nht

Raskin’s original vision of the Mac sucked.  It would have been text based with no mouse and no GUI.  

The Canon CAT was his vision and lacked GUI and mouse.  He may have been to Xerox PARC first but completely rejected everything they learned.  

The one button mouse was obviously the wrong choice given that everyone can keep track of what two buttons do...IF it was his contribution, and some folks dispute that, it was another poor one.

Raskin also had a tendency to “embellish” his accomplishments.  He, as Andy once commented, was NOT the father of the mac but it’s strange uncle...one with a nearsighted  vision of where computing would go.

He’s another example of an engineer under Jobs that did well at Apple and never did anything really relevant again after...and IMHO his primary contribution to the Max was hiring Atkinson and promoting Hertzfeld from service to development.

GeorgeBMac said:

The truth is:  The U.S. comprises less than a third of the world's GDP and is very replaceable by the other 2/3's. 

Lol...try maintaining your standard of living 1/3 of your income missing.  "Very replaceable"?

The truth is when our economy takes a hit so does everyone else's in a big way.  Remove the US from the equation and the global economy would collapse for years.  It's like removing the 3rd leg from a 3 legged stool because while the US is only 24% of the Global GDP it impacts EVERYONE else.  A hard Brexit will impact a lot of countries...with the EU as one the bigger losers...and the UK is relatively small.

MplsP said:

GeorgeBMac said:

MplsP said:

The iPhone 6 is an old model - first released in 2014 and sales stopped in 2016, so the phone is almost 3 years old at a minimum. The article doesn’t say exactly how old the phone was, but from the description, I would suspect that it was a hand-me-down device the kids were using to play games and watch videos. If this is the case, the battery was likely pretty old and may have been ‘abused’ somewhat. I’ve seen plenty of devices for which the battery is dead and kids just leave them plugged in constantly.

iPhone fires are quite unusual so it makes me wonder if there was other damage and/or a defective charger being used - both of these could lead to the battery overheating. GIven the age, it’s also possible that it had a defective replacement battery installed. Even considering this, though, you never want to have a device explode like this.

NONE of that is any excuse for a fire.   NONE.   ZERO.

How is a damaged battery not a reasonable explanation for a fire?

He’s hyper-critical of apple so any reasoned response is not to be expected.

GeorgeBMac said:

Fidonet127 said:

GeorgeBMac said:

For all those defending the "Everything Glued together & soldered together" assembly of the MacBooks by saying "Nobody ever upgraded a computer", Andrew just called bull!

His biggest (only?) complaint about his M1 MacBook Air is that it can't meet his needs because it is frozen in time with what it came with when he bought it -- versus his MacPro which grew and developed with enhancements as his needs, wants and requirements grew.

Likewise, my 9 year old i7 Thinkpad runs perfectly well and meets all of my needs -- because it's been upgraded to a 500Gb SSD, 16Gb Ram and an internal harddrive used for ongoing, real time backups.  Without those cheap and very simple to install (5 minutes or less) upgrades the machine would have been scrap

For every point, there is a vast majority of people who never upgrade the internals of their computers. You can rally and complain about that all you want, however there are millions of computers including Apple that haven’t been upgrade for years. Our 2014 Air and Mini are some of those. Apple is selling more ASi Macs than Intel Macs and every one of them are all soldered together. Apple knows their market. Rather than scrapping them, Macs do have a high resale value. 

Did you watch the video?   Andrew called bull.... 

He replaced a $6K machines with a $1.2K machine.  And it worked.  Let's see...he can replace his MBA FIVE times for the cost of the Mac Pro.  Video editing with FCP was faster on the MBA than on his Mac Pro.

Nobody gives a shit about upgradeability when your cost is cut 5X.  Especially when you can dock and connect to your RAID array, power, network and other peripherals with one (or two) cables.  The Mac mini becomes a HUGE freaking bang for the buck.  And while eGPUs don't work with enclosures other cards have been updated to with a M1 Mac.  For example BlackMagic released Desktop Video 12.0 adding Mac OS Big Sur and Apple M1 support for DeckLink 4K and 8K models, Intensity Pro 4K and UltraStudio Thunderbolt 3. 

The only way the Dems can make me vote for Trump is this.

EngDev said:

nht said:

EngDev said:

macseeker said:

Seems like the iPhone 7+ picture is sharper.

Source: Macworld

In this case the iPhone is applying blur and Note 8 isn't.  The iPhone is attempting to do a very thin DOF with focus only on the face.  It's as the more aggressive of the two in terms of attempting bokeh.  Also, it appears that the iPhone missed focus in this capture.  I wonder if she was moving during the shot.

Whether her chest would be in focus or not in a real DSLR depends on how busty she is.  Not very so likely in focus.  

The Note 8 is obviously less aggressive as seen in this comparison where the iPhone gets it more right but the Note doesn't

Both seem to have problems with blur depending on the scenario. I think Macworld did a decent job outlining these cases. They're right about the iPhone focusing too much on the face.

Not when it's called "Portrait Mode".  Typically the face is the thing you want to get in focus for portraits.  In particular, the eyes.  With a thin DOF even ears are out of focus.  Here's an example.  Eyes in focus, ears not.



Often pros do additional post processing to make the eyes pop even more.



Eyes in focus, ears and shirt not.



Eyes in focus, ears and blouse not.  The DoF is an inch or two deep at most.

Post processing includes upping the exposure just for the iris to enhance eye colors, increasing sharpness and contrast, etc, cleaning up the whites of the eyes, artificially adding light reflection or enhancing the light reflection in the eyes.

In basic portraiture you focus on the eyes.

Saying that the iPhone focuses too much on the face for portraiture is plain stupid.  

