Posts by Dave 126

Supermodel-fiddling tool Photoshop CS6 flinged in free beta

Grr Adobe

For the life in me I could not, not install the cataloguing part of previous version of CS and have since not bothered with Photoshop. I have my own system for tracking my photos and I don't need someone to try and force how they think I should do things upon me. - Chris W

Indeed, like when Adobe disabled Illustrator thumbnails in Windows Explorer, in order to push people towards their Bridge asset management software. Not sure how that was supposed to help their customers and their individual established workflows.

Having said that, Adobe Bridge doesn't make a nuisance of itself unless you run it. I tend to use Picasa for reviewing photos and launching PS. Picasa well, except for Alpha Layers in TIFFs (rendered black) and also whatever flavour of RAW my camera kicks out (rendered purple!).

Re Gimp

I can't get on with the windows in The GIMP on XP / Win7 - they keep hiding each other. I've been told that this is because GIMP was designed for GNOME which had a more sophisticated window management system that XP / 7. It sounded a plausible reason.

GIMP seems to run far slower than PS for filters.

It can't handle HDR images, though a fork of GIMP called CiniPaint can. CinePaint hasn't been put together for MS Windows yet, though. HDR Shop is worth a look for its geometric transformations, such as Mirrored Sphere > Lat / Long or Cube Map.

The 'Free Transform' tool in GIMP is more limited. You can't use Ctrl to give individual control over the corner anchor points- essential for placing a mock-of of some packaging graphics onto a 3/4 view of a box.

Having said that, I may be confusing a perceived lack of some functionality in The GIMP with a different way of doings, due to my greater familiarity with PS.

I'm not saying PS is perfect. Indeed, there are some things for which Picasa is far faster... Like 'straighten' and 'crop', if JPG output is good enough for the task in hand. Images for eBay, for example.

Nvidia shows off first 'Kepler' GPUs

For a graphics-related company...

I'm loving the c1995 dithered JPEG!

Half of Apple fanbois would bank with the iPad titan

Either finance or defense - drugs and pr0n markets just too small

I've heard it said that the big American car manufacturers eventually became sellers of financial products (hire purchase etc) with an attached car factory. Ho hum.

During the recent 'Apple Dividends' story I was thinking of where else the company could go to continue their expansion. Having not considered finance, the only big-enough sector that I could come up with was 'defence'.

A la Samsung Techwin ( Youtube: 'Samsung Techwin Defense Program' for classic Troy McClur-style voice-over)

6,000 sign e-petition to put Turing on £10 note

Re Turing Vs Darwin

Okay, my above post was a link to some beautiful nutter's spoof. It entertained me!

Has got to better than the film 'Enigma'.

But seriously, I was fascinated to learn of some of Turing's work after WW2. That on the self organisation of cells in embryos. Turing found the principal that explained how, out of a small ball of seemingly identical cells, some would become form your head, some your toes. i.e, global effects out of local communication. Or something. Devilishly clever, though. Definitely a big contribution to Darwin's field.

Even better than being commemorated on a note...

is a TV serial:

I implore you all to google ' Essex Terror The Alan Turing Adventures' and look at the first link:

[Starring Mark Gatiss] The Alan Turing Adventures is set during an alternate history Second World War. Turing here has been re-imagined as a dashing and flamboyant secret agent careering around behind enemy lines in a desperate attempt to steal and decode Hitler’s childhood diary, en route to which he gets locked in a deadly game of cat and mouse with Nazi rocketeer Wernher von Braun (Benedict Cumberbatch)

Can we get petition Mark Gatiss to actually make this?

iPhone 5 gets a 5in screen

Re: Peripheral?? Definitely!

Seems an two-part easy solution: Small cheap capable phone, say 3.2" screen, fits in pocket, excels at phone calls, texts, alarm clock, calculator, long lasting battery etc AND at throwing out a WiFi hotspot via 3G. Lives in your trousers.

In your car, jacket pocket or handbag lives a 7" device, works as a Sat Nav in the car, or as an internet tablet and PMP if you're on a train journey.

If you find your self without the tablet component, and you really need to, then you can, at a push, pull up a map or a webpage on the small screened phone- won't be fun, but will get you out of your jam. Easy peasy!

I have mates who take £400 worth of Korean shininess out on a drunken night- it doesn't seem too clever (and I believe there is an Apple engineer who now feels similarly!)

