I kicked ass at that game.. well, until I entered the national net-play contest. That was the time I got my own handed back to me by someone that must have been using additional gaming hardware. I used to just use the keyboard in Descent.
I hope they take all the miniaturization done for the Air and make a couple of other models.. they could use the same naming scheme as for the iPods: a MacBook Mini and MacBook Nano.
The Mini could be their cheap ultra-portable. Bulkier and maybe a little heavier than the slicker-than-thou Air, it could fill in the bottom of the market so that people who can't afford a Leopard-capable laptop otherwise, could still get one.
The Nano could be the kids' version.. again bulkier, more shock resistant, colorful, but still light-weight, and with a different software bundle/config tailored for k-8 education. It would be fabulous if this could also become part of the OLPC project and be made to conform to the OX's Sugar OS guidelines. It would be an EXCELLENT contribution to humanity's future.
I think the times decided on the movie rentals are a bit odd - considering the way I watch borrowed and rented movies.
24 hours to finish watching a movie or watch again is too short! Frequently when I watch a movie, we don't have time to watch the whole thing the same day. Many movies get split it up into two watching sessions, a day or two apart. If the movie is really long, sometimes there are three viewing sessions. And if it's a watch-twice kind of movie, again that's probably not convenient in the same day.. it would suck trying to finish watching and the time runs out - stopping and deleting itself in the middle of a scene.
30 days for it hanging around however, seems like over-kill. The most I've kept borrowed movies before watching them is about 2 weeks.. and with them being downloads, why would you keep them so long anyway? Maybe it's to give time for downloading over slow links.. otherwise, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
I think Crossover is definitely the way to go, with all kinds of virtualization.. Before I heard about Codeweavers I'd envisioned a multi-OS future in which every software OS ran as a set of libraries invoked by a core hardware OS.. and these libraries could either be licensed originals, or third party clones.. as is done with Crossover.
The thing is, TV is increasingly NOT free. Here in Monterey CA we get 3 channels via the airwaves.. 2 english and 1 spanish. Yet there are ads on nearly every channel (besides ones like HBO) which are primarily available only via cable or satellite access.
Basic cable here is about $16 a month before taxes and other charges, containing 31 channels.. of those, 11 are general interest and the remaining 20 are shopping, tourism, listings, public access and government access channels. So that's over $16 per month for 8 more channels than free, that you're likely to watch. The price for more channels goes up steeply after that, topping out at around $100 per month for full cable with 5 pay-channels (again, HBO, etc.).
So that range is hardly free, and it will only increase with TV broadcast towers going down all over the U.S.
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Another point which has been echo by Aurora is that there are more options than the three you've outlined.
If they're determined to keep using the advertising model, ads can be presented in many other ways which already in other countries sometimes get better ratings than the shows. Advertising doesn't have to be invasive to be successful.
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"there won’t be any commercials, and the quality of shows will increase dramatically"
That's a pretty optimistic opinion. The quality of a show, any kind of entertainment or news is determined by the people involved, their success in collaboration, and the freedom to craft well. Money and its source can certainly be a factor but it's not the deciding one.
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Another outcome that I doubt a lot of people might consider.. is that through all of this - as long as the big fat rich media corps don't strangle the net and anything like it - people might determine that the VALUE of television is just less. The industry as a whole will simply not be so rich anymore with shows being worth less. Everyone making the shows will just get paid less, so they won't cost much for people to watch.. In other words, the market would open.. much as it already has for other recorded and live performances.
It's a natural progression that the industry obviously doesn't want, since they're making such ludicrous profits right now and they only want to make more. There can never be enough profit in their mindset. That kind of reckless ambition can only last for so long though.
I don't want to dual boot. I want to be able to run Windows Software on my Mac the native hardware speed, with the MacOS still running. Preferably with the MacOS still in charge.
If I or other people will have to fully re-boot in order to do anything in the other OS, people are going to "set up camp" in both OSes as much as they would if it were actually two separate boxes of hardware. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.
People will stay in either OS as long as possible it it's annoying and time consuming to switch back and forth.. and that's bad, because people shouldn't stay in a fully Microsoft environment any longer than they have to.
Boot Camp is a mediocre response to the many hackers that have done what it's allowing but it's not a good solution, either for us or for Apple. They certainly won't win a hardware war in the Windows world any more than they do in the OS war.
If however we are presented with a live-switching or seemless solution, THAT would be an all around good thing. An implementation like X11 would be perfect. I bet most people would be happiest running Windows Applications without really running Windows the OS - and all of the viruses that go along with it. If Windows on MacOS installed as an inert set of DLLs which were utilized by whatever windows application or printer driver within the protection of the MacOS, that would be the best solution for everyone.. Us users, Apple, developers.. (even Microsoft, because they'd still be selling copies and it would probably reduce their support costs) all without the heavy potential for negative progress that dual booting entails.
