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Forbes Predicts 5% Desktop Share for Apple in 2005
sebFlyte writes "Spurred on by the iPod, Apple's share of the desktop computer market will grow to five percent (from three percent) this year, according to research from Morgan Stanley. Apparrently nearly 20% of iPod users surveyed are planning to switch to Macs, and the sales figures for the last few quarters are backing up the theory of the iPod Halo Effect. All this suggests the question ... how many iPod-touting Slashdotters are thinking of switching?"
Time to buy some Apple stock.
I plan on getting my mac mini. I've been looking for a way to not have to use Microsoft anymore and a combination of a new mac mini and an old machine running fedora is how I'll do it.
I'm going to buy a Mac, but not attach a screen to it!
I hear people bitch and moan on Slashdot about Microsoft's proprietary operating system but never once mention how Apple has maintained a closed OS.
But not because of iPod. Really, a nice desktop, integrated desktop apps, plus the joy of a UNIX cli under it all. Beat the pants of Linux for me.
-- John
I'm thinking about switching to a Mac. I have an iPod, and I recognize that it came to me through a combination of brand recognition and system usability (not just the iPod but also iTunes).
I don't even own an iPod and I'm thinking of switching.
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
i for one welcome our new iPod-touting, mac-using overlords.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
"Apparrently nearly 20% of iPod users surveyed are planning to switch to Macs,"
Never happen. As soon as that 20% realizes there's no games for that shiny Mac in the store window, they'll stay right where they are.
Well, not a total switch, I think only a few slashdot readers are capable of switching.
Did you mean, "Add to your collection?"
I would love to make the switch. But not until I can do my #1 computing activity there...play games. No matter how you slice it, gaming is not as rich on the mac platform as it is on the PC.
Because I had a Mac, I bought an iPod.
Kudos to Apple, though, for getting more market share.
What's interesting about this is that in some sense, an iPod user has the least reason to switch, as Apple has done such a good job of making iTunes work as well as it could possibly be expect to on both the Mac and the PC. Is it just a design thing?
I'm all for the trend, though, whatever the reason.
how many iPod-touting Slashdotters are thinking of switching?
Well, I certainly tout, but I long to tote. Doesn't seem likely anytime soon.
How about the Mini Mac? How about lower pricepoint iBooks? I think Apple has done quite a bit to make themselves a more serious contender in the desktop market.
I'm switching.. As soon as I get my free mini mac (placed my order on march 7)
Unless I sell it and buy DVDs instead
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Maybe while Linux eats up some market share in the corporate space, Apple can eat up some of the consumer space.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Yes, because all those white ear-budded commuters I see on the subway to and from work everyday are on their way to an internet cafe lan party.
I do not have an iPod (and probably won't buy one), but my next system will either be a G5 iMac or a Mac Mini. The irony is that an X-Box was the final factor in my decision, since I found myself spending most of my gameplaying time on the console, I do not need a PC around to run games.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I suspect that slashdotters would switch to Apple at a higher rate than the general population. After all, the juicy unix underbelly of OS X matters little to the man on the street.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
From here:
"IDC's numbers don't include free downloads or copies made and passed along to other users, nor does it include pirated copies of [operating systems] since these types of distributions would be impossible to count."
And that's just for Mac OS X. I imagine that the Linux numbers are much harder to count considering most of us who use Linux download them via BotTorrents or Linux P2P apps or ISOlation files.
I started running an OS X network, so I figured I better get a machine capable of running it;)
I did it for the chicks.
More marketshare means more income to spend on R&D. With what Apple puts out already, I can only imagine what they'll start putting out with more marketshare (compare to Microsoft's $10 billion a year R&D, and all they can put out are picture-viewing smartphones and media center TVs). At some point, there's a threshold where growth begins to fuel itself through momentum (maybe ~10% or so). With Longhorn not due out until 2006, Apple has the opportunity to grow a few more points next year as well.
I used to hate Macs; pre-OSX I was convinced they were complete garbage. My next computer will probably be a Mac. I do own an iPod, but it wasn't the iPod that convinced me to switch; it was seeing that OS X is based on UNIX, and that it looks incredibly spiffy, and that it's stable, and....
Have you ever been face-to-face with their 30" Cinema? It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
But a boost from 3 to 5% of the market share should encourage developers to port more games to OS X. It will be an intersting 12 months on that front.
I got mac mini when it came out..I'm so impressed by it, that now im thinking about buying ipod..Wonder how many people fall in my category?
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
I'll continue to use my IRiver H320 and if I need another computer, I'll build one.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
Probably few will make a switch from whichever Linux distro(s) or Windows(!) version(s) we are using. We probably still have an investment in those computers that we are unlikely to dump completely - at least not in the next 12 months.
Most of us do have multiple computers and will just add one more - an Apple this time. I will and I don't think I am atypical in that regard.
I'm still running my SGI boxes occasionally, and my old NeXT Cube still works!
There is not nearly enough love in the world, but there is far too much trust.
There are plenty of games, as I switched to a Mac, and have no problem getting the games I want, they may be a couple months behind the windows version but big-woop-dee-butt-$$%&%$ (tm) I can wait a couple months, if it means no windows email worms corrupting my system.
I don't think it's the iPods that are attracting the slashdot crowd perhaps quite so much as the great UNIX integration os x has. If you're already a linux or unix user you find that switching to OS X is almost a transparent operation, you're just running iChat instead of Gaim and doing the exact same stuff in Terminal. And if all your windows box was being used for was to check mail and ssh into the UNIX boxes, well, why did you need it? Go hang around a UNIX-centric computer science department sometime or a UNIX-centric corporate research department, you'll be amazed by how many powerbooks you see.
It's funny, switching between operating systems, you find there really aren't any compatibility or transition issues unless one of the endpoints is Windows...
Open OS. Very open OS in fact.
Closed desktop environment. Free IDE.
Tell me why you're not happy about this again? You could always run X11 and use KDE or Gnome or whatever. I personally feel that Aqua is worth every penny.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
What was that? Rumors of Apple's imminent *survival*?
I give Apple six months before Jobs shuts the place down just to spite us all.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Apple makes a great product, but I seriously doubt it will see double-digit market share any time soon.
Go ahead Apple zealots, mod me into oblivion for speaking heresy.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
as soon as I can play all my games on it, buy the hardware I want for it, and not have to pay thousands of dollars for it. If I was doing multimedia only (audio/video editing) I'd already own one.
that is, of course, assuming, people only buy computers to play games.
whilst certainly a concearn to some, one could look at what is available, and determine if that will be enough to satiate their needs.
maybe though, the 20% have already taken the games and whatever into account, and still plan on switching, whereas the 80% decided they couldn't do without them, or the ones which are available.
of course its probably neither.
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
That's really great. "5 down, 95 to go! ... still."
Moof.
.....Which is enough reason for me to buy a dual CPU PowerMac, or a 17" PowerBook.
Well to be honoust: Since I bought my Gamecube and Xbox, I only use them for gaming. Except for iTunes I never boot to windows anymore. So a mac would be the perfect solution to this. And I really think I'm not the only one.
Couldn't resist Apple marketing any longer, so I got a Shuffle few weeks back. Love it. Going to get a 15" PowerBook once my ThinkPad runs out of steam in a year or two. Also talked my girlfriend and family into Apple. That makes me just another convert I suppose.
Is not the new MAC OS basicly Linux?
No. It's basically BSD, which is, of course, dying .
No. OS X is closed-source but it has an open-source BSD kernel. It is a unix-based OS but it has much more to it than Linux, which is only the kernel -- In a way, you could think of it as a BSD distribution, but there's a lot more to it than that.
I actually got an iBook first, then an iPod shuffle.
I just got a gamecube to satisfy my game needs (played through eyetv on my mac) so I can give my massive tower PC to my dad.
I'm posting anonymously, because I have mod points.
I switched last year, and I got an iPod this year. I suppose this would be a reverse iPod halo effect? I might have purchased an iPod in any case, I might not.
One factor which really made me choose an iPod over other music players is that for Macintosh users, you can use the iPod as an emergency startup drive. It takes a little work to set it up, and Apple doesn't officially support this use, but it's nice to have when you're in a bind.
In "market" of my household, I run linux, my son runs linux, both daughters have OSX laptops, and my wife runs w2k - I'm seriously thinking of cutting microsoft out of the picture completely and getting my wife a mac, which would make us a 100% unix household. The prospect of complete freedom from worms and viruses is a big incentive, as is the utter coolness of not having to deal with microsoft any longer.
I actually am the only person I've ever talked to in engineering who switched FROM PC to Apple but then switched back to Windows.
Why?
- World domination: Microsoft owns the market. I don't care what number you want to quote, but when it comes to writing shareware/freeware for a living like I do, you have to do it in Windows or else you won't be eating very long.
- Top-notch developer tools: Visual Studio, C#, etc. all make coding incredibly easy. Going back to writing Object Oriented C or AppleScript from within Vi on a Mac OS X box just seems... well, archaic.
- Price: Windows for me is cheaper. I get a new Dell box for $599 every 6 months which lets me build faster.
- Devices: My Windows mp3 player was half the price of iPods of equivalent storage. Why pay twice as much for half-the functionality??
I have an iPod, but when I got it I just used it under linux. To be honest, it worked great, and I could care less for iTunes or any of that crap. I "switched" much later on after being lent a 300Mhz powerbook by a friend... even though it was slow, I could do everything I needed in OSX that my craptacular 650Mhz acer laptop could do, and I got 4 hours of battery life.
OSX was the workhorse that sold me on Apple... the iPod's just a toy for long car trips and lugging data files around.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
And besides, games are a good excuse to have at least two computers: one on which to get work done (Linux or Mac), and one on which to play games (Windows). That being said, there are an awful lot of games you can get for Macs or play the windows version on Linux via Cedega. (I've done a bit of both)
Transistors and Beer!!
The summary says Morgan Stanley predicts...
The linked article says Morgan Stanley predicts...
Why on earth does the Slashdot headline say "Forbes predicts..." ?
Good to see the usual quality control procedures are in place. Sheesh.
Sailing over the event horizon
When it came time for me annual system upgrade, I did the math and realized that I could get more bang for my buck switching to a Mac Mini. Two months in and I couldn't be happier. My old linux workstation is now my file server, and my old file server is now a doorstop.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
I think you're asking the wrong crowd. What I mean is, for myself, I enjoy "building" computers. I do it at work, and I enjoy putting together slick systems for myself and others I know. If I could install Mac OS X on these machines, I would in a heartbeat. I do use Linux in some cases, but Windows ends up being the defacto standard because people know it more than Linux. I'm willing to bet many slashdotters, besides the current Apple users, probably like building computers as well. If I could get an IBM PPC chip on a stock motherboard I could buy online and build myself a Mac clone, I might do it.... but what I know for sure is that AMD 64 chips are amazingly fast, fairly cool, and cheaper than most alternatives on the market right now. So, what I REALLY want, is Mac OS X ported for x86. Then I would definitely switch, and possibly a large number of other slashdotters would give it a try as well. But, I know Apple makes cash off of very expensive hardware, and they would never give that up. So, what I'm trying to say is, it would take a hell of a lot more than a fancy MP3 player (that works fine with Windows BTW) to switch both software and hardware for me. I'm not saying I'm the average slashdotter, but I'm willing to bet many people share some of the same preferences I do (even though there is no question somebody will violently disagree with this post like always).
I am! The psychotherapist has to approve, and I have to stay on the hormones for a couple more months, but then I can apply for my reassignment surgery.
Looked into switching a bit more than a year ago for my last laptop purchase. For a best-monitor, 2GB RAM, 60 or 80GB disk configuration with as-comparable-as-possible other details, the Powerbook was $1100, or over a third again as expensive as the comparable Dell, and the Dell had, in some ways, a nicer display, higher-resolution although physically smaller. If it had been a few hundred, and I hadn't had to lose resolution, I might have gone through with it, but for me, last year, the Apple Premium was too high.
I'm a nature photographer.
Or FreeBSD -- the killer OS?.. Good for Apple.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Each of these possibilities are imaginable, so I think "Never happen" might be a little premature.
I have been consulting for a large Linux shop the last few months and was surprised at the number of people running Mac laptops. The company itself provides Linux desktops for everyone, and Windows laptops for the suits, but a lot of the developers and other IT people use Mac laptops for their personal computers. I have to say I have been pretty impressed with what I have seen in terms of performance. Besides Mac just give you that extra little "Wow!" factor. Of course it is BSD under the hood, so it is a real OS. They really are slick machines. I do not think that the Ipod is the influencing factor here though.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
You know, "Wine Is Not An Emulator" WINE? Copy over a few of the files off an old Windows 98 CD + some fonts 'n' libraries and you can be playing "World of Warcraft", "Half-Life 2", "GTA: San Andreas", or whatever else you'd like. And if that fails, just get Cedega for $5. They're for linux, but they work just as well on a Mac. I know, I've tried.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
http://www.simplygames.com/mac.asp
:)
Im being given a mac myself (for web testing) and I was under the same impression until I saw the selection. WoW on a mac-mini? Going to have that thing plugged into my TV
I made the switch, but I got a PowerMac first, then got the iPod.
Common sense is not so common.
So the question is; what's Steve Jobs' plan to capitalize on this?
Will Apple push the iPod platform's technolgy forward?
(for example, stay on the forefront; push the storage envelope to allow users to store music in more audiophile freindly formats like AIFF? increase battery life? Keep the RIAA out of the pricing equation?)
Will Apple do anything to make sure this hard-won marketshare will stay on the Macintosh?
(for example, do something to attract more third party software to the platform, make pricing more attractive, etc)
Or will Apple rest on it's laurels?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Unfortunately we're late to that party. The time to get in was almost exactly a year ago -when AAPL was trading for $16 a share. The subsequent rise to ~$90, and split, has taken a bit of the potential out of the stock...
But who knows, it could still go up with increased market share (The holly grail for Apple folks).
-- As soon as I have an interesting sig, you'll be among the first to know!
And yes, I hope to own a Mac mini.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
They're never going to take much more than that. If they really want to compete they need to release OSX for x86
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
Now I've started porting my commercail applications to OS-X.
I guess the ole' Reality Distortion Field really DOES work, eh? :D
What Would Linus Do?0 0.htm
My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 (aka PowerPC 970) http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/0,39023165,39183867,
Uh, no.
WHY are you on Slashdot???
Then they'll look at the shiny console in the next window over, realize it doesn't matter, and buy the best of both worlds.
Five percent market share increase? Whooped-dee-doo. Dell already won the race. You can count me out of the Mac world. The only outstanding products are their monitors. They have superior display resolution, period, unless anyone else can show me a product that's better. Aside from that, Macintosh as a brand would have to grow much faster to overtake any PC ground, and that seems unlikely with their otherwise equivocal or inferior products, including the IPOD or the Mac Mini.
I've had an iMac in a saved cart for a while. I even got a phone call from Apple asking if I had made the purchase yet. I thought this was bizzare...anyone else have an apple rep call them on behalf of a cart they had saved?
"from the bricks to the booth...I predict the future like Cleo the psychic..."
Long time Windows and Linux user, I bought my first Mac this past summer based in part on my experience with my iPod - and I'm a likely buyer of a solid dual-core PowerMac.
It's more than just iPod compatibility. The whole buzz around Apple makes me a lot more confident that the products will be supported and upgradeable for the long haul.
More expensive? Sure, but overall the "GUI experience" has been a lot more positive than Windows or Linux.
That $499 iPod was what drew me in for the $2799 PowerBook kill.
We've got two switchers in our household. One was pre-ipod, one was post ipod.
Coming from a primarily Unix background, the switch for me was the appeal of nice hardware with the ability to get to all of my command line stuff while still having the slickness factor. I built white-box PC's for years, and was definitely 'anti-mac' for a long time. Using my g/f's powerbook was what got me to switch... "Hey look, you can use vi on it!"
On my g/f's side, the primary drive was being able to do what she does easier (desktop publishing, email, web, im,) and without as much worry about spyware, ads, etc.
We're now a 2 mac, 2 ipod household.
I used Windows 95/98/2000/XP until 2001.
... just one girl's life.
In 2001, I switched 100% to Linux.
In 2004 I bought an iPod.
In 2005 I bought a PowerBook (the current generation).
