Opinion: Apple -- Here to Stay

MacCentral ^ | March 08, 2005 | Don Tennant

[r5boston]

Nearly a decade ago, just a few months after Microsoft shipped Windows 95, I asked Bill Gates if it was a conscious decision in the development of that product to give Windows more of a Mac look and feel. Of course I knew he'd say it wasn't, but I couldn't resist asking. "There was no goal even to compete with Macintosh," Gates proclaimed. "We don't even think of Macintosh as a competitor."

That was a crock, so I pressed the issue a little. I asked him how he accounted for the widespread perception that Windows 95 looked a lot like Mac 88, and whether the similarity was just a coincidence. I didn't expect a sobbing confession of mimicry, but I thought it would be cool to see how he'd respond. Surprisingly enough, Gates shifted gears and became more forthcoming.

[antiRepublicrat]

Really. Can you provide supporting evidence for this claim.

You are showing your ignorance by demanding evidence

This stuff's common knowledge for anyone who ever had an early Mac -- accelerator cards with FPU were quite popular, as well as the third-party Mac 512 to Mac Plus upgrade. You should look it up yourself, but okay: http://www.mac512.com/512ke.htm

You should know by now that you can't win on facts, and you can't call my bluffs, because I don't make any.

[pageonetoo]

...I can easily support the premise that Microsoft had more to do with the PC revolution than IBM.

I can more easily support the idea that the gum'ts decision to use IBM PC's destined their use to be foremost in early desktop computing. If you wanted to do business with the gum't, thereafter, you needed a 5 1/4" floppy and WordPerfect!

Banks, Contractors, it didn't matter, you needed MS Dos, and IBM. Mac offered an alterantive, and most of the publishing community still use their Mac machines for graphics, etc.

There will always be people who will pay what it takes to get what THEY PERCEIVE to be the best, regardless of factuality, or hype.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[m87339]

Apple did things first and did them well and did them right.

Do the words "closed architecture" mean anything to you? They had an open architecture with the Apple II, but the Mac was un-extendable.

Until USB became prevelant, the Mac was critically crippled.

[Bush2000]

A copyright which isn't defended over some length of time of knowable infringement ceases to be a copyright. In other words, you lose your copyright -- and your standing to sue infringers -- if you knowingly don't attempt to limit damages.

[Bush2000]

WMA, like AAC, is a lossy format.

[Last Visible Dog]

I thought object-oriented programming was developing modules that could be used within many programs to perform common functions, allowing programmers to develop libraries of code that reduced programming time and hard disk usage.

Please reread my statement - we were talking about real-world abstraction. I was not trying to present a one sentence omnibus definition of object-oriented design. Also I was referring to Object Oriented Design, not Object Oriented Programming. Two different concepts. OOD is used to create models, OOP is used to implement the models.

BTW: you definition is not very good because it also applies to Procedural Programming and reducing disk usage is a not a benefit of Object Oriented programming.

Go figure.

[ThinkDifferent]

Please provide supporting evidence for your claim that it is possible to convert one audio compression format to another with degrading the signal.

Your statement was "Converting one compressed audio format to another always degrades the file therefore to use WMA files with an Ipod, one MUST degrade the files.". That's only true for lossy compression. You could transcode a WMA file to AIFF and re-encode with Apple's lossless compression with no quality degradation. Of course the file size would be larger.

[antiRepublicrat]

Please provide supporting evidence for your claim that it is possible to convert one audio compression format to another with degrading the signal.

This is like trying to explain to someone that in normal math 1 + 1 = 2.

In a digital music system, when does loss of quality happen? I'll tell you: when you compress the audio into a lossy format. The encoder throws away various information in order to attain a small file size. Other loss can occur through using a lower sampling rate and such, but that does not apply to this discussion, since all the formats we're talking about can handle the rates.

Let me repeat that for the simple-minded: encoding to a lossy format results in loss of quality -- thus the term "lossy." AAC, WMA, MP3 and RA as normally used are all lossy formats.

