Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 27th Sep 2012 19:36 UTC
I bought a brand new iMac on Tuesday. I'm pretty sure this will come as a surprise to some, so I figured I might as well offer some background information about this choice - maybe it'll help other people who are also pondering what to buy as their next computer.
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RE: No matter what OS you put on them...
by WereCatf on Mon 1st Oct 2012 05:34
in reply to "No matter what OS you put on them..."
Member since:2006-02-15
...the iMacs are great machines. Maybe not the latest or greatest HW, but put together in such a great way the negatives seem to vanish...
Can you use the display as a screen for another computer, like e.g. one day when the warranty's gone and the CPU/RAM/mobo/etc. goes bust does that also mean the display is useless also?
If you can't, well, then I have to disagree. With traditional computers you get to re-use lots of parts which contributes to less electronic waste, but with all-in-ones you actually contribute to the mountain of electronic junk occupying large areas in the developing countries.
RE[2]: No matter what OS you put on them...
by Chrispynutt on Mon 1st Oct 2012 11:57
in reply to "RE: No matter what OS you put on them..."
Member since:2012-03-14
I have to agree. It's one of the reasons why I hate myself for buying a tablet. However considering it cost as much as my graphics card, not too much.
My mate got a 27" iMac, his batch had noisy drives. After getting his first replacment he gave up and accepted it. He now has a noisy clattering drive a foot or so from his face, that requires serious and scary disasambling to change or even add another drive.
Sure it's fine if something fails under Apple Care, but not so much if you just want to do a minor upgrade to extend the life of your very expensive computer.
Edited 2012-10-01 11:59 UTC
RE[2]: No matter what OS you put on them...
by steve119 on Mon 1st Oct 2012 16:25
in reply to "RE: No matter what OS you put on them..."
Member since:2012-09-27
Yes you can, you can use the other imac as a screen using the thunderbolt and display port.
It's on YouTube as part of a review and was pretty impressed by it tbh. 
But not sure if screen will still work as display if other components are knacked though :/
Edited 2012-10-01 16:27 UTC
RE[2]: No matter what OS you put on them...
by redshift on Tue 2nd Oct 2012 03:05
in reply to "RE: No matter what OS you put on them..."
Member since:2006-05-06
"...the iMacs are great machines. Maybe not the latest or greatest HW, but put together in such a great way the negatives seem to vanish...
Can you use the display as a screen for another computer, like e.g. one day when the warranty's gone and the CPU/RAM/mobo/etc. goes bust does that also mean the display is useless also?
If you can't, well, then I have to disagree. With traditional computers you get to re-use lots of parts which contributes to less electronic waste, but with all-in-ones you actually contribute to the mountain of electronic junk occupying large areas in the developing countries. "
On the newer ones you can.... At least if you are replacing it because it is old. I am sure some kinds of failures of the main board break that feature.
News
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.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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2005-07-11
...the iMacs are great machines. Maybe not the latest or greatest HW, but put together in such a great way the negatives seem to vanish...
I have a 21" and 27" here at home and love them both, just add extra memory (and SSD if you can (easy to remove the front screen yourself on the latest ones)), just be sure not to buy the memory from Apple and you'll do OK :-)
IMHO...