I still use Linux a lot (on my desktop machines, of course), but my PowerBook with Mac OSX rocks. It isn't perfect, but I do think it is the best laptop platform in the universe. Despite the one and only one mouse button.
I left MS-Office behind long ago; now I use OpenOffice (and NeoOffice on the Mac).
Am I like your average computer user? No
A few years ago everyone told me not to touch a mac. Then in 2004 I got a 20 GB ipod and realized the potential. I can listen to almost all my music in the car using an aux input on my deck and I can portably listen to music on my way to class or anywhere I feel like. I even sometimes carry around an RCA cable and jack to RCA convertor so I can use it on most people's stereos. At the time I still had a thinkpad which was running linux (I was switching distros often) and I was not satsified. Don't get me wrong, I love linux but I realized that until the wireless drivers are improved, its not a great laptop distribution (I had a discussion about this with one of the PHLAK developers who was also irritated about this situation). So what did I do? I bought a Powerbook G4. OH NO some people are thinking. Its memory is lower quality and its processor isn't 3 Ghz. Yet ultimately the processor is powerful enough to do everything that a laptop should do and the software is seemless. I can compile most programs I want from linux and it accomplishes my needs with perfect wireless support and allows me to still have an easy setup to use gcc during my Computer Science classes. It beats Windows and if you ever have doubts just run a PowerPC distro on it. Yet I think some people will be impressed with how far MacOS has gone in the last few years.
I've always been a Mac and FreeBSD fan and just recently purchased a used G3 ibook from a friend. I'm now thinking about replacing all of my *BSD boxes with Apple ;-) The power of Unix with the beauty of Apple; a great combination.
um. some of us consider games a waste of time... I'll assume you and your frat brothers may think otherwise which is fine, but to think that games are the centers of regular folk's lives is just plain silly.
I think this is what Apple finally realized with the Mac Mini. They'll never get people en masse to go to the Mac cold turkey, but by giving them an affordable option, there's a lot of people who might try it since there's a way out (they can just write off the $500).
I guess the better question is - what percentage of Mac Mini purchasers continue to use it actively and don't eventually write it off as a bad investment? And how many of them swear off Windows?
Schnapple
So put me down as an example of Apple innovation moreso than the iPod as a instigator to switch.
I'm not sure what the secret to success is, but the secret to failure lies in trying to please everyone -Bill Cosby
I, for one, do not view an over-priced vendor lock-in device (iPod), with digital rights management to control how you use your purchase, as sufficent inducement to buy other vendor lock-in products from this company.
But then again, I build all my own computers.
Yeah, I know it's an old complaint, but the only thing that's kept me from switching for the last few years has been the price. I only got an iPod in December, and that's not really a factor at all.
And yeah, I know, Mac mini. It's neat, but it's still overpriced relative to comparable PC gear (and the 1GB models are backordered bigtime, I hear).
At any rate, I also can't see the Mac replacing my main workstation's functionality (Debian development platform) or my Windows box's functionality (games). I guess it's a niche product that I don't have a niche for.
I just switched to a Mac PowerBook after getting a blue screen of death on another year old pc laptop. So even though I'm leaving thousands of dollars of PC software behind and need to purchase everything on the Mac I feel reborn. Like a refugee from a wartorn village seeing Manhattan for the first time I stand in awe of the shiny sky scrapers and know that I am touching the face of god.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Sure is! Just log in and type, "ps -ef" to see what's running.
The %s here are referring to # of computers sold in a given year. Often, these statistics are discussed as if the % referred to the number of computers actually in use.
If Apple users buy a new computer every 4 years and Wintel users buy a new computer every 3 years, the % of Apples sold will be lower than the % of Apple computers in use.
The iPod represents exactly what Apple is: an innovator. They release produts that innovate the market. The iPod and the iPod music store have revolutionized mp3 audio. While there were products before the iPod it was Apple's ingeniuos design that innovated the mp3 player boom. And thanks to the iPod music store we might soon see even cheaper than 99cent mp3s for download (see the slashdot article on 5 cent music).
The Mac OS is similar to the iPod. If you play around with it you will wonder why Windows hasn't picked up on some of the things. Expose, for example, will re-arrange the windows open or in a certain application so you can easily choose which one you want. Buttons such as "OK" and "Cancel" are all placed in the same exact spots (OK on the right, cancel on the left) in every application. Mac OS encourages their developers to stick to standards and for the most part, they do (ex: not having a 2 button mouse prevents developers from loading things into the right click menu, which many novice users do not know about). The design of the Powerbook alone blows my mind. For $1,000 cheaper than the PC counterpart I have a top of the line processor with a gorgeous screen, a large hard drive and plenty of RAM. But it doesn't stop there - the Powerbook has a light sensor that knows when to light up my keyboard (if it's too hard to see the letters on the keys) or turn it off if it gets light enough. I won't list all the wonderful features, you can go search google for that.
Conclusion: When I switched to Mac OS I was reluctant to give up on my PC. Now I find myself reluctant to use my PC even for the simplest of tasks.
Never going back.
I still collect OS's as a hobby and keep some old machines around to play with but OS X is my primary OS now. Running 2 Virtual PC sessions as I type this.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Apple has a partical closed/partial open. Their foundation is actually opened based on BSD API. From there, they added in their old stuff with enhancements.
In addition, Apple does not typically use their system to try and lock out competitors. The IPOD is new behavior for them. Hopefully, they will consider how to approach things. The reason why OSS software is popping up around ipod is because Apple has not ported to Linux/BSD. Once they do (even closed), I suspect that we will see a lot fewer attempts to circumvent them.
OTH, MS uses their OS and Office as a way of controlling the end user WRT everything. If it was not for OSS, I have no doubt that MS would have been far worse than they are today.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you think about it Apple recently dropped the prices of their computers a bit. iBook is again under 1K$, iPod-mini and iPod-Shuffle are quite cheap and very trendy, and finally a really low cost Mac: the Mac Mini IMHO is one of the best ideas to get more and more people to switch. I think iBook and Mac Mini really mean that Apple got what Average Joe wants from a home computer, that is to say ease-of-use and low maintenance cost. Ok, we can't compare 2.5 GHz G5 proc with a 1.25 GHz G4, but does your mom need all that power to read her mail or write a Word doc? :) Think different!
Me myself I have an iBook, and I couldn't be happier, as it does what I want the way I want. It doesn't really matter if I can't compile a Linux kernel in 2 minutes as long as the battery lasts 4 hours.
I got my Mac mini a month ago, and I'm not sure if I'll ever run Linux on a desktop (that I own) again.
I've used only PCs for the past eight years. However, I bought my iPod in July 2003 and since then, I've purchased two Apple laptops -- an iBook and then a Powerbook. I love OS X so much that I've just purchased a Mac Mini for my parents. I think the iPod is a great segue into becoming a Mac user. My personal belief is that there are more applications for PC users, but the applications out for Mac users are of better quality.
The upgrade problem is especially acute with something like a mini-mac, where the software upgrade costs are going to far exceed the original purchase price.
No games, huh?
Quake 3
Doom 3
Black & White
The Sims
The Sims 2
SimCity 4
All the Myst games
All the Warcraft games
All the Diablo games
RTCW
All the Unreal Tournaments
I could go on and on here. Not to mention, I use emulators anyway, so there are all those games too.
...but it wasn't an iPod that convinced me, it was having a cheap 400mhz iMac to use as a server/living room stereo for a couple years.
Not only was it great for some simple hosting, utter silence and low power consumption, but I found that I even preferred to do casual browsing on it -- despite being so remarkably slow (OS X - Quartz Extreme = Windows on a 486). It's just so comfortable.
As others have pointed out in this thread, there won't be as many Slashdot "switchers" as there will be "adders," and that probably counts for the larger population as well (why throw out the old computer when you can keep it for the dog to use?). But I bet many will follow the cheap Mac they bought on a lark to a shiny new Powerbook, just like I did.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
Just a question: If the story says "How many iPod touting [sic] slashdotters plan to switch?" and this guy answers "Not me...it's too expensive"...WTF about that is flamebait?
BenCurry.net
Dealing with my iPod is now a major function of my computer. But my WinXP machines has no USB2 or Firewire, and iTunes performs horribly in XP--freezing for minutes at a time, not responding to drag-and-drop. Adding files to the iPod is therefore a very painful process.
I'd also like to move from big loud boxes to small quiet boxes. And I would like to switch to a unix variant.
All in all, the Mac mini looks like it will be my next computer.
I wanted iTMS before it was available on Windows, and I also wanted a lightweight laptop. So I bought an iBook. While I've been quite happy with iTMS and my iPod, the iBook was a horrendous piece of crap that broke *constantly*. I had to RMA it twice in the warranty period - once for memory, and again for the screen. Less than a month after the warranty expired, the screen died *again*. Goodbye, iBook.
By comparison, I had already bought a Dell Inspiron 8100 - *refurbed*. And it has lasted over 3 years and the only thing I ever RMA'd on it was the battery, and it has gotten a lot more travel and abuse than the iBook ever did.
On the upside, the RMA process for the iBook was certainly simple. I felt like, as a warranty caller, I was a second-class citizen calling their support people, but I'm sure lots of people with software problems probably would be leeching free support if they didn't do it how they do. But once we got through the process, the RMA was relatively fast and simple.
So yes, I was the first wave of halo buyers.. I bought a mac to GET iTunes. And I'm thankful it's available on Windows now so I can keep using it, because it wasn't worth the headache of dealing with the iBook's issues.
In other news, Doom 3 for Mac is in stores today.....
Have a GameCube and PS2 haven't played a PC game in 2+ years and haven't missed it. I plan on getting a Mac Mini.. Great OS underneath, pretty UI on top and all my favorite Open source apps will run on X-windows if nothing else.
What in the world do I winders for?? Oh thats right so I can get all those viruses, Malware and zero security Active X controls.. No thanks.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
What absolute crap. 20% of iPod users going to switch? They're going to throw away their entire hardware investment and software investment, all because of an MP3 player??
I don't know how they phrased the question, or how they interpreted the answer ("would you ever consider moving to Apple" or something stupid), but it's just not going to happen.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I switched a week ago to a new 12" PB. I owned an iBook a few years ago, but never really used it, unlike my PowerBook 5300cs years earlier. After so many years using Windows, I just got sick of it. Now I keep a cheap Dell server around for text sims and online poker.
" As soon as that 20% realizes there's no games for that shiny Mac in the store window, they'll stay right where they are."
Maybe, maybe not. Around our house we realized that for the price of one good gaming PC system, you can pick up a trio of dedicated network-capable gaming consoles, each with their own small TV. Makes a fine gaming LAN.
So the Winboxen are in the process of being replaced by Web-surfing Macs, plus a Linux box running an glue layer for the odd Windows game.
And I'll be worrying a lot less about worms, viruses, malware, etc.
The irony is that an X-Box was the final factor in my decision, since I found myself spending most of my gameplaying time on the console, I do not need a PC around to run games.
I would go further and say that there may be a great deal of overlap between the people that switch to Macs and the people that primarily use consoles for gaming - total end users that like the simplicity of hooking a console to a TV, shoving in a game, and having it just work, and similarly like the simplicity of plopping down in front of their Mac and having it "just work."
The big question is whether the Mac's software library is up to the task. It has respectable Internet software available and there is Mac Office (IMHO the single most important application to the Mac platform).
The coolest voice ever.
Seemingly along with most of Higher Education. It used to be that when I went to Internet2 or Educause conferences there were about 90% thinkpads and 10% power/ibooks. Now it is usually around 60%-70% power/ibooks. and I have noticed a lot more Linux installs on the Thinkpads.
Apple seems to have made a massive dent in Universities.
Finkployd
Error parsing question.
First, I already own a PowerMac G5 and an iBook G3, so I can't very well "switch" to Apple.
Second, I also own a Windows-running laptop, a Linux workstation, a Linux server, and an EPOC PDA (among other things), so the notion that I'd "switch" to any one platform is equally nonsensical.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I've been thinking of getting a nice little MacMini to compliment my PC. And it sure isn't because of the iPod (I still want to get one, but spending a couple hundred dollars more for a full-fledged computer makes more sense).
been looking to push billy g out my door, ive used about every flavor of linux around and like odds and ends of each, but BSD got me as the best w/ stability and mix that w/ the mac styling and im hooked (i use the mac at work whenever possible).
Home of the midwest loser - www.say-10.net
You are assuming we don't already own Macs.
:)
Although I will admit my music library is currently being stored on my Gateway and my iPod is Windows formatted.
But that may change when my Mac Mini ships on Wednesday.
Or... How many iPod-touting Slashdotter already have switched?
<raising-hand-and-not-looking-back/>
Does the term "desktop computer market" include laptops? Just curious because Apple's laptops seem a lot more common than their desktops so maybe the 3 and 5% figures would be very different if laptops were included.
The new iMac is pretty popular but for years when people bought macs they seemed to usually get ibooks or powerbooks.
Best of all, the fact that they share so much in terms of code and architecture means they play well together.
...now 2% less beleaguered! Oh, woe is me. Do you have any idea what kinda' influence Apple could have on the world if they had 5% market share? A democrat might actually win an electoral race or something. Gah! The War on Tourism might be called off! What would I use my .50 cal for, then?
I drank what? -- Socrates
I switched last year. Bought a nice, shiny dual 1.8GHz G5 Powermac and have never been happier. Yeah, it's not perfect and I do keep my old secondary PC around for games (along with my XBox, PSX and Dreamcast) but the crap I no longer have to put up with is worth it.
For me it wasn't the iPod. It was iTunes. I was using iTuines for six months before I got my iPod and it was my experience with iTunes that made me look at the Mac for the first time in five years. I had not liked OS 9 and below and I used to consider Macs to be a joke back when they first came out.
And yes, I did give Linux a try. Several, as a matter of fact, starting with SLS 1.0 back in 1993/1994 and the last time with Suse 9 last year. I never got along with Linux very well. I figured that if I tried it out seven times in ten years and never got comfortable with it it probably wasn't for me. But I did give it an honest try.
The Mac, well, OS X, I got along with from Day One and am quite happy with. A++ Would do it again.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I am calling Shenanigans!
Ipod sales are predicted at 13.3 millioin units for 2005, but I find it hard to believe that one out of five (2.66 million) will convert soley due to their experience with the ipod (sure there is windows based frustration).
It would make sense that many people would say they plan to switch to the platform, but how many really follow through with that is going to be lower once they find the sticker shock on their standard systems. If they can gain a market foothold with the mac mini will may work. There is also the question of being retrained on a new system. There certainly is something to be said for the status quo.
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
I bought a mini for in the kitchen. It is hooked up to a 17" flat panel LCD TV. My wife would not have a PC case in th kitchen. This however is smaller than a toaster and looks way cooler. I hooked a wireless keyboard with one of those nipple mice up to it. Now my wife can quickly check email- look up a recipe etc...
I have an iPod (40G and a shuffle) and the Bose speakers as well.
I don't care about games and for the naysayers: OSX is a Unix my wife and children can actually use.
Hajo Monogamy: Belief so strong that millions of people end perfectly good relationships in order to start a new one.
I'de buy Apple kit, but I find it hard to justify the cost. I run Gentoo Linux on a Sony P3 1GHz laptop, I enjoy Linux 2.6.11, so I'm really just eye'in up OSX's pretty user interface. Apples hardware is nice, and certainly more powerful than what I have, but they blatently use price descrimination techniques in the UK online store, making it even worse on my bank account. :-(
(waits for Tony's online bill to prevent firms like apple price descriminating in such a manner)
I received a 3G 10gig iPod as a gift shortly before iTunes was made available for Windows and was exceptionally tentative about actually opening it up and using it until after the Windows version of iTunes was released. Once that happened and I actually was able to use iTunes and see how simple it was to organize and categorize my music on both the iPod and on my PC I was pretty ecstatic about the whole thing.
