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Mac Thread: Yes you can turn off the 3d glass effect! W/Y/H

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Posts

  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    EggyToast wrote: »
    Given how absurdly powerful the MacPros are, I wonder who they're really selling them to. I mean, they've got the iMacs at the low end, and then the MacPros at the insanely high end. They're just making people want a "Mac." I'm not going to spend $2800 to replace my aging dual G5 with a machine that drastically overshoots my needs.

    Look at the engineering in the Mac Pros: not a lot. My thinking is that the Pros serve to exist as a marketing line that says that Apple ships the fastest computers in the world, but they don't get any attention at all. They haven't changed a thing since the Power Mac G5 was released. They just put the new hardware in every once in a while. I figure it's just as expensive to stop manufacture as it is to keep on making a small few to hardcore Maya renderers and such.

    Even Photoshop users would be find with an iMac nowadays, especially as it supports dual monitors.

    I run a Mac lab here at a CS department, all iMacs. We really don't need anything else. However, I do hear of other departments buying Mac Pros because they have no idea what their real requirements are, so buy the fastest. The media lab at Architecture and Design are all Mac Pros; I wouldn't have done that. Usually they get it all specced wrong too, ie. a very very fast CPU, and not enough RAM to keep it at full-whack. The processors are so cheap that they don't realise they're bottlenecking way earlier than 100% load time.

    Lewisham on
  • Fatty McBeardoFatty McBeardo Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    I could see a Mac Pro being worthwhile if you're working a lot in Maya or doing a whole lot of video encoding, particularly HD.

    But otherwise... not exactly sure what it's for. I can't get over how fast my "lowly" Macbook is now that it's maxed out on RAM.

    Fatty McBeardo on
  • HooraydiationHooraydiation Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Speaking of RAM, does Crucial.com ever have discounts or coupons for theirs that may be worth holding out for? $120 or so is hugely reduced from what I would have had to pay if I was buying from Apple.com, but I'd be willing to hold out on upgrading myself if I could save a little more.

    Hooraydiation on
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  • H*RH*R Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    I remember Anandtech sometimes had coupons on their site for Crucial, but really for that much memory it's almost like stealing it, and it's a reliable brand.

    H*R on
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  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    I could see a Mac Pro being worthwhile if you're working a lot in Maya or doing a whole lot of video encoding, particularly HD.

    We use an XServe for our video encoding; client machines really don't need that power.

    Lewisham on
  • Epyon9283Epyon9283 Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Lewisham wrote: »
    EggyToast wrote: »
    Given how absurdly powerful the MacPros are, I wonder who they're really selling them to. I mean, they've got the iMacs at the low end, and then the MacPros at the insanely high end. They're just making people want a "Mac." I'm not going to spend $2800 to replace my aging dual G5 with a machine that drastically overshoots my needs.

    Look at the engineering in the Mac Pros: not a lot. My thinking is that the Pros serve to exist as a marketing line that says that Apple ships the fastest computers in the world, but they don't get any attention at all. They haven't changed a thing since the Power Mac G5 was released. They just put the new hardware in every once in a while. I figure it's just as expensive to stop manufacture as it is to keep on making a small few to hardcore Maya renderers and such.

    Even Photoshop users would be find with an iMac nowadays, especially as it supports dual monitors.

    I run a Mac lab here at a CS department, all iMacs. We really don't need anything else. However, I do hear of other departments buying Mac Pros because they have no idea what their real requirements are, so buy the fastest. The media lab at Architecture and Design are all Mac Pros; I wouldn't have done that. Usually they get it all specced wrong too, ie. a very very fast CPU, and not enough RAM to keep it at full-whack. The processors are so cheap that they don't realise they're bottlenecking way earlier than 100% load time.

    Most people would be fine with an iMac but they're not expandable at all. You can put more RAM in. Wonderful. What if you want a bigger or faster internal hard drive? Not user serviceable. External drives are slow, loud (at least mine are), and require a power brick. What if you need to put in a pci card? What if you want a 30" external display? Oh well. What if you need RAID? Nope.

    I have a Mac Pro at home. Did I need one? No. I got along fine with an iMac speed wise. I got one of the 20" aluminum iMacs when they came out back in August and was disgusted with the display quality (cheap 6bit TN display with terrible viewing angle) and had issues with the analog sound output quality. I promptly returned it and got the Mac Pro so I could select my own display. Having the ability to add internal hard drives is an added bonus. I also have more RAM in the box than you could shove in an iMac (5GB).

