Posts by Richard Kilpatrick 111 publicly visible posts • joined 11 May 2007
Amazingly, the Legendary edition appears not to contain all the extras from the Limited, so you pay a considerable premium for the plastic helmet-shaped case. The Limited definitely seems to be the most interesting version - which if there are this many pre-orders, makes me suspect it won't be all that limited ;)
What the HELL is up with Apple and their peripherals?
When the iMac came out, the original, the keyboard was a good design and matched the system. Then we got the Pro keyboard, which matched the G4 and the displays for that system.
Then something went wrong. For the iMac G4/G5, we got these AWFUL white food-trays with slightly narrow spacing. They don't match the Power Mac G5, and I longed for an aluminium, full size keyboard to match my £4,000 computer in 2003.
4+ years later. What do we get...
A lovely aluminium keyboard. With keys that would shame a Sinclair QL, and despite the iMac AND Mac Pro now having no white features, WHITE keys to boot. Not grey. Not even black. Cheap looking white plastic.
To cap it all, now the slimline keyboard matches the metal stuff... the Mighty Mouse looks incredibly silly.
New iMac = useful upgrade over old one but not so much better than the one I bought in June (when I needed one). So I'm happy. It looks nice. The spec is tolerable and I expect still measures up to genuinely comparable PC packages cost-wise (in fact most AIO PCs are really nowhere near this clever).
But Apple have lost their marbles releasing that as their full-size keyboard. I'll inevitably have a look at one anyway, but I expect to dislike it.
The bluetooth one I'm quite interested in for my T-Mobile Ameo and UMPC devices, though. It looks quite handy and small, and nicer to type on than the folding types.
Alan Sugar started his business selling from the back of a Mini Van.
I notice no-one mentions how Sugar used the Elan/Enterprise's pre-launch publicity to infliuence the colour scheme of the 464 and benefit from the delays that the technically superior Enterprise suffered ;)
Atari's user interface is NOT "based on" anything to do with Apple. It's got a passing similarity, but Apple did not use Graphics Environment Manager, and the two are VERY different in terms of capability.
GEM isn't even remotely close to Apple's System software.
The ST, popular as it was, was a rush-job based on reference hardware and existing technology after Tramiel stupidly turned down the Lorraine concept that became Amiga.
I'm not bashing the ST here; I had one then and I have one now. It simply is not related to the Macintosh, other than being a fairly obvious copy (partly down to the fact that this is where computers were going anyway, but electronically, the ST is enough of a Mac "clone" that you can bung Mac ROMs in the cartridge slot and only a small amount of code is required to make it into a better Mac than Apple produced - if you only want to consider available screen real estate, rather than whether or not the mouse feels like it was made by V-Tech, or the keyboard is sprung with tired latex gloves).
I'm willing to put money on a very large percentage of the iPhone returns being from people planning to resell them on eBay to make money who didn't have the money to spend in the first place, and gambled on the iPhone to make a quick buck. Unfortunately for them, Apple had enough inventory - it's like the PS3 launch, where Sony had initial launch sales greater than Wii and Xbox 360 purely because they had brought in enough units to sell (even then, some areas of the press called it a flop because they hadn't sold out!).
As for the remarks about the ST and Amiga being credible alternatives; the Amiga wasn't really on the ball until 1987 - three years after Macintosh - and the ST was utterly laughable to work with. Some ST DTP packages were alright if you wanted to persevere, but trust me - our firm was at the forefront of that technology, the first "small" publisher in the UK using DTP (Today Newspapers was the first large one) - and I had an ST as well partly, I suspect, out of curiosity to see how it compared.
Apple's iPhone will offer improvements, but it also doesn't deliver the promises it claims - HTC's hardware combined with T-Mobile's "Web 'n' Walk" plans have been giving EU (and I believe US) users "The Internet in your pocket" or whever for a long time; the HTC Athena/Ameo offers similar storage, 3G connection, GPS, WiFi etc, and costs only about twice as much as the iPhone off contract (iPhones are not subsidised - you own the phone when you buy it).
If you want an iPhone without AT&T's TCO burden, then cancel the AT&T contract within 14 days, as I believe I read here as well as in various other places. It's yours, not the networks, so resell it, stick a Prepay AT&T SIM in it and pop it on eBay for a sensible amount or use it without the contract costs.
No Codecs a couple of years ago? Christ. I should have checked my time machine was working when I was playing with VLC on a G4 system in 2004 or so; basically as long as you've had OS X you've had access to tools like ffmpeg. I've never paid for DiVX Crapware; VLC handles it fine, but also, there are a few freely downloadable codecs and always were.
It's hardly like Windows comes swollen with codecs, either - I just had to dig around to make MCE play M4A files and it still won't add them to the library; the first "I'm fairly sure this isn't some crapware/trojan/useless junk" one I tried decided they were video, since it was targeting the MPEG4 video playing market. Say all you like, but out of the box, Apple's media support is VASTLY greater than Windows.
