Gears of War

[A Black Falcon]

Hey, I'm typing this on a 7.5-year old Mac G3. Seems like it's working pretty fine to me. And how exactly are Apple's products designed with style before substance? The iPod became popular not just because of what it looked like, but because the scroll wheel was incredibly intuitive and easy-to-use. It's entirely possible to have style and substance at the same time.
*end Mac rant*

And I'm on a 5.16 year old PC... but I think you know what I meant. :) True, sometimes form and function can both be present, but not always... the iMac is the best example... it had form, but function... no. Same for one-button Mac mice, the lack of removable media drives in those things, etc... I know that Apple has advanced on some of those fronts, but they still just have one button... Nintendo hasn't gone the whole way on the Apple front -- they don't do the "highly overpriced products that make us more money because we know our devoted fans will pay them anyway"; Nintendo does overprice things ($250 for the Wii?), but not as blatantly as Apple where you can get equivilantly powered PCs for a lot less money (and with three button mice... :D). And, of course, Nintendo actually cares about games, in marked contrast to Apple (seven and a half year PC? Yeah, not much gaming power there... I know I'm not much of one to talk, running a five year old PC that can't run most new games, but still, it runs lots of stuff and I like it for it. And when I replace it (by next spring I'm sure) it'll be back up to par. Anyway though...

I guess that part of why I dislike Mac style is because I dislike MacOS and so I say "and I don't like their design either", but I do think that Apple puts too much focus on design and not enough on function... (*recalls old debate about MacOS having fewer features*) ... I know, Apple has devoted fans anyway so they don't need to bother. They're not trying to become #1 in the computer business anymore, they just need to appeal to their base... (the iPod is different; for one, it's Windows XP compatible... :)) and yes, PCs often look pretty boring. They're computers, how stylish do they have to look? (and I think my computer's black and silver design doesn't look half bad. I mean, there's only so many ways you can dress up a mini tower, and no serious computer user would want one of those shrunken form factor iMac/eMac/whatever things Apple (or some PC manufacturers trying to capitalize on the idea, they are just as bad) comes up with... upgradability is very important...

As for the iPod, I have never used a portable music device, so I don't know which ones are good... I know the iPod is popular, but don't know if it's because it's actually better or just because it became popular and so everyone said "I need the popular one"... I'm sure it's good if it's so popular though. I just know that there's a lot of annoying incompatibilities between the various players and the various services that sell music online, but that's a different issue...

Personally I think the "64" name was stupid. Nintendo was really selling the graphics on that, and it resulted in a lot of games having very stupid sounding names (thank Nintendo they didn't call the Zelda games "Zelda 64" as was originally rumored). The sad thing is the N64 is a 32 bit system. Sure you can probably dig up the number "64" somewhere in some spec list, but if you're talking about the main processor, and bits always were used to describe that, then it's a 32 bit system. That aside, great fun. (Oh and, aside from the aweful Z button, I prefer the GCN controller to the N64 one by far, but we've already talked about that to death, suffice it to say it would have been nice if they kept the 6 button layout).

No, you're wrong, the N64 has a 64-bit CPU by all accounts I've heard. The Jaguar did indeed have some 32-bit components, and the TurboGrafx-16 was actually twin 8-bit CPUs, but I'm pretty sure that the N64 was indeed 64 bit in all critical areas, including the CPU. But really, the number of "bits" in the system doesn't matter. The Xbox 360 is a 32-bit system by that measure... :)

GCN controller over the N64 "by far"? I know we've talked about it before, but that's such strong language, and I disagree completely, so I can't ignore it... :) ... I just like the N64 controller more. Better analog stick (degrades faster, but better while it lasts), better face button layout, better trigger (left shoulder button for 3d games)... what's worse about it? Not having a barely-used right analog stick? I still woudn't miss the thing if controllers stopped having those... :)

As for the 360, I HAVE one. The top and bottom (since I keep it horizontal) are completely flat. I thought it was curved inwards too, from the photos, but that's an optical illusion. The thing that causes it is the bottom and top are closer to you (because the FRONT is what curves inward), which gives the illusion that the closer parts are wider. Not so.

Interesting... I have seen one in person, but didn't look that closely I guess...