    Epyon9283 on
  • HooraydiationHooraydiation Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    H*R wrote: »
    I remember Anandtech sometimes had coupons on their site for Crucial, but really for that much memory it's almost like stealing it, and it's a reliable brand.

    If only babies liked RAM as much as candy.

    Hooraydiation on
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  • bashbash Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Keep in mind the Mac Pros besides having eight CPU cores can also fit 32GB of RAM. At non-Apple prices that's only about $1200 to have eight times the about of RAM that will viably fit in an iMac. For intense video workflows massive amounts of RAM and CPU power are necessary. If you're doing OfflineRT edits of SD or HDV content an iMac is probably going to work out well, moving into full HD editing requires a bit more umph.

    It should also be noted that with four video cards (2600 XTs) in a Mac Pro it can drive eight 30" monitors. If you go the Dell route ($1200 per 3007WFP) that's only $9600 for 32768000 pixels. That's almost a pixel for every byte of RAM you can have (for only $1200). For the top end CPU in the Mac Pro you end up with a 32GB workstation with eight cores running at 3.2GHz with 32Mpixels of video resolution for only $15649 before taxes. I call this theoretical beast the 32'er. If all of you chip in a few thousand dollars each I'll pick one up.




    And keep it. But I will thank you.

    bash on
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  • SmasherSmasher Starting to get dizzy Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Eight 30" monitors... I think you just broke my mind.

    Smasher on
  • SmasherSmasher Starting to get dizzy Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    I'm probably LTTP, but what the hell did Apple do to break printer drivers so horribly in Leopard? I hadn't noticed anything until now since I hadn't needed to print anything since I installed it, but after some investigating it seems printers from pretty much every vendor got borked and now you can't scan or fax or anything other than print (if that!).

    I don't know if there were any printer troubles with past updates, but I sure as hell don't remember anything as bad as this.

    Smasher on
  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    I've not heard any reports of broken printer drivers; are you sure you installed the ones you need?

    Lewisham on
  • SmasherSmasher Starting to get dizzy Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    To the best of my knowledge there aren't any fully functional drivers for my printer (HP psc 2410) in Leopard yet. I can print, but scanning (and I presume faxing, though I haven't tried it) doesn't work at all.

    Apple's discussion boards are full of threads with people having printer problems. Here are two of the bigger threads, but there's literally hundreds of threads in the Leopard Printing section about various broken printers.

    Smasher on
  • drhazarddrhazard Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    So I'm trying to figure out what Adium has over iChat for someone who only uses Google Talk/Jabber and his .Mac address. Am I missing something here? It doesn't really seem to provide anything else.

    drhazard on
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  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    drhazard wrote: »
    So I'm trying to figure out what Adium has over iChat for someone who only uses Google Talk/Jabber and his .Mac address. Am I missing something here? It doesn't really seem to provide anything else.

    Customisability and Growl support.

    Lewisham on
  • mastmanmastman Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    You can make it look like it's part of the desktop which is cool IMO

    http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/5103/picture2cx5.png

    mastman on
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  • emericanaemericana Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    So I'm finally going to take the leap and buy a Mac. I'm mainly getting it for school and hopefully work in the future, which means Final Cut Express and possibly After Effects. Will a MacBook be able to handle this okay, or should I go for an iMac? I can't afford a Pro, and I'd like to be mobile, but if it'll run like shit on a notebook, I can settle...

    emericana on
  • Brodo FagginsBrodo Faggins Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    emericana wrote: »
    So I'm finally going to take the leap and buy a Mac. I'm mainly getting it for school and hopefully work in the future, which means Final Cut Express and possibly After Effects. Will a MacBook be able to handle this okay, or should I go for an iMac? I can't afford a Pro, and I'd like to be mobile, but if it'll run like shit on a notebook, I can settle...

    The specs say a MacBook will be just fine. I'd get an external monitor just so it won't feel too cramped.

    Brodo Faggins on
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  • EggyToastEggyToast Jersey CityRegistered User regular
    edited January 2008
    drhazard wrote: »
    So I'm trying to figure out what Adium has over iChat for someone who only uses Google Talk/Jabber and his .Mac address. Am I missing something here? It doesn't really seem to provide anything else.

    it provides more customization, but it's not inherently better. With iChat you can close the buddy list and see your available friends from the menu bar -- with Adium, only your status. But you can make Adium practically invisible, or at least much much much smaller than iChat. I also really like tabbed chat windows, so all my chats are in 1 window instead of, say, 3 separate windows. Adium also "flaps" continuously, while iChat will only bounce and not otherwise notify you that you have a message waiting.

