In What Quantity?
by
TPIRman
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The story is pretty useless until we get an idea of the quantity of shipping G5s we're talking about here. I'm betting it's just a trickle. When the PowerBook G4s first came out, the backorder queue remained quite long for weeks after Apple claimed the 'Books were "shipping," because the actual number of units being shipped was relatively small. I hope there's a flood of G5s making their way from Apple's factory in Taiwan, but from previous experience, I bet that isn't the case.
Re:hurray for apple
by
phillymjs
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I would tend to believe the numbers, no matter how large.
Many people have been in a holding pattern, using old machines running OS 9 for two reasons:
1) They would need a new machine to really make the most of OS X, and they wanted to wait until the successor to the G4 was available.
2) They didn't want to make the move to OS X until a native QuarkXPress was available for it.
Both of those conditions have now been fulfilled. Apple will not be able to crank out these things fast enough (even moreso than usual) to meet all the pent-up demand.
I bet once the numbers are in, we'll find out that this was Apple's best quarter in a few years, maybe even since the return of Jobs.
~Philly
Re:Apple's Market Share
by
SirSlud
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
No, its that consumers still don't 'value' OSes at their true value. Just because Ladas were cheaper than Hondas didn't mean Ladas outsold. Why? Cause people knew Ladas sucked shit, and Hondas didn't.
If Microsoft advertising ever stops drowning everybody out and they stop forcing computer distributors to *only* offer their OS, then people still start to gain a little more visibility. It really wasn't all that long ago that people knew Amiga, Commadore, Apple, IBM existed.. and we'll see such a day again. When the average consumer understands that the OS market does offer a few choices, and that actually choosing a better OS is a money-saving decision, Apple will do better.
I know of at least two people recently who bought a whole new computer cause they fucked up their Windows installation and figured it'd be easier to buy a new machine. This is an excellant example of how little choice consumers feel they have in the OS world. Who the hell buys something, watches it break from every day use, and goes out to buy the exact same thing? Obviously, somebody who feels that there isn't much else to buy.
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, and nobody ever felt alone suffering through Windows problems. When more of your friends have Apple, you'll be more likely to see the value of spending more on a computer (and subsequently buying computers/OS upgrades less often).. being a consumer is about being educated to make strong decisions. Ask anybody why they bought Windows today, and 95% of the time, the person will answer along the lines of "What else is there" or "Because of work/school/friend/game/application, I didn't have any other choice". 4% will say something along the lines of "Well, its the most popular OS, so how bad can it be?".. your usual leader-worshippers.. the same folks who equate financial success with product superiority (tho engineers know better.) The last 1% actually like Windows, but they also happen to be the 1% of the population that exhibits a distinct interest in sadomasochism.
And of course I run Windows. Because my neighbours do.. although at the rate I'm being asked to fix peoples computers, its probably worth the extra 1000$ for me to *not* have Windows and be able to feign ignorance when begged for help.
Linux is nice, but c'mon, if my neighbours can fuck up their Windows computers, fucking up Linux/BSD would be a piece of cake unless they were all sent to 'Whats a symlink, is it like a shortcut?' school.
So, lets compare out-of-the-box GUI'd commercial OSes. I wish I could include BeOS and Warp in the list, but alas, MS slayed them.
The hardware shipped with G5s kick the stuffing out of any 600$ box, thankyouverymuch. Thats apples to oranges (shit, the gfx card in a G5 is half of you 600$ box alone.. and theres a DVD recorder in there.. )
So try again? Build me a PC box with the level of componants in an Apple rig.. which Alien Ware does. A rough check says their systems go from 1500-2500..
Its good that you can get what you need for 600 bucks, but your resulting rig would be a far cry from the capabilities of a G5. I'm not saying that you can't build a cheaper PC rig that can do the same things as a G5, but at least be fair if you're going to honestly try and crunch my glibly provided numbers in my orig post.
And I'm a FreeBSD developer.. a real *nix guy who builds his own PCs. Unless you can prove that you can appreciate what the Apple experience provides, theres no sense in pointing out that you can get what *you* like for cheaper.
