from the ought-to-be-enough-for-anybody dept.
In a recent engadget article, Jon Fingas points out the following:
If you're planning to snag the new Mac mini and load it up with aftermarket memory, you may want to reconsider your strategy. Macminicolo owner Brian Stucki (among others) has discovered that the RAM in Apple's latest tiny desktop isn't upgradable, much as you'd expect with the company's laptops and the 21-inch iMac.
Related Stories
Apple is making its recently-released iMacs more easily upgradeable, with retailer OWC confirming the base specification 27-inch 5K iMac can be fitted with up to 64GB of RAM, while an iFixit teardown reveals both the memory and the processor used in the 21.5-inch 4K iMac can be removed and replaced.
[...] an upgradeable iMac is a big shift in direction from Apple. The last 21.5-inch iMac with expandable memory was the 2013 model, while the last to include a modular CPU came in 2012.
related stories:
Microsoft Releases an All-in-One Desktop PC
You Can't Upgrade the New Mac Mini's RAM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jbernardo on Monday October 20 2014, @08:24AM
This was expectable. Not only is Apple's main business selling hardware (with some nice software and a even nicer distortion field), but also most Apple users are unable and unwilling to upgrade their Macs. They buy appliances, that just happen to be powerful computers. They expect things to "just work" and go back to Apple store when they don't.
People buying previous generation Mini to upgrade them are in the minority.
(Score: 1) by goody on Monday October 20 2014, @05:03PM
Imagine if Dell, HP, and Microsoft adopted that "it should just work" mantra.
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Monday October 20 2014, @05:53PM
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 2) by Teckla on Tuesday October 21 2014, @08:04PM
They buy appliances, that just happen to be powerful computers.
I'm not sure I'd call a computer with only 2 cores and only 4 GB of RAM (keeping in mind some of that RAM is used for the integrated graphics) a powerful computer by today's standards.
The Mac mini is really wimpy.
(Score: 2) by Daiv on Wednesday October 22 2014, @01:55PM
The Mac mini may be "wimpy", but it's more than enough for a huge cross section of the computer/apple-buying population.
Anecdote: *None* of the computers in my immediate or extended family, for a total of at least 25, exceed "only 2 cores and only 4 GB of ram", and more than half only have 1-2 GB of ram. After dealing with complaints from my family since the mid-90's on how slow everyone has constantly complained their computers are, the past 4-5 years have been fantastic.
Mac mini's aren't aimed at anyone who would classify specs as "really wimpy". Mini's are perfect for a huge cross section of the public and most people would be very happy with one and *would* refer to it as powerful.
(Score: 2) by Teckla on Wednesday October 22 2014, @02:37PM
The Mac mini may be "wimpy", but it's more than enough for a huge cross section of the computer/apple-buying population.
I agree that 2 cores and 4 GB of RAM are sufficient for many people, though perhaps many of those extremely light users would be better served by a Chromebook, or even a tablet with a keyboard.
The problem I've noticed is users who buy entry level Mac gear and discover, after it's too late, that it's not sufficient for anything but light usage. Those 4 GB Mac minis run out of memory really fast, and start swapping like mad. I've seen it all too often.
My opinion is that Apple should increase their minimum RAM to at least 6 GB. The cost between 4 GB and 6 GB at Apple's volume is vanishingly small. There's no reason not to, except for misguided and extreme greed, in my opinion.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Gravis on Monday October 20 2014, @08:32AM
you can upgrade the RAM, it simply requires custom RAM from Apple. If all the RAM was soldered on the motherboard then you cant upgrade it (without hardware modifications).
deceptive headlines do not help.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Monday October 20 2014, @08:37AM
What is special about the Apple RAM? Very curious.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Gravis on Monday October 20 2014, @08:43AM
dont listen to that jerk, he doesnt know what he's talking about. i mean, just look at at his reply to his own post. pff... what an idiot.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @11:10AM
Mod parent (+1, Bipolar).
