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Apple's Fruitful Future
Apple's 30th Anniversary is prompting retrospective looks at the company's last three decades. C|Net grounds their look back in the here and now, commenting on lawsuits and competition. ZDNet complains that Apple still isn't in the workplace. The BBC looks at the company's world-changing aspects in a more upbeat story. Nick Irelan wrote in to mention a Forbes piece entitled Apple's Biggest Duds, so you can image what what side that article comes down on. CNN puts the whole thing in perspective, with a balanced look at the company's good and bad points. Finally, if you want some rumourmongering, 192939495969798999 writes "Industry sources have leaked that tomorrow, on the 30th Anniversary of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs will announce that the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4."
Siliconvalley.com points out that it's a mixed picture for Apple under Jobs ...
s iness/columnists/mike_langberg/14191452.htm?source =rss&channel=siliconvalley_mike_langberg
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/bu
Building a pricier windows box may not be the answer.
Or not. Since Windows doesn't support Apple hardware, not the other way around.
I can't wait until Apple is 64! And Apple (Beatles) will probably sue them for being 64! :P
Have a Mac which can run XP when required.
That's one way Linux is getting into the workplace. All the PCs at my work are dual boot, Linux/Windows.
"Industry sources have leaked that tomorrow, on the 30th Anniversary of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs will announce that the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4."
Well, unless you sent this from somewhere east of +2 GMT, I'd say you're a bit early on this one...
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
From the Forbes article: The Lisa
WTF? How many years ago was that? Was the Lisa actually a bad thing at the time? Nothing compared to it, with the sole exception of the "system which came after it" the Mac.
Enough about the Lisa thanks. Apple had a go and they got it right in the end.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Apple is trying to slow down and wait for M$. But with all the Vista delays I am not sure how much longer Steve Job should wait.
yeah, but what about laptops? Some will throw fish at me for saying this, but Linux for the most part is not laptop friendly. I guess you could say laptops are not linux friendly as well.
ôó
Just the capability of dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4 would certainly put Apple into Business in a big way. Although, I would think that being able to run Windows applications inside OSX would make more sense from their perspective. Both would be the best, since some people might just like Apple hardware, but just want Windows. And some people might like OSX and just need to run a few Windows applications.
or is this just an early april fools joke?
It'd be slicker if they did something like xen and allowed windows to be run as a guest OS at near full speed. That'd be more historically consistant as well.
the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4.
So now I can spend another $1200 on Adobe CS2 so I can run it on both platforms on one computer...
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
Now I'm worried.
In this confusing world, the one comforting, constant, bedrock, fundamental certainty has been that the pundits would explain how Apple is moribund, in a death spiral, and will be gone in about a year. The first time I heard that was in 1985. Not counting, of course, the people in 1984 that said the Mac was dead on arrival because it didn't have an 80-column screen and cursor keys.
Circa 1990, I worked in a Fortune 500 company which cancelled all its Mac skunkworks projects, due to Apple's imminent demise, scaled back all its Windows projects, and beefed up all its OS/2 projects, because Gartner's colorful graphs showed OS/2 would pass not only the Mac but MS-DOS and Windows in, if I recall correctly, less than two years, and would dominate the market by 1995.
Nobody is saying Apple is dead? Uh-oh, I'm worried. Maybe it's time to start short-selling Apple stock.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Dual booting is a good way to get to the workplace - Have a Mac which can run XP when required.
And double the per-seat cost of support? At the end of the day, hardware is a minor cost for enterprise users. The support/patching/security issues of a machine that logs in on OSX one day and XP the next would be prohibitive. Maybe for specialized cases (web dev etc...), but certainly not enterprise-wide. And in those cases, the workers probably already have two machines on their desk.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Have you tried Q? It works on my home iBook, but is rather slower. I'd love to see how it runs on a new powerbook.
http://www.kberg.ch/q/
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
is yet just another cross-platform solutions ;-)
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
What about: jump into new market and grow that market from a 10-100m to a multi-billion dollar market and keep majority share of that market?
How about: making tons of money selling stuff that people want (or perhaps even need)?
Market share only makes sense if you're concerned about innovating and creating new markets. The bottom line is that Apple is making money hand over fist, the old fashioned American way: innovating. I'd like to see HP, Microsoft, and Sony say they've done that in the past 5 years.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Right. Apple produces the Lisa and everyone says "dumb Apple, what a dud."
