[smax013]

JakeT said:

Yeah, I really liked the Pizmo. It was a great design. I like being able to swap out a DVD, battery, or hard drive. It's not very often that I need the DVD, so an extra battery would be nice. A second hard drive in that space could be useful as well. I liked the shape and color of the Pizmo. I've never liked the gray aluminum color. It is so ugly. Could we at least have a couple of color choices?

Apple seems to be obsessed with thickness. I don't get that. Thin is nice, but no where near the top of my priority list.

I'm disappointed with the new Laptops.

To each their own...while you seem to place some importance on the color of your laptop, I personally don't place color anywhere near the top of my priority list (OK, so if they made it some obnoxious color like pink, it would be a MAJOR buzz kill for me, but silver vs. black vs. white...I could care less...I personally liked the aluminum silver look more than the white plastic look, but either would work). Now, I will admit that I think Apple has take the whole "form over function" a bit far at times...if making the MacBook slimmer and lighter was done at the expense of a Firewire port, then I think Apple goofed.

[vulpine]

smax013 said:

Quote

2 disk system with Firewire 400, Firewire 800, and USB...can be run as BJOD or RAID 1 or RAID 0...available in 1 TB, 1.5 TB or 2 TB...starts at $349 direct:
www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10967

>

Quote

4 disk system with Firewire 400, Firewire 800, USB, and eSATA...can be run with 7 different RAID modes...available in 2 TB, 4 TB, and 6 TB...starts at $850;
[http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11113]

2 disk system with Firewire 400, Firewire 800, and USB...looks like only RAID 1...available from 250 GB upto 1 TB...starts from $150:

>

Quote

[http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/raid_1/Gmax]

Just a few easy found examples. Note that you can get LaCie drives for slightly less from places like NewEgg and OWC than direct from LaCie.

I appreciate the suggestions; I'd already looked at all of them. The 4 disk system was close to what I wanted, but I was actually looking for an external housing that would let me install my own drives... so I could add as I needed them. $850 is a little steep. If I remember, JBOD was one of the configs. Personally I don't want to use any form of RAID because with most RAIDS I've seen, you lose one drive and you essentially lose the entire stack one way or another. With a 4-stack, I could install 1 or 2TB drives one at a time and use the largest one available as my Time Machine. Currently using a ProDrive 1TB single and had to shut down a 500GB SimpleTech USB due to consistent booting issues that made the drive essentially useless.

Would still like to find a FireWire 4-stacker housing for the above purpose. Unpopulated.

[vulpine]

[quote name='smax013']

>

vulpine said:

> You know, I get tired of seeing people call Apple a Monopoly. Exactly HOW is Apple a Monopoly? And don't throw the dictionary definition; the legal definition, which is the important one, is far different.

You are taking the use of monopoly out of the context of how the person used it. You are correct that Apple is not generally considered a monopoly in the COMPUTER market (both by dictionary and legal definitions) and thus they don't have regulators going after them. But, they ARE a monopoly in the MAC OS market...you HAVE to ONLY buy computers from Apple if you want to run the Mac OS (or violate the Mac OS EULA)...thus, in the context of the original post, it was right on point...you are forced to buy what Apple provides. If you don't like the fact that Apple only offers a 13" laptop with no Firewire (OK, so they still offer the older version with Firewire...for now), then too bad...you either buy that one and only option in the 13" size or nothing with the Mac OS on it. That was the whole point of that comment. And that is a monopoly...a justifiable monopoly, but a monopoly none the less.

My complaint about your particular definition is simply the question: How does this make Apple any different from Ford? Jeep? Hummer? Cris-Craft? Panasonic? Sony? etc...? If you want to keep the warranty valid, you can only buy parts approved by those brands. With the different car brands, they specifically prohibit anything that will affect the reliability of the engine, drive train or controls. With Sony, just as a small example, they go out of their way to prevent Playstation games from playing in any other platform. Just how is this different from Apple?

Honestly, if certain lawsuits against Apple are won by the plaintiffs, the whole idea of branding is out the door for everyone.




Oh, and Smax... I'm a member of the club too. Paranoid to a fault... and so far untouched.
Message was edited by: vulpine to add PS.

[robogobo]

@Vulpine

Regarding drives and enclosures, it's well known that OWC, FW Depot, Smalldog among others, have everything to meet your FW needs, though unfortunately now even they may be forced to cut back if Apple drops FW. Then we really will feel squeezed.

