- Status
Oh, my, but that's a funny link.<P>Every gets way too much space on Ars, but he's just way too funny; reading his articles is like watching Clinton deny that he had sex with that woman.<P>Some random gems from the stability article:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Consistency - this is critical to stability. [...] Memory Protection - This is a technique to help make your system stable, but it does not guarantee stability in and of itself<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Mac Apps are usually much more stable than PC apps (especially 16bit PC apps - which is still about 70% of the software base).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>On the Mac new OS releases are steps forward -- but with PC's those steps may be forward or backward (many users are bit hard by upgrading).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
"Um, so let's get this straight. In order to eject a Mac floppy or Mac ZIP (or any removeable devices on a Mac), you need to boot the O/S? Ick."<P>Actually I think resteves was dealing with the won't-boot-up situation with this rather than the eject-the-media question... in fact macs automatically eject all media except CDs on shutdown (and if I remember correctly if the mac hangs all media except CDs are also automatically ejected on restart)... for a long time (pre-internet) this simple fact was regarded as a prime contributor to macs resisting viruses that were then often distributed via floppy... infected floppies could not be present at start up! I also rather suspect that Laners mac-guru tech dude was more of a low level acolyte judging by the fact that they figured that disassembling the whole box was the best way to get the reluctant ZIP out. I think both sides of the OS war should try to temper their enthusiasm to tear down the other side based on isolated events and the opinions of self-proffessed experts.<P>Meanwhile here's a thought for the purposes of debate: mac is to multitasking what Windows is to plug-n-play. It's there, and it does work but there is room for improvement.<P>As a further aside, the mac is often referred to by it's supporters as "intuitive" to which it's detractors often point to facts like the mouse-button eject as being less than obvious. There is no OS that is completely obvious from the get go as any one who has ever had to watch a total newbie coming to terms with simple pointing and clicking will realise. Where macs are "intuitive" is in their internal consistency... the interface guidelines that are so strictly enforced means that once you do have a moderate knowledge of the OS, it becomes more "intuitive" as to what you can do in new situations, ie "well this worked in app A, let's see if app B is the same". Windows is also getting pretty consistant these days (I feel that mac apps being ported is a prime contributer... the typical first two menus being File and Edit on most PC apps being an example of this consistency osmosis) but mac is still ahead IMHO. Frinstance, when I last used NT seriously (about six months ago) it seemed the save dialogue was different for every app... sure, you usually didn't have to be rocket scientist to work them out but you still had to hunt around a different interface everytime as you tried to find how to get to F drive or specify a particular file format or whatever... I found that an interesting point to think about in the recent OSX DP2 review: mac users might complain about inconsistencies between OSX and classic mac environments, but would windows user's even notice the problem?<P> <BR>
"Um, so let's get this straight. In order to eject a Mac floppy or Mac ZIP (or any removeable devices on a Mac), you need to boot the O/S? Ick."<P>Actually I think resteves was dealing with the won't-boot-up situation with this rather than the eject-the-media question... in fact macs automatically eject all media except CDs on shutdown (and if I remember correctly if the mac hangs all media except CDs are also automatically ejected on restart)... for a long time (pre-internet) this simple fact was regarded as a prime contributor to macs resisting viruses that were then often distributed via floppy... infected floppies could not be present at start up! I also rather suspect that Laners mac-guru tech dude was more of a low level acolyte judging by the fact that they figured that disassembling the whole box was the best way to get the reluctant ZIP out. I think both sides of the OS war should try to temper their enthusiasm to tear down the other side based on isolated events and the opinions of self-proffessed experts.<P>Meanwhile here's a thought for the purposes of debate: mac is to multitasking what Windows is to plug-n-play. It's there, and it does work but there is room for improvement.<P>As a further aside, the mac is often referred to by it's supporters as "intuitive" to which it's detractors often point to facts like the mouse-button eject as being less than obvious. There is no OS that is completely obvious from the get go as any one who has ever had to watch a total newbie coming to terms with simple pointing and clicking will realise. Where macs are "intuitive" is in their internal consistency... the interface guidelines that are so strictly enforced means that once you do have a moderate knowledge of the OS, it becomes more "intuitive" as to what you can do in new situations, ie "well this worked in app A, let's see if app B is the same". Windows is also getting pretty consistant these days (I feel that mac apps being ported is a prime contributer... the typical first two menus being File and Edit on most PC apps being an example of this consistency osmosis) but mac is still ahead IMHO. Frinstance, when I last used NT seriously (about six months ago) it seemed the save dialogue was different for every app... sure, you usually didn't have to be rocket scientist to work them out but you still had to hunt around a different interface everytime as you tried to find how to get to F drive or specify a particular file format or whatever... I found that an interesting point to think about in the recent OSX DP2 review: mac users might complain about inconsistencies between OSX and classic mac environments, but would windows user's even notice the problem?<P> <BR>
