Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
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their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
[Mac] OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion Released
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But we'll see what the reviews and the benchmarks say. I know people are generally happy with other underclocked Ultraportables like the Alienware M11x (which has a default configuration of a 1.2gHz C2D), so I think benchmarks and user satisfaction should end up looking pretty positive.
If you read Ars' article on the subject, they claim the i3 aarandale CPUs actually take up more room in the case because they require a separate controller. Using the i3 would mean there's no room left on the logic board for another graphics chip, leaving Intel's underpowered onboard GPU as your only option.
I'd go at least 128 gigs though - 64 just isn't enough for developing stuff with XCode being 8 gigs in addition to whatever else you need.
And it's silly how little space in the Air is actually the hardware - so much of it is taken by the batteries. Where's my fingernail-sized fusion cell!
And I am pretty sure I would have gone with the 11 inch model; the portability is far more important to me than the muscle, as my iPad currently proves.
I am certain that this is the death knell of their bottom-tier MacBooks, and it will be only this and the pro in the next refresh cycle.
But I really shouldn't. The MBP is my only Mac product and I need the power.
Syndalis I am really stunned by your statement. You love your iPad! It practically replaced your laptop!
It did replace my laptop; I am making my posts on mine today while I convert music here.
That said, if I never got an iPad or this class of device were not available to me and I didn't get a chance to see how well it would work for me, I would have gotten the air, no question.
In a way, I am sad I don't have a use case for it.
DropBox invite link - get 250MB extra free.
Perfectly fine.
Depending on your needs, though, an Xserve might be a better choice.
http://www.apple.com/xserve/
Though I suppose the blue-tooth keyboard would solve that.. but then, why am I not just buying a laptop if I'm going to have to carry a keyboard around with me anyway?
An iPad + foldable stand + keyboard still takes up less space in your bag and weighs less than pretty much every laptop out there that isn't a netbook.
Also, having an iPad + keyboard lets you use it without the keyboard, which beats the pants off a laptop for watching movies, reading, etc.
But is there a decent Vector/GIMP-like drawing program out there for the iPad? I asked before but no one answered, so I assumed that was a no.
There are tons of really impressive drawing apps for the iPad though... They are just tailored to the device and come with caveats. Google up best iPad drawing apps and see the stuff that comes up.
iDesign? Freeform? MiniDraw HD? iDraw? TouchDraw?
I haven't used any of these but they all came up when searching the App Store
No. I don't need photoshop-level. But something like Inkscape with different layers and vectors would be what I'm looking for. Layers are really the most important aspect.
I don't know what effect buying an Air would/will have on my iPad usage. I really love the iPad for pretty much all browsing, TV/movie watching outside of the living room, and eBook reading. I think it still has an edge over the air battery life and form factor -- the tablet is so much better for these tasks than even the smallest clamshell laptop.
But fuck is the Air sexy, and it's really putting the age of my 3 year old Macbook into perspective. I feel like I'm almost definitely going to upgrade it, I just can't decide between the 11.6" Air and the 13" Pro. And, if I do go for the Pro, I'll need to decide whether to jump now or wait for a Spring refresh.
The Pro is more powerful. The Air is silent and gives off barely any heat, two things I've grown to hate about my old plastic macbook and wouldn't improve with a Pro.
Decisions are hard.
If it weren't for the fact that I write all the time, I probably would stick with the iPad. Yeah, I can set it up with a BT Keyboard and it pretty much works okay, but having a real laptop will just make things so much easier. I will miss it though, especially iBooks.
Once I sell it on eBay and get the Air in, I'll make sure and post some impressions.
WiiU NNID: BigDookie
I can recommend Sketchbook from Autodesk. Its not near PS nor Gimp feature wise, but it still has very nice functionality (layer transparency for example) and lots of drawing tools. Before you ask further - all pencile for the ipad suck. The ipad registers only finger sized touch'points' - the actual coordinates within the "finger print" vary - making small strokes and detail work an exercise in frustration. The touch area of Most ipad pencils are at eraser size and feal like you are drawing with the eraser back of an actual pencil.
Well that is pretty stupid. I fucking hate Steve Jobs sometimes. "I don't think you need a stylus, so I'm going to make sure you can't use one at all!"
if you DO use one of those styluses for ipad, you also have to wear a glove that only exposes a couple of your fingers -- Because if you rest you palm on the iPad surface it will register as touches.
Even given the lack of pressure sensitivity and that you can't rest your palm on the surface, I 'm amazed at some of the insane things people have drawn on the iPad.
There are better devices out there if your main focus is mobile drawing/sketching.
No, I realize the screen isn't pressure sensitive. I'm fine with a capacitive stylus. It's the fact that the touch zones are all gigantic and unreliable.
It's not that I need it as a sketchpad, but even if I don't personally need the feature, I still can't understand why it's not there to be able to use a reasonably accurate stylus.
As a home user (if you don't need OSX server- which you probably don't need) you don't want an xserve.
You are paying more for less drive bays AND bays that take "special" SAS drives from Apple only.
I have a headless Mac Pro that I use as a server right now - thing is absolutely bullet proof. It has about 22tb of internal and external (ESATA) RAID. I almost exclusively control it from my laptop or other Mac Pro however I have used the iPad to control it.
