It isn't intellectual property issues that prevents OF from being used on Mactels (still trying to get used to that name).
PPC's have instructions that are used in OF. x86 chips do not. Therefore OF can't be used on the new machines.
It's expected that Apple will use EFI on its machines. But whether they will be used on the first models is anyone's guess right now.
Hopefully we will find out on the 7th.
Just to clear up some confusion. Open Firmware is NOT PPC specific. Someone also mentioned earlier it was IP encumbered so may not be used by Intel.
Open Firmware uses ANSI Forth for the built in code on the cards and devices. The whole idea behind OF is it's completely platform independent. The machine boots the devices in the system by running small interpreted Forth programs on each device or card. Native drivers are loaded by the OS after boot time.
It was designed by Sun for use in their SparcStations and adopted by Apple and IBM for the CHRP boards and is an IEEE standard so isn't IP encumbered. Anyone can use it.
If you boot a Mac straight into it's Open Firmware console you can type your own Forth programs in to the console. That's how many of the hacks to get dual monitor support on iMacs and iBooks work.
EFI is in some ways an ancestor of Open Firmware at least in idea if not parentage. It's still processor agnostic as the drivers on the card/devices are compiled C programs but are stored in a VM byte-code. Intel provides an EFI C byte-code compiler. The system provides a byte-code interpreter just as Open Firmware provided a Forth interpreter.
All the 64bit Itanium systems out there AFAIK use EFI. There's also some IA32 systems out there using the 32bit implementation of EFI already and a BIOS compatibility module that simulates the old BIOS. I can't imagine the BIOS module as being anything less than ugly though as you need Real Mode to run BIOS and Real/Protect mode switches are expensive.
Of course Apple is a software company! (...)Your Mac is almost a PC now, anyway, except for the cpu and the mobo and the chips required for them to work. (...)
Apple is a computer manufacturer (and they do something with music stuff). And they are doing such a good job at making computers because they care about the whole thing not just the hw or sw.
It makes it work together ,it makes that new technologies work nicer on your mac than on a pc (Wireless networking, Bluetooth etc), it makes it look better.
Check the bottom of your ibook or powerbook now. Apple has logos for the FCC, CE, VCI and another logo etched into the case. I assume that the "intel inside" logo will just be alongside these on the case. Nothing to worry about. Anyway, if they do put stickers on - theyre just stickers! They peel off
Those *have* to be there to pass US and EU laws otherwise you can't sell your product.
The Intel logo being there would be purely for branding or commercial reasons.
Personally I can't see Apple wanting to dilute their very clear and successful brand identity by slapping other companies branding on their products. They've not done it with ATI or NVidia so I suspect they won't do it with Intel either.
Frontal connectors - so I have to look at ugly connectors and cabling all day? No thanks.
The frontal connectors on the PMG5 are fine. I wish the mini and iMacs had them. I hate to see ergonomics and practicality sacrificed just for looks, for one, computers are supposed to be functional, and I don't think there should be such a dichotomy between functionality and aesthetics such that one has to be sacrificed for the other, I think both can coexist well.
To me the appearance argument is kind of moot for another reason. Macs emit an annoying pitch through their fans that I feel I have to hide the computer so as to not hear it, ruining the aesthetic argument.
Why not plug them in to your keyboard in front of you?
Assuming it's an Apple type keyboard. The suggestion almost certainly wouldn't work with those that use Bluetooth keyboards. I use Microsoft's Natural Elite because it has better key action and ergonomics for me. Pretty doesn't help if key action and arrangement hurts my hands through prolonged use.
Apple's keyboard would force it into slow USB 1.1 speeds and capabilities, as well as not provide much power needed for charging, such as charging the Shuffle.
I hate to see ergonomics and practicality sacrificed just for looks
And I hate to see good looks and pure design spoiled by needless functionality.
Quote:
Originally posted by JeffDM
for one, computers are supposed to be functional, and I don't think there should be such a dichotomy between functionality and aesthetics such that one has to be sacrificed for the other, I think both can coexist well.
On an iMac G5 it's no big deal to swivel it on it's base and plug it in. Wherease I think an ugly USB connector in the front would really destroy the looks.
