Slashdot Mirror
The Ultimate MacDate
Hack Jandy writes "Anandtech - the PC hardware site - took the Apple challenge and tried a Mac out for a month. The result was the most indepth Macdate I have even seen. As quoted by Anand, 'In the end, Apple has developed a very strong platform.'"
Once you're under Windows,you want the Linux hackability, once you are on Linux, you miss the bells and whistles, since I switched, I got both and I am happy :)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
From the article:
...
When writing an article (especially big NDA launches), I'd have around 20 IE windows open, Outlook with another 5 - 15 emails, Power Point with NDA presentations,
20 IE Windows??? Man, this guy has got to get a copy of Firefox and learn the joy of tabbed browsing.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
and wondered "How many of these features have been incorporated into Linux / BSD?" I just recently installed MEPIS on a spare box to start learning about linux, so I am quite a bit in the dark on some features he mentions. Are a lot of these available in KDE/Gnome/???
Mod Me, Bee-yotch!!!
He keeps mentioning things like iCalendar, Office 2004 for the PC and Outlook 2004 for the PC. But I can't seem to find these anywhere? Am i going insane?
Because it works, very very well
Well, to install an application, you simply drag the application's installer to any folder on your hard drive and it's "installed". Doing so actually triggers a number of files to be copied to various places on your drive, but the fact that you are separated from that process, it really made me feel like I wasn't in control of my system. On the flip side, installing and uninstalling applications couldn't be easier. There are no full screen installers to deal with; just drag and drop, and get back to work while the application installs. The fact that I don't know where everything is being copied contributes to my feelings of file system disconnect. Then again, maybe I'm being a bit too philosophical about my OSes.
:-)
He doesn't need to feel so disconnected. All the files are exactly where he put them, nowhere else. Mac applications are actually directories packaged up to look like individual files. All the files he saw copying were just part of the application directory. Nothing to worry about.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Have McDonalds started selling girlfirends?
i rid myself of all WinTel PC's in my home (still need them for my job)... but since going to the Apple side i have to say i have had pretty painless computing. My Apple iMac just works and the apps that go with it. People argue that it is a single vendor platform but there is something to be said for that. The tight integration between the hardware and software makes things work smoothly. No mucking around with silly patches or resource settings. Personally i feel that Apple will be gaining a lot of ground in the 'market share' department in the next 3 years.
It's nice to see a respected hardcore site like Anandtech confirm what we Mac users have known all along.
Apple created a very good operating system, which would actually probably be more to the liking of the average PC user - who just checks their email and surfs the web. They really should start advertising the usability and stability of Mac products, I see that as the quickest, and most effective way. The only downside to Macs really at this time is the lack of support for gaming, and I just don't see why more people don't switch, or at least give Macs a try.
This, my friends, is where Windows is seriously lacking as far as usability goes. He makes a good point. I for one can't stand more than about 4 Windows open at a time when I'm using windows, where as when I'm using Linux (I'm not a OSX guy) I usually have 20+ windows open on 6 virtual desktops.
Unix based window managers (along with others) have had virtual desktops for years, where did Microsoft drop the ball?
Slashdot = ((Technology + Politics) / Trolls) % Grammar Nazis
While Anand has done an excellant job of descrbing the Mac platform to people like me who have never used a Mac but always wanted to, he does not tell us how a cheaper Mac, say a $1500 Powerbook would compare to a $1500 Windows machine. I am considering buying a Powerbook, but am hesitant because I don't want a $1500 system that feels slower than a $1200 system. So all you Mac users, please help. Is there a significant/noticible difference between a Powerbook which costs $1599 or $1799 and a similarily priced Windows laptop?
And a comparably equipped Dell will run you about $1000 more. Spec out a PC that has all the features of the G5 and you'll see that the PowerMac is very reasonably priced. When comparing it to the crap Dell and Gateway advertise, yeah it sounds expensive. But those machines are crap.
For those Mac OS X people with Linux envy, there is a lot of open source programs available on http://fink.sourceforge.net/.
To install fink, you need to give a root account on Mac OS X even though there is an administrator account. Mac OS X does not have a root account as default for security.
I'd think up a better reply to your post than this, but my head is still swimming from the irony.
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
They're not using an Xserve.
From the article:
...
Maybe it's just because of the nature of my work, but I tend to have a lot of windows open at any given time.
When writing an article (especially big NDA launches), I'd have around 20 IE windows open...
Two words: Use Firefox!
You mean like this?
The owls are not what they seem
You mean for Macs, right?
Cause I"m sitting here on a AMD 2500+ Barton with 1 gig of RAM, 120 Gig HD, Geforce Video, DVD/CDROM burner all for around $600.
Built it myself. Sure, it's not a dual processor with DVD burner...but it's fast and stable.
But I will say that Apple has been consistant with their prices...their top of the line machines have always been around the 3000 mark. But at the moment they only have one machine that's below 1000, and that's with very little RAM.
Do NOT get me wrong, I LOVE Macs...but you do have to pay a premium to use them and yeah, I think it's worth it. I just can't afford it...yes, I'm poor.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
We've /.'ed his Windows servers. I've always found the Anandtech site to be rather sluggish. Must be a Windows thing.
Unfortunately, it looks like it may have been slashdotted before anyone loaded the whole cache..
but, you're free to try it
I applaud Anand for taking the time to thoroughly put the G5 through its paces. If Apple were still running the 'classic' OS, I seriously doubt Anand would have even bothered to look at the platform, let alone review it. OS X is the main reason why I prefer Macs. It doesn't get in the way of what I want to do. At work, I have a G5 on one side, and a HP XW8000 on the other. Both have their advantage, but as far as OS intuitiveness goes -- the Mac wins hands down.
The PC Weenies:Tech toons with a byte!
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
Fine. Don't switch. Stick with Windows and suffer the nightmares of spyware, viruses, trojans, and security holes big enough to fly a 747 through.
Apple isn't losing any sleep over the incredibly tiny minority of users who are in your shoes and who can't afford to switch. Not that I believe your $100,000 figure in the first place. How many one-man freelance operations out there need Maya/[insert other über-expensive software here]? (Then again, why should I believe a guy who thinks assembling an iMac from Apple-branded parts constitutes "building" a Macintosh?)
For the rest of us, our employers will provide the software necessary to get Real Work(tm) done, and the software besides that *isn't* that expensive. Even if you had to re-purchase every single game you own for the Mac platform (and you typically don't, since a lot of games can be had in cross-platform CD versions now, with both Mac and PC versions in the same box), that would still be well under $10K, and if you're *that* into PC gaming, why the hell are you buying a Mac in the first place?
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
...from the article.
If you want any sort of software compatibility, driver support and don't want to be made fun of, Windows is the way to go.
Huh?
Actually, if you want to be made fun of (by those who count) you would be running Windows.
Someone sent me a copy of Go screen and I've been using it for the past 5 years on two different work PCs (NT and 2k).... and it does what you'd expect; it acts like a virtual desk top!
I'm sure there are a thousand others out there.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I mean for PCs. Up until a couple years ago 3K was the price for a good personal computer. Starting in the 80s and up through the mid to late 90's. Hell, my computer I custom built in 2000 cost about that much too. Course it was top o the line but so is this one.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
After doing the necessary research to make sure that I could actually get work done on a Mac, I whipped out the trusty credit card and decided to give the experiment a try.
That single sentence gives quite a bit of insight into a very major reason that Windows is so popular. The very fact that one has to research into applications is a drawbridge for many would-be switchers. With Windows, you have no doubts that there is going to be an application out there, already written, somewhere in cyberland...all you need to do is download (or buy). Gamers and "specialists", who require either very today-trendy or very specific function software, are turned off by the belief (or disbelief, possibly) that Linux and Mac simply can't support their needs.
Then, of course, there is the whole hardware debate. Once again, for Windows...it's out there somewhere; go find it. For Linux, well, it's out there, but have fun finding drivers and getting Linux to be a happy landlord. For Mac, it's out there if Apple or an approved sales associate has decided you need to have it.
