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General discussion

Evening trivia.

Nov 8, 2007 10:05AM PST

In "Mac OS X" is the X pronounced as such or should it be pronounced as "10". If so, I've been speaking it as "Mac OS X" for all these years wrongly...

Discussion is locked

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"10"
Nov 8, 2007 10:01PM PST

"Ten"... not "ex"

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Makes sense now I think of it.
Nov 9, 2007 1:43AM PST

But I have been pronouncing it Mac OS "ex" all these years. Oops.

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I call it OS "ex" even though I know it's 10.
Nov 9, 2007 7:25AM PST

"Ex" just sounds better. Just like saying PowerBook over MacBook Pro I guess. I wish they'd have just called them the Intel PowerBooks. MBP is a mouthful at best.

X makes it seems "better". Psychological I bet. Most people don't actually know any of this anyway.
-BMF

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True.
Nov 9, 2007 8:04AM PST

Ha. I call my iBook a PowerMac, because technically it is.

I had a Kernel Panic today after launching a bad disk image Sad

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Uh-oh. Fixed it I hope?
Nov 9, 2007 10:53AM PST

The iBook you have is too good to screw up, even if 366Mhz today is basically nothing to everyday people. Most people that know anything will assume it has to be Core Duo or etc. to be good. I say that AMD and PPC kick Intel's ***, and if some real PPC chips had been allowed to evolve, who knows how much power it could wield? Gotta love the new Intel chips though. My iMac has raw power while my Intel PowerBook (and that's what it should be called!) has streamlined looks and refined power. LOL, technical gibberish.

X, Y, or Z, it doesn't really matter to me. How's that for a Mac rhyme? Haha... yeah. I think we all see the point.

Here's my list of renaming the Mac computer lines:

MBP becomes the Intel PowerBook,

MacBook stays the same (it seems easier to say than iBook to me),

iMac has been around for years so I think that should stay too,

Pro reverts to THE POWERMAC (emphasis on the THE)

Mac Mini... I think it should be called the Intel-a-box because it's just a small box with an Apple and an Intel CPU inside. LOL. MacBox is the new name.

Rumored Tablet Mac... the iWrite, and that's so my original idea. You could also go with TouchBook to make it complicated of course.

Rumored no-optical drive MacBook, what to call that? Hmm... let's see... FlashBook... no... NanoBook... no... Aha! The "aBook". It's just a simple, basic Mac with nothing but ports, a battery, a screen + iSight, and the Tpad w/a keyboard. How about that? Not all Apple products used an "i". Remember the eMac?

iThink therefore i-use-my-Mac-to-come-up-with-this-stuff LOL.

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Yes I agree.
Nov 9, 2007 11:22AM PST

I'm not what you could call a "fan" of Intel either. PPC and AMD/Via are much more to my preference.

As for my iBook, I honestly don't know what to think. The Kernel Panic shocked me, but given the other minor problems I have had/been having, such as

-Trackpad/cursor hanging sometimes for periods of time
-OS 9 horrendously unstable
-Certain apps randomly quitting

I am beginning to wonder to myself what is up with it. I'm pretty sure the Hard Drive is at fault. Something I said to my mum the other week is now seeming like a feasible idea, rather than just meaningless chatter. I said "I think I should just open it right up and replace as much as I can" and now I am fast beginning to think it will be my only option to a working reliable machine.

That said, I am prepared to spend the time and effort on the machine and have a loveable classic for years to come, rather than just taking the easy route out and tossing it.

I'm sure I will think of something.

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Might as well as toss in a 200GB HD,
Nov 9, 2007 11:41AM PST

with a new logic board for a G4 CPU for the clamshell case, some few GBs of RAM... just toss the whole thing but the nice case. Wink, that is if you could do that.

That'd be nice, to have one of the most powerful laptops in a 7-8 year old iBook shell, or however old your specific model is. Nice trick there. Leopard on an iBook G3? No way! Wait, it's a G4? A dual-G4? With 4GB of RAM, and OMG! the system profiler must be screwed! Look at those incredible specs! Wow, never knew that Apple made such powerhouses.

I'd love to see those expressions on a rookie Apple employee. Oh man I would love to video that.

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I probably would.
Nov 9, 2007 11:38PM PST

I could stick it on Youtube along with my vast collection of other stuff.

It's funny what you said actually because that did cross my mind. I would like to somehow cram a super-laptop into the modest-looking case, but whether it would be possible is a question in itself. I might just take it apart today just to get to grips with what I'd be taking on. Will bring photos/videos...

