Many people seem to be coming by here looking for my Apple Store comments, which are just down a little ways on Friday’s entry. Since this has become a minor attraction, I’ll re-emphasize how deeply, intensely snazzy the iSight is; the experience is almost exactly like what sci-fi movies have been showing us for decades. I just had an AV chat with Pascale Soleil (in which she could hear my voice, but her DV camera kept flaking out on voice or video or both); during the interval when we both could talk, and I could see her frown or laugh or reach around the back of my head (as it seemed) to turn the camera on and off, I caught a glimpse of what's so captivating about this technology. And Pascale and I have only just met, as it were; ’twould be even more thrilling if I could iChat with Margaret during her travels, for instance.
So I’m wondering how to rationalize adding another gadget to my desktop.
The rest of the store is mostly like other Apple Stores, but bigger. We may buy Margaret a sleeve for her iBook, and it’s great to know that there’s a place downtown that’s more or less guaranteed to have standard Apple stuff in stock (much more convenient than the store out west in Schaumburg, and with wider selection than Nabih’s here in Evanston). The staff were convivial and hyperactive, the equipment was first-rate, and the store itself is handsome. (One of the employees suggested that the transparent staircase itself was worth the wait. Call me jaded, but it didn’t particularly move me.) Four blocks from an El stop; stuffed with Mac-centric goodies; near the Cathedral of St. James (so I can combine ecclesiastical with electronic errands); all in all, highly favorable marks.
Posted by AKMA at June 29, 2003 01:18 PM | TrackBackMy local Apple Store is located in the outside portion of Southpoint Mall (off I-40, Fayettville Rd in Durham).
Whenever I find myself about to be trapped in a baby clothing store (we have no kids) or a stinky candle shop, I duck out and head over to the sleek lines and distinctive smell of the Apple Store.
The only "problem" with having an Apple Store within 10 minutes from home is that it encourages impulse purchases. Such purchases can be expensive at the Apple Store.
Posted by: Ryan at June 29, 2003 01:47 PMIt’ a little surprising that the iSight is so fairly-priced, I think (it seems capable of much more than they’e presently allowed it to do, and it does those things well, easily, and stylishly). I don’ think I can muster $149 right now, but that’s not the investment that an iPod or a whole new CPU would be. . . .
Posted by: AKMA at June 29, 2003 02:56 PMI admit there is probably something pathological about my hatred of cameras, but -- this thing is never getting deskspace in my house. It's. Just. Not.
Nobody needs to see me that badly.
Posted by: Dorothea Salo at June 29, 2003 05:19 PMsusan bought an ibook there today
Posted by: Trevor at June 29, 2003 06:40 PMSince the Heap has no definite rules as to where it will create space for you, there must be some way of figuring out where your new space is. And the answer is, simply enough, addressing. When you create new space in the heap to hold your data, you get back an address that tells you where your new space is, so your bits can move in. This address is called a Pointer, and it's really just a hexadecimal number that points to a location in the heap. Since it's really just a number, it can be stored quite nicely into a variable.
Posted by: Jane at January 13, 2004 12:10 PMNote first that favoriteNumbers type changed. Instead of our familiar int, we're now using int*. The asterisk here is an operator, which is often called the "star operator". You will remember that we also use an asterisk as a sign for multiplication. The positioning of the asterisk changes its meaning. This operator effectively means "this is a pointer". Here it says that favoriteNumber will be not an int but a pointer to an int. And instead of simply going on to say what we're putting in that int, we have to take an extra step and create the space, which is what does. This function takes an argument that specifies how much space you need and then returns a pointer to that space. We've passed it the result of another function, , which we pass int, a type. In reality, is a macro, but for now we don't have to care: all we need to know is that it tells us the size of whatever we gave it, in this case an int. So when is done, it gives us an address in the heap where we can put an integer. It is important to remember that the data is stored in the heap, while the address of that data is stored in a pointer on the stack.
Posted by: Ebotte at January 13, 2004 12:10 PMTo address this issue, we turn to the second place to put variables, which is called the Heap. If you think of the Stack as a high-rise apartment building somewhere, variables as tenets and each level building atop the one before it, then the Heap is the suburban sprawl, every citizen finding a space for herself, each lot a different size and locations that can't be readily predictable. For all the simplicity offered by the Stack, the Heap seems positively chaotic, but the reality is that each just obeys its own rules.
Posted by: Ambrose at January 13, 2004 12:11 PM