Shortly after that I started saving up money to buy myself a 12" PowerBook and managed to purchase one about a year later. I've never been nearly as happy with a purchasing decision before or with any other computer. I'd been using PCs since the early days of MS-DOS and now I have almost no interest in ever using a Windows machine again (With the exception of getting in a game of HL2 from time to time). I've been heartiliy recommending to friends that they consider buying a Mac for their next computer and of the people who've listened they've all been very pleased as well (Some of them were also iPod users before the switch and had been tentatively thinking about it). My parents have even purchased a Mac Mini after I mentioned how simple it was to do things in OS X (like organize photos, make simple home movies, etc. Basically I explained iLife to them) and how they wouldn't need to worry about spy/ad/mal-ware anymore. That pretty much did the trick, though the low price tag helped too.
So... yeah, maybe there's something to that halo effect.
Currrent trrends arre forr morre rr's everrywherre.
"The unicode stuff in the latest version is working fabulously well. My russian mafia friends are ecstatic."
My company recently made the decision that all new desktop computers purchased would be from Apple. Although the average Mac is more expensive than the average PC, the (current) lack of spyware and other PC related problems will probably pay for itself in the first few months.
I can say with 100% certainty that the switch to Apples was made because of the IPods. The IPods got the company owners into Apple's Pittsburgh store and the rest is history. Apple's retail employees do a very good job of introducing customers and potential customers to their other product lines. I've never been more impressed by floor-level retail salespeople... and apparently neither were the company owners.
this.. is flamebait?
the guy is saying he can't pay for it? flamebait?
please, whoever moderated this, get a grip on yourself.
that being said, I really do not see such a thing happen, for multiple reasons.
a): peoples computers 'work just fine now' - for as far as people know and care
b): a mac just doesn't cut it for gaming. imho, it's a better idea to buy a PS2 or whatever anyway, but people like gaming.
And if it is, it will have to be a huge, no enormous change of mindshare for apple.
As soon as the Mac Mini starts shipping with 10.4
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
I'd stuck it out with Linux since making the trek to my University with a bag full of floppies and downloading Slackware 0.97 or something like that, years and years ago. I trashed Windows to install a real operating system and scoffed at the Mac.
... oh ... 10 years in front of Gnome and 5 years ahead of KDE.
But recently, I got tired of Linux. The endless quest for a better desktop or a more compatible distribution. You've just upgraded? Congratulations, now go and recompile all your multi-media apps (like DVD playing). Want to plug in a device that's been on the market for a couple of years but no one in kernel land has? Good luck and plug it into your partner's mac to use instead.
For me the final straw was buying a G4 iPod, and deliberately setting up a Windows machine so that I could make sure it was formatted VFAT rather than HFS so that it would definitely be able to be used with my Linux system. And viola, it too didn't work! So, goodbye Linux, hello Mac. Sold my Linux custom-built workstation for $500 AU, bought an eMac, and have never looked back. I'm more productive, significantly more compatible with any device I want to buy and the interface is about
I still use Linux, I think it's a great server platform, but for the desktop, nah. I'm even going to be buying myself a bright shiny new 17" PowerBook soon out of my own money rather than continue to use Linux as my laptop OS for work.
Mac OS X - what Linux could have been, and what Solaris should have been.
I'm not paranoid - everyone really is out to get me.
That's why I have a Gamecube.
I hear PC gamers fretting all the time about whether their graphics cards are up to snuff, whether they're going to be able to run the hot new game coming out in two weeks... I never have to worry about any of that. My computer can't run any games at all (except World of Warcraft, which I don't really want), but I know I can go down to walmart and there's more games there than I've got money to buy or time to play, and all I have to do is put a disc in a machine and switch it on. I don't even have to sign off AIM or Skype.
Okay, if your conception of "games" is "first person shooters" then the PC is where it's at and what I'm saying is worthless, but as far as I'm concerned, my lifetime needs as far as first person shooters go was sated completely in 1998. And if first person shooters aren't your thing then commercial PC gaming probably isn't going to do much at all for you right now. There's some interesting stuff coming out of the PC shareware game community, but when was the last commercial PC gaming got a game like Katamari Damacy, or Wario Ware? There was a time in the past where the pc games lineup made being a mac user a bit depressing but at this point, pc gaming seems like it wouldn't be worth the bother even if my computer could run it. I've got all the games I want and then some.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I first feel in love with iTunes, bought an iPod. In the same token, I really want to move away from Windows because I don't feel secure running it and the cost of ownership is high. If you consider the price of anti-virus software and the cost of x86 pc to run XP it adds up. You can have equal performance running linux on half the computer power (more or less). Because I'm considering it for home use and share it with my girlfriend I need something more user friendly so I'll have a mac in my home soon.
I switched 3 weeks ago and have been very, very happy
I added a 12" PowerBook in addition to my Athlon desktop last month, and I'll tell you why I did, and why I am glad I did
This laptop will probably convince me to buy a Mac desktop next. I keep trying to use Quicksilver on my Windows machine. I keep wishing the software I had on my Mac were available on my PC.
Yes, my iPod helped me become more comfortable with the Apple brand name before I bought my PowerBook. I used an old PowerBook at work before, and that got me hooked too.
I bought the laptop right before I left for the Middle East (Qatar to be specific) and wanted it to store images on. It cost a little bit more than a new, larger memory card. But it's been very, very worth it
Bought an iPod last year and got a powerbook 12" about 4 months after. I have to say that for a linux power-user, it's a great OS.
I didn't get a Mac because of the iPod either. It was the $599 Mac mini that got me. I already had the keyboard, mouse, and display from my Windows box. It was an easy decision to make.
I notice that this article mentions that the Mac mini was released too soon to have a sales impact. It will be very interesting to see how much it has an effect.
I switched without the iPod (I have a Zen). I just bought a PowerBook and I LOVE it. My profs all seemed to be Apple freaks, so I made the blind jump and I couldn't be happier. I'll give my experience & advice if anyone's curious....
I have wanted a mac for about 3 years now but $2000 for a "decent" configuration always put me off. I looked at the eMac product for a while but the clunky CRT and "all-in-oneness" of it always put me off.
I ordered my Mac Mini with a superdrive and 512MB and am perfectly happy with it. Total cost was under $800. It is (almost) the perfect family computer.
I've already switched to a mac, but unfortunately I don't have an ipod yet.
I have had a number of friends that have ipods tell me they want to get a mac because they love their ipods so much.
I think that the ipod gets people interested in Apple who would never have considered a mac before.
I decided to make the switch after the cube came out..
I was seriously considering making my next home computer a mac mini, and then I got a hold of an older iMac temporary to try OS X out. 3 things really bothered me though:
1) I can't turn off the damned weird mouse acceleration that OS X uses. I use a trackball, and like to have the mouse speed very high, but the accel. algo used in OS X drives me insane when you move the pointer slowly. I've tried all the settings I could find, up to installing MS IntelliPoint drivers, no luck...
2) I can't easily/freeely change the stupid mouse pointer..
3) I really, really miss having a tree view of folders, with files listed on the right. I deeply nest my files (for logical organization, etc.) In other respects, I like the finder.
Call me a Windows weenee, etc. But not having these available really slows my productivity.
Otherwise, have been very impressed with OS X, especially how well it performs on older hardware.
P.S. Picasa kicks iPhoto's ass, sorry.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
After all, Linux is such a huge bastion of gaming, and NOBODY uses that operating system!
More people play console games than PC games. That's where gaming is going.
Okay, now you brits have just taken this whole, "Mangling the language" thing to a new low. Honoust? Seriously. Come on.
I'm not an iPod user but I decided to replace an old Win98 machine that I used for mainly for photos with a Mac Mini. Even tho there are a few gotchas, I'm pretty happy so far. I've been learning to use the Gimp to replace Photoshop and so far I've been able to do everything I could before. 'course I'm no graphix artist... Besides that I use it for the web and email (Firefox and Thunderbird) and some office apps (NeoOffice/J). Eclipse works fine too. The only thing I really miss is Freecell. Have to move over to my Linux box for that, oh well, can't have everything.
Well to be honoust: Since I bought my Gamecube and Xbox, I only use them for gaming. Except for iTunes I never boot to windows anymore. So a mac would be the perfect solution to this. And I really think I'm not the only one.
Perfect solution to a problem that doesn't exist. You can already run iTunes, why blow more $$$, unless you just need to feel like you have the "complete set", or are even trendier than everyone else with an iPod?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I bought an iPod and iTunes aside (I prefer using Xplay because much of my music is already in a directory structure) I love Apple. I'm hoping to buy a laptop before I go abroad next fall and, cash permitting, its defintely going to be an iBook or Powerbook. The look and feel of OS X is great and then the Unix underpinnings mean a lot of the stuff I learned about Linux and other Unix-y systems will come in handy and there's a veritable bonanza of software on Freshmeat and the traditional Mac shareware developers.
I have a lot of experience with Macs at my work and I enjoy them greatly. The idea of dragging a kludgy Windows laptop across the Pacific has no appeal to me; if I can't get an Apple laptop, I'm not taking a computer.
Tiger is only making the pot sweeter; there are a few simple Windows apps (dictionaries and the like) I depend on, but I think they can pretty easily be rewritten for Dashboard.
In short, I can't wait to jump ship.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
I've already switched, and actually, it was a month before I got an iPod (a 1GB shuffle as a birthday present).
Granted, I never was a big Windows fan, I simply used it because I dealt with it so much at work (tends to happen when you write Windows apps and admin the boxes). I never really had any particular beef with Windows as of NT 5 -- they're pretty trouble free, but I was pretty used to Linux and BSD. I sort of had most of my earlier computing experiences with VMS anyhow.
I got my Mini a month ago, and switched most stuff over within the week. As of now, the only thing I boot XP for are games, and Money (going to take another stab at Quicken in a month or so). Moving my Firefox and Thunderbird profiles over were cake, and I bought apps like Transmit, Office, and The Missing Sync to fill the gaps that iLife and the software bundle didn't cover.
I've sort of been sucked into the cult though, now sporting the bluetooth keyboard/mouse, iSight, and a 23" HD Cinema display. Yet I'm very happy despite a credit card balance. It's quiet, lots more desk space, lower power bill ($7/mo, I kid you not!) and I can always terminal service into XP, or just switch for a game of Counter-Strike: Source. When they lowered the price barrier with the Mini, there was no turning back.
Hehe, he said penetration!
I'm on a buildup to purchasing a new G5. There are several reasons for this, but a lot of it has to do with Mac OS X. Of course, it is fairly well known that OS X offers a pretty good "user experience," but in looking at the upcoming Tiger stuff, I'm just blown away at how refined it's getting.
I plan to use my G5 for video capture/editing, DVD authoring, digital image manipulation using Photoshop, and professional audio/music production,as well as for general use (email, web browsing, etc.). I'll still keep a PC for games and those few applications where the PC is still king. A GNU/linux box for Oracle and an OpenBSD box for infrastructure and I'll be all set.
What a nice time we live in, as far as computing options go....
hmmm...I use my Macs for making video games. Does that count?
Jory
After finally making the plunge last year to buy a Mac, I found myself giving more and more consideration to getting an ipod (something I'd previously wrote off as being overpriced, and unneccesary).
A year later, my ipod's with me daily, and serves up more than just music, via the amazing Pod2Go software. The only regret I have is not taking the plunge earlier than I did!
I went from hours and hours of tweaking, and modding my systems to behave in a somewhat intelligent manner, to just having a computer work the way I want it to. Someone in a different thread once put it best: "If I want to tweak and play, I can do so, but when I need to knuckle down and do real work, it just works, no tweaking needed". I couldn't have said it better myself.
Linux for me, Mac for wife/kids,,,
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I have 3 machines that I use, a PC with WIN XP, a PC with LINUX SUSE 9.1, and a laptop running FC3. And will be adding a MACmini. I've been a MAC user since day 1 back in 1984. Just gave my Imac to my brother in anticipation of getting a Mac mini.
So why can't you have all 3. or am I a heritic????
__________ Leave me alone I'm compiling a RPG II program on my S/36...Thanks to metamucil I'm a Regular Meta Moderator
PC user waits 3 years for new game to come out only to be disappointed. Mac user waits 3 1/2 years for new game to come out only to be disappointed. Whats the diff. the game market is suffering from Microsoft syndrome--Its become so large all its energy is consumed sustaining itself and can no longer grow and innovate. The big companies cant do anything but rehash the same old titles while abusing there employees to make an extra buck. Meanwhile small companies that can innovate can't reach the market any more without a million dollar PR budget.
Too bad there's no WMV9 codec for non-Windows machines yet (macs and/or linux and that's free and OSS). (yea...I hate wmv9 too but a majority of the anime raws I get are in wmv9 [avi or wmv]).
If there was, I'd buy a mac....but toss the OS out for a refund. I like Debian with a touch of KDE.
I bought an Mac Mini and an iPod, but I haven't "switched" per se. At the time I bought the Mini, I also bought a Dell for my parents. One of the things I liked about the Mac was it wasn't flooded with all sorts of "crap". I didn't have to remove a dozen or so software packages that were included (i.e. AOL, Netscape, dozens of trial and crippleware packages.)
The Mac just started up, and worked. Things couldn't have been easier. In fact after a month I was wishing I had bought the Mac for my parents.
OS X is a lot more than Darwin. Quartz? Aqua? The iLife suite?
I had used Macs, PCs, Windows, Linux, etc. plenty throughout the 90's. Started programming in QBasic on a 286, now now do a combo of PHP/Perl/Bash/Java/C/etc. depending on the need. My main target platform is the web, and the LAMP combo is simple/cost effective/solid enough that it just made sense. When it came time to needing portability, I wanted a desktop replacement capable machine, but I knew that to be as efficient as possible, I needed the server platform on the desktop, so I needed a Unix machine.
:)
What other Unix-based laptop comes with even 1/10th the polish and completeness of a Mac? This makes a Mac a no-brainer purchase for anyone needing both portability and a Unix environment for writing LAMP-based web apps. I wonder how many others were in a similar scenario and switched because of it? LAMP may be benefiting Apple more than people would think.
Now I'm slowly replacing all the machines in the office with Macs. I've got a 667 TiBook, 20" G5 iMac, and a new 1.5 Mac Mini too. They're all awesome machines. The only machine left that's non-Mac is a Linux server, and that's only to offer an alternative test platform, and to run MSIE 6 via Wine through remote X sessions from our Macs. Just this week I gave away the only Windows machine we had. It felt great.
You know, us switchers sure love to talk about out it!
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
I can get Halo on my iPod? Sweet!
For the VERY longest time I hated and raged against macs, then I start using them for video editing in college. I saw how nice the G5's handled video and decided tht with my graduation money I would buy a dual 2ghz G5. It was a great investment, even thought i was very leery at first. It love it now, and won't go back to windows. I just bought an Ipod 2 weeks ago, so I guess you coudl say I went in the reverse order.
I'm a student in a field of physics heavily dependent upon clustered computing (going to graduate school in high energy theory, I've worked on two previous computational research projects developing parallel C code), so I don't really "see" myself as being able to give up my linux box for real development projects.
That being said, this summer I'm planning on buying (building if I go the PC route) a new computer for graduate school, and I'd love for it to be an iMac G5. But will I feasibly be able to use it without having a variant of linux installed? All the commerical apps I need (Mathematica, MATLAB) have Mac versions, but what about things like LaTex, emacs, gcc... things I use on a daily basis?... are there ports? Can you merely run these from the terminal like you would on any ordinary BSD or linux box?
And if you can, is it easier to just use linux?
(BTW... I own a 20 gig iPod, and aside from the massive headaches getting it to play nice with Slackware, I love it!)
It might be worth paying for. But "free" has nothing to do with price. Free software means to have full access to the source and the ability to use, modify, distribute, etc that software.
Just getting people into an Apple store, be it to see an iPod or not, is often enough to make them want to switch. When I wanted to see the iPod Shuffle and Mac mini, I took my wife with me to the Apple store and she fell in love with OS X while we were there. She doesn't want a computer for gaming; she only needs web browsing, email, text-editing, iPod management, and basic digital photo editing abilities. Currently, she's doing this on a WinME desktop and WinXP laptop (she had them both before we got married, don't blame me). After about 10 minutes exploring OS X while I waited to play with the only iPod Shuffle in the store, she decided that our next computer will be a Mac. She'll get no protest from me; I love using my linux boxes and will keep using it but certainly won't mind adding a Mac to my collection.
Here come the apple fanboys logging into their other accounts claiming they are going to "switch" because of the ipod, or blabing on about how insainly great the small apple branded pc and the apple BSD.. I mean OSX are.