Quote:
Originally posted by JeffDM
To me the appearance argument is kind of moot for another reason. Macs emit an annoying pitch through their fans that I feel I have to hide the computer so as to not hear it, ruining the aesthetic argument.
Some seem to. Mine doesn't. And some people are more sensitive to it than others. It's a lot quieter than any PC I've had though. I started up an old PC I had from 1999 and my god I can't believe I used to have that in the office on 24/7.
And I hate to see good looks and pure design spoiled by needless functionality.
Please, don't assign a zero to good ergonomics and something a lot of people actually do use. People actually do use those ports when available because they are convenient, I think it's nonsense to have to buy a hub just to get a convenient port. A computer is supposed to be a functional device too. If you want an art piece, buy an art piece. Apple shouldn't be designing computers such that the convenience is deliberately crippled.
Quote:
On an iMac G5 it's no big deal to swivel it on it's base and plug it in. Wherease I think an ugly USB connector in the front would really destroy the looks.
It doesn't work so well when there are a lot of cables back there, more than half of them don't have a positive retaining lock, so there's some risk of disconnecting them with each turn. It doesn't work so well with the mini either. I would be fine with a side port on the iMac, best of both worlds, IMO.
Quote:
Some seem to. Mine doesn't. And some people are more sensitive to it than others. It's a lot quieter than any PC I've had though. I started up an old PC I had from 1999 and my god I can't believe I used to have that in the office on 24/7.
My Compaq Xeons may be slightly louder, the pitch is far less offensive than I have heard on a 1.25 mini, 1.6GHz iMac and dual Powermac 2.5. The Xeon systems also happen to have 15k RPM drives and the design is actually good such that any noise those drives emits is fairly well muffled, unlike that in the lesser accoustical design of the Powermacs. The nine fans for the PMG5 they liked to tout doesn't help because the real key is fewer larger diameter fans so they turn slower for less whine and still move more air.
I think maybe the point I wanted to make is being missed regarding the close integration of hardware and software:
It no longer takes a lot of specialized hardware to have an Apple-quality hardware-software experience.
By being able to provide "the Mac experience" with commodity hardware, Apple can grow their marketshare.
Of course they can still have superior designs and usability features. One does not preclude the other - the opposite is true: If your parts cost less you can choose to spend more on your design.
Don't assign a zero to good ergonomics. People actually do use those ports when available because they are convenient. A computer is supposed to be a functional device too. If you want an art piece, buy an art piece. Apple shouldn't be designing computers such that the convenience is deliberately crippled.
If you just design for convenience though you'd end up with something particularly ugly.
Shoes with velcro
Stretch elastic pants
Homer Simpson's car of the future.
MacDonalds burgers
Almost any Windows laptop with card readers built in and more special function keys than are practical. eg. an Outlook Express key. FFS, Why?!??!
For the number of times I have to use the ports on the back of my iMac, their location is fine. I've one cable coming out and round the front to my camera which I leave plugged in and that's it. I must touch the ports in the back about once every 3 months. Hopefully with wifi becoming much more common on cameras now, even that is shortly to become a thing of the past.
iMacs ARE functional. That's not to say lazy ergonomics should be introduced at the expense of diluting Apple's strong industrial design. Lot's of people do actually buy Macs because they look fantastic. I can't imagine anyone NOT buying one just because it doesn't have a USB port on the front. There is a trade off and I think they get it about right most of the time.
f you just design for convenience though you'd end up with something particularly ugly.[/b/]
If you just design for appearance, you end up with something useless. But I'm not arguing for the extreme, so please don't strawman this. Maybe you rarely use a feature, but I don't think it is a good idea to assume that most others would be the same.
Quote:
iMacs ARE functional. That's not to say lazy ergonomics should be introduced at the expense of diluting Apple's strong industrial design.
I think the phrase industrial design is misapplied when it comes to Apple products. Artistic design, maybe, but when one goes to places of industry, one might note that many times, industrial design doesn't allow appearance to get away of functionality in machinery, form follows function, rather than function sacrificed for form. Usually, true industrial design is more concerned about safety, productivity, performance and functionality well before appearance is considered.