In short, very few users are debating the worthiness, usability, or power of an operating system these days. It's the flexibility that they want. That may sound like quite a trite argument to have in favor of Microsoft...but in the context of the applications and hardware discussed above, I think it's pretty appropriate.
Dont run Outlook, dont use IE. Tell you what, you start holding your breath and I'll tell you to stop as soon as I get a virus or trojan. Kay?
"Apple isn't losing any sleep over the incredibly tiny minority of users who are in your shoes and who can't afford to switch. Not that I believe your $100,000 figure in the first place. How many one-man freelance operations out there need Maya/[insert other über-expensive software here]? (Then again, why should I believe a guy who thinks assembling an iMac from Apple-branded parts constitutes "building" a Macintosh?)"
So only an "incredibly tiny minority of users" buy software? As for building a Macintosh, your right if you buy parts off eBay (or even retail) lighting comes down from the sky and strikes you dead. So its impossible, and all the auctions and web sites selling parts and upgrades are just trying to kill you.
"For the rest of us, our employers will provide the software necessary to get Real Work(tm) done, and the software besides that *isn't* that expensive. Even if you had to re-purchase every single game you own for the Mac platform (and you typically don't, since a lot of games can be had in cross-platform CD versions now, with both Mac and PC versions in the same box), that would still be well under $10K, and if you're *that* into PC gaming, why the hell are you buying a Mac in the first place?"
What? Photoshop, 3D-Studio, Autocad etc are expensive. Buying Macintosh equivilents or versions costs money and thats just the tip of the ice berg for the software I own and use. As for games, I thought we where talking about "real work"? Non the less, most games dont have a Macintosh version, on the CD or any other place.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
12 pages, all of them slashdotted, the print command runs some MS-only WinOpen script that doesn't work in Safari, the email command runs some MS-only WinOpen script that doesn't work in Safari. Bah. Maybe he's got something useful to say, but I'll never get past the first page. At least it's not green on black like ArsTechnica.
As for linux envy... OS X is a BSD derivative! http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/ and http://gentoo-wiki.com/Gentoo_MacOS are some more ports friendly systems, as opposed to Fink's apt-style system. Maybe "Linux curious" would be a better term ;)
Building it yourself is a very different proposition. You've paid less in dollars, but more in the requisite time, knowledge, effort, tools, parts acquisition, and additional responsibility for its functioning.
Which might very well be a worthwhile deal for you, nothing wrong with that. But it's not really meaningful to compare just the price in dollars for these two systems and pretend that the other costs don't exist.
I wonder if Apple ever intends to crack the gaming nut.. I think there is a huge community of gamers that would drop windows in a heartbeat if Apple even came -close- to being a competitive games platform. Gaming also drives hardware sales like nothing else imaginable. If I could play all the same games on a Mac that I do on a PC, I think I'd be willing to pay around $400 more for a similar powered computer without the wintel platform nuissance.
Actually, from my perspective, it's becoming too late. Whereas Windows 98 was pure hell in terms of usability, hardware compatibility, inconsistency, and stability, Windows XP massively shrunk the gap between itself and the overall Mac platform. By the time Apple would catch up, if ever, in the gaming market, the gap might be too small to bother a migration.
Last week, I got my 20" iMac G5 and decided to shut down my Windows box and my debian server and see how it went.
:)
:) )
Moving the Linux stuff to the iMac was a breeze. I was mainly using the linux box for running Squid, for acting as a shell server for IRC, and for a general purpose file server. The iMac does all that and now does easy print sharing for me as well. With BSD under the hood and the power of (a href="http://fink.sourceforge.net">Fink, anyone used to Linux can probably easily move their stuff over to OSX painlessly.
Moving the Windows files was painless using the built-in SAMBA on OSX. I installed OpenOffice (under X11) for times when I need compatibility, but I'm intentionally staying away from MS Office on OSX for now, just to see if OpenOffice is good enough. I'm giving up gaming on the PC, which I'll miss a little, but I've got a GameCube and PS2 which can get more use now.
The real strength of OSX is in iLife. My wife really had a lot of trouble with Windows and the complexity of all the different apps we had to use to manage media (ThumbsPlus, Premiere, etc.) With iLife, she can publish or email or get prints of photos out of iPhoto very easily. iChat and iTunes are nice too. I've had quite a few MP3 players, but the iPod plus iTunes is the first one I didn't have to manage for my wife.
As an aside, the iMac G5 is a beautiful machine too and it's totally silent. Spookily silent. When I walked into the home office after shutting down the windows and linux box, I thought we had a power outage.
I think Anand's review is accurate and very fair. The only thing I would add is just a comment that for anyone non-technical or anyone with a lot of digital media, I think an apple machine makes a lot of sense, especially with the low cost of the new iMacs.
(disclaimer: apple employee
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Whoa, not so fast. That's not exactly the cadillac of X86 computers. Try buying a dual-processor Opteron with a fast video card, a DVD burner, liquid cooling, an OS (XP Pro costs quite a pretty penny to buy ... unless you're running a Linux system), a LCD monitor, a high-end logitech mouse and keyboard, etc, etc.
True, I didn't compare apples to apples and having a dual Opteron would be more fair...
But the OS is Linux...so that didn't cost anything, and I didn't include any monitors at all because the 3000 price for the G5 doesn't include a monitor. And of course, good keyboard and mice are not that expensive anymore.
But I hear where you're coming from...but still, I could build a system for under a Grand that would be considered "top of the line" (again, sans monitor).
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I can't reach TFA, but if you tell me what features you're looking at, perhaps I can help you. I am a hardcore Debian user, but I know OS X as well (I used it before I installed Linux on my iBook).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
There's something very close to this already, and has been for years. Generally speaking, if you have version N of a major piece of Windows software, the price to upgrade to N+1 on Windows, or move to N+1 on a Mac, is the same. Upgrade pricing usually doesn't seem to care about pricing.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
Tabs are nice for a number of usability reasons.
* The browser window size is predictable; that is, it won't change from one tab to the next, unless you change it for all of them.
* The browser window location is predictable; same reason.
* The number of things floating around on your desktop/taskbar is controllable. Having all those browser windows open slows you down in the most common use scenarios.
OTOH, your point about being able to switch back and forth between web pages is well taken. For that reason, it's still easy to open a new window: right click, new window (same as IE). Middle click is tab by default; I'll bet there's a FF extension somewhere that lets you do double-middle-click as new window.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I like macs, but once I spec out a mac with an adequate amount of RAM in it, it always jumps up to about 3 grand.
Are you insane? Do you buy RAM from Dell? Or from IBM? Of course not. So why should you buy it from Apple?
Here's a hint:
http://froogle.google.com/
Here's another:
http://ramseeker.com/
And one more just for good measure:
http://dealram.com/
If you can't find more RAM than you could ever use for less than $(3000 - costOfNewMac), I'll eat my socks.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
"and if you're *that* into PC gaming, why the hell are you buying a Mac in the first place?"
Indeed.
If it were computer gaming and not PC gaming, I'd own several Macs and not several PCs.
I think Apple really dropped the ball here by not aggressively marketing to developers, making it easier to port and assisting them. Nothing drives hardware sales like games. People who play games would prefer to have a simpler care free platform to do it on, but the games just aren't there. It's a giant missed opportunity.
It seems like even if they started trying now, by the time they even were respectable enough for games to be an option, Microsoft will probably have caught up with Apple in most regards. Apple knows you hook people young on a platform, how could they have not factored games into that ?
$1k for Office
Sorry, but what are you smoking? Office 2004 for Mac runs for $500 at the Apple store, and this is for the Pro edition that contains VPC. I also heavily doubt the figure for the Adobe products.
Methinks you are exaggerating just a bit...
with Geforce Video? hahaha. We're comparing modern computers here. If I wanted a Geforce I'd pick one out of the trash.
