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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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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.
Pity its a thread about Apple instead of open source, a few points you made in there I might enjoy debating.
I must admit the macmini is something that'll probably persuade me to purchase a mac. Although buying one of a decent spec will still cost 500+ pound so I guess its cheap in mac terms rather than general PC terms.
I must admit the macmini is something that'll probably persuade me to purchase a mac. Although buying one of a decent spec will still cost 500+ pound so I guess its cheap in mac terms rather than general PC terms.
Hey thats a nice little post, Im looking forward to OpenOffice 2 I dont own (legal or otherwise) any microsoft or commercial spreadsheet/word processing software I use OpenOffice 1.1 for EVERYTHING from powerpoint compatible slides to HTML editing (when I can be bothered).
In many cases it surpasses the Microsoft products that it mimmicks, although there are still some compatibility issues with regard to tables being imported from .doc files. Bring on version 2!!
In many cases it surpasses the Microsoft products that it mimmicks, although there are still some compatibility issues with regard to tables being imported from .doc files. Bring on version 2!!
Right now, OpenOffice lacks a piece of basic functionality that means I can't use it: lack of a decent word count facility. I just went back to uni and have to write essays of a certain length, not including footnotes; Writer, unlike Word, doesn't have an 'include footnotes' checkbox in its word count thing. I'm doing history so I have to use a LOT of footnotes and if I use Writer then I have no real clue how long my essay is. I actually had to spend a horrible weekend at my girlfriend's using OpenOffice on my laptop to write an essay for Monday - working out how much I'd written was a nightmare. Apparently its been included in recent snapshot builds but I'm a bit too paranoid to write something important on potentially unstable software.
Garin wrote:
> Pity its a thread about Apple instead of open source, a few points you
> made in there I might enjoy debating.
Feel free! I was originally writing about Apple but then it turned into 'Apple and open source' by mistake.
Garin wrote:
> Pity its a thread about Apple instead of open source, a few points you
> made in there I might enjoy debating.
Feel free! I was originally writing about Apple but then it turned into 'Apple and open source' by mistake.
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.
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.
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.
[URL]http://www.jwz.org/images/iProduct.gif[/URL].
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.
Most laptops featuring onboard graphics are whisper quiet, too.
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