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Monday, May 9, 2011

victoria falls

victoria falls. Victoria Falls Photos
  • Victoria Falls Photos



  • ergle2
    Sep 13, 03:02 PM
    You totally missed my point. Even if an application uses only one thread at all times, that application is still a separate process from all of the other processes you have running. At any given time you'll have at least 30 something processes, even when no user-land applications are running. OS X will spread out those processes to try to utilize all the cores as much as possible.

    In reality, there are probably not too many non-Apple applications which routinely use 8 threads or more. In the near future I expect all applications to use at least 2-3 threads, even the most simple ones.

    Sure, but all those background processes take next to no time to execute -- the extra latency of having more processors will probably slow things down far more than you gain from having up to 8 of those 30 be able to run at any one time.

    I'm not saying there's no need for 8 cores -- markets such as databases, media production, rendering, etc. can already make use of that kind of power.

    Regular desktops, not so much.

    Many simple apps are already mutithreadedto some dgree, but it's to make them non-blocking rather than to spread processor load. If you look at Windows, you'll find a very high number of threads in even just a media player, but some of it's just there to repaint the GUI etc.





    victoria falls. Victoria Falls Photos
  • Victoria Falls Photos



  • Half Glass
    Sep 13, 10:26 AM
    Wow...a user upgradable Mac. Good stuff indeed.

    I am anxiously awaiting better utilization of all the cores, but the ability to multitask without hiccups is still great for now!

    --HG





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  • Devils Pool - Victoria Falls,



  • Multimedia
    Aug 26, 07:50 PM
    I Just Hope Apple Joins The Rest Of The Manufacturers In This Mass Announcement. I'm afraid they won't due to EGO problems. :rolleyes: In this case, I wish they wouldn't "Think Differently".





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  • dare-See Victoria Falls



  • bedifferent
    Apr 27, 10:03 AM
    I find your statement back to him a bit hypocritical and quite judgmental. Why are his panties in a twist but not yours?

    Your initial reply to him was harsh to begin with and he replied logically. Agree to disagree. Leave it at that.

    He commented to my post, not the other way around.

    My comment, #75 (again, no mention of him):

    There's a nuclear disaster in Japan and treacherous weather throughout, people are jobless and homeless and the dollar's in the sh***er and our Supreme Court ruled that companies can give unlimited financial aid to any politician putting business interests in our government and people are worried about Apple possibly tracking them on their iDevice?

    Let 'em, my life is BORING, they wouldn't be interested :p


    His comment to me:

    None of which are affecting my day to day life. However, since you say I can't go on living my life until all other worldly issues are resolved, I will be waiting for a e-mail letting me know when I can resume going about my daily routine.

    Until then, I will stay fixed in front of my computer screen. :rolleyes:

    This argument that we shouldn't worry about anything because bigger things are going on has got to stop. It's the most disingenuous comment you can make.

    So this comment was logical and not insulting and personal?

    I made no mention of or to him in my initial post, so this means your comment should be addressed to him, not me… and how does this involve you?

    I made a comment, directed to no one, that many agreed with, but one person made personal slams at me and why are we discussing this?

    /end of discussion, this is juvenile





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  • Victoria Falls Safari Lodge



  • Cowinacape
    Jul 14, 04:46 PM
    I don't know if I am real big on the rumored 512 meg of ram (geesh) for the bottom end tower, c'mon Steve would throwing a gig in there really break the bank?? I do like the idea of dual optical drives though ( I do copy my cd's for use in my garage/workshop, so I don't wreck the originals).

    An extra one or two pci slots would of been nice, (sucks, that some video cards wind up taking two slots, due to their cooling setup)





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  • Victoria Falls



  • MacinDoc
    Aug 26, 11:40 PM
    I just called Apple support, I was on hold for over 20 minutes, then I was disconnected. No wonder people are unhappy :mad: :( :confused:
    I mentioned this on the battery recall forum, so ignore this post if you've already read it, but I think it may help explain why this sort of thing is happening.
    I know it's frustrating to wait to speak to a customer services rep when there's a potential problem with your Mac, but before complaining that Apple has a problem with customer service, let's look at things objectively.

    Let's say that Apple sells approximately 12,000 computers per day (a realistic estimate, based on their most recent financial statement). If 1 in 10 customers needs to speak with a customer services rep (this estimate is high, I think, but sometimes more than one consulation is required, so I will be generous with this number), and if a rep can deal with 10 problems per day (a very conservative estimate), then Apple could theoretically provide for all of its computer-related customer service needs with a total of 120 computer-oriented customer support staff (I am excluding iPod customer support staff from this discussion). Now, that number sounds really low, so let's multiply it by 10, for a total of 1200 customer support staff (this would mean that each would normally only have to deal with one customer per day). I understand that 1.8 million batteries were recalled, and this would mean that each customer support rep would have to deal with 1500 recalled batteries. Does anyone think that this can be done, along with all the other usual customer service needs, in a day, a week, or even a month? Apple is going to have to divert staff from other areas to deal with this problem. Remember, the number of batteries recalled is greater than the number of computers Apple ships in a quarter!





