Windows Vista Beta 2 features bugs and blue screens - Page 2

Do you really think MS invented this ?
C'mon

While it's true that I haven't seen your computer (pretty rude of you to not have invited me over by now), I want to clarify that I only mean the majority of users. There is probably a higher number of users on this forum with large hard drives which are quite full. However, those people also tend to be very good with computers and frequently either don't care enough about backups, or are already managing a solution themselves. Time Machine is for the masses. Of course, anyone with a full hard drive who wants to use it as a backup system can either buy a larger drive, delete some stuff, or move some files onto other drives.

I'm not seeing those parallels. Copland has little to nothing to do with OS X many of its prime features were rolled into OS 9. Jobs came in with Next and the idea of Copland as the next generation OS was totally thrown in the trash.

Until Vista is thrown in the trash and an entirely new OS is brought in I don't see the parallels.

Apple didn't start 'fresh' with OSX, as much as bought NeXT which OSX is from. If MS were to ditch Vista, with your thinking, they'd need to acquire another software company that is creating an OS already...

WATCH OUT GOOGLE!

Everything I've read about Time Machine suggests that it requires its own dedicated partition as the backup medium, I think with a strong suggestion that it be a separate hard drive altogether, it doesn't make as much sense to back something up onto the same hard drive as it would to a separate unit.

I think that what Apple is trying to implement is a much better version (more user accessible) of the "restore system point" feature in Windows XP. (Though Apple's version won't be such a blunt instrument, allowing you to just restore the files you need). In that case, it is all backed up on the same drive, same partition, and the administrator can decide how much space to allow for backups. However, with Boot Camp's nondestructive partitioning on the fly, maybe Apple plans to have Time Machine store it's backups on a separate flexible partition.

Man, you just don't hide your folders well enough. Encrypt em next time.

That's a nice idea, but all the data would be gone if the drive died, so it's only a partial backup solution if it really is a backup solution. Using it on the same drive you are trying to protect the data would mean it's only a crude version control system. The presentation suggests being able to restore the entire system from backup, and that can't be done if your backup is also on the drive that just died.

<Puts on Flame Retardant Lab Coat and Anal Retentive Taped Scientist Glasses>

"Generalizations are always false."

Catagorical statements about what, "Most People," think, do, or have, really annoy me. Unless you're a god, or a professional statistician who has data to back up such statements, I feel that most people who do make such statements really have no justification for doing so, that such claims only serve to show that they are bull-headed and ignorant, and that even when they're wrong, they refuse to admit it. In otherwords, they are charlatains, liars, and cheats. EAT THY FOOT!!!



Please learn to use the phrases, "I feel..." "I believe..." "I think..." and "It seems to me..."

<Dives for Bomb Shelter>

<Pokes his head out>

Hey, you're right though, it is rude of him not to have invited you over yet.

<Ducks under cover>

I like the way you attack, it has a humorous style to it. I stand corrected. I apologize. I should have said "in my experience", instead of "the facte of the matter is", since you are quite right that I have little data to back up my impressions. I'd imagine Apple would do the research to check how useful this implementation might be to users, if I'm even right about what their plan is (which again is just my impression/guess).

Thanks. I try to minimize the shrapnel. A Flash Bang is frequently better than a nuke.



Personally, my default assumption would be quite the oposite of something you said above, in that my own HD is only 60 GB and there is almost no room left on it. I would expect it to be more natural for a savvy computer geek to put up with lack of space simply because he knows how to deal with it.

Oh, no, never mind. It's cause I have too many optical drives and don't have any free IDE slots. :P Hmm, you know I was kinda wondering why I put up with such cramped conditions.



How easily I forget such things.

*edit* actually, I AM a little surprised that didn't start a flame war. And that WAS the venting of a general frustration regarding the posts of many people round these parts, not just any one individual.

I will partially agree with bdj21ya though, many (not most) people do not fill up their HDs to anywhere NEAR capacity:
Take my mother's iMac:
160 GB, 20 GB full, counting all the preinstalled apps & system

Most people that use OS X are "above" average in my opinion. Shows very well in this case.

My brother, who started a small ICT business last month was surpriced abouth the costs of the MBP I planned to buy.
2,500 euro was pretty decent in his opinion.