    If iChat suits your needs, great. I use Adium at home because it's more straightforward (oddly enough) and it's got more customization. I use iChat at work since it's all we get.

    EggyToast on
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  • bashbash Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    EggyToast wrote: »
    drhazard wrote: »
    So I'm trying to figure out what Adium has over iChat for someone who only uses Google Talk/Jabber and his .Mac address. Am I missing something here? It doesn't really seem to provide anything else.

    it provides more customization, but it's not inherently better. With iChat you can close the buddy list and see your available friends from the menu bar -- with Adium, only your status. But you can make Adium practically invisible, or at least much much much smaller than iChat. I also really like tabbed chat windows, so all my chats are in 1 window instead of, say, 3 separate windows. Adium also "flaps" continuously, while iChat will only bounce and not otherwise notify you that you have a message waiting.

    Some of these behaviors have changed in Leopard. For one "tabs" are supported on Leopard's iChat. If you enable them multiple conversations will exist in a single window with vertical split view, the left side showing different "tabs" and the right containing your conversation. In Leopard iChat will also display an unread message count on the iChat icon even if you set iChat not to bounce in the Dock.

    I used to use Adium exclusively for a really long time. Fortunately iChat's performance and UI has improved significantly and I found I really wasn't using Adium's customization much. I picked a style I was comfortable with and stuck with it. While it is cool to make Adium blend in with the desktop I end up having so many windows open simultaneously that it is almost always covered. I switched back to iChat about a year ago and have been using it since. I don't log onto twenty IM networks simultaneously do that aspect of Adium wasn't helping me much. As I said the customizations are cute at first but quickly become useless and I ended up going back to iChat-ish UI elements pretty quickly.

    In terms of AV features Adium doesn't even begin to compare to iChat. This may change in the future but right now iChat wins hands down. Not only can you do gorgeous 4-way video conferences but 10-way audio conferences and with Leopard has iChat Theater as an option if the recipient is also running Leopard. With iChat theater you can drag pretty much any file with a QuickLook plug-in onto an iChat conference and present it to all of the current participants. There's also a public framework for adding iChat Theater functionality to running applications which will be pretty sweet once third parties begin supporting utilizing it.

    bash on
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  • ZoolanderZoolander Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Does Leopard's Preview have a full-screen mode?

    Zoolander on
  • RonenRonen Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Zoolander wrote: »
    Does Leopard's Preview have a full-screen mode?

    I'm logging into my machine at home to check this, but off the top of my head I know Quick Look does. Hit space to open the file in Quick Look, then there's an icon for full screen.

    Edit: As far as I can tell, no, Preview doesn't have a full screen mode. I will say that everything I used to use Preview for I do in Quick Look now, so for me at least it's not a huge deal.

    Ronen on
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  • EggyToastEggyToast Jersey CityRegistered User regular
    edited January 2008
    bash wrote: »

    Some of these behaviors have changed in Leopard. [ichat gets cool]
    That's cool to know. I agree that making Adium blend in with the desktop completely ruins the usefulness of the application unless you're just sitting there staring at your desktop. My computer doesn't have any of the built in video stuff, being a Powermac G5, but if I get a laptop I wouldn't be surprised if I stick with iChat. The video thing is pretty huge if you have a use for it, and I imagine I'll be video chatting with my parents (and hey, even my sister now who has a Macbook).

    It's sad that my family have computers that are faster than mine.

    EggyToast on
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  • EggyToastEggyToast Jersey CityRegistered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Zoolander wrote: »
    Does Leopard's Preview have a full-screen mode?

    What are you previewing? Pictures? I know in 10.4 you can just highlight them, right click, and "View Slideshow."

    EggyToast on
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  • LoneIgadzraLoneIgadzra Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Dudes, as regards Adium vs. iChat, if I get an IM Adium continuously flashes the name in the dock until I check it out. It'll also pop a Growl notification if the chat window is in the background so I can see whether I want to check it out in the first place.

    iChat bounces. One lonely fucking time.

    I don't even care about customization or anything, that's just a matter of pure functionality. I made my sister switch because she would always have 20 chats going and lose my IMs. No more.

