Author: alternateorg

WiredNews has announced the reader-influenced ‘VaporWare 2000’ list of products that were supposed to be hot-shit this year, but turned out to be hot air instead. The number one? It’s what I believe to be a wrongly-accused MacOS X. Apple never said they were going to ship it this year, and they even got the Public Beta out in time. The reader comments Wired chose to publish were not only misinformed, but ridiculous. So whatever.

To spare you the retarded reader comments, here’s the list (4 of the 10 are games):

10. Tribes 2 (game)
9. Wireless Web Pads
8. Bluetooth (wireless technology… long live 802.11 (Airport)!)
7. Silicon Film’s Electronic Film system (a technology allowing the conversion of 35mm cameras to digital ones.. I never heard a thing about it)
6. Warcraft III (game)
5. Intel Itanium chips (64-bit processors)
4. New Linux Kernel
3. Black & White (game)
2. Duke Nukem Forever (game)
1. Mac OS X

I just viewed the site in Netscape 4.7 for Mac, and the survey table on the left is looking a little funky… and I can’t figure out why. So please, if you care about that kind of thing but want to continue using Netscape, use Netscape 6, cause it works fine in that or IE5. I hate doing that to you, but the code looks fine to me.

If you like house/techno/jungle/trance/whatever and want to mix your own MP3s without the expensive purchase of some tables, vinyl and a mixer, DON’T buy Mixman Technoligies Megamix software. It blows.

I bought it for my brother for christmas (who also received a couple tables), with the intention that he could use the $30 software to mix at home or practice without waking up the whole house. And, being the guy I am, I even offered to install it for him. The first problem I saw with it was that on the install, I noticed a lot of .swf files being installed, giving me the feeling that it’s Shockwave-based (never a good sign for commercial software). The second (and fatal) problem was a combination of these things:
1. The software WILL NOT run with virtual memory running.
2. The software REQUIRES 32MB RAM, without aforementioned virtual memory
3. The iMac my parents have has 64MB RAM, but with virtual memory off, the OS takes up around 33MB of its own, leaving 1MB less than the software needs.
4. The software refuses to work with even that 1MB less RAM.

Now, I know that I could have gone into the extensions manager and stripped the OS down to its bare naked system, leaving only the appearance stuff and sound and graphics stuff, but quite honestly, it would be too much for my brother/family to manage extension sets and whatnot. And they shouldn’t even have to, just to support a 30-dollar software package I bought at MediaPlay. Maybe I’ll sell it on eBay or something.

I know I bitched before about the lack of game availability for Mac, but this is even worse. The software exists, but it won’t run correctly, even though the system in question does in fact meet the minimum system requirements on the box. And it’s not making my dad any more confident in his Mac purchase. Which is never a good thing.

Back at home now, lovin’ my iMac… Whew. That whole ‘using a Compaq Presario for a week’ thing was getting to be a little much. But I’m back on my beloved OS, and back to IE5 crashing the system when Entourage is open… Ah, the Mac life.

And because I’ve just sort of jumped into the (legal) procurement of games for Mac, I’m getting to be real upset by the fact that in every store in the planet (including rural Arkansas) you can find brand new games for PC, but their Mac counterparts, while actally having been released as well, are conspicuously absent (Rune, in particular). Motherfuckers.