Why Apple should open up Apple TV

Toms Hardware is one of those sites you feel like you've been going to since childhood. You've watched the site grow up and mature. You have a personal connection. If it wasn't for Toms Hardware, I may not be into hardware as much as I am now.

if it was for the inquirer i'd find the tech industry to be dry and boring. thank you both.

tom i hope you find a good home and they dont abuse you.

CJ

Subject: Microsoft does u-turn on DRM

this is great news for anyone who owns a zune, poor smucks that they are, but more importantly has microsoft now said anything about removing the vista drm infection?

Daemeon

Subject: Install Linux in half an hour

Hi,

Having read your article regarding the swift installation of PCLinuxOS, I thought I'd give it a whirl! I'm pretty much a novice when it comes to installing Linux, and my poor experiences are such that I've walked away bemused by the lack of compatiblity (if its not the screen, its the sound, if not that then something else as irritatingly niggly that requires an expert to sort out!).

So, I downloaded the latest distribution of PCLinuxOS, burned it onto a CD-RW disc, rebooted my PC with the disc in one of the two DVD-RW drives, followed the basic instructions (I decided on running the OS from the CD rather than a full and potentially tretcherous HD install!) and was booted into a fully working Linux environment where, after configuring the WiFi card's WEP to talk to my wireless/modem router, I was surfing the web within seconds via Firefox! Quite astonishing and blew away my negative experience of past skirmishes with an OS that seemed to have little patience for someone who isn't fond of getting their hands dirty when something needs configuring or fixing!

My system is as follows : Tualatin 1.2GHz Celeron overclocked to 1.6GHz, 512MB SDRAM, ATI Radeon 9600XT, Belkin PCI WiFi, Wacom Graphire USB tablet, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz PCI soundcard, VIA USB 2.0 PCI card, front panel with USB 2.0 connections and card reader, cheapo wireless mouse/keyboard and a sturdy HP D1100 Business Inkjet. What surprised me most was that my Wacom graphics pad, ATI 9600XT card and Santa Cruz audio were working straight off with no configuration (well, the ATI defaulted to 16bit colour, but it was painless to configure that for 24/32bit output). Oh, and the OS knew that the graphics card was connected to a 1280x1024 pixel TFT screen, so straightaway I was presented with a crystal clear GUI.

Many thanks for the heads up - its been an eye opener. :-)

Kind Regards,
Alex Quant

Subject: The rumour is Tom's Hardware's been sold

Wow! And?

For several years Tom's was my number one source for hardware information and not a single recommendation let me down (their gushing over the Asus P3V4X board, once Via had worked out the driver issues for the chipset, had me plop down a fair chunka and the board is still purring along nicely, many years later).

Then came the hints of favouritism, which was bad but not one billionth as bad as the revisions they made to the site. A reasonably uncluttered and intuitive environment became Hellish. It didn't take long to snip them from my /comp/hardware bookmarks and as of right now I honestly can't remember the last time I checked in, even in desperation. And? So?

Regards,
mjh

Subject: Toshiba

LOL Toshiba?

The SAME Toshiba that sold a gigantic, three-story tall, seven-axis milling machine to the Soviet Union in the Eighties (It was all over the news in Canada, radio newspapers, television, how Toshiba had stabbed the USA in the face, never mind the back) so that the Soviets could have nuclear subs that were as quiet as the Americans?

Yes, are we, in the United States, Oh So Eager to do ANYTHING for Toshiba??

No, I hope Hell will freeze over before any commission that the USA is on or that it controls will ever do anything for Toshiba.

Since that day, I have, not once EVER bought anything made by Toshiba, it made such a strong impression on me as a young man, how our "ally" Japan. "Ally" to the Japanese, of course, meaning in the same way a John is an "ally" of a lady of the evening, and loved about as much. And for about as long.

Bring us another Ehime Maru. We'll show you what a REALLY quiet nuclear sub can do.

Smilo

Subject: RD600 Replacement

Why does everyone blame AMD/ATI for RD600 being such a failure, when in reality, this problem is because of nVidia?

RD600 had been planned to use a ULi southbridge...Remember ULi? nV bought them out just so they could screw with ATI a little, as I'm sure ULi had help from ATI in creating it's "ANY 2 same cards for 3D rendering" chipset that allowed both Crossfire and SLi to work.

Had nV not bought ULi, the rd600 products would have been out a bit over a year ago, and been one of the best chipset at that time.

But so goes the tech battle...you win your battles fast, or you lose in the end. Maybe this is a good lesson for AMD...

Rennie

Subject: OpenXML

ODF is the joke.

No macro language? Grossly inadequate spreadsheet specÉ

As Miguel Icaza says:
A common objection to OOXML is that the specification is "too big", that 6,000 pages is a bit too much for a specification and that this would prevent third parties from implementing support for the standard.