Greg, you smokin crack, boy. The G5 is still slow in my opinion. Granted, most people only use their computers for email, web, word processing and solitaire - but people like me (and there are hopefully quite a number of us) don't stop there. We need more innovation, not less.
The only time computers will be good enough to not bother with further development, is the day when you don't have to think about using them, repairing them, and you never have to wait for them to accomplish anything you want them to do. We're quite a while from that. Particularly with the stunted, quarter by quarter profit driven bread crumb dispersion of 'improvements'.
It's over-priced to me. One way is the price to capacity ratio. The other is that $250 doesn't SEEM cheap. Things clearly over $100 are purchases not many can get on a whim. So if we're saving up to get an iPod, may as well save up a little bit more and get an iPod that can store a bazillion more songs.
I think Watson was the only case of Apple being a software bully. While some software makers won't see fit to compete with some of Apple's applications (which I think is silly, there's always room for competition if there's room for a better way to go about it), I think what they're developing in-house and especially for free, is a very good thing. Why? Because of the problem that plagued all of the first Macs.. When you bought a Mac you had a nice OS but you couldn't do anything. No Apple-born and included software to do anything with pictures, words or anything. Not even a game or two.
Over time they've gotten better about bundling software like AppleWorks and such, but the iApps mark a new and better way to include out of the box ability to actually do something with a new Mac. They set a new standard for modern software and they're free. They may not be perfect but they're a hell of a lot better than nothing, which is the alternative. I think they just need to fill a couple more holes in the basic utilities for iApps and they'll have it covered. A couple apps to deconstruct Appleworks, a sound editor (simpler than Soundtrack), an iSyncable NotePad, and maybe an RSS browser, or something in the 3d area like a basic composer/animator with a large object library. What good is an expensive computer and an expensive operating system if you have to pay MORE for applications to do anything on them?
Providing nothing creates stagnation. Providing something inspires user creation.
I heartily agree with this. Interface responsiveness has been one of the biggest detriments to potential adopters of OS X who have actually TRIED the operating system and the Macs it runs on. Our sluggish interface has perpetuated the megahertz myth, allowed app performance to slide even more, alienated current mac, linux and windows users; and it has cost us countless accumulated hours of productivity - click by click and window resize by window resize. With the fastest computers in history at our disposal, we're forced to slow down our mouse movements so OS X can keep up. That is a VERY BAD THING.
I don't care what it takes to fix it. Whether it's hardware addition to new graphics boards or software streamlining, the answers need to start happening. Though, addressing the speed should have always been one of their top priorities. Quartz Extreme isn't doing it, and Apple indicated that it was supposed to. If some features just won't work without slowing everything down, then let us turn them off in a Preference Panel. Something, anything!
We want solutions, we don't want Apple to keep ignoring us on this issue. It's hurting their sales of both software and machines and needlessly slowing us down. It doesn't matter how fast your chips are if the OS keeps bringing them to a snail's crawl.
I would have to agree with what Dan, Jason and 'mapple' said. A lot of good ideas have been programmed here and there, implementation is the key. I would also like to offer a suggestion.
Make all additional features and those previously mentioned togglable both by preferences and by modifier keys.
If we apply this to the edges of windows we get the following possible happy users:
Bob likes windows to behave as they currently do in 10.2. Slim, unclickable edges, drag only with the title bar, resize conforms to the content width, no windowshade or transparency.
Suki likes her windows to behave more like other *nix with fat grabby sides that resize when dragged. She also doesn't have the fastest of macs, so live window action is best defaulted to Off.
Achmel runs a public mac and needs to keep the interface stock, so that the random users aren't confused. But he's also a power user that prefers using things like windowshading, draggable edges, transparency and full screen resize. So he has memorized all of the modifier key options that let him manipulate the interface smoothly.
Sheniqua prefers window shading and transparency always available through the title bar. And though she does like slim window edges, she likes the grabby bars to appear when she hovers the cursor over the edge. About the only keyboard modifier she wants to remember is the one that toggles the grabby sides from Resize to Move.
Svorn really gets the most out of the depth-based auto transparency feature of the new windowing system and has had the lost window centering and forced refresh commands come in very useful at times. He also thinks that the next version of the 3d Window Plug-in (open source donateware) he was testing will be a solid enough arrangement metaphor to use all the time.
That's what I'd like to see. All the features, all by choice, open architecture. If that could also be made small and fast, we would again have THE window manager that everyone would try to follow.
Hoby
I would like something built into the OS like the old Extension manager, except as a preference pane with the added ability to enable fonts from anywhere on your computer. That would make fonts from collected output easy as pie to open with documents. Or for installation, have along with the listing groups (system fonts, user fonts, system 9 fonts), a row of drop folders so you don't have to find them through the Finder.
Hoby Van Hoose
http://www.ihoby.com/
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