You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

Re: He who bullshits most..... Pink Shirts

Much like the Dilbert cartoon titled "What Your Work Clothes Say About You". In four parts, but one was a sharply dressed colleague ("Be nice to me because I will be your boss next month") and the last was hairy and bearded, wearing sandals, shorts and a tie-died t-shirt: "I am the only one who knows how the IT system works. Treat me like God"

Comprehension of English

The article didn't say "don't improve the backup process because no one notices". You used quotation marks when you were actually paraphrasing - incorrectly.

The actual quote was "No one really cares if you’ve made the backup process run 50 per cent faster unless it’s stopping work", which seems to be entirely plausible in many situations... for example, a back up made after office hours. No one will cares if it takes 4 hours instead of 2 if they are not going to be in the office for another 14 hours, hence not "stopping work".

And besides, the article's author was only using it as an example, so don't read too deeply in to it.

So whilst you're digesting that, let us introduce you to Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. I find it useful because neither my memory or my typing is perfect.

Neither is my knowledge. So if I encounter an article or a process that runs against what I think I know, I give it thought and consideration. If I was right, no matter. If I was wrong, then I will have learned something, possibly making my job easier.

Rock'n'Roll Racing

I remember Super Stuntman on the Speccy

developed by a little outfit called 'Codemasters', who I think did alright for themselves. It was an overhead racer, but only vertically scrolling. You had to crash to earn stunt points, but not crash too much! Hmm, it might have been an influence upon Windows 98!

Think I'll have to fire up DosBox... Or hell, dig out my old 100 MB harddisk and see what's on there!

Google cools data center with bathtubs, dishwashers

grey water for flushing toilets

There have been ideas for using waste water from washing machine for flushing toilets. Seems to be a good idea.

ARM's ultra-low-power fridge-puter chips: Just what the CIA ordered

Re: Kitchen Appliances

Your fridge doesn't need it, but it would be handy for things like your fridge to temporarily reduce their power consumption. Like an internal combustion engine, the electrical grid and power stations are more efficient and reliable if their load is more constant and predictable.

Microsoft: No next-gen Xbox in 2012

Re: Boring..

Can you expand on your multi-platform comment?

I'm not taking sides, but it just seemed Sony didn't pay for many 3rd party exclusives, and some games developers couldn't be arsed programming for the Cell chip.

Pair of double-As give you cheap, quick charge

I lost my camera charger...

so I invested in http://www.hahnel.ie/index.cfm?page=chargers&pId=54# a universal lithium-ion battery charger. There are equivalents made by other companies.

You twiddle the knobs until the two pins line up with the +/- contacts on your battery, and it detects the polarity and voltage automatically. It also has a female USB socket for charging things you still have the cables for.

It's dead handy.

Hopefully most phones will be able to charge over micro-USB soon... Apple and Nokia I'm looking at you! (You woulda thought that Nokia would see the wisdom is having their phones be easy to charge... after all, the ubiquity of Nokia chargers a few years back was a good reason for choosing their brand of phone!)

I've tried the

Eddie Murphy heading for worst movie ever glory

Re: T3 was ok No it wasn't, except for:

This 'deleted scene':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kayFrIR-Qfw

They should have kept this scene and deleted the rest of the movie!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kayFrIR-Qfw

T1 Good Stuff

T2 Brilliant, more polished, original story picked up, turned on its head and then put perfectly to bed. Plus a mini gun.

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Neither T1 or T2 pushed the basic premise beyond its limits. The Matrix worked well for the same reason. If they were ever to make a sequel to The Matrix then I'm sure it would push its premise too far, and thus fail.

Canon PowerShot S100 GPS compact camera

Re: 90%

Good point, though could it be that companies rarely make God-awful products these days? A 10%er wouldn't make it out the door of the factory, a 55% might be given a supermarket home-brand badge, like Teknika, so can be safely ignored by Reghardware.

Yeah, there will be plenty of could-do-betters, but often it is a case of 'is it better than what Sony or Nikon are offering me?', or 'will this camera be right for me?', in which case the the % score is just a rough guide.

I liked the way the review has a jeans pocket test. And the observation about it not drawing attention to you.

Smartphone owners demand bigger screens

I'm with you, thesykes

Small capable phone in trousers, which can then throw up a 3G-WiFi bridge for the 7" tablet in your jacket pocket or glovebox.

