Universal versus universality

[imomus]

I took delivery of a new Apple iBook 14" on Monday. The baby weighs 5.9 pounds and is quick, bright and healthy, an oblong white chunk of happiness. (Read Man of broken letters for an account of everything that had gone wrong with my old iBook.)

I have only two complaints. Apple changed the Airport architecture, so I can't use my old Airport card in the new machine. And the DVD drive only allows you to switch regions five times in the entire life of the computer. Since I have DVDs from all regions, this means that I'm going to have to decide which to watch and which to turn into paperweights. As far as I can see there is no hack for my DVD drive, the Matshita CD-RW CW-8123.

When DVD was invented, the Hollywood studios devised the region system so that their product roll-outs could continue to be staggered, allowing them to concentrate marketing resources in different countries at different times. Now, I watch very few Hollywood films. I've bought DVDs all over the world, in full legality, and I've bought a player to play them on, at full cost. And yet my DVDs, from Japan, Russia, Europe and America, cannot all be played. Hollywood, not content merely to restrict the view of the world in its own products -- products which I can, and do, choose to avoid -- has restricted the view I can get of the world from all DVDs. Instead of encoding its own products to restrict them, it has encoded the player, which should be universal.

Comments

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

As someone who has worked on Macintosh computers for over 15 years, I've always found the "burnt bridge" policy imposed by both Mac and Adobe a bit vexing, although I fully recognize the necessity of this practice (my ancient copy of Streamline still works, thank heavens). Over the winter, I finally made the slightly painful hardware/software leap to OSX and a G5 with a full complement of cannon and crew. The flat screen make color preparations in Photoshop a much easier undertaking, at least in my experience. Besides the considerable expense and some minor software and operating system tics (CS Illustrator seems to crash more than earlier versions), I have few complaints--other than finding a doily for my cold, linear CPU has been a challenge, and the galling fact that my recent purchases shall be nearly obsolete in a year or so. Very hard for a small studio to keep up with such changes.

I cannot speak to the DVD problem to which you refer (I do not own any), but it sounds like it certainly requires a long hard look, to put it kindly.

An aside: I would recommend those who still use Quark to give a switch to InDesign serious consideration.

Is it true that 30-inch flat screens shall be available in the near future? Good heavens.

W

Hola

[biseinen.livejournal.com]

30-inch flat screens are available right now! Check the Apple website.
eD B^)