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  • Pool -- Victoria Falls



  • dpruitt
    Mar 22, 12:48 PM
    Looks like another Zune in the making!





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  • Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe 5th



  • Kabeyun
    Mar 22, 01:03 PM
    Blackberry playbook = The IPad 2 killer - you heard it here first.

    ...and last, at least as far as the spec war argument goes. You're grafting a computer-shopping mentality onto a tablet market, and people don't think of tablets as computers. People don't buy tablets based on specs, and the spec difference between current or impending offerings it not what will define the user experience.





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  • Victoria Falls by jovenol (197



  • samcraig
    Apr 27, 09:02 AM
    And assume you go to a place you have been a month ago, wouldn't having the database speed things up when you return to that location a month later?

    (Though I agree the effect will be very minor, as soon as you land with a plane, the iPhone will start populating that database, thus having the data from a month ago will only be relevant if you need location data right away after landing.)

    I'm not as impatient as some on here. If I have to wait another second or two - I'm good. :)





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  • Victoria Falls



  • ZoomZoomZoom
    Sep 19, 12:36 AM
    I think when the update reveals itself to be.... just a mere processor swop the moans to the high heavens would be deafening!

    Any likelihood that we will see a new case design at MWSF perchance? :rolleyes:

    Someone's gonna get a real hurtin'.

    You forgot Mormon.

    Hahaha :D





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  • Victoria Falls



  • brianus
    Sep 20, 04:07 PM
    So - are you inferring that Windows 2000 or Windows XP never blue screen? Because (if you are) that's a load of crap. I've seen blue screens in both OS's. Granted it's usually tied to hardware only, but it still happens. I've had an external USB drive blue screen in XP every time I turned it on, tried on 3 XP computers. Hardware fault, no doubt. Lately my HP Laptop dvd drive has been causing XP Pro to blue screen every other time I insert a dvd-r. Again - hardware fault.

    Otherwise are both OS's stable? Damn straight. But problems do occur and I hope you're not suggesting otherwise. No OS is without its flaws.

    Huh? When did I say they never, ever experience any crashes whatsoever? Good god, I have never seen such a collection of mind-bendingly literal-minded people in one thread. Yikes. No idiot would ever say they never ever crash. As was painfully obvious, I was comparing Mac users' perceptions of older Windows OS's to the more recent ones and saying their impressions were inaccurate. I've been dealing with OS X kernel panics and CarbonLib issues all day, but I would never suggest things are as bad as in the OS 8 days when you'd get that little "bomb" at the system would shut down.

    It's already happened, just not in as a melodramatic way as you suggest (back to 1GHz? geez). AMD took a small step back, Hz wise when they introduced dual core, though it still advanced their "+" processor ratings I suppose that few noticed the actual clock reduction. Intel took a major step back Hz wise between Netburst and Core 2. The 5000 and 5100 series Xeon CPUs demonstrate this, you can get a Dell precision 690 with 3.73GHz Netburst based chips or the same 690 with 3.0GHz Core2 based chips.

    One thing I've noticed is that store ads no longer quote GHz like they used to, but rather processor model numbers. Makes sense: most people will not bother to investigate further, but if they did see the GHz numbers of Pentiums on the same sale ad as those of Core 2's, they might not be so hot on the latter. And please, everyone for the love of god, do not treat me to 5 replies in which you remonstrate me for not getting that the Core 2's are actually faster - I GET IT.





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  • Falls are in its prime it



  • Silentwave
    Aug 17, 11:05 AM
    pc world, september issue, mentioned amd's plan for a quad core processor in 2007 and if that happens, some pc box will be faster than our best xeon powered machines...that is, he he, unless we get that quad core K8L amd with their 4x4 motherboard architecture which would enable a desktop to run two quads for a total of 8 amd cores (but the price of such a machine will debut at a very high price and probably won't directly compete with the mac pro)


    Um....that's why intel has quad core chips coming out...starting in *2006*
    On the Xeon side, Clovertown, on the consumer side, kentsfield. Sometime in the first half of 2007 I believe we'll see Tigerton, which will be an even more formidable quad core xeon, capable of more than 2 processor configurations- so if apple gets a 3 socket logic board, or a 4 socket one, we could have 12 or 16 cores.





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  • Victoria Falls (courtesy of



  • shamino
    Jul 14, 05:26 PM
    Kind of odd/funny how we seem to be going backwards in processor speeds. Instead of 3.6 GHz Pentiums, we are looking at 2.x GHz Intel Cores. It would be interesting to see how well a single Core processor matches up to PowerPC, or a Pentium, or AMD.
    It just means that Intel has finally publicly recognized the validity of the MHz Myth.