This just seems the sensible way of doing it.

Adobe Photoshop Touch

Whats missing...

is the ability to use the iPad hand-in-hand with a Mac, as part of proper Photoshop's interface. Mouse in one hand, iPad beneath the other hand for pan, zoom, sliders and selecting tools, layers and masks.

It just seems so obvious, I don't why Adobe haven't jumped on it.

(Could it be latency? Can anyone technical guess at the minimum latency this sort of set-up would have?)

Re: Mac's Killer app?

Because

1. For many years there was no complete colour-space management on PCs... to many different manufacturers of graphics cards, monitors and printers etc. Therefore it was far harder to get your intended colours on your finished work if you used a PC. You'd use a Mac, your printing agency or publisher would use a Mac... easy!

2. Photoshop is usually used hand-in-hand with Illustrator- this came on Macs first because it used Postscript. Macs had good graphical abilities at the time, because it was key to their UI... a side effect if this design choice was the emergence of DTP

Regarding max image size... yes, this does seem puzzling, especially if you remember that Photoshop allowed editing of images far larger than the available RAM back in the 386 days, by opening just parts of it.

But yeah... 1600 x 1600? 1:1? Or does it allow the same number of pixels in a different aspect ratio? You'da though an A4 print would be the size to aim for!

US gov tells Apple chief Tim Cook: Send us a minion to grill

I thought the whole point of Apple's App Store certification was to prevent nasties?

I've evidently missed something, but then I don't have an iDevice.

Lawyers of Mordor menace Hobbit boozer

Re: Fuck Saul Zentz

I was thinking the same, but I don't know the licensing deal that Newline Cinema has with SZC. Will Newline pay a percentage (in which case the boycott logic works, albeit a drop in the ocean) or have Newline already paid a lump sum?

Nevertheless, a reason that Tolkein's IP is so profitable today is because of the excellent work by Peter Jackson, Alan Lee and the cast and crew of TLOTR. It is unfair to deny them their cut.

The other reason that the franchise is popular is *because* it has been integrated into our culture, as Ian McKellen pointed out by mentioning his 'Gandalf for President' badge. People are keen to watch the movies because they feel a part ownership of the stories.

Green Dragon?

Tolkien was a user of pubs. He dropped enough hints in TLOTR to this effect, even if one doesn't know about the Eagle and Child in Oxford.

Heck, at the end of the Return Of The King (book, not film), Frodo and Sam return to the Shire to discover it has been ransacked for the sake of industry and profit.

Grrr

Good Luck to the pub and its landlady. Things aren't easy in the licensed trade, and it would be nice to see her win (though I suspect any win will be in the 'court of public opinion' rather than a court of law).

What is the point of a hobbit if not to be in a 'David versus Goliath' story?

Boffins render fibre obsolete

I'd get one but...

... I don't know anyone else who has one.

NASA orders study for all astronauts over vision concerns

half gravity = f half the effect?

i.e, were you to build a centrifuge for the 'nauts, would it have to simulate a full 1 G?

And if they only spent their sleep time there, say a third of their 'day' cycle, would the effect be reduced, or eliminated?

How big/fast a hamster-wheel would you need?

Panasonic CF-53 Toughbook 14in rugged laptop

Re: Forgot the customary moan

My car mechanic has been quizzing me on such a machine - for use in a workshop for diagnostic equipment. High resolution screen useful for viewing graphs, not films. Variable lighting conditions, use of gloves in winter, a wide variety of dust, grime and tea. Not to mention some of his lads...

Specifying an SSD seems to be a no-brainer, given those tall workbenches and concrete floors; he can always use a NAS over WiFi if needs be. Asking him what sort of data lives on his HDD I was only told 'Well, he last one seemed to fill up'.

IIRC he's settled on a Durabook from Steatite.co.uk who seem to stock rugged laptops from a variety of manufacturers. It's just that it is only ever the Panasonics that we hear about in the mainstream IT press.

I'm not a mechanic myself, just clumsy, so I made sure my laptop had at least a spill-proof keyboard. Though the Reg has often made me laugh, you will never owe me a new keyboard.

Microsoft 'yanked optical drive from Xbox 720'

@ Haku, Re Cars

You're right, we don't hear the car companies complaining. However, they give all the gifts to the first owner - 5 year warranty, fuel economy - which don't last too long for the second owner. Common Rail Diesel engines cost a lot to fix once they start going wrong.