I've tried to post this about 5 times over the last day or so, but so far no luck... sigh... when all five turn up at once I'm gonna look like an idiot...<P>"Um, so let's get this straight. In order to eject a Mac floppy or Mac ZIP (or any removeable devices on a Mac), you need to boot the O/S? Ick."<P>Actually I think resteves was dealing with the won't-boot-up situation with this rather than the eject-the-media question... in fact macs automatically eject all media except CDs on shutdown (and if I remember correctly if the mac hangs all media except CDs are also automatically ejected on restart)... for a long time (pre-internet) this simple fact was regarded as a prime contributor to macs resisting viruses that were then often distributed via floppy... infected floppies could not be present at start up! I also rather suspect that Laners mac-guru tech dude was more of a low level acolyte judging by the fact that they figured that disassembling the whole box was the best way to get the reluctant ZIP out. I think both sides of the OS war should try to temper their enthusiasm to tear down the other side based on isolated events and the opinions of self-proffessed experts.<P>Meanwhile here's a thought for the purposes of debate: mac is to multitasking what Windows is to plug-n-play. It's there, and it does work but there is room for improvement.<P>As a further aside, the mac is often referred to by it's supporters as "intuitive" to which it's detractors often point to facts like the mouse-button eject as being less than obvious. There is no OS that is completely obvious from the get go as any one who has ever had to watch a total newbie coming to terms with simple pointing and clicking will realise. Where macs are "intuitive" is in their internal consistency... the interface guidelines that are so strictly enforced means that once you do have a moderate knowledge of the OS, it becomes more "intuitive" as to what you can do in new situations, ie "well this worked in app A, let's see if app B is the same". Windows is also getting pretty consistant these days (I feel that mac apps being ported is a prime contributer... the typical first two menus being File and Edit on most PC apps being an example of this consistency osmosis) but mac is still ahead IMHO. Frinstance, when I last used NT seriously (about six months ago) it seemed the save dialogue was different for every app... sure, you usually didn't have to be rocket scientist to work them out but you still had to hunt around a different interface everytime as you tried to find how to get to F drive or specify a particular file format or whatever... I found that an interesting point to think about in the recent OSX DP2 review: mac users might complain about inconsistencies between OSX and classic mac environments, but would windows user's even notice the problem?<P> <BR>
"when all five turn up at once i'm gonna look like an idiot"<P>yep. especially because there are seven. View image: /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif
resteves<BR>do you just run around and call everyone a troll?<BR>---------<BR>No, just people that fabricat BS lists that have little basis in reality.<P>Detnap says:<P>well, let's see something that was written<BR>"8. Again you don't know shit, try 4/5 years ago when mac's were busting out MP, you were using dos or win 3.1 and we had MP, the rumor now is that we should be expecting MP G4 next year....key this with mac os 10(note that it is not available, the assumption is that next year it will be released...current Vapour ware(on developer release)"<P>are you going to go and start calling Happy_Aardvark a troll now, since you said you would call people "that fabricat BS lists that have little basis in reality." trolls. i'm waiting.<P>sure, we can say how pentium 233s boot up slow, but why don't we use the information we know (300 mhz) computer and compare it that way? even<BR>if there was a hell of a lot of ram on the pc machine, there's still a good chance that you can set it to boot up quite fast <BR>---------<BR>And "there's still a good chance that you can set" the 9600 "to boot up quite fast." So what is the point? <P>1. hey, if the pc has 700 or so macs, I assure you that if you have a good motherboard, you don't need to wait 5 minutes for it to boot.<BR>--------<BR>IF you had a good mobo?? <BR>That is because (AFAIK-ICBW) the PC doesn't automatically check the RAM on start-up. the mac does. You can set it to not do so. There are other ways to speed up the Mac. And other questions, was a start up volume chosen, were there apps that auto start etc.