OK. I own PCs and Macs and use both. I've use Macs since System 5, and PCs since DOS. The PC is mainly for working from home when I'm not building actual hardware at work. The Mac is where I do creative things and day to day stuff like email and web browsing.
The Mac is just nicer to use. That's really all there is to it, and yes that's subjective I guess, although even the hardcore Windows fanatics I know admit the GUI is a mess. As for price differences, there really isn't that much of a gap if you compare equivalently equiped machines of comparable quality.
The quality factor is important. I built my own PC, for example, and would never bother with some $500 gray box. There really is no bargain basement Mac, but I don't think I'd want one anyway.
As an aside, I find it weird that there is so much quibbling over a couple bucks in the personal computer world. I know a guy at work who bought a $60,000 car and a $5000 plasma television, and then spent three weeks online to save $100 on a PC (he paid $500 instead of $600). I consider my time to be money, and the time saved using my Mac pays for any price gap easily within a month.
It's very hard not to be biased about whatever you use. But I'll try.
I switched to Mac from Linux because it works. Add Fink to it, and it acts just like a Linux box. I have a PowerBook, and it's by far my favorite laptop (of many laptops I've owned).
What does "it works" mean? It almost never crashes. It almost never needs drivers. It runs MS Office. It's a Unix workstation: bash shell, X, KDE, Gnome, etc. It goes to sleep when the lid closes and comes back within 1 second when the lid opens (I rarely turn it "off"). iPhoto, iTunes, iPod, iMovie are excellent, simple, and easy (not power programs, but excellent for the basics). And most important, it's pretty (titanium or aluminum case).
I still use Debian/Dell on my servers. But for a laptop, OS X is incredibly useful.
It's not about speed anymore. About the PIII, I quit caring about speed. Everything after that is *fast*. My Powerbook 800 is probably about as fast as a PIII 800. For programming, documents, etc., speed isn't the issue anymore. The issue is usability. Personally, I really like KDE. I still use it on my Mac once in a while. I also like OS X. It just works.
Re:2 things keeping market share down
by
MoneyT
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
In regards to #2. If you don't like it, sell it. Macs have very high resale value.
-- T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Re:hurray for apple
by
WatertonMan
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Because for many kinds of programs that doesn't work for finding buts. i.e. you have to get your program into the same state as it was earlier. For things like tracking down decompression errors, encryption errors, btree errors, and so forth, what you describe is next to useless. I admit that fix and continue is extremely usefull. I've been using it in Visual Studio for years. It's about time it came to Project Builder. But it really isn't helpful for many kinds of debugging.
The issue isn't fixing the bug it is finding the bug. Sometimes subtle logic bugs can take many days of iterating through the code to find.
Funny... People have been saying that since the beginning of the nineties... Yet Apple revolutionize again and again, and show better prosper than ever. This year we got the Music Store, the Power Mac G5, the 17" Powerbook, the new iPods... Apple and Dell are the only companies in the same industry that show profits right now.
Is Apple dead?
Not by a long shot...
--
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
Re:It's Not That Complicated
by
phillymjs
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Why do you think they still produce 3.5" 5400 RPM drives? Why do you think software driven modems became a success?
Because hardware companies are cheap.
Why do you think people assume LCDs have a better display?
I didn't know people assumed LCDs have a better display. The reason most people I know buy LCDs is to get a larger physical screen size without having to sacrifice desk surface area for a hulking CRT.
Remember, we're talking about people that buy a computer because it's cute, inexpensive, and named after fruit that matches the color.
Erm, no. We're talking about the professional market here. They knew the G5 was coming for the last year, just not exactly when. And I can tell you that every one of my clients, professionals one and all, were waiting for exactly what I said: the next generation of Macs beyond the G4, and OS X-native QuarkXPress. If you had read the articles in the Mac press since 10.2 was released, you'ld know that that was by far the predominant stance.