You just don't see old bangers on the roads these days.

Orange 3G data network goes titsup

Roaming on T-Mobile 3G fine here 20 miles North of Bristol

what the title said.

Hands on with the Apple iPad 3

All good-

- especially the price of the existing iPad 2 now at £330... this can only exert pressure on competitors to reduce their prices, poor dears!

------

Now, how about a screen like that on a laptop? Or being able to use a tablet as a auxiliary monitor? I would imagine it would be easier for Apple to do that, since they have control over the hardware and OS of both the iPad and (i)Mac(book), and thus offer their potential customers a feature that their competitors can't.

SJ was right- using a vertical touchscreen sounds tiring- but using a horizontal secondary touchscreen to keep, say, Photoshop toolbars on would be good.

Sub-£400 svelte lappies hurled in Ultrabook preemptive strike

Re: 'Re Metal Casing?'

You wouldn't machine polycarbonate- you would mould it. Injection moulded plastic parts can have high detail and sharp radii, cast aluminium parts can't - hence Apple's decision to CNC machine their Macbook 'unibodies'. Injection moulding time: 10 seconds. Machining time?- many minutes.

Carbon fibre doesn't shatter if used appropriately - look at the 'blades' used by amputee athletes for an extreme example of this. It is abrasion resistance that is CF's weak point, traditionally. Carbon Fibre is better than aluminium when WiFi etc antennas are used.

Aluminium works well as a heat sink, unlike plastics or composites.

Aluminium scuffs and dents, so most anodised finishes will eventually look shabby. The manufacturer doesn't normally mind- after a year the customer might eye-up the new shiny-shiny in the showroom. This is probably why we don't see the very hard wearing Titanium Nitride (drill bits, bicycle cogs etc) used instead- usually a very gold finish, can be dark grey or iridescent.

--------------------------------------------

Ideally, I would like a laptop/ultrabook/whatever with its own integrated (poss. neoprene) carry case. Plonk it down, open it up, start working.

Future car tech

Road trains..,

Make sense. Fuel economy is far better because the vehicles are at a mostly constant speed, and also the wind resistance of the train is far less than that of the sum of the vehicles. Mechanical wear would be less. These platoons wouldn't have to stop at junctions as often, either, since different platoons - or individual vehicles- can be co-ordinated in advance of the junction so they arrive at different times. However, the un-addressed issue is that of the driver adapting from automatic to manual control.

Safety would be better. That horrific pile-up on the M5 in Autumn 2011 would not have happened had the vehicles been linked. Do bear that it mind when making negative comments about 'idiot sensors'. I'm sure you have an I.Q of 185, but that doesn't mean your eyes can see through smoke.

Audi shows off OLED-illuminated concept R8

'Concept' cars usually appeal to one's inner 13 year old...

... and their function is to shock and amaze, thus drawing attention to the brand. Like 'haute-couture' fashion, the link to what the consumer will be offered is tenuous. The budget can be considered marketing- just as sponsoring a motor-sport team is.

Still, I completely agree that headlights and rear lights etc need regulating- there are too many tossers with these blinding white headlights, for other reason than they think it makes them look cool.

But why haven'it we got more use of Daylight Running Lights, a la Volvo? I know there was a large study done in Australia that strongly suggested they would improve safety. In this country, it's untrue how many (especially grey or silver cars!) don't turn on their side lights when conditions are misty, murky or otherwise less than optimal.

Hobbit movie locations using 6km of data cabling

To those who say 'meh...

I find this article more interesting when contrasted with the filming of the LOTR over ten years ago.

WETA were creating post-production footage in NZ, and sending it over broadband to London. However, the last mile from the studio offices to Peter Jackson's house and editing suite (Door decorated with picture of PJ as Bad Taste's 'Derek' wielding a chainsaw) required that day's footage to be carried on an iPod.

Metro breakdown! Windows 8 UI is little gain for lots of pain

Re "we know best"

Steve Jobs thought he knew best. On his insistence that Office for OSX retains menus (not that $&*ing Ribbon), and his decision not to jump on the 16:9 screen ratio bandwagon, I have to agree with him. If Office was the only suite I used (and CAD does seem to be going all cloudy) then I would strongly consider getting my first ever Mac, for these reasons.