And regarding monopolies, give it up, Ford doesn't make you sign an agreement saying you'll never under any circumstances buy parts from anyone else (or better, install their parts in another car), or require you to drive on their roads. Come on, this analogy has be squashed 100 times.

I think you're taking your signature a little too much to heart.

[smax013]

vulpine said:

My complaint about your particular definition is simply the question: How does this make Apple any different from Ford? Jeep? Hummer? Cris-Craft? Panasonic? Sony? etc...? If you want to keep the warranty valid, you can only buy parts approved by those brands. With the different car brands, they specifically prohibit anything that will affect the reliability of the engine, drive train or controls. With Sony, just as a small example, they go out of their way to prevent Playstation games from playing in any other platform. Just how is this different from Apple?

Honestly, if certain lawsuits against Apple are won by the plaintiffs, the whole idea of branding is out the door for everyone.




Oh, and Smax... I'm a member of the club too. Paranoid to a fault... and so far untouched.

Message was edited by: vulpine to add PS.

First of all, your response implies that I (and maybe you as well) believe all monopolies are bad. I certainly don't believe that. In many ways, Apple "monopoly" on the Mac OS market is a good thing. There are certain downsides...such as I cannot get a mid-size tower that is a little more customized to my tastes that can run Mac OS X...it is either an all-in-one iMac (no thanks) or spend a lot on money for a Mac Pro, which while I drool at the thought of is just more than I need. On the plus side, Apple has less support costs and issues to deal with (fewer options to support).



There are lots of examples of "natural" monopolies in history...those are situations where someone dominates the market just due to good business and superior products, etc. "Bad" monopolies are those that use their monopoly in one market to gain a monopoly or dominance or advantage in another market. THIS is where Micro$oft got into trouble...they used their natural monopoly in Windoze to try to dominate the browser and media player market...and tries to maintain their monopoly, not by "natural" business forces (i.e. make Windoze better than all the competitors so that no one wanted an OS other than Windoze) but rather by coercive type pressure on computer manufacturers.



As to the example of cars, that is not really a comparable example. While a Ford Fusion is different than a Honda Accord, etc, they are nominally very similar. There is no major difference that makes them unique enough from the other mid-size cars. The Mac OS tends to make a 13" MacBook rather unique wihen compared to a group of Windoze 13" laptops. While they are all part of the COMPUTER market, Apple does NOT have a monopoly on, there is one and only one option in the 13" laptop in the MAC market. The whole point of that original post was NOT that Apple had an illegal monopoly, but rather that Apple had a monopoly on Macs which results in a captured market in many regards. If you want a 13" Mac laptop, you only have ONE choice...no ifs ands or buts.

[smax013]

vulpine said:

I appreciate the suggestions; I'd already looked at all of them. The 4 disk system was close to what I wanted, but I was actually looking for an external housing that would let me install my own drives... so I could add as I needed them. $850 is a little steep. If I remember, JBOD was one of the configs. Personally I don't want to use any form of RAID because with most RAIDS I've seen, you lose one drive and you essentially lose the entire stack one way or another. With a 4-stack, I could install 1 or 2TB drives one at a time and use the largest one available as my Time Machine. Currently using a ProDrive 1TB single and had to shut down a 500GB SimpleTech USB due to consistent booting issues that made the drive essentially useless.

Would still like to find a FireWire 4-stacker housing for the above purpose. Unpopulated.

You mean something like this:



eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%20Technology/FUSD4Q0TB/



Firewire 400, Firewire 800, USB, eSATA. You supply your own drives. It is $650, which I assume you will claim is steep, but that is inline with what I would expect for a 4 drive system with onboard hardware RAID and 4 connection interfaces (up until recently, many 4 drive RAID network NAS systems where about $1000 with no drives). You are talking higher end hardware...not a typical "external drive" for $200 or less.



And again, finding that took me all of about 1 minute of looking on OWC's website. I want to say that I found something similar in the past on NewEgg, but I did not go back at this time to look again.



I don't know what you mean with your comment about RAID's taking down the entire stack. RAID 1 is a mirrored setup...if one drive goes down, the overall setup should still be functional as the redundant drive is still there and functional. My LaCie 2 drive NAS is setup in RAID 1...if a drive goes down, it still works fine. That is the WHOLE point of RAID 1. Now, if you run in RAID 0, if a drive goes, you are toast.

