skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Mac Pro isn't just for those in the A/V industry. It's for anyone who wants a Mac with more than four cores. No other Mac can do 6+ cores.

The Mac Pro hasn't seen a case update in at least six years. What other Apple product has been neglected like this?
Some other good game RE resources:

XentaxWiki http://wiki.xentax.com/index.php/Game_File_Format_Central - Documentation of game file formats

DOS Game Modding Wiki http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/Main_Page - A lot of information on old DOS games, specifically the ones by Apogee
Final Cut Pro?
Let's say I'm running a post shop and I want to render from After Effects as fast as possible. In normal use, just how much faster will one of these dated Xeons render my comps than the quad-core i7 in a top-of-the-line iMac?
For comparison purposes, before tax this is 1905 €, roughly 2380 USD.
Totally sour grapes, but I sure get tweaked when I see people doing cool things with toys that are ostensibly available but that I can't buy yet because...
Very nice UI/UX. If I was a .NET developer this is something I would consider using and paying for. 2 initial thoughts:

1. It's not clear how the integration works (API call during exception handling?). That mechanism is important to me, the developer.
2. Seems like the ASP.NET limitation will make it tough to gain traction initially.

You may want to consider open-sourcing the integration hooks (API calls, stack trace parsing, etc). That would allow people like me to add support for my language/framework and send a pull request through GitHub. Just a thought..

Best of luck!
I think we just need to make it work when you are logged out - maybe set a cookie so you can claim all your links if/when you sign up if the cookie is still set. We're working on it, literally around the clock
IOS + OSX developers (edited out my not really interesting comment about XCode)
Depends on how heavily After Effects leverages threads. With up to twelve cores on a Mac Pro, it could potentially be much faster.
Ditto to Hackintosh. The Mac Pro never was a good buy.

Half the reason one buys an Apple product is because of the terrific build quality and design. That's extremely important in a notebook computer, something you'll carry around day in day out and have to depend on to not fail when you're in the field.

There's far less incentive in buying a terrifically sturdy and pretty machine that will sit under your desk and not be moved for years on end.
"Yelp buries reviews by one-time posters" might be a more accurate title.

Yelp is trying to build a community of reliable reviewers, not display every review of an establishment, because this is a good way to avoid business owners soliciting reviews from friends and family. If those acquaintances are not part of the Yelp community, they don't understand the standards of the community or even what a five star review means. They are not useful reviews so they are filtered. Community members have a stake in their reputation as a reviewer.

This is something like the practice of hellbanning on Hacker News, except that it allows users to progress from untrusted to trusted, rather than HN's "lightening" approach. Yelp could probably do a better job of explaining this to users - it should say "Yelp displays reviews by experienced reviewers more prominently. Until you establish yourself by writing frequent reviews, yours may be filtered."
Our sound guy is PISSED at the lack of update. Seriously, incredibly pissed. I've honestly never seen him this angry before. He'd been counting down the days till WWDC and a long overdue update. There are three major pieces of software he uses on his Mac that he swears by. It sounds like they have all just released or are about to release Windows versions.

I'm beginning to wonder if this is a trend? Apple is clearly focused on iOS and consumer/prosumer and not professional. I certainly don't blame them. Is the future of professionals going to be Windows? Even for lifelong Mac die hards? It seems plausible imo.
Also, Apple will replace the battery for you for between $100-$200:

http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro/service/battery/
The Clever Ways Chrome Hides Latency by Anticipating Your Every Need
Yes, when people asked me why Google was spending millions on driving around taking a picture of every street I explained they were actually taking pictures of the signs on every street :-) That you can see your front door is just a bonus on top of the intelligence that is gained by being able to image process miles and miles of streets for data about how they are used (or not).
Flashback is the exception that proves the rule. As much as I like to disagree with people who suggest that the OS X is "fundamentally more secure than windows" (it really, really isn't) - it does tend to have many fewer active exploits than Windows Platforms do - and your average OS X system is much less likely to be loaded up with malware than your average Windows XP system.
So you like slow machines? I gave up using mine and sold it... it's nice that it was cheap, but I feel like I can't do anything on it other than vim. I prefer only carrying around one laptop, so I'd rather get the laptop that can do everything.
Your points on the Thinkpads sound entirely valid - I merely meant that it's possible to get Linux pre-installed on a laptop with a decent form factor (Thinkpads haven't changed substantially in years, clearly they have some fans). I've only ever used Linux on W520s, so I guess I've got a bias.