<P>Detnap says:<BR>er-hum, the pc does, but you can hit esc to cancel it if you want, or set the bios to run it only once or a comprehensive check(a good motherboard gives you OPTIONS, the MAC doesn't. that's what i want, options. maybe you don't) i guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. you want a computer that can autodetect disks and cause it to crash. i don't want my computer to autodetect.<P><BR>2. last time I checked, I never crashed my pc by inserting a floppy<BR>-----<BR>That is because the PC is incapable of autodetecting a floppy. (or a ZIP?) I know it can do a CD, sometimes. But the point is, the problem was not with the Zip, that just made the problem show itself.<P>Detnap says:<P>umm, if autodetect can crash my computer, i'd rather not have it at all. so again, since you make no mention of a way to disable autodetect, then inserting a disk can crash the apple, not the pc. if you want something like inserting a disk to crash your pc, then fine, i won't convince you otherwise.<P>3. I knew about apple e (which doesn't work all the time) didn't know about the mouse button. What a have to say about this is if the mac is so<BR>"intuitive", why is it so much easier for my grandma to eject a disk on a pc?<BR>---------<BR>Because the auto detect feature is more advanced, as is the software put away. <P><BR>MORE ADVANCED? well, windows95/98 can autodetect cds, but you can also disable that feature if you wanted it not to. and quite frankly, i don't like it. so again, we'll have to agree to disagree.<P>5. Oh, by the way, I worked in the graphics department with 30 or so odd macs as tech support. Every time we got a new mac, we'd do a clean<BR>install, install just what we needed to use (quark, Photoshop, illustrator) connected to a quad processor Unix server. So I?ve dealt with macs before,<BR>and boy, those things didn't have anywhere near the reliability of NT machines (the macs were always hanging, and after a while, sometimes they'd<BR>start hanging all they time)<BR>--------<BR>Any time frames for the Macs and NT machines you were using??<P>hmm, os 8.x nt were on service pack 3 i think (last year).<P>6. Yeah, voodoo 3 with beta drivers. Swell. One of the largest games to hit the shelves this year, quake 3, doesn't work well with voodoo 3 due to<BR>driver issues. Yeah, that's something that I want to put on my machine. If you think that's "good", then some people just have lower standards than others I guess.<BR>-------<BR>So you are not using Win2k?? That is also Beta. The drivers are beta as a technicality, so they aren't held financially responsible for them. They have been very responsive to glitches and or bug fixes, and they work quite well. I would rather they were fully supported, but they work and that is what really counts. And Anantech doesn't seem to show a problem with the voodoo drivers on Q3:A... but what do they know...<P>have you seen the 3dfx win2k drivers (direct x is messy from what i hear)? i wouldn't touch them with a ten yard stick. but you also have to remember that the hacked version of 3dfx windows drivers are actually NT drivers combined with win98 drivers with a new .ini file to install. and also, win2k final release is out, so if i'm using build 2195, it's the final version<P>7. So you're happy with the multitasking in 7.x??? Hmm, low expectations. It really is. I was talking about mac os x style multitasking<BR>---------<BR>Here is where you need to read a bit more carefully. YOU said that macs can only do one thing at a time. HA said you must not be familiar with Macs, and if you are you are only familiar with 7.x. See, we can do lots of things at the same time on the Macs, and we do. The MT is not as good as NT, and I wish it was, but your statement was still ludicrous. (This is the kind of stuff I was refering to as trolling.)<P><BR>detnap says:<BR>okay, sure, but you don't need to state the obvious. if you want people to know how much you know, fine, just say "i know more than you so there". we all know that the mac os CAN do more than one thing at a time, but it doesn't work as well as a pc. also, if you read my setence carefully, it states "5. people who want to do more than one thing at a time" doesn't really say that the mac can't multitask, but it was a jab at the fact that the mac os can't multitask as well. please make a note of it. sure, people can do more than one thing at once, ie, talk on the phone while watching tv. but that's not the point. lighten up.<P><BR>8. NT 3.1. Came out in 1993. The form of Macintosh multiprocessing isn't good as of yet. geez, why do you think they're developing the macosx not<BR>from the regular macos9. .<BR>--------<BR>I think you may be confusing multi-tasking with multi-processing. The Macs have do MP before, long before.(And I think before Windows was ICBW) They can't do it now, but that is hopefully changing. Of course, Win9x can't do it either...<P>huh? i said "6. people who want to be able to use more than one cpu at a time" you talk about multitasking. maybe you should reread my post then reply. thank you for your time. and again, the first letters of the words are "multi-tasking" are mt, not mp. please reread.
>>>I also rather suspect that Laners mac-guru tech dude was more of a low level acolyte judging by the fact that they figured that disassembling the whole box was the best way to get the reluctant ZIP out<<<<P>So, how would you have suggested I get the disk out? The pinhole didn't work, and I couldn't boot into the OS. If you have a better suggestion, please let me know.<P>And the guy who helped me is *extremely* qualified in both the Mac and PC areas - don't presume to make judgements on something you have no knowledge about.