(Score: 4, Informative) by Sir Finkus on Monday October 20 2014, @09:21AM
Not a lot, although the mac pros do use ECC ram, if you consider that "special".
Soldered ram is somewhat justifiable for a Laptop I think, because there are tradeoffs that need to be made as to allow user replaceable RAM. I don't see why this needs to be the case for a "desktop" pc. The article doesn't mention if the new Mac mini is smaller than the old one, so that might be a factor as well.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 20 2014, @11:44AM
The article doesn't mention if the new Mac mini is smaller than the old one
I've read some discussion on that topic that the fetishization of thinness seems to be spreading from phones, where it doesn't matter other than making it a little awkward to hold and a technical PITA, to desktop computers where its just irrelevant. Like the fad some years back of cutting windows in gaming PCs "for the cooling" and then sticking a plastic window and blue LEDs in there "to make it cool".
(Score: 0) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday October 20 2014, @01:25PM
Macs have been by homosexuals, for homosexuals, ever since the PPC days.
Nothing advertises the want of a large Black dick in the ass more than using a Mac in public.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @02:07PM
Classy comment
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 20 2014, @02:43PM
Well, if my wife is secretly bi I'm OK as long as I get to watch, and its her hot friends not her ... not so hot friends. Aside from that, my point was you could build the next mac mini into a giant plastic dog turd and no one will realistically notice or care, seeing as my wife's mac mini is buried on her desk behind the monitor or something where no one sees it. I think her old one looked like a single slice silver toaster or a really small waffle maker, and her new one looks like a piece of wonderbread with the crusts cut off and an oreo on top.
I have a good analogy, lets make SSDs that are so stylish and hot and sexy and super thin but it doesn't matter because almost nobody gazes longingly at SSDs all day long anyway.
Its like trying to turn a toothbrush into a conspicuous consumption item, its just dumb.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday October 20 2014, @02:57PM
Not to mention if you give folks the choice between "more power at a better price" and "looks pretty but weak and expensive"? Well with the notable exception of the hardcore Appleites the average person will ALWAYS pick the former. And why wouldn't they? as you note its not like they are gonna spend their days gazing lovingly at this teeny tiny box, they are gonna be too busy actually USING the thing to care about how "purty" you can make the thing. I found this out when I first started building HTPCs, folks would rather have a larger case with better hardware than pay a premium for having an itty bitty NUC style thing with severe hardware limitations.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 20 2014, @03:15PM
You are on the right track but appliances like a mythtv frontend have more a carnival ride "you must be this tall ->" sign and once you're there all good. I remember the crap I went thru more than a decade ago to get a mythtv FE up and running, and then there was an era I could use a castoff desktop (still have one in the basement lab/workshop, the thing just won't die) and my living room has one of those zotac boxes thats smaller than a cablemodem and it just works.
Once you can display live TV, later live HDTV, there's no point in making it any faster. I'm doing vdpau acceleration in the video card and it works at like 20% CPU and I'm sure a new box could pull that down to 5% but I just don't care until the hardware breaks.
On the other hand an appliance like an apple desktop can never encode video "too fast" so I don't think a "you must be this tall ->" sign threshold exists. At least not yet. Someday we'll be able to encode video faster than we can burn DVDs or upload to youtube and then there will be no point at all in further increases for the average buyer. That'll be interesting. Its coming soon, the end of progress in end user raw computer power.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday October 20 2014, @03:44PM
I would argue that for the most part we are already there as very few users are doing any kind of realtime encoding and for everything else even a 5 year old CPU is overkill. I know I used to be the guy that HAD to replace his system every other year (with a hardware upgrade on the off year) because the systems just couldn't keep up, but now? The Phenom II X6 I have at home can transcode video AND burn a DVD as well as play a game or watch a movie and all at the same time.
