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Return of the Mac
Ben Gutierrez writes "Paul Graham has posted a new essay on the Return of the Mac which begins with: 'All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs.' Tim O'Reilly said some similar things in Watching Alpha Geeks . From the article: "My friend Robert said his whole research group at MIT recently bought themselves Powerbooks. These guys are not the graphic designers and grandmas who were buying Macs at Apple's low point in the mid 1990s. They're about as hardcore OS hackers as you can get."
That said... BSD is dy^H^Hthriving.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Since around 1993 I've been messing with Unix. SCO, Slackware (1.0-ish), RedHat (pre 4.0...on Sparc!), Caldera, Irix, SunOS, etc.... both in userland, on the desktop, on my own servers, and a professional sysadmin.
I've got a mac now. The first of my life, from someone who wasn't ever a mac guy (and was probably more 'anti-mac' than most.) My g/f has one too -- more than once I was like 'just open a terminal and do....'
The fact that she doesn't need to know what the terminal.app is? That's the best part..... I get what I need, she gets what she needs.
I would switch if games didn't come out until a year after the PC version does.
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
Last year's Usenix conference was full of Powerbooks. Most of the top dogs in the industry. That prompted me to buy a PowerMac. It's the best computing decision I've ever made.
What's your point? I don't like Dell laptops... IBM sold their laptop division to some no-name, can't be yet trusted for quality company over seas... what's that leave us? Yes, Powerbooks... they're great hardware... I'm not a Mac lover... but I have had to work on PPC hardware, and I do like the power it has over similiar x86 based laptops... and OSX is a nice unix environment with a pretty shell... now if the powerbooks still had OS9 on them, there would be no way I would buy one...
That's the seller, an OS that's stable and powerful, on hardware that's powerful... Less to do with it being Apple, more to do with being better than Dell and HP and the rest of the crap out there.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
at least at my university, it seems as if apple have changed their image. No longer for graphic designers - it's for people who wanna 'get stuff done' with their computers
Also, their laptops are pretty much class dominant, and compare favourably on price with the high-end thinkpads in the powerbook range.
Business Voyeur
That statement would defintely hold more water if they actually had numbers from five years ago to compare to. Even though their site didn't exist five years ago, maybe check out a similar site that DID exist way back then...
Most /. advocacy seems to stem from the following:
Macs aren't Microsoft (unless you used Word or something on them)
You can install Linux on them (not that you can't even an electric toothbrush these days)
They were an underdog, which made those really cool Apple ][ computers back in the day (some of us have the emulators installed on our PC's and still fiddle with them.)
They had a sense of style, which the monolithic PC companies still can't seem to get (PC's, seen them lately? Was Dell/HP styling inspired by pinching a loaf?)
They were evolving, which always inspires some hope.
did I miss anything?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Are you sure about that? Think about messing around on the Internet. Ten years ago that was just getting popular in universities and now it's perfectly normal in the home.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
I noticed this trend (geeks switching to OS X) a few years ago. Most of the alpha geeks at Seattle Wireless were using iBooks around 2002. At that point, I knew Apple had a bright future ahead. Not only have I switched my main computer to a 12" PowerBook, but I also invested in AAPL stock. Now most of my roommates have iPods, more than half have PowerBooks, and the rest want a PowerBook. Many of my friends are switching, and it will be only a matter of time before lots of the general population does as well.
Here's the obligatory rebuttal. You're forgetting the software. You can put Linux on it for free, but you're not getting nearly the user experience you get with a Mac. Or you can pay for Windows and the software that runs on it. That will bring up the cost of that $450US system. Still, not the same user experience. With a Mac, it's the compete system your paying for, not just the hardware.
Cepstral: Quality TTS for OS X, Linux, Windows
Google - 2 PhD students at Stanford
...
Linux - 1 grad student at Helsinki University
GNU - bunch O' long hairs at MIT
You were saying something about the author being on crack? Those are 3 examples off the top of my head that have not only influenced but re-defined the software industry. I'm sure there are probably at least a couple more out there
They call me the working man. I guess that's what I am.
I bet you also voted for whoever your favorite actor told you to.
Sheep. Baaaaaaa! B-a-a-a-a!
Sometimes taking unspoken advise from those whom you respect is a conscious choice, not mindless groupthink. There are developers out there who are better than I am, and when they speak, I listen. I also pay attention to what tools they use. This is neither blind nor foolish, when not taken to an extreme.
So, I was a die hard Windows user, been that way since 3.0 (3.11 and 2k were my favorite releases), but 18 months ago I switched to Linux (first SuSE and more recently FC3). And now I'm thinking of a PowerBook.
Leaving Windows wasn't a problem, but sticking with Linux is. Sure it's very fast on my machine, and I have all the familiar Unix tools from the GNU chain, but so much doesn't work right. Linux on the desktop is close to a joke. I've tried both GNOME and KDE and neither is bug free (cf. Win2K which was very, very stable), and there are so many hardware incompatibilities that it's a pain.
Ultimately, I want to support F/OSS, but I may have to switch because it's a productivity drain for me to discover that gnome-panel has crashed something and now Evolution can't open the File dialog. Ugh. Or figure out why gaim's icon disappears in the tray some of the time, or have gdesklets eat the CPU for no apparent reason, or...
