Linked by David Adams on Thu 19th May 2011 17:41 UTC, submitted by Hans Otten
Well, this will come as no surprise to OSNews readers, but as outlined in a recent BBC documentary, UK neuroscientists have studied brain scans of hard-core Apple fans and have found that their mental reactions to Apple imagery are quite similar to scans of religious devotees' brains when shown images of their iconography. The DigitalTrends article summarizing the finding singles out Apple users, but I think we all know that, RDF aside, this is not an Apple-only phenomenon.
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Member since:2008-10-23
Also one can't become an Apple fanatic before you get influenced. That just proves Apple knows how to make cool stuff and more important sell it. At least their stuff has a personality (like most computers did in the 80's). Other companies just try to bump the specs, dish it out and pull it as quickly if it doesn't sell well enough.
I believe it's their clever marketing that makes you think they make cool stuff. Their stuff is still just dumbed down Unix, much less cool than my customized LFS but they sell it like something magic and the fans do that marketing for them. That is what the personality of their stuff is about in my opinion.
RE[2]: Comment by MOS6510
by MOS6510 on Fri 20th May 2011 10:32
in reply to "RE: Comment by MOS6510"
Member since:2011-05-12
I think it's more that marketing. It's a certain vision they put in to practice where they both control the hard- and software. Add attention to detail and of course marketing and you have something.
At home I have a lot of retro stuff, a lot from the 70's and 80's. A lot of stuff breathes personality and is part of the producer's history. During the 90's this was lost, IMHO, when the PC clones took over. All computers turned in to ugly PCs with DOS and Windows.
Sure my Amiga is crap compared to a 2011 PC, but it is more fun.
And now when Dell or HP comes with a new product you know it's just specs in a box. That's what they sell specs for a price. Most non-tech users hardly know the brand of the PC they use (well, most don't even), let alone the type.
Yesterday someone at work even offered me an old computer. Hoping it was not a PC I said I might be interested. What was it? Well, a PC. A Dell or an HP. They have had it for years, don't even know what brand. I told her to bring it along but I wouldn't pay for it. I'll use it as a test machine or give it away if someone is interested.
I do like the IBM XT though.
News
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."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.More News »
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Member since:
2011-05-12
I think there is a difference between Apple users and iPhone owners.
A lot of people own iPhones and I know a whole bunch, but a large number (mostly women, oh well) don't even know Steve Jobs, don't have a Mac and don't even know which type of iPhone they have. Sure they love their phones, but you can't call them Apple fanatics.
The "religious" Apple user is in fact a percentage of all Apple product owning people. It might be a big percentage, but even so you can't say every Apple product owning person believes in the Apple Church.
Also one can't become an Apple fanatic before you get influenced. That just proves Apple knows how to make cool stuff and more important sell it. At least their stuff has a personality (like most computers did in the 80's). Other companies just try to bump the specs, dish it out and pull it as quickly if it doesn't sell well enough.