    LoneIgadzra on
  • mastmanmastman Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    That is why I switched. But the new leopard one at least puts a little red number on the icon so you can tell when you have unviewed chats.

    leopard ichat also puts them all into one window.

    I use adium at work cuz I have to use ICQ, but at home I use ichat. Though, I wish ichat showed the people who were signed in to googlechat like adium did.

    mastman on
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  • Shazkar ShadowstormShazkar Shadowstorm Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    I use Adium 99.9% of the time, unless I want to video chat.

    Shazkar Shadowstorm on
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  • drhazarddrhazard Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    I'll keep looking over it, but I think I'll stick with iChat for now. I don't have a whole lot of Web 2.0 things I use so the the additional message protocols aren't of much interest to me, and the visual things (integrated with the desktop would mean I'd never see it, and I'd rather have a small red icon instead of something jumping spastically in the Dock) don't really attract me.

    drhazard on
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  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    bash wrote:
    While it is cool to make Adium blend in with the desktop I end up having so many windows open simultaneously that it is almost always covered.

    I have my Adium contact list docked on the side, and then auto-hidden, floating above all other windows, so it acts like the Mac OS X dock. It's really easy to get at it that way, rather than worrying about it being buried.

    Lewisham on
  • ginguskahnginguskahn Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    So i just gave adium a try as people seem to be raving about it, I got it looking nice, transparent and what not.

    Only problems are, every time I log in it says there is a buddy list-sync error with my MSN and I have to OK like 10 people into my list, which is really annoying.

    Secondly it installed growl which now has a tab in my system settings. I have no idea what growl is, nor do I want it in my sys prefs pane. Can I remove it?

    ginguskahn on
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  • GihgehlsGihgehls Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Growl is a service that lets other programs display notifications, much like the gmail notifier or how outlook works on windows. Growl has options that have to go somewhere. I didn't realize that the System Prefs window was such valuable real estate. You can safely removed Growl and it won't break anaything major, but you will stop getting notifications in the upper-right (by default.)

    Gihgehls on
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  • ZoolanderZoolander Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    EggyToast wrote: »
    Zoolander wrote: »
    Does Leopard's Preview have a full-screen mode?

    What are you previewing? Pictures? I know in 10.4 you can just highlight them, right click, and "View Slideshow."

    I'm reading PDFs. Preview does everything else I need to do with PDFs, but I can't do without full-screen mode. I've been using Skim, but I find it ugly and doesn't have the visual polish I want. And Skim's icon really bugs me and when I see all my pdfs have that ugly icon, it nags at me.

    Zoolander on
  • HooraydiationHooraydiation Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    So I can't decide between 2GB of RAM and 4GB. I wouldn't describe my Macbook usage as intensive, but if I'm going to need 4GB down the line I wonder if it might be prudent to just shell out the $100 now.

    I don't suppose I could just buy one 2GB stick and use that in my Macbook, could I?

    Hooraydiation on
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  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Zoolander wrote: »
    EggyToast wrote: »
    Zoolander wrote: »
    Does Leopard's Preview have a full-screen mode?

    What are you previewing? Pictures? I know in 10.4 you can just highlight them, right click, and "View Slideshow."

    I'm reading PDFs. Preview does everything else I need to do with PDFs, but I can't do without full-screen mode. I've been using Skim, but I find it ugly and doesn't have the visual polish I want. And Skim's icon really bugs me and when I see all my pdfs have that ugly icon, it nags at me.

    Just do what EggyToast said: Preview -> View -> Slideshow.

    Lewisham on
  • hoodie13hoodie13 punch bro Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    mastman wrote: »
    You can make it look like it's part of the desktop which is cool IMO

    http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/5103/picture2cx5.png

    Two things: one, how did you get your list to be completely opaque, and two, I want your wallpaper.

    hoodie13 on
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  • ZoolanderZoolander Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Lewisham wrote: »
    Zoolander wrote: »
    EggyToast wrote: »
    Zoolander wrote: »
    Does Leopard's Preview have a full-screen mode?

    What are you previewing? Pictures? I know in 10.4 you can just highlight them, right click, and "View Slideshow."

    I'm reading PDFs. Preview does everything else I need to do with PDFs, but I can't do without full-screen mode. I've been using Skim, but I find it ugly and doesn't have the visual polish I want. And Skim's icon really bugs me and when I see all my pdfs have that ugly icon, it nags at me.