After a while, talking about the cost of software updates, which he considered to high, (about 800 euro for Adobe CS3) he asked me what I payed for support.

He didn't believe me and couldn't understand how it was possible that, besides Applecare, I didn't pay a cent for support.

Just because technology in general probably doesn't excite you anymore (hey, I just hit 30 too, so I know the "been there, done that" feeling), doesn't mean there isn't anything groundbreaking in Mac OS X.

How about OpenGL rendering at the core so that you get rendering speed + nice effects, and the possibility for new and interesting interfaces? Sure people had shown similar things on Linux/X in the past, but nothing really made it to the general masses, nor was it on the same scale as Mac did it.

As someone who recently spent a lot of time setting up a RAID server + backup system due to having numerous hard drive crashes/IDE failures, Time Machine looks pretty exciting both from a backup perspective, and for hunting down lost and old versions of files. No need to set up version control for your home directory anymore.

And iTunes is probably the best music ripping/library creation and management software out there. Sure they weren't the first to come out with that type of software, but they pretty much _defined_ how it should be done.

Change rarely happens overnight in leaps. However, if you take the time to look at all the small steps and incremental changes, you'll see how far Apple has helped to advance OS technology.

I hope that it will be rigged up with allow use with a laptop and an external HD, such that any changes you make while away from home get syncronized upon return. That would be gorrvy... er groovy. sorry, fatfingers day today I guess.

I certainly can't speak for "most people", but in my case, no matter how big a hard drive I buy, it's never very long before it's 95% full, and whenever I burn a few gigs to a DVD and delete it from the drive, that space very quickly fills up again. Laptop users, in particular, cannot buy a hard drive larger than 160 GB right now (while 3.5" drives are available in sizes up to 750 GB).

But more importantly, backing up to the same hard drive is a pretty weak strategy, and creates a false sense of security. It would give you the benefit of being able to restore a deleted or accidentally-overwritten file, but does not protect your data in the event of drive corruption or failure.

Time Machine is surely based on the same concept as a file versioning system like CVS, Subversion etc. While it is able to make incremental backups of files by only storing the differences between each version, it still requires a full copy at the beginning, and that means your backup will start out as large as your existing data (though they may use some compression). This effectively reduces your drive space by more than half, if you choose to backup to the same drive.

Backing up to a separate hard drive is absolutely essential if you want to be sure your data is actually safe.

Word. Invariably "most people" is actually just a reference to the person making the point, who has almost certainly not even taken the time to ask a few of their friends to confirm these gross assumptions.

With exactly the same degree of authority, I could claim that "most people" who use a Mac are using a PowerBook G4 15" aluminum (Oct 2005 model) with 1.5 GB of RAM, running OS X 10.4.7, and live in a tiny apartment in Kyoto, which is half covered with dirty laundry and empty plastic bottles and snack boxes because they are too busy reading and replying to stupid comments on forums.

Speaking of which, I have laundry to do and garbage to take out.

I'm talking about my prediction.

Please. Tiger beta was released amid much fanfare about Spotlight. 3 or 4 months later, MS and Google both release the same product. \


hummmmmmmmm.............



Actually, I agree 100% with this. That's the main thing I was thinking of when I said "While Questions remain...."


As in, they both display folders??? Whoa, the similarities are shocking!

Seriously, like everything else, I'm looking for TimeMachine to sport some awesome hardware tie-ins. That is, after all, Apple's MO. Maybe dual harddrives across the Mac line for backup purposes. Maybe iDisk super cheap so "everyone" could subscribe. In any case, when I upgrade my computers to Leopard, I'll be getting externals for my home computers. A backup system that "just works," little to no config, completely on-its own=priceless. And I don't think there's any question there'll be something as Celemourne suggested for portables.

You don't compile and build a public beta with debug symbols included. That would be like giving every hacker in the world an easily removable map of everything the OS does. As bird brained as MS can be I'm sure they aren't doing that, it would be excruciatingly painful to do compared to setting release for the build mode.

Also remember, once upon a time MS said 4GB RAM and a dual core 4Ghz 64-bit processor was going to be the minimum supported hardware. They knew al along they were dealing with good old fashioned bloat.