when you look at what a user actually DOES with their PC, even their HTPC? Most aren't doing anything that can't be done on a 5 year old system. like I said realtime encoding is rare, thanks to the mess that is cablecards and all the other DRM crap and with sites like Hulu and Netflix having actual copies is becoming less and less of a concern. instead what I'm seeing is users ripping their DVD and CD collections and using their HTPCs as a combination mediatank/netbox/game console and for those uses? Slap mediaportal on any $300 Athlon quad system and its all gravy.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday October 20 2014, @02:38PM
How is it "justifiable" for a laptop? It doesn't save ANY space, sure they don't have to make a slot so the user can easily replace it (as they did with most netbooks) but that is NO excuse for soldering it straight to the board! If I as a customer want to deal with the PITA that is tearing down the system so I can get to the RAM and swap it then i should be able to do so, soldering it straight to the board is not only anti-consumer but just makes for more landfill fodder when a memory cell goes bad or an otherwise perfectly good system gets trashed because its so RAM limited its unusable.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @03:44PM
There's two types of soldered-in RAM. One is where they take a regular SO-DIMM, and solder that to the mainboard, which saves the cost of a socker, but little if any space, since you still have all the same layers in your sandwich. The other is to solder RAM chips directly to the mainboard -- which can actually save quite a bit of space, if it allows you to make the whole laptop thinner. (Obviously, no benefit if e.g. normal-height HDDs make the whole laptop thick enough for SO-DIMMs anyway, but for SSD-only machines it can matter.) Discussing the pros and cons of soldered-in RAM without mentioning which type you're talking about is pointless and stupid.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday October 20 2014, @05:35PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday October 20 2014, @09:27PM
How exactly does that work? DRAM still requires X amount of power to keep the cells alive and you can't tell me balls of that crappy new green solder can carry power better than a copper on copper slot connection. But let us say that you are 100% correct...does that 20% in savings REALLY justify making something landfill fodder? Memory cells DO go bad, they are a hell of a lot more likely to fail than any other part short of the disk drives and its not like modern OSes can handle having bad RAM cells so is it REALLY worth the trade off, when we are talking about something running off the mains no less?
Of course lets cut through the bullshit, ok? YOU know this isn't why its being done, just as I know that isn't why its being done, its being done so they can charge $300 for RAM that the user could buy for $80 anywhere else. Just more corporate douchebaggery from a company that told their users they are too damned stupid to hold a cell phone correctly and refused to admit that they were getting pwned by malware because MacDefender was a trojan and not a virus so that don't count...yeah bullshit, just more douchebaggery and the sad part is the users will take it and probably praise Apple for that righteous assfucking they just got!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday October 20 2014, @10:15PM
Of course lets cut through the bullshit, ok? YOU know this isn't why its being done, just as I know that isn't why its being done, its being done so they can charge $300 for RAM that the user could buy for $80 anywhere else.
I doubt it. The memory has to be installed back at the factory in China. That costs them a lot more than having me just purchase the simms and put it in myself. It also creates an inventory situation since they can't just keep every permutation of systems at their stores, instead the people that walk in have to make their selection and wait five days for it to ship.
I think the real reason is they felt having the laptop thinner and made of a uni-body was likely to earn them more sales. The $200 premium isn't near as nice as it was pre-Retina days.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday October 21 2014, @12:18AM
What cost? Working conditions and pay are sooo bad over there that Foxconn had to install a net to catch the workers trying to commit suicide, no way in hell they are paying them enough to not make fat bank on that $300 RAM, no way. When you consider that Cook made sure Apple got insanely low prices by buying their parts over a year in advance? if that "$300" RAM cost them even $40 I'd be amazed, figure in at most another $20 to have some sweatshop worker install it and you are talking $240 pure profit per unit!
And what laptop? we are talking about Mac mini, you know, the desktop unit? You can't tell me that soldering the RAM into a unit drawing off the mains was done for ANY reason other than price gouging, and just one more bit of proof that Cook is more like Balmer than Jobs, a stuffed suit that is gonna nickel and dime the customers until he sours the branding.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday October 21 2014, @12:34AM
What cost?