    Raw clock speed is meaningless. You can get better performance at a slower clock speed if you can increase parallelism. This includes features like superscalar architecture (where multiple instructions are executed per clock), deep pipelining, hyperthreading, SIMD instructions, and multi-core chips.
    However, I am finding one of my predicitions finally happen...it appears that a ceiling has been currently met on how fast the current line of processors can go, and now we are relying on multiple cores/processors to distribute work, instead of relying on just one fast chip.
    That's a part of the equation, but not all of it.

    Higher clock speeds are possible, but it's not worth the effort. Pumping up the clock speed creates serious problems in terms of power consumption and heat dissipation. Leaving the clock speed lower, but increasing parallelism will also boost performance, and keeps the power curve down at manageable levels.

    It's worth noting that Intel has shipped P4-series chips at 3.4GHz. But the new chips (Woodcrest and Conroe) aren't being sold at speeds above 3GHz.
    So when will we start seeing 8 chips in a computer? Perhaps this will become the new measurement...not processor speeds, but the number of processors (or cores).
    Pay attention. The answer is "sooner than you think".

    There have already been technology briefings from Intel that talk about 4-core chips in early and 32-core chips by 2010. Similar offerings are expected from AMD.

    And the Xeon-MP series processors (which will, of course, eventually get all this tech) are designed with 8-way SMP in mind. A theoretical Xeon-MP based on this 32-core tech would produce a system with 256 cores. Of course, it is doubtful that anything other than a large server would be able to take proper advantage of this, so I wouldn't ever expect to find one on a desktop.

    (FWIW, Intel is looking to Sun as a rival here. Sun's latest chip - the UltraSPARC T1 (http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-T1/) - currently ships in an 8-core configuration, with each core capable of running four threads at a time, and only consuming 72W of power. Even at 1.2GHz - the top speed they're currently shipping at - this makes for a very nice server.)





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  • on the edge Victoria Falls



  • zacman
    Apr 6, 03:55 PM
    It seems nobody learned from Apple's iPhone debacle:

    "Hahaha, look at Android they only ship 1/10 of iPhones!!!" - 12 months later: "Uh, ok, Android outsells iOS 3:1 but Apple only ships 1 phone!!!!"

    Now with tablets:

    "Hahaha, look at the Android tablets, they only ship 1/10 of iPads." - 12 months later: Well you know...





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  • Description: Victoria Falls



  • laidbackliam
    Aug 7, 02:34 AM
    this is me going out an a limb here.

    but do you think the desktop lineup could become this?

    Mac mini (2 models)
    the Mac
    iMac
    Mac Pro

    "if" this happens, which i find unlikely based on pure speculation, the mac mini could keep yonah processors, the Mac could get conroe, the iMac could get conroe, and the Mac Pro could go balls to the wall with 3.0ghz woodcrests.

    the Mac would be the affordable tower that people have been wanting. yet another reason for people to switch. a unit that works, that has an upgrade path, but doesn't cost 1500+.

    again, i don't think this will happen at wwdc, but i do think it would be cool





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  • Devil S Pool Victoria Falls:



  • KPOM
    Apr 6, 02:25 PM
    I am shocked that anyone finds this as a positive.

    So you all want a drop from 1.86/2.13 to 1.4GHz CPUs in your 13" MBA? That is a 30% drop.

    Uh, megahertz myth, anyone? Based on the 2.3Ghz Core i5 in the MacBook Pro, I'd expect the 1.4GHz Core i5 with hyperthreading to be significantly faster than the 1.86 or 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo. Plus, it can turbo boost to 2.3GHz.


    Then you want another drop of approaching 50% in graphics performance? Remember these IGPs clock in much lower than the STD voltage SB used in 13" MBP.

    That is a legitimate concern. That said, if you aren't a gamer, the CPU may more than make up for it. Plus, we all know Apple can't use the Core 2 Duo forever, and is taking some heat for still using it now.
    capabilities!





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  • Victoria Falls Park,



  • jp102235
    Apr 25, 03:06 PM
    I could have sworn that the fed govt is barred from spying on us, but private citizens can do this all day long.





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  • Victoria Falls, one of the



  • ~Shard~
    Aug 11, 10:16 AM
    These rumors surrounding the iPhone have been around for quite a while now, so I sure hope it becomes reality sooner rather than later. Who knows, if it�s really good I may actually buy my first cell phone ever. :cool:





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  • of Africa#39;s Victoria Falls



  • HiRez
    Sep 18, 11:57 PM
    The aluminum design has been been pretty good (although I personally like the Titanium design better, with the dark keys that don't get glared when light is shining on them). But, the Mac pro laptop line is in dire need on a system refresh. The design is getting a little stale.

