Apple's Device Model Beats the PC Way

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Walt Mossberg argues in the Wall Street Journal that Apple's model for PCs and devices is beating Microsoft's. In early battles for dominance of the PC market, Microsoft's component-based platform crushed Apple's end-to-end model, he says. But in today's post-PC era, where the focus is on music players, game consoles and cellphones, the end-to-end model is the early winner. From the column: 'Even the Mac isn't as closed as its critics charge. It's still designed to work with Apple's own operating system and software. But it can handle all the common files Windows uses, can network with Windows machines, and can use all of the common Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice. The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows. Heck, the newest Macs can even run Windows itself.'"

Comments

History Repeats Itself

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA:

The jury is still out on whether the end-to-end model will prevail in the long term. Many at Microsoft, and some outside analysts as well, believe the new devices will eventually succumb to the component model, and that Apple's success with the iPod will fade, just as its early dominance of the PC market did.

I'd have to disagree with the above, based on the following observation:

I believe we're seeing an evolution of PCs and electronic devices that closely parallels the evolution of the electric motor. When electric motors were first available to the public, it was in a general-purpose, component model. You could buy an electric motor, and it would normally come with different belts or chains allowing you to attach them to a wide variety of other devices. Nowadays, electric motors are much more within the end-to-end model, in which they are made for a specific task and embedded in the end product.

Computing devices seem to be following that same general curve...becoming more specialized, embedded, and specific-to-task (one example: console games vs. gaming PCs). Given this inexorable movement away from the general-purpose to the application-specific, I'd have to guess that the end-to-end model will be excercising progressively more dominance in the market as time passes.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed this is a great analogy.

I remember back in the '80s someone making the same analogy in a debate about the future of computers. One guy was predicting that the mainframes and minicomputers would eventually become affordable that everyone would have one in their garage and send all computing-needs-tasks to it as batch files.

The other guy disagreed with the same analogy -- he said that when the electric motor was first gaining popularity, people predicted that you would have a large motor in your garage and pulley and chain and gear systems that would transfer the power to your sewing machine in your living room, etc.

Of course, as you observe, now electric motors are in whatever device that needs one; and computers are in almost every device that needs one.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[alxtoth]

Am I the only one who can't understand why newfound "Intel Apple fans" are the only ones thrilled about running Windows ?!? After decades of Mac zealotry ?!? Even MS's own employees have a thing called Mini Microsoft http://minimsft.blogspot.com/ .. Somebody must pay hard cash to keep up the good blogging of Macs running XP ...

Re:History Repeats Itself

[BasilBrush]

The electric motor analogy to computer devices is one of the key arguments in the book "The Invisible Computer", by Donald A Norman in 1999. Coincidentally he used to work for Apple. Which probably made the book and his theory rather popular there. Perhaps it even provided the catalyst for Apple deciding to do the iPod. It's probably one of the best example of the kind of "invisible computer"/"information appliances" he described.

It was a good book, and probably worth reading again now to see how his predictions are going.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[amliebsch]

I think your analogy only works for "computers" to include any turing-complete integrated circuit. In that case, computers, just like motors, are already manufactured in a dizzying array of form factors, capabilities, and functions. Specialized computers are manufactured for practically every consumer product that uses electricity.

But a PC is intended and designed to be as general-use as possible. The very concept of software is to enable the device to perform functions that were not contemplated at the time of manufacturing. To the extent that the PC is modular, it fills that role better, because increasing the functionality beyond the design conception is cheaper and easier. Perhaps some people would be willing to give up the flexibility of a PC in favor of something like a game console: slicker, better at doing what it was intended to do, but limited to its designed functionality. But I think many people are attracted by the open-ended nature of possibilities created by a general-purpose PC.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric and small gas powered motors are still made and sold in this manner. Now the manufactor buys the generic motor and drive system that meets their spec. If a motor is not available that meets a very specific need or if extrememly large quantities are needed, specific motors are built for that job. Of course your local hardware store does not sell just motors any longer but other places do.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Shazow]

You make a very good point. A very depressingly good point. :-(

There seems to be a similar parallel in software and operating systems. My beloved Linux (and Unix in general) took the component model from the beginning. Making little programs that do little things very well, strapping them together and doing clever things. Then Microsoft came along with Windows which seems to employ the end-to-end model. Especially with the upcoming Vista which has a version of the OS for each type of user (a brillaint economic move in terms of price discrimination).

This depresses me, but you may be right. Things may be moving towards a proprietary world.