Laner - <BR> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>don't presume to make judgements on something you have no knowledge about.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>You get alot of this from resteves. View image: /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif <P>(I know, it is a low blow to resteves. View image: /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif Couldn't help the obvious, though)
"Meanwhile here's a thought for the purposes of debate: mac is to multitasking what Windows is to plug-n-play. It's there, and it does work but there is room for improvement."<P>Hmm. Last year I built five computers. I installed new hard drives on two more. For argument's sake, let's say that there were 50 devices to be detected in that exercise (I'm not including devices too new to have drivers on the Win 98 CD).<P>Total number of devices detected and correct drivers installed = 50.<P>That includes hardware going back to 1992 (LaserJet III) and two 1994 3Com ISA NICs.<P>
<P> That is because (AFAIK-ICBW) the PC doesn't automatically check the RAM on start-up. the mac does. You can set it to not do so. There are<BR> other ways to speed up the Mac. And other questions, was a start up volume chosen, were there apps that auto start etc.<P> Detnap says:<BR> er-hum, the pc does, but you can hit esc to cancel it if you want, or set the bios to run it only once or a comprehensive check(a good<BR> motherboard gives you OPTIONS, the MAC doesn't. <BR>-----------<BR>You are saying the PC will check to see if the RAM is good or has gone bad when you start up? I know it does a disk check if not shut down properly, but did not think it checked the RAM. Either way, yes, on the Mac you can have it skip that step.<P><BR> Detnap says:<P> umm, if autodetect can crash my computer, i'd rather not have it at all. so again, since you make no mention of a way to disable autodetect, then<BR> inserting a disk can crash the apple, not the pc. if you want something like inserting a disk to crash your pc, then fine, i won't convince you<BR> otherwise.<BR>----------<BR>Autodetecting did NOT crash the computer. It is pretty obviously a hard drive problem that finally came to a head when the zip was inserted and it tried to read it. If the same problem happened on a PC, it would not have happened when inserted, but would have happened when you clicked on the drive and it tried to read it then. The act of detecting does not cause a HD to fail.<BR>It seems silly for you to cling so stongly to the belief that autodetecting caused this machine to crash.<P> MORE ADVANCED? well, windows95/98 can autodetect cds, but you can also disable that feature if you wanted it not to. and quite frankly, i don't<BR> like it. so again, we'll have to agree to disagree.<BR>--------<BR>yes, more advanced. As in Win95 could not do it, and then it became more advanced and was able to do it. AFAIK, the PC still is incapable of autodetecting anything else besides a CD, and even a CD does not show up on the desktop.<BR>I cannot think of one reason to NOT want the drives to be autodetected. (Not auto started, that is different, and can be annoying.)<P><BR> have you seen the 3dfx win2k drivers (direct x is messy from what i hear)? i wouldn't touch them with a ten yard stick. but you also have to<BR> remember that the hacked version of 3dfx windows drivers are actually NT drivers combined with win98 drivers with a new .ini file to install. and<BR> also, win2k final release is out, so if i'm using build 2195, it's the final version<BR>-----------<BR>You made a big point about how scary beta drivers are, yet apparently you are using a beta OS. Seems a bit hypocritical. The Mac Voodoo3 drivers are quite good. and are continually being upgraded.<P><BR>
<BR>So, how would you have suggested I get the disk out? The pinhole didn't work, and I couldn't boot into the OS. If you have a better suggestion,<BR> please let me know.<BR>-------<P>It partly depends on if it was an internal or external zip.<P>If extrernal, connect to different Mac and then eject.<P>Internal: I do not know what it was doing while not booting up, but the first thing to try would be to boot from a CD while holding down the 'c' key. this should bypass the HD and zip, and allow the computer to boot up, and then eject the zip. There are other options, but those are the first two I would use.<P><BR>What ever happened to the machine? Did they find out what happened to the HD?<P>
resteves says:<BR>You are saying the PC will check to see if the RAM is good or has gone bad when you start up? I know it does a disk check if not shut down properly, but did not think it checked the RAM. Either way, yes, on the Mac you can have it skip that step.<P>Detnap says:<BR>fine, i did not know that you can skip the memory test on the mac. but on the pc, it says on the screen "hit esc to skip the memory test", allowing you to skip it if you so chose (and tells you how to boot).<P>resteves says:<BR>Autodetecting did NOT crash the computer. It is pretty obviously a hard drive problem that finally came to a head when the zip was inserted and it tried to read it. If the same problem happened on a PC, it would not have happened when inserted, but would have happened when you clicked on the drive and it tried to read it then. The act of detecting does not cause a HD to fail.<BR>It seems silly for you to cling so stongly to the belief that autodetecting caused this machine to crash.<P>detnap says:<BR>okay, so are you saying for a FACT that the subsystem that controlled autodetect didn't get corrupt? are you god? also, i've inserted floppies into macs and that causes crashes. nothing wrong with the disk. just need to reboot. you can't tell me that those are caused by "hard drive failure"<P>resteves says:<BR>yes, more advanced. As in Win95 could not do it, and then it became more advanced and was able to do it. AFAIK, the PC still is incapable of autodetecting anything else besides a CD, and even a CD does not show up on the desktop.<BR>I cannot think of one reason to NOT want the drives to be autodetected. (Not auto started, that is different, and can be annoying.)<P>detnap says:<BR>try to think of a reason to want drives to be autodetected.<BR>1. you can see if a disk is in your computer (whoop de doo. i can tell if a disk is in my computer even if i didn't have an icon on the desktop)<BR>now you try it.<P>resteves says:<BR>You made a big point about how scary beta drivers are, yet apparently you are using a beta OS. Seems a bit hypocritical. The Mac Voodoo3 drivers are quite good. and are continually being upgraded.<P>detnap says:<BR>i'm not sure where you came up with the fact that i was using win2k (if you can find the line where i said i used it... well then i was drunk) but overall, i can tell you, i'm typing this NOT using beta anything(not win2k definatly, except maybe icq...)<P>anyhow, microsoft didn't put on their os "the use of beta win2k is recommended for developers" like the mac voodoo3 drivers. do you know anyone with a voodoo 3 in a mac? i'd love to hear from them.
This is all very confusing; what is resteves saying and what is detnap saying and why don't they both learn to use the UBB 'quote' tag?