Gee, can't understand why you would have wanted to post this as an anonymous coward...
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
More significantly, that AMD box (albeit lacking in details) seems to have specs roughly equivalent to a G5 iMac, maybe a little faster, but not much. Add a name-brand 17" DVI flat panel to it (you don't mention a monitor for that price), and you're awfully close to the price of the new iMac, without the sleek design, the small form factor, the hardware qualification, or the pre-installed OS. So much for your big savings.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Duh. Sorry.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
The design is nice too, but OsX is the seller. If apple was still offering Os9, even with top hardware the only people who would buy them would be the apple zealots. Instead, with OsX you get fast expansion of the apple zealot tribe :D
You've /.ed my favourite hardware review site.
What else am I supposed to read when I'm supposed to be working??!
I am the maverick of Slashdot
From reading the posts thus far, I have this nagging feeling:
Am I going to be one of those MacIdiots now? It's starting to look that way...
(I am imagining a world where my PC is mostly in my control. Very few viruses. Very little spyware. Things run as I expect them to. Actually, now that I think of it, very few problems at all. There seems to be very little to "fix". Shit, now what am I going to spend my time doing?)
If you're interested in a cheaper Mac, not necessarily a laptop, have a look at the iMac. G5 processor, just like the PowerMac, starting at around $1200. The correct term I believe is "badass".
Kissing some Karma goodbye...
;-)
I was a bit underwhelmed by the review. While there were some fair cops (video card underpowered, not enough RAM, game releases lagging behind, etc.), I was bugged by some of his comments.
A few examples:
It's iCal, not iCalendar. He seemed to have gotten it wrong more often than right. (If you use a program you can see its name in the menu bar.)
He didn't bother to check on how the drag-n-drop installs work. (Not good for a supposed hard core tech site.)
No, Macs aren't overpriced against other name-brand manufacturers. They are price competitive. (I'll grant you that if you build your own and zealously look for bargains you can build a slightly cheaper PC.)
Of course Windows is going to be more stable if you buy specific hardware for Windows servers as (is implied) using any old hardware for Linux.
He's used Unix at university and he still doesn't feel comfortable about the concept of home directories? Or the Unix hierarchy? (The names can be cryptic, but the hierarchy is pretty simple compared to Windows splatter approach.)
Unfortunately it is little glitches in reviews that leave you wondering just how technical the reviewer is in their other reviews. This one could have stood a little more fact-checking. I know I would hesitate before recommending this article to a knowledgeable Windows-using friend. I'd probably point them towards Ars Technica instead.
Funny note: I think he meant he's used Windows since 3.0, not 2.0. Using Win 2.0 would have been the act of a masochist.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
Better than switching between tabs, IMHO.
For the Apple Challenged like me (x86 boxen both at work and at home) there's this nifty little app called "winplosion" wich mimics Expose exactly, and costs all of US$9.95. In fact, it mimics it so well that I'm surprised they haven't been hit with a C&D from apple.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with WinPlosion. I just found that it is the best Expose clone there is for windows, and, as bonus points, doesn't require you install something like the .net framework. Only requirement is a bit of RAM (I woulnd't use it in 128MB systems) and some _REAL_ 2d acceleration hardware, since it relies in DirectX/DirectDraw to do the thumbnails/animation (a friend tried it with a SIS based integrated-graphics laptop and it sucked :).
I know I'm feeding a troll here, but...
/., I'd hazard a guess that you're into software development. Sure, Photoshop, 3D Studio, Autocad, etc. are nice toys, but they're hardly essential tools for a software developer. If you wanted to switch your software development over to a Mac, Xcode is *free*. As in, it costs zero dollars.
So only an "incredibly tiny minority of users" buy software?
No, an incredibly tiny minority of users can't afford the extra $3-500 it would typically cost to cross-grade the few Windows applications they absolutely need.
Think about this for a second. Most users only buy OS upgrades and games. Those who work for themselves probably buy Office, perhaps Photoshop or Illustrator, or maybe Final Cut Pro/Logic/etc., depending on the field they're in. Those who work for a company get their software bought for them, so it's a non-issue. The number of people who work for themselves and also have tens of thousands of dollars' worth of legitimately-purchased software on their Windows boxen are an incredibly tiny minority, and Apple won't care one bit if the four of you in the world don't switch.
I don't know what your day job is, but from other comments I've seen on
If you expect us to believe the $100,000-worth-of-software figure, you'd better start coming up with some specifics. I don't buy it for a second.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
An Xbox or PS2 (and soon, PS3) or GameCube are all sub-$150. Why even bother gaming on a lowly computer?
In the end, Apple has developed a very strong platform.
Anyone that's USED one in the past 15 years will tell you that. There's no question that Apple has some good technology in their arsenal. The question is "Is Apple right for you?". For me it used to be, but now it's not.
There's no need to make it any more complicated than it needs to be.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm primarily used to running Linux on my desktop, but lately I've been considering buying a laptop. I've heard many good things about OS X, so I'm thinking of buying an iBook.
I have a question for people who've used both sorts of systems: Are there any features/characteristics of x86 Linux machines that are lacking on OS X machines?
The article actually brings something up that I have always noticed on a Mac (os 9 & X), surfing the web is painfully slow compared to a windows box. I've used IE, Netscape, Opera, everything I could get my hands on, but it is still slower than on a pc. Is this a rendering thing, but it happens in os 9 even more than X? Just curious if anyone out there knows why this is.
Im.
That's insanely cheap compared to the Mac IIfx that was priced over $10,000 back in 1990. (40MHz single processor. 128MB of RAM?) Or the Mac Portable which was abour $6000 when first released iirc. And those aren't even adjusted dollar figures.
Of course, if that little email appended to the above linked page is accurate, the IIfx was created to be sold to the US government. If I were Apple, I'd have made it $10K (each) too. Gift horse, mouth, etc.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
I just wish the mac had a start menu so I could find the shutdown option.
The Abobe figures are accurate.
$450 for Acrobat, $1250 for Creative Suite, $1500 for Video Collection, and I'm not going into the cost of all those plug ins."
Well, you can eliminate that $500. For Access use mysql/postgresql and one of the myriad of free guis for them. As for Publisher, WTF are you using it for if you've got the Adobe Creative Suite??? There's just no reason to touch Publisher if you've got the full Creative Suite.
I'm also assuming you run your own business or are borderline insane to have purchased all of those for personal use.
.technomancer
I'm an astronomer, and my work involves a lot of coding (and running) CPU-intensive C programs, as well as intensive image processing. In the 1980s, a lot of people in our field were using VAX systems, but in the 90's they began switching to Sun/Solaris platforms because of their speed and stability; that's what I used throughout graduate school. In the late 90's, Linux-Intel became a player, because it could offer such a dramatic cost reduction compared to Suns, which were exorbitantly priced (at its most disparate, I believe a Linux-Intel system with comparable performance to a given Sun cost 25% less).
Now we are at a point where many people at my institute are switching to macs. The top reasons are: 1) Hate to/don't have time to RTFM. Need a situation where hardware you buy just works. 2) High-end mac prices are now comparable to high-end intel prices 3) Any document can quickly be made into a PDF (a standard in our community)
As a fan of free software, I feel guilty about this. However, I do think many of Apple's products are aesthetically pleasing, and things like iChat works with amazing simplicity. Clearly they put a lot of thought into design, and I agree with a lot of choices they've made, so I feel OK about supporting them.
I wish Linux would eliminate the RTFM. Some of us just don't have time for that. But I still have an Intel laptop, and I intend to see how far things have come since RedHat 9 by installing sarge when it is out.
Re: "In order to launch the file or open the folder via keyboard, you have to hit Command-Down Arrow (Command-Up Arrow will traverse up a folder tree). This takes a bit of getting used to and if approached with an open mind, you can get used to it in a couple of days, but it can be frustrating at first - especially if you are a keyboard addict used to Windows."
Very frustrating. Until you figure out how to use Cmd-O.