I was waiting to replace my primary home machine as well, nursing along a 6 year-old Power Mac-- finally last year I couldn't wait any longer and picked up a used G4 that had the horsepower to run OS X, because I needed to get familiar with it so I could effectively support it when the time comes. In January, the G4 goes bye-bye and I get a dual G5, which is what I was waiting for all along. I just hope Apple manages to catch up with demand by then.
~Philly
Re:That box!
by
dasmegabyte
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Excellent Pirsig mental diarrhea. For those of you who don't think reading is strictly for masochists, here's an attempt at simplifying this post:
True Quality is not about simply delivering a nice product. It is a process which does not stop throughout the products' design and manufacture. As soon as you begin to cut corners, you begin to whittle away at this.
"We don't need the nice box," you say. That's cool, and probably true. You don't really need rounded edges or a shiny back, either. And you don't need the Chicago font, or a glowbing blue backlight, or a hold button. Fact is, 99% of the unit is in the short run inconsequential to the production of a digital music player.
But in the long run, it's these inconsequential elements that make the difference between a truly great machine and a half assed one. Really fine details smooth over the parts that may not work so great. There is a lot more leeway given, hence the Apple fanatic's uncanny ability to look over some of the stupid shit Apple does. After all, quality is a combination of all the factors of a product...here's something that looks well made, sounds well made, feels well made and comes with well made accessories in a well made box. At what point does the box start mattering? Well, it's the first thing you see at the check-out when you're about to shell out a bunch of cash for the thing, or it's the first thing you see when it comes in the mail. It's very reassuring.
Besides, the box is at most 5% of the cost of the final product. If you don't include it, you either reduce the price of the product by 5% or increase your margin by a similar amount. If additional sales as a result of the cool box are more than that 5%, and don't come at the expense of people willing to buy the thing if it were ONLY 5% cheaper, it's worthwhile to keep it. And I guarantee you that's not the case with the iPod.
Re:hurray for apple
by
Steveftoth
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
They're not lying at all though.
Listen, 64-bit is not a hardware issue as much as it is a software issue. Yes, the hardware support needs to be there first, but really it about wether or not the software will actually use the 64-bit modes.
It's not like 64-bit is always a win-win situation. Some programs will always run faster when compiled in a 32-bit addressing mode simply because 32-bit can be more efficient when not addressing large amounts of ram. Just like there are programs that can be written entirely withing the 16-bit addressing modes of the x86 that will outperform the 32-bit version. Though I would guess that today that number is rather small.
I hope that the Mac continues to be a hybrid of 32 and 64 bit programs for awhile. It won't be expensive to maintain compatability from the OS perspective, and it will ensure that all of us that don't want to upgrade will be able to run all the software for awhile.
Apple already has the infistructure in place so that people with G5s will be able to run G5 versions and people with G4s will be able to run a G4 version. Their executable format allows for multiple versions of the same program so that the developers can simple recompile for the G5 ahead of time and package it with the G4 version in the same file. (like the old 'fat' binaries of yore with 68k and ppc code in them)
Besides, you can't 'just recompile' and get benefits of 64 computing. It's not that simple. If you don't program with the intent of being x-platform then you can't recompile and have it work. Also, as you hinted, the G5 has a radically different idea about what kind of code it optimal compared to the G4, thus any code targeted for the G4 will perform sub-standard. We'll just have to wait a month or two until all the software catches up to the hardware. The G5 will only seem to get faster and faster as more software is retargeted for it.
The G5 is more then a step up in clock speed, it's a whole new generation of processor, a bigger step from the G3 to G4. But no matter how you look at it, it's a step up. Maybe not as big as you want it to be and this is something that I think a few people are (still) sore about.
Re:What is up with slashdot?
by
dasmegabyte
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Well, it's very easy. A lot of the slashdot readers put a lot of time, money and knowledge into inferior, yet popular platforms. These are people who stayed up late nights trying to get a kernel to compile or getting a system to run stable after hacking some nuance of the bios which resulted in a 3% speed increase to memory operations.