Still, from what I have read, it wouldn't appear to be a huge technical difficulty for MS to relegate Metro to be just an optional extra for use in specific situations- y'know, like Windows Media Centre UI being good for use with a Infra-Red Remote Control, as opposed to a mouse and keyboard.

What was the name of that Vista feature that didn't take off, the one which put widgets on a small secondary display? Metro might be good for that...

( http://www.pcworld.com/article/126040/computex_with_vista_bonus_laptop_displays.html )

Very happy with Win7- not perfect, but really doesn't get in the way of doing work. Good job MS, good job.

Indiana Jones flicks out on Blu-ray this Fall

Expressed graphically...

The Trilogy Meter. It seems to be pretty much spot on to me, give or take a touch of fine tuning.

http://danmeth.com/post/77471620/my-trilogy-meter-1-in-a-series-of-pop-cultural

Motorola Defy Mini rugged Android smartphone

New niche

How about a tough compact Android phone that is good at calls and texts, and good at supplying a 3G>WiFi hotspot for when you have a laptop or tablet to hand?

To put it another way, take Motorola's Atrix dock: If you have this dock near at hand, say in your car or briefcase, why does the phone itself need such a large screen?

Does anyone know if a phone's CPU power impacts at all on its ability at supplying a 3G hotspot?

That said, this appears to have roughly the same dimensions as my dumbphone Samsung 5620 'Monte'. It's not smart, but battery lasts a couple of days, I have dropped it dozens of times without breaking it and it slips into pockets without discomfort. It can do some smart things like iplayer, maps and GPS, albeit in a fiddly manner- but fine to get me out of a jam. This new Moto would appear to offer the same 'plus' points. Tempted though I am by a Galaxy S2 or whatever, I'm just too clumsy!

Asus outs 1920 x 1280 Android ICS tablet

Ratio- yes please!

Is that ICS button-bar at the bottom of the screen 80 pixels high?

How come you can get a nice (for things other than watching DVDs) ratio on a tablet, but struggle to get above 1920 x 1080 on a normal laptop? At least on a tablet you can turn whole thing through 90º when it suits.

Younger generation taking 'sledgehammer' to security

doesn't accept from single source

" ...the average US 21-year-old has sent over 250,000 emails, text messages, and IM sessions, has spent over 14,000 hours online, and doesn't accept information from a single source, but checks with his or her network instead. They use email rarely..."

"...has sent over 250,000 emails, text messages, and IM sessions... ...They use email rarely..."

Errr?

Apple files patent for 'polished meteorite' keyboard

Re: Re: Funny, but I can't see the keys when I am using...

Yes, people do make judgements on how things look- ultimately, life is too short to make controlled tests of everything we might think of buying, so we go with looks. Granted, these assumptions can by cynically used against us - what Pirsig called "All shit with a thin veneer of quality". However: If a product can be made with taste and restraint and good judgement on the outside, it is more likely that the same CAN be implemented on the inside. Likewise, if we see a member of the opposite sex who looks well put together on the outside, we are more likely to believe that their genetic machinery is in good working order throughout.

There are reasons why we judge on appearances. As Oscar Wilde remarked: "Only shallow people refuse to judge on appearances". He was only being ironic because he cared.

Indeed, Oscar also had a few things to say about Honesty of Materials. One can see that honesty in Dieter Rams' work, and that of Sir Jonny, be it honesty to injection moulded plastics or to extruded aluminium. 'Polished Meteorite' would not fall into this category, but it was being used as an EXAMPLE to illustrate how broad that facet of the concept could be.

Compare that to the typical PC case-front of the late 90s: Superfluous plasti-chrome mouldings with arbitrary curves that do nothing but take up space and make the ports and drives more difficult to access than they should be, whilst wasting plastic and the time of a tool maker.

If you don't think things should be beautiful, or be used as tools to make other things more beautiful, then we must agree to disagree.

Daniel Craig like Connery, Skyfall helmsman suggests

Okay gentlemen, your gadget ideas please!

May I hijack this thread, and ask you Reg readers for your ideas on what new Q-Branch gadgets 007 might have in future films?

[Original spy gadgets were tiny radios and tiny cameras... now that we all have devices in our pockets that can snap a top secret war-plan and send it around the world, what would it take to bring the magic back to JB's gizmos?]