Considering that for years we, the open source community, have been trying to extract as much information about protocols and file formats from Microsoft, this is actually a good thing.

For example, many years ago, when I was working on Gnumeric, one of the issues that we ran into was that the actual descriptions for functions and formulas in Excel was not entirely accurate from the public books you could buy.

OOXML devotes 324 pages of the standard to document the formulas and functions.

The original submission to the ECMA TC45 working group did not have any of this information. Jody Goldberg and Michael Meeks that represented Novell at the TC45 requested the information and it eventually made it into the standards. I consider this a win, and I consider those 324 extra pages a win for everyone (almost half the size of the ODF standard).

Depending on how you count, ODF has 4 to 10 pages devoted to it. There is no way you could build a spreadsheet software based on this specification.

To build a spreadsheet program based on ODF you would have to resort to an existing implementation source code (OpenOffice.org, Gnumeric) or you would have to resort to Microsoft's public documentation or ironically to the OOXML specification.

The ODF Alliance in their OOXML Fact Sheet conveniently ignores this issue.``

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Jan-30.html

Bruce

Subject: Unreleased graphics cards do the rounds

It's surprising that the results for the 8600 seem to indicate that the SM3 performance is a bit low, you'd expect the other scores to be the low ones that require RAM access instead, and not the SM3 scores which require calculations rather than bandwidth.

It's about time futuremark released a DX10 benchmark, to test all these new cards with DX9 tests seems a bit unfair and uninformative, some cards might have a completely different ranking when pitched in a DX10 battle, and if GPU makers had time to release several generations of DX10 cards you'd think futuremark had enough time to code a new benchmark.

W

Subject: Nvidia go drivers?

So with all this fuss about nvidia struggling to provide drivers, i'd like to know if the 7 series GO drivers will be getting an update any time soon?

Either for vista or for xp. I play alot of games with mine and we don't get the same sort of fixes/updates as the desktop parts, yet it's a graphics part for mobile gaming.

The last update was: Version: 84.63
Release Date: July 5, 2006
WHQL Certified

Thats a long time.

Thanks, Rich A

Subject: Why Apple should open up Apple TV

Firstly, bless Apple for their relatively non-draconian approach to hardware lockdown. OS X, the iPod, Macs, and now Apple TV all demonstrate Apple's commitment to blocking off functionality they disapprove of, but without breaking legs and wasting millions to do it. In particular, kudos to them for sticking iPod music directly on a USB HDD in unencrypted (if strangely-sorted) format.

But the fact remains that the confoundingly sexy-but-dull Apple TV does officially lock out OS X, and when hacked only (at present) hobbles along fairly uselessly.

Of course they could simply sell the Apple TV for $300 and allow users to upgrade (at the OS cost of $130) to a fully functional Mac. So why should Apple allow OS X on the Apple TV?

1) Marketshare. Today you can wander into a Fry's Electronics and plunk down $450 for a complete 3.2Ghz PC with Windows Vista and a 17inch monitor. A Mac with a monitor starts at more than twice that, $1000. Between saving for college and paying off red-meat heart attack bills, Mary and John are on a budget when it comes to electonics, and the cheaper the machine the better. And at $300 plus $130 for the OS, a $430 Mac could well be the gateway drug for countless Windows users. Right now OS X users are still second-class citizens when it comes to school, work, drivers, software, web-services, and more Mac users benefit the Mac cult en masse.

2) Ride the good will. People loved it when Apple introduced Bootcamp to allow 'lowly Windows' on their Macs. They loved it when Apple announced DRM-free music. They love it when Apple comes across as 'the good buy' in the murky tech biz, and that helps Apple's bottom line.

3) Sell more iTunes content. The Apple TV has been criticized for the inability to purchase and download iTunes content (both audio and video) directly "from the couch". Purchasing content requires the user to both have and use a Mac or Windows computer. OS X on Apple TV would allow users to use iTunes and thus purchase content using only the set-top device, increasing the likelihood of an impulse buy (picture a small party hanging out in front of the TV trying to figure out what to watch or listen to that evening).

4) Surfing the web in Safari at 1920x1080 from my couch for only $430 would be slick as $#(+.

So how much does Apple stand to gain and lose when we compare this to their cheapest Mac? Lets compare the specs and feature sets:

$430 is 72% of $600. I'm willing to bet that the cost-to-build for the Apple TV is well less than 72% of the cost-to-build for the Mac Mini (the lack of an optical drive is a big one). And, realistically-speaking, the average user pining for a workhorse Mac to use for even simple tasks like office productivity are likely to spring for the much higher power and capability of the Mac Mini (or higher-end Macs) anyway, thus the Apple TV serves as no real 'threat' to their Mac sales.

What other issues might pose a stumbling block for such a plan?

One minor issue is that, officially, OS X Tiger is only supported on Macs that have a firewire port.