But then again, if this the same was happening for microsoft we would be hearing about how all these posters must be "M$"(OMG M$$!!lolo!11!) astroturfers.
I was a happy iPod owner for around a year.
I got a Mac Mini last week, and from my experiences so far - I'll never go back to Windows on my personal computer.
I love that apple hardware and so bought a G4 and recently for my 16year old daughter. However we both found the UI really confusing, as we were used to Suse Linux. We're not very confident computer users, and thought the OSX looked a little more suited to experienced users than Suse Linux.
When they came out with a Suse port for the Mac we didn't waste a beat and installed it - everything just worked (ok except connecting to AirportExtreme networks!) This for us was the perfect setup, great hardware and industrial design with a sensible and productive desktop. Kelly uses it for all her schoolwork and multimedia. Since several of my workmates have done the same.
Once a linux user, always a linux user I guess -but count us in as switchers!!
I've been thinking of getting myself a mac for ages, but after the mini came to the market it's a bit easier for me to do the switch due to it's low cost. Never had or have any plans of buying an ipod, but i think the ipod has put apple on the map for the average joe.
Bits of News Giving you the latest bits.
Bought an iPod July 2003. Bought an iMac February 2004. Bought two more iPods. Buying a Powerbook any week now.
So yes, it works.
--- witty signature
well...considering macs wont support my PC formatted ipod entirely...i doubt i'll switch any time soon. however, getting a mini as a 4th computer is a valid option, but its very far down my priority list (ibm X41 laptop being at top)
And what was I doing writing a book about an 'escapist fantasy' writer like Tolkien. What came over me. Shame on me!
Then again, reading The Lord of the Rings does encourage just the sort of patient, methodical thinking that our TV remote controls discourage. We have to stick to his tale to the very end or we get nothing out of it.
--Mike Perry, Seattle, Untangling Tolkien
All this suggests the question ... how many iPod-touting Slashdotters are thinking of switching?"
/. about Apple, they are perfect, no one wants anything more, everything works flawless everytime, the processors are fast, the value is good and it just works. Well, I am not a typical computer dumb consumer. I need to see some real facts and here about real issues, not watered down rough comparisons of the platforms that include nothing but opinions from people who like to defend the product themselves (like everything I stated above that I've already heard). I have no problem getting my Win9x-WXP machine "just working", I can already figure out and have no problems using my non iPod mp3 player without a scroll wheel and am happy with it. I am not confused with the buttons on it like others claim for anything but the iPod. What are the technical advantages of Apple of commodity PC for someone is already a nerd and/or geek? Let's be realistic, there are millions of cell phones in use today and not a single one made by Apple, the first thing the Apple /. bandwagon would state if Apple made a cell phone is that it is so easy to use and outstanding feel, love to carry it in my pocket, I've been so depressed for the last 10 years waiting for something this to come around and blah blah non technical blah. I am already a geek and/or nerd, I want specifics and an honest opinion of the product, not your feelings on Apple in general!
I do not have an iPod but anyway..
I would like to hear some honest opinions of Apple computers but I can tell you slashdot is not the place where it can happen. According to what I've read on
Posted AC because of instead of getting honest feedback and replies, it will be sent into -1 as a troll.
Why make the investment on a Mac? Granted they may be more secure but can I run my tax software on it? Can I run my office applications? Can play a few commercial video games? Will I be able to VPN to the office and back again?
If I can do all of the above I have not lost any functionality. Again I ask those who may know. (I have never touched a Mac) Why make the move?
Any body who has made the move how was the transition? Any regrets?
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Quote: "... how many iPod-touting Slashdotters are thinking of switching?"
Switching? I _added_ a PowerBook to my collection mostly for testing. I wouldn't call that switching. Oh, and I don't have an iPod.
First, if a game is decent, chances are, it exists for the Mac. Nearly all major games (Warcraft (I-WoW), Call to Duty, NWN, SW KotOR, Sims, etc.) have Mac versions that equal their Windows counterparts (not emulation). Second, who is running away from Linux because of the lack of games?
In all fairness to people buying these computers, it is about user experience. If the Macintosh delivers a better user experience, people will switch. The halo effect of the iPod is to show people what a well-designed machine feels like. Since (IMHO) the Macintosh has a much better experience, along with all of the accoutrements of a *nix under the hood, I had very little heartburn over switching.
Incidentally, the main use of my Mac is collision modelling in FORTRAN. Thank goodness for gfortran. The POSIX-compliant version is much more stable than its Windows counterpart and neither it nor g95 require MinGW on Darwin (obviously).
Finally, Darwin has the ability to compile the *nix OSS that we have all come to love. I keep a recent build of Apple's X11 on my machine and have yet to run into a tgz that didn't compile cleanly or with minimum tweaking. For those who love their OSS but don't like to work their own code, there are a couple decent package managers for the Mac as well (i-Installer, Fink, etc).
I'll probably buy a laptop, but I will be getting my gf a macMini. She thinks it is so cute and really, does she need anything more then that(web, typing, and email)? No, and I'm tired of always having to fix her PC and stuff like that.
I love Linux, but damnit, sometimes I don't want to have to tinker to get things to work. Don't take that as a flame - that's a hard for me to say since I've been pimping the penguin for 10 years now.
But not for ipod, but because of Mac OS X.
I won't believe it until I hear it from Netcraft.
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
love it.
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. - Rene Descartes (1637)
They always have an axe to grind.
I got a mac mini a while back to play with. But I don't really use it all that much. It's fun to have a play with but I can't imagine ever using it instead of my pc for anything 'real'.
I have a Mac and an iPod. I like them both. They're not perfect. Particularly the iPod: it has difficulties with tactile feedback and is VERY hard to use in the car without taking your eyes off the road, which is a bummer. But I do like them and they both have personality.
In fact, Apple has proven it has such a great ability to design cool stuff and market it well (the reality distortion field) that I think they should go one step further. I think they should go somewhere they've never gone before.
I think Apple needs to make a cell phone.
Think about it: there are zillions of different little portable music players out there, and they all do pretty much the same thing. But everyone wants an iPod. Partly this is because of the name: if people want a portable music player and they don't care to spend much time comparing models, they know they can go get an iPod and it will do what they want, and people they've known who've had one have been happy with it. But partly it's also just because people the thing looks cool and is just a cool little gadget overall.
Imagine cell phones made in Apple's trendy, minimalist white plastic look (like the white iPods), or in any number of other cool styles Apple has done in the past. Also think about how many cell phones are sold. Huge, huge numbers. Also, think about how clunky and stupid the GUI is on most cell phones, and imagine what would happen if Apple applied their GUI knowledge to that.
I have an iPod and would not consider switching until a) the hardware costs of an Apple come down and b) they do something about 3rd party hardware. These items are key.
There is great joy for me in running down to the computer store, buying some new hardware and putting it together into a nice, beefy Linux box. Having a selection of products from different competitors that are adequately benchmarked and significantly improved from the 'old' model is exactly what makes me want a computer.
The idea that someone has taken all of the guesswork out of it and put together a box that I am just supposed to use is boring.
M
and the low-low price of the Mini (even after necessary upgrades) is the reason why I'm spending my tax return on a Mac.
1) My VPN software for work is available for Mac
2) Native X windows(so I can get to my work boxen)
3) OUTLOOK EXCHANGE SERVER GOODNESS! I need my mail, I need my calendars, and I need the shared folders.
My latest failed attempt at re-installing winders (after ot totally borked) on my laptop convinced me.
MAC's also got Quicken* (although some financial institutions will only do auto-download for Winders boxes... Vanguard?) and if you don't have a big back-log of quicken data (I don't, I just got it) you can port it over with a bit of fuss.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Open OS. Very open OS in fact.
Closed desktop environment.
Let me translate that from zealot-speak to truth: The part of the OS that dedicated hobbyists/sysadmins have been using for decades is open but the part that everyone else uses isn't.
Couple things.
1) I like Linux.
2) I like the Mac.
3) I mostly use Windows, (work and home).
If Mac catches up and passes (back) Linux it only proves what I have been thinking for a while now - and that is - If somebody does not do something interesting in the Linux GUI/desktop space Linux will never catch on (with the masses).
Considering all the things Linux has going for it - mainly, it runs on PC hardware and is free, there is almost no excuse.
All KDE/GNOME has to do is try something new - something cool - anything - do something creative!!! do something cool!!! I mean I know GNOME had a project render the desktop with vector graphics, I mean - do that!...
But, I a feel I am only typing to hear myself type .
I made the switch a year and a half ago when I needed to pick a laptop that I could write effective code with and still be able to read file formats that the rest of the world reads, such as Word and Excel. There's really only one option. ...and cue the replies offering the "one option" that is not a Mac. There, I preempted them.
It got modded down because the rabid Apple fanboys don't like hearing about how much more it can cost for someone to switch.
And since I know they are going to reply, notice I said CAN. For some it can be more expensive(switching over and keeping compatibility with MS Office, some priority application, getting the hardware configuration you really want, etc) and others it might not.
Basically, this means Apple is dying.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
When did RMS get an account on /.? Although, I must admit, the username is appropriately chosen.
To clear up your obvious confusion, please read the GNU group's distinction then ask yourself, do you really think the poster meant free software as in software that doesn't cost anything or free software as in software that gives you freedoms.
The distinction is important and you cavalierly mix Open Source with Free Software. Bad, bad, bad.
What is missing from the Mac Internet software lineup to hold it down to the level of "respectable"?
:)
.NET framework for websites that make use of it (such as lots of corporate ASP.NET sites), that will probably never be available for the Mac. Like I said, it's not Apple's fault - but the fact remains.
Man, doesn't take much to get eaten alive by the Mac crowd, does it?
The one thing that's keeping me from giving the poll of available Mac Internet software a five-star rating is the lack of Internet Explorer 6. This isn't because I consider IE 6 to be a superior browser, but because it is quite simply the web browsing standard, and it isn't available for the Mac. This isn't Apple's fault, of course. On a Mac, the best alternatives you have would be Firefox or Safari. Even so, there is all sorts of functionality specific to IE 6, as well as the
The coolest voice ever.
I don't like that iTunes lets me customize pretty much nothing compared to Winamp or Foobar2000. I love BSplayer for video because I can customize _everything_. I have twenty Firefox extensions for more and faster control as I browse. For OSX, how available are free third-party apps that let me customize it when I think differently from Apple?
As for the price difference, the laptops are very competitively priced FOR THE QUALITY OF WHAT YOU GET. Sure, there is no cheap piece-of-crap-but-it-works Apple laptop equivalent to the Office Depot Compaq special you read about in slickdeals, but we're talking internal slot-loading dvd/cdrw or dvd burners in a 12" laptop. Find me a reasonably priced Dell or Sony with those specs. And there's no comment on the Mac mini, its price competition is obvious enough.
All that said, it's all about OS X for me. I think OS X is the best desktop OS ever. I'm on my first Mac (an original 12" powerbook), I've had it for over two years, reloaded it once, and this is by far the most reliable and most consistent operating environment I've ever used.
...my next computer will probably be a Mac. I'm currently a Thinkpad user, but they're probably going away, at least as we know them. I'm sick of Windows. Just keeping it updated and working is a PITA. Networking sucks -- I have to reboot the machine to get it to release an IP address, etc., and that takes ten minutes. Programs leave crud all over the drive. You can't tell where your data is, etc., and searching the filesystem is slow and clunky. Command line ability is limited.
I like Linux. In fact I use it a lot, usually from a live CD these days. But I have to interact with the rest of the Office-using world (esp. Excel and Access), so that's probably out. Plus there are all kinds of hardware issues to be sorted out running Linux on laptops. There's always something that doesn't work, or is inconvenient to use, or requires tweaking, etc. I don't want to tweak, configure, spend time learning about work-arounds, etc. I just want to work. Some people get off on playing amateur sysadmin. The rest of us have real work to do.
I can solve all these problems in one fell swoop with a Mac. Recently I was talking to a friend about her new Mac. She loves it because, "It just fucking works."
I'm sure most /. readers can relate: I'm the tech support guy for the entire family. I just helped my sister buy a Mac Mini because I just can't in good faith tell my family to buy Windows any more due to the rampant security issues. That, and I'm tired of cleaning spyware off of their computers everytime I visit.
In the interest of preventing useless flames:It's my first foray into the Mac world, so we'll see how it goes.
Can you point to any important research publications by Apple researchers in the last few years? I haven't seen any.
Sure, they're all located here
It is truly amazing to me how many people equate the PC with Microsoft. People, come on! Using a PC does *not* mean you have to use Microsoft products. You do not need a Mac to escape Microsoft. All you need is broadband, Or, if you go with Ubuntu Linux (my prefered choice) all you need is a mailing address. They will ship you a quantity of installation and liveCDs at no charge, they even pay the shipping. I'd like to see apple try to beat the price on that!
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
The iPod isn't the only Apple product with a halo effect. It's just has the biggest one. About a year ago I was in the market for a new laptop. Having been a *n?x user for years I'd been wanting to give OS X a try. So I purchased my first Apple product, an iBook G4. I was blown away at the quality, power and ease of use of both of the hardware and the OS. I've since purchased iPod's for both of my children. Between the three of us we've spent a small fortune at the iTMS. I've purchased a Mac Mini for the children and will be getting a new Power Book for myself later this year. In addition I am very close to getting a couple of friends to switch. This is all within less than a year of getting the iBook.
I got an iMac G5 20" last month and I am absolutely loving it. I do my coding at work, I want to turn on my computer, surf, do a little photo and music work at home. The iMac is great for that. And my wife hated our pc, she loves the mac. I used linux for a while but I got tired of having to spend hours recompiling software for smoother fonts etc. I'm getting old and tired of hacking at my computer, I want to turn it on, compute and thats it. If I want to game, I have my PS2. I loved the iMac and iTunes so much I just got an iPod shuffle. Great, simple piece of equipment. The wife wants one too. I guess the word is simplicity, with power still available. I'm not going back...
Only the good games that people actually want to play come out for Mac. The other pieces of shit games that come out for the PC aren't worth the time to port to Mac.
Yeah. What an insult to Mac gamers, there. Have fun with Extreme Paintbrawl and the rest of the shit-ass Windows games.
Well, I'd consider it for a fun home machine, but Macs are still pretty useless in most business environments. Poor hardware support (no serial or parallel port), and many, many fewer customer business apps make it impossible for me to consider switching my business. Also, I'm not really a fan of hardware lock-in. They're cute and fun, but not nearly as functional as a boring, generic PC if you're doing almost anything other than web browsing and writing email. Also, the upgrade cycle is insane. I'm simply not buying a new OS every 6 months just to maintain compatibility with current versions of software. My copes of Windows 2000 are still 100% compatible with all of my software, and probably will be for a long, long time, especially if I install the bolt-on .Net stuff.
I don't respond to AC's.
...is that you?
The mac mini is obsolete.
Your point of view is obsolete.
I mean that semi-facetiously, so don't call me a troll. But five years ago, I hardly saw any Mac notebooks around. Now I'm seeing a large number of iBooks and, to a lesser extent, PowerBooks in local coffeeshops and so on. I'd estimate that 20-25% of all notebooks I see are now Macs. This is a huge jump.
It seems kind of unfair to reference Ms. Rosen up front as being "quite attractive," just because she has a nice portrait of herself next to her quite well-written article. You must know that as a result, many /.'ers are going to click over there to scope her out...while ignoring the article entirely.
...
It strikes me that there's a bit of gender bias lurking here--I mean, do you see people referencing the "devastatingly handsome" John C. Dvorak or the "toe-curlingly sexy" Robert X. Cringely?
Oh. Right. Sorry.
j
Anyone that uses their PC seriously for work or gaming isn't going to switch because of an iPod or iTunes. I stick with Windows because it runs all the apps I need to do my media work and all the games I love to play.
OK, here's a link to an old post I made, which comments point by point on the reasons that apple gives for users to switch to Mac computers. I know I'll get modded down for this (isn't it great to say this?), but here it goes:
= 11517342
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137713&cid
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I've used a friends iBook off and on for a numbers of days. It has a great feel to it, and it seems fairly fast, and it's light weight. It fits my simple laptop needs, which is mostly just having WiFi, and being able to let me surf+Write. Plus, the OS is built on Unix and I can get a command prompt easily, and it is sort of nice looking.