Is that Mac finally put out a good OS. How am I supposed to sneer at crapintoshes now?
Oh well... I can still badmouth windows.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Well, I really did just switch. And I really did disclose that I work for Apple. What's the problem? When a big interview with Miguel goes about about what Novell is doing, do you immediately ignore the article because of the inherent bias? "OMG Miguel WORKS for Novell!"
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Until about half a year ago, I had never even thought about buying a Mac. Then I broke a bezel on my laptop. Ultimately, that forced me to evaluate every laptop I could get my hands on for durability. A couple months and about $3K later I was a happy 17'' Powerbook owner. The only downside to that was that another couple months later my lady decided she can't live without a Powerbook either...
And then it occurred to me:
My only problem with Microsoft is the severity of bugs in their software.
I can relate to all of what you said. I used to be a PC/Windows use because of the broad Software selection and ease of use (Point n click has some advantages), I was a also a PC/Linux user because of the stability security powerful server apps etc... OS.X is an acceptable compromise, even on my G4 PowerBook (which incidentally makes any PC laptop I have yet seen look like a brick when you see them side by side). Plus OS.X beats both Linux and Windows hands down when it comes to ergonomics (I am relly hooked on Exposé for example). Another boon is immunity to Worms/Viruses and best of all it integrates 95% into the windows network at work. My only gripe is that I wish Apple would increase the stability of its OS and the Window manager instead of adding so many 'eyecandy' features. In eight months of using OS.X have had one Kernel panic and five window manager crashes which is only marginally better than my experience with Windows XP, considering what I paid for the Mac I expected the stability of OS.X to be greater.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Dont run Outlook, dont use IE. Tell you what, you start holding your breath and I'll tell you to stop as soon as I get a virus or trojan. Kay?
Windows and it's associated hardware has it's place - just not in the hands of people who'd rather get things done than have to plan their time around making sure they have working software on a day to day basis. "Don't use IE and Outlook and you'll be fine!" Oh - and make sure you're running a firewall. And spyware checker. And an updated virus scanner. And the latest 50MB "patch" from Bill. And never download any software. Or connect your machine to the net before you do all of the above things. Then you'll be fine. Except that's probably not the case.
Yeah. I sell Macs. Yet, my $1350 laptop can crunch more audio plugins (pure CPU) than a desktop dual 2.0 ghz G5.
That being said, I'm getting my girlfriend a PowerBook. Why? Because she surfs the web, does some e-mail, adores photography, and wants a laptop that will last. My eMachines is starting to crack around the hinge, even though it's only 7 or 8 months old. I use my laptop every day for hours on end, and so do my colleagues, but they've had their 17" Powerbooks for two years, and nothing - nothing - is falling apart on them.
For me, I have to have Linux for sanity, and Windows for work. But if you're a "casual" computer user, Macs will work. No problems, no viruses, no bugs, no esoteric error messages or random crashing. They turn on and compute.
That's why I like selling them - the customers don't call until two years later when they want another one.
I'm glad to see that Anand is open to trying a new OS. I give him lots of credit for plunking down a few grand, buying a nice Mac, and giving it an honest go. And I'm glad that in the end he had a positive experience and continues to enjoy using his Mac.
It's pretty interesting to read the impressions of someone trying out MacOS X for the first time, particularly if that someone hasn't travelled outside the world of Windows. Anand writes:
The uniformity really extends far beyond keyboard shortcuts...a menubar always exists at the top of your screen in MacOS X, regardless of what application you're in.
Talk about getting down to basics, eh? I think that's a very interesting comment. It would never have occurred to me to explain that to a new Mac user, particularly one with extensive computing experience on another platform. Kudos to Anand for capturing the newness of it all.
That said, there are a number of things that bug be about the article. For one, it seems pretty ballsy to switch to an entirely different platform and think that you've learned enough in 30 days to write an article of this length (printed, it comes to 24 pages). He clearly is laboring under a number of misconceptions that probably would have been cleared up if he'd spent some more time with his system.
Another thing is that he seems to want his Mac to work the way Windows does. That's a pretty common thing with switchers, and it's totally understandable. But if you're going to review an OS you should really try to come to it with an open mind. To his credit, he's pretty up front about his bias being due to using Windows for so long, but his "the directory structure seems very foreign because it's different from Windows" comments make me want to choke him.
A good editor (human editor, not text editor) would really help this article. Anand tends to use 50 words where 7 are called for, and he even manages to contradict himself occasionally. Though it clearly was not, it should have been reviewed by a knowledgeable Mac user or two to clear up some of the obvious misconceptions.
Anand criticizes the price of the system he bought several times. He spent about $2700 on a top of the line, dual processor G5 because:
I knew that if I was going to give the platform a good chance, I needed to get the fastest system that Apple had to offer.
It's great that he knew what he wanted and all, but as a newcomer he wasn't really in a position to know whether he really needed that much power or whether he could have gotten along just fine with a G4 iMac. He never considered that something less than the fastest thing available could meet his needs, and he doesn't bother to try to find out. So it's a little unfair to whine about the price when something costing half as much very well might have performed acceptably.
Overall, I'm glad he wrote it and I'm glad he's happy with the Mac. Keep at it.
... the native OS.X installer for *.pkg packages does not seem to have an uninstall feature (at least on one that I am aware of) which obviously starts to really suck as soon as you try to remove some crappy *.pkg packaged program you downloaded on a whim. Fortunately there is OSXPM but it still sucks that Apple did not do a better job at thinking the OS.X package manager system throug.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
And want the link opened in the current window instead, do the following:
In the url bar enter without quote marks "about:config" and hit enter.
In the filter bar enter without quote marks "new".
Then double click browser.block.target_new_window so that it is set to "true".
$1k for Office
Boy, I'd like to be your vendor for software, because I'd make a fortune from your ignorance. You don't know what the hell you're talking about.
First of all, $1000 for Office? You must be crazy. You can legally get Office 2004 (the "Student/Teacher Edition") for less than $150, and it comes with all the apps that Office 2004 Standard includes. If you insist on paying the "full" price, that's $265. And an Access replacement would probably be FileMaker Pro 7, which I found for $218. And you've already got a replacement for Publisher if you're going to be buying the Adobe Creative Suite.
The Abobe figures are accurate. $450 for Acrobat, $1250 for Creative Suite
Secondly, why would you buy Acrobat separately when you can get it as part of Creative Suite Premium and save a couple hundred bucks? Furthermore, Creative Suite Premium is not $1250-- the freakin' MSRP isn't even that high, and only a complete moron would pay the MSRP. CDW sells it for $1139, and Pricewatch lists a few sites that offer it for even less.
~Philly
c'mon, there is still a browser flamefest article of the front friggin page! Take it over there!
He won't need to... Windows is already a virus by itself.
AC comments get piped to
Can any of you people even conceive of the fact that the product cost never reflects the actual cost to get a system to where it's suitable for usage? With any Adobe, Microsoft, CAD or 3D application the MSRP is where you start before factoring in the cost of plug-ins, support, etc. The MSRP is really only useful as a baseline for telling how bad you were ripped off when all the dust settles.
If you were ever responsible for making a purchase that affects an operation you would know this. Instead, all you can do is point out superficial equivalencies that do *NOT* actually provide a useful alternative and call other people ignorant.
I have researched the facts and the $30k number is probably the conservative estimate.
M
No, Macs aren't overpriced against other name-brand manufacturers. They are price competitive. (I'll grant you that if you build your own and zealously look for bargains you can build a slightly cheaper PC.)
Well I wouldn't mind having a Mac at home as a second machine - but the limited choices really suck. I like the expandability and choice that the PC gives me. With a desktoo Mac I basically get a choice between a reasonably price but totally non-upgradeable iMac or a very expensive PowerMac G5. Is there no middle ground? How about a $1500ish desktop Mac with a single G5 with no built in monitor? I hate all in one designs and I really hate that Apple went with the useless 5200 graphics card on the iMac.