Microsoft produces Windows 1.0 and Windows 2.0 and everyone says "Got to admire Microsoft, they stick to it until they get it right."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
That article linked to with the supposed XP rumor says nothing at all about dual-booting or Windows on Macs. Just Intel iBooks and video iPods. And it's from the beginning of February.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
All future Apple products will support the Evil Bit.
3 4209
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/01/14
I metamoderate, therefore I am
I work for a credit card processing company and we're a Mac company. We develop on our dual G5s and our sales staff uses powerbooks and iBooks. We get the luxury of using OmniGraffle over visio (its cheaper too!). We did break down and buy office, but we still use iCal and Mail.app over entourage. Our server environment runs 1U IBM x306s running fedora core 4. I can definately say we've saved a significant amount by not going windows. http://www.mobileevolution.com/
if sign.nil? Sig.new
Jobs is turning Apple into an innovating consumer device company and building its brand so that, hopefully for Apple, even when there's competition for a product, folks will still buy the Apple - even for a premium.
I honestly predict that one day, Apple will leave its roots behind and leave the PC market to the commodity manufacturers - like the big American companies did with TVs. Yeah, you can still buy a name brand TV, but it's usually some Asian company that bought the rights to use the name on their TVs.
Saturday is April 1. Slashdot will be shut down. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Market share is a very misleading statistic.
It is possible that Apple doubled its sales in one quarter and its "market share" decrease if PC sales grew faster than that during the same time period.
Because recent reports indicate that Apple's computer sales have increased... and did so by a large margin, decreased market share is an indicator of increased PC sales not decreased Mac sales... but siliconvalley.com doesn't tell you that.
The guy is confusing install base and market share. Whether or not he's doing it purposefully is unknown, but something tells me he's aware of the differences and how the public misperceives them. They are two totally different statistics. The journalist is playing upon the public's misconceptions about install base and market share because it makes for a more dramatic story.
It's very disheartening as its yet another method of causing people to (mistakenly) believe that Apple is dying... like so many of the debunked stories of yesteryear.
Yep
Um, so, what's up with that MacNN URL? Is someone getting AdWords revenue for every Slashdot-reading Apple fanboy who clicks the link?
Steve: Today, I've got some amazing news! The new Intel Macs will support dual booting with Windows!
*clapping and cheering*
Steve: April fools!! Haha, I'm so funny.
...and the IBM Portable, and Micro Channel, and, of course, the IBM 4" diskette drive (you know... the one that was going to blow the Seagate 3" diskette drive, the Hitachi 3-1/4" diskette drive, and the Sony 3-1/2" diskette drive out of the water?)
How about Microsoft Bob? and Windows ME? and Windows for Pen Computing?
The biggest thing the IBMs and Microsofts of the world have going for them is the perception of infallibility. Their flops are instantly forgotten, and all the business folk accept the idea that they will inevitably sweep aside the competition at anything they do.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"Industry sources have leaked that tomorrow, on the 30th Anniversary of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs will announce that the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4."
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
Wht crack head is moderating these posts funny?
Dual booting is a HORRIBLE way to get into the workplace. It's confusing to many people and only doubles the cost of software licensing.
what they tried to do to my uncle Jimmy Pepper, after he was promoted to Sergeant in the army.
Vendor lock in is very dangerous, and it should be avoided wherever possible. It isn't avoidable in many software markets (such as OS), but hardware has been a commodity market for decades. It would be extremely stupid for any business to take a step into the distant past with a single hardware vendor.
Apple has no business in the workplace until it opens up it's hardware to competition.
MAKE IT TALK WITH SERVERS BETTER.
What makes Wintel PCs what they are is that people are accustomed to connecting these things to servers when they log in.
That experience doesn't exist (to the best of my knowledge) with the MacOSX environment. Drives can be mounted at power up but I don't see the same experience that people are accustomed to in Windows.
I have an integrated environment where there is Mac and Windows on the same network sharing access to files. They both access the Novell and Linux server files. Windows does it better. Mac will lose its network mountings without cause that is obvious to the user and without a mounting script, the user would generally need to restart the computer (and the apps) to resume normal work. In windows, if users are dicconected from a server, the user is notified.