You mean besides having to take it off the line, solder the RAM in, and ship it individually to somebody's house? Even at the pay-rate you're assuming that's still way more expensive than installing it in-store or having the customer do it. There's also the inventory issue I mentioned that you must have accidentally skipped over.
Working conditions and pay are sooo bad over there that Foxconn had to install a net to catch the workers trying to commit suicide...
You are not well informed.
...to not make fat bank on that $300 RAM.
Two hundred.
And what laptop?
You asked: How is it "justifiable" for a laptop?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday October 21 2014, @12:57PM
...so if they don't solder the RAM directly to the board...nobody ever has to install it or something?
They've gotta install the RAM at the factory anyway. Whether it's a fixed amount of four different options, it's still the same basic process. Might now take a couple seconds extra per laptop, from somebody making a couple bucks a day, but it saves a minute or two per laptop from somebody making ten or twenty bucks an hour if they were really having them customized at the Apple stores...
But in fact if you look at the sales page for the mac mini...they have four options. These options have differences in RAM -- but also in CPU, battery, display, and storage. They're not giving people more options, they're giving them *fewer*. They have *less* to keep in inventory and less to assemble. You can't throw 8GB of RAM in with the 2.5GHz processor anymore. If you want 8GB of RAM, you're forced to buy the 2.6GHz CPU.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday October 22 2014, @01:19AM
Dude where the fuck have YOU been? Would you like a link to the suicide nets, complete with pics? Ask and ye shall receive [dailytech.com]. And regular RAM installs itself...by magic? And are you really gonna honestly try to sell us on them actually taking each individual board and hand soldering in the RAM, a process that is practically designed for automated lines?
If you wanna kiss the Apple booty and try to explain away their douchebag behavior you really need to bring better arguments, yours don't even hold up to the most trivial of examination, sorry. BTW if you wanna pay the Apple premium because you like OSX or the designs or just because? Then please, enjoy them in good health, I wish you nothing but happiness with your purchase. We are all individuals and have our own tastes and I would never try to tell someone they couldn't enjoy different things than I, that's what makes us individuals after all.
But please don't try to justify corporate douchebaggery just because you like the brand, you end up jumping through logic hoops the size of Texas and posting illogical shit that don't pass muster like what you posted. I'm not the only one that noticed either, look at the other post, he caught the same problems in your argument. As I said your argument MIGHT hold water if we were talking about the Air, where the battery is a sliver and every mw counts...we are on the mains dude, none of that argument works here. Just accept that Apple are being dicks and move on, just as I had to accept Balmer was a pathetic CEO and Win 8 was deep fried ass, just because you liked previous products does NOT provide an indicator of future performance and behavior, mmkay?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday October 22 2014, @01:54AM
Would you like a link to the suicide nets, complete with pics? Ask and ye shall receive.
When being accused of being mis-informed, consider checking the date on the materials you offer as rebuttal.
And are you really gonna honestly try to sell us on them actually taking each individual board and hand soldering in the RAM, a process that is practically designed for automated lines?
Yep. I mentioned other stuff you ignored, too.
I'm not the only one that noticed either, look at the other post, he caught the same problems in your argument.
Not really, he didn't read my post very carefully. His observations about the fewer configurations of the Mini actually supported my point, he didn't catch that while writing it.
If you wanna kiss the Apple booty...
I'm sorry my experience purchasing Apple laptops is in direct conflict with your agenda. It's a pity though because you're going to walk away from this thread with a swiss-cheese memory of what we talked about, including overlooking that I had actually criticized this approach in the first post I made. Hopefully one day you'll forgive me for not reading your sermon in its entirety.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 22 2014, @11:55PM
If you had actually been interested in the truth of the matter you would have looked a little deeper than what fit your preconceived notions and found that the suicide rate in Foxconn factories is LOWER than the overall suicide rate in China and LOWER than the rate in the US.