But I'm not arguing for that, I'm arguing for a balance, and I think Apple chooses appearance a bit too often.
If you just design for appearance, you end up with something useless. But I'm not arguing for the extreme, so please don't strawman this.
I think the phrase industrial design is misapplied when it comes to Apple products. Artistic design, maybe, but when one goes to places of industry, one might note that many times, industrial design doesn't allow appearance to get away of functionality in machinery, form follows function, rather than function sacrificed for form. Usually, true industrial design is more concerned about safety, productivity, performance and functionality well before appearance is considered.
interesting points....that's why "product design" is a term more commonly used today than "industrial design" ... just food for thought
I think the phrase industrial design is misapplied when it comes to Apple products. Artistic design, maybe, but when one goes to places of industry, one might note that many times, industrial design doesn't allow appearance to get away of functionality in machinery, form follows function, rather than function sacrificed for form. Usually, true industrial design is more concerned about safety, productivity, performance and functionality well before appearance is considered.
'Artistic design' isn't a phrase I'd recognise. 'Product design' maybe which does include ergonomics and function as well as form.
'Industrial design' overlaps with 'Product design' but continues not just the form but also the technical merits and the processes used in manufacturing the product.
Apple's and in particular Jonathan Ive's designs have pushed not just product design forward but also industrial design through use of new materials and processes. I think you'd be doing Ive a great disservice if you described his work on purely aesthetic grounds.
Anyway, getting back to the thread, Intel have no design skills, product, industrial or artistic. I wouldn't mind being the fly on the wall in the first meeting between Apple's design dept and Intel's engineers when they both clash with USB port placement and where to stick the Intel Inside sticker. ;-)
I think you'd be doing Ive a great disservice if you described his work on purely aesthetic grounds.
Anyway, getting back to the thread, Intel have no design skills, product, industrial or artistic.
I think you are doing the idea of design a disservice if you don't think Intel can do it. Intel designs reliable chips and boards. It doesn't need to look good because no one really needs to see the boards.
I think you are doing the idea of design a disservice if you don't think Intel can do it. Intel designs reliable chips and boards. It doesn't need to look good because no one really needs to see the boards.
Just to clear up some confusion. Open Firmware is NOT PPC specific. Someone also mentioned earlier it was IP encumbered so may not be used by Intel.
Open Firmware uses ANSI Forth for the built in code on the cards and devices. The whole idea behind OF is it's completely platform independent. The machine boots the devices in the system by running small interpreted Forth programs on each device or card. Native drivers are loaded by the OS after boot time.
It was designed by Sun for use in their SparcStations and adopted by Apple and IBM for the CHRP boards and is an IEEE standard so isn't IP encumbered. Anyone can use it.
If you boot a Mac straight into it's Open Firmware console you can type your own Forth programs in to the console. That's how many of the hacks to get dual monitor support on iMacs and iBooks work.
EFI is in some ways an ancestor of Open Firmware at least in idea if not parentage. It's still processor agnostic as the drivers on the card/devices are compiled C programs but are stored in a VM byte-code. Intel provides an EFI C byte-code compiler. The system provides a byte-code interpreter just as Open Firmware provided a Forth interpreter.
All the 64bit Itanium systems out there AFAIK use EFI. There's also some IA32 systems out there using the 32bit implementation of EFI already and a BIOS compatibility module that simulates the old BIOS. I can't imagine the BIOS module as being anything less than ugly though as you need Real Mode to run BIOS and Real/Protect mode switches are expensive.
You're not reading the posts.
It seems as though too many are going to Wikipedea and reading the INCOMPLETE definition.
Sorry, but you are wrong. Go back to my earlier post on this.
Comments
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Frontal connectors - so I have to look at ugly connectors and cabling all day? No thanks.
Or so you can plug things like flash drives in a lot easier.
Originally posted by melgross
It isn't intellectual property issues that prevents OF from being used on Mactels (still trying to get used to that name).
PPC's have instructions that are used in OF. x86 chips do not. Therefore OF can't be used on the new machines.
