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Comment: Re:Why hyphenation in an e-text? (Score 2) 291

by macs4all (#48653369) Attached to: Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens

Doesn't the dam-ned text get re-flowed by the devi-ce or so-mething? That be-ing said, this is ridi-culous, all my prin-ted books have a few hy-phens, and I've ne-ver had any dif-ficulty rea-ding them. Maybe Ama-zon should just add "don't hyphenate" setting on their reading device and end it once and for all?

The real question is, did he "hard-hyphen" the words, such that they wouldn't re-flow correctly; or did he just have lots of compound-adjectives, etc. that would actually call for hyphenation?

Comment: Re:from the what-until-they-get-a-load-of-this dep (Score 1) 291

by macs4all (#48653315) Attached to: Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens

Hyphens are just another example of how we treat punctuation marks as though they were boogers, something to be expunged and discarded, kept away from ourselves and others. But without them, we cannot distinguish a panda bear who eats shoots and leaves from a mob hit-man who eats, shoots and leaves.


I cannot count how many times I have been excoriated in these very pages for my "excessive" use of quotation-marks.

I then feel compelled to "defend" myself, citing the grammatical rules that show all the alternate uses of same.

Fortunately, that usually shuts up those people.

Comment: Re:Apple Pushing All Mobile CPU Vendors (Score 1) 114

by macs4all (#48613079) Attached to: Apple and Samsung Already Working On A9 Processor

The long term plan is to run iOS on laptops and desktops, or have you not been paying attention? This is why Apple has stopped caring about POSIX, and has put all of its efforts into the iOS runtime environment--UI, toolchain, etc. OS X is a second-class citizen.


Apple isn't paying any attention to poor-old OS X. Neglected, it is... NOT!

And here's the list for Mavericks, released only a year earlier.

...And the list for Mountain Lion, only a year or so before Mavericks.

Now, let's see the comparable list for Windows 7 to 8.1, which covers MORE time (by far!) (2009 to 2014) than the time-period between OS X 10.8 to 10.10 (2012 to 2014).

So, keep on hating, hater. Meanwhile, Apple continues happily along, walking AND chewing-gum at the same time (significantly improving both OS X and iOS simultaneously).

Comment: Re:Three times. (Score 1) 114

by macs4all (#48612981) Attached to: Apple and Samsung Already Working On A9 Processor

That's only two switches. Count the arrows!

Well, it depends.

You could almost legitimately count the 16 -> 32 bit transition of the 68k MacOS as nearly equivalent to a "Platform Change". They essentially had to do a complete rewrite on the Macintosh Toolbox, on QuickDraw, on QuickTime, and the OS itself, not to mention all the developers that had to re-do their applications to be "32 bit Clean" (remember that?).

Shoot, MS is STILL trying to sort out 32 vs 64 bit for Windows; and their "solution" is about as fugly as fugly gets!

Comment: Re:Three times. (Score 1) 114

by macs4all (#48612941) Attached to: Apple and Samsung Already Working On A9 Processor

They went 680x0 -> PowerPC 6xx -> x86.

You forgot the ARM port of significant portions of OS X (specifically the XNU/Darwin portions?).

So that makes THREE, no FOUR "Ports".

Actually, it is three; but still pretty cool.

I remember SJ standing up at a WWDC keynote right after the (essentially flawless) Intel transition of OS X,saying "Our engineers have worked long an hard to turn THIS (shows an OS X Desktop (ostensibly running on PPC)) to THIS (Ripple-Transition to an identical OS X Desktop (ostensibly running on Intel)). Crowd goes wild. Very effective demonstration. and it was true: The transition from PPC to Intel was virtually seamless, as was the transition from 32 to 64 bit. None of that horseshit like with Windows, with its TWO "Program Files" directory-trees, and its 32/64 bit drivers (there was a LITTLE bit of that with a FEW drivers; but not NEARLY to the extent that Windows users had (and still have) to suffer).

I personally would have like to have seen them carry Rosetta along a little longer; but they saw how long it took to rid everything of 68k code when they did the 68k -> PPC transition, and was anxious to keep OS X as architecturally "Clean" as possible; so it makes sense.

Comment: Re:ARM for desktop/laptop (Score 1) 114

by macs4all (#48612857) Attached to: Apple and Samsung Already Working On A9 Processor

That's probably not what he means. It's been hypothesized and rumored that Apple will eventually move all their laptops and desktops away from Intel and use ARM as the CPU. Intel has been behind schedule delivering next-generation chips, which leads to the conclusion that Apple would want to control its own destiny with its own CPUs.

They won't do that until Windows runs full-blown Windows (NOT RT) on ARM (and has some sort of JIT), which it does NOT seem that MS is particularly interested in making happen. RT was designed from the get-go to be a stepchild, at best, of "real Windows", and it looks like that's what it is going to stay.

Apple sells not an insignificant number of desktop and laptop machines because of being able to dual-boot (and do VM) for other OSes (primarily Windows and Linux), and to be frank, that requires Intel (and more importantly, x86) compatibility. And you can bet your bottom-dollar that Apple is VERY aware of that market-segment.