In short, MacOSX doesn't seem to be geared to a business environment. It's their own damned fault. They need to make it work in a way that business users expect to see it... and right now, it's essentially, the Windows way. This is the same issue with Linux adoption in the workplace.
Don't they know Apple will be out of business within 2 years? The industry pundits have been saying that for ...um...30 years!
Instead of letting people vote on Apple's worst product, they should let people vote on what products people thought were cool, but died anyway.
I'll start:
Newton (of course),
geopod (early voice capability was cool),
opendoc (with Cyberdog!),
and Hypercard!
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
A question both Jobs & Gates may soon be wondering.
I had the serial number 71 Apple II (I wrote the little chess game that was distributed with early Apples on the demo software cassette), bought an early Mac (I wrote the ExperOPS5 commercial product on it), and I still use Macs a lot for my work (although I use Linux more).
For me, Apple products are "feel good" products. Visually they look great compared to the competition. The software always seems a little more solid (probably because of only needing to support their own hardware).
You can certainly get more bang for the buck with a PC clone running Linux, but Macs with OS X are great products. When I bought my first Mac, they were very new and one day I brought my Mac into work because I wanted my secretary to type in a big stack of notes that I had written on a business trip. I immediately got pulled into a meeting and when I got out of the meeting my non-technical secretary was done - it just took her a few minutes to figure out the Mac -- try that with a PC in 1984!
In related news, Apple's website announced they're looking for a handwriting recognition engineer, so maybe they'll be releasing their own PDA sometime soon.
This announcement is nothing. I think the world would prefer to see him announce that you can boot OSX on any newer, reasonable PC hardware. That would get it in the workplace faster. Apple's hardware is too costly for most businesses (well, not really, but that's how they see it).
Why does forbes suck up to msft all the time?
Dan Lyons has been sucking up to scox, and bashing Linux for years. His disregard for facts is amazing.His articles are way over the top.
Danny is only one example. Forbes gushes over msft constantly. And forbes vehemently *hates* anybody who competes with msft, or msft's Internets, of has anything unkind to say about msft.
Jeez,
What is it with Forbes?
I feel like I'm in an elevator while reading a short, single column 'article' squashed between adverts, and even then the content contains such rubbish as
"The Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people ), where he now has a board seat via the acquisition of his Pixar (nasdaq: PIXR - news - people ) animation studio."
Come on people, lets stop linking to this rubbish.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
No fish from me. I agree that some laptops aren't linux friendly. My inspiron is an exception. The only problem I had with it was the video so I had to use a workaround (and that was fixed in the next bios upgrade).
The only *real* problem I had was getting a wireless card that was linux friendly. Other than that, it hasn't been bad at all. I've heard horror stories though.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
You know Apple owners love to smell their own farts.
Dual booting may be a good solution, but Virtual PC for Mac/Intel running Windows at near-native speeds will be a better one.
And by the way, the comment about Apple releasing a dual booting laptop themselves is nonsense.
For Apple's 30th they need to release a new NEWTON based on the iPod. Give it a sizable full color high rez screen, a small HD, with a load of good features... make it PC, and Linux compatible so others can use it too. Then the Newton wouldn't be such a flop. Make it a competitor to the Orgami. I'd buy one.
MadOgre.com
Finally, if you want some rumourmongering, 192939495969798999 writes...
They forgot the Apple III Computer Of course, this was an emminently forgetable computer anyway (only on the market for 4 months), so I can forgive them for forgetting.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Industry and commerce ground to a halt throughout the world, as workers, peasants, and billionaire executives alike tuned in to monitor the proceedings on radio, television, internet, and a variety of wireless and satellite communications. Most retail businesses in the United States and Europe were closed for the day, in preparation for the announcement, which was expected to change human civilization as it is currently conceived or understood.
Clergy from Mecca, to Rome, to Salt Lake City, to Tokyo and beyond paced rooms as they waited and brooded over the vast consequences of the announcement. In many Third World nations, the poor and ignorant masses were so overcome with fear and anxiety, that rioting and mass suicides began to spread on all continents, barely held in check by legions of police and military personnel, tenuously in control of their own emotions.
The entire planet fell dumb with awe as Jobs made his momentous announcement: Apple Computer had devised a method to capture and process data that was for practical purposes impervious to the causes of erasure and data loss that plague modern computing devices. No amount of electromagnetic fields could cause erasure, and data written with this technology was expected to be readable for a thousand years or more under reasonable storage conditions. Even more mind-boggling, the reading and writing of the data was technology independent. It would not be necessary for users hundreds of years in the future to preserve today's technology. Jobs demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, the ease with which future generations would be able to access such data.
