In honour of Steve Jobs - first Apple experience/hardware? Was it great?

[redbox]

And you know what ? Some people buy MacBook for running Windows7 on it. No OSX.
It's their choices, they chose the hardware not the software. And then ?

Maybe because they want to look cool but know that OSX isn't as good as everyone says it is...?

[TotO]

Maybe because they want to look cool but know that OSX isn't as good as everyone says it is...?

Sorry, I don't have time to feed a troll.
Good week.

[Gryzor]

So, when you use your Mac.... *fap*?

Also, maybe the paint doesn't come off the keys, it comes off the case *trolllll*

[TotO]

So, when you use your Mac.... *fap*?

No, never !
(sorry, I take time to reply with only one hand. )

[khisanth]

I love using my Macbook Pro, the hardware is excellent.
 
Aluminium unibody design so its light and STRONG
Gorgeous screen
Very nice backlit keyboard that is very nice to use
Multitouch trackpad that works extremely well
Intel core 2 duo processor
Magnetic power connector that literally jumps into the socket and can be pulled out by accident without breaking anything
Little button to show you how much battery power is left without having to turn the laptop on
Very efficient sleep mode, I can leave it in sleep mode unplugged for days.

So the hardware is not good?


I have to admit I never really liked the older macs, before OS X. However I didnt use them enough to see their benefits etc.

[mahlemiut]

I got a X68000 monitor. It's multiscan (15/31KHz) and can display progressive resolutions.
X68000 was the best 16bit computer ever. (for gamers )

The monitor does 24kHz also, and apparently works well when hooked up to arcade games also.

And not to mention you can upgrade the CPU to a 68030 or better, and a SCSI controller (if necessary), then install a current version of NetBSD on it.

[MacDeath]

Also it is easier to Pimp a PC...



ok, let get more motivation.























Come on, it's only kidding.

THX steve jobs fot all of this.
The world won't be as fun without you.









Woz...

[TotO]

The monitor does 24kHz also, and apparently works well when hooked up to arcade games also.
And not to mention you can upgrade the CPU to a 68030 or better, and a SCSI controller (if necessary), then install a current version of NetBSD on it.

Yes, you can plug Sega Model 1, 2 & 3 on it (496x384/24KHz) for playing famous 3D racing games.
For a 100% games compatibility, it was better to got a 68000 16MHz version with 5"1/4 floppy drive.

[MacDeath]

The Sharp X68000 managed 768x512 in glorious 16-bit colour back in 1987.  Japan liked high resolution displays, since Japanese is hard to read at 320x200

Yeah, same feeling with NEC PC6001 series...

3 MArks :
1st is like speccy.
2nd is like Amstrad CPC (Mode0 and mode1 resolutions).
3rd is like having even twice more horizontal resolution (twice the bpp, so actually 320x200x16 and 640x200x4...)...

I wish the Amstrad PLUS could into twice bpp rate with the same video modes... would be quite perfect yet need a lot more RAM/VRAM too and some faster Data channeling.

I'd crave for a 160x200x256 mode...


Back to Apple.

The AppleII series got a lot of clones I guess.

I couldn't find proper informations on the video modes  and colours (isthere really that kind of stuff ?).

To me AppleII is always in monocolour monitor...
Is it ?
The colour was mostly using the compsite monitor trick I guess (a common feature in pre-1984 usa... like CGA...)


Apple IIgs was quite a 16bit version thought, and I like the almost AmstradPLUS way to deal with more than 16 colours...

You have like raster attributes mode.
So 16 colours per scanline, and a fast way to process for this... like an attribute map.

On Amstrad PLUS you can get quite that thing but sadly even the improved Rasters are not as good and may be a bit heavier if over-exploited (I guess, is it ?).



Apple IIc was a good compact machine, said to be "portable"... well more like "transportable" indeed.

It's design in 1984 predates the Atari St/Amiga 500/thomsonMO6/Amstrad PC20/Amstrad PLUS designs...


Also Apple released some "AppleII on a card" : extension cards to put on a Mac to get a Hardware emulation...
I wish amstrazd did the same with CPC and PCW for its PC..

A proper "CPCW" card could be great and could even be used as video and sound card at the time...

Video : you get some modes better than CGA.
sound : you get better than the standard buzzer/beeper (yeah, just a mundane AY, still as good as on Atari ST...)

Technically it would be a sound and video card with it's own Co-CPU (a Z80) and its own RAM (like 64K or even 128K)...
Many tricks are potentially conceivable for this...well... on the paper.

This on a PC1512 (or a PC20...) could definitly pull a good "Gaming machine" potential for the time (1986-1987...).


There was an extention on CPC to turn it into a PC... but it was quite the reversed concept....


Concerning design : Snow White design language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_design_language

[MaV]

This is getting ridiculous:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/241980/apples_steve_jobs_gets_his_day.html


It's even more ridiculous in light of a recent death to be mourned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie

He's done a lot more than Steve Jobs (RIP) could have ever hoped for. Yet his death went largely unnoticed by the public.

[Gryzor]

By god, I didn't even know about Ritchie passing away... How sad, and sadder still is the fact that NOONE covered it!!

Jobs day? What a joke. At least the comments on that page are right on.

As a commenter says in his comment:

There was a great line in the movie 'The Pirates of Silicon Valley', where Blamer says 'When did this stop being a business and become a religion'. Enough said...