John.
Hey, what are you using right now to read my post? A monitor? Wow, there's that problem solved.
What are you using to click on the Reply button. A mouse? Good! Two down, one to go.
Now, what are you using to make the letters appear on your monitor. A keyboard? Brilliant!
What were you complaining about again?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Maybe you can sell your wife the same way I did. She hated how our old windows box slowed to a crawl frequently due to malware, adware, etc. I'm sure I could have kept up on all the service patches and updates and adware programs and virus protectors, but screw it. My mac works. Always. With no complaints and no effort on my part.
By the way. Virus protectors are as bad as the viruses themselves. Does any body else complain about these pieces of crap?
Jack
Obligitory "Me to".
The mac mini HAS to be as serious turning point. Finally, you can buy an economy mac without paying for redundant hardware you most likely have (monitor, ram, hard drives). It's as close as you can get to being able to buy a PPC motherboard, G4 CPU, copy of OSX, and do with it as you please. I got my mini last week and was pretty much able to take all of my old PC hardware and shuffle it over to the mini thanks to a USB 2.0 HD enclosure, spare ram, exisiting monitor and USB mouse.
I've been one of those fence riders for a long while about buying a mac, but damnit, now there is no reason not to. If you were like me and liked Linux for the *NIX'ness, but also wanted mainstream apps like Photoshop, etc with a GUI that beats the snot out of Windows, get one of these mini's. It's the best of both worlds. You can be a geek with a crapload of terminals open and still be chic.
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
One reason Apple is more streamlined than Windows is that it refuses to keep backwards compatability.
...
... have you even used a Mac in this century? Or are you just busting on them because people are migrating from the platform you like and you don't: understand why, fear change, fear being a follower or that you just plain like what you're using and get a funny feeling when others find something they like better.
Not flaming you (although I think that's what you want). Most anti-Mac folks I run into these days haven't touched a Mac since the System 7 days and continue to carry that prejudice.
Stating that Apple refused to adopt backward compatibility is ignoring the fact that you can still run ancient software in Classic layer and will be able to for some time.
Can't use a floppy?
I haven't missed it, but I can go buy a USB external for peanuts.
No two-button mouse?
Never mind, I'm not going there
Seriously
Anyway, I guess I don't understand where you get "Apple thinks it's customers are idiots" out of any of this.
All I can say is fear not, there is enough room in this town for two OS's.
They can switch. I'll stick with *nix and free updates, and save myself $140 every other year in upgrade costs.
Too bad, those $140 (sic) upgrades are friggin' awesome.
Four weeks, Twenty papers, that's two dollars
Does that 450USD system have onboard or dedicated gfx?
Does it use shared ram or dedicated VRam?
Does it include any software similar to iLife?
Does it include Windows XP Pro?
Does it include a DVD-Combo drive?
Does it include CD Burning software?
Does it include a USB Keyboard with USB ports?
Does it include Firewire ports?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
What amazes me most is how short of a time it took for OS X to get put together.
What really made MacOS X work is that Apple already had a very secure decently sized niche market for Macs. That is, there was a guaranteed devoted userbase that:
(1) Hardware manufacturers bother to write and include drivers.
(2) Software companies bother to release OS X versions of their applications.
That means that "things just work" - hardware works, and there is enough software, all built for the specific platform, that it all plays together nicely.
Imagine, for a minute, that there was a Linux distributor (Call them X) that standardised on a fixed platform (say GNOME for example), and had enough guaranteed userbase that Adobe wrote a version of the Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) for GNOME, Microsoft released MS Office for GNOME, and lots of other serious software companies also wrote GNOME versions of their commercial applications. All of a sudden distribution X would be a viable platform that had all the software you need, and it all works seamlessly together inside GNOME. Presuming you also have hardware coming with distribution X drivers, dsitribution X would be quite reasonable competition for OS X - it would certainly have the "it just works" factor.
You can redo the whole gedanken experiment with KDE if you like, you'll get similar results.
What made OS X really work was the guaranteed userbase and the fact that it could run old mac software to ensure a smooth transition of that userbase and an immediate supply of software. Honestly, if a small startup company wrote a brand new OS that was as good as OS X but lacked the userbase, and hecne software and hardware support, it would just potter along and probably eventually die or get bought out (see BeOS, NeXTStep etc.)
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Sue fan sites
Tried to use the DMCA to remove content from source forge
Promise upgrades but never follow through(ibook,performa)
Use DRM to lock product(itunes) to device(ipod) and threaten to use the DMCA to protect the lock in
Reciever of numerous customer lawsuits from selling used products as new, and to lie about about the battery life on ipods
For a company with only less than 3% market share, they sure seem to get sued a lot for shoddy products or unethical business behavior.
And this post will probably last 5 minutes before apple fanboys troll, or flamebait it even though i just posted facts.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Oh the shock and horror. Apple is a "corporation" which has to protect its IP and trade secrets from being leaked to the competition.
# Tried to use the DMCA to remove content from source forge
See above.
