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Just been looking at the new Apple products.
To the iPod Shuffle I say pffft.
The Mac Mini on the other hand...
I have an ideological bias against Apple: I don't like the idea of a closed system.
However I do like the idea of trying different technologies. I'm a geek, I can't help it. Currently I dual boot XP and Linux - if I could add OSX, which is apparently wonderful, then so much the better. Before it was impossible because of cost; now, maybe not.
Personally I think that open source will always eventually deliver the better product. Mozilla and now Firefox are already doing it for browsers; OpenOffice will probably do it by version 2 for office software, at least for my needs; OSs, which are an order of magnitude more complex, will be next but probably not for a while. For me open source software falls down most readily on usability - and despite all the glossy distributions this is still a problem for Linux. As long as there exists a 'font de-uglification how-to' then Linux will not win the desktop.
Apple, for all their faults, are brilliant at making a user friendly product. If the Shuffle succeeds then it will be a tragic triumph for marketing but even such an obviously derivative product has, in my opinion, a quite brilliant twist: autofill. Specify how much space you want for documents and how much for music, and autofill the player with a random selection of songs. Minus the GUI this is a page of code, maybe? A couple of hours work for a vaguely competent programmer? It's a simple, one button solution to a simple problem - one that I've wished for myself. It's "easy", sure, but Apple thought of it, and Apple fixed it. Contrast this with the way I currently fill up my MuVo mp3 player: if I want to put a whole album on there then I can't just copy all the files in a folder in one go because Windows starts randomly picking which file to copy next (WHY??!!), and everything ends up out of joint. Instead I have to drag track one over, wait for it to finish then drag track two over, wait for...etc. Incredibly dull and wasteful - and the antithesis of computing, which is supposed to remove the drudgework from our lives. Apple's innovation, then, is in software not hardware.
As someone who belives in open source I think that criticising Apple blindly is ignorant and self-defeating: I would rather take a good look at OSX, steal its good points, throw away its bad points, and stomp up and down on the parts that try and integrate us into an Apple Life (TM), where we watch, listen, play, and romance only things that can bought on Apple branded iShops.
(Anti-Apple rant begins and ends with this paragraph - feel free to skip, it's peripheral to the technology.) When I read a sentence like "Apple engineers designed this small wonder from the ground up to deliver the most Mac for the least dinero" it makes me want to vomit. Dinero? Is Apple my friend? Is it cool? Do I want it using slang in front of my mother? No. Apple is quite possibly the vilest, most insidious brand around - beloved of people who look down on McDonalds, Gap, Starbucks and Versace-branded t-shirts. Beloved also of people who would never be so shallow as to assess their worth by the sum and calibre of their possessions - people who would never pay over the odds for a logo, oh no. And, true fact, 98% of Mac owners have written a broadsheet article extolling their virtues.
But, still, I don't particularly like the kind of person who buys a Chelsea season ticket - and it doesn't make the team any less brilliant. And that, in essence, is why I'm seriously considering buying a Mac Mini as a second computer: the technology looks brilliant. A quiet, inexpensive second PC that can do all the average day's tasks for me while allowing me to learn a new OS: very, very tempting.
To the iPod Shuffle I say pffft.
The Mac Mini on the other hand...
I have an ideological bias against Apple: I don't like the idea of a closed system.
However I do like the idea of trying different technologies. I'm a geek, I can't help it. Currently I dual boot XP and Linux - if I could add OSX, which is apparently wonderful, then so much the better. Before it was impossible because of cost; now, maybe not.
Personally I think that open source will always eventually deliver the better product. Mozilla and now Firefox are already doing it for browsers; OpenOffice will probably do it by version 2 for office software, at least for my needs; OSs, which are an order of magnitude more complex, will be next but probably not for a while. For me open source software falls down most readily on usability - and despite all the glossy distributions this is still a problem for Linux. As long as there exists a 'font de-uglification how-to' then Linux will not win the desktop.