And now Apple comes around a makes a machine that's fast, nice looking, and doesn't require all of this extra knowledge and work to use.
Of course they're annoyed. Of course they're threatened. If Apple's stuff is any good, then they've been wasting their time.
So they spread FUD about broken applications, inconsequential complaints about how a $600 bargain PC is cheaper than a $3000 high end work station, or slander about how Apples are effeminate. It's all bullshit meant to make them feel better about a perceived waste. People do it all the time...just listen to the arguments people make about the benefits of sinking $10,000 into a $15,000 honda, rather than buy a $25,000 BMW.
It's childish in a way. Isn't there more to computing than JUST running an OS as fast as possible? If you do your computer stuff in Linux and like it, fine. I use Windows 2000, Gentoo and OSX 10.2 and none of them is better than any of the others for EVERYTHING. Granted, I spend more time tweaking the Gentoo box than either of the other two, but once I'm done I can just ignore it, and let it chug away serving web pages, databases, etc to its hearts content. Admining the 2k box is generally to keep it from falling apart in DLL hell...and admining the Apple machine is usually accepting that "you can't do that" on an apple;).
Re:hurray for apple
by
waynelorentz
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
That 17% number could be right, if every shop is run like the one I'm in.
The majority of the machines are IBM clones. The ones in the art department are Mac. They all need to talk to each other. It took the Wintel-head IT guys forever to figure it out, and it still doesn't work right all the time.
The IT guys are afriad to upgrade the Macs because they think they'll break what little works of the network now. It doesn't matter how much you tell them that OSX simplifies networking, they are afraid of anything outside their comfort zone, which at this time only includes Windows 2000.
Re:hurray for apple
by
Mr.+Show
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
as a professional developer, even $2499 is recovered in a few days when you're tracking an extremely nasty bug.
Then write better code:)
Seriously, though, I am also both a C++ Win32 and Apple developer. I agree that PB is not as good as Visual Studio, but that's not the point. It's like saying that iMovie is not good enough because Final Cut Pro is better. Well, you pay $1000 for Final Cut Pro, so it should be better. Similarly, you pay an arm and a leg for Visual Studio, which gives Microsoft the resources to invest in adding more features and making it a richer development environment. You get what you pay for. That's life. And while there are some things about PB that drive me nuts, for free development tools I think PB and IB are pretty good (IMHO, IB spanks VC++ for UI design -- can't speak for VB or "C#" though), and I'm looking forward to XCode.
Slashdot Mirror
The story is pretty useless until we get an idea of the quantity of shipping G5s we're talking about here. I'm betting it's just a trickle. When the PowerBook G4s first came out, the backorder queue remained quite long for weeks after Apple claimed the 'Books were "shipping," because the actual number of units being shipped was relatively small. I hope there's a flood of G5s making their way from Apple's factory in Taiwan, but from previous experience, I bet that isn't the case.
I would tend to believe the numbers, no matter how large.
Many people have been in a holding pattern, using old machines running OS 9 for two reasons:
1) They would need a new machine to really make the most of OS X, and they wanted to wait until the successor to the G4 was available.
2) They didn't want to make the move to OS X until a native QuarkXPress was available for it.
Both of those conditions have now been fulfilled. Apple will not be able to crank out these things fast enough (even moreso than usual) to meet all the pent-up demand.
I bet once the numbers are in, we'll find out that this was Apple's best quarter in a few years, maybe even since the return of Jobs.
~Philly
No, its that consumers still don't 'value' OSes at their true value. Just because Ladas were cheaper than Hondas didn't mean Ladas outsold. Why? Cause people knew Ladas sucked shit, and Hondas didn't.
.. and we'll see such a day again. When the average consumer understands that the OS market does offer a few choices, and that actually choosing a better OS is a money-saving decision, Apple will do better.