- shazow

Re:History Repeats Itself

[AKAImBatman]

That's a good comparison. To take it a bit further, generic motors are still produced as generators. However, no one connects a device directly to a motor these days. Instead, the motor's output is first converted into a universal format (electricity) before being distributed to attachable devices. This design allows any device with a standard power plug to make use of the motor. It also allows for devices to be chained via power strips.

Now compare this to a computer. External devices used to be directly chained to the bus via ISA, PCI, PCMCIA, or Serial lines. As time progressed, the market moved to a generic "in-between" bus known as USB. (Universal Serial Bus) Just like with generators today, any device that has a USB connector can be attached to nearly any large computing device. With a hub, USB devices can even be chained to allow for as many devices to be controlled as can reasonably be handled by a single device.

The parallels are simply amazing.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[NutscrapeSucks]

For iTMS, I think this electric motor analogy stinks -- For the same reason that comparing pirating MP3s is not the same as stealing CDs from the store. Mossberg is arguing that the user-experience factors outweigh the (potential) network factors. Electric motor are used the way they are for cost reasons, not user experience.

It's all just software, there's no physical restriction which confines you to the "end-to-end" model. Apple's Good User Experience and Apple's Closed DRM Format are mutually exclusive IMO. In fact Apple is going with a closed format because they know that UE can't sell forever and eventually there's going to be "good enough" alternatives eventually.

I don't really care about iTMS, because for most people music is cheap and disposable. But keep in mind that right now people have two digital music players (PC and iPod), and iTMS seems like a great idea. In the near future, your Car/Phone/TV/HD-DVD/Microwave/etc will all play digital music, and people are going want the network effects more than the user-experience.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[poolmeister]

Totally agree with you there, I (as many of us Slashdotters) refuse to put up with Windows on any of my PC's, but to think of spending a sizeable wad of cash on slick & stylish new Mac and then purposely loading a Windows OS in favor of Mac OS, that's just sounds really dum to me.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[magicjava]

Am I the only one who can't understand why newfound "Intel Apple fans" are the only ones thrilled about running Windows

Speaking only for myself, I run Macs and Windows on my home setup. Have one machine that supports both operating systems greatly cuts down on the cost of hardware and reduces desktop clutter by over 50%.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[MindStalker]

The thing is that the general purpose PC is now become so cheap you can have a general purpose PC AND several specific purpose computing devices as well. There simply isn't much money to be made from the manufacturing of the general purpose PC anymore (well there is money to be made, but its from bulk quantity now). Seriously I could definatly see a time when people stop buying 500 dollar video cards for their PC, and just simply stick to buying $600 gamespheres.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[halfcuban]

See, I don't think it will be a move towards a proprietary world however. There's nothing on the Mac today, for the most part, that's really all that proprietary. An iPod hooks up by USB or FireWire, plays mp3's, and while it was intially limited to Apple's terrible iTunes product, many other software programs have managed to reverse-engineer into it. While admittedly none of the standards above are completely "free" (vorbis would be better than mp3, etc) It's not like the old days of when Mac's talked to each other using AppleTalk or something. To be honest, the continued focus on market share and OS dominance by analysts strikes me as hollow in today's computing world, where its increasingly becoming irrelevant what OS you run, as long as they hook up into the standards for communicating with other computers. No amount of "Extend and dominate" by Microsoft or "Making seamless" from Apple can change the fact that the world is all about pretty widely agreed upon standards.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[tetabiate]

While your comment seem logically flawless, I think that the main reason the end-to-end model works (at least in the case of the ipod) is due to the simple interface that improves usability while still offering a lot of options at an affordable price. That's also the reason why cheap cell phones sell better than feature-full still affordable ones. Also, miniaturization is a key word when speaking about technological trends.

  - A new political era in Latin America: history repeats itself.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[be-fan]

Being happy about being able to run Windows isn't out of any thrill of running Windows. It's a pragmatic issue: now, we can run software we can't find on OS X on the Mac. Better yet, with virtualization, we can run that software in a comfortable OS X environment. The net result is that we no longer have to keep a PC around if there is some piece of software we need to run occasionally.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[smoor]

As someone who's spec'd motors for a wide variety of projects for the last ten years, I think your way off. Your point might be valid, but motors come in a standard variety of sizes and configurations. You tell me what HP (or torque), operating voltage and a handful of other variables, I'll get you a motor that will work just fine.

Motors, like most devices have standardized over the years to common frame sizes, HP ratings, etc making selection much easier - a matter of catalog browsing.