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>This is all very confusing; what is resteves saying and what is detnap saying and why don't they both learn to use the UBB 'quote' tag?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>sorry, i didn't know how to use them, but i do now
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>yes, more advanced. As in Win95 could not do it, and then it became more advanced and was able to do it. AFAIK, the PC still is incapable of autodetecting anything else besides a CD, and even a CD does not show up on the desktop.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Uh, Win95 could ALWAYS auto detect CDs. What the FUCK are you talking about? You talk out of your ass about Win95 CONSTANTLY and continually get things wrong about it (the whole "multitasking is about as good as MacOS" thing comes to mind), then complain when people say anything about Macs or even have valid complaints about them, even if that person uses Macs daily. Dude, shut up already! If you were talking about Win 3.1 in all the instances where you say Win 95, you would be dead on, but so far every time you detract from 95, you've been wrong. Give it up.<P>I'm not even a Microsoft supporter, not by a long shot... I tend to use BeOS whenever possible, and I use Macs at work (only because I have to, and not with any joy whatsoever) but at least I know what the hell I'm talking about when I bitch about the limitations of Macs. The reason I bitch about the limitations of Macs is because I run up against them every single day at work. You just bitch about MS products to try to make MacOS look better. And you continually get it wrong. It's fucking sad.
he might be refering to the auto boot set up, rather than going through the bios....just out of interest is it normal for the PC to hang if you have it set for CD booting and you want to boot of the HD. Is there a key sequence to get around this, or is it a matter of changing the bios to boot of the HD again. Thanx in advance for the help.
"I cannot think of one reason to NOT want the drives to be autodetected. (Not auto started, that is different, and can be annoying.)"<P>While autodetection is nice, it's not like I can't read what's on some removable media. If I didn't label it (duh!) then autodetection is going to save me a couple of seconds.<P>Autostarting can be a nuisance to the experienced user, but for a newbie, seeing a familiar-looking dialog box with options clearly labelled beats a window where you may not be able to see all the icons and the only way to know which to use is to read whatever the programmer could fit in the icon title.<P>And of course "Autodetect good: Autostart bad" has nothing whatsoever to do with what each platform is capable of. View image: /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif<BR>
happy a--><P>set it to boot from the hard drive instead<P>or make sure there isnt a bootable cdrom in the drive<P>as for key combinations i dont know of any .. but if i want to boot from the hard drive i set it to do so (why waste boot time having it seek the cdrom for a boot sector)
***2. last time I checked, I never crashed my pc by inserting a floppy<BR>-----<BR>That is because the PC is incapable of autodetecting a floppy. (or a ZIP?) I know it can do a CD, sometimes. But the point is, the problem was not with the Zip, that just made the problem show itself.<P>***<P>You know, this is an interesting assertion, but the autodetection of such devices cannot really be laid at the feet of Win95/98/NT. BUT, the OS has the capacity to be extended to autodetect such things if they exist, ie, if a PC hardware manufacturer decided to build a mac style autoeject floppy drive for the PC, the appropriate drivers would allow Windows to do autoeject and the whatnot with it. . see also, "auto power down (ie, when you choose shutdown, an ATX PC will actually turn off without having to hit the power button. . this is enabled by a driver addition to Windows." So, it is no fault of the Windows OS that it cannot autoeject, and, assuming the appropriate hardware and drivers, it most certainly can. Actually, I think the LS-120 floppies may work this way. .
>So, how would you have suggested I get the disk out? The pinhole didn't >work, and I couldn't boot into the OS. If you have a better suggestion, >please let me know.<BR>><BR>>And the guy who helped me is *extremely* qualified in both the Mac and PC >areas - don't presume to make judgements on something you have no >knowledge about.<P>Obviously he's not that qualified... he didn't know how to hold down the mouse button as the computer turned on. You don't need to boot up the OS for this to work. Just getting to the blinking question mark at the beginning, with the mouse button held down will eject all media, especially Zips and floppies. Besides, if it was an external drive, they have eject buttons that work perfectly fine when they aren't mounted to a Mac's desktop.
I think the whole point is, if the pinhole eject doesn't work, the disk isn't coming out. The Autoeject thing isn't going to work if the pinhole eject won't work.
<BR>People seem confused about what windows can and cannot detect. Zip, Jazz, and any other Iomega device can be autodetected. All CD, DVD, etc can be detected as well. So can the LS 120 floppy drives.<P>Regular floppy drives cannot be autodetected because of hardware limitations.<BR>
Exactly Dan, that's what I'm saying. . the only reason regular floppies cant be ejected is because they have no mechanical means to do so, it is not a limitation of the OS. Someone could come out with an electro- mechanical eject disk drive for the PC tommorow if they wanted to (indeed, the LS120s do have this feature).
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>You are saying the PC will check to see if the RAM is good or has gone bad when you start up? I know it does a disk check if not shut down properly, but did not think it checked the RAM. Either way, yes, on the Mac you can have it skip that step.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>FWIW, the PC counts how much memory it has and checks that all the address lines work, but it doesn't check if the memory is bad or not. Neither does the Mac. For the simple reason that to do so requires hours of soak testing, with various different read/write patterns.