.. being a consumer is about being educated to make strong decisions. Ask anybody why they bought Windows today, and 95% of the time, the person will answer along the lines of "What else is there" or "Because of work/school/friend/game/application, I didn't have any other choice". 4% will say something along the lines of "Well, its the most popular OS, so how bad can it be?" .. your usual leader-worshippers .. the same folks who equate financial success with product superiority (tho engineers know better.) The last 1% actually like Windows, but they also happen to be the 1% of the population that exhibits a distinct interest in sadomasochism.
.. although at the rate I'm being asked to fix peoples computers, its probably worth the extra 1000$ for me to *not* have Windows and be able to feign ignorance when begged for help.
If Microsoft advertising ever stops drowning everybody out and they stop forcing computer distributors to *only* offer their OS, then people still start to gain a little more visibility. It really wasn't all that long ago that people knew Amiga, Commadore, Apple, IBM existed
I know of at least two people recently who bought a whole new computer cause they fucked up their Windows installation and figured it'd be easier to buy a new machine. This is an excellant example of how little choice consumers feel they have in the OS world. Who the hell buys something, watches it break from every day use, and goes out to buy the exact same thing? Obviously, somebody who feels that there isn't much else to buy.
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, and nobody ever felt alone suffering through Windows problems. When more of your friends have Apple, you'll be more likely to see the value of spending more on a computer (and subsequently buying computers/OS upgrades less often)
And of course I run Windows. Because my neighbours do
"Old man yells at systemd"
Linux is nice, but c'mon, if my neighbours can fuck up their Windows computers, fucking up Linux/BSD would be a piece of cake unless they were all sent to 'Whats a symlink, is it like a shortcut?' school.
.. and theres a DVD recorder in there .. )
.. which Alien Ware does. A rough check says their systems go from 1500-2500 ..
.. a real *nix guy who builds his own PCs. Unless you can prove that you can appreciate what the Apple experience provides, theres no sense in pointing out that you can get what *you* like for cheaper.
So, lets compare out-of-the-box GUI'd commercial OSes. I wish I could include BeOS and Warp in the list, but alas, MS slayed them.
The hardware shipped with G5s kick the stuffing out of any 600$ box, thankyouverymuch. Thats apples to oranges (shit, the gfx card in a G5 is half of you 600$ box alone
So try again? Build me a PC box with the level of componants in an Apple rig
Its good that you can get what you need for 600 bucks, but your resulting rig would be a far cry from the capabilities of a G5. I'm not saying that you can't build a cheaper PC rig that can do the same things as a G5, but at least be fair if you're going to honestly try and crunch my glibly provided numbers in my orig post.
And I'm a FreeBSD developer
"Old man yells at systemd"
The Mac is just nicer to use. That's really all there is to it, and yes that's subjective I guess, although even the hardcore Windows fanatics I know admit the GUI is a mess. As for price differences, there really isn't that much of a gap if you compare equivalently equiped machines of comparable quality.
The quality factor is important. I built my own PC, for example, and would never bother with some $500 gray box. There really is no bargain basement Mac, but I don't think I'd want one anyway.
As an aside, I find it weird that there is so much quibbling over a couple bucks in the personal computer world. I know a guy at work who bought a $60,000 car and a $5000 plasma television, and then spent three weeks online to save $100 on a PC (he paid $500 instead of $600). I consider my time to be money, and the time saved using my Mac pays for any price gap easily within a month.
--- Ban humanity.
It's very hard not to be biased about whatever you use. But I'll try.
I switched to Mac from Linux because it works. Add Fink to it, and it acts just like a Linux box. I have a PowerBook, and it's by far my favorite laptop (of many laptops I've owned).
What does "it works" mean? It almost never crashes. It almost never needs drivers. It runs MS Office. It's a Unix workstation: bash shell, X, KDE, Gnome, etc. It goes to sleep when the lid closes and comes back within 1 second when the lid opens (I rarely turn it "off"). iPhoto, iTunes, iPod, iMovie are excellent, simple, and easy (not power programs, but excellent for the basics). And most important, it's pretty (titanium or aluminum case).
I still use Debian/Dell on my servers. But for a laptop, OS X is incredibly useful.