The new technology, revolutionary yet environmentally friendly nanotechnology-based laminae of compacted cellulose fiber as the data substrate, and finely machined graphite rods or thin tubes of optically dense viscous gel deposition units, were shown in a variety of decorative colors. Jobs demonstrated a bright yellow substrate which was preformatted with fine rulings on its surface to guide the application of data. He showed data deposition in blue, black, red, and green, and claimed that Apple could provide deposition units in any arbitrary color. The substrate was to be made available in pads of 100 laminae, and the deposition units in boxes of one dozen. Later in the day Staples and Office Depot made surprise announcements of the imminent availability of this technology in their stores worldwide.
The reality is that Apple is moving towards a Windows-based offering built on Intel hardware. Users would see Windows no more than they see Unix today. NeXT on Windows instead of NeXT on Unix. All the goodness of the Mac GUI, but the ability to run Windows software, and less expensive, better performing hardware.
What's wrong with that?
There is that virus problem, but maybe Apple's Winmactels will be better locked down.
Oh, come on mods, lighten up; it made me laugh out loud.
"Sufferin' succotash."
ZDNet must have never visited my workplace. People are pretty free to specify their own laptop models, and the percentage of Apple-branded laptops spotted in a meeting room is often 50%, and has been as high as 100%.
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
Whoever wrote the poll obviously doesn't know her Apple history.
Apple's solution for people with Windows apps isn't dual-boot - it's CrossOver. That's system-level emulation, versus dual-boot or launching Virtual PC. Apple has a few Windows apps running already this way (though not for you to try yet).
Can a Linux-ite elaborate? I only know what the reps tell me.
All macs will now be gBooks, you can buy your gPod and get music on gTunes. All theyre gonna do is search-and-replace appple.com replacing i with g...
I heard the name might be change to something like Grape or something.
I have two coworkers who did the opposite. They bought dell laptops with Windows and installed OS X on them and can dual boot to either OS.
I am guessing that the dual boot thing is an April Fool's joke. Do you honestly think Apple is interested in supporting the buggy, virus-prone Windows XP? I doubt it. Unless Apple has struck some crazy support deal with Microsoft, I think Jobs is just pulling a fast one.
Everything on my laptop works perfectly under Linux except for standby/hibernate, which don't work at all. It's a bit of a pain in the ass. Intel's wireless cards (specifically the 2200BG) have good open-source drivers, although this wasn't always the case (and certainly wasn't when I got this machine).
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
I worked for a major maker of desktop publishing software for the Mac and PC. In 1997, the co-founder (and resident wacko) decided "apple was dead" and "no more macs would be purchased within the company". Two problems with this logic - one - 78% of their revenue was from Apple users - and 2 - new USB-only macs were coming down the pipeline which nullified all the hardware dongles being used. Not to mention things like new dev-hires who needed new macs to test and develop on, testing on all hardware for compliance - and yes this was a hoot.
We were sneaking in macs in the shipping dock in off hours and making little side deals with security to erase video and door logs to cover tracks to contravene the order until the idiotic ban was lifted. Of course - other reasons for this could have included cofounder wacko coming to personal loggerheads with Apple's still reigning co-founder wacko and you had entertainment that reality show producers would otherwise kill for.
But yes - some of Apple's dearest "supporters" also wrote Apple off long ago.
Res publica non dominetur
I never use hibernate, so that's not a real issue. I also think that the modem doesn't work, but that's also not really an issue since the only time I've ever used that was to send a fax from windows all of a half dozen times or so.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
That's two things.
It really depends what you want to do.
A visit to the forums at onmac.net (the home of the fully working XP on Mac contest won by narf and blanka for their fully working dual-boot solution) shows a lot of angst over not yet having fully working graphics acceleration, due to a lack of ATI x1600 drivers.
Such angst might also exist for a Virtual PC solution if, as in the past with this software, graphics are not fully accelerated. This is mainly for games of course, but in the Wiki on that site which shows tested software, many people have expressed desires to run high-end 3D and scientific OpenGL applications.