It's expected that Apple will use EFI on its machines. But whether they will be used on the first models is anyone's guess right now.
Hopefully we will find out on the 7th.
Just to clear up some confusion. Open Firmware is NOT PPC specific. Someone also mentioned earlier it was IP encumbered so may not be used by Intel.
Open Firmware uses ANSI Forth for the built in code on the cards and devices. The whole idea behind OF is it's completely platform independent. The machine boots the devices in the system by running small interpreted Forth programs on each device or card. Native drivers are loaded by the OS after boot time.
It was designed by Sun for use in their SparcStations and adopted by Apple and IBM for the CHRP boards and is an IEEE standard so isn't IP encumbered. Anyone can use it.
If you boot a Mac straight into it's Open Firmware console you can type your own Forth programs in to the console. That's how many of the hacks to get dual monitor support on iMacs and iBooks work.
EFI is in some ways an ancestor of Open Firmware at least in idea if not parentage. It's still processor agnostic as the drivers on the card/devices are compiled C programs but are stored in a VM byte-code. Intel provides an EFI C byte-code compiler. The system provides a byte-code interpreter just as Open Firmware provided a Forth interpreter.
All the 64bit Itanium systems out there AFAIK use EFI. There's also some IA32 systems out there using the 32bit implementation of EFI already and a BIOS compatibility module that simulates the old BIOS. I can't imagine the BIOS module as being anything less than ugly though as you need Real Mode to run BIOS and Real/Protect mode switches are expensive.
Originally posted by Telomar
Or so you can plug things like flash drives in a lot easier.
Why not plug them in to your keyboard in front of you?
Originally posted by jccbin
Of course Apple is a software company! (...)Your Mac is almost a PC now, anyway, except for the cpu and the mobo and the chips required for them to work. (...)
Apple is a computer manufacturer (and they do something with music stuff). And they are doing such a good job at making computers because they care about the whole thing not just the hw or sw.
It makes it work together ,it makes that new technologies work nicer on your mac than on a pc (Wireless networking, Bluetooth etc), it makes it look better.
Originally posted by the_snitch
Check the bottom of your ibook or powerbook now. Apple has logos for the FCC, CE, VCI and another logo etched into the case. I assume that the "intel inside" logo will just be alongside these on the case. Nothing to worry about. Anyway, if they do put stickers on - theyre just stickers! They peel off
Those *have* to be there to pass US and EU laws otherwise you can't sell your product.
The Intel logo being there would be purely for branding or commercial reasons.
Personally I can't see Apple wanting to dilute their very clear and successful brand identity by slapping other companies branding on their products. They've not done it with ATI or NVidia so I suspect they won't do it with Intel either.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Frontal connectors - so I have to look at ugly connectors and cabling all day? No thanks.
The frontal connectors on the PMG5 are fine. I wish the mini and iMacs had them. I hate to see ergonomics and practicality sacrificed just for looks, for one, computers are supposed to be functional, and I don't think there should be such a dichotomy between functionality and aesthetics such that one has to be sacrificed for the other, I think both can coexist well.
To me the appearance argument is kind of moot for another reason. Macs emit an annoying pitch through their fans that I feel I have to hide the computer so as to not hear it, ruining the aesthetic argument.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Why not plug them in to your keyboard in front of you?
Assuming it's an Apple type keyboard. The suggestion almost certainly wouldn't work with those that use Bluetooth keyboards. I use Microsoft's Natural Elite because it has better key action and ergonomics for me. Pretty doesn't help if key action and arrangement hurts my hands through prolonged use.
Apple's keyboard would force it into slow USB 1.1 speeds and capabilities, as well as not provide much power needed for charging, such as charging the Shuffle.
Originally posted by JeffDM
I hate to see ergonomics and practicality sacrificed just for looks
And I hate to see good looks and pure design spoiled by needless functionality.
Originally posted by JeffDM
for one, computers are supposed to be functional, and I don't think there should be such a dichotomy between functionality and aesthetics such that one has to be sacrificed for the other, I think both can coexist well.
On an iMac G5 it's no big deal to swivel it on it's base and plug it in. Wherease I think an ugly USB connector in the front would really destroy the looks.
