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Apple Releases Final Mac OS X Mountain Lion to Developers

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Re: Apple Releases Final Mac OS X Mountain Lion to Developers

#61

Post by tensor »

mkaltenecker wrote: post #50
tensor wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that skeuomorphism is only about taste. It's not just a skin, it also removes and limits functionality. I can even give specific examples. If you have lion, go to your address book. It probably opens and lists people on the left with their details on the right. It looks like a book. Can you group people? It's certainly not obvious that such functionality (which is useful!) exists. Now click the red bookmar…

Skeumorphism is purely about looks. If it impacts functionality it’s more than that. If it’s only looks it doesn’t matter and is only about taste.

You cannot just change the definition of a word to suite your argument. Most people consider skeuomorphic design to include both looks and behaviour. Regardless, what I've described is all looks. Address Book still has grouping functionality. It's just been made extremely difficult to use because of the design of the interface.

Further, looks are about much more than just taste. Designs affect how easy it is to understand the information being displayed, or to understand how to use an application. Skeuomorphic design is typically used to try to improve the latter: help people to understand how to use the app. It mimics a physical object because people already know how that object works. This benefit disappears if your skeuomorphic design doesn't actually work like the object it mimics though.

Re: Apple Releases Final Mac OS X Mountain Lion to Developers

#62

Post by yen223 »

mkaltenecker wrote: post #50
tensor wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that skeuomorphism is only about taste. It's not just a skin, it also removes and limits functionality. I can even give specific examples. If you have lion, go to your address book. It probably opens and lists people on the left with their details on the right. It looks like a book. Can you group people? It's certainly not obvious that such functionality (which is useful!) exists. Now click the red bookmar…

Skeumorphism is purely about looks. If it impacts functionality it’s more than that. If it’s only looks it doesn’t matter and is only about taste.

Tensor's point, which I agree with, is that Apple's choice to use skeumorphism has impacted functionality, and is not a good design principal at all.

I would also argue that a lot of their designs look downright ugly to be honest.

Re: Apple Releases Final Mac OS X Mountain Lion to Developers

#63

Post by bstar77 »

dave84 wrote: post #47
bstar77 wrote: post #10

Can anyone comment if airplay is disabled on pre 2011 macs? I'm going to be royally pissed if airplay is disabled because I'm missing some BS drm chip. Hopefully the era of "Jailbreaking" macs has not started.

Check out AirParrot, it's $10. Fullscreen AirPlay audio and video. It works fine on my 2008 Macbook but it gets a little hot and noisy. The lag is noticeable but tolerable, fine for browsing the web but not gaming. Audio/video sync is fine too for watching flash videos or whatever.

Will this work well for movies? I'm mainly trying to simplify the streaming for my 3 year olds dvd library from my iMac to a PS3.

Re: Apple Releases Final Mac OS X Mountain Lion to Developers

#64

Post by bstar77 »

st3fan wrote: post #15
bstar77 wrote: post #10

Can anyone comment if airplay is disabled on pre 2011 macs? I'm going to be royally pissed if airplay is disabled because I'm missing some BS drm chip. Hopefully the era of "Jailbreaking" macs has not started.

DRM Chip? What did that crazy rumour come from?

I apologize, I made the mistake of reading cultofmac a bit too literally. http://www.cultofmac.com/177259/why-cant-macs-older-than-201...

Re: Apple Releases Final Mac OS X Mountain Lion to Developers

#65

Post by bstar77 »

gte910h wrote: post #18
bstar77 wrote: post #10

Can anyone comment if airplay is disabled on pre 2011 macs? I'm going to be royally pissed if airplay is disabled because I'm missing some BS drm chip. Hopefully the era of "Jailbreaking" macs has not started.

Are you talking about being an Airplay source or destination? AirServer functions as a destination already: http://www.airserverapp.com/ For a source, Airfoil works for audio: http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/ It looks like a hardware limitation if you don't have the ISQV, you're SOL.

I need it as a source to stream my son's movies. Getting tired of using PS3 media server. I'd much rather organize the library in iTunes.

Re: Apple Releases Final Mac OS X Mountain Lion to Developers

#66

Post by matthewlyle »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #37
sneak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's vastly better in the DPs. They haven't updated the beta _at all_ since it was released months and months ago.

But still no MSN integration, right? I still have some MSN contacts that forces me to stick to Adium.

I use this: http://cocoon.drinkbrainjuice.com/. It's in free beta right now.

Re: Apple Releases Final Mac OS X Mountain Lion to Developers

#67

Post by hollerith »

cdrxndr wrote: post #33

Just bought a new Macbook Pro and have recently gotten my first taste of Lion. Two words: kernel panic. Hoping for a stability boost on this one. No way my entire overpowered system should crash from running a browser, text edit, and Skype.

Never had Lion kernel panic. In fact, in about 1200 hours of use, I've had to reboot it only once to get it working right again.

Re: Apple Releases Final Mac OS X Mountain Lion to Developers

#68

Post by bstar77 »

bstar77 wrote: post #63
dave84 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out AirParrot, it's $10. Fullscreen AirPlay audio and video. It works fine on my 2008 Macbook but it gets a little hot and noisy. The lag is noticeable but tolerable, fine for browsing the web but not gaming. Audio/video sync is fine too for watching flash videos or whatever.

Will this work well for movies? I'm mainly trying to simplify the streaming for my 3 year olds dvd library from my iMac to a PS3.

I just tried it with an h264 ripped dvd and it's ok, but it's dropping too many frames. I guess the ps3 media server lives on.

Re: Apple Releases Final Mac OS X Mountain Lion to Developers

#69

Post by ken »

dylanvee wrote: post #13
bstar77 wrote: post #10

Can anyone comment if airplay is disabled on pre 2011 macs? I'm going to be royally pissed if airplay is disabled because I'm missing some BS drm chip. Hopefully the era of "Jailbreaking" macs has not started.

AirPlay mirroring relies on Intel Quick Sync Video support in your CPU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video

Good to know, but it's still a bit disappointing that no Mac Pro can do AirPlay.

I wonder if there's a new API coming down the pipe for this. The obvious way to implement AirPlay mirroring, in my mind, would have been to add Quick Sync Video support as an optimization to existing video APIs, and then simply have AirPlay mirroring use that. Then not only could people with lots of free GPU cycles but no Quick Sync Video CPU (alas, like me) use AirPlay mirroring, but other video apps would automatically take advantage of the new performance.

Re: Apple Releases Final Mac OS X Mountain Lion to Developers

#70

Post by pooriaazimi »

taligent wrote: post #2

Something very odd is happening at Apple. Either there is a massive shortage of developers (unlikely) or developers have been moved to a new project (AppleTV ?). Because Mountain Lion and iOS6 are by far the most underwhelming updates yet in terms of features.

The refined App sandbox and new system services (through XPC) are a major under-the-hood change. I don't have time to go through it, but they seem to have changed erything in OS X for XPC (watch WWDC sessions if you're interested).

But I completely agree with your first point. iWork hasn't been updated since 2009... I just can't believe it. It's still not on iCloud so if you want to share files between iOS and iWork on Mac, you have to manually copy and upload them. It's disgusting.

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