Sure the G5s are great but I cannot afford to drop $3000 at a time for a new computer. With a PC I can upgrade a bit at a time - and only need to drop about $800 once every few years for a new motherboard, cpu and ram.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Don't get me wrong, I would not mind having one to toy with but as for I use my PC for the MAC will not suffice.
That being said.
At 1299 I can buy the lowest cost iMac. A similar PC system, discounting the nice packaging but keeping a similar sized LCD, will set me back 999 from DELL. It is the same or cheaper from some other vendors. For the very basics that most users do that price and "Windows familarity" will be all that is needed to keep people from looking at the iMac. Throw in the fact that your standard department store doesn't carrry Mac or anything related and the potential drops furhter.
There are laptops cheaper than both that satisfy the needs of many people. Then there are the bottom end PCs that put the masses onto the net and what other progression in buying do you expect them to take? When they out grow their 499 PC they probably will end up with yet another 499 PC!
The geek side of me says, The iMac combined with OSX is better than WinXP. The geek side in me says , SO FRICKING WHAT! I want to play game X now! The gaming geek isn't going to budge. The FPS gaming geek wouldn't even have a iMac pass the laugh test.
Yes MAC has an OS that finally appeals to some of us. The trouble is it is still too expensive, too hard to find software for, and too hard to get general support for if your not part of the culture of Apple or geek.
What I would like to see is a bottom end 4 piece (case, monitor, keyboard, mouse) Mac computer. It would feature OSX, at most a 15" LCD, a 1.4 or slower G5 (make them all one speed and don't publish the number), 256mb ram expandable to 512/768 and about 40gb of disk with a CDRW. Have it all for around 699 or so. I don't know if Apple can reach this low or wants too? They seem to want to maintain an air of exlusivity yet at the same time want more people to pay attention to them.
My only worry is that Apple will steer to far away from their PC side and it will wither. I like the fact that Jobs has transformed Apple so that it is not so vulnerable to one market but I hope he doesn't take it to far away from what it was.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Slightly off topic, but I feel compelled to urge Anand on this point.
I've been using a 12" PowerBook and it's the finest piece of hardware I've ever used. Obviously I haven't tried everything, but between many desktops and laptops, this is the easiest, most usable machine for light-to-medium office work and database development.
Portable, snappy, painless wireless and bluetooth (out-of-the-box), and OSX. It's just beautiful.
I've found that a lot of people complain about the price they paid for their Apple hardware when confronted with software problems...
Yes, Apple hardware is expensive. However, OS X 10.3 (latest version) is MUCH cheaper per license than Windows XP.
Windows XP Pro (Upgrade): $189.99
Windows XP Pro (Full): $279.99
Mac OS X 10.3 (Full): $129.00
For an admittedly "better" operating system, Apple sure gives you a good deal, eh?
Note: I neglected to mention XP Home on purpose; the lack of configurability with regards to disabling default services with known security vulnerabilities (Messenger, UPnP, etc.) make it unadvisable as a real consumer OS.
"Life in every breath... that is bushido"
What was the cost of the operating system on top of that?
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
If you OS-X mac is crashing everyday, you should send it in for a check up. That sounds like a hardware problem. Maybe a bad motherboard, or some faulty memory ?
If I wanted a cheap Mac (and didn't need portability), I'd look around for an older dual-G4 desktop, and load it up with 1-2 GB of RAM. The Mac really shines with dual processors and a good sized chunk of RAM. The OS seems to do a really good job of spreading the load between the processors. A dual-450 MHz G4 Mac feels very snappy, more so than, say, an 800 MHz single-processor Mac. It's not that it has a lot of raw power, it's that it never seems to bog down, no matter how many applications and windows you have open.
If one more reviewer mentions "gaming" as a valid consideration to selecting a PC, I'm going to kill people. The $1,000's a "gamer" spends on their "toy" is fine... but don't assume that the rest of the world prefers to sit in a desk chair on their computer... instead of on the couch with a beer & xbox.
As a Mac user (desktop and laptop), I can tell you that the most important thing you can do is buy ram. You will be surprised at how much faster that 800MHz G3 feels after you put more ram in it. This is especially true if you use Office or Flash (or just like keeping a lot of apps running at once).
I regularly have 20 Opera windows open. By choice.
And no, of course they are not maximized. I organize them by using the windowshading and the windows-menu features of my window manager. This is of course under Linux.
---
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
There's DarwinPorts and Gentoo too!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I took a look at SafariSpeed (linked here: http://www.scifience.net/safarispeed.html ) and it looks like it's just an applescript wrapper around a shell script.
Kill safari, open a terminal and paste in (without the ""):
"defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay 0.0001"
To change the timeout. To turn it back off:
"defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay 1.0"
Try it out. I just made the adjustment so I can't tell at the moment.
Hope that helps someone out!
What bugs me even more is the shit I've had to deal with my entire life every time I mentioned that I was a Mac user. I've used Macs for over 15 years and I still get the "Macs suck" comments all the time. I'm not a Mac Missionary preaching to the unwashed masses. I'm currently a *nix sysadmin and believe that computers are tools and people must use the best tool they see fit to use. When people ask me why I use a Mac, I'll explain it and try to dispel the numerous myths out there , but that's about as far as I go.
You want to talk about annoying, try dealing with assholes like you on a daily basis. Assholes who generalize and make assumptions. Assholes who have no knowledge of what they speak of. Assholes who make policy changes and infrastructure changes to make my job more difficult because I use Linux, FreeBSD and OS X instead of Windows. You my friend are an ignorant fool, and it's really time to grow up. It's funny reading your previous postings where you mention life is about the little things, being nice to strangers, etc. I believe it's human nature to be hypocritical and you, sir, just proved my point. One can only hope that your attitude will be the reason why you "fail the test".
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that a function of symbolic links? (the shortcut capability, not the textedit one)
The iMac G5 is better for those users who wouldn't know how to build their own computer, just want something that works, and can afford it. A home-built AMD-chip system is better for geeks with little money.
Uh, you do realize you're making the guy's point for him, don't you? The question isn't what a geek can put together for $600, but what a company can sell for $600 (or $1200, or whatever). Unless you can point to (or sell yourself) a system that does all an iMac G5 does, you simply cannot pretend there is a price advantage for the homebuilt PC. It's two totally different markets.
I know I'm the last guy to the party on this one, but I just recently tried Cygwin, and it's too cool for school. One of the other windows open on this WinXP machine right now is running an X server, which is talking to an X client (via OpenSSH) that's running on the crappy old PII (450 mhz, some puny amount of RAM) that sits beside my desk. I can use my big monitor and my good keyboard, and sit in my comfortable chair, to play around on my for-practice OpenBSD server that would never, ever rate all this expensive hardware on its own. And I can alt-tab to Mozilla and waste time on Slashdot whenever I want to.
Killer app.
Could it be that an 800lb gorilla, known for fuck you deals, has made things expensive for Apple? You know, "We will use your format if you give us X per copy and charge everyone else way too much money for it," kind of deal. Sort of like the "You must make OS/2 more expensive than Windoze or we cut off your oxygen," deal they gave computer builders.
All of this hinges on Mac not being able to play a video format, which I doubt. Macs are well known for doing video stuff out of the box. Anything is possible.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Then you need to find a different job. I have 2 Powerbooks and an iMac running OSX.3, and I am responsible for several more. They all work, and I have seen 2 kernal panics and only a few application crashes--most of which have been MS Office. If you're system is constantly crashing, you've busted something. As for the trashcan, WTF cares? My machines are extremely stable, fast and allow me and the people around me to get their work done. The iLife suite is unbeatable and the Pro Apps are incredibly easy to use. So, no marketing BS, I like my machines. BTW, how do you train software?
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
max is windows only, and at one point it was really Intel only, as they had based some of its pipeline on Intel extensions.