Originally posted by JeffDM
To me the appearance argument is kind of moot for another reason. Macs emit an annoying pitch through their fans that I feel I have to hide the computer so as to not hear it, ruining the aesthetic argument.
Some seem to. Mine doesn't. And some people are more sensitive to it than others. It's a lot quieter than any PC I've had though. I started up an old PC I had from 1999 and my god I can't believe I used to have that in the office on 24/7.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
And I hate to see good looks and pure design spoiled by needless functionality.
Please, don't assign a zero to good ergonomics and something a lot of people actually do use. People actually do use those ports when available because they are convenient, I think it's nonsense to have to buy a hub just to get a convenient port. A computer is supposed to be a functional device too. If you want an art piece, buy an art piece. Apple shouldn't be designing computers such that the convenience is deliberately crippled.
Quote:
On an iMac G5 it's no big deal to swivel it on it's base and plug it in. Wherease I think an ugly USB connector in the front would really destroy the looks.
It doesn't work so well when there are a lot of cables back there, more than half of them don't have a positive retaining lock, so there's some risk of disconnecting them with each turn. It doesn't work so well with the mini either. I would be fine with a side port on the iMac, best of both worlds, IMO.
Some seem to. Mine doesn't. And some people are more sensitive to it than others. It's a lot quieter than any PC I've had though. I started up an old PC I had from 1999 and my god I can't believe I used to have that in the office on 24/7.
My Compaq Xeons may be slightly louder, the pitch is far less offensive than I have heard on a 1.25 mini, 1.6GHz iMac and dual Powermac 2.5. The Xeon systems also happen to have 15k RPM drives and the design is actually good such that any noise those drives emits is fairly well muffled, unlike that in the lesser accoustical design of the Powermacs. The nine fans for the PMG5 they liked to tout doesn't help because the real key is fewer larger diameter fans so they turn slower for less whine and still move more air.
It no longer takes a lot of specialized hardware to have an Apple-quality hardware-software experience.
By being able to provide "the Mac experience" with commodity hardware, Apple can grow their marketshare.
Of course they can still have superior designs and usability features. One does not preclude the other - the opposite is true: If your parts cost less you can choose to spend more on your design.
Originally posted by JeffDM
Don't assign a zero to good ergonomics. People actually do use those ports when available because they are convenient. A computer is supposed to be a functional device too. If you want an art piece, buy an art piece. Apple shouldn't be designing computers such that the convenience is deliberately crippled.
If you just design for convenience though you'd end up with something particularly ugly.
Shoes with velcro
Stretch elastic pants
Homer Simpson's car of the future.
MacDonalds burgers
Almost any Windows laptop with card readers built in and more special function keys than are practical. eg. an Outlook Express key. FFS, Why?!??!
For the number of times I have to use the ports on the back of my iMac, their location is fine. I've one cable coming out and round the front to my camera which I leave plugged in and that's it. I must touch the ports in the back about once every 3 months. Hopefully with wifi becoming much more common on cameras now, even that is shortly to become a thing of the past.
iMacs ARE functional. That's not to say lazy ergonomics should be introduced at the expense of diluting Apple's strong industrial design. Lot's of people do actually buy Macs because they look fantastic. I can't imagine anyone NOT buying one just because it doesn't have a USB port on the front. There is a trade off and I think they get it about right most of the time.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
f you just design for convenience though you'd end up with something particularly ugly.[/b/]
If you just design for appearance, you end up with something useless. But I'm not arguing for the extreme, so please don't strawman this. Maybe you rarely use a feature, but I don't think it is a good idea to assume that most others would be the same.
iMacs ARE functional. That's not to say lazy ergonomics should be introduced at the expense of diluting Apple's strong industrial design.
I think the phrase industrial design is misapplied when it comes to Apple products. Artistic design, maybe, but when one goes to places of industry, one might note that many times, industrial design doesn't allow appearance to get away of functionality in machinery, form follows function, rather than function sacrificed for form. Usually, true industrial design is more concerned about safety, productivity, performance and functionality well before appearance is considered.