> Currently, there are no competitively priced linux laptops.

I think ZaReason, System76, and ThinkPenguin all offer decent machines for prices that beat their Dell, HP, Sony, and Mac counterparts. It's just a question of whether or not their offerings meet your needs.

Using a Linux VM on a Mac (or Windows) is definitely a good solution.
To confirm, what kind of professionals are you talking about for whom a new Macbook Pro isn't going to be fast enough?
I've read about those, it feels like their economy is base on building stuff.

They've also built one of the longest bridge that only save like 20 minute of traffic...

http://www.autoblog.com/2011/07/01/china-opens-26-mile-long-...
I suppose, perhaps, our current system can work just fine. Whenever someone is caught doing something illegal with another person's artwork (for example, using a photo-manip'd version of a photo that person took as part of a CD album cover) take them to court for copyright infringement.

From what I can gather, anything more than that is draconian. I mean, what artist really cares if their artwork is used as someone's desktop background?
No, I can't believe that the URL box is used more than the search one. Thre must be an error or, more probably, a bias towards tech-savvy people. I've seen common people typing full URLs in the Google box.
Neglect on the internals side is objectionable, but what of the the case? It's still just as (subjectively) beautiful today as it was six years ago. Does a product really need to radically look different just to be "new?"
I don't know if it is just me or their laptops look mondo ugly - may be they just need a better website.

The world is moving towards polished aluminum etc. while we see these clunky models - I really hope they put more thought into making the laptops more aesthetic.
Switchblade - Lethal Explosive UAV Drones
I would love a Postgres RDS option, and am somewhat surprised Amazon hasn't offered one yet.
I'd politely like to ask..

What, besides A/V work, is a 6+ core OS X machine necessary for?
Sigh... Quicktime. As a Linux user, I can't use it. Just use HTML5 Video or make Quicktime cross-platform Apple...
I'm at WWDC and after seeing one up close, it delivers on all the hyperbole attached to the launch. It's a truly incredible piece of hardware and the display is as game changing as the original iPhone retina screen was.
Not specifically what you're wishing for, but interesting data porn, nonetheless: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1114945...
That's quite a mistake to make!
> The iPad 1 does not have contract lock-in and is not actively being sold by Apple

Bingo. Apple still sells new 3GS phones, so it would directly impact customers that may be buying their products today. This isn't the case with the iPad1.

Apple rarely does things (solely) based on technical requirements or some architectural vision. It may be frustrating, but it is consistent - they are primarily customer focused, not specs-focused or vision-focused. Yes, there is attention to specs and an underlying vision of computing, but they are 2nd to the (paying) customers.
How to Build a Twitter Backup App in DotNet
I said nothing about the love I will have for my child. I was talking about the love I have now for children who do not yet exist. If they don't yet exist, it doesn't even make irrational sense to love them yet. At best, I love a vague image in my head of what I think having children will be like.
I (still) work in old-world publishing. Honestly, Mac Pros are losing their edge in this industry. My machine was recently upgraded from an old Mac Pro to a new Mac Mini. Even when I spam my machine with a half-dozen Adobe apps at once, I don't really hurt for performance.

Granted, some still need a Mac Pro to drive multiple huge monitors, cut video, add weird device interfaces, etc. Some will demand super expensive hardware for reasons more political than practical. All that said, overall, the publishing industry seems to be hitting a performance-plateau where the old Pro is no longer necessary among many practitioners.
I've read a lot of these types of posts and (sorry, rant) feel they're written only to make "good developers" feel better about themselves. I see no other value in such posts because "bad developers" won't learn these things by reading about them ...or they'd be good developers.