There are certainly specialized motors out there, but there is no end-to-end strategy on 25HP 480V/3P motor. I won't say they are commodities, but I could almost the exact same thing (mount and form-factor wise) from 4 different companies without any trouble at all.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[OwnedByTwoCats]

The PC was designed to be general purpose. But now that people have 30 years of experience with desktop computers, they've found some "known solutions" that fulfill the needs of large segments of the market. Large enough that the machines can be "locked down", and the flexibility and a lot of complexity removed. Imagine a machine with web browser, office suite, finance package, photo catalog, and music. Do what a $400 PC bundle does, but eliminate viruses and spyware and worms and DDOS drones. You don't have to worry about anti-virus software subscriptions.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Skreems]

Actually, I think looking at things that way yields somewhat different conclusions. Look at the early PC market, for example. Apple sold completely pre-fab systems. Yeah, they came in a number of flavors (different speeds, different add-in cards) but essentially you were buying one complete system. The parts used to make such systems weren't available, even to businesses; Apple was the only one who could put together an Apple PC.

In contrast, x86 machines were built from modular components. If you wanted to, you could order different components from vendors and assemble the machine yourself. More common, though, you would pay someone else to assemble the components for you. Gateway, Dell, HP, whoever you picked, they could get the same components as every other manufacturer, and put them together, then ship it to you. You got a fully functional system, but since it wasn't proprietary you could easily swap out parts, and the competition in who was providing these pieces meant lower prices and (sometimes) better performance.

Now move to the software analogy. With Windows, Microsoft builds a bunch of pieces that they assemble into an operating system. They sell it in several different styles, and you can pick which one you want; but the pieces they use to make those systems are not available to anybody else. Another company cannot just come in, buy the parts, and assemble a version of Windows to sell to you. It's a closed market.

Linux, on the other hand, is nearly identical to the x86 market. The system is composed of a bunch of pieces that fit together in standardized ways. Many different people or groups have taken a stab at building versions of these components, though. You can take kernels patched and tweaked in any of thousands of different ways, different device systems, different GUIs, etc, and assemble them into a functional system. Individuals can do this themselves, but more often they will get a full package from some company that has taken these widely available pieces and assembled them.

The situations are parallel to a striking degree. And the results are nearly the same as well. Apple makes computers in which all the parts work together. You don't have to worry about the CPU overheating and frying the motherboard. All the parts are quality controlled, and while they may not be the very best on the market, you know the system is going to Just Work (tm). Windows is the same. You can't swap out the chron manager or the system logger if you want different functionality, but you also know that one piece of the OS isn't going to eat the rest of it. With Linux, you have a huge range of choice in which components you assemble, but that comes with the added risk that some available components are much lower quality than others, and some may be incompatible with each other; exactly the same way with assembling x86 components yourself.

In the end, who won? Well, it's not a perfect parallel, but it seems that in the long run, interchangeable parts and systems with more options won out. It took companies who would hide that abstraction from the user to do it, but Linux is getting there. Fedora, Suse, Linspire, etc are all catching on more and more, and as people start to realize that "computer" is not synonymous with "Windows", they'll continue to do so.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[MightyYar]

"Electric motor are used the way they are for cost reasons, not user experience."

This is an excellent point.

"In fact Apple is going with a closed format because they know that UE can't sell forever and eventually there's going to be "good enough" alternatives eventually."

On this point, I disagree. I think that there will pretty much always be an opportunity for UE to sell... Granted, if the hardware stayed the same, then UE would evolve to a certain level that was "good enough". However, I'd argue that innovation is actually moving faster in hardware than in software. Therefore, the UE (mostly, but not completely, defined by the software) will be constantly one-step behind. A nimble company that can react quickly will have the superior UE as long as hardware evolves at it's current pace.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't read the article, but I fail to see how his works in Apple's favor.

If the way is embedded systems and consumer products, then isn't Microsoft still WAAAAAAY ahead of Apple in this regard? Cars, medical devices, phones, etc... microsoft has embedded systems everywhere.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[BasilBrush]

But a PC is intended and designed to be as general-use as possible.

But that's just what they said about the general purpose electric motor. That's the whole point of the analogy.

As an extreme example, take Word Processing and Spreadsheet use. You may think that the same general purpose computer is best adapted to both tasks. But it's not:

Word processing on a PC is compromised because the screen is the wrong shape to fit a representation of a piece of paper on. A portrait orientation would work better. Yet for spreadsheets, landscape is better.

Likewise the keyboard is not optimised for either task. Instead of anonymous but general purpose buttons market F1-F12, and relatively arbitrary control and alt key combinations, which vary from application to application, there should be buttons marked perhaps BOLD, CENTER, STYLE etc. on the word processor and ABSOLUTE/RELATIVE or SUM on the spreadsheet.