So I'm a bit tempted to switch over. The lack of a right mouse button on the iBook itself is sort of stopping me. Along with the fact that if I really looked around, I could probably find a sturdy and lightweight PC laptop in near the same form factor, that would end up going for a cheaper price, and I could just put Linux on it.
Whatever happens, I have to let my HP Omnibook continue to die it's slow death first.
http://thepoliticalgeek.com/blog/ Politics for Geeks.
All this suggests the question ... how many iPod-touting Slashdotters are thinking of switching?
Switching? Slashdotters don't switch hardware. We aggregate and incorporate. Why would I ever dispose of anything that could generate a couple more SETI@home points per month, while also filling in as my firewall, e-mail, and/or MAME and streaming media server? And that's just my 8088! You hipsters with your disposable hardware. Makes me sick.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Darwin maintains BSD compatibility but impliments a number of different approachs to core systems. For instance, the driver subsystem in Darwin is IOKit, an object-oriented system that allows for dynamic loading and unloading of device drivers (indeed, whole classes of drivers). BSD currently lacks this ability. Try coding a new driver for BSD and you will find yourself re-coding whole sections of pre-existant code that must then be loaded into the kernel side-by-side, increasing memory usage unnecessarily.
Consider as well that Darwin is not a pure microkernel system. A number of subsystems are loaded into Mach, which allows for faster communication between the components.
I would not claim that one system is arbitrarily better than the other but to claim that they are the same is pure garbage. You appear to just be quoting some equally uninformed /. poster.
An Apple store opened in my town last Friday - part of a large outdoor mall. The entire mall opened Friday, in fact, so it was quite busy with the sight-see-ers. Out of perhaps 50 stores, only two had lines to get in - Cheesecake Factory restaurant of perhaps 70 people in line, and the Apple store with about 40. True, they were giving away a t-shirt, but other stores were as well. I have a newish Powerbook and an oldist Power mac, but even I'm not die-hard enough to stand in a long line just to get into the store - uh-oh, maybe I shouldn't have said this in public, I might get thrown out of the brotherhood!!!
I guess the biggest change for me has been a decline in how much I game. The less I game the less I'm booting into Win at home. And on the lappy I don't plan to do much gaming at all.
In any case I love the powerbook. The iLife suite is quite nice, and I appreciate the integration. Plus I'm a sucker for things that just are nice to look at. And the Mac is definitely that. And of course there's the cli, Fink, etc. etc.
People often say that about IE -- they must hit a lot more flashy sites than I do, as I've never noticed anything suffering in a Mac browser besides the Outlook web interface.
.NET framework. My company, for example, runs six web applications that require this - they're COM+/ASP/.NET dealies for which there exists absolutely no way to access from a Mac. This is a mortgage company, so we have lots of people wanting to access these sites from home. The percentage of potential Mac switchers that also have such requirements may not be overwhelmingly huge, but it will be significant.
I'm not talking about superficial site appearance, though - I'm talking about substantial functionality that depends on the presence of the
The coolest voice ever.
All of the high end macs were solid hardware, Quadras, 8500's, 7500's, 9500's 9600's. I still have an 8500 working wonderfully. Not to mention my PowerComputing clone. Yes, the Performa 6400, 6500 and others sucked.
Thanks for the warning, but Michael "oh boy am I a suit!" Hyatt has got me interested and mentions a few of the things I want.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Featured Games on the Mac: Maya Personal Learning Edition Pocket Tanks realMYST Sheep Universal Hint System ToySight Granted, this is only a small part, but were they really necessary on the list?
Derive Politics
I was in the market for a new laptop earlier this year, and I opted for an iBook G4 instead of the generic Dell. Part of that decision was definitely due to how much I enjoy my iPod, and iTunes is a big part of that. Another part of that arose from struggling with a couple of Windows boxes at the time we were making the decision. The final straw was that for equivalent specs, the list prices was not significantly different, unless I caught a special at Dell, I would have paid only $50 more for the iBook than a similarly configured Dell. The last factor was that I was also looking at the Mac Mini, to get my feet wet with OSX. Since, I still have my XP desktop, I don't count that as swtiching, just adding another box to the mix.
So far, things I really like: battery life, great Airport range, a beautiful screen, it's unix inside (bash, gcc, etc.. work out of the box), iLife '05, iWork '05.
Things I like less: speed (the system doesn't feel slow, but it's no speed demon on floating point math), the keyboard key positions (but that's true of most laptops) and yes, the single button touchpad.
I'm also still seriously considering adding a Mac Mini to the mix a bit later in the year as to replace the desktop as the "always on" box, relegating the Dell to only tasks where high speed is required (e.g. DVD mastering) but will wait until later in the year when Tiger is here.
B1 - not nearly the number of games for Macs as windows. But, much more games for Macs than Linux.
2 - Open source kernel, closed source gui. But, they took care of all the things that open source programers hate to do (printer drivers and printer infrastructure for example)
3 - Mac mini is cheap, its a decent machine, and I already have a monitor, but it they just upgraded the video card a little then I could use it with the 30" monitor if I decide to get one one-day
4 - Always add $100-$200 to the cost of any machine to upgrade ram to a reasonable amount
5 - Next month, its expected that their new OS (Tiger) will come out. It comes with X-Code 2.0 (their developement IDE), so your going to probably want the upgrade. If you wait till then you can save yourself $130.
6 - Instead of a mac-mini, I could get a 12" iBook which has DVI out and I can use it as a portable DVD player as well. If, down the line I get some sort of a Tivo-like device that allows me to offload my shows onto it, then its also my portible TV w/out commercials. And, of course, I could also read files/etc on the go with a pretty portable device. Can also use it as an MP3 player, and my portable HD.
7 - If they release a dual-core processor based iMac, macMini or iBook soon, I think I'd have to buy it in a heartbeat.
Can you point to any important research publications by Apple researchers in the last few years? I haven't seen any.
.4, .5...
Yes: It's called OSX 10.3,
The simple fact is that Apple R&D seems to be going into helping users. For instance, coming out in Tiger we actually have what WinFS was trying to accomplish in Spotlight. Not just the searching abilities, but also the searching API that developers could hook document creation into which was so important to WinFS.
So look at the Tiger design docs and say Apple has no R&D publications. They just happen to be practical and technically oriented. After all, a company the size of Apple can't afford to throw billions a year into a hole with nothing real to show from it like you have with MS.
As I've said before, Microsoft R&D is just a way to make sure there are a lot of smart people not producing things for other companies. It's basically a cushy prision for people Microsoft fears being in the wrong hands.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1) Got job with YDL
2) Got ipod
3) God Powerbook (Running YDL)
I haven't switched to OSX, and probably never will.
no comment
I work in "business" and the last time i used a serial or parallel port for something work related was when i needed to get into a unix box that didn't have a display and wasn't booting... serialled in and tweaked the prom settings.
Why would you need one... it's a serious question.
My system has usb mouse/keyboard and a built in smart card reader for my id badge. Everything else like printing is done over the network.
I agree with your skepticism of the 20% number, but people do not only buy computers for games. If they did, Intel would not be the larges graphics chipset maker (as their graphics chips suck for games).
I think Apple's share will grow, but the 20% number is pretty optimistic unless they bring out a PowerBook with a bus faster than my Athlon had in 1999.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I bought a mac when the mini came out. It gives me the chance to try a Mac and not have to spend a ton of cash + run something new. I have wanted to try the Mac since OSX came out.
:). My decisions were in no way influenced by IPod.
I really like it so far. I am honestly thinking of buying a nicer Mac and switching completly. I think everyone has covered the reasons OSX is nice to use so I wont rehash. But major factors for me were my work VPN software is compatible, Lotus Notes, Terminal Server client, native X to remote dispaly all my unix apps, and the major games titles I play are available on Mac. Heck if my mini could run WoW good enough (which it don't) I would probably not boot my linux box OR my Windows box again
The simplt fact is that msot people do not really have that much "invested" in software. After all lots of it becomes unusable after a few years anyway, and lots of people also do not even buy half the software they have installed.
When I moved from the PC to the Mac there was really not that much I had to spend to change over softwrae, since a lot of stuff I was using was already free or has cross-licencing (like Adobe Photoshop, yes you can transfer the licence to a Mac for free).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's not saying much for the Mac.
Meh.
I believe the top market share the Apple II ever achieved was around 16%.
- I own an Ipod and will be buying a Mac
- I own an Ipod and will not buy a Mac
- I do not own an Ipod and will not buy a Mac
- I do not own and Ipod and will buy a Mac
- I own and Ipod and own a Mac
- I own Apple stock will buy everything Apple
- I own Micro$oft stock and will never buy anything Apple
- fsck Apple
I bought myself an iPod for Xmas, and was determined to get a Mac Mini when they came out, but I changed my mind and decided to get something I actually needed. So I got an iBook instead.
.NET). In the last two months I've spend nearly $1800 on Apple, and it'll be $120 more when Tiger comes out...
I have a linux box and an XP box, but my iBook is now far and away my primary desktop. The Mac makes for a very nice personal computer, and although I've been using Linux for about 7 years and tried on numerous occasions to use it as my primary desktop, I've only just now realized how absolutely great it is to have a mostly functional unix under a fully functional desktop (as opposed to a full unix under a partial desktop)
It's funny, in 7 years I've spent no more than $200 dollars on Microsoft products (student versions of MSVC 6 and
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
Here is the very reason why I feel that Mono is usch a horribly stupid idea. For every Mono app that is written, more and more of the mindset turns in this direction.
Forget switching... *nix users: keep your clunky (or possibly glowing) box around to do the server things you like to fiddle with, get a mac to use day to day... trust me. The *nix environment in OS X is great, full interoperability with your beige (or black?) box, but is slick, and requires no low level knowledge. Maybe consider it your "weekend" machine when you don't want to work on editing shell scripts or recompiling kernels and so on.
You know what that means, folks...Beleaguered platform!! Apple is dying!!!
I have 4 friends who purchased a 17 inch PB, a Power Mac, a Mac mini and 2 iBooks on my recommendation. 2 of my daughter's friends now own Macs, and my wife wants a Mac mini to replace a 3d iMac we bought for our foreign exchange student. So, I guess I've facilitated a bunch of switchers.
I just bought an iPod mini about 3 weeks ago.
Am I switching?
Not until Steve Jobs comes to pry my PC out of my cold, dead hands.
This whole thread is nothing but an another Apple Circle Jerk.
Note how vociferously alternative viewpoints have been viciously shouted and modded down by proApple Zealots.
They will ship you a quantity of installation and liveCDs at no charge, they even pay the shipping. I'd like to see apple try to beat the price on that!
Well, it's pretty easy consider that when you buy a new Mac OS X comes preinstalled...
That's the problem, is that Linux is almost always an additional step for any mainstream computer buyer so even free does not get it much uptake. Look how hard it is to get people to switch to Firefox, which is a no-brainer!
I imagine Tiger will send a new spike of buyers forth for Macs because then they'll get that update for free.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, every mac made since they got rid of the DIN-9 style serial ports has had at least one USB port. USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. It's a serial port!
If you need to interface with legacy serial ports using something like RS-232 with DB9 connectors, you can pick up a cheap Keyspan adapter. I use one of these things *all the time* with my Powerbook to console into routers, switches, and servers. Works like a charm!
but I may buy one as a second computer. I do not think it will be a Mac-Mini as that seems too gimped for anything more than what my grandparents would use a PC for. Too me it appears to be nothing more than an "internet" appliance. I understand it could do more but the PC-build it myself in me screams anything not-expandable it tossable as well.
So here is the question, I figure a G5 of some sort is in my future. I do not need a monitor, my 2001fp from Dell should be compatible, right? I would like to be able to play a good FPS on occasion and maybe a mmorpg or too. What kind of Geforce/Radeon can I get for a Mac. Is there a "Mac" penalty price? What MMORPGs are actually playable native to the Mac? Also, is there a C# compiler on the Mac or does the Mac come with a good compiler and IDE?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The Quicktake
I thought that apple hardware and OS sucked until i saw OSX. I had a g3 with OS9 and it kept crashing 2-3 times a day, reminded me of pre win2k versions.
Once i saw OSX, i had to get a powerbook. Too bad i didn't buy some extra ram, 256mb isn't enough.
There is some stuff i miss (mainly, i can't print to a windows-connected canon printer) but i am mostly happy
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
The whole PC gaming market is small potatoes next to the console gaming market, and it's only getting worse. More and more games are developed for consoles first then ported to PCs later time permitting.
I don't think the game issue is as important to the broader market as it used to be. To hardcore gamers it may be, but that doesn't seem to be indicative of the larger market.
This is cold comfort for those that really loved the great RPGs, with consoles dominated by Japanese-style RPGs, and with a tendency for console games to be "dumbed down" a bit. (See Deus Ex:Invisible War). Not to mention I couldn't aim a reticle with my thumb if my life depended on it, so an FPS on a console is unplayable for me. But that's the price of progress.
If anything, the bigger problem is that most people in corporate work *have* to use exchange/outlook and MS Office apps. And while there is Office for the Mac, and other alternatives, the compatibility between them all is not perfect.
... MS Windows in the middle.
I bought an iBook half a year ago to develop for a larger flash project. I've been using Linux exclusively for almost 4 years (SuSE at first, then Debian).
My next Computer is going to be a Mac.
Why?
Thats why.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
who care more about how the computer looks.
I've got an 8600 that still works like a charm, though OS X does run a bit slow on it... it's functional small load server at least.
As a long time Mac user, I'm used to being flamed, argued with, laughed at, or generally exposed to all sorts of abusive language and insults whenever I "come out" and admit to being the proud owner of two Mac machines. I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised to finally find a place where people seem to at least be reasonable about their discussion. I have no problem with anyone pointing out the disadvantages of the OS, and for the first time in a long time I'm actually seeing a lot of people...well...being reasonable in their discussions. I'm also heartened to see so many people switching (or adding). Despite the definite drawbacks (mainly with software availability, but as a lifetime Mac person, I have to say that its infinitely better now than it has ever been), I frankly just love the machines and now OSX, and hope that Apple can hold on to this momentum and at least increase its presence enough to continue convincing companies that they should take the platform seriously enough to make their software compatible. I have to agree though, while the iPod has heightened awareness of the brand and exposed a lot of new people to quality products, I don't think that the iPod alone is responsible. They're more likely just the catalyst in the equation.
I purchased my first iPod about a year and a half ago. After the terrible experience of MusicMatch & the iPod on Windows, I longed for the Mac iPod experience. I also lusted after OS X and the Dock - which works the way I like my computer to work.
A few months later, my web-surfing laptop died on me. In looking for a new laptop, the iBooks definitely stood out to me, and I went for it. Safari is good, Firefox works well, and most other things that I really wanted on my web laptop were available.
It's worked out for me. I've even replaced my desktop with a 20" iMac G5, and I don't miss my noisy, tons-of-compatibility-problems PC.
Now that I have a Mac Mini my AMD 2800 at 2gz and a gig of ram just sits, turned off except for an occasional game.
My Mini is 1.25 gz and 512 megs ram, Superdrive and external USB 160 gig hard drive.
I'm happy. iBook is next. Gave my Thinkpad to my daughter.
I like the look of OSX. No, I LOVE the look. Everything is so refreshingly appealing to the eye. I like the built-in capability of 128px icons. I like the dock. However, I can get icon sets and other nice, colorful, appeasing items for XP Prof. Hell, I can get OSX imitation themes for it.
I work with a bunch of designers (I'm a devloper), and I am on a Mac probably 2 times a week for a few hours. I don't feel overwhelmed enough by OSX to actually switch to Apple. I use an XP Prof. machine, and I NEVER have any problems with it. It has failed on me maybe 1 time in the past 6 months. Maybe. My coworker has a Mac, and it freezes on him probably 2 times a week. Freezes in a manner than doesn't allow him to do anything besides restart. I just sorta laugh to myself, and continue working.
Maybe I'll switch in the future, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend 2500 on a 15" Powerbook when the only thing that I admire about OSX is the "prettiness". I spent 1700 on a HP zt3000, and got pretty much all of the same features for, oh, about 800 less.
