Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

yes. it seems quite user friendly for a novice who just wants columns to add up columns and stuff. it's cheap if bought singly from the app store.

most people seem to be dissing the lightpeak/thunderbolt but from what i can tell it's going to have a big impact ~(in a good way) for photographers/film makers and i presume musicians?

i don't share velocio's pessimism i think it will be 6months to a year then it will be everywhere (video/photography) in the same way that firewire became the common connection choice for mac based systems. don't forget intel are behind this and it all happens at chip level (you can't add a card to an existing computer) apple have the headstart but other manufacturers are getting it a year later. even if it halves in speed with a monitor connected the ability to connect an external SSD drive with superfast in/out will have a big impact on productivity (photography/video) OSX lion now has trim for SSD's and according to this bit of info the macbooks are significantly faster than you would expect from just reading the specs:

Browsing through the complete list of benchmarks shows the new MacBook Pros in context with the other Macs. The top-of-the-line MacBook Pro now outrank many of last year's desktop machines including the Mac Pro and iMac. PrimateLabs concludes: "The performance of the new MacBook Pros is amazing. The slowest MacBook Pro performs on par with the fastest previous-generation MacBook Pro, and the fastest MacBook Pro is 80% faster than the fastest previous-generation MacBook Pro."

In fact, if you look at our Mac Benchmark charts, you'll see that the fastest MacBook Pro is faster than a lot of Mac Pros (including the current generation of Mac Pros). The new MacBook Pros truly are portable workstations.[/I]

probably a pointless upgrade to a business user but power users™ will be all over these.

the Music Tech community is excited, from what i can tell, and apparently a lot of manufacturers have skipped USB3 in anticipation of this technology. not sure how much truth there is in that, but we might see some Thunderbolt I/Os appearing sooner rather than later, based on that.

you can still plug FW/USB stuff into a thunderbolt port but no idea if it works as well, hopefully the geeks will get testing as soon as the laptops hit the streets as that geekbench thingy is only a guide.
i want the geeks to work out the differences between the 2.7 dual core and 2.2 4-core for photography apps as for some Khz is king and multi cores of little benefit. that's why the 6 core macpro was better for capture one/photoshop than the 8 core as it was higher Ghz it's only things like compressor (video) that would scream on an 8 core while other apps were slower than a 6.

you can still plug FW/USB stuff into a thunderbolt port .

i didn't realise that. i was thinking of getting the new MBP, but thought i'd have to wait until i had some thunderbolt connectivity.

Does anyone know about CAD software for CNC machining? Is there anything, not overly complicated, available for the Mac?

lacie announce thunderbolt external SSD

http://www.lacie.com/us/technologies/technology.htm?id=10039

i too was/am baffled by Excel. a dark art.

i made the jump from Word to Pages, and haven't looked back. i hadn't really heard of Numbers.. good is it?

Yes such a dark art that, that accurate answers can be found on the first page of google.

i guess it's not a piece of piss if you have never used a spreadsheet or any microsoft application before and have no idea what 'cell' or 'sum' is. i still don't know what a 'macro' is but i'm happy to remain ignorant as to what they entail, they can't be that exciting.

You really couldn't make a educated guess what SUM means? ... Really. I find that very hard to believe.

In fact the term been in mathematics for a while ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summation

Or did you not pay attention in Primary School Maths class?

It's not really a piece of piss. It's database functions are nuts. It has weird matrix functions like sumproduct that are very useful but totally unintuitive. I never use macros but I could show you formulae that could make your hair stand on end.

When you get into the more complicated stuff ... it can get difficult, but then you have to ask ... why am I doing this in Excel?

I really get pissed off with the downright lies about Microsoft Applications on the internet ... most of them can be better applied to Apple and GNU/Linux eco-system. I honestly think people make up problems to do with Microsoft Problems so they have something to slag off/evangelise another product.

i can summarise that i did not pay attention in maths class, or english, or science or any other class.

You fault then ;-) ... wish I could have used that on the Tennis pun thread.

i'm quite happily annoyed with and ignorant to when it comes to MS software, hopefully it'll stay that way.

We have to use some weirdo webmail version of outlook at work and it's so fucking backwards it's ridiculous. And if you can't put an email client together...

Yes such a dark art that, that accurate answers can be found on the first page of google.

You really couldn't make a educated guess what SUM means? ... Really. I find that very hard to believe.