[TotO]

Jobs day? What a joke.

Why ? I already got 218 jobs days by year. 

[khisanth]

Yes it is sad that Dennis Ritchie has passed away and he has really changed the world, much more so than Jobs.

However, why are people surprised that nobody is mourning him? Ask people in your office, street or house if they know who he was, most people won't. I certainly didnt remember his name, though have read about him a few times.

Steve Jobs was on television shows, podcasts, news reports, product launches etc etc, he was VISIBLE and had great charisma, so of course people will mourn him or know about him etc. He was a hero for many people. Even my mum was very sad and she is not into IT.

Dennis Ritchie was a VERY important person in the industry, but not media friendly or famous outside his field. Steve Jobs was and thus gets the attention. Fair? No, but thats life.

[TotO]

Yes it is sad that Dennis Ritchie has passed away and he has really changed the world, much more so than Jobs.

Yes, Dennis Ritchie create the famous C language (by improving the B language) and was involved on the UNIX development, and write some books about that.
But I'm afraid to said, with all the respect I got for this pionner of the "modern computing", that it change the world on 70s/80s, not for the "today" life. It's why, crappy news forget him. It's a shame, but... I'm not surprise.

[khisanth]

Well Mac OS X is based on a type of UNIX !

You could say that a lot of todays systems are built upon or based on systems from the 70/80s. C or at least its variants is still very important today. Still loads of UNIX systems around.

[redbox]

You could say that a lot of todays systems are built upon or based on systems from the 70/80s. C or at least its variants is still very important today. Still loads of UNIX systems around.

Underestimation at it's best...!  The whole world runs on UNIX/Linux.  C still is the most important programming language by far.


Shame about Dennis Ritchie, remember reading about him at uni and he was a true pioneer.

[TotO]

Well Mac OS X is based on a type of UNIX !

UNIX is an "invention" of Ken Thompson from Bell Labs, not Dennie Ritchie. (rewritten in C with his B improvement)
And UNIX came from Unics, that came from Multics, ...

[redbox]

UNIX is an invention of Ken Thompson from Bell Labs, not Dennie Ritchie. (rewritten in C with his B improvement)

Okay, fair enough he did the C version.


But it could be argued that the portability this allowed was the most fundamental aspect of UNIX's success.

[TotO]

Okay, fair enough he did the C version.

Yes, like many "inventors" he improved an existing things to go further. (C is my favorite language. But ANSI, not K&R)
He said : "if I don't create C language, another do it, because it was necessary".

[khisanth]

I wonder how many of todays inventions or ideas would have eventually been invented or thought of , if the original person did not exist?

[redbox]

Well, necessity is the mother of invention.

Jobs grew up in Silicon Valley surrounded by all the emerging technology of that era. Ritchie's father was an engineer at Bell. Could be said both were helped hugely by being in the right place at the right time.

[Morn]

So for any of you who have or had owned Apple hardware or software, what was your first?

2003 iBook, although I did play around with Apple's 1990s offerings at the University computer lab (and was largely unimpressed). My reason for getting it at the time: Apple laptops are wonderful for scientists, you have a nice PDF workflow, you can run all your scientific Unix software easily (your IDL, your Matplotlib, etc.), Keynote for presentations is far better than any presentation package on Windows or Linux I've seen. Pages for scientific posters. And there's an X server. And unlike Linux and Windows OS X comes with the iApps, which are just fantastic. Nothing on Windows or Linux comes even close.

So to everyone who says, "but the Mac is only about its software" I answer: Yes, but Windows and Linux programmers have not been able to come up with anything nearly as productive and streamlined, despite ripping off Apple's interfaces for over a decade. I've been following KDE since the early Betas, same with GNOME, and I've been a Windows user for many years. There is undeniably some good software for Windows and Linux, but it's rarely as well-thought-out as OS X software. And that's why Apple dominates the industry right now, very deservedly I think.

The big question is whether Apple products will continue to be as carefully designed and executed as they (mostly) have been during the last ten years or so. Steve Jobs was a perfectionist who obsessed about design and usability and was ready to spend large amounts on R&D. Most CEOs seem to be idiots who cut R&D spending and run the company into the ground when the product line gets obsolete and nothing compelling is on the horizon. Heck, even Sir Alan did that in the 90s with his insistence that nobody needs 16-bit machines! Apple will continue to be successful for a few years based on its current momentum, but then we'll see if they can deliver outstanding products without Steve Jobs. And if they can sell them without the help of his famous RDF (reality-distortion field). 

[MacDeath]

Apple had a Jobs day?
And they didn't worked this day ?

 

BTW it's like in music industry...
You always praise the singer and not the producer or obscure studio musician who actually do all the work.

Look at all those modern female singer :
Katy perry, Rihanna, Briney Spearm...

They actually only sing but the songs are produced and composed by teams of peoples who produce and write stuff for all of them, with almost scientific recipes to create hit songs.

All a Beyoncé does is to choose songs from a list and get the studio wizard to make her sound good (thx technology).



Steve Jobs was like that.

He invented nothing but commercial and advertisement gimmicks, and was only an inferior Alan M. Sugar in our sipirts...

[MaV]

Briney Spearm...

I wonder what you wanted to tell us by that? it sounds like briny sperm (whatever that means).

[Bryce]

It sounds painful 

Bryce.