Just my 2 cents. I really don't have anything against Apple, and I'm glad that they're taking market share from Microsoft. But when I have a perfectly good AND CLEAN XP OS, I can't bring myself to fork over the extra "style" money required to use an Apple.
Macs are not all that bad for gaming. Nowadays you just wait longer. Sometimes you even get nice surprises such as Blizzard WoW to get released for both Windoze and Mac.
I've been using Athlons for me and all the people I've been building custom Linux PCs for. I remeber a few years ago when AMD had one socket and Intel had 7. That was a major reason to use AMD.
Now AMD has something like 3 (or more) adding up to 9 or 10 different PC CPU sockets. Add in the bazillion variants of RAM clockings, HDD (SATA, EIDE (3 different speeds), SCSI (god know how many different types, etc.) conection standards etc. and even for a hardwarefreak like me things are getting very confusing.
I don't have the time for this anymore. And since configuring a PC with good hardware and a good OS (Linux) takes lots of time, in the end a Mac is cheaper. Much cheaper.
Linux will be the future workhorse OS, OS X will be the appliance OS.
Apple has gotten things just right for quite some time now, they deserve the market share they are just gaining.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Actually, there are business apps that I wouldn't call 'narrow vertical' that don't run on the Mac. I've been working with modelling, BPM and rules software, and quite a few don't support the Mac. I'd hardly call these narrow or vertical.
That said, I always make a point of letting vendors know that I'd prefer a Mac version. I switched a few years ago to get a stable *nix desktop environment. No regrets, but we have two laptops at home now: one Windows laptop for those apps that won't run on the Mac.
AndyB
Ubuntu linux worked flawlessly "out of the box" for me, distros are getting better.
This same Morgan Stanley report has been out for quite a
while now, generally pulled out of the drawer when needed
to get a new pop in the stock price.
A little research will show that Apples worldwide share
grew 0.42% y/y which based on an estimated market of 185M
is an increase of under 800K. They have sold 10M Ipods so
far of which at least 7M came in 2004. If 20% were
switching the sales increase should be order 1.5M, nearly
twice what has been reported.
Apple dies and then Linux takes desktop share away from a slowly dying Windows...
What happened? Everything was going to plan two years ago?
Damn you iPod! Damn you and your white plastic earbuds!
I wouldn't put it past old Steve J to have the games angle wrapped up also. All they'd need is a partnership with, say, Sony to allow every Mac Mini to have a dual operating system, OSX and PS3, that way every PS3 game would run on Mac, fast track to LOTs of developers, and since Sony doesn't make significant profit on the consols, it's really a win-win. I have more thoughts on this at: http://geekspeakwithjason.blogspot.com/ if anyone's interested...
BMW recreated Mini out of the ground and may certainly have actually paid for the copyrights to the name, but engineered everything and built the factories. They wish they could get hold of the Austin name for the same reason. Mercedes essentially engineered a purchase of Chrysler, but should have waited a year for a much better deal. Fiat I am unable to comment on, though with their problems does anybody really give them any number of years...
Certainly, the number of car companies will be reduced and limited to a handful, but can one really say that BMW isn't pprofitable, and successful in its nitch, which is the point.
" ... how many iPod-touting Slashdotters are thinking of switching?"
you would've made it a poll...
"
Well I don't own an iPod, however almost 1 year ago I purchased a Powerbook over a new IBM or Dell laptop. You know why? The local retailer near me who I purchase my laptops from just got an Apple section infront of the IBM section so I decided to have a look, I tried to be a smartarse and quiz him about how I would buy one but program a, b and x were not on a Mac that I needed.
None the less, I walked out with a Powerbook and the exact software that I needed, hell, I even walked out with Office for Mac.
One year later, I now have 2 Powerbooks (1 for work and personal) and 2 Mac Desktops - I love them, and I am even going as far as trying to fix a PowerMac into a normal desktop case as to look like a normal IBM computer - why? Our business sells and repairs IBM computers and it would look a little silly trying to sell IBM type PC's when the computer I am using myself is an Apple.
I have not walked into the store since I will know I will walk out with an iPod.
As soon as the Mini came out, I predicted Apple could go as high as 10-15% by Summer 2006. To everyone who asks my advice on what kind of new computer to get, I recommend a Mini so they can avoid spyware. To everyone who has a PC and is sick of spyware, I recommend a Mini. (My mom wanted to replace her aging PII/266 but she didn't listen to me--she got an iMac instead.)
Now that spyware is such a huge honking problem and people are buying new PCs just to get away from it, I imagine it'll drive a bunch of people to switch. Honestly, if it weren't for spyware, I'd still go either way. All else being equal, PCs are still cheaper for low-end use. But with spyware being as bad as it is, I think Apple can really make a dent.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Wow, im shocked that this wasn't modded down to troll. Anyway, I am a windows/linux guy like everybody else here looking to switch to mac. Wolrd Domination: they do own the market, but what does that mean? If you are already farmiliar working in their environment, then should u not have ur computer with you, you'll still be fine. Apps? Most core productivity apps (office suite) are available for mac, or some sufficient or superior replacemetn (Unix roots). Not always the easiest route to go, i'll give you, but stillnot enough of a deterrant for me. Dev tools - VS is a matter of preferance; i dont like it, but to each his own. C# is a language, not a tool. That being said, mono is available, and progressing nicely, while .NET sucks ass and will ruin any system it is installed on. Also, vi extensions and tools can make it quite functional, albeit im no fan of the CL interface (but some are amazing with it). Better than the point-and-click only M$ toolz.
Price: Mac's retain their value much much longer than a PC does. So while the initial 2000 dollar (high end) investment is higher than the 600 bux for a mid/low end dell (depends on the prephirals u get/config) you aren't buying a new mac every 6 months (though you may want to, my god are they gorgeous). Also, if you are actually doing that, you are burning some serious cash. Learn to upgrade/build your computer.
Devices: what MP3 player is that? I have not seen any MP3 player that can match the IPOD in terms of both price AND quality. Granted, the Dell DJ, Creative and RIO's offerings as well may be a few bucks cheaper (or include an FM tuner or other features) they do not match it in terms of build quality. Yes, I will admit that there is the pain in the ass batterly life issue, but nothing is perfect.
I have a dual 2Ghz G5 and a 1.5Ghz PowerBook. While Panther is great for multimedia I still prefer my £600 Acer laptop with Fedora Core 3 simply because the full install comes with nearly everything I could want and more, easily installed in around 30mins. OS X has no development tools out of the box to match the range of GNU that comes with Fedora 3. Yes, you can install Fink and enable XCode but I haven't found this to be such a smooth ride. Compiling open source software on OS X can lead down many blind alleys due to what I consider to be a schizophrenic OS. The marriage of the Apple system and the BSD internals is uncomfortable and results in a hybrid system. Why did OS X have so many Perl problems for years? Often it's hard to get a Mac version of what you want because development isn't a priority (OpenOffice.org). For development and server-related work I still prefer Fedora.
http://files.redvsblue.com/switch/RvB_Switch.mov/
What, is even the Master Chief getting an iPod now too? Didn't think that tough sob even listened to music. At least the white headphone jack won't clash too badly with his green and orange...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Imagine OSx was made open source. Imagine OSx was free. Imagine OSx was available on x86. Imagine Microsoft would then be doomed.
people in the apple store are snobs. was ignored, looked at funny, then spoken to in a smart ass tone. forget it...
Replaced my PC laptop with a Powerbook. Haven't looked back.
Game... blouses.
going to buy a mac, but then they scared me off the the prospect of this scary new invention called the two button mouse...too innovative for my taste.
Ya, I've been down this path. iPod Jul 2003, PowerBook Jul 2004.
I used to build PC's and it was fun and you'd get more bang for the buck, but I got ever sick of dealing with flaky drivers and Windows problems. But until the Mac Mini there wasn't an affordable Mac for most people.
I do almost all work and personal stuff on the Mac now. Only time I tend to go back to WinXP is for Visio (which doesn't seem to quite work right under VirtualPC). I'm hopeful that one-day Visio will be produced for the Mac.
Fedora Core is also used, but primarily as a server platform in my small business.
We've got a number of Toshiba WinXP laptops and all of my users have trouble every single day with Windows Wireless networking. They have to repair their connections 2-3 times a day. My PowerBook has no troubles at all with connections. Hibernation of laptops is another - try going a week with hibernating Windows - it becomes so flakey. Now the PowerBook only gets a reboot when an OS update needs it. Otherwise hibernation just works - currently at 24 days with hibernation only - no reboots! All off my work colleagues reboot their WinXP laptop daily.
I have been providing tech support for family and friends in the past, but now with the Mac Mini I'm going to provide them with a subtle and a not-so-subtle hint - "Check out the Mac Mini!" and I'm no longer providing support for Windows.
The Mac operating system and application platform is great. iLife (haven't touched Garageband) is a really great suite of software and the integration works really well. I'm going to be suggesting to family that they should switch just because of the improvements they will have in being able to manage their digital photos etc. And having it all on *nix underpinning is nice - its great for me being able to crank open terminal.
I had an Apple ][ many years ago - ah Castle Wolfenstein ;) but hardly touched pre-OSX because it was and still is crap. I did get a dual-CPU Mac once but promptly installed BeOS instead.
I've been on PC's for YEARS. I've got a large collection of software that I need to do my job and my hobbies (graphic design, web development, and music production).
The value of software (Photoshop, After Effects, Dreamweaver, Ableton Live, Project 5, etc.) is so much higher than the hardware. I'd have to shell out 2x to 3x to replace all my PC software with Mac software.
I just bought a new PC to use as a DAW with my electronic drums. I REALLY wanted to get a Mac, but instead I ended up doing the New Egg thing and building an AMD based system. God what a horrible experience. Trying to get XP installed on a SATA system... First time in years I got a PC with no floppy, and the first time I NEEDED a floppy because XP, even SP2 does not have SATA drivers!!! I should have just bought a Dell and overpaid for crap components that at least worked with less than three days of fiddling!
But what I REALLY wanted was a G5!!! Apple needs to come up with a way to make the software switch more easy to swallow.
I doubt I'm the only one with this issue.
What I don't know I just fake...
Not thinking of switching - but im thinking of getting one to do the things linux aint to hot at. OSX will complement my linux box - not replace it! linux will always remain for my serious development stuff, Im tempted by OSX for my other hobbies namely composing music and editing video. I know i can do those things with Windows but I despise it and besides Apple hardware "just looks nice" (tm) then of course theres the "power of unix under the hood" which might be fun.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
So what is Apple's market share among old people in Korea now?
Shades of Grayden
I got a mini to start using OSX and to have a portable media server. I was originally going to buy a windows notebook for that purpose, but I decided on the mini because it just looked too intriguing.
However, I also upgraded my desktop system the same week, it's now an overclocked Athlon64 system with an SLI motherboard and a GF6800 (only one for now). It runs windows XP. So I certainly didn't "switch" to the mac.
I use the Athlon box for games, and as a digital audio workstation. But now with the mini I only turn on that box when I'm doing games or DAW work... everything else, the day to day stuff, I use the mac for because it's just a refreshing change and OSX is a lot more pleasant to use.
Could I have a mac as my only system? Sure, if somebody GAVE me a dual G5 perhaps. I'm not sure which one is my "main" computer now, because I use the mac most of the time, but I use the Athlon rig for the really heavy duty stuff.
After using OSX for a while, I'm starting to think that my 3rd computer would be a mac too. Funny how that works. I've read that the mac mini is the gateway drug...
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
The iMac just works -- unlike Linux, which constantly required fiddling. I get sound when I want it, and network drives mount and unmount easily. The Mac version of Opera works great, and the freeware editor TextWrangler is fine for authoring scripts and program files.
It's not all roses, though. I still get Postscript errors on my HP 4MV laser printer, which Linux never gave me. And I really don't like having to click in a window once just to gain focus and again to click a button or some other control. Apple's single-button-no-scrollwheel mouse sucks bigtime; but that's a solvable problem, since any USB mouse will function fully with all its bells and whistles.
Mac OS X is dying; rabid Windows gamers worldwide confirm it!
To me, it looks like Apple were switching instead...
... as well, at the same time. Which side the overall balance is leaning to - who knows (except Apple top brass)?
There have been a lot of rumours on the web that starting some months ago Apple for the first time has been selling more iPods to PC users than to Mac users. There are indeed some signs pointing in this direction, indicating an important shift in Apple's marketing strategy: The iPod boxes now read "PC and Mac" instead "Mac and PC" as it has been for years. Omitting the previously included firewire cable and power adapter from iPod packages makes sense if you are targeting users of recent PCs (remember, iTunes for Win requires Win2k or Win XP which runs most probably on hardware with USB 2 on board. On the other hand, owners of not-so-old Macs, like two-and a-half-year-old eMacs and G3 iBooks can't even charge a recent iPod without buying additional gear).
That said, Apple's new orientation towards Win using customers is in clear contradiction to the "switchers in droves" and "halo effect" statements that can be seen and read here and elsewhere...
There may be switchers from Win to Mac, but there may be switchers of the other kind from Mac to
Ok - let me get this strait - UNIX (lets use this word for all the linux/mac/whatever works for you) will always be a treated as THE REAL COMPUTER by people who knows - you could wain all day long say whatever you want to - THE REAL COMPUTER IS A UNIX COMPUTER - now - come back to your daily 365FPS in UT2004
E:)
I like the shuffle so much, mine not only won't have a screen, it'll pick a random applications for me to use!
Congratulations, you're another sucker who bought something because of clever marketing.
I have an iPod but don't use it. I won't be switching -- I'm happy with WinXP and my two Dell laptops.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
This is a windows-centric opinion... Windows needs 512mb to actually get work done, but OS X runs fine with 256mb. Apple designs computers that work fine out of the box with a stock configuration. I have an imac with 256mb and it runs much faster than most PC systems I have used with 512mb ram.
It's like saying a 3ghz P4 is faster than a 2ghz g5, which isn't true. The number is higher but a higher number isn't always faster.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Anyway, interesting list you've got there. Once I've gotten through NetHack, I might take a look at some of those games. This Diablo, that's the NetHack rip-off, right?
I'll never forgive Apple (Back in the apple II days) for pricing $5 replacement parts for $200 because they could not be obtained elsewhere.
If Macs dominated the market, Mac OS would triple in cost every year.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Disclaimer: 10 Year Mac User. OSX fan.
OK Let's face it, Linux on the PB's is the way to go; clean, lean and outperforming the OSX. Me? Ti PB (1 week old). I **thought** I was happy until I put Debian on it. It Just Works
I've tested Doom3 frame rates, writing PDF's, boot times and burning DVD's. Debian, I am sad to say, smokes Mr. Blue.
Sure I keep a dual boot box, but rarely do I ever touch OSX these days. Run 'top' on OSX lately? it's depressing. Half the GPU is being hogged by OSX's insistence on *2D* blitting, the rest of the system memory is doing God Knows what with some iLife update sillyness. Linux just feels better, it's free, mature, and has the worlds *best* kernel hacker making sure it works really really well - Linus (his desktop is a Mac). You might see alot more Mac's around lately, but more and more are running Linux under the hood, so.. not a switcher, but a pitcher.
Oh yeah, think I'm missing out on any Look and Feel? Wrong!..I never touch the CLI these days!
http://kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=1
Apple has this wonderful mode you can use your mac in called FireWire target disk mode. Simply start up the machine while holding down the T key and your mac's internal hard drive(s) become firewire disks. Essentially your mac becomes a very expensive firewire enclosure. Has saved me much time backing up, makes me love my Powerbook like the child I'll never have :)
Rule of the open mind
People who are resistant to change cannot resist change for the worst.
When you buy a Mac (A wonderful consumer device and computer) and still own PCs that does not mean you are "switching". Is Apple one of Slashdot's sponsers. It is almost like saying that I own a toyota automobile and I just bought a chevy truck; I must be "switching" and should not like my Toyota anymore. I can't own both or like both that would be "evil". Few Mac users don't own several computers. Just the ones that blather in your face about my brand of "blue jeans" is better than your brand. I own several computers and plan on purchasing more computers in the future. I have a Linux X86 based PC, A Windows XP based PC and a Mac. They all have different things I like and don't like about them. FYI Apple is just as much a fucked up company as microsoft -- they will buy out the little guy, use the little guys work (rip it off), and sue over pantents and other such nonsense at a drop of a hat. With all that said I use both types of computers and like them.