PinheadX said: "I think the whole point is, if the pinhole eject doesn't work, the disk isn't coming out. The Autoeject thing isn't going to work if the pinhole eject won't work."<P>But then wouldn't that be an actual mechanical problem with the ZIP drive and not really anything to do with the OS? With mac you can't manually eject a disc thats mounted, but if you restart up until the desktop is created, the disc isn't mounted... if it won't eject then, I don't think it can be the mac's fault.<P>Perhaps the whole point of this thread, apart from continuing the age old war, is that blamng the mac OS for this particular crash would be like blaming Ford because you got a flat tire! I could crash photoshop4 on NT on demand! My Intuous tablet drivers would come and go with apparent gay abandon (my mac never does any of these things, so I prefer it for my uses)... was this MS fault? Wacoms? Intels? Adobes? The reality is both OS have various issues, and you makes you choice depending on which issues cause the least pain.<P>Finally to Laner, who advised me "don't presume to make judgements on something you have no knowledge about." see various posts about how your "mac expert" could have easily dealt with the situation and, ahem, aren't you the one bagging macs, which you personally know very little about, on the basis of ONE unfortunate incident. I've never crashed a mac by inserting a ZIP or a floppy... not that that doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it's probably not all that common.<P>PS sorry about all those repeat posts earlier... turns out out I actually am an idiot! But then being a mac using grapho, you already knew that! to save me from further humiliation, how do the quote doohickeys work?
the quote thingy works by putting a [ then the word quote, then a ] then what you are quoting (cut and paste) and then the same brackets, with a /quote inside them...<P>Also, you can delete those multiple posts. just click on the edit post icon, and you should get a checkbox option to delete the entire post.
OMFG kokalo, I dare you to post here again. I will personally devour the very matter that you are made of.
Apparently only forum leaders can delete my copious redundant posts...thanks for instructions never-the-less, Pinhead, or should I call you Mr X?<P>Meanwhile, Easy Rhino, I'm not blinded to David Every's very pro-Apple stance, and I also know the rather low regard that he is held in around here but I have also often agreed with his take various platform contentious issues... so I'll stick my head in the lions mouth and fill in for Kuala Lumpa or Koala bear or whatever his name is: go ahead and devour me and I'll try my best to stick in your throat!<BR> <BR>Here's my only ground rule: abuse and vitriol is optional, but if used, must be witty... imaginative insults being about the only positive atribute of any OS war!
Well give me something to go after then. I don't have time to discount Every point-for-point. Also I'm going out of the country for 2 weeks starting tonight so this might have to wait...
Jesus-fucking-Christ already. I think this horse is definitely DEAD. So stop BEATING IT!<P>Of course, I think I qualify for self-flagellation by reading all the confusing and repetitive threads in this forum...
Pick an Every article that you agree with and start a new thread. I'll be more than happy to point out the bias and stretching of technical facts to win advocacy points that characterize the 'Kiddo's scribblings.
"Every isn't wrong about every thing he says, and neither are his detractors."<P>You are missing the point. I don't dislike Every because he supports the Mac; I dislike him because he is transparently dishonest. If there was a similar pro-PC site, I would be embarrassed by it and warn people off, even if I agreed with 95 percent of what was there.<P>He is not ignorant or mindlessly pro-Mac, like many contributors to Mac sites. He assesses a situation and presents it in the most Pro-Mac way he can, and usually that involves misleading his audience. He relies on their lack of technical knowledge to trust him, and he does this so often that this isn't accidental.<P>We have just debated his denigration of the file copy function in NT compared to Mac, where the only way he could have prepared his evidence was to have spent several minutes setting things up so he could make a screen capture of a dialog box. That dialog box, ostensibly a standard NT copy warning (that a file already existed with that name) was created by making copies of folders and then copying them back to their original location. The Mac dialog box was created using a single file. <P>Every tried to make the point that the NT dialog box was complicated, but the dialog box had to deal with situations such as copying all files in the folders overwriting the originals, or copying only those files which were not already present in the target folders. These options are not available when you copy a single file, and the NT dialog box in that instance is as simple as the Mac's.<P>I have prepared enough dialog boxes for screen captures in the manuals and books I've written, and I know that Every did not do what he did by accident. It was a deliberate atempt to mislead, and it was so blatant that he had to withdraw it a few days later (but he still didn't show the correct NT dialog box). A person who does this, and who does it again and again, is not fit to be taken seriously as a platform proponent.<P>Even if you take the wider view, Every still comes up wanting. The article that seems to have been quoted the most is his evaluation of the Pentium and the G3. Every came down strongly for the G3 (surprise!) because the die size of the Pentium was larger and it dissipated more heat.<P>I have seen this quoted many times as evidence that Macs are better than PCs. Well, here we are at the end of 1999, and the next generation of Mac chips is stuck at 450MHz compared to yesterday's announcement of the 800MHz chips from Intel and AMD.<P>Why is this? It turned out that Every's concerns *didn't matter.* The Pentium remains thermally stable (in fact, it's regularly overclocked), and the number of thinline Pentium laptops shows that the size of the CPU isn't an issue (in fact, with the iBook, Apple's laptops are getting larger). What *is* an issue is short pipelines in the G4 which mean that faster clock speeds won't give faster performance. <P>Now there have been many prophecies made in good faith that turned out to be wrong. But Every's "chip designer" background seems a little shaky here. He zeroed in on two things where the G3 was supposedly better than the Pentium, and based all his conclusions on those. He knew that the pipelines in the G3 were short, but somehow he didn't see fit to mention that. <P>Al of these attitudes could be excused if they were made in the context of boards like Ars and the newsgroups. Any post can be rebutted and corrections made. But when Every sets up a whole site which, unlike Ars and most of the PC sites, has no bulletin board, it would appear that he is an uneducated devious fraud whose conclusions don't stand up to discussion.