Macs are not necessarily impossible for self-repair. I own about 80 of the damn things from 1984 to present day, and they can be repaired, even the laptops, with a little care. Expensive, yes. Impossible? No. My G5's firewire is dead because I stupidly plugged in a faulty iPod USB/Firewire charger (third party one, killed a 3G iPod too - it caught fire, oddly enough, but that's not Apple's fault, it was a faulty lead) and all the FW400 ports are now fused I presume. To fix it, I either have to spend a LOT on a logic board, or shove a PCI Firewire card in, which I will do having found one.
Anyway, just FYI, Macs since 1999 have had all the productivity stuff, and since 2001, OS X has transformed the way Apples behave OS-wise. The hardware has for the most part improved too; anyone remembering 'Diesel' Spindler's years knows what crap Apple churned out under the Performa/Centris brand.
As for Vista - it's my job to use it in this case, I'm a tech journalist. Reviewing Vista is part of reviewing the hardware since it's the only OS option available in this case, and I am determined to give it a fair showing and not pan it without justification. Coming from daily Mac use, it's a LOT harder to do that than I'd hoped! Thankfully the other PC I'm reviewing right now (which costs more than a MacBook and definitely won't be user-repairable!) is running XP SP2 - doesn't do much more, but at least I expect it not to do it :D
"You have to buy every little thing from apple, Video codecs, cd writing software, FFS EVERYTHING. THEY SUCK!!"
Brian Miller, perhaps you need to do some market research. I think you are mistaking Apple for Microsoft here ;)
Admittedly many PC manufacturers do bundle (often hopeless/crapware) utilities to fill this gap, but out of the box, a Macintosh can:
Edit HD movies
Burn DVDs, proper ones, with menus and so forth
Play a wide variety of media
Share media via iTunes
Compose music in the very, very good GarageBand application.
Not only does Mac OS have disc burning integrated, but all Macs ship with iLife, a suite of applications for "home" multimedia, and the total cost of OS X retail and iLife retail is literally a fraction of the cost for Vista Ultimate (rrp comparison, end user products) - if you want to buy it. Which of course, no-one does to get their initial setup, only to upgrade.
Last clean install of XP Pro I got, it wouldn't even play a DVD without a Codec, and Vista "Ultimate" cannot burn DVDs, cannot handle ISO/image files greater than 2GB (and MS, laughable, distribute VS Pro trials as an image of 2.7GB, which Vista dynamically resizes to 2GB when you download the recommended app to burn it to disc... in the end, I had to use the Mac to burn the disk!), and cannot play AAC/M4A files without adding not just codecs, but filters.
Your comments are not exactly relevant here anyway; this is a hardware/support issue, not platform issue, but I still think that you need re-educating!
As a freelance journalist myself, in your position I would have:
Had a backup computer. Doing all your work on a laptop is going to result in RSI and similar issues.
Had an onsite maintenance plan. Third parties offer them, as do Apple (at a price). I'm currently reviewing a Dell and whilst I am finding Windows Vista to be the system's weakest point, Dell's support offerings are fantastic. I especially approve of their £200/4 year accidental damage EU-wide coverage with new for old replacement.
Bought a new computer, put the MacBook into firewire mode, migrated, continued working whilst I resolved my issues with the Apple, then sold the repaired or replacement computer. If my losses were so great as to merit this much whining (or indeed, let's say, greater than the value of upgrade you received in the form of the MacBook Pro), then it would be sound financial sense to buy a new computer to allow me to keep working.
Apple are slow to sort these issues. I've been there. I still run a business on Mac OS X, my last purchase being a 24" iMac (just in time for rumours of a really much nicer model to be launched. Maybe I can persuade mine to catch fire and see if Apple PR can replace it with a new one)...
Look on the bright side. At least Apple's PR department (were) reliably talking to you ;)
"I'm impressed you weren't tempted to play the "I'm a tech journalist, so sort this out sharpish or I'll write you up" card. If you did, and this was the result, heaven help us non-journo types."
Chris, either you're being stealth-sarcastic, or you missed the section of the article where Apple's PR department sort it out. Apple's PR department have nothing to do with consumers; at best you'd get Customer Relations.
If she is a tech journalist, she's not a very good one given the editorial slant. Does "The Sun" have a tech column? (And does it basically go "The Internet is for porn!")...
T-Mobile offer 3 tiers of "unlimited" browsing - £7.50 for Web 'n' Walk, £12.50 for Web 'n' Walk Plus, but Web 'n' Walk Max which I forget the cost of, but "allows" VoIP.
Anyway, the former two are 1GB and 3GB "Fair Use", and the latter also allows modem use.
I have the former.
It came with a T-Mobile Ameo, which to all intents and purposes is pretty much a computer. When I needed to download a new version of VLC for my Mac, I downloaded to the Ameo's 8GB HD and copied it over ;)
A true UMPC would make this whole "no modem use" laughable.
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