Got that? Good. Remember: Lossy == loss of quality. Try it again: Lossy == loss of quality.

The clue for you here should be the name of the compression mechanism that will not result in a loss of quality when importing into iTunes: Apple Lossless.

Yes, that's right! This format does not throw away any audio information from the stream it's encoding. It reproduces it perfectly. And where will this stream come from? The decoding of the WMA file. It will be encoding with out any loss of quality the exact same sound that's sent to you when playing a WMA file. You could get the same result using WAV, but your resulting file would be huge.

If you can't understand that, then you're totally lost. Seek help.

[antiRepublicrat]

A copyright which isn't defended over some length of time of knowable infringement ceases to be a copyright.

You're confusing copyright and trademark. You will lose the ability to sue that one particular infringer, but you still retain copyright and are free to sue others. You can completely lose a trademark or servicemark by not enforcing it.

[Last Visible Dog]

... and therefore be able to produce PCs to compete with IBM's line, removing IBM's monopoly on PC manufacture! What part of that is so hard to understand?

What part of "the IBM PC hardware was not proprietary" do you not understand. One minute you claim it is proprietary and then you say "everything was standard components" - the service manual for the IBM PC contained complete schematics and the source code for the bios - explain to me how the fits that definition of proprietary. None of the IBM PC hardware was proprietary (despite what you keep claiming)

proprietary Owned by a private individual or corporation under a trademark or patent

The only thing proprietary in the IBM PC was the software bios. The architecture was open so third party vendors can make all kinds of hardware for the machine. This is one of the reasons the PC platform overwhelming beat the Apple Mac

I guessing that as an off-the-deep-end Mac fanatic, you are merely trying to rewrite history.

[Last Visible Dog]

This is like trying to explain to someone that in normal math 1 + 1 = 2...ramble...ramble....ramble

I asked for supporting evidence...

So you can't provide any supporting evidence for your claims.

That's what I figure. Lots of talk with absolutely nothing to back it up.

[Last Visible Dog]

This stuff's common knowledge for anyone who ever had an early Mac -- accelerator cards with FPU were quite popular, as well as the third-party Mac 512 to Mac Plus upgrade. You should look it up yourself, but okay: http://www.mac512.com/512ke.htm

Try again. The Macintosh 512Ke came out in 1986.

[Last Visible Dog]

I can more easily support the idea that the gum'ts decision to use IBM PC's destined their use to be foremost in early desktop computing. If you wanted to do business with the gum't, thereafter, you needed a 5 1/4" floppy and WordPerfect!

I worked at the Department of Engery from 1986-1993. The government was very slow to convert to the PC - it was the very late 80's and early 90's before the PC was the dominate computer in the part of the government I saw (DOE and DOD) - that was long after the PC took over the PC revolution. This is just my experience.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Well sometimes you have to look beyond the hype - who would you rather do: the quirky old telephone operator or a woman that has been dead for 43 years?

:-)

[Poser]

" BTW: you definition is not very good because it also applies to Procedural Programming and reducing disk usage is a not a benefit of Object Oriented programming."

An object is simply an external procedure (subroutine) that can be used by multiple programs. Because it is only on the disk one time, it saves disk space. I think my definition is pretty simple and relatively accurate. I understand that disk (and memory) space aren't a real concern to programmers with today's copius RAM and mammouth disk space, but once upon a time, it made a big difference.

Now I'm trying to figure out what you mean by OOD and how it differs in concept from OOP. You will have to pardon my ignorance as I haven't written any applications since the late 1980's. Back then I was having to use overlay files (.ovr) to make things fit into existing memory.

[Last Visible Dog]

Do the words "closed architecture" mean anything to you? They had an open architecture with the Apple II, but the Mac was un-extendable.

Alright - another person that understands the situation!

[Petronski]

The clue for you here should be the name of the compression mechanism that will not result in a loss of quality when importing into iTunes: Apple Lossless.