That said, the list is subjective. I, for example, fall nicely through the cracks of this particular categorization:

"Bad developer only sticks to what he knows ... reaction to any technical change is negative"

A the moment I'm most definitely avoiding change because I have 64k LOC that I can either a) finish, or b) migrate to .NET 4.5.

"Good developer ... finishes several technical books a year."

I haven't read a technical book in at least 4 years. But after 21 years' programming I own more tech books than many I work with have read, and I've read each and every one I own. So I'm actually quite comfortable with that.

"Good developer ... also very much concerned with the process quality"

Definitely not me. I had my process fix in the mid 90's and could no longer care less. Where I'm the architect I get on with it. Where I'm a program manager I tell the team what I need, and couldn't care less who does it, how or where it's done, or by how many. I care only about if, when, and quality.

"Bad developer completes tasks."

So should good developers. If all you ever do is to develop features which create value for customers, you're never going to get a product out the door.

"Bad developer always needs to allocate extra time to document and simplify."

This one is definitely me. My design may evolve. The next feature may highlight a bad design decision in the last, but the temptation is always there to work on the next-next feature, rather than refactoring something you know needs it. It's just time management. Also, this is at odds with "Good developer will ... always continue to clean and fix."

There are no absolutes. You just do what you're able. If you're bad and smart enough to recognize that fact you'll become good. Q.E.D.
Retina and a joke
How much for my Apple IIe? :)
To me, it's a very attractive idea: that someone has gone through the work to ensure a working combination of hardware for Linux. That's not trivial when you start getting into peripherals.

In my ideal world, they'd maintain a custom set of drivers that could be updated on Arch, Gentoo, or a Debian variant.

I'd buy it, keep it updated, and never have to tweak. Like my desktops.
I don't think houses were as little as $10k in the 70s. Maybe for grandparents, not parents.

I hate it how people use absolute numbers when comparing house values now to the past as it completely distorts the changes.

For example, a house worth $40k in 1970 and $300k today sounds like a good return, right? However, that would not even be a 5% "ROI" compounded over that period. When you take into account maintenance, property taxes and other home ownership costs, it's probably not even above the inflation rate.

Yet, when you look at the numbers on paper and see a nearly 8x increase, many people think "Wow, what a great investment."
Probably the ones who have 32gb of memory for their photoshop scratch buffer. There's still quite a few of these types of professionals. You just can't put that much memory in the Macbook Pro. Processor speed is probably less of an issue compared with memory capacity.
Using the Google Picker to upload files to Drive
> I've never used a Thinkpad, though, so I can't say whether it would have fared better or not.

Well... my 2006 T60p is in great shape. Original hard drive, battery only 14.7% down from its original capacity.

My 2004 X31 is still ticking and it's been through a lot. Zero problems with the electronics although to be fair I did upgrade the hard drive in 2007.
You can never have enough processing power when you're editing and re-rendering videos.

Hell, I find lightroom able to use all the CPU I can throw at it when I muck around with ~400 photos that I shoot in a day.

I have no doubt that video work can easily use all the CPU/memory you throw at it: imagine rendering a finished video in five different formats and resolutions in the background, while you're editing/tweaking your next project in the background.

Remember these are professionals.
Wish you guys the best of luck. It's been a problem I've given a pretty good chunk of investigation, myself. Just make sure it stays super easy to install and talk to your users. :)
> ...will start to realise that people actually care about owning beautiful things.

Thanks for speaking for _everyone_, but no. It's just most people are really superficial. The end.

Hardware manufacturers need to be as superficial in order to compete with Apple, however, part of me thinks that it will just turn consumer computing into a boring homogeneous set of devices across all manufacturers.
Except there's not really a premium Windows platform to compete with the overall integration that a high-end Mac and Mac OS X offers.

If you can get the same performance out of, say, the new MacBook Pro plus a couple Thunderbolt displays and a Thunderbolt RAID, the pros can just move in that direction.

