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New iPods and Pro Machines?

Lynxpro said:
Bite your tongue. The A1000 shipped with weak 256k of memory while the first Atari ST, the 520ST shipped STANDARD with 512k. And the 1040ST was the world's first personal computer with 1 megabyte of memory STANDARD and cost $1000.
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And I was talking about A500, not A1000. besides, alter A1000's did ship with 512KB of RAM standard.

And in those times, the ST blazed away at 8Mhz versus the Amiga at 7.16Mhz on the same processor.
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true, but Amiga had dedicated chips for video, sound and other things. While the ST had MARGINALLY faster CPU, Amiga's had dedicated co-processors for several tasks. You could say that ST relied on brute force, whereas Amiga relied on elegance. But then again, even on the "brute force"-department, ST was only marginally faster than Amiga was (8MHz vs. 7.16MHz).
 
ininjacorndog said:
Ive been waiting for apple to realease a powerbook update for two months now. I hope its freaking soon.
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I've been waiting 10 1/2 months, for an update I'd be willing to fork over ≈$3k USD for. :(
 
ajwitte said:
The click wheel buttons are real buttons. The wheel deflects ~1mm when you click it. Perhaps you were thinking of the 3G 'Pod?
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Yes, I know they move when you press them. Making out the separate button without looking (say when it's in your pocket) is the problem.

It's not that big of a deal though. Now the 3G generation was a huuuuuge step backwards in usability.
 
ZorPrime said:
I've been waiting 10 1/2 months, for an update I'd be willing to fork over ≈$3k USD for. :(
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Same here, I almost bought the updates in January, but they were far from what I was hoping. Here's to the dream that all on earth may one day enjoy the happiness of an Apple POWERBOOK!!!
 
LimeiBook86 said:
Some people are expecting video Podcasts soon but, I have to burst this bubble. There are a lot of problems, video podcasts won't be as easy to distribute as audio ones are...even if a company sponsored the podcast (like lets say AOL) they are still giving you a lot of bandwidth to burn, costing them almost 3x more than an audio podcast.
................
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What are you talking about? There are already Video Podcasts on iTunes. So why shouldn't come what already is there? :cool: :rolleyes:
 
Lynxpro said:
I was an Atari ST owner. However, I really was impressed with the sound capabilities of the Apple IIGS at the time. Great stuff. But too bad that computer was at an evolutionary dead-end since the Mac was the future of Apple and just about everyone outside of the K-12 educational system understood that.

My true regret over the whole situation is that Atari and Commodore both could not see the necessity in unifying their 16/32 bit systems. Had both companies created a single platform, I think we'd all be in a better situation computer wise in terms of ease of use. The Atari/Commodore standard would've eventually brought Apple's prices in line for the Macs and kicked their engineering team into overdrive and made competitive products, plus it would've put a damper on Windows computers in the homes since nobody would've bought a Packard Bell at the time.

Of course, such a vibrant platform would've tied up all the developers in Europe and thus Linux would not be where its at today because of it. However, I think in response, OS X's audio and video capabilities would be even better than they are today.
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Exactly...the GS's sound capabilities are unmatched even today, with its wonderful Ensoniq chip and 16-channel built-in synthesizer...as you said, the GS was at a dead-end, paying a sort of last homage to the Apple II line...I still have a '89/90 A+ Magazine where Sculley publishes an open letter to Apple II users in general, stating that the line would be "supported for years to come", hehehe...we were at the advent of the Mac LC line, and Apple even sold for some time the Apple II emulation card, since Apple II users were all the time ranting at Mac users...interesting times.

As for gaming, the GS was probably the king of ports...anyone who has seen Rocket Ranger and Arkanoid II for the GS may attest this...these games were far ahead of any similar offer to Amigas and Ataris...and the complexity of dual mode-treatment between Apple II ordinary programs and IIGS ones was nothing short of amazing...
 
Evangelion said:
And I was talking about A500, not A1000. besides, alter A1000's did ship with 512KB of RAM standard.



true, but Amiga had dedicated chips for video, sound and other things. While the ST had MARGINALLY faster CPU, Amiga's had dedicated co-processors for several tasks. You could say that ST relied on brute force, whereas Amiga relied on elegance. But then again, even on the "brute force"-department, ST was only marginally faster than Amiga was (8MHz vs. 7.16MHz).
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Yeah, the Amiga's blitter was so much better than Atari's poor effort... plus the Amiga had a real OS with pre-emptive multitasking... which Windows didn't have until Windows 95 (over 10 years later).
 
Shattering Fast said:
Well, nine months before october is the holiday season, wouldn't people be more like to have sex in January/December then any other time of the year?
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Actually, the exact date of conception for an Oct. 5th birthday (assuming the birth occurs on the expected day), would be New Year's Eve. So you are more correct than you realized. Certainly people are having sex New Year's Eve.

EDIT: Somebody beat me to it. :eek:
 
aikomhoch said:
Actually, the exact date of conception for an Oct. 5th birthday (assuming the birth occurs on the expected day), would be New Year's Eve. So you are more correct than you realized. Certainly people are having sex New Year's Eve.

