MarkSF's Profile

  • Nov 02, 2009
  • 14
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Latest comments made by: MarkSF

  • Nice new look...and it's good that the back "History" articles are now actually readable (as opposed to the empty articles that usually came up previously when trying to read them).
    MarkSF had this to say on Apr 02, 2008 Posts: 14
    Welcome to the New Apple Matters
  • Besides the very legitimate issues raised in the last three replies, I have to say a line like "sucks diseased moose wang" in this type of article basically red-flags the credibility quotient of the author.
    MarkSF had this to say on Dec 10, 2007 Posts: 14
    When Will Apple Decide Ripping DVDs Is Cool Too?
  • Why does clicking on the left-side "Recent Articles" links to these articles result in seeing no article at all?
    MarkSF had this to say on Oct 11, 2007 Posts: 14
    October 11, 1979: VisiCalc Introduced
  • I recall reading that PPC apps were coded more in favor of memory efficiency at the expense of some speed, while Intel apps are compiled the other way around (speed over memory efficiency). Also the more CPU cores, the more memory the system uses. 1.25gb RAM is (to this day) almost always "more than enough" on my 12-inch G4 Powerbook (even with many apps running at once), while 1gb on a Mac Pro was making the thing page like crazy with just one application open. From my observations, memory requirements for the same apps running on the Mac Pro without excessive paging was around 3x what was needed in the G4 Powerbook. For web-browsing, I use the optimized Intel-specific Firefox builds found here: http://www.beatnikpad.com/archives/2007/09/19/003355.php In both features and performance, I find it far preferable to any version of Safari.
    MarkSF had this to say on Oct 11, 2007 Posts: 14
    Don't Give Me More Speed, Give Me Efficiency
  • The juvenile/ignorant use of "gay" to denounce the Mighty Mouse pretty much sums up the credibility of this article. And I write that as someone who is leaving his iPhone at 1.0.2 until installer.app works with the newer firmware.
  • Seems to me this "review" would have been much more useful to readers after the questions had been answered. As it is, it reads more like a forum posting.
    MarkSF had this to say on Jul 12, 2007 Posts: 14
    Airport Extreme N - The New Hotness
  • Yes, but the introduction of the "Sunflower iMacs" sets up context for the rest of the article and therefore doesn't really make sense, since those iMacs were introduced the following year. I like this site in general, but the first poster is not the only one to have noticed incorrect dates in some of the articles here. More aggressive fact-checking would help overall credibility.
    MarkSF had this to say on May 21, 2007 Posts: 14
    May 21, 2001: Apple Starts Selling Only LCD Monitors
  • I agree with Black Six: I've never had the kinds of problems described either with the iPod's earbuds or with the power adaptors for my Powerbook. Maybe you're winding up the cords too tightly when storing them? One thing that definitely *will* stress these kinds of cords is sharp angles and stress/pulling at connection-points. Both ends of the thinner (low-voltage) cables for Powerbook/Macbook power-supplies commonly fail for that reason. When you wind up cords, keep a bit of slack at both ends, and try to never bend them sharply.
    MarkSF had this to say on Apr 22, 2007 Posts: 14
    The Series is Over! Frayed Wires: 4, James: 0.
  • To me, the built-in audio (on the G4 12-inch Powerbook) is fine as-is, because most DJ's use an external USB- or Firewire-connected multichannel interface. I use Rane/Serato's Scratch Live and either the original SSL interface or the USB-connected TTM57SL mixer for this. Other products of this kind either use their own similar interface, or are normally set up to use multichannel devices (M-Audio is popular, RME is higher-end). Aside from what I mentioned earlier, the only other real deficiency on the 12-inch Powerbooks is the 10/100 Ethernet...the speed improvement of gigabit is nice when doing large backups over a network.
  • Excellent article and follow-up comments. I use my 12-inch Powerbook for DJ-ing, and nothing in the current line would work well for me as a replacement. I need the small footprint (many DJ booths have little space for a laptop, aside from the obvious and already-mentioned portability considerations), metal case (helps with heat dissipation, among other things), non-glossy screen (some bar/club lighting makes a glossy screen very annoying to use), and the inherent greater strength against torsional flexing that you get in a smaller case. I could probably live without the optical drive...especially considering that it's a very expensive part to repair or replace, compared to the cost of a normal-size DVD mechanism and a Firewire case. The only feature addition I'd want (aside from an updated processor and the faster speed) is the lighted keyboard...that's the one thing that annoys me about the 12-inch Powerbook compared to its larger siblings. Nice to have for dark environments (like many DJ booths).
  • Wasn't this actually in 1996?
    MarkSF had this to say on Nov 27, 2006 Posts: 14
    November 27, 1996: Jobs Calls Amelio
  • I tried it on Firefox, and found it irritating enough to remove immediately. The little blue dots that it puts next to every link make certain pages really unattractive, and I wasn't fond of the full-sized "window within the window" that it created (with non-standard cheesy-looking UI elements and logo). It also seemed sluggish, and I'm using a Mac Pro. The basic idea has merit, and maybe if there was something that *didn't* litter pages with blue dots (maybe just use some keyboard command when clicking links to activate the "preview"), and rendered its preview in a user-definable-sized pop-up (rather than obliterating the whole browser window) it would be more worthwhile to me.
    MarkSF had this to say on Nov 22, 2006 Posts: 14
    Cooliris - The New Way to Browse
  • Good quality Firewire cables are $3 at my local computer store (thick cables, gold-plated connectors, never had a single bit of trouble with them). It would be nice if Migration Assistant worked over a network, but on the generation of machines described in the article Firewire would be much faster than Ethernet (probably less true on newer machines with gigabit-speed networking).
    MarkSF had this to say on Nov 06, 2006 Posts: 14
    AAM: Switching Macs
  • I think it was actually released in 1991 (a screaming 25mHz), with the 33mHz Quadra 950 following in mid-1992. Its desirability at the time was compromised by being among the first (if not *the* very first) new Mac to require System 7...a lot of software hadn't yet been updated to work optimally with System 7, plus System 7 itself needed a few revs to become acceptably stable. For a user running audio software like Sound Designer II on a IIfx (or even a IIci) with System 6.0.8, the Quadra 900 with System 7.0.1 was outright sluggish.
    MarkSF had this to say on Oct 19, 2006 Posts: 14
    October 18, 1991: Quadra 900 Introduced