evilcat's Profile

  • Oct 27, 2012
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Latest comments made by: evilcat

  • The Apple TV built in to an Apple HDTV set makes sense to me. They have the LCD manufacturing contacts from all those Cinema Displays, laptops and iMacs. They have the perfect industrial design team to make the TV look sexy, as in B&) sexy rather than Samsung taking a standard design and making it 2" deep... and if they can sell the TV with all the Apple TV functionality included, suddenly you have an over-powered TV rather than an under-powered set top box. One caveat though: Will Steve really let an Apple product live/die on a local basis? I mean... digital terrestrial tuner in the US, Freeview tuner in the UK, and so on. There are numerous standards out there and Apple like to pick one and only one. This would mean we end up with a US-only TV, most likely. It's like expecting them to create a digital radio... XFM or Sirius? Or DAB for Europe? That's the one thing makes me think this might not happen.
    evilcat had this to say on Dec 15, 2009 Posts: 66
    Time for Apple to Make a TV
  • Probably. They need to do to the iPhone what Apple did to the Walkman, and work on something even better.
    evilcat had this to say on Jul 22, 2009 Posts: 66
    Is it Already Too Late for the iPhone Wannabes?
  • Just because Google and Microsoft offer the products doesn't mean they will be a success: remember MS Bob? Outside of the USA, people are very protective of their privacy, hence the debate in the UK over ID cards - people are outraged at the idea of having any kind of ID card which a law enforcement officer can request to see. In the USA, the idea of being outraged when everybody carries a driver's license is completely alien. European countries have data protection laws and they are quite strict. In the US, once you give your data to a company/bank/whatever it seems they can do what they like with it. Perhaps in the US the idea of having your docs on a MS server is not upsetting, but I don't see it flying in Europe. I don't see
  • Chris Howard: 'Adobe has an online image editing app called Photoshop Express. ' Fair enough, good point. But how about editing that wedding video and burning it to DVD? 'Many organizations run thin-client technology on Citrix or Windows Terminal services. ' Have you used these? I used Citrix at a large company and it was painful. Unbelievably slow. At times, almost unusable. Also, they are still running full versions of Windows, just they're running from a central server, like using Parallels, but one server is shunting out 300 VM's at once. And those VM's are using desktop software. Until you can get Powerpoint, Visio, Project, those custom-built Access applications that always run so badly, and everything else running under Chrome OS, there's no competition. Citrix et al are about giving more control to the IT department, not about handing it over to a third party like Google.
  • Sorry, but I call 'bullshit' here. If you compare the state of Windows to the state of the Apple OS in early 2000, MS had a clearly better, more advanced OS: Windows 2000 on a Celeron knocked seven shades out of a green G3 with OS 9. I remember our studio's graphic designer being jealous of and wowed by this cheap, £850 PC I brought into the office. Google Chrome OS will only shake up the world of bloggers who think they are tech experts. In the corporate world, no-one is getting rid of their desktop system. Your parents can't edit the photos from their digital camera with a web based OS. The Chrome OS is for the kind of people who like to play with Linux in their spare time. It doesn't touch the mass market, and Apple chase a certain segment of the mass market, not tech geeks. That's why most Apple rumours these days refer to the iPhone rather than the next development in the Mac line. Apple don't follow, they innovate. At the end of the day, Chrome OS is just another version of a trend Netscape tried (and failed) to make work in the mid-to-late 1990's. Why would Apple become the next company to attempt this? Let Google spend the cash and make absolutely NO difference to anybody... Except so-called tech experts who can't even get a job reporting on tech issues for a real publication (no offense to anyone on Applematters - I'm talking about TechCrunch, Ars Technica etc etc). In fact, aren't Google turning into Sun? Great R&D;, a great place to work if you want to explore your every tech whim... but in 90% of cases the products are never commercially viable. All Google can do is give you 'free' products which harvest your private info to give you better targeted adverts, like when gMail scrapes your email contents to better serve you advertising. Apple is in the business, like Microsoft, of turning a profit. Google is not. The Google OS will never make an impact on the mainstream world, therefor Apple will not be pushed by it to make something new. They're already working on something new. We have no idea what it is, but like the iMac, iPod and iPhone it will make a difference to everybody. Google? They'll stick to finding ways to sell advertising.