Now for the soapbox. What idiot thinks an OS should have several times to several dozen times larger a footprint in RAM than the vast majority of applications? The effing OS is supposed to serve multiple applications efficiently, not eat your entire machine on it's own.

He probably called it Apple's OS, and the typically idiotic tech writer munged it up.

They all followed grep, but until VERY recently only Apple has made it useable.




This is old hash. Konfabulator was a way to bring back desk accessories. It didn't take off in Mac land because it was so damn hard to make widgets and was a resource hog of famous repute. Like just about everything Apple has done, they took the existing state of the art and mad it useable for the masses, or in this case re-introduced the desk accessories with a twist that resembled Konfabulators. Apple is quite on record as saying they won't step into the space of well designed third party apps, but crappy apps that users want done right they will step in if the delay is too long. The list of Apple projects there is very long, no apologies since what went before didn't measure up.



If you are a developer these are big. If you're not you have no reason to ever be aware of them. Don't hate on what you have no need to understand. It just exposes your ignorance of what constitutes a powerful technology.



You are all wrong. Time machine can be configured down to the individual file level. As to why don't users have external drives for backup already? The current solutions are written for sysadmins, not grandmas. Now ther will be a larger market for external drives because EVERYONE can do SIMPLE backups. Telling mom and pop that they can plug and play the backup and not loose the digital pictures of junior is huge. Right now every solution is just too much of a pain in the ass. Again Apple didn't invent it, just made it accessible to regular users, that alone is earth-shattering


And the Windows examples don't look like various file organization research demo videos that have been released over the last 5-7 years? Getting the big boys to buy in is the whole purpose of the research, and that research tends to show certain metaphors work well for certain classes of tasks. Two companies independently using a publicly published metaphor isn't copying, it is following the whole damn reason for research in the first place.

Allow me to repeat myself: Vista will never ship.

I don't see why this is an issue. Companies' names have been used as adjectives in conversations around me all my life (notice I avoid generalizing to the whole U.S., though I have heard this on national news too). It would be just as acceptable to refer to Windows as the Microsoft OS.

More examples:
Apple iPod
Microsoft Zune Player
the Enron scandal.

and so on.

I guess it's ready for release.

Hey, just because the journalists have been munging up the proper use of possessives for a long time doesn't mean it suddenly became OK.

Nevermind.

Google released Google Desktop Search long before any Tiger beta.

If this happened a lot of high level MS execs would been seen hurling themselves from windows.

Jobs came in with NeXT *BECAUSE* Copland was already an unwieldy / unworkable resource drain...and already being hauled out to the dumpster.

The moral of the story? Vista could be Redmond's Copland in the same way that Afghanistan was the Soviet Union's Viet Nam: by the time they get it sorted out, the game will already be over.

The good news, OTOH, is that one random forum poster seeing it or not isn't a factor.

Yes, but Balmer would bounce.

http://www.flamingmailbox.com/maccom...es/balmer.html

They will because they are mindless sheep.8)

I'd like to quickly admit that I was wrong about Time Machine. It appears to me that it does rely on external drives, but I assume that Apple would allow users the option of backing up to an internal drive as well, though probably not the same partition.

The wording on their site seems to suggest that they will allow you to use a separate partition on the same drive, at least it doesn't have anything to suggest that they will even remind the user that it's not good practice to do so.

I'm just saying that it's not as good of a data protection solution as using a separate hard drive for the backup system. Using the same drive will still provide the "roll-back" potential in case a file was inadvertently corrupted, changed or deleted, but if the drive dies, you've lost your original and the backup.

seems like there's too much concern over the 'external hard drive' aspect of Time Machine: in case no one's noticed, external hds w/ capacities >160gb are less than 100USD.

that's pretty cheap insurance - hell, 10 years ago, a CD burner cost close to 1000USD.

JeffDM, you make excellent points!

<Predicto!!! Hat stuff.... I forgot how it goes >

That's why I predicted that Apple will have some sort of hardware tie-in like dual harddrives on every machine. It's very cheap and it would REALLY make TimeMachine "for the masses" and "just work"

<throws the hat in the bomb shelter and goes on his merry way. What is this, Lebanon? Bomb shelters! Pfft!>

Uh oh. Here we go again.