I Had A Random Thought...

[tegan]

Is my d key broken? How did I manage to misspell "and" twice in one post?

[dibs]

Is my key broken?

Try it again?

[JonCole]

This is particularly difficult because I think the new MacBook is a major misstep for them - it is underpowered and the USB/power solution is lousy. I quite like my MacBook Air (it's pretty damn great having a *nix based operating system that's polished and easy to use) but I wouldn't buy one of these new MacBooks.

 

I dunno, Apple is all about gen 1 products building hype and supply chain and then using the momentum to actually make a good product. Not to mention that they are really good at convincing people of what they want and setting industry standards. Take the MacBook Air for example, some of the biggest criticisms of it were the lack of disc drive, no FireWire ports, and tiny (80gb!) SSD which all contributed to the size reduction that eventually made the Air popular. And over the years, people realized that they didn't really need disc drives, FireWire was on the way out in favor of Lightning and USB 3.0, and SSDs would get bigger as demand went up for them so people wouldn't have to care about not having a hulking HDD. It also only had a single USB 2.0 port, so people bemoaned needing to carry around USB hubs. But again, once Apple refined their processes they were able to jam one more USB port into it and people pretty much forgot it was an issue to begin with.

 

I'm guessing that when you say the "USB/power solution is lousy" you mean having only one port for both purposes is lousy and not the idea of having a USB 3.0 port for charging is lousy. Because I really think that having a tiny, universal port that can charge a laptop is amazing. I honestly think that this problem is a matter of a new idea not taking root, once Apple releases gen 2 with more ports and in time we actually get more peripherals that can just plug directly into that port instead of needing an adapter I'm sure everything will just pan out.

[Merus]

Yeah, I'm specifically responding to the lack of USB ports, although there's a part of me that thinks it's bullshit that Apple change their power solution every few years, because parts stay expensive and rare.

[JonCole]

I think it's good that Apple backed USB, because it's actually a standard that's a real standard unlike stuff like FireWire, Thunderbolt, Magsafe, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if you start seeing smartphones and tablets with USB Type-C ports in the next year. Though Apple will probably still use Lightning for their iPhones because they're weird and dumb.

[Merus]

It'll be interesting to see with the EU standard - they're pushing through a law that requires phone manufacturers to comply with standard specifications, but I don't know if they'll manage to update that specification or if the law's written in a way where the details of the specification can be updated to Type-C ports without having to change the law that enforces the specification. It'll be interesting if phone manufacturers want to move to Type-C en masse but can't because of the EU.

[syntheticgerbil]

I'd wager that, first an foremost, it's because Adobe's creative software (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc) used to be Mac-exclusive an older artists just kept telling younger ones to go Mac even after they went multiplatform.

Pretty much you're going to be spending a stupid amount of money to get a mac that handles stuff like After Effects as quickly as just building your own Windows for a third of the cost.

 

I'd probably be fine with Macs if it weren't for the price. I tend to have used them in my mains in a few work/school environments, but never at home on my own dime.

[Merus]

Pretty much you're going to be spending a stupid amount of money to get a mac that handles stuff like After Effects as quickly as just building your own Windows for a third of the cost.

 

A third seems like an exaggeration - the desktop Macs seem capable of running After Effects in a performant fashion, even the lowest end, which is A$1200. You can't even buy the CPU and motherboard for a third. So long as you get the right driver onto the Mac, based on my Googling, they run fine, and because Adobe can optimise for specific hardware profiles, the performance is always going to be slightly better than on a directly equivalent PC.

[dartmonkey]

Do you guys ever get forum post deja-vu? Just as I hit the post button I'll often get a wave of it. Of course, I'm pretty sure I have written an identical post at some point.

[syntheticgerbil]

A third seems like an exaggeration - the desktop Macs seem capable of running After Effects in a performant fashion, even the lowest end, which is A$1200. You can't even buy the CPU and motherboard for a third. So long as you get the right driver onto the Mac, based on my Googling, they run fine, and because Adobe can optimise for specific hardware profiles, the performance is always going to be slightly better than on a directly equivalent PC.

I guess? This is based on me comparing multiple projects I take to and from work and home, school and home, depending on the situation.

 

I have no idea what you are comparing, but in general you save good money if you build your own desktop smartly as opposed to a hardware equivalent prebuilt Windows machine and mac. In no way is paying for a Mac ever going to be cheaper in terms of hardware.

[Merus]

I'm looking at the Australian Apple website, getting it to pull up the full specs for a machine, and then comparing that to equivalent PC parts from MSY, which is where I buy my parts. The algebra might be a little different depending on where you live. I don't know if it matters too much: I was detecting a full whiff of early 2000s 'Apple is so overpriced because they use non-standard parts'. These days, they're the single most important consumer of electronic components and are ruthless when it comes to securing needed parts (up to the point of buying out the world's supply of components), so for MacBooks, at least, the prices are fairly close to what you'd pay for an equivalent pre-built PC laptop. (Where it falls down is that Apple don't do the low end, so it's possible to buy much cheaper PC laptops that don't meet the specs of the lowest-end MacBooks.)