  • No threat. Just another windowing system on Linux, there to compete with KDE, Gnome and XFCE, plus all the other versions out there. That means they're just going to take another slice out of the small slice currently owned by Red Hat, Canonical et al.
    evilcat had this to say on Jul 08, 2009 Posts: 66
    Google OS Poses Double Whammy Threat to Microsoft
  • Surely if a member of the public makes the error of believing a Netbook to be a fully-functional laptop computer, and this is because companies like Acer have not been quick to fix this misconception in their advertising.... That means said consumer does no research before buying, and so would also believe those Microsoft Laptop Hunter ads and buy a PC instead? Therefore making NO opportunity for Apple, since they sell the iPhone as a jumped-up phone, not a pocket computer, and MacBooks cost too much for the average consumer?
  • The puck! Ha ha ha :) And how about the so-called 'Mighty Mouse?' The clit on mine dried up within 2 months and became unusable. I actually use a Microsoft cordless mouse with my Mac (heresy, I know). It's the old 'innovate then evolve' argument, isn't it? The last Mac innovation was the original iMac, which is now evolving. The iPod was an innovation and now it's evolving. Let's see... iMac in '98, iPod in 2001, iPhone in 2007... which means now the iPhone is merely evolving, the next big innovation may arrive between 2010 and 2013. Now that would be something to get excited about.
    evilcat had this to say on Jun 12, 2009 Posts: 66
    Want to Understand the iPhone Updates? Look at the Mac
  • I second Beeb's comment about being done with Apple hardware, and temper it with the fact I couldn't give a flying fudge about the iPhone. Let's see them make a good candybar phone instead of something feels like a paperback pamphlet when it's pressed against your ear.
  • What I have noticed since I started buying Macs (for myself and work) in 2004 is a gradual separation of their products, so that less of them overlap with one another, and they are more clearly defined as 'pro' or consumer.' Generally, the only time you see a price overlap is with the top-end of one model and the bottom end of the next, and this exists either to have you pay a ridiculous amount of money, or up-sell you to the next line. Just like when your car insurance firm tells you it'll be £3,000 to insure your car -- they don't want to insure you but if you're willing to pay, well... In the same way, who would spend almost a grand on a Mac Mini? They want you to get the lower end iMac for the same / slightly less and they're hoping you'll add a couple of small upgrades and make a few hundred more out of you. I also get the impression that they design from the top end down. It would be feasible to have a quad core iMac but that won't happen... until the base Mac Pro is based on a six-core Xeon. Apple have firmly held beliefs about 'pro' and 'consumer.' All laptops are glossy, unless you are a photographer, but they have no intention of letting someone who carries three grand of camera around with them get away with a 15" MacBook Pro. You're a pro? Prepare to pay like a pro then. A few years back I worked at an agency with five graphic designers. Two were running early Power Mac G5's with dual 1.8's in them. Those machines were 18 months old and still running fine. The other three were running old G4 Power Macs, 500 - 800MHz. Everyone ran CRT monitors. Those machines were just too slow. We bought two Dell 20" monitors (back when they had the same panels as the Apple Cinema Displays) for 1/4 the Apple price and they went to the G5s. The three G4 PMs were replaced with 20" Intel iMacs. Each one ran at about 2GHz, and between the 20" panels (IPS back then, I believe), had 2Gb RAM (double what the G4's had) and the designers loved them. That's no option now, though. Glossy screens? No good for colour accuracy. With one design choice, Apple have said 'No. You shall not use our consumer Macs for professional work. How dare you get by on £1,000 of kit? Our Mac Pros are £1,900 and this is what you must pay.' Throw in the choice of nasty, cheap TFT panels and there's no choice. Mac Pro or nothing. The point I am making with this rather long-winded post is that Apple already have a 15" laptop. It's a MacBook Pro. And we Apple users are dumb enough to do as they tell us... like bvdecicco said above, they needed a 15" and so they bought a MB Pro. Why would Apple make a 15" MacBook and lose that extra few hundred dollars?