Who knows, perhaps the spreadsheet would be better with different pointing scrolling controls. Perhaps a trackball purely for scrolling.

Perhaps the word processor should have a scanner/ocr built in. Because it doesn't need anything more than a cheap embedded CPU and no fancy 3D graphics it could have extras like that and still be a fraction of the price of a general purpose PC.

BTW, don't argue with any of the specific suggestions here. They're out of my hat and for demonstration purposes only. The point is that looking at each application separately, hardware can be designed to support a specific problem far better than the general purpose machine can. Those optimal designs would certainly be different from my examples.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[clydemaxwell]

A large problem with this modular form is that people aren't taking advantage of it as much anymore;

More and more people need to completely overhaul or even replace their systems to support new software, and this conflicts with the modular upgrade design.

As with the xbox which has now been wholesale 'replaced' with the xbox360, upgrades now take the form of a new device with better overall specifications.

We geeks, however, will always support modularity as long as it is beneficial to us.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Moofie]

"Look at the early PC market, for example. Apple sold completely pre-fab systems."

Um, Apple WAS the early PC market, and you built it yourself. I see the point that you're getting at, but you didn't make it very clearly.

People have always said that Macs were less modular and adaptible than PCs. I never found that to be true in my experience, and whatever modularity you gave away (Yeah, Macs didn't have ISA slots to install AdLib Gold cards) you got back by having really good stuff included in the box already.

Your mileage may vary.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Moofie]

"UE can't sell forever"

On the contrary, I think that Apple has made it clear that people will pay for good user experience. Is a Mac Mini or an iPod nano really that expensive?

I could buy PC components, and build it myself. I've done that for years, with a fair amount of success. I'm tired of dealing with all that mess, and now I can buy an iMac for, what? $1300 bucks? And it'll run every app on the planet.

How much is my time worth?

YOU may still enjoy trying to figure out why your PC reboots itself spontaneously. That's fine...you're welcome to it. Me? I'm tired of that rat race.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Anonymous Coward]

I just filed 4 new patents based on your post. Thanks!

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Comboman]

Computing devices seem to be following that same general curve...becoming more specialized, embedded, and specific-to-task (one example: console games vs. gaming PCs). Given this inexorable movement away from the general-purpose to the application-specific, I'd have to guess that the end-to-end model will be excercising progressively more dominance in the market as time passes.

{sarcasm} That certainly explains the popularity of WebTV boxes and "internet appliances". Why use an over-powered, general-purpose computer to surf the net when you can use a specialized end-to-end device. {/sarcasm}

Re:History Repeats Itself

[NutscrapeSucks]

I'm not denying that UE sells, but I question if Apple has even defined UE correctly for the long-term trends in the market. Compatibility is part of the User Experience.

For example, just carrying a cellphone is a better "user experience" than having both cellphone + iPod. iTMS? Better buy a special Cingular cellphone or live with the poorer UE. [Of course the cell companies are even bigger bastards than Apple about this stuff.]

How about your car? Wouldn't it be better to just push a button and transfer all your music to your BMW directly from your PC? That's the future. But Apple's UE is to take the iPod and plug it into the car. In this case the iPod is the obsolete "Electric Motor" and iTMS popularity is possibly restricting the better UE.

I think it's inevitable that the iPod/Mac analogy will play out over time, where Apple defined UE in terms of the desktop with the Mac and forgot all about UE in terms of the network.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[irenaeous]

I don't know that you should be depressed. This looks to me like a great scenario for FOSS. Companies other than Apple or MS that wish to market specialized end to end solutions with tightly linked hardware and software will need inexpensive, secure and reliable OS and application software unemcumbered by IP claims and royalties. And Open Standards will be essential for such devices to inter-operate. No other companies will be able to develop pure proprietary solutions from scratch, or have to license their solutions from their competition. All this looks to me like powerful incentives to embrace FOSS solutions. And, yes, they will be extended, much as Apple has in fact done with OS-X which if your recall is built on top of BSD. But the continued use of FOSS in all sorts of niches will ensure the survival and viability of free solutions for "the rest of us."

Re:History Repeats Itself

[NutscrapeSucks]

Um, Apple WAS the early PC market, and you built it yourself.

There has always been "commodity component" PCs based on the Altair 8080/S-100 Bus design that predated any Apple or IBM. The IBM PC didn't create this market, it only helped standardize it. Modularity is the bedrock foundation of the PC Market going back to even it's hacker roots.