It's not about speed anymore. About the PIII, I quit caring about speed. Everything after that is *fast*. My Powerbook 800 is probably about as fast as a PIII 800. For programming, documents, etc., speed isn't the issue anymore. The issue is usability. Personally, I really like KDE. I still use it on my Mac once in a while. I also like OS X. It just works.
In regards to #2. If you don't like it, sell it. Macs have very high resale value.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
The issue isn't fixing the bug it is finding the bug. Sometimes subtle logic bugs can take many days of iterating through the code to find.
Apple as we know it is dead.
Funny... People have been saying that since the beginning of the nineties... Yet Apple revolutionize again and again, and show better prosper than ever. This year we got the Music Store, the Power Mac G5, the 17" Powerbook, the new iPods... Apple and Dell are the only companies in the same industry that show profits right now.
Is Apple dead?
Not by a long shot...
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
Why do you think they still produce 3.5" 5400 RPM drives? Why do you think software driven modems became a success?
Because hardware companies are cheap.
Why do you think people assume LCDs have a better display?
I didn't know people assumed LCDs have a better display. The reason most people I know buy LCDs is to get a larger physical screen size without having to sacrifice desk surface area for a hulking CRT.
Remember, we're talking about people that buy a computer because it's cute, inexpensive, and named after fruit that matches the color.
Erm, no. We're talking about the professional market here. They knew the G5 was coming for the last year, just not exactly when. And I can tell you that every one of my clients, professionals one and all, were waiting for exactly what I said: the next generation of Macs beyond the G4, and OS X-native QuarkXPress. If you had read the articles in the Mac press since 10.2 was released, you'ld know that that was by far the predominant stance.
I was waiting to replace my primary home machine as well, nursing along a 6 year-old Power Mac-- finally last year I couldn't wait any longer and picked up a used G4 that had the horsepower to run OS X, because I needed to get familiar with it so I could effectively support it when the time comes. In January, the G4 goes bye-bye and I get a dual G5, which is what I was waiting for all along. I just hope Apple manages to catch up with demand by then.
~Philly
Excellent Pirsig mental diarrhea. For those of you who don't think reading is strictly for masochists, here's an attempt at simplifying this post:
True Quality is not about simply delivering a nice product. It is a process which does not stop throughout the products' design and manufacture. As soon as you begin to cut corners, you begin to whittle away at this.
"We don't need the nice box," you say. That's cool, and probably true. You don't really need rounded edges or a shiny back, either. And you don't need the Chicago font, or a glowbing blue backlight, or a hold button. Fact is, 99% of the unit is in the short run inconsequential to the production of a digital music player.
But in the long run, it's these inconsequential elements that make the difference between a truly great machine and a half assed one. Really fine details smooth over the parts that may not work so great. There is a lot more leeway given, hence the Apple fanatic's uncanny ability to look over some of the stupid shit Apple does. After all, quality is a combination of all the factors of a product...here's something that looks well made, sounds well made, feels well made and comes with well made accessories in a well made box. At what point does the box start mattering? Well, it's the first thing you see at the check-out when you're about to shell out a bunch of cash for the thing, or it's the first thing you see when it comes in the mail. It's very reassuring.
Besides, the box is at most 5% of the cost of the final product. If you don't include it, you either reduce the price of the product by 5% or increase your margin by a similar amount. If additional sales as a result of the cool box are more than that 5%, and don't come at the expense of people willing to buy the thing if it were ONLY 5% cheaper, it's worthwhile to keep it. And I guarantee you that's not the case with the iPod.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
They're not lying at all though.
Listen, 64-bit is not a hardware issue as much as it is a software issue. Yes, the hardware support needs to be there first, but really it about wether or not the software will actually use the 64-bit modes.
It's not like 64-bit is always a win-win situation. Some programs will always run faster when compiled in a 32-bit addressing mode simply because 32-bit can be more efficient when not addressing large amounts of ram. Just like there are programs that can be written entirely withing the 16-bit addressing modes of the x86 that will outperform the 32-bit version. Though I would guess that today that number is rather small.
