dickrichards2000's Profile

Hardly a challenging topic for an Apple site. After all, it seems the company is finally getting the recognition that its fans have been wanting for the past decade or more. How safe is it to say that Apple should be a trailblazing tech entity? Or Google for that matter? Google? NOT all things to all people? Last time I checked they virtually had a site or a piece of software for just about everything. Not that I'm complaining, I think they make great stuff - wait - great FREE stuff - but they have their hands in more cookie jars than I can count. As far as eBay and Amazon, yeah, it's a shame that the modern world and the modern shareholder demand so much. Here are two great services that inevitably MUST expand in some capacity or face the wrath of the almight stale stock value. Too bad, they're both so good at what they do best. I hear that groceries are coming soon to an Amazon.com page near me... Something about that just makes me cringe. AMD? Used to love 'em. Intel? Recently learned to love 'em. Now that the GHz war is officially over and I lost (thousands) I'm really hoping that both of these companies continue to duke it out. I'm far more excited at the prospect of a DozenCore CPU than I am of reaching 5GHz. I can only hope that they invest more in R&D and less in their respective legal depts. Xbox? Is that thing still around? Oh yeah.. the 360... At this time last year I was drooling over such a thing. Oddly enough I just don't care anymore. Like I said, I lost the GHz war trying to have the best gaming rig around for several years running. Next to a great PC, Xbox 360 just seems kind of lame, so lame that I've almost forgotten it came out. Will Wii win? Will PS3 ever materialize? Will Microsoft ever figure out that good games make great consoles? Maybe, maybe not. In the meantime my Intel iMac plays a bitchin' game of Counterstrike though ... it's almost worth the time it takes to restart into XP. I don't know though, I just don't see Xbox being the savior of Microsoft, not even close. I have high hopes for Vista, not because I care to use it, but because of the competitive spirit it might just give to Apple. Future version of OS X can only benefit from Vista being a very cool experience. HP? hahahahahahahaha. Yeah right. And finally... DRM. Yes folks, DRM is the future of entertainment media. By God it's going to be just like it was only a few short years ago... We'll have to pay for movies and music, hell MAYBE even software! Oh no! And yeah I suppose we can stress out that the iTunes I buy today might not work on the Plays For Sure device that takes over the world tomorrow but I really wasn't expecting it to. That'd be like trying to shove my cassettes into my CD player. The entertainment industry rapes its own customers, why is everyone so surprised by this? They've done it for longer than any of us have been alive and they'll do it long after we're gone.

Screw the pledge, I wanted to play Counterstrike and I'm not about to give another dime to Dell - having just given them a boatload of money at this time last year for two crap computers that didn't last more than 3 months each. I loathe Windows but find it useful for a few odd tasks here and there that Virtual PC ran adequately. The idea that if I want to play a game or two should justify my buying a Dell, an Xbox 360, whatever - well, that's just stupid. Why? I can play the best of the PC world on a Mac now (whereas I could only play about 60% of the best games before on it if I waited nearly a year for them to be released). There's no sense in that arguement. PC's have great games, and if given the opportunity to play them - hey why not? I've been running dualboot XP/Mac for 3 days and that's been about it. I ran Internet Explorer once to get a patch and was quickly reminded of why I left Windows in the first place... But these Intel mac's boot so fast (at least the iMac does, I dont have a MacBook just yet) that I can kill Windows and be back typing in Pages in a matter of a few seconds. Life is good. This whole experience has more clearly defined for me what each OS is good for.