    Just do what EggyToast said: Preview -> View -> Slideshow.
    Slideshow view sucks. It doesn't zoom to page width, but shows the whole page. You can't scroll through the pages continuously, just one at a time. You can't create comments (annotate) in slideshow mode.

    Zoolander on
  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Zoolander wrote: »
    Lewisham wrote: »
    Zoolander wrote: »
    EggyToast wrote: »
    Zoolander wrote: »
    Does Leopard's Preview have a full-screen mode?

    What are you previewing? Pictures? I know in 10.4 you can just highlight them, right click, and "View Slideshow."

    I'm reading PDFs. Preview does everything else I need to do with PDFs, but I can't do without full-screen mode. I've been using Skim, but I find it ugly and doesn't have the visual polish I want. And Skim's icon really bugs me and when I see all my pdfs have that ugly icon, it nags at me.

    Just do what EggyToast said: Preview -> View -> Slideshow.
    Slideshow view sucks. It doesn't zoom to page width, but shows the whole page. You can't scroll through the pages continuously, just one at a time. You can't create comments (annotate) in slideshow mode.

    Well then you don't just want "full-screen" mode, do you? You want to have the window very big.

    Sometimes Zoolander, you really have weird requirements.

    Lewisham on
  • lordswinglordswing Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    So I can't decide between 2GB of RAM and 4GB. I wouldn't describe my Macbook usage as intensive, but if I'm going to need 4GB down the line I wonder if it might be prudent to just shell out the $100 now.

    I don't suppose I could just buy one 2GB stick and use that in my Macbook, could I?

    http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/MacBook/DDR2/

    For that price, I'd just go with the 4 gigs for $99. Damn, I remember paying $180 for a total of 2 gigs. Nice to hear Apple upped the ram from 3 to 4 gigs.

    lordswing on
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  • ZoolanderZoolander Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Lewisham wrote: »
    Zoolander wrote: »
    Lewisham wrote: »
    Zoolander wrote: »
    EggyToast wrote: »
    Zoolander wrote: »
    Does Leopard's Preview have a full-screen mode?

    What are you previewing? Pictures? I know in 10.4 you can just highlight them, right click, and "View Slideshow."

    I'm reading PDFs. Preview does everything else I need to do with PDFs, but I can't do without full-screen mode. I've been using Skim, but I find it ugly and doesn't have the visual polish I want. And Skim's icon really bugs me and when I see all my pdfs have that ugly icon, it nags at me.

    Just do what EggyToast said: Preview -> View -> Slideshow.
    Slideshow view sucks. It doesn't zoom to page width, but shows the whole page. You can't scroll through the pages continuously, just one at a time. You can't create comments (annotate) in slideshow mode.

    Well then you don't just want "full-screen" mode, do you? You want to have the window very big.

    Sometimes Zoolander, you really have weird requirements.
    No... I want full-screen mode. i.e. no icons, no menubar, nothing but the pdf displayed appropriately (page-width zoom). To annotate, you right click and select annotate. Skim has this, and it's called full-screen mode, so apparently my requirements are not very weird.

    To be honest I'd compromise for changing Skim's default icons for pdfs, which are incredibly ugly, but apparently you need to pay money to change filetype icons in OS X, which is pretty retarded. Unless someone can point me to a free equivalent to CandyBar that won't fuck up my system.

    Zoolander on
  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Zoolander wrote: »
    To be honest I'd compromise for changing Skim's default icons for pdfs, which are incredibly ugly, but apparently you need to pay money to change filetype icons in OS X, which is pretty retarded. Unless someone can point me to a free equivalent to CandyBar that won't fuck up my system.

    All you need to do is go into the Package Contents of the app (right-click -> Show Package Contents), and locate the icon file it's using for documents, and replace it with the one you want. I forget where it is in the structure; think of it is a learning experience.

    Lewisham on
  • ZoolanderZoolander Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Lewisham wrote: »
    Zoolander wrote: »
    To be honest I'd compromise for changing Skim's default icons for pdfs, which are incredibly ugly, but apparently you need to pay money to change filetype icons in OS X, which is pretty retarded. Unless someone can point me to a free equivalent to CandyBar that won't fuck up my system.

    All you need to do is go into the Package Contents of the app (right-click -> Show Package Contents), and locate the icon file it's using for documents, and replace it with the one you want. I forget where it is in the structure; think of it is a learning experience.

    sweet, thanks

    Zoolander on
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