Mac-heads touting intuitivity and ease-of-use might say OS X would muddy the easy and purpose-driven nature of the Apple TV. However, the Apple TV interface is basically just Front Row, which is included on Macs anyway. Installing oS X wouldn't interfere with the basic functionality and ease-of-use for the Apple TV. To make it easier just have it automatically switch between "OS X" and "Apple TV" when the user switches between keyboard/mouse and the remote.

One question remains: without an optical drive, how should users install OS X onto the Apple TV? Why through a download purchase on iTunes, of course.

Sumit Chandra Agarwal

Subject: crash bang BOOM!

so i install the new drivers, do a driver clean of course. (8800 GTS 640 SLi) and well...im giddy as a school girl. I go fire up my crack cocaine called BF2, to get a good session in, and well it starts crashing. i start maybe something with the settings that's causing it to crash. low and behold it was the drivers, so back to old drivers. (never thought about reinstalling or trying S.Talker(eff'n periods, it's a name not an IP address!)

CJ Thorsen

Subject: Power Calculator

Which is more likely?

A PSU holding up maximum load for multiple months (something most can't do for more than a few seconds, except with very conservatively rated units from mfgs like Etasis/Delta/Liteon/Enhance/Zippy/3Y) or the components simply aren't drawing that much power?

Unless you're running multiple instances of Prime + ATiTool [Which for some reason heats up my card more than 3DMark/games...and the dT is substantial, even with water, so the power draw must be as well.] Throw in Sandra to test the RAM/HDDs, now run it all in parallel. And you MIGHT hit full power draw...though even then it's doubtful.

But then, who knows. Maybe a bogus calculator will work after all. The fact that is gives a rating in watts rather than amperes per rail (12V/5v/etc.) makes me skeptical, at best.

Edit: After writing this, I realized the pro version now supports amperes/rail, Initially when I saw this several months ago it didn't. Regardless, the feature is paid-for, and when the information is freely availible elsewhere... (not to mention more accurate), I think I'll pass.

T

Subject: 8800 ForceWare for Windows XP emerges

It is to bad nobody seems to believe the "OTHER" nvidia cards could use a new driver. There hasnt been a new driver for anything other then the 8800's since November 2,2006. That is five months with nothing. I know quite a few very unhappy people with new 7900 series cards with older drivers then the cards. I feel I have bought a old out of date unsupported product from Nvidia. What Nvidia doesnt seem to realize is that for my next card I doent think I will buy it from a company that forgot all about me and my new $600 video card.

D Carr

Subject: eXtreme Power Supply Calculator

I've tried out that calculator before (that you mentioned in your article), and it doesn't seem to give very accurate results. In fact, I took the system that was talked about in a previous article here, "Ultimate Overclocked PC only needs 500W power supply" By Nebojsa Novakovic, and I ran those components through the calculator. The eXtreme Power Supply Calculator claimed that that system required over 650watts of power, working at 100%. In the article, that system was documented to take no more than 429watts even at high load, and it was run off of a 500watt power supply. So, the power supply calculator is at least 200watts off, quite a large amount.

CompWiz

Subject: New Forceware Drivers

You mention that nvidia have released new forceware drivers so what does this mean for ppl who have been going to guru3d.com for beta drivers for the past two months.

As current drivers don't fix bugs in dx9 games such Call Of Juarez, CS:S. Where there are noticeable bugs surrounding shadows/player outlines, foggy smokey textures which clear up, upfront but not from distances.

These drivers with their version number feel a step backward as the beta drivers are truly well established now in their 00's. so errr errrr i am bit confused, based on my problem history would you recomend trying out the new drivers ???

Thanks Man,

Ibrar

Subject: Microsoft does u-turn on DRM

I think you've got it wrong. Microsoft has always taken the position that DRM is a bad idea. I say this with confidence because I am good friends with a developer in the DRM group at MS and have had in-depth conversations regarding Microsoft's stand on DRM with him and the manager of his department. This was a few years ago and they had been saying it for a long time before that.

Everyone who knows technology knows DRM defeats the purpose of distributing media. The people who know technology at Microsoft are just like the rest of us. Unfortunately they have to answer to people who don't know technology. The people who negotiate contracts with the recording industry had to assure the labels that their intellectual property would be secured. Without that assurance they would never have allowed Microsoft to distribute their property.

I think the stance Microsoft is taking could have been planned from the start: Get your foot in the door with the labels by offering DRM security, then when they start to realize it's a bad idea you just lift the technical limitations and continue providing the service. Microsoft has the service contracts already in place. They don't care if they serve DRM content or open content. If they can prove to the labels that open content will bring in more customers then by all means they will push for open content. It's just good business.

Abronow

Subject: MS removing DRM

Bill Gates gave his speech about how much DRM sucked months before Steve Jobs' speech flooded the internet.

Mout

Subject: Toms Hardware

So whats next, you all selling your souls to the register next?. The end of days are a coming :)

Wolverine