    Here's what I'd like to see:

    -- How about some new textures for the case, such as brushed copper? I think that would look sharp. Or tinted aluminum, including brushed black metal. The brushings could even have subtle anisotropic patterns visible when tilted into and away from light sources, like circular rings, houndstooth, herringbone, starburst, etc. Imagine a blue-greenish "surfer" MBP with a "wave" pattern brushed into it, or a Boston Celtics green or two-toned wood-colored model with a brushed parquet pattern. This would be some real cutting-edge design that no other laptop vendor could easily copy.
    -- 256 MB graphics, Radeon X1800 Mobility or better
    -- HDMI output
    -- SDI input and dual SDI video output (fill + key). Yes, input. This would be fantastic for mobile video professionals.
    -- 1920x1200 resolution on the 17" model (this will become important with the resolution-independent UI in Leopard)
    -- 1680x1050 resolution on the 15" model
    -- 12"-13" model with 1440x900 resolution and backlit keyboard
    -- Dual Firewire ports on separate controllers, with no shared bandwidth. One 400 Mbps, one 400/800?
    -- Three USB2 ports on separate controllers.





    LagunaSol
    Apr 6, 03:26 PM
    Congrats, you will be able to play with the handful of apps designed for it.
    ;)

    But hey, haven't you heard, Honeycomb is a real tablet OS. (Whatever the heck that means.)

    Google must have used that line in a PowerPoint somewhere because I see it regurgitated verbatim on every single iPad vs. Honeycomb thread.

    The Google brainwashing continues. ;)





    lgutie20
    Mar 22, 02:04 PM
    The trick with Apple is to innovate in aspects that no one else is considering. Example: "we need smart covers because protecting your tablet is a must and should be easy." Thus far this is an APPLE ONLY thing and it works like a charm.

    There are other things they could do.

    If Apple really wants to completely stand out (even with the crippled aspect that they don't support Flash) they really need to push for Thunderbolt on iOS devices.

    It would sync data faster.

    It would charge devices faster.

    I know there is a lot of groundwork to be done first. All Apple computers should have the Thunderbolt I/O in order for the iOS devices to even consider Thunderbolt.

    Time is not a luxury Apple has right now. They need to move faster than ever.





    MacinDoc
    Sep 19, 01:14 PM
    I'm finding it hilarious that you can put yourself into Stevie's reality distortion field even after the Intel switch. Maybe while Apple had PPC, you could have said that. But now that direct hardware comparisons can be made, don't you think it's stupid that sub-$1000 PC notebooks have better processors than the best Apple has to offer?

    And yes, the MBP is a top-of-the-line laptop. Apart from 2'' thick behemoths, it was one of the fastest portables around, and it was priced accordingly. Now it's still priced as such, but times are moving, technology is advancing, and if you compare pound for pound, the MBP is behind.
    Sorry, but you're in an Intel RDF if you think that a 1.66 GHz C2D is a better processor than a 2.33 GHz CD. For practical purposes, the only differences at this time between CD and C2D are SSE3 instructions and slightly better power management. Nonetheless, you can rest assured that C2D MBPs will be SHIPPING by Sept. 25.





    ratinakage
    Apr 8, 07:43 AM
    It makes total sense to hold back the units for the following reason:

    Day 1: Someone calls up BestBuy to find out if they have the iPad2. They reply, "yes we have a very small amount in stock". Customer arrives at the store and they are all sold out but they are told that there will be a few more on sale tomorrow. Customer picks up some random crap like a DVD, mouse or whatever.

    Day 2: Customer arrives at the store and they are all sold out but they are told that there will be a few more on sale tomorrow. Customer maybe picks up some other random crap and leaves.

    Day 3: [Same as Day 2]

    Day 4: [Same as Day 3] etc...

    If you just release a few each day, customers will keep coming back in hope of finding one and possibly buy some other small items while in the store. If you sell them all out and have nothing for weeks, you will have no customers coming to the store. BB knows that the iPad2 is in short supply and that they will have no trouble shifting the stock if they need to so they are happy to sit on it and keep a steady flow of customers coming through the store.





    iMeowbot
    Sep 19, 08:43 AM
    All you people who keep whining about "But I want 64 bit!!!" need to step back and think about what possible benefit a 64-bit system will give you. Those of you who need to address more than 4 gigs of RAM are excused. The rest of you, tell me WHY you need 64-bit computing.
    There is a general unease about the AMD64 instruction set. We are already seeing a few programs that only run on Intel Macs. What's to stop developers from ignoring the x86 target in new software, especially on the high end, given the short sales cycle of x86-only Macs? The Mac Pro didn't even have a 32-bit version.