Notice that there was no iMac update at all today; Apple might be planning to release a new high-end iMac to better serve the old Mac Pro crowd.
Going from "We can be confident in our models" to "We can be confident in our planetary models" is a big step up in scale and complexity.
Most of my audio gear doesn't work at all and graphics drivers, while much improved as of late, are still woeful.

I Hackintoshed my desktop (because we're never getting another Mac Pro) specifically because of driver support. It's actually better in Hackintosh-land than on Linux.
The fact is Mac Pro's aren't as profitable as iPads or iPhones. If you were CEO you'd de-prioritise the line as well.

They're not killing off the line altogether probably because it's a less risky market. iPads and iPhones are new, and tomorrow a new phone could kill off iPhone sales over night.

It is pretty shitty to see Apple do this however. I'd love for them to put in the bleeding edge hardware on the line.
Sheep mustering with a quadcopter
When you say design, do you mean surface appearance?

Or do you mean quality of engineering and thought put into making the machine? Those are two different things.
Nothing says ergonomics like typing on a hard glass screen.

I agree. Tablets are ergonomically stupid as well. Don't even get me started on the general problem of having your fingers blocking what you are trying to see, let alone the lack of any kind of nice tactile feedback. The current minimalist design principles for personal computing devices are mirroring the worst of the architectural ones. Clean, sleek, beautiful, refined, and fairly useless for most people.

Today's computing devices are fragile toys that look the part, and do more things, but are functionally worse at doing the tasks of the objects they are supposed to replace. The fact is I am very close to binning my smart phone and finding an old nokia 3210, purely because I could use that without looking at it most of the time, it was much quicker to make a call, it crashed a lot less, booted up quicker and the batteries lasted longer.
Not overpriced. Nobody could come close to the price of the Macbook Air with fully equivalent hardware, for example, and today's MBP release is the same. When competitors try to meet the specs across the board, without any major compromises, they cost 20% more.

The overpriced thing is a decade old, and used to be justified as a brand positioning (pay more for quality build).

Now, Apple's supply chain lets them offer even higher build quality but at a discount to inferior products.
Didn't realize until just now what a pain it is to post photos on craigslist, etc: take photo with camera/phone, sync with laptop, use laptop to post photo. That's probably the reason Instagram had traction. Is this already easy on Android?
Kune: a GWT federated social network
No discussion, at all? Bleh...!

Oh well, it's not like I have anything insightful to add myself right now, I'd just like to heartily agree with this:

"I’m sorry if this post has been a long and rambling read. It’s a topic that I feel strongly about. I believe in equality–regardless of sex, gender, sexual orientation, skin colour, etc. I want to live in a world where, as a white, heterosexual male, I have no special privileges. And, I’m happy to use whatever privileges I may have today to help achieve that goal."
Young web dev asking what language to learn?
Over my summer break from uni I want to go away and learn a language which will further my skills as a web dev. What's the best to learn? JavaScript, Ruby, PHP? Any good books or sites which will help me learn one of the above. Is there something else I should be thinking about?
People in the business of video editing are one example. They need/use more RAM and processing power than you can get on any new model of Macbook Pro.
You only named 3 devices. All of which have only been on the market less than 5 years. It won't take the industry long to surpass those. Intel chips are the brain of the computer. Therefore the rest of the device benefits from it. And you can't argue that Apple didn't benefit greatly from the switch. Or else they wouldn't have rewritten their entire OS for them.

So maybe 1/3 of my points are invalid.and I'm not anti apple I happen to own the latest macbook. And used to work there.
It make sense on pure dollar value, but I think it would really hurt the brand perception of Macs as a premium computer, and it would drive the pro market elsewhere which could have a nasty trickle down effect over time. I don't think Mac Pro is going anywhere, maybe they have something bigger in the works and just need more time.
So, I'm the one who posted the LA Times article link to HN. This UAV fascinates me to no end. It seems these are launched by the solder who essentially carries this thing around with them until needed. They launch the UAV and then fly it to their target relying on GPS, maps, and most importantly video. They will essentially see the view of the UAV up until the moment of impact whether it is a vehicle, building, or person. I'm sure this thing basically flies itself, following the target via video analysis, and there are tons of ways to abort if needed. How amazing is this? And expensive I bet.
After Effects has NVidia acceleration (CUDA), so a Mac Pro with multiple NVidia cards might be a better choice.