 

I'm assuming something similar applies to Mac desktop hardware, at least on the low end. (I can't imagine you're getting a good deal on the high end no matter what happens.) I know PC parts are significantly cheaper than buying a pre-built computer. However, there's probably a performance improvement on Macs over directly equivalent PC hardware (partly because Windows is still kind of rubbish, partly because Macs have specific hardware profiles and Adobe can and probably does write specifically for them, in the same way that game developers can write specifically for a console) so you need more PC than you would Mac to get the same result. Put all those in a blender, and I'd be surprised if you can literally spend a third of the cost of a Mac to get the same performance from a PC. Building a PC being cheaper than a Mac? Absolutely, but that's not the statement in question.

 

(Honestly though we really should call PCs Oranges.)

[Patrick R]

I get e-mails with subject lines like "They murdered my son." and "He was crying 'please stop'" almost every day because I'm on some kind of Change.org mailing list. It's so incredibly off-putting, I wonder why they do it.

 

[Bjorn]

I've blocked everything from change.org, they are overbearingly obnoxious.  I have a wholly negative view of it as a service because of their mailing list. 

[Professor Video Games]

Same. I unsubscribed and probably won't use the site again. I just wanted to support a local radio station guys, so just take it down a notch please?

[JonCole]

Kinda reminds me of the emails I'd get from Barack Obama's campaign, where it'd be like "Yo what's up man" and I'm just like does Barack want my money, want to be my bro, or is he a spambot now?

[Merus]

The system is profoundly fucked up, which is why we're going to all sign a petition so we can demonstrate that we're upset

 

Soon we're going to get a hashtag going

 

Then they'll be sorry

 

Edit: I don't think I expressed myself entirely clearly here; I think it's kind of gross that people's actual grief is being trivialised by turning it into spam and an internet petition. They've done exactly what they claim to be against, taking pain and suffering and teaching people to turn a blind eye to it so they can get through the day.

[Griddlelol]

I don't remember the stats for change.org in terms of success rate of online petitions, but it was surprisingly low. So low to the point that I felt bad even signing a petition on that site because it was less than doing something. It was making myself believe I've done something, while doing nothing.

Site's good idea in principle, terrible in every other way.

[Merus]

So I managed to piss off a guy so bad that he sent me five expletive-filled, racist, homophobic private messages. This is a new experience for me! Apparently he also found my wordpress blog from 2010, so I had to turn comments off there. I'm curious to find out if he's going to keep following me across the internet.

 

I'm not even mad because he was being a fuckwit and I called him out (among other things, he responded to me saying he was whinging with a five paragraph rant which unironically included the phrase 'slap in the face' which is a sure sign you're dealing with someone who needs to let it go) and his behaviour since then is demonstrating that he was acting like a fuckwit because he is a fuckwit.

 

Like, I'd be concerned if it wasn't so fucking pathetic.

[N1njaSquirrel]

What the hell is up with spam mail now days? I just got this:
 
Subject: Season 2 DVD, though no press releases listed the exclamation marks in the title when the episode was broadcast.‏

Body:
They preferred to fight a decisive battle closer to home. All efforts were thereafter focused on evacuating casualties from the battlefield.
Electrical Co of Trafford Park, Manchester. The membership is centered on an agricultural cooperative near Holden, Missouri.
A world that is very scary and unwanted for many rural families. Due to the small size pollution occures at times even through fresh water supply.
The last ships, in what amounted to each element of three ships, were given the altitude with the most favorable wind. Swift Heart Rabbit staring at the Spirit's spell possessing a tree. New York harbor, then took part in the transportation revolution, from steamboats to railroads.

[Apple Cider]

I wonder if there'd be a way to somehow create a hashtag campaign that's just for signal boosting people's various crowdfunding or projects so it can aggregate getting money into their hands.

[JonCole]

I just entered the open enrollment period of my employer's insurance policy. I forgot how much of a nightmare this stuff is to think about and deal with. Maybe I should actually go to the doctor sometime so this isn't a total waste.

[SecretAsianMan]

I just entered the open enrollment period of my employer's insurance policy. I forgot how much of a nightmare this stuff is to think about and deal with. Maybe I should actually go to the doctor sometime so this isn't a total waste.

 

I need to pick a doctor as well.  I have a rash on my leg that I really should get looked at.  Plus I have all this money in my HSA.

[SecretAsianMan]

One of the more annoying things about working the back shift is it messes with my pooping schedule.

 

This post is dedicated to Zeusthecat.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I'm actually going to a doctor this morning to try and be a real adult and stuff, but I'm sure at some point they'll see through me and insist to talk to my parents.

[tegan]

I have to have bloodwork done before an appointment next week, and I didn't notice I was supposed to do it a month beforehand. OnO