As my previous posts mentioned, I’m no OS fanatics. I just love one that just works! I’ve been a Windows 3.11 user, and an avid Mac user since 94, converted to Windows since Win95, but again bought a Mac since original iMac Strawberry Rev. A(1998) and own a lovely iMac G4 17″.
Eventough I work mostly on Windows (my jobs requires me to do that–I’m a consultant, have to deal a lot with Windows and Linux), one thing that I totally missed from Windows is smoothness. Yes read that a loud… S-M-O-O-T-H-N-E-S-S-!-!
My Windows is a great specs (I owned hundreds Windows machines sinces), but when I just want to work out with something, I just feel Windows slow my move. Like today. I have lots of pictures on my Sony T-610 (since I hate carry around a digicam) but I got a real pain in the ass on setup T-610 to a Windows machine thru bluetooth (Yep I knows that the Billionton I bought 6 months ago comes with the drivers, but since I constantly re-installing my Windows machine, sometimes I kinda lazy to setup the driver/and mostly because the configuring). And yes since I got a Windows XP SP2 (latest bloodiest from MS) I know it comes with bluetooth drivers onboard.
Hmm.. here I go plug the Billionton bluetooth on Windows, pairing on my Sony T-610, and eeep… nothing. It’s not even there (using Microsoft Windows built-in drivers on XP SP2). Arrggh, have to install the Billionton driver again…. arrgh. Then I unplug the Billionton for fun, put it on Mac, gozzz, it goes pairing and everything real S-M-O-O-T-H-!-! sooo easy. I even got to my Pictures and Musics folder so easy. And here I go downloading my pictures from my phone to Mac and upload it on this blog.
The moral of this story : Yeah, if only Apple comes out early with those Dual Core G4 PowerBook it would be easier for me to make the decision on which portable I should buy right away!! (Now I still have a hard time figuring out which portable to choose between a Apple PowerBook and a lovely Sony VAIO TR5AP) Come on Apple, make my day!
The picture I upload is so blurry due I took it while driving on my new E-Class Merc! Yes, I even now a switcher from BMW to Mercedes. The 3200 cc engine just feel S-M-O-O-T-H-!-! :p
June 14th, 2006 at 12:50 am
You seem to be mixed up between file format and encoding type, so I don’t understand the meaning of some of your sentences. E.g., “I’m only interested to MPEG-4 audio plugs-in for QuickTime compatibility.. and guess 3ivx just work real S-M-O-O-T-H… humm now my Windows Media runs all the QuickTime files I had, including those lovely commercials.”… I am lost????__You need to mention what your old QuickTime movies encoded in, since QuickTime is just a file format. QuickTime video is encoding format, and of course WMP cannot play QuickTime video. __Yes, WM10 does not have AC3 codec (this is the audio codec ofen used for audio encoding in DVD), which is very dissapointing. And, Microsoft’s MPEG4 video is different from QuickTime’s MPEG4 video. When you have the most money in the world, you’d always want to discover your own standard, you know :P__The thing is QuickTime is NOT just a video format. It can contain a lot of things including interactivity, and this is why MPEG adopted QuickTime for MPEG4. This is quite different from the simpler Windows Media. I should admit though that Windows Media Format 9 is excellent in compressing level and video quality.__QuickTime aside, VLC is my best pick. It even plays DVD while your WMP10 barks. And it works on any OS (Windows, Mac, Linux, BeOS etc), which is good for OS agnostics like me.
11/17/2004 5:12 AM
June 14th, 2006 at 12:50 am
True. File format is different than encoding type. As the reason why I mentioned only QuickTime files on that article, since when it comes to QuickTimes files, people are less concern about the encoding type, and they only need a full compatibility to the whole sets of QuickTime format using plain QuickTime Player Standard or the Pro edition (Pro is adding authoring features as Save, Export, Import etc).__Since QuickTime grows and keep changing the default format for its audio and video codecs (for better compression and resolutions) it’s less important for end-users to worry about the type. My articles only a short mentioned that when it’s comes with default (WM10) then Apple should worry about (since they still have a hard time bundling QuickTime player on the net).__Of course I still like QuickTime more than Windows Media since it do MORE than just movies playback, like it does Virtual Reality (QuickTime VR) — once I even attended Microsoft Windows 95 launched event (using my Apple business card that made Microsoft people raised its eyebrow ;p) on Shangrilla hotel backed then on 1995 that Microsoft showed a demo of Microsoft Surround Video (a QuickTime VR wannabe). Where is it now? I never see a live one, not even once other than on that demo day :P. Or even the demo ran using QuickTime? ;p__As for QuickTime, the early QuickTime files encoded in Sorenson Video (version 1) for video — not so good but still whole lot better than AVI (uncompressed) or Intel Indeo (when we talk about video files on Windows platform); and the audio encoded in Qualcomm PureVoice. Later version encoded in Sorenson Video 2 for video and QDesign Music Codecs for audio. Then Sorenson Video 3 comes aboard just before MPEG4 Audio/Video codecs usually use by Apple default commercial.__Technically speaking I find Sorenson Video a.k.a Spark is much better compression than the MPEG4 itself! But since the MPEG4 is now becoming standard, Apple more often use MPEG4 than Sorenson3 itself. And QDesign Musics Codecs is way far better than Fraunhofer MP3!__What I’m trying to tell is that Apple (typical!!) just lost it’s mindshare/acknowedge with QuickTime since very less PC users knows about QuickTime than they do Windows Media format, when it all invented by Apple (even the naming nomenclatures). Remember QuickDraw, QuickDrawGX, QuickDraw 3D, they are all great technologies, but look now most people mentioned the “almost the same naming scheme” DirectX!! DirectDraw, etc., etc. I was there seen and using QuickDrawGX (for great typography technology), QuickDraw 3D (for another great 3D technology ahead of its time — 3D relies on database that makes a slow graphics card can render and manipulate 3D in realtime using Z-buffer technology, but look at now?? Another loosing the ball (a.k.a Momentum) by Apple. None of the consumers even now ever heard about QuickTime while now Windows Media format can be playback on most consumers electronics alongside with MP3 format. And once even people rendered QuickTime on Silicon Graphics (I heard on early PowerMac days, that usually game developer rendered QuickTime on Silicon Graphics since Quadra is not good enough (of course this time we’re talking about the format, don’t get ourself confused again :P)__As for VLC yes, I’m using VLC for most platform especially on Linux and Mac OS X (on Mac OS X since it’s native Cocoa frontend and the only cool player than can play VCD direct — aside its main feature for Streaming Player/Broadcaster).__You know we speak the same protocol here, I just wondering why you brag the idea like that? 😛 Mr. Arnold, you should check your workload, seems that you’ve loaded too much this quarter. 😛 You even forgot that I’m actually an active participant on the macfan-id hosted on your server years ago 😛
11/17/2004 7:34 PM