You're such a ricer.
I had switched to OSX+IPOD in a flash, however, i would say its still "raw" for a lot of "normal" people.
These are the reasons my sister didnt switch, despite of a strong recommendation from me:
1. Yahoo Launch dosent work
2. MSN / Yahoo messenger are not to the mark on Mac (they dont have stuff like avatars, etc).
3. Her existing Webcam wont work with Mac.
4. She already owns fairly new versions of Adobe Photoshop, Primere, MS Office on windows, going to mac will have her buy all these again.
5. She absolutely dosent care about the "Unix" part.
6. All her friends know windows, so windows can generally get better support from people if something goes wrong.
7. A lot of online movie sites, like MovieLink.com don't work on Mac.
8. Safari/Firefox browsers are great, but cant beat IE in terms of the number of sites supporting them.
These are a few i can think of, there may be more..
All the ones not expecting it to be a gaming platform.
Seriously, the only reasons I've heard for leaving Mac are:
1) Too expensive: People have run into tough economic times and when their computer broke, they couldn't afford a new mac.
2) No games: Macs suck for games. No arguing. None. I've given up on PC games after continually buggy products, poor documentation, and excessive cheating. I'm a console gamer now.
3) Windows Development: Ehhh, yeah.
because an adder is a snake.
Use QT like KDE uses and you can target multiple platforms with reasonable levels of goodness on all three. I am really sorry but the amount of software for mac is more than linux, because of commercial apps, free stuff ported to X11 for OS X, and the shear number of programing interfaces to mac os X.
It has Cocoa, Carbon, QT, Java, X11, and Quartz, the flexibility is nothing short of incredible. There are native bindings to OS X from C++, C, Java, Obj-C and the framework is elegant to boot.
Once Apple hits 5% it can resurrect OpenDoc, Kaleida, and Taligent!
I am not really considering switching, although if I find I need a laptop in the near future then it'll probably be a Mac.
However, both of my grandmothers have aging windows 98 boxes, which regularly fill up with spyware etc despite the best efforts of my father and I. The time will soon come to replace the things, and I am definitely going to recommend Mac Minis. Two, three years ago, I wouldn't have. But Apple has come a long way recently.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
No hardcore computer people do not need easy to use, or elegant as far as users are concerned. We tend to choose based on performance and technical merits, we know technology and that motivates our purchases. People who know nothing about technology except they can browse the web, listen to music, write a document, do a spread sheet are those who go to best buy and buy an ipod and are blown away by the performance and simplicity of the device that they entertain switching to mac.
My father and a few friends of mine got ipods and were like wow these things are really great and just work. Then they ask me about my powerbook and tell them it is a pleasure to use just like the ipod and the next thing you know they go out and buy an ibook or a mac mini. So people previously not interested in a mac are buying them. Usually as an addition to an old pc but after using the mac notebook or mini mac will be ardent mac users.
Personally, I hope Apple fervently gains as much market share as possible. I recently started writing a book and had to spend three weeks in the middle wrestling with Windows on various different fronts. Oh, you've changed your primary hard drive because you had to back up? Re-activate me. Oh, you've had to change your mobo becuase it's screwed? Re-activate me. Oh, you've had to change your hard drive again because you're setting up a RAID configuration? RE-ACTIVATE ME. It's hard to describe the sheer frustration I have felt during the last re-build. Really. Think of one of those whistling kettles left to boil until the water disappears. However, no-one's moved it and it's still on the stove, just getting hotter and redder by the minute, slowly melting until it's one large, seething mess of non-radioactive meltdown. That was me. All I want to do is write, the ideas are *going* for crissakes, and yet good ol' Windows continues to throw BSOD's and "sorry sir, can't find that CD Drive you were talking about" comments every few minutes my way. Arrrgh! Once it was (finally) sorted, I swore then and there - literally, writing a contract in my own blood sort of swearing - that this was *it* - no more Windows machines after this. I'm not a coder, I just write. I also have a 2nd generation iMac which I'm thinking of using as my day-to-day system. It's (very) stable, it works, it doesn't jack me around, and of course, most importantly, it doesn't stoke my fantasies of tracking Bill Gates down and shoving my copy of Windows XP as far down his gullet as possible. Instead, it greets me in a reasonably cheery way (yeah, I know - a sucker for pseudo-human emotive interfaces, me), and it works? Errr, Bill? Hello? If some company wishes to step forward and provide an alternative platform that even a writer can use (and not Linux kiddies; I'm think. I write. I don't have the time/ability to spend years on a PC), fantastique! Until then, Powerbook calls. No, if only I could port my ever beautiful ThinkPad to OS X... SK
always stays at motel 6 when he travels. He drinks Andre or Cold Duck champagne, Old Milwaukee beer, and lives in a used mobile home in a bad neighborhood. For some people, price is the only criterion.
I have had many apples, desktops, powerbooks, an original white chicklet ibook, and now a newer one. The first ibook was damn indestructible, I once knocked it off a desk onto an office floor and nothing happened to it, it is still in service after almost 5 years, 4 years and change.
My recent ibook suffered from a motherboard failure, but I got old stock for like $700 and apple replaced the motherboard under warranty it took 4 days, it works like champ now and has for a month. But yeah the last generation of G3 ibooks were not great but apple will make good on the problems you have.
Because of how attractive their hardware is women will put computers where they formerly wouldn't like the kitchen, because an imac g5 is small and with bluetooth keyboard and mice in the drawer, no wires, wireless ethernet. The joy of having a computer in the most lived in areas of the house, without an ugly black or beige box with a ton of wires.
While dell is larger and has more money, I think the chinese may eat them for breakfast. The new IBM, Lenovo will probably be able to beat them on cost and service. Dell does not have many fans, just people who buy because it is cheap.
Apple has loyalty like Porsche, people who want not just a fast car like a corvette but an well designed and crafted machine.
Honestly I've been thinking of switching for a few years now, even before I bought my iPod.
I'm runing linux on several machines and XP on some more but I do like the idea of a vendor supported unix for a home environment w/ mainstream apps that won't break the bank. Moving everything to 1 OS also sounds like a nice idea.
Admittedly though I was looking at a NeXT cube over 10 years ago for similar reasons.
I'm not SOL, I'm typing this on a powerbook ;). I was just making a point regarding subsituting Darwin for OS X.
I'm sick of this bullshit Apple praise. Apple keeps their hardware design very simple, and hires macromedia to make its OS pretty. Just look at macromedia's site: it's cyan blue and white, with just the right amount of color. Perfect. But Apple as a companyhttp://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05 /03/05/1331242&tid=109&tid=141&tid=123&tid=3 is not worth the cult worship that surrounds it.
People buy macs because they're (1) pretty (2) user-friendly and (3) they think it's the only option out there. You bought a $2,000 iMac? Cool. Let me show you my mATX linux/windows box + LCD that's equally pretty in both hardware and OS, and runs games like a champ, THAT I BOUGHT FOR LESS THAN HALF THE PRICE.
back when Atari quit making the ST line. I drove to the Atari dealer to get a new computer, found I couldn't get one, and drove straight to the nearest Mac dealer. Never looked back.
Yeah, I considered buying a PC once - in 1981. They sucked then and they suck now.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I recently bought a 12 inch powerbook rather than an x86 laptop to run linux. I'm still running Linux/x86/Suse9.2 on my desktop and servers, OpenBSD on my firewall.
And the worst kind... he's looking for an Apple-fanboy dicksucking.
I undid moderations to post this, btw.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I bought my mum an iBook recently. I've always been a fan of the Mac to a certain degree. Never owned one though. I'll be getting a Mac Mini in the not too distant future (after Tiger is released probably) to use as a media center. And yes I do own an iPod.
I'll still do all my work on my Linux laptop though.
-- Oliver Jones - Deeper Design Limited
I owned and worked with a number of such clones over the years and let me say that the experience plainly sucked. The money quite possibly would have been better spent on x86/Windows machines.
I've still got an old UMax c600 that would be running YellowDog if the hard drive was a little larger. This particular clone requires a 3rd-party software (FWB Toolkit) to use the CD-ROM. Obviously, this means that you initially have to have Classic Mac OS with FWB installed before any software can be installed from CD.
I was extremely happy when Apple stopped cloning. IMO, it did nothing but undermine Apple's product and operating system, effectively making dealing with Classic OS as painful as dealing with Windows.
(Not that it was really that much better back in the Classic OS days
Except of course that Blizzard does simultaneous releases for both the Mac and Windows versions of their games. This has held true from the original Warcraft all the way through World of Warcraft. (Or WC3 if you're talking RTS).
To be quite honest, this would have been a deal breaker for me. I've played so many RTS games, and yet I still enjoy them. Three years of Counter Strike in college was enough to burn me out on FPS games forever. RTS still have a warm place in my heart though. And luckily for me, my powerbook plays them just peachy.
And as parent said, Console games (at least on the GC) seem to be beating the pants off the PC gaming market as of late. Not sure how many rehashed FPS games I'm supposed to give a crap about, but there's really nothing that amazing otherwise. Ok, except Savage. I do miss Savage.
I got my iPod last June. I got my PB 15" fully loaded about 3 weeks ago. Too bad I still have to use a Dell for work.
"Apple designs computers that work fine out of the box with a stock configuration."
Are you saying the G3 iBooks worked fine with the stock 128 mb? That's funny... I couldn't boot 10.2 without swapping (no applications running) before I upgraded to 384.
512 mb is the minimum if you want to do more than one thing at once without swapping. I have trouble with 384 mb on 10.3.
"The number is higher but a higher number isn't always faster."
That's true. RISC binaries take up more memory than CISC because all the opcodes must be the same length.
In my experience with Windows, MacOS X, Linux and *BSD (with the "fancy" GUIs) they have very similar memory requirements. 256 is enough for an "office" machine that doesn't have to do more than web, e-mail, and word processing/small spread sheets. 512 mb is enough to comfortably multitask, and nothin' says lovin' like a gig of memory.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Wow. You are serious.
I would not let that bug-ridden, insecure, non-standards complaint, "please add me to your bot-network and steal some personal info while you're at it" piece of crap software anywhere near my OS X box
Are you referring to the server-side functionality of
I've written a few
As far as server-side goes, yes, it would be nice to run
yes, I am 'toting' an ipod too.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
I bought a 15" powerbook. With after market addition of a 1GB DIMM raising the price to $2100,
I just bought a 15" x86-based laptop for under $1500 (80G, 1G, SuperDrive, 1280x800), and I was already paying a premium for a nice-looking design.
it does everything a $2500 windows machine does with much less worries regarding a virus,
I don't worry about viruses either--I run Linux on it.
they discover the lack of games, the large amount of MS software you will continue to use and the overall high price for outdated hardware? These questions come from a mini owner, but I think Forbes and the crowd here is over simplifying things a bit.
I'm not planning on switching per se...but I'm planning on getting a Mac Mini (when I get enough referrals) to complete the unholy trinity of Linux box, Windows box, Mac box in my apartment. But then, I've always been platform agnostic.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I feel very, very sorry for anyone whose crucial site requires ActiveX!
Although, don't they have a Firefox plugin that lets those sites run for specified domains only?
Good luck with your project removing the extra step. I think someday the ideal "Linux Switcher" distro will be one that takes over the computer, looks as much like the old users Windows desktop as lawyers and window managers will allow, and runs some form of Wine to run most user programs while OpenOffice is silently replaced right on top of Office. But, it's a little ways off.
Then you can plop it onto computers of friends and relatives, probably speeding up thier computer in the process.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's funny, I absolutely loved Giants, and I was playing it on my old G4/733 a few years ago just fine ;) It was actually one of the very first OS X-only games.
Why would Microsoft need to put these people into a "prison" if companies like Apple don't have jobs for them anyway? Where are the job postings for people with research-level qualifications from Apple? Apple employees neither publish much, nor does Apple even hire the kind of people that deliver innovation.
Indsutry employment is not that hard for the people Microsoft pulls into R&D. Simply put, they write a giant fat check and the people up and leave wheever they were and go there to die. The only difference between Microsoft and Alien abduction is that Microsoft probably does not grab as many rednecks and the probes go in your head instead of other places.
I would be more convinced if you could point me to a number of interesting things that have come from Microsoft R&D that many people are using today. They've had enough time to produce something by now?
Apple used to have a research lab that looked promising and produced some great stuff, but that was short lived and closed about a decade ago. Nowadays, Apple just seems to have engineers who confuse product feature lists and usability engineering with "innovation".
Oddly the "Innovation" that Microsoft is promising us (like WinFS) is nowhere to be seen, while real versions that actually WORK for users are coming out from Apple on a regular basis.
Or were you saying Microsofts cheap rip-off of Java or XUL are revolutionary?
Are the Java 3D desktop clone?
Or the rounded colored buttons with saturation turned up to 11?
Clippy... yes, now there's something they did not steal. Clippy is thier own. And that damn dog who can't find squat. Perhaps they should have hired an owl, at least they are smart and have keen vision.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Unlike you, I'm not just planning on switching, I'm using Macs alongside Linux machines. I can just say, if you are happy with the Mac over a Linux machine, your needs must be rather modest.
And here I thought I was the only one who felt this way. I've got a Mac, but it is far from my main machine. All these geeks seem to love Macs, but for me, Linux is where it is at. I suppose once you learn enough about Linux you get pretty comfortable and its no longer a pain to use (more of a joy for me lately). I don't feel this way about OS X. There are a LOT of things I really like about OS X, but it just doesn't have the same power my Debian box gives me. If I'm coding, I'd much rather be on Linux. I even find Amarok (Linux music player) much much better than iTunes. So I am running out of uses for my OS X box. I've been meaning to play with XCode and mess around with Garageband, but I don't have any serious uses for OS X other than playing around with it.
Think different(tm) and use Linux.
I'm going to buy a powerbook. Why? Because it has the best damned OS on the planet - a great UI (with solid OO design) on top of a great OS... It has absolutely nothing to do with iPod.
On the PC, you can get an OK desktop, OR a great OS, but not both in the same package (sorry, Linux fans... the desktops STILL suck, and it still sucks trying to get everything to play nice, and no, my favorite software STILL doesn't run on Linux, and no, I'm not going to switch to a lame-ass alternative... especially since my favorite software DOES work with all my hardware on OS X).
It's all about good software running on a good OS, playing nice with my good hardware that isn't supported on Linux (even though I've complained to the manufacturers).
- Eric
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
A Mac Mini is not for gaming. That's what PCs and consoles are for. The target market for the Mini is the average Joe Six Pack - someone who wants a simple machine that'll let them surf the web, check their email, write papers, and manage their photos and music without the hassles of virii, spyware, adware, etc. And the Mini accomplishes those things rather well.
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
I like my IPOD, but I just built an AMD 4000 super machine (1 meg cache, 4 gig RAM, 796 Gigs of hard drive space in RAID 0 - 2 400 Gigs -). I do not think there is a MAC that can perform as quick as this screamer FOR THE PRICE THAT I PAID. Yes some dual G5 is probably faster. Also, one thing about PCs - you can make your own PC, and then run Linux in 64 bit mode (Mandrake 10.2 in my case). The dual boot into XP to play some cool games on the PCI express GForce! Life is good!!
I do run my mac without a screen attached (it's an old ibook with a broken screen). With VNC, it works great! Why have clunky screens or KVM switches all over the place when I can just have a laptop and visit the rest of the machines via ssh or VNC?
After being a PC user for over 15 years, I switched 2 weeks ago to a new powerbook g4. the laptops are the best on the market and the switch was largely spurred by my buying an ipod in october. we'll see how the switch goes on (long term experience) but so far the experience is great.
According to my logs, about 6.5% of Simpy[1] visitors are using MacOS. This number has been pretty steady over the last several months. The number of Linux user has been dropping slowly.
[1] http://www.simpy.com
Simpy
Very insightful.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Wow, so Darwin is marginally different from BSD. Too bad I don't recall refering to BSD when talking about the system that the hobbyiests and sys admins use, I was refering to UNIX based systems in general NOT BSD specifically.
When you get right down to it that is ALL Darwin is: just another UNIX clone.