Apple, for all their faults, are brilliant at making a user friendly product. If the Shuffle succeeds then it will be a tragic triumph for marketing but even such an obviously derivative product has, in my opinion, a quite brilliant twist: autofill. Specify how much space you want for documents and how much for music, and autofill the player with a random selection of songs. Minus the GUI this is a page of code, maybe? A couple of hours work for a vaguely competent programmer? It's a simple, one button solution to a simple problem - one that I've wished for myself. It's "easy", sure, but Apple thought of it, and Apple fixed it. Contrast this with the way I currently fill up my MuVo mp3 player: if I want to put a whole album on there then I can't just copy all the files in a folder in one go because Windows starts randomly picking which file to copy next (WHY??!!), and everything ends up out of joint. Instead I have to drag track one over, wait for it to finish then drag track two over, wait for...etc. Incredibly dull and wasteful - and the antithesis of computing, which is supposed to remove the drudgework from our lives. Apple's innovation, then, is in software not hardware.
As someone who belives in open source I think that criticising Apple blindly is ignorant and self-defeating: I would rather take a good look at OSX, steal its good points, throw away its bad points, and stomp up and down on the parts that try and integrate us into an Apple Life (TM), where we watch, listen, play, and romance only things that can bought on Apple branded iShops.
(Anti-Apple rant begins and ends with this paragraph - feel free to skip, it's peripheral to the technology.) When I read a sentence like "Apple engineers designed this small wonder from the ground up to deliver the most Mac for the least dinero" it makes me want to vomit. Dinero? Is Apple my friend? Is it cool? Do I want it using slang in front of my mother? No. Apple is quite possibly the vilest, most insidious brand around - beloved of people who look down on McDonalds, Gap, Starbucks and Versace-branded t-shirts. Beloved also of people who would never be so shallow as to assess their worth by the sum and calibre of their possessions - people who would never pay over the odds for a logo, oh no. And, true fact, 98% of Mac owners have written a broadsheet article extolling their virtues.
But, still, I don't particularly like the kind of person who buys a Chelsea season ticket - and it doesn't make the team any less brilliant. And that, in essence, is why I'm seriously considering buying a Mac Mini as a second computer: the technology looks brilliant. A quiet, inexpensive second PC that can do all the average day's tasks for me while allowing me to learn a new OS: very, very tempting.
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A tragic tale and no mistake!
Just for the record I'm typing this on the perfectly functioning PII Vaio laptop that I inherited from my dad when he got his new one. I installed XP, put some more RAM in, and it goes like a charm. Musta got lucky. I wouldn't buy a Sony out of my own money because they're pretty overpriced but a free one suits me fine.
Just for the record I'm typing this on the perfectly functioning PII Vaio laptop that I inherited from my dad when he got his new one. I installed XP, put some more RAM in, and it goes like a charm. Musta got lucky. I wouldn't buy a Sony out of my own money because they're pretty overpriced but a free one suits me fine.
Arrrghh!!!!
Sony Vaios are the worst thing made. They are a crime. They should not have been released.
They all seem all brilliant at first all hunky dory. Then in a year or two's time POOF!!!
No more vaio. Sure, you can pay £200 to fix it but what would be the point?
They go black after 20 seconds. Sometimes mine won't get the little crap orange lights under the screen to go on but only the power light. The battery becomes utterly useless. The cable doesn't work and ebay cables become just as useless and the best success I ever had was to use the PS2 one!
They aren't worth this trouble. They are a rip off.
for your planning now since you are still all safe within the first six months. Get a game or thing that completely takes the focus of the compueter. HAS to be fullscreen mode. It can not access the system sleep privelages. I myself recommend liero xtreme coz it's fun to play and does all the requirements. Can be found here: [URL]http://www.lieroxtreme.thegaminguniverse.com/[URL] .
Now put it in your start menu and not too far down it so you can get to it in about three keystrokes. Now in the odd times that you do manage to get it started you will have it get to the password screen and if you did something stupid (like me!) you'll get an error too. When it starts up you shall get hardly nuff time to do anything. With the speed of quickness, you must press the keystrokes to LX or what ever and press enter.
This will just slow down the time it will crash in. And whilst at it, you get to play a game!