    evilcat had this to say on Jun 02, 2009 Posts: 66
    15 Inch -The Missing MacBook
  • I'm a Mac because the OS stays out of my way and lets me get on with doing my work. Windows XP systems used to crash up to three times a day and Vista keeps annoying me with pop-ups letting me know how efficient and safe it's being, right when I'm in the middle of typing. So I guess I'm a Mac for OS X. Tiger, not Leopard :)
    evilcat had this to say on May 27, 2009 Posts: 66
    Top 10 Reasons Why I'm a Mac
  • jocknerd >> Since I want the OS to simply stay out of my way and let me run my apps without being annoyed by it, Windows 7 starts to look quite attractive. Then take the case that Photoshop CS4 is true 64-bit on the PC, but on the Mac it's not. Even Adobe don't give a flying fudge about OS X. They're having to write CS5 from the ground up since they just Carbonized the OS 9 version 5 years ago and charged us $1,000's for it! Let's face it, us Mac owner get gouged. That's all there is to it.
    evilcat had this to say on May 20, 2009 Posts: 66
    Apple, Please Give Us More Bang for Our Buck
  • Robomac Infidel >> Unfortunately, we're more than a few years away from blanket fibre-optic coverage. I can tell you now that it will be at least 10 years before it covers the UK, especially since the dreaded recession hit, and companies are holding off spending. I just moved to the US, and there's (irony of ironies) a Verizon flagship sotre in Harbor East specifically to sell FIOS... but they screwed up and FIOS isn't in place yet. Those guys have been there for six months with no product to sell! I will be happy once your utopia arrives, though. Count me in.
    evilcat had this to say on May 10, 2009 Posts: 66
    What Apple TV Could Learn From The iPhone
  • I wish that people would stop fixating on the iPhone/AT&T;combination. Look how many partners Apple has for the iPhone across the world. It is O2 in the UK. They are nothing to do with AT&T;. In each market, there is a different provider. They'll have to do the same with Apple TV. I moved to the US from the UK late last year and I'm stunned to find that your choice of TV is from your cable provider (and you don't get to choose which one) or satellite (if the building you're in will let you have a dish). In our apartment, that gives me a choice of one TV provider. Since cable, satellite and digital use different technology, Apple would either have to bundle three converters with the Apple TV or make you pay extra for the one you need. I have no idea what that would mean for the decoding/processing software. That's just for the US with NTSC. Then they have to deal with PAL broadcasts in the Europe and Japan, and SECAM in France. Frankly, the DFVR route is a dud. If they would let the AppleTV use an existing TV tuner/recording solution (such as the EyeTV), that would be better. The solution seems then to be the Hulu/NetFlix route. But guess what? They want to provide that content through iTunes. They wouldn't even let the South Park boys provide video clips to the iPhone though the app store because they want you to buy into the iTunes ecosystem. And that will never change. Someone internal at Apple said the AppleTV is a hobby. I think you're right, Hadley, anbd it could be so much more... But expect it to stay an Apple hobby.
    evilcat had this to say on May 07, 2009 Posts: 66
    What Apple TV Could Learn From The iPhone
  • Beeblebrox said "I’m a little baffled that the Apple fanboys keep insisting that the iPhone is not only a substitute, but is actually better than a netbook when the ONLY thing it has going for it is size." The only thing the iPhone proves is that Apple already have their < $400 product and therefore won't produce a Netbook for less than $500. Not that the two products in any way substitute one another practically.
    evilcat had this to say on May 03, 2009 Posts: 66
    6 "Apple Will Never Release a NetBook" Myths Debunked