[cogmission]

Hi Everyone!

First post on macworld!

I just bought a MBP and was wondering if anyone knew the manufacturer of the solid state 128GB drives?

[cogmission]

Hi Everyone!

First post on macworld!

I just bought a MBP and was wondering if anyone knew the manufacturer of the solid state 128GB drives?

(posted this as a reply to somebody else's reply - sorry)

[smax013]

vulpine said:

Go look for FireWire hard drives. FW400 and FW800 drives are getting hard to find.

I should also note that your story also has kind of "morphed". You originally said it was getting hard to fine Firewire drives. I have absolutely no trouble finding Firewire drives. I will admit that it is tougher to find Firewire drives and enclosures for RAID (i.e. multiple drives per housing), but then they are not too terribly prevalent in USB flavors as well. If you want into your typical electronics, office supply, or computer store, you will find plenty of USB 2.0 drives with a single drive, but not too many with multiple drives.



My original point is that your claim that Firewire drives are hard to find is just absurd. Yes, you might not find a Firewire drive at your local Staples store, but you will have zero problem finding a "run of the mill" Firewire drive (whether FW400 or FW800) in an online store. I will agree that if you want a Firewire drive with RAID, then you will have to work a little more...but then you will likely have to work almost as hard to find a USB drive with RAID...and up until recently it was REALLY tough to find a eSATA drive with RAID (trust me, I was looking for one for quite a while...they are now much more available then they were about 6 to 12 months ago).

[kkolehma]

Personally watching blu-ray movies with Mac is irrelevant for me. I wouldn't do it because PS3 is much better for that than Mac ever will be. What is not irrelevant is 50GB vs 9GB of available space. Also I have HD camcoder, I do want to edit the films I take. Now with mac that means that I have to put the material back to HDV tape in order to use it in my TV or limit the lenght to 15 minutes which still fits to 4 GB single layer DVD in HD quality.

Electronic storage?! oh please you've got be kinding... Even Steve Jobs cannot seriously believe in that, why else there is a recommendation to backup your iTunes library to DVD (which takes just three discs for me since we don't have movies in iTunes Europe). There is no reasonably priced network storage service that would give ANY guarantee that data is available after, say, 15 years. I have bunch of MP3's left from late 90's but none of them are on harddrive, they all are in CD. How many over 10 years old files you still have on your harddrive? I can still watch my parents wedding video from 70's but what would be the changes that my children could watch mine if it was on harddisk or some obscure internet site?

Right now it seems that I have to switch to Windows since there isn't any information that Apple would have Blu-Ray support anytime soon. If there just would be some official anouncement, that in spring 2009 FCS will be able to put out Blu-Ray and iMac will have Blu-Ray drive (even as an option), I could wait until then and postpone the investement. Now there isn't any guarantee and I will be better of with Windows which has it now. So you just might see in next Windows Vista hype presentation a reason why people are switching to Vista and that would be a Mac OS lack of HD support. And 1.6GB iTunes 1920x1080 video is just about as HD as any DVD played with my PS3.

[macwilf]

smax013 said:

Quote

There are lots of examples of "natural" monopolies in history...those are situations where someone dominates the market just due to good business and superior products, etc. "Bad" monopolies are those that use their monopoly in one market to gain a monopoly or dominance or advantage in another market. THIS is where Micro$oft got into trouble...they used their natural monopoly in Windoze to try to dominate the browser and media player market...and tries to maintain their monopoly, not by "natural" business forces (i.e. make Windoze better than all the competitors so that no one wanted an OS other than Windoze) but rather by coercive type pressure on computer manufacturers.

This might be a litt off-topic, but I have often wondered when we have seen a situation similar to what we have when it comes to personal computers; that one single company and one single brand (in different flavours) have had a GLOBAL monopoly? I have not been able to come up with one.

There might have been lots of occasions with monopolies within countries, but globally? Because that is the situation with Microsoftʼs dominance today.

The only realistic alternatives to that monopoly are Apple and several Linux-distros. So I guess the problem is not really that Apple is a monopoly of "Apples", but that there are so few alternatives. If we do not want to join the monopoly for various reasons, we simply have to choose Apple or Linux. And although the latter has improved there, it is still too geeky for the average person, so one is stuck with a Mac and have to take what Apple offers. That is of course very frustrating but one can hardly blame Apple for that. They do what they have to do as a company and although they err at times, overall they do a fairly good job. But they cannot offer us more alternatives than what they do have. If those are not good for us and we still do not want to go to Windows, we are more or less stuck.