I didn't know that. But I just opened up iTunes and sure enough, there it is.

I'll keep that in mind in case someone tries to lie about it again.

Of course it's meaningless to me because I'm not dumb enough to put any money into WMA files.

[smirk]

[Last Visible Dog]

An object is simply an external procedure (subroutine) that can be used by multiple programs.

That statement is flat-out wrong. An object is made up of both data and functionality - although that can be true to some extent with subroutines, objects support encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism - levels of complexity subroutines can not in any way support. Objects are far more complex than subroutines. Object are complex data structures that are only vaguely similar to subroutines

Because it is only on the disk one time, it saves disk space.

Procedural subroutines can be used over and over within having to have multiple copies on the hard drive. Software does not execute on the hard drive - you are way off in left field. Object oriented programming in far more complex so most of the time object oriented programs will actually take up more disk space than a procedure program that does the same thing. Object Oriented programming has nothing to do with saving disk space.

Now I'm trying to figure out what you mean by OOD and how it differs in concept from OOP

The best place to start is to look up the terms

Put very simply: Object Oriented design is the process of creating object orient design diagrams and documents while Object Orient Programing is the process of using the diagram to create a program in a specific OO language. They are very different endeavors. OOD focuses more on generic OO concepts and OOP focuses more on syntax of a specific language.

[Last Visible Dog]

If you can't understand that, then you're totally lost. Seek help.

One last try.

There is Lossless AAC and Lossless WMA - that has nothing to do with converting one compression format to another.

You have defined a lossless format but have failed to show a lossless conversion routine.

I will keep an open mind but I have never heard of a conversion process that was lossless - I asked you to provide supporting evidence but all you could do is ramble on some more.

All compression formats, even lossless formats, remove some data from the file. If you start with an uncompressed file, you end open with a compressed file with no data lost (when using a lossless format). That is not the case when converting one compression format to another. The conversion routine converts one compression format into another and this always degrades the file - there is no clean way to recompress a file with another format and there is no way to return a lossy format to its original state. Conversion routines degrade the file.

Now if you took the digital audio feed out from a WMA player and feed it into a digital recorder using the lossless format theoretically you would have no loss - but that is not what you are talking about. You are talking about software programs that contain algorithms that convert one format to another and I have never heard of one that did not degrade the file.

All I am asking for is a link to support your claim - I will keep an open mind. Did you learn about this lossless conversion from a source or just your imagination?

[Bush2000]

No, I was referring specifically to the situation in which someone fails to defend their copyright against one or more persons despite knowing that there is infringement. I believe that that was the reason cited in the Xerox v Apple case. Xerox held these copyrights for years and didn't act upon them until after Apple sued Microsoft for violating copyrights that Xerox claimed as its own. It's as if some dumbass lawyer at Xerox was sleeping for years -- and then got a bright idea. But the horse had already left the barn.

[Richard Kimball]

You're correct that even lossless formats, at least the ones I'm familiar with, have some information degradation. I think wave files are supposed to be lossless, but they're huge and don't support tagging of other information, like album covers and album name, etc.

However, I think there is a question as to whether it's worth worrying about or is more of theoretical interest, and I suppose that's where I'm going. About the only way to get a totally lossless format would be to rip them in lossless from CDs, in a totally non-compressed format. You could then code the files to any format you wished.

In a comparison with JPEGS, which I work with a lot, I maintain my files in Photoshop format, then export as jpg. Multiple saves under jpg causes image degradation after about the fourth save, as a result of the compression algorithm being rerun multiple times. While I'm less familiar with music codecs, I'd assume the same is true of them. The question is, then, how far (and how much space do you want to commit to the uncompressed sound files? WMA lossless would be a better format than WMA for maintaining quality. My personal preference would be ALE through iTunes, which allows you to import as ALE, and rip in MP3, MP4, ALE, or whichever other format you wish.