Robinhood's Profile

The rating scale of 7.9 was calculated on a Pentium.

bikemike: just because it could be a lot easier doesn't mean Chris is wrong to mess around with partitions and reinstalls and all that - it's his computer! Most people aren't masochists, but that doesn't mean masochists are wrong to do things the rest of us would find painful. I agree that most users would be better off just to leave the computer the way it was at 11:53 am, use the migration assistant, and be done with it. However, it looks like Chris wanted to try things out that most users wouldn't do, and he's learned some things from that process. Most engineers I know have a long history of pulling things apart to find out how they worked... and some of those things were never put back together again. As long as it was their own things they pulled apart, who am I to complain? The Mac Way of doing things is a very pleasant and easy way to do most things... but it's a product, not a religion. Heresy can be rewarding too! Incidentally, I agree with you that partitions on a Mac are generally unnecessary (except for a huge disk in an old system), and that virtualization is a better approach to running Win on Mac for anything except games... but if someone else wants to put themselves through a more painful and involved process to achieve something else, perhaps they'll discover something I'll later appreciate not having to discover for myself.

Once again, the 17" model misses the bet to use some of that HUGE amount of base space for a real numeric keypad. I don't mind that my 12" iBook doesn't have one, but what excuse does a 17" widescreen "laptop" have?

Damn! Steve Jobs farted and I missed it!?? Have you got a video link???

The folks crying armageddon over the effect of dual-booting on developers are - I think - really missing the point. There isn't a giant, nebulous mass of developers "out there" who feel the "pressure" to develop for that 4% of market share because otherwise that 4% of market share can't use their wonderful software. Developers produce software for Mac because - now listen carefully - people want to run their software on Mac. That's Mac OS, not just a white box with an Apple logo running Windows. The big producers like Microsoft and Adobe already say they'll keep developing, and what about the smaller ones? There aren't really that many small developers, other than the open-source community, who develop actively for both Windows and Mac (or Windows and anything else): it tends to be either/or, and that won't change with the advent of dual booting Macs. It's honestly not much of a leap to take that pledge... I looked with interest at the announcement of Boot Camp, then more or less ignored it. I never shut down my current Macs, and I never plan to shut down Mac OS X on my Intel-based Macs. Dual-booting is for people stuck on less flexible hardware who need to go between Windows (for games) and *nix (for a decent OS). Virtualization, now *that's* a different ball-game. That allows some utility use of a near-native speed virtual Windows machine, without having to turn my Mac into another piece of Wintel crapware. What would I use virtualization for? Probably just to deal with an Access database for work. That's a perfect example of why the Intel Macs stand to make big gains, and why we can stop wailing about deserting developers: Access has NEVER been developed for Mac, and that's despite many years of existence with no dual-bootable Mac/Windows hardware. It's produced by a major software developer who makes plenty of other Mac software (indeed, Mac software better than its own Windows counterparts - Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, etc). You say developers won't port to Mac because now a Mac can dual-boot to Windows to run their software? Only the developers that never would have ported to Mac regardless. And guess what: all the developers that already develop BETTER software for Mac, or ONLY for Mac... well, don't expect them to switch to Windows. :-) Yes, it's all a lot of change, and more than a little chaotic, but as J.D. says in Heathers: "chaos is what killed the dinosaurs, darlin'!" Tigers and leopards... those definitely aren't dinosaurs.