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Like to see those.
Nov 10, 2007 6:24AM PST

Taking it apart may not serve such a good purpose though. Think about it: unless there are some companies out there that actually take these laptops (old ones) and outfit them with the latest and greatest stuff with compatible components, why would you take a look inside? Looks aren't everything.
But for the positive side, you can see what goes where and what you may need to replace. You could take the old HD and stick it in an external case and boot off of it whenever you put in flash drives. Then you can install a fresh copy of Panther right into it. If only the last of the G3 chips (900Mhz) could be swapped into one of these. At least those are more usable in terms of speed. I wonder if somebody can make some Intel or AMD compatible boards for it. That would be a bit nice don't you think?

I'm going to look into some of this stuff. Perhaps I'll find some good ideas and/or parts. Then I'll go on eBay, buy me an Indigo model, and trick it out to have better stuff than the current machines. Love to do that.

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Bleh.
Nov 10, 2007 9:04AM PST

You're probably gonna hate me for this but in a decision I made today I am going to cease development on the iBook. At least, for the foresee-able future. I'm gonna spend my money at the moment on upgrading to Windows Vista, and perhaps another stick of RAM for my Windows machine.

Although the hard drive in the iBook is past it's expected average life expectancy, like the hard drive in my Performa 450 it could end up going for decades, and just keep on going; many do - so for now all development and upgrades on it are gonna be put on hold. I came to this decision after realising that I don't really use it for much anyway, just a bit of photoshop.

Yes, I procrastinate terribly. Currently blogging on this now and will make a Youtube vid soon...

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Hate you? No, I was just thinking that
Nov 10, 2007 10:19AM PST

it'd be a cool experience. I understand if you don't want to invest so much into it right now. I tend to procrastinate myself.

The HD could go on for awhile, supposing it decides to not give out on any day. As for the other parts, they should work as long as the iBook is operational.
At least you have some Photoshop stuff. To get all of those nice goodies for the Intel machines, you have to fork over quite a bit. It's like $90 for Photoshop Elements by itself, and $650 for a new user if you buy Photoshop CS3. And the full Adobe suites? Hundreds of dollars. Ouch. I'm not too dependent on that since I don't have any of those. iLife cuts it for me, though I'm thinking about abandoning GB and going with Logic.

FYI, if incase you want to buy upgrades or peripherals for your machines, try Amazon. They're not the greatest PC and Mac shop, but you can get some software $20-$30 cheaper than at the Apple Store (I don't know how to convert that to pounds or Euros, sorry). I think I saved $30 on a new .Mac subscription and $20 off both a AirPort Wireless Adapter thing (plugs in the wall and has the AirTunes) and the new iLife suite. So I saved some stuff, but I wouldn't buy RAM there. Amazon is better for peripherals in my opinion (and new machines I guess, if you're looking at AMD HP towers).
-BMF

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I was kidding
Nov 10, 2007 10:44AM PST

about hating me, LOL.

But yes, I've decided I'll be best spending my money upgrading my main work machine anyway than one that is more of a hobby machine. Like I said though, the hard drive in my 14 year old Performa is extremely loud, but it's SCSI, and we all know they just about last forever. Perhaps the iBook will hold true of similar, too.

Installing Vista on my Windows PC will pretty much fill what's left of this modest 40Gig Hard Disk too, so it may even be upgrades all round in the future sometime.

I hate computers.

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I know you were kidding.
Nov 10, 2007 11:38AM PST

Some of my comments pertain to my sense of humor Wink.

I LOVE GOOD COMPUTERS, but I HATE when they mess up and you have to work on them to no end (hence, my frustration with Windows machines, always something wrong). Manufacturers ought to set things right by building quality machines that last forever. But it all has to do with marketing. Buy a piece of junk one year, breaks the next, you buy a new one. That's what they all want you to do, Apple or PC makers.
And I've said it over and over: Apple showed this action through the requirements in Leopard. They want to eliminate PPC all together and get Mac users on Intel. Soon enough, I bet they'll strike a deal with AMD and ATI, allowing them to offer both CPU brands in their products. Then they'll just be another PC manufacturer with just a different form of Linux (UNIX core is what I'm referring to).
I wish that they had gotten someone to make their never-released G5 mobile chipset for the laptop line, since IBM, Moto, or whoever was their last PPC group couldn't produce them in mass quantities in the quality they wanted. AMD would have been better than Intel, though I mean no disrespect to the machines themselves. They rock, but a little more throttle and power would have been better for Apple's legacy. But I digress...