I hope that the Mac continues to be a hybrid of 32 and 64 bit programs for awhile. It won't be expensive to maintain compatability from the OS perspective, and it will ensure that all of us that don't want to upgrade will be able to run all the software for awhile.
Apple already has the infistructure in place so that people with G5s will be able to run G5 versions and people with G4s will be able to run a G4 version. Their executable format allows for multiple versions of the same program so that the developers can simple recompile for the G5 ahead of time and package it with the G4 version in the same file. (like the old 'fat' binaries of yore with 68k and ppc code in them)
Besides, you can't 'just recompile' and get benefits of 64 computing. It's not that simple. If you don't program with the intent of being x-platform then you can't recompile and have it work. Also, as you hinted, the G5 has a radically different idea about what kind of code it optimal compared to the G4, thus any code targeted for the G4 will perform sub-standard. We'll just have to wait a month or two until all the software catches up to the hardware. The G5 will only seem to get faster and faster as more software is retargeted for it.
The G5 is more then a step up in clock speed, it's a whole new generation of processor, a bigger step from the G3 to G4. But no matter how you look at it, it's a step up. Maybe not as big as you want it to be and this is something that I think a few people are (still) sore about.
Well, it's very easy. A lot of the slashdot readers put a lot of time, money and knowledge into inferior, yet popular platforms. These are people who stayed up late nights trying to get a kernel to compile or getting a system to run stable after hacking some nuance of the bios which resulted in a 3% speed increase to memory operations.
;).
And now Apple comes around a makes a machine that's fast, nice looking, and doesn't require all of this extra knowledge and work to use.
Of course they're annoyed. Of course they're threatened. If Apple's stuff is any good, then they've been wasting their time.
So they spread FUD about broken applications, inconsequential complaints about how a $600 bargain PC is cheaper than a $3000 high end work station, or slander about how Apples are effeminate. It's all bullshit meant to make them feel better about a perceived waste. People do it all the time...just listen to the arguments people make about the benefits of sinking $10,000 into a $15,000 honda, rather than buy a $25,000 BMW.
It's childish in a way. Isn't there more to computing than JUST running an OS as fast as possible? If you do your computer stuff in Linux and like it, fine. I use Windows 2000, Gentoo and OSX 10.2 and none of them is better than any of the others for EVERYTHING. Granted, I spend more time tweaking the Gentoo box than either of the other two, but once I'm done I can just ignore it, and let it chug away serving web pages, databases, etc to its hearts content. Admining the 2k box is generally to keep it from falling apart in DLL hell...and admining the Apple machine is usually accepting that "you can't do that" on an apple
Hey freaks: now you're ju
That 17% number could be right, if every shop is run like the one I'm in. The majority of the machines are IBM clones. The ones in the art department are Mac. They all need to talk to each other. It took the Wintel-head IT guys forever to figure it out, and it still doesn't work right all the time. The IT guys are afriad to upgrade the Macs because they think they'll break what little works of the network now. It doesn't matter how much you tell them that OSX simplifies networking, they are afraid of anything outside their comfort zone, which at this time only includes Windows 2000.
World's tallest building rises in the desert
as a professional developer, even $2499 is recovered in a few days when you're tracking an extremely nasty bug.
Then write better code :)
Seriously, though, I am also both a C++ Win32 and Apple developer. I agree that PB is not as good as Visual Studio, but that's not the point. It's like saying that iMovie is not good enough because Final Cut Pro is better. Well, you pay $1000 for Final Cut Pro, so it should be better. Similarly, you pay an arm and a leg for Visual Studio, which gives Microsoft the resources to invest in adding more features and making it a richer development environment. You get what you pay for. That's life. And while there are some things about PB that drive me nuts, for free development tools I think PB and IB are pretty good (IMHO, IB spanks VC++ for UI design -- can't speak for VB or "C#" though), and I'm looking forward to XCode.