Article is from 2010, but it gets the point across.
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-and-dell-investigating-the-foxconn-working-conditions-2010-5 [businessinsider.com]
"After 9 suicides in 5 months, and reports of brutal working conditions, Apple and Dell say they are investigating the working conditions at Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer that builds iPads, iPhones and other gadgets.
But while it's obviously a tragedy that any one person, let alone 9, ever commits suicide, let's be clear about one thing: the suicide rate at Foxconn is not particularly high. In fact, at 5.4 suicides per 100,000 people (400,000 people work at Foxconn), the Foxconn suicide rate is lower than it is in all 50 U.S. states.
In Wyoming, where the population is 512,757, and there are no sweatshops, 22.6 people per 100,000 commit suicide, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
In California, the rate is 9.2 – New York, 6.9.
If conditions are so bad, why are so few people offing themselves?
Let us know how that Crow tastes. I know you won't read this, but other people will.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 20 2014, @03:28PM
All the laptops I ever bought did not have soldered RAM. I'm sure more "ultrabooks" do, and almost all tablets or two-in-ones.
I'm happy as long as a laptop can take 8 GB of RAM, until maybe 2016 or universal memory appears.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Gravis on Monday October 20 2014, @08:38AM
i misread "custom order to get more RAM" as " order to get more custom RAM"
but the question is: who cares about a specific product? I mean, a thin client have non-upgradable RAM isnt anything new.
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Monday October 20 2014, @12:32PM
but the question is: who cares about a specific product? I mean, a thin client have non-upgradable RAM isnt anything new.
But the Mac Mini isn't a 'thin client'. It's a full blown computer that only needs a keyboard, mouse & monitor. The guy they quote in the summary is from MacMiniColo [macminicolo.net], a Mac Mini colocation facility that lets you add your Mac Mini as a server (another built in feature that 'thin clients' don't have).
This is just a way for Apple to get your cash for their more-expensive RAM. The physical dimensions of the Mini didn't change. They're just trying to get the extra $ that many would save by buying the RAM upgrades from another source.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @01:22PM
You will see more and more of this as we move closer to SoC systems. With only specialty 'server class' MB's having the ability to install TB size memories.
Desktop/laptop has peaked feature wise. 4-8gig is good enough for 98% of the people out there and not be hitting the swap drive. The rest of us will have to make due and get out our soldering guns apparently. All the innovations we see are basically revisions to existing ideas. The only 'new' thing they have added in the past few years is the ability for touch screens.
For Apple it is a matter of feeding in a few extra chips for the pick and place machine. Instead of 2 stages of pick and place and paying a person to pop the memory in and testing the memory socket works correctly. I fully expect the flash drive to be next.
You will see more and more of this. Especially in the 'want to be thin look' laptop/tablet market.
Not that I would ever by an apple product. Still sort of bitter they basically ended one of the best jobs I ever had thru their cost cutting and style marketing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tonyPick on Monday October 20 2014, @08:39AM
If all the RAM was soldered on the motherboard then you cant upgrade it (without hardware modifications)
According to this it is Soldered;
http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/17/mac-mini-soldered-ram/ [macrumors.com]
http://blog.macminicolo.net/post/100240431773/a-look-at-the-2014-mac-mini [macminicolo.net]
So do you have a citation for the "Not Soldered, just custom" version of this story?
(Score: 1) by kai_h on Tuesday October 21 2014, @06:14AM
No, the RAM is soldered to the logic board from what I can see. That makes it about as upgradable as a laptop with soldered RAM.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Monday October 20 2014, @10:05AM
As HairyFeet posted in another apple story...
+1 Agree
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday October 20 2014, @02:29PM
What is truly sad is if this was any other company the users would be screaming bloody murder at such obvious anti-consumer douchebaggery, but because its Apple, a company that is notorious for fucking their users on RAM by charging truly insane markups? Its completely accepted without so much as a whimper.