So for these, booting as a PC is the better option. Besides, it takes my MacBook Pro less than 30 secs to reboot from Mac OS X to XP and vice versa.
Another area is hardware drivers which are not fully compatible with the Virtual PC environment. In the past I've been using a specialized piece of mapping software with a GPS hardware device (via RS232 serial converted to USB). Although I could tortuously configure Virtual PC to work with it, it was always forgetting settings, or directing the adapter to the wrong port, etc. Now with dual-booting, it just works each and every time I plug it it.
I agree having a virtualization option would be great, but it is not always the best way of running another OS on the same hardware.
"The reality is that Apple is moving towards a Windows-based offering built on Intel hardware. Users would see Windows no more than they see Unix today. NeXT on Windows instead of NeXT on Unix. All the goodness of the Mac GUI, but the ability to run Windows software, and less expensive, better performing hardware."
This particular trollish comment keeps appearing in one form or another lately. It is completely retarded. Apple doesn't need to introduce a Windows-based offering. They will have virtualization built-in to the next major release of OS X. Virtualization is a better choice for most users than dual-boot and it keeps the Apple OS in front of new users to better aquaint them with the benefits of OS X. For others there will be nicely packaged versions of the popular dual-boot "hack".
This sig kills fascists.
I'm not sure exactly what the problem is that you are trying to describe, but:
:)
1) Macs can connect at login. Just drag a mounted share point into Login Items. Duh.
2) Macs do give you a notification when a server becomes disconnected. All the way back to OS 7, I think.
3) You can actually use bash, applescript, whatever, to write a script to automatically re-mount on disconnect. Go learn how.
4) We have roughly the same number of PC's here as Macs, and I certainly can't distinguish any difference in the frequency of disconnects. Maybe that's because the PC's get rebooted more often.
5) Making it work the Windows way is a stupid, stupid suggestion. Think about it. Providing the same functionality in a *better* way is what Apple has to do.
I call troll, and/or a really lousy IT guy.
I trust all information leaked from Apple, especially on the day before April 1st, about an April 1st announcement.
But really, what a great use of an April Fools it is, to have the entire industry waiting on the tips of their baited breath to hear Apple state that they will allow Windows on their boxen. Remember, this is Apple, the wizards of spin (ie. advertising, mindshare, etc...).
And, just for the record, when Apple employees go to buy the best mp3 player / computer / hifi they can, they buy Jack Bauer brand. (;
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur. . . . . . . .
Microsoft Vista: Not 'People Ready'
From the ZDnet article:
So why are Macs still such a rare site in the enterprise?
Because of incompetent hairpieces in management who wouldn't know a good product if one jumped up their ass.
Or because of humpfuck articles that ask dumbass questions like "why doesn't Apple get a job?"
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
on MacInTels will run Windows alonside Mac without partitioning or switching... it just works! Steve Jobs would accept only a duel on the desktop, and let the people decide. Its pure Jobs!
The division, headed by Steve Jobs look-alike Tucker Carlson, will begin to bring out new products that cater specifically to this untapped market.
The new Intel iBooks will feature optional American Flag engraving, Sudden Mud Sensor, and birdshot-proof screen protection.
Also, all new Macs will have the option to boot up to the traditional Mac startup chime or, for the first time, the Fox News Alert sound effect.
Paulo's News: Bringing You the Best of the Mainsternative Media
Here's a nice BitTorrent link with all the keynotes since Steve Job's comeback (1997) + the introduction of the original Mac in 1984 (>10GB!!!):
click
They forgot a few.
//gs? Macintosh TV? eMate? Oh -- the KING of all Apple failures... Apple III?
Remember Dylan?
Remember OpenDoc?
Apple
I think that new sound system they introduced is a dud as well, but maybe the Cult of Mac will buy some.
If your list of product names starts off with "gbook," "gpod," "gtunes," and "gmail," I think there's a pretty strong argument for staying as far as you can away from the term "grape."
I've was always a big fan if Thinkpads. They were always the best laptops for me. Good hardware, sturdy, and I having been involved with projects under IBM supervision I know what there QA is like (hell ;-)). Leveno taking things over however has made me doubt things. What kind of support am I going to get? Are they going to spy on me?
You know what? I started out on Apples. I owe the fact that I'm now a software developer on the fact that my schools always had computers (which happened to be Apples in one shape or another) in every classroom.