You're generally limited to Blender, Lightwave and Maya for 3d work. which for real commercial animation out of the box leaves you with only Maya. (I know there are a lot of Lightwave fans out there, and I own/use it myself.[ Maya used to be a lot more expensive.] but lightwave lacks any sort of good 3d tracking to make it worth while.)
If there are any others, I would love to know. I've been out of the market for a while...
btw any one know if cinelerra is getting ported to osx?
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Going down to the store is a good idea. I did this for myself last month and was stunned by how well the Macs worked. I thought about it for a while and it made sense. OSX is a clean OS, much like Linux or BSD and requires much less processing power for what it does.
I ended up getting a used PII thinkpad and put Sarge on it. It is a little slow for big honkers like OpenOffice and KDE3 but can easily have multiple documents up and would do everything the reviewer wanted as "work". Running Window Maker and KOffice, I don't have to wait for it. The availability of multiple named workspaces makes it easy for me to organize and find my work. This is still a killer feature of X and free software.
Gigahertz class Macs will do everything just fine. They really are snappy.
The same thing can not be said of the same hardware running Windoze. The OS does not do as much out of the box and most "bundles" of software only include enough to get the most basic work done. You will have to buy/download movie editing software, music ripping software, and other stuff that the Mac just comes with. You might even get your hands on some crippled version of Office that will make you even crazier than Office itself. Worse, everyone knows how Windoze gets buggy and craps out if you load it up with software or just use what you have for a couple of years. Sooner or later, some malware will get through and screw things up for you.
My conclusion was that $1000 was about the price for a decent laptop in either camp but the Mac will be easier. When my mom's PII laptop dies, I'm going to recommend she gets a Mac.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You cannot watch mpeg2 video in Quicktime without buying an addon.
This is true, but then again you don't have to limit yourself to what's bundled with the system. Two capable open source players available for the Mac are VLC and MPlayerOSX. As for editiing I can't help, since I have not needed to investigate this.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I do have to say that i am not done reading yet but i do really like his out look. It's always nice for me to hear the outlook of the windows world. there are 2 points that i don't think are very accurate however. Those are the memory and the video card. I don't understand why he says it has DDR400 RAM? my G5 which sadly is one of the 1.6ghz towers has DDR2700 RAM so why would a later more powerful machine have slower RAM? The other issue with the Video card is something i saw as well before i made my purchase. However what is so far unnoted is that you can get a Radeon 9800 pro (128mb vRAM) for only 45 bucks more. I know it's still more but double the video power foronly $45 bucks? yes please!
--jd
OS X has X11 built in. you can run, at the same time:
OS X "Aqua"a complete KDE or Gnome desktop environment, including KOffice, OpenOffice, Gimp...
ssh -x into any Linux box anywhere
run multiple Windows or x86 Linux emulations in VirtualPC
VNC into your office Windows PC to work with your specific software
distribute all those windows onto virtual desktops, either in OS X (extra app.), or using your X11 environment (KDE, some WM)
too lazy to open up all those options; usually i don't do more than OS X or X11; wouldn't touch Windows (last time for the online german tax system :-( ).
regarding screen estate: every powerbook supports monitor spanning: so you can have a 17in widescreen laptop + a 23in LCD; but your neck will hurt (like from watching tennis from close by). one reason to do it: the window minimizing effect: put the dock on one side of one screen, and minimize a window on the other one. better than any game (for five trys...)./p/
Here's what a Mac date looks like.
Running the risk of suggesting a Lexus when you have a Rolls-Royce (I don't know that much about Gentoo), I have had fantastic luck running X applications using FinkCommander via Fink. It requires that Apple's X11 (or OSS equivalent) be installed but I have been running Gimp, OpenOffice, and GNUCash with no troubles.
I've used many many platforms over the years, but I never owned a Macintosh until a few months ago. I still won't give up my x86 system, but I do like the mac and find myself using it more and more for "simple" tasks like writing a letter for example. It's hard to put your finger on, but the Mac OS is comfortable and friendly in a way Windows XP is not. That said, like the writer I would never give up my REAL computer. kevin
TaskSwitch XP might be of interest to you. It's a Windows alt-tab replacement that lets you click on object windows as opposed to bashing tab repeatedly (you can still bash tab if you like) and it shows screenshots of the windows you hover over. Open source project.
parent might be right about snobs, but not mac users in general. I had to scrape together every last cent to get this powerbook; and I was quite aware that i wasn't getting the world's most powerful computer for my money. Mac advocates always go on about the overall experience, but it's true. I like the way my powerbook feels under my arm, I like the shape of the power adaptor, I like the instant wake-from-sleep, I like the screen overlays for the volume and brightness controls, I like the solid battery life, I like the silence... My computer is just part of life, and it's a quality-of-life issue. (Whoops. I promised myself I would never participate in a mac v pc thread.)
In an attempt to sound unbiased, the guy basically ruins the article...
The line that caught my eye:
$3000 for a top of the line G5 isn't a bargain regardless of what you compare it to.
Umm... it may not be a bargain per say, but it is most certainly on par with pre-built name brand x86 offerings... running quickly through the Dell configurator I was easily able to make a Dimension XPS hit >$3000 with similar RAM, HD, optical drives and software components selected...
Playing an FPS on any console is not fun or even comparable to playing it with a mouse/keyboard combo.
As well as playing an RTS on the console. The menu hunting is just not very intuitive on a console with you only having a few analog sticks and 4-6 buttons.
And with a pc I only have to upgrade a few pieces of hardware (if I choose to) to stay current. Console makers rarely make their console backwards compatible.
Consoles do have games that work best on them, whereas pcs have games that work best on them. That's why I own the 3 newer consoles as well as my windows gaming pc, my gameboy and also my linux boxen for servers and other stuff.
There's room in my home for everything. Only reason I own no Macs is that I can't afford the price of their systems.
You can enable login for the root account with the Netinfo Manager utility. Under previous versions of OS X you had to follow a long and slightly risky procedure to manually edit the user data; under Panther (and possible Jaguar) there is a handy "Enable root account" menu item.
You don't need to do this to use sudo, of course.
We have a 20" G5 iMac.
The hardware performance is OK (nothing special) but its design is awesome. As is pretty much everything about OS X. But there is a huge disadvantage in software choices compared to Windows (I'm a recent switcher... I've found replacements for most programs, but not for everything). So I'm surprised that Anand didn't talk about Windows performance under Virtual PC 7.
Wow... I think you just confirmed that you're the personification of my of my biggest pet peeve. Let me first give you a little background on what I do for a living.
I'm a system administrator in charge of a multitude of *nix, Windows, and OS X boxes. I help support roughly 300 Macs, over 500 Windows machines and a handful of servers running anything from OS X, Windows, Linux and even FreeBSD. This is in a university environment where different departments have vastly different needs. I am intimately familiar with all three platforms and since I also do consulting on the side and do training seminars for students, faculty and staff, it sounds like we have similar backgrounds.
Macs are not perfect, but if you have machines crashing on a daily basis, you have problems with hardware or with how you deployed OS X. My guess is you're an old Windows or *nix admin who grew up hating macs and refuses to learn and adapt in order to do your job. Trust me, I've met more than my share of people like you. I've been administering Macs since System 7 and I cannot begin to explain my frustration when I walk into labs and offices maintained by incompetent admins who have no knowledge of how to configure and deploy the systems they support and departments who work to make deploying a heterogeneous environment as difficult as possible.
I have labs running 27/7 and the only time the machines are restarted is when I run updates that require them to do so and when we are upgrading or cleaning the machines. These include Powermac G3s, Powermac G4s, Powermac G5s, iMacs, iBooks, and Powerbooks. Heck, one faculty member even managed to get a Cube. Since the move to OS X about two years ago, I have had maybe 2 actual kernel panics and all were the result of bad hard drives or memory. Maybe once or twice in the semester we need to repair the directory structure on a drive because a student kicked out a power plug while it was writing but this can be corrected in 5mins with a firewire HD and a new image... I won't even begin to discuss the ease NetBoot, NetInstall, and even RADMind can bring if you have the infrastructure to support them.
