Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 13th Oct 2010 17:26 UTC
In this day and age of iOS this and iPad that you'd nearly forget it, but the gadget maker from Cupertino actually makes personal computers and an accompanying operating system as well. It's been nearly three years since the last substantial release, so it's about time: Apple has just announced a press event titled 'Back to Mac', with a lion on the invite.
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RE[2]: Comment by drcouzelis
by arpan on Wed 13th Oct 2010 19:27
in reply to "RE: Comment by drcouzelis"
Member since:2006-07-30
I'd rather they ditch the Optical disc. I rarely use it, and would rather have an external drive for the few times I need to use it.
That would allow them to have 2 HDs. One would a SSD for speed, and the second could a standard HD for all the storage requirements required.
Or two HDs in RAID config etc!
RE[3]: Comment by drcouzelis
by mrAmiga500 on Wed 13th Oct 2010 19:42
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by drcouzelis"
Member since:2009-03-20
It would be nice to ditch the optical disc (I hate optical discs), but only if they offered a cheap matching external optical drive. (are Apple optional extras ever cheap?) If you've already got an external optical drive, you don't need it, but it should be available if you don't.
I don't use optical discs often either, but I don't have an external optical drive and I still buy Compact Discs and DVDs.
Edited 2010-10-13 19:43 UTC
RE[2]: Comment by drcouzelis
by Neolander on Wed 13th Oct 2010 19:42
in reply to "RE: Comment by drcouzelis"
Member since:2010-03-08
I'd like to see no hard drives. They're hot, slow, bulky and unreliable. Storage should be solid state.
Unreliable ? I'm genuinely curious about this claim : have SSD finally got past mechanical hard drives in terms of reliability ?
Because yes, I know, no mechanical parts and everything, but every storage medium lasting more than 30 years which I know of (paper, clay, marble, tapes, optical disks if stored with extreme care, records, MiniDisc) requires mechanical parts somewhere in the writing or reading process.
In the specific case of SSD, last time I heard about them, they had some serious issues : sudden death by cremation after a few months in a way that's similar to early low-end USB pen drives was still common, and the ones who did survive had an issue that only let them issue a very limited number of writes per NAND chip, requiring complex algorithms at the OS level to make them live reasonably long (like the strange filesystem of the EEEPC 701). Are these now fixed ?
Edited 2010-10-13 19:46 UTC
RE[3]: Comment by drcouzelis
by jackeebleu on Wed 13th Oct 2010 20:54
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by drcouzelis"
Member since:2006-01-26
RE[3]: Comment by drcouzelis
by nt_jerkface on Wed 13th Oct 2010 22:32
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by drcouzelis"
Member since:2009-08-26
There are have been numerous SSD drives that had higher than average fail rates.
I put my SSD on ebay after being unimpressed with the speed boost. With Win7 and Vista common programs are already cached to the memory and cold boots are rare. I felt much safer after putting my Scorpio blue back in. I've seen 5400 RPM drives go 10 years and the power draw isn't much different.
So yea SSDs are overrated for typical use. A 5400RPM Scorpio can read at over 50mb/sec. They are not the same drives that laptops came with 5 years ago.
RE[3]: Comment by drcouzelis
by Phloptical on Wed 13th Oct 2010 23:35
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by drcouzelis"
Member since:2006-10-10
RE[2]: Comment by drcouzelis
by WorknMan on Wed 13th Oct 2010 20:40
in reply to "RE: Comment by drcouzelis"
Member since:2005-11-13
Regarding software: One thing that is long overdue is the ability to rip DVDs and put them in a playlist. You should be able to store all your movies and play them when you want...
Of course, this will never happen.
Of course, this will never happen.
There's already tons of software for ripping DVDs. (I use DVDFab on Windows - I'm sure Macs have something similar available.) Of course, this will never come bundled with the OS, for obvious reasons. (It's technically illegal, at least in the US.)
RE[3]: Comment by drcouzelis
by jackeebleu on Wed 13th Oct 2010 20:55
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by drcouzelis"
Member since:2006-01-26
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 22:06 UTC
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:45 UTC
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."More News »
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Member since:
2009-03-20
You mean optical disc? I think you still need CD/DVD - for music and movies. I'd like to see no hard drives. They're hot, slow, bulky and unreliable. Storage should be solid state.
Regarding software: One thing that is long overdue is the ability to rip DVDs and put them in a playlist. You should be able to store all your movies and play them when you want - without having to search for a DVD and worry about if it's going to jerk and skip because it's scratched or dirty. You should be able to select a movie in the playlist and it plays instantly - no menu or stupid FBI warning or other BS that you can't skip through.
Of course, this will never happen. The movie industry want to force you to watch stuff you can't skip through and they want the physical media to get scratched so you have to buy it again. (and of course, Apple want you to buy movies through iTunes)