Honestly I haven't found a VNC for iPad I like. I have an awesome mac-specific one on the iPhone but it hasn't been ported yet.
Well I don't think the ipad was designed on purpose to piss people off regarding this functionality. I think some key decisions have to be made in order to make it work. Smaller touch areas might cause more accidental input - or a touch system with finer resolution might increase the price formthe device.
The programer of the drawing applications could simply fix this issue with an cursor which would control similar to the ship in espaluga 2 (iphone game). This cursor / tool could be controlled by "dragging" it. The line wouldn't appear directly under your finger but a bit to your right - this would also circumwent any jitter resulting from the toucharea of your finger.
This is pretty much complete bullshit. There's no requirement for something that controls the iPad to be "finger sized", but there is a requirement that the touch point provides enough change in capacitance for the touchscreen to consider it a "touch" and not an accidental or irrelevant input. In high sensitivity capacitive screens, factors like humidity and condensation can cause false-positives. Consumer-focused capacitive touchscreens are built to accept the normal change of capacitance applied when touched by a human finger, but have no "finger-sized touch point" requirement. In order for a stylus to work, it needs to create enough capacitance change for the screen to register it as a touch and not an errant piece of dust that fell onto the screen. To do this with something like conductive foam, a larger contact point is required.
Touch your iPad very, very lightly with the tip of your finger. See how it registers the touch, even though the point at which your finger actually made contact is smaller than a Pogo Sketch stylus?
They aren't. Stop taking what random people tell you on the internet to be factual information and then getting yourself worked up about it and raging over Steve Jobs. All capacitive touchscreens require the use of the same kind of stylus.
edit: there are ways to get precision out of a stylus used in a capacitive screen, but currently the only two companies working on them that I know of are HTC (who have had this patent for a while and haven't done anything with it), and Cypress who built one for their own TrueTouch screens.
RIM also filed a patent for a combination resistive+capacitive screen a while back to provide stylus precision and ease-of-use fingertip multitouch, but have yet to produce anything that uses it.
imported some video from a couple SDHC cards of mine using iMovie '11, but I ran into a small problem: It imported the video weird. And by "weird" I mean when the clip should end, it now adds another loop or the video of each clip, sans audio.
Any idea why it's doing this, and how to fix it?
EDIT: Hmmm, wait, it seems to be affecting the MP4's I had converted from an earlier batch of raw HD video, not the SDHC files. huh.
1) Holy crap the 11 is tiny! It feels overall smaller than the 9" Aspire One I'm using right now (thinner but obviously a little wider due to the extra screen size) and the keyboard is obviously full size and really nice to use
2) Double holy crap! The screens on both are stunning, the 11" again is especially nice, the rez works really well, things aren't to small but theres plenty of real estate. Bright and crisp as well.
3) They are both surprisingly fast, even with the 2 gb ram in both stuff opened super rapidly (SSD I guess) and I opened every program i could find and surfed the net, not a stutter. With 4 gb I would imagine even some of the more taxing programs (that apple don't install in store
Very impressed, shame I can't afford to upgrade my Acer
This. I'm currently developing a tangible interface iPad game - it uses a game piece that you place on the iPad's screen, and the piece contains three distinct touch points so that I can calculate what the angle of rotation is. The prototype pieces I'm using are about the size of a finger, and yet the device is able to recognize the three distinct points within a finger-sized radius with awesome accuracy.
Alright, someone go on eBay and buy my iPad so I can buy this thing already.
WiiU NNID: BigDookie
Given the limited amount of information you've shared about your game, I'm unreasonably excited.
Here's what I want to do...I think I want a Mac Mini. I've got a few (re: 2-3) external hard drives which I would like to be able to use to watch things on my home theater setup.
So I can either set up the Mac Mini to stream to my PS3, which is basically how I work things now from my now deceased PC...OR...I can have the Mac Mini connected directly to my Sony receiver via HDMI.
Is that possible?
Part 2...can I just buy some RAM off say, newegg and install it? I believe it's PC3 8500 but other than that I don't know.
I guess as a part 3...whats the best way to back stuff up? Can I do a semi-RAID setup with USB externals?
Part 1: Sure. The Mac Mini has HDMI out, so I'd just hook it directly up to the receiver.
Part 2: Yep. Just make sure it's the right kind.
Part 3: I'll let someone else get that.
Hmm interesting. Now how far can one be for the magic mouse/keyboard to work? At the moment my desk is probably 15' away in a straight line through 2 concrete walls. I'd like to have the mac mini on my desk connected to my monitor for normal PC type use and just output to the receiver as a second one.
I should clearly just buy one and mess around with it, obvious solution.
EDIT: Also, thanks for the info!
Double Ninja Edit: So this would work?
Google up otherworld computing and see what they Re charging for RAM for your device. Much cheaper than apple, and guaranteed to work.
I haven't looked into the new minis, but I'm pretty sure the only Macs that have heatsinks on the RAM are the Mac Pros. And really the heatsinks are only there to keep the fans at a minimum. Not sure if you need paired RAM in the minis either, guess I should read up on them.
I would recommend crucial for RAM. Been using them for years at home and work, never had a problem.
They won't steer you wrong on what RAM you need.