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MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

arstechnica.com

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Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#481

Post by mark_integerdsv »

rbanffy wrote: post #453
X-Istence wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because familiarising yourself with software that costs thousands of dollars for free is kind of fun? The fact that I have at least part of the knowledge makes me more valuable for an employer.

The real question is why would you want to be valuable to someone who uses Exchange and Sharepoint ;-)

Uuhm... Not to be overly flippant but me, my wife and my two daughters as well as my bootstrapped startup are supported by my work for a multinational financial organization. The technologies you mention essentially run this organization from an information delivery aspect.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#482

Post by orangecat »

phaus wrote: post #279

While the new laptops seem very nice, the Mac Pro is a blatant attempt to insult the customer's intelligence. A video card from 2009, seriously? A quick search of newegg.com revealed that this card is so old and obsolete that they don't even sell it anymore. I understand that graphics cards aren't the most important thing in the world to many of Apple's customers, but there is absolutely no reason that they don't at…

Apple doesn't want normal customers to even consider the Mac Pro. It exists to milk high-end pro users who are locked into Mac-based ecosystems, and possibly to make the rest of the lineup look less expensive.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#483

Post by orangecat »

pippy wrote: post #320

I get little hints of Apple losing it's finesse. The plugs are on either side of the new MacBooks, a detail that Apple previously didn't miss. And two Thunderbolts? Does anyone here actually have a thunderbolt device?

And two Thunderbolts? Does anyone here actually have a thunderbolt device?

The most common use is probably external monitors, via mini-DisplayPort adapters.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#484

Post by cheatercheater »

pbrumm wrote: post #423
masklinn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why have a HDMI port if you have two Thunderbolt ports? > [...] > In fact, why not just have three Thunderbolt ports Avoids needing a dongle when plugging into an HDTV or an HDMI overhead projector, I'm guessing. They probably considered the pros and cons and ended up thinking two TB ports were enough and HDMI was requested often enough it would make sense, especially as they'd axed both GigE and FW800. And one of…

I just noticed that it doesn't have a GigE port. that is just switching an hdmi adapter for a GigE - thunderbolt cable. it was probably necessary to get the form factor, but it is annoying.

I find ethernet ports on laptops to be the most annoying port ever, since the ethernet plug is not robust at all. They break very quickly and you're left with an intermittent connection. If I use a laptop that I move a lot, I'll either use a docking station for the ethernet (thinkpad docking stations aren't so bad) or use usb (because the plug is so resilient). Now with being able to use thunderbolt I have another option that won't break so easily.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#485

Post by cheatercheater »

jonknee wrote: post #113
cheatercheater wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably missing something: why have a HDMI port if you have two Thunderbolt ports? In fact, why not just have three Thunderbolt ports - even if one is only going to carry DP and not PCI?

Why would you need three Thunderbolt ports? The devices chain pretty well, if you have an external monitor for example it will also have a Thunderbolt port that other devices can be plugged into. Not needing another adapter to use HDMI is great. You already need one for Ethernet and FireWire.

I don't know: can I use a thunderbolt port to chain monitors?

About the dongles: in my use I usually take the laptop to the same places all the time, so I just buy the right cable (here it would be a thunderbolt -> hdmi cable i guess). If I go to random places where I need to hook up to a monitor I won't know whether they'll have a hdmi cable just as much as I don't know if they'll have a thunderbolt cable, so I need to carry a cable anyways. What's the difference whether it's a hdmi-hdmi or thunderbolt-hdmi cable? They're likely to have DVI or DP anyway, so you still need to take the dongles with you.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#486

Post by ericd »

taligent wrote: post #469
ericd wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried pretty hard to find that, since I'd been able to do that for a previous version, but I came up empty. If you're telling me I could have avoided giving up SL, I'm pretty sad about that.

Visit http://connect.apple.com It has ALL versions of Xcode.

Which seems to confirm that XCode 4.3 isn't available for SL :-( .

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#487

Post by masklinn »

pbrumm wrote: post #423
masklinn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why have a HDMI port if you have two Thunderbolt ports? > [...] > In fact, why not just have three Thunderbolt ports Avoids needing a dongle when plugging into an HDTV or an HDMI overhead projector, I'm guessing. They probably considered the pros and cons and ended up thinking two TB ports were enough and HDMI was requested often enough it would make sense, especially as they'd axed both GigE and FW800. And one of…

I just noticed that it doesn't have a GigE port. that is just switching an hdmi adapter for a GigE - thunderbolt cable. it was probably necessary to get the form factor, but it is annoying.