Am I the only one that is totally fucking bewildered by this insane loyalty to a fricking BRAND? I mean I like Windows but I was the first to call for Balmer getting the boot (and I would still argue he was the worst tech CEO EVAR) and called Windows 8 a total disaster, and even though I was a hardcore Intel+Nvidia man when it came out that Intel was bribing OEMs and rigging benches and Nvidia fucked over many customers (including me) with Bumpgate? I dropped them like a bad habit and have avoided their products to this very day.
So why in the hell would you show such loyalty to a fricking company, especially when they are ripping you off with shit like this? there is absolutely ZERO reason to do this other than fucking the customer by forcing them to pay out the ass for "Apple RAM", none whatsoever. they can't even use a technical excuse like Intel was doing when they ran the idea of soldering the RAM so they could have a faster connection between the L3 the RAM as this is the low end model!
I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but treating these corps that look at you like a walking ATM like they were a fricking ballclub just seems like insanity to me.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @10:26AM
Apple losing me as a mac-mini customer with this move.
Apple losing the professional video editing market with their iMovie Pro.
Apple still not having the mid-tower with PCIe slots, user upgradeable graphics and ram that users have been clamoring after for years.
Apple repeating historical poor taste by infecting people's music collections with bono's damp farts.
Apple losing all signs of good taste and releasing 'bling' mobile products.
Apple being responsible for the much fabled year of desktop linux, by virtue of the fact that they and Microsoft have completely lost the fucking plot!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @12:23PM
==http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5845245&cid=48176317
by goruka (1721094) on Saturday October 18, 2014
Disclaimer: I wrote plenty of open source audio apps for linux, even worked with professional audio hardware with embedded linux.
Pulseaudio is just another victim of the attitude from the linux kernel developers of kicking a problem to userland when they should really be solving it. Userspace audio mixers are OK for many applications, such as a video player, desktop sounds, listening to mp3s, etc. as long as such applications don't need low latency. If you need videogames, pro-audio stuff, or even real-time video editing you need low latency and here is the problem happens. You need somehow a way to ensure that the low latency audio thread gets notification quickly and gets priority in the scheduler (because the buffers are small), while the regular latency audio just needs to accumulate more data into buffers.
But the problem is, that you have only one DAC, and different streams might request different configuration parameters, such as bit depth, sampling rate, channels, etc. In any serious OS, the kernel will open a stream with the maximum settings for real-time, and will ensure it gets the needed attention, while it mixes and resamples the audio that comes from the regular OS sound buffers over it. Linux kernel developers are against this, and the justification is that resampling should not happen in the kernel. As a result, asks user space to solve the problem. Pulseaudio is an attempt to solve that problem, and does what the kernel should be doing in userspace, but unfortunately it just doesn't work very well. Linux is not a "real time" OS and scheduling can still fuck you your user-space audio.
Back in the day, OSS handled this perfectly, but when it was replaced by ALSA (an extremely bloated and over-designed API and driver architecture) hell began, so please don't blame PulseAudio for this, this is purely the fault of kernel developers.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday October 20 2014, @12:42PM
Wasn't ALSA created to solve some features missing in OSS?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @02:34PM
==https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pro_Audio
Modern Linux systems are more than capable of supporting your (semi-)professional audio needs. Latencies of 5ms down to even as low as 1ms can be achieved with good hardware and proper configuration.
==https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/OSS
The Open Sound System (or OSS) is an alternative sound architecture for Unix-like and POSIX-compatible systems. OSS version 3 was the original sound system for Linux, but was superseded by the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (or ALSA) in 2002 when OSS version 4 became proprietary software. OSSv4 became free software again in 2007 when 4Front Technologies released its source code and provided it under the GPL license.