You can be sure that Apple would love to move to ARM, if only for its insanely-good performance/Watt (and to have a tool to pry-down Intel's stupidly-high prices. And people talk about the "Apple Tax"... Sheesh!). But, unless and until Windows either becomes insignificant (which may very well happen in about 10 years) or they develop "RT" into a non-joke OS, don't look for Apple to give up Intel anytime soon.


by macs4all (#48612733) Attached to: Apple and Samsung Already Working On A9 Processor

The long term plan is to run OS X on it.

While I'm not sure I'd welcome that on anything smaller than the iPhone 6 Plus, it WOULD be wonderful to be able to download a version of OS X that was designed with a slightly different UI layer that was targeted for certain classes of iOS devices (e.g. Tablets).

But I understand why that gets to be "a bit much" for a company; because not only do they have to develop it (which is kind of trivial for them, due to the way that iOS and OS X are built); but more importantly, they would have to test and SUPPORT the "chimera" iOS X. And THAT is (understandably) too much of a drain for the amount of return.

But you can bet that, in some Apple engineer's basement, there lives an iPad running OS X. After all, that's how OS X for Intel came to be...

Comment: Re:Apple not working on adding more RAM to iPhone (Score 1) 114

by macs4all (#48612653) Attached to: Apple and Samsung Already Working On A9 Processor

That way they will always have a ready market of users waiting to upgrade. They did the same thing with the big phones. The demand was there for years but they carried on selling small form phones till the market for small form phones is going to fall. Then when they release the big phones, boom!! the pent-up demand guarantee increased sale.

Not hardly.

"Big phones" was a private "thing" with the then-CEO. I think his last name was "Jobs".

Considering the timing of SJ's demise, relative to the introduction of the iPhone 5, then 6 and 6 Plus, I would venture to say that Apple approved the iPhone 5 (the first "big" iPhone) as a sort of "marketing test" on the very day that Steve J. stopped breathing.

Remember, it takes TIME to approve new case designs, displays, etc; not to mention new SoCs to drive the extra pixels. It isn't like you just put the old phones in the Incredible Blow-Up Machine and voila!

Then, when the market acceptance of the iPhone 5 was encouraging, they started market research and engineering R&D on the (bigger still) iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

But if you want to talk about Planned Obsolescence by continually releasing "The Next Big Thing" that is simply the "The Previous Big Thing" with a slightly different/better "Gotta Have It" geegaw or case design, look no further than Samsung; with their FIFTY NINE new models of Smartphones released in 2014 alone.

So stop your ridiculous Apple Hating. They are actually a pretty "restrained" tech-driven Company.

Comment: Re:Only in America... (Score 0) 71

by macs4all (#48567809) Attached to: Apple DRM Lawsuit Loses Last Plaintiff, but Judge Rules Against Dismissal

The judge in this case made the right call - there's already been effort, time and money expended to get the case this far. Dismissing it and saying "bring another suit when you have new plaintiffs" would waste resources, not the least of which being the court's.

Actually, that's done ALL the time; it's called a "Dismissal Without Prejudice". Usually, the "Journey's Account"-type statute in the Jurisdiction saves the suit from the effects of the running of the statute of limitations (assuming the original suit was filed "in time"). Journey's Account is an old legal doctrine (that still exists in some form in many U.S. Jurisdictions) that allows the filing of a New Case for a few years (usually 2 to 5) that "Relates Back" to the Original Case, and is treated "Nunc pro Tunc" (as if it was filed back then). It is usually used to get past a Statue of Limitations problem when a suit is filed in the wrong Court; but can be used when a suit fails for almost ANY reason.

Class Action Suits are kind of odd; but I would bet they follow Journey's Account doctrine.

What I can't figure out is why they can even file a Personal Damages suit EIGHT years after the original purchase.

Comment: Re:Wha?!?!!! (Score 1) 172

by macs4all (#48558159) Attached to: Just-Announced X.Org Security Flaws Affect Code Dating Back To 1987

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

On the mac while "classic" mode is gone "carbon" is still there and was explicitly intended to allow porting of code from classic macos. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some code that had been written for classic macos still in there somewhere.

Similarly win32 was designed as a 32-bit variant of win16 and i'd be very surprised if there wasn't still some old code hanging arround somewhere.

While technically still there, the Carbon API has been officially Deprecated since 2012, and as of OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), is clearly on its way out.

It's a shame, because it was a brilliant piece of work (but also not without its problems); but the writing was clearly on the wall when it wasn't ported to 64-bit in 2007.

Comment: Not So Fast... (Score 1) 45

by macs4all (#48525383) Attached to: Pantry Pests Harbor Plastic-Chomping Bacteria
This reminds me of a cautionary tale in the form of an SF novel titled Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters.

I read it back in 1972, while in high school, but remembered the "lesson" it taught about cultivating and developing "Scavenger" bacteria.

Before you applaud this discovery, you might give that book a read...

Jus' Sayin'...