In fact the term been in mathematics for a while ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summation

Or did you not pay attention in Primary School Maths class?

When you get into the more complicated stuff ... it can get difficult, but then you have to ask ... why am I doing this in Excel?

I really get pissed off with the downright lies about Microsoft Applications on the internet ... most of them can be better applied to Apple and GNU/Linux eco-system. I honestly think people make up problems to do with Microsoft Problems so they have something to slag off/evangelise another product.

Wo wo woooo.. lets cool those jets Ballmer... I can't use Excel for the life of me and I am dead shithot and using computers.

This isn't the place for measuring cocks either, it's for fellow lfgss mac users helping others out, as hael for one did for me, so take the debates to www.nerds.com/ijustlovemyexcelspreadsheetsomuch and PM someone who cares.

Cheers.

like indexed searching, only apple call it 'spotlight' and claim it's the next best thing.

If it is what I think it is it has been about for a long time as locate.

has anyone else had the fun of running matlab on a mac?

try to manipulate a gigabyte array and watch the machine struggle and cry. going to make a fortran program to do it instead, what a load of shit.

apparently it can be 100 times slower than the same machine running linux. i guess most people never use macs for this sort of computing so mathworks never bothered to get it to work.

100 time seems a bit crazy.

If you need to manipulate large matlap data you can.

1. Compile matlab code to an executable (if you have the toolbox add on whatever that does this).

2. Output the results to a .dat file and then write a small program in FORTAN / C++ as you are considering
   but consider python might be quicker than matlab, at although i's still an interpreted language I think it has less overhead than matlab which runs through a JVM. Python also has thing like http://www.scipy.org/. I have only used python myself for some very small tasks but it is a really easy language and easy / quick to learn.

3. Use the profiling tool on MATLAB if there is one routine that is being called a lot and function calls to it can not be reduced or it just take a long time to complete consider rewriting that routine in a compiled language. I did this once in Java, I think it can also be done in C++, not sure about FORTAN, that way you don't have to rewrite the entire thing.

As for being ballmers best mate ... I own 3 macs ... 2 Windows Pc's and a I buy OpenBSD releases because I support the project ... So fuck off.

At the end of the day I was pointing out that it's PEBKAC rather than anything else ... which pisses me off when people are slagging an app off.

even python might be quicker than matlab, at although i's still an interpreted language I think it has less overhead than matlab which runs through a JVM.

Pure Java code runs 30% slower than pure C code ... so any implementation of Matlab code that runs in the JVM will be faster than Python I should imagine.

EDIT: love the user name ... been using it for years ... still the best lube I have ever used is the Sturmey Archer stuff.

iPad 2 finally unveiled. Doesn't seem that much different from the last.

9 times better graphics! imagine! 9 angry birds instead of just one!

i can't believe the the pc/android market hasn't managed to bring out a rival device yet.
if they have then nobody is buying them*

*i don't know anyone sad/geeky enough.

Think Jobs has a good point when it comes to hardware and software has to work together on a device like this. Having it in two separate companies will just create something half baked

Think Jobs has a good point when it comes to hardware and software has to work together on a device like this. Having it in two separate companies will just create something half baked

Drink that kool aid.

well, is there an alternative to it that is as good? I don't know much about these things, i tried in iPad and didn't like it, too restrictive. Part from gmaps on it which was utterly amazing

kindle seems great, and it's only one company behind it

well, is there an alternative to it that is as good?

i see a lot of people walking the streets using these

they seem quite popular with overseas people who like to wear grey uniforms with a bit of high viz.

binatone homesurf?
£99 so really cheap, you could buy 4 of these instead of one of those shitty i-pads

i can't believe the the pc/android market hasn't managed to bring out a rival device yet.
if they have then nobody is buying them*

*i don't know anyone sad/geeky enough.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/02/ipad-price/

at least samsung are making money out of tablets :-)

Advice please, upgrade time... Because of my VAT status I have to spend over £2K to get my VAT back... So I'm considering getting the fastest quad-core 15" (not the hi-res display version) and a 27" Cinema Display... I'll get 20% back so seems like a pretty good deal to me...

But... Just been on the Apple site and I can't see the hi-res display 15" MBP... Pretty sure I saw one in-store yesterday for £2K+... Any clue?

BTW Mrs Slain bought the entry level 13" MBP yesterday... Lovely little machine... Will be doing some AB benchmark tests in my graphics lab tomorrow...