For those who have not got a vaio, don't get one, please. This has been noted as a known Vaio design fault.
Sony Vaios are the worst thing made. They are a crime. They should not have been released.
They all seem all brilliant at first all hunky dory. Then in a year or two's time POOF!!!
No more vaio. Sure, you can pay £200 to fix it but what would be the point?
They go black after 20 seconds. Sometimes mine won't get the little crap orange lights under the screen to go on but only the power light. The battery becomes utterly useless. The cable doesn't work and ebay cables become just as useless and the best success I ever had was to use the PS2 one!
They aren't worth this trouble. They are a rip off.
for your planning now since you are still all safe within the first six months. Get a game or thing that completely takes the focus of the compueter. HAS to be fullscreen mode. It can not access the system sleep privelages. I myself recommend liero xtreme coz it's fun to play and does all the requirements. Can be found here: [URL]http://www.lieroxtreme.thegaminguniverse.com/[URL] .
Now put it in your start menu and not too far down it so you can get to it in about three keystrokes. Now in the odd times that you do manage to get it started you will have it get to the password screen and if you did something stupid (like me!) you'll get an error too. When it starts up you shall get hardly nuff time to do anything. With the speed of quickness, you must press the keystrokes to LX or what ever and press enter.
This will just slow down the time it will crash in. And whilst at it, you get to play a game!
For those who have not got a vaio, don't get one, please. This has been noted as a known Vaio design fault.
I find laptops generally have quite whiny fans, although my dad just got a new Vaio that is very nice and very quiet. I'd rather have a big screen and a decent keyboard and mouse though.
Not really no.
Some laptops feature those fans which come on every minute or so.
I'm probably going to get an Apple Laptop for when I got to uni.
Some laptops feature those fans which come on every minute or so.
I'm probably going to get an Apple Laptop for when I got to uni.
Most laptops featuring onboard graphics are whisper quiet, too.
Ho ho, "ethnic-looking clip art model".
Mac Mini can do one thing my current PC can't: be quiet. I spent quite a lot of time and money making my PC quiet, including one highly amusing GPU core-crushing incident, but thanks to my stupidly high standards it still seems, well, noisy. Mac Mini is by all accounts almost silent - something I can do non-intensive work on in peace is very attractive.
Mac Mini can do one thing my current PC can't: be quiet. I spent quite a lot of time and money making my PC quiet, including one highly amusing GPU core-crushing incident, but thanks to my stupidly high standards it still seems, well, noisy. Mac Mini is by all accounts almost silent - something I can do non-intensive work on in peace is very attractive.
[URL]http://www.jwz.org/images/iProduct.gif[/URL].
In essence, the My First Mac is just a £300 version of OSX. If you could get OSX on your PC for £100 then you wouldn't buy a MiniMac.
I use Gentoo too, mainly because I'm a nerd and I can't let this here Linux thing pass me by. While the philosophy and parts of the design of Linux are better than Windows, some stuff that would be trivial to do in Windows is just a brainache to get working in Gentoo. I have a big long list of things that don't work properly (or at all) that I need to fix at some point, some of which might take (and have already taken) entire weekends of headscratching, reading documentation and searching the internet. I still haven't tried OSX, and although I'm becoming tempted by this cheap new Mac, I can't justify buying one because it doesn't actually do anything that either my Windows XP or Gentoo machines can't do already.
I agree with the open source paragraph.
Currently I use Gentoo Linux on my computer and I just find it such a better enviroment to use rather then Windows. I don't intend to make references to what I think of Microsofts OS, I just prefer a Linux enviroment
Mac OSX though, is cool. The thing I like most about it is it's pretty much a "mix of everything", it has the power of Unix and the easy to use interface.
Currently I use Gentoo Linux on my computer and I just find it such a better enviroment to use rather then Windows. I don't intend to make references to what I think of Microsofts OS, I just prefer a Linux enviroment
Mac OSX though, is cool. The thing I like most about it is it's pretty much a "mix of everything", it has the power of Unix and the easy to use interface.
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