EDIT: Somebody beat me to it. :eek:
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My wife and I are expecting our first baby tomorrow, October 5th!!! :D
 
I am hoping for a drop in monitor prices as well - Apple makes the best monitors but a tad expensive for me to justify a new (larger!) one - and yes, when it comes to monitors size does matter...
 
~Shard~ said:
Just because IBM couldn't deliver in a technological capacity does not make Apple cowardly. You try shoe-horning in that hot, server-class chip into a laptop. Apple could only work with what IBM gave them. Is Intel cowardly for not cramming their Itanium 2 into a laptop? :p :cool: I don't know if taking a "creative risk" and putting a G5 in a laptop would go over to well when users' legs started melting... ;)

As for a next-to-nothing speed bump, who says this will definitely be the case? If Apple implements a 7448 architecture then the PowerBook could definitely receive more than just a "whimper of a speed bump" - better than just another marginal 30 MHz bump on the existing chipset at least.

Oh well, perhaps we'll know tomorrow...
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I just don't buy it. There are numerous reports about how Apple took advantage of being one of the only buyers of PPC chips and negociated reduced purchase prices from chips by manufacturers ie, Motorola/Freescale, IBM.

This reduced price purchasing allowed Apple to make more profit margin on machines it sold but it didn't allow IBM & Motorola to reinvest in R&D. The chip manufacturers could not make a decent profit on these chips and improve them at the same time. When IBM approached Apple about kicking in money for R&D and development of the new chip technology, Apple told them to take a hike.

If Apple had put more money in the PPC chip like they did the low profit iTunes store, we would have had a G5 PB and a 3 Ghz PM.

Besides IBM announced a new low-power G5 chip back in
July. Why can't Apple use that chip in the PB? IF you tell me that chip doesn't exist then I would tell you that is a lie. I have a friend who has worked on this chip and it is a reality. There is also a possibility that you will see another computer company releasing a Linux machine using this chip very soon.

I restate my comment, Apple is being cowardly by not taking the product risks on their computer line like they do on their ipod/ music products. :rolleyes:
 
huntson said:
they are not rleasing the G5 power book latops becasue they can't. That is oneof the reasosn they are switching to Intel. IBM can't make cool enough G5 processors for the laptop.
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They have since July. :rolleyes:
 
BRLawyer said:
As for gaming, the GS was probably the king of ports...anyone who has seen Rocket Ranger and Arkanoid II for the GS may attest this...these games were far ahead of any similar offer to Amigas and Ataris...and the complexity of dual mode-treatment between Apple II ordinary programs and IIGS ones was nothing short of amazing...
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You obviously never saw the Amiga version of Rocket Ranger and Arkanoid II because if you had you would never make this statement.

The Amiga versions wer far superior, delivered 4096 colors, and had a hi-res interlaced mode that blew away the Apple IIGS.

The company that produced Rocket Ranger, "(CinemaWare I think)" developed on an Amiga and wrote for the Amiga. These were later ported to the AppleIIGS.

Your comments make me think that you never really saw or used an Amiga. It sounds more like you read about them in MacWorld magazine.
 
digitalbiker said:
They have since July. :rolleyes:
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Man, give it up already. So IBM comes out and says it has a "low-power" g5 running at a whopping 1.6ghz? Who the hell cares. Why should Apple design and manufacture, a complety new motherboard and surrounding chipset, around hardware that is marginal at best. To satiate the appetite of some delusional fans, who haven't noticed that Apple is perhaps telling the truth when they say the powerpc roadmap insofar as low power is murky?

It cost intel BILLIONS for r&d of the Pentium-M, and this took on the order of a couple years. So why should Apple, who is exponentially smaller than Intel, bear the sole price for R&D of their future, when it can do the smart thing in aligning themsleves to be in a posistion of at least parity with the rest of the world. We're languishing far behind, and a single core 1.6g5 at this point is comical. Just imho...no offense:confused: :)
 
Oh............I sure hope so!

I really really really hope that they come out with a new iPod next week! I just turned mine in for fixing at Best Buy under my warranty so that means I'll probably just get a new one like I have the other three times! It would be nice to have video to watch video of my family from afar. I wonder how they would incorporate that into the menus.
 
Argh, I need a new Mac. I've been waiting for a new Powermac, and almost bought a refurb, but decided to wait. I keep hearing next Tues... I should know better by now. :p
 
271 said:
for a long long time atari's had the best midi timing of any computer. many people still sequence with them (norman cook = fatboyslim) and many many well known records owe their creation to the atari.
side note.. logic on atari was called notator or was it creator back then???
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Well, I know Cubase was definitely on the platform. That's still on my things-to-do-list. Get Cubase for the Atari Falcon and use that DSP chip (the same one used in the NeXT, btw) for something.

Too bad Apple couldn't pick up the mantle and release the Hotz Keyboard. That thing was awesome. And while the software itself is available for sale to turn any keyboard into a Hotz Keyboard, it still would be better to see an actual shipped product.
 
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