work out. I waited until the Core2Duo's came out and only then bought a new iMac.
In the meantime my wife and I used, and still use, our 2000 800mhz G4 iMac lamp and our 800mhz G4 PowerBook, which I'm writing this on, by the way.
I've been wanting a Mac mini for over a year now. At the time it had been just under 180 days since the last time that the Mac Mini had been updated and I figured I'm not going to buy a new one until it has been updated again. I'm still waiting at 530 some days or so for it to be updated. I'm not going to buy one know that if I bought one before it gets updated I would be pretty upset when it did.
I in no way feel screwed that my G4s can't install Mac OS 10.5.
Member since:2009-02-04
Member since:2006-02-17
Guess what? no one listened to me (and people like me) - and now this group of complainers are now swarming websites like this - pissing an moaning after being full warned as to the consequences of their purchasing decision. Please explain to me why the slightest bit of sympathy should be shed for those who went and purchased a massive upgrade knowing that there was a limited life span to it?
Kaiwai, were you speaking as an Apple worker or official Apple reseller to customers or as a simple Apple/tech-savvy to his friends? Because what really counts it's only the first position: official Apple position. In 2006 Apple was migrating to Intel yet it was still selling powerful&expensive PPC machines, saying to its paying costumers "Don't worry for your brand new PPC, we will support it!". Now, the support ended after 2.5 years, and people have all the right to complain and shout at Apple.
Member since:2005-07-06
Kaiwai, were you speaking as an Apple worker or official Apple reseller to customers or as a simple Apple/tech-savvy to his friends? Because what really counts it's only the first position: official Apple position. In 2006 Apple was migrating to Intel yet it was still selling powerful&expensive PPC machines, saying to its paying costumers "Don't worry for your brand new PPC, we will support it!". Now, the support ended after 2.5 years, and people have all the right to complain and shout at Apple.
Where did Apple ever make a commitment to a certain time period? Provide the information. Discussions on Mac boards over the internet came to pretty much the conclusion of: get the G5 PPC if you really need it for work and that the performance is crucial for work immediately or hold off to get an Intel one once released.
This filtered back through the forums into articles, online buying advice etc even resellers were advising customers to hold off their purchases. etc. It wasn't as though a unsure buyer couldn't pull on resources to quantify as to whether purchasing a PPC G5 monster at that moment was a good investment. I don't know about you, but I tend to RESEARCH my purchases before slapping down several thousand dollars.
If the general concensus of pundits, forum goers, resellers and so forth is to hold off for the Intel release - you know what? I'd take their advice because to me the several thousand dollars is worth a pretty penny. If the advice from people who are 9/10 correct in their prediction, I'm going to trust them more than I trust Apple - whose sole purpose for pushing the PPC is to maintain the high margin profit stream.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 23:02 UTC, submitted by M.Onty
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 22:28 UTC
"A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."More News »
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Member since:
2005-07-06
1) I can understanding killing off PowerPC, that makes sense BUT I think the idea of killing off the Core Solo is pretty crap - at the very least they should have 'recommended' a dual core but still allow those who want to run iLife on their core solo to continue on doing as they did. People could still use it whilst at the same time realising that their machine is underpowered and things might take a little longer than if they had a dual core.
2) Regarding this statement, "If I had bought a dual quad-core PowerMac G5 2.5 years ago for three kidneys and a liver, I'd be pretty pissed off right about now" - I (along with many others) warned and I warned and I warned and I warned - but people didn't listen to me. I said it was a stupid idea to purchase a G5 given that there is a move to Intel.
Guess what? no one listened to me (and people like me) - and now this group of complainers are now swarming websites like this - pissing an moaning after being full warned as to the consequences of their purchasing decision. Please explain to me why the slightest bit of sympathy should be shed for those who went and purchased a massive upgrade knowing that there was a limited life span to it?