I trust the Apple brand. While I haven't had the need to own an Apple in 10 years (due to the fact that I develop Windows based systems), I've always been curious. My thinkpad a30 is nearing the end of its life cycle. If I could run XP on a Mac Book, I wouldn't think twice about it. I know I'm going to get good hardware, I know I'm going to get good support and it's an American company.
1. Windows Vista 2. Windows 95 3. Windows XP 4. Windows 2000 5. Windows 98 I think its in that order...
Wow. Now parents shop for school next year before it's out this year. Poor kids.
That is awesome. That's the most obfuscated description I've ever read.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to tell you what it describes, that should be an exercise for the reader.
I don't get it.
"Virtual PC for Mac/Intel running Windows at near-native speeds will be a better one."
Running Virtual PC or VMware currently on Windows with a Windows virtual machine does not quite fit the "near-native speeds" description. I would expect a substantial performance hit on a Mac as well.
Good enough for basic applications but terrible for intensive ones including (but not limited to) gaming.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Of course, hopefully a good Cedega-for-Mac solution will eliminate the need for dualboot altogether.
OS.X has never been a platform for hardcore gamers, it probably never will be and for those who use it the native game ports usually offer an adequate if not spectacular selection to choose from. But you are probably righ, a Cedega-for-mac solution will probably happen. If it does it will completely kill off the native OS.X ports which will make the people at Cedega happy but for the rest of us that isn't necessarily a good thing. Even if games will be playable with Cedega almost as soon as they are released for Windows the stability will probalby never quite measure up when compared to Windows. Personally I'd rather stick with the native ports and live with the limited selection and dual booting. Another thing is that Cedega's business practices vis-a-vi the OSS community are not exactly to my liking. The OSS crowd doesn't like Cedega alot and they can ruin them by setting up a competing project which is probably why Cedega reacted so venomously and threatened to restrict their proprietary license when Gentoo and Debian included it.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I agree though, looks are important, but I guess I left the Windows World (and thus beige boxes) behind 6 years ago and have lost a bit of touch since the.
Funny, I left beige boxes behind the same number of years ago! And yet, here I am typing this from an XP SP1 machine (I've flirted with Linux, but I've yet to settle down on a distro . . . consider me a Linux bachelor). Neither I nor any of my friends have cases that look anything but cool (except for my one friend who found a P4 in the garbage, but that's another story), and I don't mean that we we ultra-geeks and spent huge wads of cash on fancy cases or modding them; these are just cool looking stock cases, which I would have assumed any decent computer store would have shelves of.
And at the time I first got this aluminum-cased full tower that's still sitting beside me now, I noted (or rather, my back noted) how much more of a hassle it was to lug around an iMac at that time than it was my computer; it was actually nicer to carry one moderately heavy CRT and then one light-enough-to-lift-with-my-pinky tower than it was to move iMacs around, carrying handle be damned.
Not that many people aren't impressed by having the entire computer in one package (well, except for keyboard, mouse, decent speakers . . . but yaknow), my point is more a general point that PCs don't have to be fugly and badly designed on a physical level. Now, I'll will concede that likely a majority of PCs sold ARE suffering from such faults, and that gives people the perception that "ooh! these Macs are sooo much better!" when they glance over at them. And don't you be telling me that most PCs are such because it's cheaper, though! My computer here, all nice and windowed and glisteningly silver, is just a cheap chinese no-name brand! So the exact reasons why PC cases are generally so bad while equally priced superior products exist, well, I have my theories but howabout we just leave it sitting at that for now. I'd just like to quote MKlaus (the parent) one last time:
I think Price sells first and foremost, the rest is just added "convinience", that is if they see it.
You're bang on there, especially with the "if they see it", as I think that's exactly why Macs are winning the perception of functional and cool looking, and these people go "wow, I want that!" while continuing in their zombie-like purchasing of bad PC cases while they could buy better ones for the same price . . . they just don't ever see this option.
Actually, another thing occurs to me. All those beige boxes, many of them are purchased by companies for employees to work, right? It reminds me of going to Staples one time and looking at network cables (before I was bothering to just splice my own ethernet cables, which is hella cheaper, but I digress). There were red, blue, yellow and grey cables . . . the grey cost more than the decent-looking colours. "WTF?" I asked the salesperson. He was a kindof cool guy, and he replied "Huh, never noticed that. I guess we can probably get away with it 'cause businesses just buy grey, so we can jack up the price on that one." I walked away that day with some red and some blue, naturally.