That is why we are frustrated and that is why we want Apple to do this and not to do that, but it is not reasonable to expect them to fulfil all our wishes. They are just one company with one brand.

Then there is that other company and that one other brand.

Hardwarewise I think a lot of us might have chosen other machines, according to the size of our wallets, but we want Mac OS X - and that we can only have with a Mac. Legally and non-geeky.

That is the problem and it is a global problem. And again, I cannot think of any other similar situation. Globally.
Message was edited by: macwilf

[vulpine]

robogobo said:

@Vulpine


And regarding monopolies, give it up, Ford doesn't make you sign an agreement saying you'll never under any circumstances buy parts from anyone else (or better, install their parts in another car), or require you to drive on their roads. Come on, this analogy has be squashed 100 times.

I think you're taking your signature a little too much to heart.

Go put a supercharger on your new Mustang GT's engine. Then take it in for warranty repair.

>smax013:
>First of all, your response implies that I (and maybe you as well) believe all monopolies are bad. I certainly don't believe that. In many ways, Apple "monopoly" on the Mac OS market is a good thing. There are certain downsides...such as I cannot get a mid-size tower that is a little more customized to my tastes that can run Mac OS X...it is either an all-in-one iMac (no thanks) or spend a lot on money for a Mac Pro, which while I drool at the thought of is just more than I need. On the plus side, Apple has less support costs and issues to deal with (fewer options to support).

While I don't disagree with you here, we now have two different knock-off companies suing Apple for monopolistic behavior: Psystar with their Open Computer trying to run OS X, and a little company in asia (I forget the name) with their "Super Shuffle", a device almost identical to the Apple iPod Shuffle in appearance and using almost identical advertising (silhouette of dancer with white earphones.) Should Apple give in to them? If so, why?



>http://eshop.macsale...logy/FUSD4Q0TB/
>Firewire 400, Firewire 800, USB, eSATA. You supply your own drives. It is $650, which I assume you will claim is steep, but that is inline with what I would expect for a 4 drive system with onboard hardware RAID and 4 connection interfaces (up until recently, many 4 drive RAID network NAS systems where about $1000 with no drives). You are talking higher end hardware...not a typical "external drive" for $200 or less.
>And again, finding that took me all of about 1 minute of looking on OWC's website. I want to say that I found something similar in the past on NewEgg, but I did not go back at this time to look again.


Have to admit I didn't find that when I was looking. I admit it's a bit pricey compared to other brands using only eSATA I found at around $350, but that is what I was looking for. Thank you!

>I don't know what you mean with your comment about RAID's taking down the entire stack. RAID 1 is a mirrored setup...if one drive goes down, the overall setup should still be functional as the redundant drive is still there and functional. My LaCie 2 drive NAS is setup in RAID 1...if a drive goes down, it still works fine. That is the WHOLE point of RAID 1. Now, if you run in RAID 0, if a drive goes, you are toast.

As for the RAID, an online acquaintance of mine using a similar RAID array had one drive shut down; it wasn't until after he replaced the bad drive (and he had to use the shotgun approach to discover which drive it was) that he was able to access the data on the other drives. I personally don't know enough about RAID, but I, too, thought that unless he was striping, the rest of the data would still be accessible.

>I should also note that your story also has kind of "morphed". You originally said it was getting hard to fine Firewire drives. I have absolutely no trouble finding Firewire drives. I will admit that it is tougher to find Firewire drives and enclosures for RAID (i.e. multiple drives per housing), but then they are not too terribly prevalent in USB flavors as well. If you want into your typical electronics, office supply, or computer store, you will find plenty of USB 2.0 drives with a single drive, but not too many with multiple drives.

Yes, I should have put that qualifier in first. I wanted a multiple drive enclosure--preferably not too expensive. I ended up paying almost $300 for the 1TB single drive I located.
Message was edited by: vulpine for clarity

[someoneinca]

It is possible to burn Blu-Ray discs on a mac with Toast 9 Titanium as long as you have a blu-ray writable drive.

[robogobo]

@vulpine Dude, give it up. You're just talking in circles and you don't know what side you're on.