The "average" iPod buying computer user knows little to nothing about what they NEED to do what they do. I can't count the number of times I've seen a Dual p4 machine with 160gb SATA raid and gig of ram doing NOTHING but web sufing, word and e-mail. So lets consider this: The average computer buyer (being uninformed) has a budget of about a $1000. What do they end up buying? A Dell Dimension 8400 with all kinds of power they'll never use. So they buy an iPod, and get into "what if I switch?" mode... The $1299 for a G5 iMac doesn't seem like a rip-off, and man is it slick looking! They still have all kinds of power they'll never use. Or maybe they see the mac mini and think: gee thats cute! And they end up buying a machine that meets thier needs. I don't have an iPod 'cuz i can't justify the cost...well alright i spent all the money on my home theater... but still, people who buy iPods on a whim have the money. they won't feel the sticker-shock so many have argued as the reason the switches won't happen. I think the Forbes report is on target in it's prediciton.
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
Using a Mac means never having to move the mouse to see what you just typed.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Started out with Commodores. First a 64, then a 128. On which I ran, among other things, GEOS.
Then went to DOS on a '286 (which I was required to build as an incoming freshman at NJIT in the late '80s).
A year or two later, I got my hands on PC/GEOS, and ran that on top of DOS until 1993-1994, since it was object-oriented and multithreaded and pre-emptively multitasked in 1990. (Coincidentally, it used Objective-C...)
Around 1994 I managed to download Linux floppies and started using that. By 1997, I was running it on a laptop, a year later, my wife had a Linux laptop as well (and I must say, classically trained ballerinas who use vi make excellent wives).
2001 rolled around, and my laptop - a 486-75 - was getting pretty long in the tooth, so I started looking around for possible replacements. I wanted something that could play DVD's, which at that point on Linux was no minor thing.
I noticed Apple's dual USB iBooks. I noticed that if I wanted dual USB ports, FireWire, and 10/100 ethernet, built in, on the PC side of the fence, it would cost me an extra $500. This made my brain hurt, since as everyone knew, Apples were supposed to be more expensive. But I bought one anyway.
And then another. And then a Power Mac G5. And the one of the iBooks got lost at the repair depot and we got an iBook G4 as a replacement. And then I bought a PowerBook.
The Power Mac is for sale (I'm not home enough to make it worth having any more), and when it sells, I'll buy a Mac mini for my daughter. The older iBook is also going to be for sale soon, and when it sells, maybe another Mac mini to replace a 2000-vintage Dell laptop I've got running Linux as a home "server." Dunno.
I switched from Linux to Mac because the Mac "just worked." Getting it to play DVD's required, well, nothing. I didn't have to install WINE to run Office. And so on. (And I say this as someone who thought nothing of working with another person to figure out the X modelines for my wife's Linux laptop, as someone who thought nothing of buying a SCSI scanner and being the first to determine that yes, it did work with SANE, and so on - I'm not a technophobe.)
I've stuck with Macs because for the most part, they continue to "just work." I deal professionally with Windows 95, 98, NT 4 and XP, Red Hat 7 through 9, Solaris, SunOS 4, SCO OpenSewer on a 100-pound Dell, and things even more abominable. A PowerBook with OS X is a very nice counterpoint to the vast majority of the above. (Coincidentally, it uses Objective-C)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I must admit, I was sorely tempted by the Mac Mini. It was a good price point, a good performer (for the desktop apps I need), and there appeared to be some support from Linux distros (Debian/Ubuntu, etc).
Then I realized it had an ATI video chipset. I don't think I would enjoy fighting with a company that doesn't like to give up driver sources, and instead only distributes binary drivers that work with "approved" kernels (Please correct me, as I'm behind the times on this). Never mind the pain that getting PPC Linux drivers might be.
Then I realized I couldn't get it without buying Mac OS X. Why the hell would I want to substitute a Microsoft tax for a Macintosh tax?
After seeing what Apple won't do for the iPod (like allow for recording that the hardware is capable of), I don't trust their equipment either. I'll stick with the open commodity stuff, thanks.
Put simply, I can't trust an audio player that doesn't play Ogg Vorbis.
Who cares if few shiny jewels sit stuck on top of a huuuge mountain of turd? You still gotta climb up there to admire those.
But, goddamnit why must all the juicy 4 or more cpu mobos cost so much? I just want lotsa cpus without expensive integrated scsi u320, pci-x, or other server crap.
What makes you think Mac hardware is expensive? For many years (until we were "normalised"), we had Mac desktops, and dollar for dollar, they were always comparable[1] to other brand-name hardware. While the margins on PCs are thinner than ever, the mini-Mac is pretty damn cheap, and the iBook comparable very well too. Unlike PCs, I have *never* needed to support the Macs I have supplied to friends and relatives.
I pay a bit more for engineered hardware (mostly Sun and HP) where reliability is important (my servers, machines built for relatives). We came close to DIY PPC hardware with the CHRP platform, but I can't see it making a whole lot of sense for Apple just now, a return to the clones would be more likely to hurt their growth than improve it.
Xix.
[1] Except for the very first PCI PoserMacs, if I ever see a 7100 again, it will be too soon! Bleah!
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Some time ago, I became disillusioned with the post-Win2K world. I think XP is fairly ridiculous and I don't like "dial home" / authentication.
I tried FreeBSD and it didnt work for me (although, I still appreciate its theoretical goodness). I've had nice experiences with Fedora Core 3 on different boxen (x86_64 and i368 alike). I still have Win2K on a couple production boxen that cannot/shouldn't be changed.
However, I nabbed an iBook. It's beautiful and "just works" as I've constantly heard from my Mac friends. It is easy to find a myriad of applications from web development to office work to programming to encryption to general internet apps. Frankly, games are not a purchasing decision for me... I don't waste time on such silly things.
OS X is wonderful. It is familiar to anyone runnign Windows or XWindows, but the primary difference is that you dont have to WORK to make things function properly. Installation is the easiest thing since the blow-up doll. You download your favorite whatever and drop it into the Applications folder... and that's it.
I've had no system conflicts or lack of drivers or anything of a sort. Granted, I am only a month in... but I haven't had one single puzzling experience. Flat out, it works and works well.
I strongly suspect a Mac Mini is next... and after Tiger, perhaps my PC-based systems are a thing of the past.
Mac's are generally high-end machines ( yeah I know the mini is the greatest thing since sliced white bread but lets be honest, its the exception, not the rule. ) that are designed to do heavy stuff.
80-90% of the comsumers out there that want a high end machine are doing it for *drum roll* games!
And what crappy OS are they stuck with?
Windows!
At least with my high end PC that I spent the GNP of several small african nations on I can get a second hard drive and slap in Gentoo or Fedora (maybe get in some Doom 3 action..)
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
"All this suggests the question ... how many iPod-touting Slashdotters are thinking of switching?"
Apple is the epitome of closed-source PC hardware, and the performance per dollar margin is unreal. I think i'll pass, thanx.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Long term DOS, Windows, OS/2, Linux, Ultrix, Solaris, FreeBSD user. Switched when the Mac mini became available.
I don't regret. On the contrary.
All OSes I know suck, osx sucks less.
-jsl
Dyslectics of the world, untie!
I'm thinking of doing that in the future. But I'm not planning to swith to OS X.
About a week ago I got my Mac Mini (my first Mac!). And for the last week I have been using it as my primary desktop (I even unplugged my main machine, so I would me more or less forced to use and learn OS X). During that week I have made the following observations:
- I absolutely love the hardware! The Mini is sexy, cool and quiet. No cheap-looking plastic or abundance of LED's. Just toned-down coolness.
- OS X looks very good. It has lots of eye-candy and chrome.
- iLife-apps are very good.
- Stability of the system is good
- Installation of apps is very easy!
- I still like my Linux/KDE-combo more
Yes, I can see why some people think OS X is the greatest thing out there. The OS is very good and it looks gorgerous. But in the end, I noticed that I still missed using KDE. While OS X was good, it simply didn't do it for me.
I can see myself buying a PowerMac sometime in the future, and I can see myself running Linux on it (Well, I would propably use Mac-On-Linux as well).
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
"Apple payed for a nice chunk of college :)"
Hmmmmm... college didn't work out, huh?
[big grin]
John (who is about to ditch his PC heritage completely and add a full monty PowerMac and a big Apple LCD to his shopping list).
Marketed like slaves, sold like common whores. Buying a mac just cuz you have an ipod is like buying a dildo just because you bought batteries.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
"dynamic loading an dunloading of drivers....BSD currently lacks this ability"
What BSD are you talking about?
I usually compile my FreeBSD kernel with almost no drivers and load the ones I need at boot time..
As for your comments about writing a BSD driver, well, that shows you haven't written one
recently.. if ever..
There is generic class support for ethernet adapters,
(since 1988 that I know of) and disk devices and
sound devices, as well as a very comprehensive general device framework that keeps track of device hierarchies etc. This is an area they have been working on actively.
That doesn't mean that what you say about Darwin is wrong, but.. what you say about BSD is not
really correct.
Most people, when talking about FreeBSD and MacOS-X do get it a bit wrong.. FreeBSD is not really the source of the kernel, but the source of that UNIX userland that you see when you drop to a console on your mac. With the desktop now suporting X11 (if you enable it) and openoffice and Gimp running on it, I realy feel at home on my wife's ibook.. Almost like on my BSD machine.
I think Apple's laptops are fairly competitive with Wintel laptops, and I wouldn't mind owning one.
However, the cost and lack of choice with their desktop hardware is never going to convince me to go all-out APPL. It simply isn't the most effective use of my money. Perhaps if the long-rumoured OSX for x86 arrives, I'll switch. But not before either that happens, or APPL lowers their profit margins. (And while it's cheap, the Mini is simply unsuitable for my purposes)
As for the price difference, the laptops are very competitively priced FOR THE QUALITY OF WHAT YOU GET. Sure, there is no cheap piece-of-crap-but-it-works Apple laptop equivalent to the Office Depot Compaq special you read about in slickdeals, but we're talking internal slot-loading dvd/cdrw or dvd burners in a 12" laptop. Find me a reasonably priced Dell or Sony with those specs. And there's no comment on the Mac mini, its price competition is obvious enough.
with macs, it's extremely hard to find a deal, if any at all. there's the 10% student discount, xx% employee discounts, or the seldom deals @ amazon.com or other internet stores. however, even with these discounts, we're paying at least a 30% premium against competitors of similar specs. plus with apple controlling the pricing, it's hard for them to be competitive against other brands. apple isn't allowing customers to feel that they've gotten a really good deal which is needed some of the time in my opinion.
Just imagine if Apple computers only costed 10% more than their competitors, that 5% might just sky rocket up to 15%.
HD Trailers
I own an iPod mini for use at work and may buy a second one owing to hours worked and battery life. But no way will I buy a Mac! Wy wife has owned at least 2 Macs for her standard office use. She's managed to break them both shortly after the warranties expired. Getting them fixed has been chancy at best, impossible at worst and always expensive in time and money.
It's all marketing hype (an Apple strength) and fashionably vocal zealots (not many cheerleaders for M$). If Apple profits from the halo effect, good for them...but include me OUT.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."
- H. L. Mencken
I get what it's for genius, I own one. But that doesn't mean most people won't come to the mini expecting a more complete computing experience, and they are going to ask why some of these things aren't available or work poorly. And for the record, the Mac mini is sloooowwww...
Yeah but are you making games FOR the mac? Could it be the other way around?... the more/better games for the mac you put out, the more people will get macs and therefore your games? Hey, just my 0.02% worth
"Persistance is Fertile" - Me. I can quote myself if I want to.
FreeBSD KLD allows for dynamic loading and unloading of device drivers as modules. This remains a non-OO system and retains the performance hit when you have a large number of calls accessing the driver.
While FreeBSD provides greater objectification of bus resources than its predecessor, there remains much work to do before the bus throughput approaches Darwin's level.
Don't get me wrong, BSD is a great system and the 5.0 changes were truly astounding when I look at what I used to run on 4.1. That said, Darwin's developers learned a lot from BSD's mistakes and in turn, *BSD developers seem to be watching Darwin's development and taking a number of cues from Darwin's (very different) solutions to common problems.
But then world of warcraft came out and it has the os x version on the same cd as the windows one. Hooray. I've quit playing all other games cause it is so addictive, so, the lack of games problem is solved.
Even turbo tax had the os x and windows version together on the same cd. Hooray! (Now if they'd just make quicken files compatible between the mac and pc, that would solve my MAJOR gripe w/ switching... I switched, and I'm glad I did, but that was the worst thing for me!)
Well, I'll be . .
I'd expect a classically trained ballerina to be more of an emacs type . .
oh, wait. Nevermind. I'm thinking of circus contortionists . .
hawk
(I know you were joking... or I hope you were joking....)
.I was just kissing Internet Communist's ass so he'd send me money the money I requested. Don't tell anyone, okay?)
(psst. .
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
What else is there worth playing? Even EA states in their earnings statement that WOW has negatively affect their earnings. Get a CLUE!!!
I jumped to a Mac with Mac OS X, 2 1/2 years ago. I haven't looked back at Windows, though I still have a x86 box with a flavor of Linux/BSD on it to work with if my Mac is working overtime, with certain projects. And to try out the latest distro's to keep in touch with the BSD and Linux. As for Windows, I am forced to continue supporting it and use it at work. But personally, Mac is my way. Whether that be with Mac OS X or other over time. I predict I will be running Apple PPC hardware for a long time to come.
Regards,
Ryan Pritchard
Fun Extends All Basic Life Expectancies
not server use. Ironic how Windows is becoming better suited for servers but less suitable for the desktop...
Maybe 20% of iPod users don't play games?
Or maybe they play World of Warcraft. I know I downloaded the update this morning on my PB 15' 1.5 Ghz. :)
Heard the rumours about easter eggs in the content patch... Kill the Rabbit
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Surely would have to be the Performa 52xx and the PB 190
Both had a series of extended warranty issues, the Performa had cache problems, a batch problem with the copper wiring used for the analog cards, firmware issues, etc... the PB 190 hade numberous problems with firmware, casings, display components, and to top it all off, they both shipped with Mac OS 7.1 when it was new and shiney and full of bugs.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
This has bullshit sarcasm written all over it.
...back when the MacSE FDHD came out. I've used various windows OS's since then. I'm still an Apple biggot.
I'm a paying Apple Associate. Beta tested OS X. So, of course anything I say is suspect.
Yes, Virginia you CAN get by with 256 Meg. Yes, you will have swapping. No, unless you are a power user, you will not notice.
I was under the impression my dear sweet wife had 512 Meg until one day I was updating her machine, got bored, and looked. I was horrified and amazed at the same time. She had been using the machine for close to two years, ripping with iTunes, etc. etc.
I still got her a gig (hey, it's cheap).
My advice, based on years of use of the OS X is to get 512Meg. It will help, but it is no panacea.
The big lie here is that you need gobs of RAM. That is not true. You can get by with the minimum. 512 is only the minimum if you are a geek.
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
Here's a suggestion for all you computer builders that seem somehow to remain unfulfilled - buy and restore an S-100 computer running CP/M. Anyone can buy a bunch of off-the-shelf PC stuff and build a computer - you know it can be done *somehow*. But after its all said and done, what have you accomplished that a million other geeks haven't already done? Buy an old IMSAI running a 2 or 4 Mhz (yes Mhz) 8-bit Z80 with 64K (yes K) of RAM, a serial board, and a floppy controller, then buy a couple of old floppy drives off eBay and get THAT to boot. When you do, you will know you have done something, because you will have written the entire I/O portion of the operating system in assembly, researched and understood the difference between single density and double density and floppy drive spindle speeds, will have written a floppy formattter, will have written direct disk sector read and write utilities, and will - in short - know your computer better than you will ever be able to know that Alienware 20Terahertz Doom player you hacked up. There's just nothing like being able to directly poke an entire game into memory using the front panel (IMSAI's 'Chase the lights game - which my daughter played for hours - requires only 40 bytes of code). I program commercial Mac OS X apps for a living, but for sheer fun, I'd rather get another of my old IMSAI's or ALTAIRs (or any pre-PC computer) up and running again. And you can do it for about what you pay for all those modern PC parts. And by the way, IMSAI is still around - see www.imsai.net Just a thought :-)
I don't exactly get a choice in the matter. I make sound.
Jory