A lot of people think Apple Computer intends to make good looking computers. Many people admire the casing of Apple’s laptops, iBooks and PowerBooks, which are replaced by MacBook and MacBook Pro very recently. If they see these computers’ Operating System, Mac OS X, especially some eye-catching features, like the Dock, and Expose, they would probably marvel at Apple’s beauty and think Apple’s first aim must be good looking when they design computers.

Yes. Apple does have some of the best industry designs, and the designers never ignore any detail. For example, you will find the little screws in Apple’s laptops are in perfect symmetry. However, making computers beautiful is not Apple’s first intention. Apple’s computers may be said as "born to be beautiful but never use make-ups". It is true. Some laptop makers put nice looking buttons or LEDs on the laptops, to make them look nice. On Apple’s laptops, you cannot find a single indicator! Even the power indicator is located on the power plug.

Let’s talk about the OS. Many would think Apple put Dock and Expose into the OS because they look beautiful. However, if they do not try the OS themselves, they would not know Dock and Expose are very useful features. Take Expose as an example. Apple was once criticized for the lack of Alt + Tab feature in its OS. Now, Apple not only has Command + Tab, but also has Command + ~, which in combination enable users to switch between running applications as well as between different windows of the same application. What’s more, Apple decides to take the advantage of graphical user interface and multi-button mouse commonly in use today. So they came out with the Expose idea. So that user can press a certain button on the mouse, or move mouse cursor to one corner of the screen to active Expose, that is to show all active windows in a floating manner or show the Desktop quickly. That is to say, Expose is a very useful feature other than just nice-looking.

As a conclusion, Apple computer not only aims at making computers look good, but also tries its best to make computers as easy to use as possible.

我的PowerBook送去修了2个月，终于回来了。学校IT co-op里那位和善的胖哥哥把电脑拿出来的时候，隔着一层塑料袋子，我就象看一个许久不见的老朋友的脸庞一样盯着PowerBook那银色的外壳看。2个月不见，记忆中她的模样竟然模糊了许多！

其实我不总是这样多情的，大一大二，我两年里用过8台电脑，哪里顾得上留恋其中任何一个！过去的2个月里，MacBook Pro, 还有MacBook多次出现在我的视野里，我几乎觉得我的PowerBook过时了，我也产生过将来换去新Mac的念头。15寸的Pro多强大啊，黑色的MacBook多cool,多另类！

可是，人呢，往往不身临其境，就不会有那特殊的感觉。所以，人们也常常直到失去了某些珍贵的东西，才开始懂得珍惜。我就是这样。天天跟她厮混在一起的时候，并不觉得她好，也没有珍惜的意思；甚至，刚刚分离的时候也没有很多留恋；甚至，在今天下午突然萌生那种依恋的感觉之前，我都不能想像自己会要跟她“不离不弃“！

比如油画，看印刷在纸上的油画，或者是电脑屏幕上呈现的，无论有多逼真，也不会让人赞叹油画的表现力。比如风景，许多的感慨，和突然发自内心的赞叹，只能是身临其境的时候才有。又比如，失恋的感觉，在一切都平息之后，你还能想像得到当初自己那心碎的感觉么？

我们祖先的所谓“居安思危“正是对上述原理的应用，教导我们不要因为现在或者感觉不到一些情绪，就忽略那些情绪可能产生，可能给我们带来很大的影响。哈哈，所谓学以致用，是这样么？

总之，我是开始珍惜我的PowerBook了，并且慎重地决定，用她认真的访问的第一个网站是我的blog,并且仔细察看了我硬盘里那许多值得我珍惜的数据。并且，我还是开始珍惜我的手机。并且，我更加珍惜我现在跟别人，跟朋友建立起的关系，更加要呵护自己心头的那一份“依恋“。

今天，我说“不离不弃“，是我真正懂得“珍惜“和“珍贵“才说的！

ARToolKit is a C and C++ language software library that lets programmers easily develop Augmented Reality applications. Augmented Reality (AR) is the overlay of virtual computer graphics images on the real world, and has many potential applications in industrial and academic research.

One of the most difficult parts of developing an Augmented Reality application is precisely calculating the user’s viewpoint in real time so that the virtual images are exactly aligned with real world objects. ARToolKit uses computer vision techniques to calculate the real camera position and orientation relative to marked cards, allowing the programmer to overlay virtual objects onto these cards. The fast, precise tracking provided by ARToolKit should enable the rapid development of many new and interesting AR applications.

This guide contains a complete description of the ARToolKit library, how to install it, and how to use its functionality in AR applications. Several simple sample applications are provided with ARToolKit to enable the programmer to get started immediately. ARToolKit includes the tracking libraries and complete source code for these libraries enabling programming to port the code to a variety of platforms or customize it for their own applications.

ARToolKit currently runs on the SGI IRIX, PC Linux, Mac OS X, and PC Windows (95/98/NT/2000/XP) operating systems. The last version of ARToolKit is completly multi-platform.. The functionality of each version of the toolkit is the same, but the performance may vary depending on the different hardware configurations.

The current version of ARToolKit supports both video and optical see-through augmented reality. Video see-through AR is where virtual images are overlaid on live video of the real world. The alternative is optical see-through augmented reality, where computer graphics are overlaid directly on a view of the real world. Optical see-through augmented reality typically requires a see-through head mounted display and has more complicated camera calibration and registration requirements.

Comments and questions about ARToolKit and any bug reports are actively invited. News about new releases of ARToolKit, comments and questions and applications people are working on is broadcast on the ARToolKit mailing list, and there is an active community forum (see community webpage). Bug reports and fixes, patches, and feature requests are also actively sought. These should be posted using the tracker on the ARToolKit SourceForge project pages, linked above.

IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING YOUR RIGHT TO USE ARTOOLKIT:

ARToolKit is made available freely for non-commercial use under the GNU General Public License. Commercial licenses to a professional implementation of ARToolKit are available for users for whom the GPL is not suitable, or who require a higher level of support, or who require customization or other specialist modifictions. Commercial licenses are administered by ARToolworks, Inc., Seattle, WA, USA. Click here for more information on ARToolKit licenses and your usage options.