But I'm not arguing for that, I'm arguing for a balance, and I think Apple chooses appearance a bit too often.
Originally posted by JeffDM
If you just design for appearance, you end up with something useless. But I'm not arguing for the extreme, so please don't strawman this.
I think the phrase industrial design is misapplied when it comes to Apple products. Artistic design, maybe, but when one goes to places of industry, one might note that many times, industrial design doesn't allow appearance to get away of functionality in machinery, form follows function, rather than function sacrificed for form. Usually, true industrial design is more concerned about safety, productivity, performance and functionality well before appearance is considered.
interesting points....that's why "product design" is a term more commonly used today than "industrial design" ... just food for thought
Originally posted by JeffDM
I think the phrase industrial design is misapplied when it comes to Apple products. Artistic design, maybe, but when one goes to places of industry, one might note that many times, industrial design doesn't allow appearance to get away of functionality in machinery, form follows function, rather than function sacrificed for form. Usually, true industrial design is more concerned about safety, productivity, performance and functionality well before appearance is considered.
'Artistic design' isn't a phrase I'd recognise. 'Product design' maybe which does include ergonomics and function as well as form.
'Industrial design' overlaps with 'Product design' but continues not just the form but also the technical merits and the processes used in manufacturing the product.
Apple's and in particular Jonathan Ive's designs have pushed not just product design forward but also industrial design through use of new materials and processes. I think you'd be doing Ive a great disservice if you described his work on purely aesthetic grounds.
Anyway, getting back to the thread, Intel have no design skills, product, industrial or artistic. I wouldn't mind being the fly on the wall in the first meeting between Apple's design dept and Intel's engineers when they both clash with USB port placement and where to stick the Intel Inside sticker. ;-)
Originally posted by aegisdesign
I think you'd be doing Ive a great disservice if you described his work on purely aesthetic grounds.
Anyway, getting back to the thread, Intel have no design skills, product, industrial or artistic.
I think you are doing the idea of design a disservice if you don't think Intel can do it. Intel designs reliable chips and boards. It doesn't need to look good because no one really needs to see the boards.
Originally posted by JeffDM
I think you are doing the idea of design a disservice if you don't think Intel can do it. Intel designs reliable chips and boards. It doesn't need to look good because no one really needs to see the boards.
I think you are doing designers a disservice.
Originally posted by kcmac
I think you are doing designers a disservice.
I don't think so, because design and designing are very broad and abstract concepts that shouldn't be restricted to rigid popular misconceptions.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Just to clear up some confusion. Open Firmware is NOT PPC specific. Someone also mentioned earlier it was IP encumbered so may not be used by Intel.
Open Firmware uses ANSI Forth for the built in code on the cards and devices. The whole idea behind OF is it's completely platform independent. The machine boots the devices in the system by running small interpreted Forth programs on each device or card. Native drivers are loaded by the OS after boot time.
It was designed by Sun for use in their SparcStations and adopted by Apple and IBM for the CHRP boards and is an IEEE standard so isn't IP encumbered. Anyone can use it.
If you boot a Mac straight into it's Open Firmware console you can type your own Forth programs in to the console. That's how many of the hacks to get dual monitor support on iMacs and iBooks work.
EFI is in some ways an ancestor of Open Firmware at least in idea if not parentage. It's still processor agnostic as the drivers on the card/devices are compiled C programs but are stored in a VM byte-code. Intel provides an EFI C byte-code compiler. The system provides a byte-code interpreter just as Open Firmware provided a Forth interpreter.
All the 64bit Itanium systems out there AFAIK use EFI. There's also some IA32 systems out there using the 32bit implementation of EFI already and a BIOS compatibility module that simulates the old BIOS. I can't imagine the BIOS module as being anything less than ugly though as you need Real Mode to run BIOS and Real/Protect mode switches are expensive.
You're not reading the posts.
It seems as though too many are going to Wikipedea and reading the INCOMPLETE definition.
Sorry, but you are wrong. Go back to my earlier post on this.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Why not plug them in to your keyboard in front of you?
Keyboard USB is USB 1.1. If speed is of no concern, that's fine.