Applications, themselves rarely crash and when they do, they do so gracefully. In fact, the worst problem we have lies in the finder being tied up while connecting to file shares and the fact that OS X does not have native support for Windows DFS. Despite these shortcomings, the Macs are still significantly more stable and easier to maintain. In fact, our students are beginning to use our Macs more because they tend to be more reliable on our Active Directory-based network. Yeah, I said Active Directory...
You may try to explain your problems away by stating I'm not deploying the same software. I have labs that run OS X with all the Adobe and Macromedia applications. We run MS Office, Final Cut Pro, Shake, Logic, Quark, Mathmatica, Maya, and many other custom and highend scientfic apps. It usually only takes me a few hours (At most a day depending on the software and supporting files) to create a Mac image compared to two or more days to create a Windows image where most of that time on Windows is spent applying updates, protecting it from viruses, and modifying the registry.
Sorry, but I simply see no justification and no facts. In my experience and the experience of many of my colleagues, Mac OS X is infinitely easier to deploy and maintain than Windows. I sincerely recommend that you seek some training from Apple and visit sites like macosxlabs.org so you can learn what you're doing wrong and stop spreading FUD by running poorly maintained facilities and blaming your failings on an extremely solid platform. At the very least, spend a little more time refining your writing skills so you can be a better troll.
Okay somebody said this already. 20 IE windows? Sheesh. This is the editor of a hardcore tech site? IE faster than firefox? Is he on E? What the hell? Since when has Gecko been slower than Mosaic? Also has he heard about spyware? www.getfirefox.com
Note the difference between the http addresses of first page of the article and the 1 page version.
First page: http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2232
1 page version: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2232
Just replace everything between ".com/" and ".aspx?" with "printarticle"
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
I think this is a generally well written article. It was long, but I was left wanting him to talk about so much more. Some gripes of his were due to lack of info/knowledge, but nothing major. Some things he likes are going to get even better very soon, like Mail's slew of new features coming in Tiger. Anyhow, my story reads much like Anand's. I've been using PCs since a Tandy 1000EX 8088, and have been building computers since I was in 5th grade. I was always a die hard PC guys until about 3 years ago, and I've slowly all but abandoned PCs. What I like most, is a general trend: less hatred between the two camps. I hate petty crap, people seem more open minded these days. PC guys seem to respect Mac guys and Mac guys PC guys, maybe not completely, but it's not a blind hatred anymore. Multiple systems can only benefit everyone, as it breeds innovation. Thumbs up to Anand.
I have *never* used Windows. For *anything*.
Hate to bring us into the political domain, but since the metaphor came from the article...
I have *never* voted. For *anyone*.
(and it seems about 50% of the population is with me on this one)
One other nice thing which he did not touch on, was that OS X ships with a very nice text editor that's actually useful (TextEdit), unlike Wordpad or Notepad. It handles rich text well, and can save in RTF or (and this is kind of neat) .Doc format! In fact it can even read most Word documetns as well, though currently it lacks table support which is a big stumbling point as just like with HTML, people LOVE to use tables.
Fortunatley in Tiger TextEdit adds table support for reading word docs (and possibly for editing?)
I find TextEdit to be totally capabile for all the document creation I do (though again, I'll admit tbales would be kind of nice mostly to read other peoples stuff).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seriously, if you miss PC games get an XBox and a PS2 and be done with it. I can think of no game category that is not ripe with offerings on the consoles. And I can think of a number of categories (like the whole rhythm game area) that is pretty much a wasteland on the PC.
I'll admit Half Life 2 looks pretty cool. But you know what? It will be out in a year or so for a console anyway, and I can play it then - and a number of console games support keyboards and mice. I was on that PC game upgrade wheel for a time, and it just got old (and expensive).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When you get OS X, Terminal.app is sitting right there - like an XTerm with a real bash shell, only with MUCH better system integration than you'll see from Cygwin! You can drag files from the Finder (explorer) into the shell and it expands the whole path out.
X11 is also right there, as are libraries to compile X11 apps (when you install the dev tools).
OS X also has an SSH deamon included that you enable/disable through the standard config GUI (same with Apache which is also bunded by default). And of course that means you have real ssh/scp capabilities included by default. It also uses CUPS and Samba, also built in.
You were right about one thing - having the full set of UNIX utilities included by default in an OS with a great GUI is indeed a killer app. That's why so many technical people are going for mac laptops, then desktops.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and frankly, I think everyone update software too fast and patches too slow..
Exposé is a very fast and efficient way of switching to a desired browser window, competing with tabs for ultimate poweruserness.
The feature doesn't (yet) expose the individual tabs within an application, so you'd have to have the browser pages open in separate windows.
Separate windows also allow for faster drag&drop between them, another feature which was praised in the article.
J
Peace
Warning: this became much more of a rant than I expected.
To be honest, I know where you're coming from there. I never thought I'd get a Mac for a desktop. It's just that much cheaper to keep an x86 box updated.
That said, your offhand reference to the free Linux install doesn't hold water with probably 90% (statistic pulled out of my a**) of computer users. I will grant you that Linux distros have come a long way towards some small chance of hitting the average desktop. On the other hand, I adore something Linux finds difficult: Adobe products. Say what you like about Killustrator and the Gimp; I agree that what you can do with their Adobe gene-donors you can do with Linux tools. But it takes me half the time in the native apps. Time is money. In the long run, Photoshop is cheaper than the Gimp.
So I ended up using Windows. Which brought me to the virus-laden, popup-ridden, spyware-infested cesspool that is Windows. Now that loses me time, and therefore money. I also like the flexibility Unix variants (which notably have very few of the problems above) to run GPL and other open-source programs.
So. I want Adobe. I want lack of Windows-style security risks. I want GPL flexibility. I'd like to save money, but those three things will increase productivity enough to justify a certain amount of increased initial hardware cost. What combines all that? You guessed it - a Mac. Or, to be pedantic, a Linux PC with Wine - 'cept I'd rather be using my computer than configuring it. And like I said, time is money.
So to come full circle, your claim that a Mac is too expensive, at least for what I (and most of the print design world) use computers for, falls a little flat. The saved hours, days, weeks even, of production nets more income. Simple.
It occurs to me that though you didn't specify a use for your $600 Linux box, it's more likely a weblication development tool than a prepress tool. Thumbs up to you - that makes complete sense. I wouldn't get a BMW to haul cargo or pull trailers. But you probably wouldn't get a pickup truck to commute quickly, comfortably, and stylishly. Fitting the tool for the task, you see.
Anyway, that got a lot longer than anticipated. Thanks for watching.
You can do that in OS X by right-clicking on a file, choosing Get Info (selecting and hitting command-I also works), going to the 'Open with' section, setting an application for it, and if you want it to be a default for that filename extension, hit the 'Change All' button.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Hardly economic elite.
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
The best comparison that I know of is http://www.xvsxp.com/ XvsXP
Both OSes' features are compared in detail such as:
-Login
-Find/Search
-Drag & Drop
-Network capabilities
I learned much about my new Mac on this site, as it explains how to do certain tasks on both Systems. Every switcher should have a good look here. Even a Windows-savy friend of mine learnt new stuff about XP there.
This is not a troll, although it may at first seem like that is my intention.
The biggest barrier to entry for Apple's products has been cost. It's clearly stated in the article as well. There is no way to get around this fact. If you buy a Mac, you pay a premium. And you can argue all you want about how that premium buys you a more reliable and integrated system, but the fact is when 3,500 dollars buys you less than what the competition is hocking, many people are going to be turned off.
And I find three ways this could go. One, Apple tanks. With the company gone under, I can only hope that they'd fully release OS X to the open source community. Eventually, I'd hypothesize that an Intel clone would be made. With this hypothetical clone, the hardware barrier to entry would be nil. Assuming, of course, emulating Classic could be done at a decent speed. If I recall, OS X itself is highly portable - as were its NeXT predecessors.