Scroogle unplugged for good this time

interestingly, I saw this on the ixquick home page:

"NEW!

Ixquick now offers anonymous

Google results on its sister website

Startpage.com.

Try your search now!"

Researchers propose ‘overclock’ scheme for mobiles

re Tegra

Indeed, the story did remind me of what I had read of the Tegra's use of its 5th core, and of Intel's 'thermal capacitance, but of a far greater logical progression of these tricks (most of many capable cores sat at close to ambient temperature most of the time, so each can be over-clocked aggressively) becoming the norm for mobile devices... In what ways will this affect OS and application development?

Nokia Asha 201 Qwerty phone

No USB charge... Grrr!

It used to be that us Nokia users could charge their phone in any almost any location- odds were that there would be a (old size ) Nokia charger (or 6) to hand... Not that we would need a charge more than twice a week.

I haven't had a Nokia for some years now, and have got quite used to recharging my gadgets from either Mini- or Micro-USB cables. Having a car stereo with a USB socket is handy for this, or a nearby PC, games console, LCD picture frame or TV.

Ageing Mario blamed for Nintendo's woes

There are characters...

Donkey Kong, Link from Zelda and, for one generation of Nintendo console, Pierce Brosnan as 007.

Lego builds Lord of the Rings collection

Re relative scale

The image I saw on (Engadget?) of The Fellowship of the Ring figures had the taller figures (Strider, Gandolf, Legolas, Boromir) with a colour-matched [1 x 1, 1/3 height block] on each foot, thus making them taller than the hobbits and dwarves of the party.

The image ElReg has used is of higher resolution, though.

Motorola slices out Razr smartphone bootloader lock

Does Consumer Law apply to business purchase?

It is billed as a handset for 'developers', i.e businesses. I don't know, is this Moto's thinking?

Ex-staffer: Apple assigns new workers to made up projects

Shareholders more than happy with rise in stock value.

Apple have billions in the bank BECAUSE they work this way. R&D is an investment, and you pay to protect it.

Besides, some of these 'dummy' projects might turn up gold, a patent or a design. Y'know, like buying a graphics workstation company that doesn't manage to sell any workstations to hospitals or meteorologists ... but wins Academy Awards and makes you a billionaire.

Microsoft builds Kinect into Asus laptops

This isn't XBOX version...

it's been tweaked work at smaller distances. Your FAIL is a FAIL : D

As a 3D CAD user, this might have potential for 1, scanning 3D objects, and 2, maybe developing a 3D gesture-based 'digital clay' interface for CAD software - using my hands, not my limbs. Anything that allows you to swap away from one input device to another can only reduce (the chance of) RSI.

Hell, it would stimulate the 'little grey cells' if the designer were able to stand up and pace about whilst designing. ( see recent studies that suggest foreign languages are learnt quicker if the student is moving around )

We've already seen software that allows Solidworks to be manipulated with an XBOX 360 controller.

However, Kinect would be more flexible in its current stand-alone form.

I'm excited to see what software comes along.

Boffins one step closer to invisible shed

I agree, the article was light on details. However, the tone of the headline would suggest that the concept has been covered before in The Reg.

To answer your question, the point is to keep Reg readers up to date with small progressions in an ongoing area of research. It is fairly clear that the important word in the article is "metamaterials".

I would recommend to everyone have a glance at the Wikepedia article that results from searching for the above word- some interesting concepts to muddle the brain with!

Making an invisible shed is but one of many potential (hopefully maybe!) applications across a broad range of disciplines.

Samsung NX200 20.3Mp APS-C compact system camera

can you compare to the Sony Nex-5 or 3?

the latter can be had for around the £350 mark and features an APS-C sensor? Can you note the pros of this Sammy over the Sonys?

Cheers!

Samsung joins Ultrabook race

Wouldn't want to go back to 1920 x 1080

I'm on a Dell laptop with 16:10 1920 x 1200 screen. I wouldn't want to go back to anything lower. It can't be compared to these machines though -it's 17+" and weighs enough to upset chiropractors.

Plenty of people take digs at Apple, but at least they have screens at 16:10, an aspect ratio that is hard to find amongst other manufacturer's offerings.

With many applications having Office-style horizontal tool-bars, 'ribbons' or 'command managers' - not to mention browsers- 16:9 makes no sense at all for most people; your actual working area begins to resemble a letterbox.