The primary criticism for that iPhone 7 shot is that it missed focus...not that it focused too much on the face.  It actually got the blur correct but the eyes and face are a bit muddy focused.  Since the iPhone nailed focus in other shots I mark that down as user error.

Frankly, the entire piece from Mac World is shoddy.  The model is posed differently for each phone.  Adam, despite being "Video Director & Photographer, MacWorld", apparently doesn't own a DSLR with a prime lens to shoot for reference.

Adding a reference would have taken a few extra moments...it's literally "hold the pose" Snap, switch, snap, switch, snap.  Not let me be a dumbass and shoot each camera in series and then end up with different poses, distance and worse...lighting.  

What did we learn from Adam's comparisons?  That he doesn't actually know how to run photographic comparisons.

TL;DR;  Its called Portrait Mode.  Focusing on the face is entirely the point.

madan said:

The lowest end Mini has an i3 that trades with a 2400g...a 150 dollar CPU.  Hardly a world beater in an 800 dollar computer.

The DDR4 in a Mini isn't 3200.  It's 2666 which is fast by Mac standards but isn't even the fastest on the market.


The only great part about the Mini is the fact that it's:

A. Small & stylish in a nice aluminum box with excellent heat management through shared blowers, proper air routing, software cooling profiles and thermal skin dissipation.

B. It has that insane motherboard design with fantastically forward thinking IO (thunderbolt-enabled USB-C ahoy!).

Beyond that, you mentioned it.  It uses IGP.  The issue isn't whether Mini purchasers need it.  It's whether Apple charges people like the Mini *has* that grunt.  Which it doesn't have.

A 2400g, some fast RAM, a nice PCIE SSD on a mini ITX would be about twice the size.  Sure.  And no Mac OS X.  And you'd lose 2 or 3 USB C ports.  But you'd also chip 400 dollars on a computer that could tie the Mini on half the tasks and run rings around it on the other half.

Again, Mac OS is the best OS on the market.  Apple hardware engineering is great.  But is it worth 100% markup great? I wonder.  They're charging the same that a Dell with a Core i5/twice the fast RAM/and a GTX 1060 costs.  And those two systems aren't even in the same solar system, much less planet.

So yeah. Mazda.  Ferrari. Fits.

The NSX used the engine from the Legend
Lamborghini and Audi collaborated on the V10 engine used in the Gallardo and Huracan.
Pagani Huayra uses a Mercedes V12 engine.
Aston Martin Vantage uses a Mercedes V8
The Lous Evora uses a Toyota engine.

The i3 Mini you are whining about is faster than the 2017 15" MBP Core i7-7920HQ in single core and faster than the 2017 21: iMac Core i5-7500 in multicore.

That leads me to believe you know very little about supercars or computers.

Mike Wuerthele said:

nht said:

AppleInsider said:

The market appears to be there for a $499 Mac mini, so the the only two questions left is whether Apple wants to enter that price-point again, or is capable of manufacturing a machine for that price. It certainly managed to build them right up to about last Tuesday when it finally replaced the $499 Mac mini with this new design.

There isn't a real business case for re-entering the $499 market.  What's the advantage for Apple to trash ASPs and sell $499 machines instead $799 machines?  Would it really double Mac sales?  

Apple is already going to lose more valuable iMac sales to Mini sales as the new minis have very high bang for the buck.

And did Apple lose the edu market to Chromebooks or Google Docs?  You aren't going to beat $200 chromebooks with a $500 Mac when the $300 iPads can't make a significant dent.

Services.

You still need to show that the $500 price point would sufficiently increase Mac sales so that it's a positive outcome even counting service income.  What's more, the buyers of $500 PCs are likely not as good a demographic for services than $800 PC buyers...just like the buyers of $100 Android phones are not as good a demographic for services as $600+ iPhone buyers.

So that's still not a good business case for introducing a $500 mini and trashing your $1200 iMac sales when the $300 iPad already exists and is positioned within the Apple product line for the edu/low end market.

And iOS devices trounce MacOS devices in volume.  So service income is largely dominated by iPads (ie cars) than Macs (trucks) anyway.

dysamoria said:

So this computer is awesome for companies like Pixar. Where’s the thermally well-designed modular machine for small businesses, prosumers, hobbyists, and institutions that cannot justify a $12000 setup... but also cannot justify replacing disposable computers every 3 years and want something more powerful than an obsessively compact machine?

Everyone keeps defending Apple with the “if you cannot afford it, it’s not for you” meme. The Mac Pro used to start at $2500. Then $3000. Now that starting price is $6000. It has the same name. It has the same *general* appearance. Yet, the pricing, and, according to you apologists, the intended purpose/market for THIS new “Mac Pro” is big business that can justify spending $12000 for a workstation. Apple went WAY overboard here. They’ve utterly dropped an entire segment of computer using professionals. They’ve aimed at the 1% while shouting “SEE WE STILL CARE ABOUT PROFESSIONALS!”

People keep saying Pixar (who will have huge render farms) but the pros that want this machine are customers of Blackmagic, RED and ARRI.  BM folks will buy the lower end $6K Mac Pro.  RED 8K users will pony up for the top end Mac Pro.

For Pros that don't need a $6000 machine there's the mini, iMac and iMac Pro.  The new Mac Pro is more pro than the old cheese grater Mac pros.  For one, it's more easily rackable and it has a lot more expansion ability relative to most other workstations due to the thermal design and the modules.

gerrit said:

Epic may be self-serving, but most developers I know agree that Epic is on the right side of this and are hoping that Epic wins. Self-serving or not, they're on the side of the developers. 

BS.  As a small developer I have problems with discovery but at least I don’t have to worry as much about wholesale theft and seeing my apks appear for free on 3rd party “stores” with Trojans inside.

Only server based apps are immune.

Epic’s play is entirely self serving.