> it was probably necessary to get the form factor

Aye, the whole laptop has something like 0.05" over a standard ethernet port, so you'd have to carve the lid or something.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#488

Post by AncientPC »

barrkel wrote: post #450
AncientPC wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about package managers? Windows management (e.g. Xmonad)? You don't like the KDE/Gnome defaults and don't want to spend time customizing. Fonts? Install from package manager. Themes? Install from package manager. Or download from gnome-look.org and install using gnome-tweak-tool. Yet you go out of your way to tweak Windows to your liking. I don't have driver issues, but that's from researching purchases before b…

Window management: I prefer cascaded windows (the bottom-left corners effectively start working like tabs - see http://blog.barrkel.com/2009/11/on-difficulty-of-setting-win... ). Tiled windows are a waste of screen space; I have far more open windows than can ever fit tiled. And what about package managers? Cygwin has a package manager; combined with cygports, it has just about everything I need, resolves dependencie…

> Tiled windows are a waste of screen space; I have far more open windows than can ever fit tiled.

That's what multiple workspaces are for. Tiling WMs are especially great when working with large and/or multiple monitors. You're not forced to always use tile mode, you can easily switch between layouts via hotkey: http://xmonad.org/tour.html

Also, a lot of smart people disagree with you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3964530

>

You don't want to update for fear of breaking something, yet you admit your problems stem from never updating.

Have you thought about Debian Stable/Ubuntu LTS releases?

Are you really complaining that Debian/Ubuntu package availability? Even if the main servers disappeared, you're ignoring the fact that there's plenty of mirrors. What happens if microsoft.com disappeared?

>

Hit Ctrl -: http://i.imgur.com/0xWSw.png

Explorer looks less dense, doesn't have tabs, split panes, copy queuing, real file modification tracking (Explorer requires F5 to see changes). It doesn't auto-adjust column widths, look at file size as an example. Not to mention the explorer.exe process doubles as the WM, so when it crashes all windows get reset.

Nautilus has a better hotkeys. Alt + Home to jump back to home directory, F9 to see symlinks to common directories, Ctrl + H to toggle hidden files, Ctrl + 1/2/3 to change views.

You could have not chosen a worse program to compare between the two OSes.

>

That's a result of market dominance, not anything intrinsically different between Windows and Linux. Congrats!

Have you tried installing a clean version Windows 7 on a laptop? Have you noticed how many proprietary drivers you have to download and install? I did this a few months ago with a new X220 and spent 4 hours finding, downloading, and installing drivers. If Lenovo.com disappeared, I'd be SOL.

Take any laptop and clean install Ubuntu and Windows without internet access. You will have a better working system with Ubuntu.

Due to lack of proprietary drivers, Linux actually has much better support for older hardware. Not to mention a large source of Windows BSODs are due to low quality, 3rd party drivers running in the kernel.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#489

Post by msutherl »

radley wrote: post #462
msutherl wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The move toward integrated, worry-free, easy to use products for consumers is a good thing. In order to keep such things being developed, Apple will need to provide an adequate development environment. Thus, Apple has an incentive to keep both worlds alive. The only thing to worry about is that, because they only have the incentive to keep their development ecosystem merely adequate, we won't see much improvement in…

If you did anything with media you'd have a different view.

I'm actually a designer and musician. Apple's recent media production tools are excellent. Logic, FCP, iMovie, Keynote, Quartz Composer, etc. are best in class. The move toward iOS influenced software is a net win IMO. Fewer details to worry about, more fluid interfaces, and command line utilities from the Linux community aren't going anywhere.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#490

Post by msutherl »

X-Istence wrote: post #321
msutherl wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The move toward integrated, worry-free, easy to use products for consumers is a good thing. In order to keep such things being developed, Apple will need to provide an adequate development environment. Thus, Apple has an incentive to keep both worlds alive. The only thing to worry about is that, because they only have the incentive to keep their development ecosystem merely adequate, we won't see much improvement in…

Apple decoupled the compiler/command line tools from Xcode specifically so that projects like MacPorts and HomeBrew can continue to exist on the Apple platform. There was a post on this a while back on HN! I absolutely love HomeBrew, it is modeled a lot after MacPorts/FreeBSD ports tree and provides a way to compile packages from source (some are even hosted as bottles... no compiling required). It is an excellent to…

I like Homebrew to, but compare it to Arch Linux's package manager and user community and you'll see that it's far from competitive.
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