I have to admit I have treated IMarshalls suggestion that I start a new thread based on an Every article with some amount of fear (a mac-user starting a "pro"-Every thread on Arsforum... I'd be taost in seconds!) but interestingly one of the articles I thought of doing this with was the afore mentioned PII vs G3 article as it seemed among the most contentious. What accured to me reading the piece were the following (from memory)...<P>In his opening arguments he is pretty subjective (especially his description of the look of the Pentium: I seem to recall that it was "black and forbidding" or similiar). Now to me the pentium is a bloated butt ugly looking piece of industrial design, but that's pretty much a personal opinion and also pretty academic and I can see why a PC proponent would find the tone of the article annoying. Alot of PC sites do the same to mac... despite his protestations of it being "postive" I found Ceaser's G3 review had a similiar tone... Maybe it's just something you notice more when it's done by the "other side"... still, Every is biased and it shows, however it's not actually untrue, just fairly irrelevant. <P>my score: first round nil-nil.<BR>"The chip is big and ugly"... well even if it is, so what?<P><BR>The he goes on to talk about the closed Pentium format and the open PPC one... hmmm, well it was written at a time when Intel seemed to be trying lo lock in a proprietry slot, although such is the state of flux in this area that just because the slot at that time was proprietry it was misleading to give the impression that it would always be so... and PPC standards might be open, but macOS licensing isn't. You could probably build a mac-clone and sell it, you just couldn't label it or refer to it as mac-compatible (which would make it a pretty bloody hard sell!!) and Apple is unlikely to give a toss about that boxes longterm compatabilty. They would probably go out of their way to break the OS for the rival... if they could afford to have a clone market they wouldn't have cancelled the clone license deal in the first place. <P>second round Good Every-0 Bad Every-1<BR>Every may not exactly be lying, but these statements do create a misleading impression about the comparative openness of the two chips. I can see why this kind of thing must shit you guys up the wall. It's a fair cop.<P>But then he starts to discuss the relative size of the chips, their heat sinks and their relative sizes. his comments here seem fair enough: the pentium is bloody huge, the heat sink enormous, the power consumption (at the time of writing, and to a far lesser extent now) of the pentiums is higher than we would like and measurably higher than the PPC. The PPC is much smaller, and the same chip that powers desktop machines also sits in powerbooks and has since the intro of the G3 chip. Only recently has Intel released G3 comparable PIIs for mobiles, for along time the best mobile chip from intel was (I think) a 233 (or 266 MMX)... whatever. And I could be wrong but I seem to remember that the benchmarks I saw at the time did seem to show the mobile pentiums being noticable less grunty than the desktop counterparts at the same speed... Every draws the pretty reasonable conclusion that the pentium is suffering here from some basic design constraints that mean it is difficult to reduce power consumption and size, especially compared with the PPC which even now probably still has the edge in terms of power/size/heat.<P>third round Good Every-1 Bad Every-0<BR>Forgetting OS issues, the PPC probably is a better basic design than a pentium. It should be. It's architecture is newer and it didn't really inherit much legacy from the earlier moto chips. I'm not dissing pentuims here...but they are a very successful refinement of what is basiclly (to my admittedly limited techy understanding) an older architecture.<P>I think he then mentions something about CISC vs RISC... and the accuracy of this depends on where you fall in the "what is RISC" debate. Is reduced sets of instruction or sets of reduced instructions? I think the latter is better description of my understanding of the concept, ie the aim is not reduce the total number of instructions (PPCs apparently have lots), but rather to reduce the length of each individual intruction, and thus make them easier for the processor to deal with, although a given task may take more cycles because of this. With this definition, again it seems to me Every is right, PPCs are pure RISC while Pentiums are CISC sitting on top of RISC. And there is some evidence to back up the claim that PPC mhz equates to pentium mhz at between a 1:1 and 1:1.5 ratio, depending on the exact nature of what you doing... if this in fact the case, it also seems to indicate the PPC is "better" design.<P>I'm not going to score this last one, as the CISC-RISC thing seems to be a very inflamatory debate around here, and I'm not altogether confident in my grasp of the technical details to make a call. I will say that on this matter, Every makes sense to me.<P>So it's like I said earlier. Every IS biased, and I can see why so many around here regard him as the devil, however mixed in with the bias is some actual reasonable calls, IMHO. Just cause you don't like him and sometimes his arguments seem a tad forced doesn't mean that every single thing he evr says is the exact opposite of truth. Switch on your bias filter (the flip side of the one that often needs to be used around ars, he said with a smile) get what you can from his site. Don't tell newbies Every always lies, tell them read his stuff with a grain of salt, draw your own conclusions.<P>Or at least thats the case if he's not actually fudging things. You accusation of the NT copy window thing is pretty serious. I don't have an NT machine to check the reality. I do remember I did not think much of it (hated the one item at a time progress bar that was pointless I thought, but not as useless as the estimation in MS time-dilation units of how long the job would take), but I can't recall ever having an especially dificult time working out what was going on or where files were going. If Every was manufacturing this in the cynical way you suggest then thats a black mark against him, that's for sure. I'm off to read that particular article now and see whats what.<P>