My inference, from reading the above pages: the OSS project shot themselves in the foot by going proprietary and closing up the source code. So ALSA took over from that point and OSS was abandoned by the community. the owners of OSS (4Front Technologies) realised their mistake a few years down the track an re-released the source code and provided it under the GPL license.
But it was too little too late, the OSS project had lost its goodwill and Linux userland had moved on. Also, the OSS project had lost a lot of technical ground during the proprietary years--such as under-developed USB support--and now they are playing catch up.
To come back to life, the OSS project needs a fresh injection of driver and system developers to bring it up to date with modern Linux operating systems. This seems unlikely, because just about all the people who drive the direction of Linux development are simply not fanatical about the worlds of audiophiles, pro audio, pro video, gaming.
So there we have the ultimate truth about 'Linux on the desktop'; it will never happen for a particular cross-section of serious computer users such as 'audiophiles, pro audio, pro video, gaming'; for system administration, business and government applications, and geeks who love hacking ones and zeros as an exercise in itself, 'Linux on the desktop' has arrived so take full advantage of it and let go of your shackles to Microsoft and Apple ASAP.
_______________________________________________________________
P.S. -- The post which started this sub-topic was modded down to 'minus 1' by some lovely gentleman, so you may not see it.
If you want to read it, go here: ==http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=4454&cid=107787
(Score: 1) by kai_h on Tuesday October 21 2014, @06:17AM
And, it pains me as much as it pains you, but quite clearly Apple don't give a fuck. I'm sure they make more margin off selling 10 iPads than they do off selling one Mac Pro. Or make more off selling two iPads than they do on a Mac mini. Neither the Mac Pro nor the Mac mini are Apple's key product lines. I'm also sure that the iPad outsells the Mac Pro by well over 10 to 1. Apple are going where the money is, and from that perspective can you blame them?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 20 2014, @04:37PM
I myself don't own any Apple or MS products. Not interested in closed source anything. If I was ever forced to use a Mac I would immediately open a terminal and forget the rest was there. Anything else is like trying to shoe-horn your mind, body, and soul into a thimble.
As an investor, though, I'm happy to own Apple stock. I don't get their stuff as a user or customer, but I'm happy, through them, to earn money from the hapless and vain.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 20 2014, @06:42PM
"Mac is an OS for people with one-button brains"
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @04:53PM
No, I do not expect the 21" Mac to have soldered RAM, so that's a suprise as well.
It's evil. Doubling or quadrupling a computer's RAM has always made it useful.
If soldered memory is a necessarily evil, that's only one I would expect on iPad or the Mac ultrabook, not on desktops.
Maybe they fear the Mac Mini would be too much competition with the Mac Pro (bumping it to 16GB makes it a workstation)
(Score: 1) by goody on Monday October 20 2014, @05:07PM
Buy the Mac loaded up with all the memory you might ever need. If you're wanting to load it up with aftermarket memory, that means cost is a big issue for you, which means you probably shouldn't buy Apple products in the first place.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday October 20 2014, @07:12PM
Exactly. I don't even know why Apple bothers listing prices in their stores. You should be happy to pay whatever Apple demands when you get to the cash register, in fact you should just hand over your credit card without them telling you the total. If this doesn't sound right to you, then you have no business being an Apple customer.
(Score: 1) by goody on Monday October 20 2014, @10:56PM
No, that's not what I said. You know what the price is and you know you can't cheap out with aftermarket memory. If you don't like it, don't buy it. You can still get the memory you need, you just have to pay Apple for it. A high price or a feature you don't like is not the same as blindly paying whatever or not knowing the price. You know the price, you know the deal with the memory, and you know this is Apple being Apple.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21 2014, @04:08AM
So in other words. 4 gig is fine for now.
Hm I suddenly got into photoshop and need 16 gig. Sure why not replace my whole computer. I dont mind dropping another 1500 on something. I have money to burn...
Hell better yet lets install linux it will magically take care of the issue! /sarc