Yeah man, it’s a good thing they haven’t copied Apple’s ReadyBoost yet!

readyboost is MS’s :S ... and not just that the one of there only original things .. which is shit as well!

I noticed there’s no drop shadow on that software update dialog either. WTF?

I’ve had quicktime trying to install itself on my computer on many occasions.  Thank god for classic media player.

I don’t quite understand why Apple choose to create applications for Windows when there are certainly better alternatives out there.  Apple should just forget it and concentrate on developing on their on platform.

Thank god for classic media player.

Why aren’t you using Windows Media Player 11?

I don’t quite understand why Apple choose to create applications for Windows when there are certainly better alternatives out there.

Because they sell millions of iPods to Windows users and will soon sell millions of iPhones to Windows users.

Apple should just forget it and concentrate on developing on their on platform.

Forget billions in revenue? Why would they do that?

I don’t run Aero. No Aero, no drop shadows.

Except on the Start Menu.

Menus got drop shadows in Windows XP, you don’t need DWM for them. I think the mouse pointer even had a shadow back in Window 2000, but I could be wrong.

Thanks.

So that is fragmented between legacy and Aero? Some things use the legacy and some things use Aero?

Lighten up. Anyone is obviously free to make comments about iTunes at any time.

I’m commenting on the screenshot in your blog. No big deal. I find it weird that Vista carries over legacy shadows that are separate from Aero.

If you don’t mind me asking, can you turn off those legacy shadows?

Yeah man, it’s a good thing they haven’t copied Apple’s ReadyBoost yet!

You mean like RAM disk from Mac System 7 released in 1991?

You know, RAM is a lot faster than USB Flash drives.

Certain tasks...like cache? LOL. Yeah, I was putting my browser’s cache on my RAM disk and it was a lot faster. It’s the same exact concept - using memory is faster than a hard drive. You designate the RAM disk for “certain tasks” instead of the hard drive.

But back in 1991, we didn’t have Flash memory drives.

This is an evolution of a feature the Mac OS had (and still has) decades ago. So Microsoft uses Flash memory drives to add (slow) RAM to a computer that has little RAM “under the hood”.

That’s exactly what I said. You either don’t know what cache is or you are purposely being ignorant.

It’s amazing how you, UnnDunn, are quick to point out whatever Apple innovates is just an evolution, yet when grasping for innovations in Vista you come up with cache on memory and claim Microsoft came up with the idea.

Sigh. Look, this is a very simple idea to grasp.

The OS and applications cache to the hard drive. RAM Disk lets you cache to RAM instead, which is much faster than the hard drive. ReadyBoost lets you cache to a Flash memory drive, which is faster than a hard drive.

RAM Disk also lets you put your Mac applications and documents on it so they launch really fast.

Surely you can clear your hatred of Apple for a second to see that the purpose of both is the same.

What? So you’re going to take an application that is already resident in RAM and… cache it to RAM (only this time it’s called a RAMdisk?) Does that make any fricken sense whatsoever?

If you knew anything about the classic Mac OS, yes, it makes perfect sense. It didn’t have dynamic memory allocation. Got it? So you had a fixed amount of RAM allocated to an application, like Photoshop. You couldn’t allocate all your RAM to Photoshop because then you couldn’t load up any other applications at the same time and you also needed RAM free for the System. So you had a certain % allocated to Photoshop, a certain % for your other applications. If Photoshop hit that limit, it would cache to the hard drive (as it does now). You could go into the Photoshop preferences and designate (still can) the drive to cache too...the RAM Disk. But in OS X, this would make no sense because of dynamic memory allocation. It dynamically allocates RAM to the applications as needed, using all the RAM if it has to, and caches (though I think Adobe uses their own memory allocation system so it might cache to the hard drive with free RAM, so a RAM Disk would work).

In OS X, taking RAM away to create a RAM Disk is taking RAM away from the application, so it makes no sense. But in the Classic Mac OS, it made total sense, and lots of people used it.

You see, you would need any amount of experience with the classic Mac OS and the RAM Disk from 1991 to know what you are talking about. You obviously don’t.

And, as I said, you could designate the RAM Disk for the browser cache.

In fact, what I’m talking about can be done on Windows.

I tried a few experiments, moving my browser cache to the RAM drive, or moving my temporary files there, or even moving my entire email archive to RAM, and it turns out to make a massive difference in performance. Nearly everything is instant. Running a copy of Photoshop installed to the virtual drive is astonishing the first few times you start the app. But it’s not a solution that really works for any length of time, as various parts of Windows balk at being run from a drive that’s not “real”. And you don’t want to have to reinstall your apps every time you reboot, even if XP only rarely needs to be rebooted.

The Classic Mac OS didn’t have any problems with RAM Disk and it did store on the hard drive things in your RAM Disk, so it would be there the next time you booted.

The OS and Applications are stored on the hard disk and loaded into RAM.  The process of loading things from a hard drive is slow, so ReadyBoost caches some things onto a fast Flash Memory device, so that loading them into RAM is much faster.

Don’t confuse SuperFetch with Readyboost.

ReadyBoost is not about launching applications faster. It’s about systems with a low amount of RAM (512 meg) having to cache, and caching to the Flash drive instead of the hard drive. It’s all about cache, UnnDunn.

According to Anand’s benchmarks, if you have 1 gig of RAM or higher, the benefits of ReadyBoost are negligible.

The whole idea here is to use memory to cache instead of a hard drive (RAM Disk, ReadyBoost), to launch applications and documents faster from RAM (RAM Disk, SuperFetch).

Here are Windows users who put their Photoshop cache/scratch on a RAM Disk and see great speed benefits.

Stage 3: denial. You are now just putting your hands over your ears even though I clearly have shown the relationship between ReadyBoost and RAM Disk. Deny all you want, every reasonable person reading this recognizes the similarities between the two.

Great. How does this relate to ReadyBoost and its relationship (or lack thereof) to RAMdisk?

Hmm, Vista puts cache on Flash memory because it’s faster than a hard drive and those Windows users are putting their Photoshop cache on a RAM Disk because it’s faster than a hard drive. You aren’t a stupid person, so I’m going to believe that you see a relationship, but your hatred of all things Apple is making you be unreasonable on this thread.

(And by the way, I love how you’ve completely taken us away from the issue at hand, which is iTunes, lest we forget.)

Not at all. I completely agree that trying to slip iTunes onto your system like that is totally lame. You see, I’m not like you, UnnDunn. I call it as I see it. I don’t spend hours writing blogs bashing Microsoft like you do bashing Apple.