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G5+Mobile - wouldn't work.
Nov 10, 2007 11:58AM PST

The reason Apple discontinued using PowerPC is because the chip was reaching the end of its useful life. It was too hot and was wasting too much for what its power was. AMD weren't as big and powerful, supposedly, as Intel at the time and Intel were a good option for them because it'd enable them to run Windows. Also, given they released so many versions of their software for Windows, it's obvious that the OS is all they have going for them. Think about it. Windows is really good nowadays (at least I think it is, and as yet have had much less problems with Windows than Mac, and generally prefer Windows) and Apple knows that they are not going to swallow the market up. Releasing iTunes, Safari and godknows else for PC, AND allowing their machines to run Windows, is almost a ceasefire in itself. They can't capture the PC market so they essentially blend in with it. All an Apple machine is these days is a PC with EFI. That's it. I mean,

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I don't, and I know putting a G5 in a PowerBook
Nov 10, 2007 12:20PM PST

would literally melt your lower half away. That's why development was taking too long in the first place, and what pressured Apple to go ahead and bond with Intel. Of course you could always invent a G6 chip that was a quad-core, ran cooler, better than everything else, etc. Steve, that's what I'd call a screamer. Problem with laptops are they always get hot now and then. My MBP loves to heat up when I really start doing stuff, so I prefer to use it on a desk or table. Don't know about the MacBooks, but I don't think they use up as much. I heard all the newer models use less power or something and they run better...

I got the feeling that when you said you've had more problems with Mac, you were basing it off of the G3 vs. your WinBox. The G3 has no right to perform well at all with its original parts today, but it works, and on Panther too. And your WinBox is Vista capable by what you've said, so you're comparing an almost 8 year old iBook with laughable specs to a recent Windows laptop. No offense to the iBook, but that's what it looks like. Apple has made some questionable choices, but they probably don't care.
Steve gets a dollar a day to keep his taxes away and the rest of us are paying for his creations. LOL. Ben Franklin may not have seen it that way though. Point is, Apple just jumps at whatever seems good at the time and tries to make a giant profit from it. The iPod and Intel chips show that. And look at Apple now, reaping in millions over these devices.

If Apple had died, there'd be no need to fight with MS! No fun and definitely no cool looking OS-es anymore unless you did something to Linux, but that would take quite some time anyway to develop into a widely used system. And I'm sure AT&T, T-Mobile, and O2 are happy about their iPhone profits alongside their customers/hackers, so who's not happy? The stiffs who use MS all day for work and no entertainment and relaxing? Come on.

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But hey!
Nov 10, 2007 12:28PM PST

I do genuinely like MS and I do like using Windows at college, home, whereever. I guess that's just me.

And yes, I was being a little unfair with the iBook specs.

I actually keep both my laptops on my desk and it doesn't really make a difference with heat. Since I installed a gig upgrade of RAM in my Winlaptop it seems to generally get a lot hotter (quite a nice wrist-warmer actually) so I'm not too concerned about that. It was dirt cheap I must say, and not what I'd call very high specced but it's a nice solid piece of kit and yes it should run Vista albeit not with Aero. Which I'm not too concerned about. It's just the security I'm upgrading for, and stuff.

If I didn't have a VIA processor, I'd probably have tried out OS X 86 by now, and I would have been able to compare the OSes on the same hardware and make a true judgement. That said, it was a quick thought that went in and out of my head in a snap.

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I'm not trying to insult Windows.
Nov 10, 2007 12:38PM PST

MS has been great over the years, don't get me wrong. In fact, both MS and Apple have borrowed from each other over the years, and now they share similar platforms and CPUs to run their systems on. In a way, they have to coexist with each other to bring about a balance between everyone, if you want to look at that way.

MS has done a good job with their stuff, but it could be better. With Apple, they tend to (tend to!) produce something of good quality more often and even when you don't expect them to. Put them together in a Mac and everyone's happy! Or so Parallels would like you to believe "cough".

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What next?
Nov 9, 2007 11:27AM PST

They're selling MacBooks without optical drives? Hmm. How about the "nobook" for no drive... kinda thing...

What'll it be next? Just a screen and a keyboard?!

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They are trying to patent the touch-keyboard
Nov 9, 2007 11:37AM PST

which they patented awhile ago. That would be hard, touching a pad to type rather than actual keys... I think that with Apple, as long as it looks cool, "works cool", and is innovative, it becomes a must-buy.

And when rumors heat up about an Apple product, they tend to produce some sort of device that satisfies some of the rabble. Why if people hadn't been interested in 3rd party apps on the iPhone, they may not have caved in and said they'd release the SDK in Feb. Or they could have and would generate some other hype. Speaking of which, anyone want to take a look at my iJailbreak post in the MP3 section? Thanks.