Dvorak is a dweeb and Apple has done way too much lately to jump ship on OS X. I *DO* agree with the point about Virtual PC though, that's all this is when it comes right down to it - an alternative. There were those of us who used Virtual PC rather religiously (whether it was fast or not - which it wasn't) because we needed both a Mac and Windows PC with us while we're on the go. It satisfied that need and now this can too. While it obviously opens up a lot of doors into the world of gaming, etc. for Mac users, I seriously doubt that the long term impact is going to be much different than it already is (90% of the games out there will still be PC only and that's unlikely to change anytime soon regardless of what Apple does). Sure, it's a heckuva lot faster than Virtual PC but if you love OS X is this really going to change your life? No, not really. I further loathe the idea that, just like Virtual PC, I'm having to shove a damn Symantec product installer CD into my Mac once again so I don't get plagued with all the virus crap out there... Once again I'm doing 3 hours of Windows XP updates, once again I'm checking for spyware and defragging this stupid partition... Is it a good idea? Sure, I love Half-Life 2. Is it going to replace OS X in my world? Not a chance. I need/want/use both and this is a great solution. It won't kill OS X, it won't help out Microsoft, and Dvorak will continue to be wrong about just about everything.

I still have one, a 1040ST, somewhere. I went through a few of 'em, customer service and warranties at the time not being what they are today. Who puts joystick and mouse ports UNDER the computer though? C'mon!

Yeah.... OK!.... And now back to the topic at hand.... You mean to tell me that those comfortable little chairs around the iMac table were for kids? Then answer me this, why the hell can I play Doom 3 and Unreal Tournament on said iMac's? If you think Americans utterly disregard foreign cultures, then you obviously haven't seen what we're sometimes capable of doing to our own.

Another downside to releasing early, with a little background information included... I've estimated that in the past 15 years I have owned over a dozen game systems - heck I bought a Sega Saturn for $500 on release day in 95, dropped $800 on 3DO, etc. and it doesn't stop there, I've dumped countless thousands into games - hundreds of them. Having said that, the downside to releasing early is quite simple, Microsoft simply does no innovate. Period. Not their video game dept. at least. The whole XBOX 360 thing, much like the regular old XBOX before it simply bores the pants off me. Wow, gee, now its able to do what my gaming PC has been able to do for the past year. Big deal. How many FPS games can I really play at this point? The whole industry needs a kick in the ass these days, none of this is revolutionary at all, just more of the same with a few more polygons per second and (ooh ooh!) 20 more shadows on-screen at once. Woo. In walking by the demo display with my wife, we were still uncertain if we were watching an actual XBOX 360 game or an older XBOX game playing ON a 360. Another guy standing watching mentioned "man that's a great TV, too bad they aren't showing movies on it". I suspect that once the dust settles, the MS name will do little to get XBOX out of the #2 spot. They're hip, sure, with geeks but who else? Do I really need a sequel to Perfect Dark? I hadn't even thought of that game in 5 years. And hence, the mistake of releasing early. If you're a company not known for innovation then it's usually wiser to wait and see what everyone else is going to do and rip it off, rather than just release a seriously boring and uninspired product. Does PS3 look any better? Couldn't say... the industry is so stagnant now that I have a very hard time even paying attention.

I think you'll see input divided into two different camps entirely. 1. Voice will become the norm for home users, perhaps even a combination of voice/retina-scan. For the casual users this is already possible but just not as well implemented as it could be. Casual users don't need fancy 8-button commands or much else. I know I still get a kick out of telling my Mac to "Open My Browser" from time to time. The capability is there, it just needs refining. Combined with a retina scanner this would be fantastic. Your voice giving the application commands, your eyes telling the browser which article to focus on. Even more fun to see will be how the web porn industry uses this, lol. 2. Pro users require far more speed and control and therefore they are far more likely to don the cool gloves, etc. - for use in conjunction with or without the voice/eye commands. This opens the possibilities of two hand control as well, allowing anyone with the dexterity the ability to multitask.

Now Steve, just think how inflated those figures will get once there is some truly worthwhile content at higher resolution... Get me the CSI's, or music videos from someone other than Dokken, and we're in business. Better still, get me the ability to download FULL-LENGTH Pixar material. It'll still be interesting to see what a movie costs, I doubt it'll be $1.99 - unless it's an expiring rental.