# Use DRM to lock product(itunes) to device(ipod) and threaten to use the DMCA to protect the lock in
I have news for you, the labels want and demand DRM. But it can be easily circumvented legally with a thing called a CD-R disk.
# Reciever of numerous customer lawsuits from selling used products as new, and to lie about about the battery life on ipods
Those lawsuits are being pushed by disgruntled resellers, not consumers. Have those cases been proven?
Does the competition speak honestly about their battery life? No. Companies like Dell and Sony forget to mention that their "numbers" are based on testing using the lowest bandwidth settings with no user interaction.
YMMV but I've experienced battery life on my 2nd generation iPod which exceeds Apples claims for battery life but then again, I don't use the backlight and I'm not deaf. What this means is I usually listen on Shuffle mode and my volume is less than a fifth of full volume.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
However, my powerbook purchase brought the joy of computing back into my life. I frequently read the comments of those who decry the overpriced Mac when compared to constructing your own box (which I used to do - and I still believe that a Mac is equivalently priced with Dell/Gateway/IBM hardware, when all things are factored in properly) and while true on one level, it misses the mark on the total picture. That is depending on your interests and usage desires:
Life got a lot simpler when I replaced my wife's Win XP box with an iMac. No more weekly degunk sessions, antivirus, malware consternation and constant admonitions for her to be vigilant about keeping her machine clean were necessary. And she took to it like a charm -- things were unfamiliar (and still sometimes she stumbles on a Win -> Mac how-to-do question) but she is enthralled with it now and spends more time on email/web browsing than she ever did on the Win box. The iLife/iPod deal is just gravy and really we've experienced firsthand on how much more hassle-free life became after the Mac switch.
So, I'm not swayed by saving a couple hundred dollars. Just like I wouldn't buy a Kia or a Yugo, I'm not going to opt for a bargain basement PC over a quality machine like a Mac. No, it's not perfect and presents its own set of flaws, but at this juncture, it seems to be the product of greater quality for me.
AZspot
I don't know how much you value your time, but mine is worth more than pennies an hour. Given the amount of nit-picking you're doing about $50 worth of hardware, given the far superior software package, security, and visual appeal, you aren't someone who will be swayed.
My god, people will come up with all sorts of excuses. You can pay $500 for something you want that will work as advertised, or paying 80+% of that cost for something that won't.
And sure, I can come up with some freeware crap-fest software to install on a Windows box to make it sorta work if I wanted. But that's just pathetic... I'd spend hours doing it, the software would be anemic, and my OS would be crippled.
Where's the comparison again?
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Of course with things like Key-Value introspection and Cocoa Bindings and Core Data, we're really moving beyond what a traditional application development environment it and getting closer to a data-abstraction environment.
Yes. And note that Next/OpenStep had very similar technologies in a different form with Enterprise Objects Framework.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
So you are just itching to buy yet another keyboard, mouse and monitor? With iMacs that force one to acquire the built-in monitor there were complaints about the forced bundling. Now that Apple has an option that doesn't require you to buy a new monitor we still hear nothing but whiny complaints.
For anyone who has owned a computer the cost of upgrading to Mac OS X is no more than $600. The excuse that it costs too much is gone. Find another one.
That's impressive, by in my opinion Linux (which I have used various flavors of for several years for desktops and servers) still doesn't cut it for the average home user. Many users want a few simple apps like Photoshop Elements, and of course they can't have that on Linux. Instead, a bunch of idiots like you and me point them at something called "the GIMP". We say, "Look, it's free!" They say, "I don't care, it sucks, I want Photoshop Elements." We are not necessarily smarter than them.
/dev/hda3 thing instead of translating all that garbage into something a normal person can understand, like a drive icon on the desktop with the volume label displayed under it. What a concept, huh? Of all things, KDE still displays the device name and mount path on the desktop under the drive icon, as if that would actually be useful to the common user! I like KDE in general, but give me a break. "/mnt/storagedrive3 [/dev/sdb2]"? How is that useful to the average person? Volume labels have been around forever. Why aren't we using them, like every other sensible desktop OS?
There definitely isn't a set of applications for Linux to match iLife/iWork. IPhoto alone has no match on Linux. Besides which, we all know what happens with most of these Linspire machines. People buy it for the hardware and throw a pirated copy of Windows and about $1,000 worth of other pirated software on it. Unfortunate but true.
So, I see the machine, but I don't see the legal software and the usability that goes with it. Of course, that's just my opinion, but it's based on direct observation that tells me Linux still isn't quite ready to compete with OS X except in niche markets (where it usually kicks butt). As a general desktop OS it is sorely lacking. I mean, lately I've tried some of the very newest and most "user friendly" distros like Knoppix, Kubuntu and Mandrake 10.1, and none of them will even auto-mount a simple USB key on the desktop!
And I've never yet met a Linux file manager or desktop environment that made it easy to navigate (or even find) the various drives inside and connected to my computer, at least not in any way similar to how it works in the Windows/Mac/BeOS file managers. Linux still seems to be stuck on the whole
These kind of things should be considered showstopper bugs if we want average people to use Linux as a desktop. We do want that, don't we? So far I haven't really seen any Linux software even going in the right direction.