So maybe that's part of the problem? Maybe business just creates so much demand for shitty-looking cases? Thinking about it, that might be part of why (as T("pessimistic")FA notes, Apple hasn't broken into the workplace; it doesn't meet the demands of blandness, concrete and sterility. So what's the solution? Will business eventually adopt the Mac, and if so, will that Mac come in a regulation bland box?
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
WTF are ou talking about?
get any iBook, MacBook, mac mini, iMac and compare to equavelent items from Dell or your local PC store. You will find that once you count in hardware, software and build quality Apple are actually quite reasonable. Alienware (Delaware?) aren't exactly cheap either but people still buy them.
Tags have got to be my new favorite feature. :)
The filesystem is the package manager
The website says it won't run XP. That's kind of a huge limitation.
Would this mean tri-booting with Linux WinXP and Mac OS X??
If you really think that Windows is best... don't come running to me to fix the viruses, spyware, etc
Anybody remember when "As Seen On TV" was all over these threads like white on iPods? I wonder if Apple finally fired him...
get any iBook, MacBook, mac mini, iMac and compare to equavelent items from Dell or your local PC store. You will find that once you count in hardware, software and build quality Apple are actually quite reasonable.
Yeah, but not everyone needs the Cadillac of computers, some just want a Chevy. Fact is, Apple's cheapest computer right now is $599, and it comes without a screen, keyboard, or mouse. You can buy an entire PC system for half the cost.
As it says on the bag of non-Walmart flour I buy: "The bitter taste of the others remain long after their bargain price is forgotten."
i wonder how apple plans to deal with the bad pr if they don't release a killer product on april 1 and a large part of their user base slits their wrists... just a thought...
Get your torrents...
Intel is really grabbing at straws here. While there HyperThreading model has proven to be quite a beast... AMD has done far better on the memory access component of the same class processor... But seriouly...When Will I be able to dual boot my standard laptop, an AMD64 3200+ with 2GB DDR, to run Linux/Mac OSX??? I'll gladly pay the licensing fees to run the ?BSD? based OS...if only to support the 2 of 500 people in my company that actually have Macs... I guess it also stands to reason that if you can dual-boot a PowerBook with Windows...we could easily find a way of dual-booting into Linux as well... Anyone know what processor Intel will be adding to these machines? IA64?
"There ought to be limits to freedom." -George W. Bush
I'm not defending MS's OS monopoly, just pointing out that it exists, where as there are numerous alternatives in the hardware market.
However, it would still be extremely irresponsible of any business to lock itself into Apple on both the hardware *and* software side. You've acknowleged the problems Microsoft causes with only half that monopoly.
The Pippin? A/UX? The Twentieth Anniversary Mac?
Whoever wrote that horrid fluff piece at Forbes didn't do her research. "Recording record profits" indeed.
--saint
Well, okay, maybe not full virtual machine technology, but something more on the order of Wine/WineX/Cedega, a compatibility layer. I think the technology would be VERY interesting for the Mac/Intel platform, especially if MS developed it, because they have far more resources than the Cedega guys as well as their own source code. The problem with this implementation is not speed. It'd be a cash cow if it had good compatibility.
This isn't an area in which I am very well-versed technically, but I do know this: Mac users would rather run Windows apps as bastard children than boot into Windows. However, if, as your sibling post suggests, you can boot into windows in 30 seconds on one of these boxes, well, maybe it's not so bad.
Marketshare percentages are misleading.
OK - Since you asked.
Mac mini
1.5 GHz Intel Core Solo
$599.00
1.5GHz Intel Core Solo processor
2MB L2 Cache
667MHz Frontside Bus
512MB memory (667MHz DDR2 SDRAM)
60GB Serial ATA hard drive
Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
Built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0
Apple Remote
Dimension E310
$499
Free Color Printer
Processor/Display
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 521 w/HT Technology (2.8GHz,800FSB)
Operating System
Genuine Windows® XP Media Center 2005 Edition
Monitor
15 inch E156FP Analog Flat Panel
Memory
512MB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz -2 DIMMs
Hard Drive
80GB2 Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
CD or DVD Drive
Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability
Did I score on that prediction or what! Wow, I feel special./ 136253&from=rss
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/05
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