hhcccchh-PTOOEY:<P>The problem with Every is that he twists facts to suit his ends. Because he has such a clear agenda, his writing is not honest. It's not that he's clearly wrong on everything that he says; it's that his bias leads him to interpret everything in one direction.<P>I think you can see why Every is annoying, and why it's especially annoying to see him quoted by clueless Mac-advocates. Misinformation tends to spread among the closed-minded, and Every is a primary source of it in the Mac community.<P>Anyway, if you're still interested, why don't you choose an article that's a little less subjective than the Risc/Cisc article? Try the multitasking article; that's a good one for analysis.
I'll give it a read! But one thing I would say is that Every justifies his bias by saying that he has got to compensate for a fairly ingrained pro-PC anti-mac stance taken by many other sources. Now, this may be rampant self-justification (I personally feel that anytime your bias is showing in terms of your conclusions, your argument is weakened no matter what) but, in spite of many posts here at ars, I can see where he's coming from: there is a weakening, though enduring, anti mac background radiation on most general PC sites. There are many cases of mac-misinformation (less and less these days I will grant) and I don't see ars PC folks attacking them with the same passion for the truth with which Every is assaulted. I don't think this is knowing, I think most anti-mac folk have just got very used to thinking in this way and just don't notice it...<BR>The fact is during Apples worst period, preSteve, antimac truisms such as macs cannot run more than one program at a time, couldn't run java, couldn't interact with PCs, Apple has already gone out of business etc, were rife from such sources as Techweb editors, PC editorials and such... of course this hurt customer confidence and looked like becoming a self fulfilling prophecy... and some, like good old John Dvorak, seemed regard driving Apple out of business as some kind of amusing hobby.<BR>Mac users, especially graphos (I among them), became serious advocates in the face of this because we were fighting for the platform that made or livings possible. Things have eased up alot now, but I think vestiges of that mac-advocate fighting desperation remain to be seen in sites like Every's. You may not approve, but maybe you can understand. <BR>I have also seen the same knee jerk defense from the PC zealots that post here, who absolutley will not allow that any aspect of a mac is in any way as good as the PC alternative, let alone better... but in my experience there are SOME areas where macs truly are really, really good and where I have sampled the PC alternative I have found it not so good... what can I say?
Stupid are those who don't understand their computer and install junk things into it. <P>Stupid are those who don't understand design art and claim that they do.<P>And stupid are those who claimed that their understand both OSes.<P>You don't know piece of shit.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Every justifies his bias by saying that he has got to compensate for a fairly ingrained pro-PC anti-mac stance taken by many other sources<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>That's pretty sad, especially when you consider that Every is more biased than any "PC" publication I've ever seen. It's like he's saying "they're bad, so I'll be even worse to compensate!" Two wrongs, and all that.<P>One thing I've observed is that Mac people tend to take criticism of Apple rather personally. It's an odd phenomenon. The Apple of the "pre-Steve" times deserved immense amounts of criticism; I don't see how anyone could deny that. With this in mind, I don't think that there was really that much anti-Apple bias in the media. Remember, formulating deserved criticism is not being "anti".<P>Truth be told, my impression is that the media in general is relatively pro-Apple, judging from their reception of products that in my view deserve less accolades, such as the various MacOS releases and the iMac.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>I have also seen the same knee jerk defense from the PC zealots that post here, who absolutley will not allow that any aspect of a mac is in any way as good as the PC alternative, let alone better... but in my experience there are SOME areas where macs truly are really, really good and where I have sampled the PC alternative I have found it not so good... what can I say?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>I have yet to find an area in which this is the case. You appear to have found such a niche in desktop publishing, which is probably just a reflection of the superiority of a particular software product that was written for the MacOS. What most PC people object to is the glorification of Apple hardware and operating systems, which by PC standards are very poor products indeed.
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