Next solution. Apple designs a tight, Intel box. Or AMD. They use a custom design, but it is an Apple branded machine with Intel inside. This is believed to be a route Apple would never go. But, I'm all for it - if it could be done. There needs to be a vendor who can sell chips to Apple at a low enough price that Apple can reduce their own margins. Heck, sell at a loss even - and play the Microsoft.
Also, the Mac does need to be pumped as a gaming platform. This isn't as hard as it seems. Hardware wise, currently, no. But for the casual gamer to mid-performance gamer, Apple could easily sway the mindset. It just needs to put some high profile ads out like has been done for the iPod. I'm sure the iMac could fulfill the mid-range gamer's needs and it's a sleek design to boot.
Now, the third solution - games. With the release of the PS III, X-Box II, and Gamecube all on the PowerPC chipset - the market for these will become so huge that Apple's prices, by scale of economics, will drop. In which case, the barrier is removed.
In all cases, though, price is the key factor.
I give Mac 1,000,000 bonus points when it comes to the design and usability of the OS and wish very much they could port it to x86, but am I the only one here who thinks it should perform a little better? I'm still running my WinXP system on a 1.6 Ghz Tbred with 1 Gig of RAM and it doesn't slow down a hitch unless I start doing CPU intensive multitasking, like video encoding + multiple browser windows + mp3 playback.
I fear the same thing is going to happen with Longhorn. Between Avalon and the 3D desktop and everything else I fear it's going to slow the system to a crawl unless you have top of the line hardware. And donning my tinfoil hat, maybe that's the point - the industry is now choosing to boost lagging hardware sales through the OS instead of just games.
Looking at the performance of OSX doing non-CPU intensive tasks I can't help but think that Apple has already gone that route.
Is it too much to ask for a simple, clean, effecient UI that has multitasking convenience built-in without fancy graphics and translucence and animations and all the other useless crap?
"Trying is only the first step towards failure." - Homer
JavaScript and Java aren't even remotely similar.
Its just too hard to not go with the 95%. What I like to do is give in on the OS, but run neato GNU and other cool apps on Windows, and write my own little stuff using the tons of dev environments out there. Forget the OS ... its the apps you live in!
He can use one of the 'browsers' that wraps itself around the IE browser to add functionality. MyIE2, SlimBrowser, etc. come to mind.
I have been using Macs at home since 1994, but also put in at least 40 hours per week on Windows 2000 at work, and before that, NT.
Here are the things I notice most when making the daily switch back and forth from Windows to Macs.
1. On a Mac, when you start typing, the arrow cursor disappears, and doesn't reappear until you move the mouse. I was so used to this feature, that I really noticed its absence in Windows. I was constantly highlighting a word, typing, then having to reach over and move the arrow cursor away from what I had just typed, so that I could see if I typed it right. I watched Windows users in action, and found that they would use the mouse to place the text cursor, then instinctively move the arrow cursor out of their way.
2. With Macs, background windows are not live until after the first click. Mac people do this all the time: Highlight some text in Document A, then switch to Document B, highlight and copy some text, then switch back to Document A and paste the copied text, replacing the highlighted text. You can't do this in Windows, unless you are very very careful about clicking a non-clickable part of the window. Even then, some Windows apps lose their highlight no matter where you click. Interestingly, MS Excel works like Mac apps in this regard.
3. Navigating sub-menus. This demos best if you have your Recent Items set to a really high number. From the Apple Menu, you can pull down to Recent Items, then across and down to the item you want. Or you can go directly to the item you want, diagonally across 'open space.' The freaky part is this -- move the mouse straight up and down quickly, and the various sub-menus come and go -- or move the mouse diagonally, and quite slowly, to go directly to an item in Recent Items. Try it, and see how weirdly brilliant the Mac UI can be.
4. Single-click to get a text cursor. Double-click to highlight a word. Triple-click to highlight a line. Quadruple-click to highlight a paragraph. These shortcuts are almost universal in Mac applications. Unfortunately, recent versions of IE for Windows are so broken that you can't even highlight the text from part of one word to part of another. (This was the final straw that made me switch permanently to Firefox for Windows.)
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
A new eMachine PC is $599, and you get an AMD 3200+ processor, 512 MB RAM, 160 GB HD, DVD +/- RW drive. Granted you get a GeForce4 MX integrated GPU, but comparing this to a 1.25 G4 I'd say you get double the perfomance for less money.
r od=eMachines_T3256/
You can find it at http://www.emachines.com/products/products.html?p
Every article on the Mac and OS X makes a big deal about the lack of games for the platform. While I agree, what I don't understand is why use your computer for games when there is PS2, XBox and GameCube. These platforms are cheap and there are tons of games for them and the controllers are great. If I want to play a game, I fire up my Xbox or GameCube. Would never even consider using the computer.
Let me get this straight. You have a DUAL 2.5 GZ system with half a gig of memory, and running office is sluggish? Dragging and dropping pictures taxes the system???
I think you just fed the troll... of course Office isn't sluggish. I use it on a 600MHz iBook and it's perfectly fine (though its interface quirks are irritating, but that's another story). I can drag and drop pictures all day long, rarely have I ever seen less than snappy response. I use a 1GHz G4 quicksilver at work and it just ain't slow. I haven't used a G5, this is an education establishment for god's sake - but I would not expect it to feel slow!! If that user's experiences are genuine (which I doubt), there must be something seriously wrong with his setup.
Well, you can check out the specs for a Dell top-level machine, buy the parts and build it yourself. Bingo! You have a cheap system that is almost 100% compatible.
I don't believe that big-name vendors add much value. I always buy my machines custom-built. It is a common practice in most stores here to do it for free - you just pay the list price for the parts. Unless you are aiming for the absolutely cheapest parts, you can be pretty confident that the system will work just fine - and the store will test the machine after it is built anyway.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Actually, for all intense purposes, the Macs have very little to configure out of the box. The problem is that there exist people who fail to learn how to do even rudimentary things like lock the machine down by changing permissions on certain files and directories... you know things you should probably do in a lab environment but don't usually have to worry too much about at home. Hell, I taught my entire staff what they need to do and in a week they were more than able to pick up most of what they need to do a better job than half the MCSE hacks that admin Mac labs these days.
If you read my entire argument, you may have noticed how I mentioned the Windows box take twice the time to configure and deploy, if not more more time. As for administration, I do have less administrative duties on the Macs... especially after creating a few shell scripts to automate most of the tasks I may have to do.
You also seem to have skipped over the fact that I mentioned I have more hardware maintenance issues with the Windows based machines which means they are out of use more often.
It's funny how people always mention the upfront cost of a machine, and available software when trying to attack the Mac platform. Where you come up with less flexibility is beyond me... I'd love an explanation for that one because there's nothing I can't do on a Mac that I can do on a PC, so where's the lack in flexibility?
As for software, we install the same software products on both or Windows boxes and our Macs. In some cases where it's a departmental lab or a faculty members computer or a server, there may be some additional software, but I have yet to encounter a situation where a user wasn't able to find a piece of software or a viable alternative to use on a Mac.
Finally, the hardware cost. We typically replace the machines in our labs every 2-3 years on a rotating basis so we're always buying new machines and pushing the oldest ones out. The oldest machines go on sale where the general public is able to guy them. Guess which machines hold their value better? You got it, the Macs. In general, we typically pay about $200 more for our Macs than we do for comparable PCs. However, we typically get $200-300 more for the Macs when we sell them then we do for the PCs. In our situation, we break even or come our ahead on our Mac purchases. Hell, we'd do even better if I could convince the MCSEs to migrate to Xserves and save on the windows licensing and additional software expenses they have because Windows 2003 server doesn't have a lot of the capabilities OS X has out of the box or for free.
Try again when you actually have some experience and knowledge about that you which you attack,
I just wish the mac had a start menu so I could find the shutdown option.
:)
Call it funny if you want, but there is rarely any reason to shut down a mac - unlike Windows, macs can reliably suspend and resume