This is an "upgrade" in the sense that the processors they were using became too expensive and they used the currently sold ones.
I imagine he is talking about sound engineers. Also, he is talking about the Mac Pro (the desktop) not the Macbook Pro, the laptop.
Seconded. It's gotta be on the RDS roadmap.
The point was that the 'loss' was in the value of a house they weren't going to sell.

It's like scratching off the numbers on a lottery ticket and saying you lost $1M for each one that doesn't match
Here is a relevent benchmark. The top of the line iMac has a Sandy Bridge 2600, and the 980X is the desktop version of the equivilant server part.

980X vs 2600 video transcoding:
24s vs 29.1s (lower is better)

But there are still 2 CPUs in the Mac Pro, so you can double performance; it should be 2.5x faster still.

Ivy Bridge, which features in the new MacBook Pros, and likely iMacs soon, nets another 10% or so for the same clock speed over Sandy Bridge.

Haswell will likely be the point at which a quad core Haswell chip roughly equals a 6 core Westmere chip (not bad for a 3 generation gap).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-i...

Edit: Another commenter pointed out that AE has CUDA acceleration. In that case, even a mid range graphics card would be faster than two high end CPUs.
> Using a Linux VM on a Mac (or Windows) is definitely a good solution.

Just to be crystal clear: I did not say it was a good solution. In fact, it's often wholly inadequate. However, it is better as a time investment than trying to get a workable Linux laptop solution.
I accept that we'll cease to exist someday (at the very least, we'll definitely be gone by the heat death of the universe), but I don't really see any reason not to try to delay that point as far as possible, by whatever means possible.

I mean... why the hell not?
yes - there is that ;-)
Consumer wise it's the i7-3930k and 3960x. For the XEONs as the other person noted, it's the E5-26xx and the E5-1650 is pretty badass.

You can still go higher than these, but the prices skyrocket on the E7 line, eg the E7-8870, and the core to core value isn't higher:

http://ark.intel.com/products/53580/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E7-...
A Novel Way to Sell a Technical Book
When it's getting harder and harder to sell technical books, you have to resort to novel ideas. How about a fast-paced video summary?
Because its easier to sell your stockpiles of CPU's/other left over assets this way.
Good point, thanks for the correction.

I neglected to consider the flash storage costs in my initial glances. If you avoid a large flash drive (I usually run something like a 40GB ssd and a 256GB 7200RPM paired), the pricing leans towards the Verix, but not by much - and you aren't getting the same flash storage.
wow, up to $40k already!
For me, upvoting means putting the article in my "saved" list because it's something I might want to read later.
I wish people would be more specific when discussing this. "Only a few years old" and "old" can both cover a rather wide range, even if in this case "old" is capped at six years by the date of introduction of the model.
Heh, if you'd like a real MicroVAX 3900 to play with I can hook you up :-) (or 3100, or 3200, or 3300, or 3400, or 4000/200 or 4000/400 or you get the picture)
What everyone else said, plus the fans. Man, there are times I actually think about a Mac Pro as a humble Rails developer. If I fully parellelized my test suites it might even be worth the money.
$2200 for a laptop that is literally unparalleled in at least display is not a bad price. Some people still buy Windows laptops for well over $3k. Windows8 convertibles are probably going to run for a significant premium.

I won't be buying one - but I've got kids/house and my older riced-up MBP is still fast and sexy enough (and my eyes are fine with the screen).
This has recently shifted to student loan debt however. The effects of this type of debt are a lot subtler and nastier because you can't get student loan debt discharged in bankruptcy proceedings.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/student...