Aside from trivialities about the Apple I, Apple has always been involved in the "whole widget" side of the business (practically inventing it), and not the commodity component side. At least not until this year when they've basically embrased the demon of the standard Intel motherboard.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Kadin2048]

I think the analogy he's getting at is the most people don't go out and buy electric motors by themselves. You're basically an anomaly.

Most people go out and buy a sewing machine. They plug it in, and it works. The smarter people probably realize that it has an electric motor in it, but they don't think about it very much. It's just a sewing machine. Similarly, people buy all manner of motorized devices without thinking about the motors themselves.

Unless they break, of course, in which case a rare person or two might take the device apart and replace the motor with a new one (or take it to someone who does this). But that's becoming more and more rare anyway.

The point is that motors aren't something that the average person deals with much anymore. People buy devices that include motors in them, and just expect them to function as sealed units. They don't buy a belt-driven sewing machine, take it home, and attach it to the drive shaft that runs along their ceiling which is connected to their "home motor" in the garage.

The analogy breaks down -- as most analogies do -- when you look at it too closely or start splitting hairs. But the point is that where once, people thought of "a computer" as a product, something that individuals would go out to the store and buy, today and in the future, people just buy music players, digital television recorders, and other computerized devices. The Device is the product, and it may include a computer in it, in the same way that the sewing machine includes a motor, but nobody really thinks about that.

Your point about motors may not be too much of a disagreement: that motors have become standardized even as they've become integrated into other products and basically invisible to the average user, might suggest that the "computing machinery" which drives everyday devices will become more-or-less standard, so that inside a purpose-built device there is a number of standard components, put together in a particular configuration in order to efficiently accomplish a set task, but that those components are replaceable (or at least understandable) if someone desires it.

As a tinkerer and hobbyist, I fervently hope that will be the case: that I'll be able to take apart a DTV recorder (or my offspring, should I have any, will) and be able to identify and replace parts of it as easily as I can open up a sewing machine and with a little skill, replace the motor.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Anonymous Coward]

snag 'dynamically labeled keyboard keys' for me, wouldja?

Re:History Repeats Itself

[GoatMonkey2112]

There's no reason that a Mac would handle any of these problems better. A widescreen panel that rotates and one of those OLED keyboards would solve those problems on either platform.

I think that some basic applications will develop themselves into their own devices, but that doesn't eliminate the need for a general purpose PC or Mac (which they both are, just because Macs are proprietary doesn't make them not general purpose).

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Moofie]

"Aside from trivialities about the Apple I"

You say "trivialities", I say "launched the best computer hardware and software company on the planet".

But whatever.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

>Am I the only one who can't understand why newfound "Intel Apple fans" are the only ones thrilled about running Windows ?!?

By coming out with BootCamp, "Big Brother" said it's OK to run Windows, so the Happy Citizens are just expressing their united glee at the Great Leader's wisdom and tolerance.

If BootCamp were to disappear, running Windows would return to ThoughtCrime status, and all mention of this period would be deleted from the Mac history books, much like the PowerMac 6100/DOS has been relegated to trival obscurity.

(I know it's flamebait, no need to mod me as such.)

The Apple fanboys did.

Well, I've got karma to burn to uncensor this post.

Readers: set Flamebait modifier to +5 in your preferences and censorship won't affect you as much (except the articles do still disappear when the sotry is archived).

Re:History Repeats Itself

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

This is just going by what I've heard, but I don't think many people are talking about buying a Mac just to run Windows. People seem to be talking about buying a Mac and then either dual-booting or running Parallels Workstation.

It's not about replacing OS X, so much as it is supplementing your Mac-using experience by letting you have easy access to your old Windows stuff. And for long-time Mac users, it's about getting access to the (very few) Windows applications that don't have a Mac version or equivalent.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[NutscrapeSucks]

Sounds like you're too busy wackin it to the Apple logo to understand the point.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[kimgkimg]

Well the manufacturer's sure are taking advantage of it. Have you shopped for a BTO (Built To Order) system lately? How the heck would you be able to offer all those different types of options without standard interfaces and modularity?

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Moofie]

Uh, yeah dude, I'm totally wackin' it.

I see your point. It just wasn't a very good, or interesting, one.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[celticmonkey]

PCs are general use, BUT they might as well be end-to-end packages like Macs because the average user (as opposed to us /. geeks) never cracks it open or takes advantage of its modularity. They just go and buy a Gateway, a Dell or an HP as their pocket-book permits and that's that. What's really surprising is that PC manufacturers like Dell haven't started mass producing small form factor end-to-end machines like Apple. They average user would be only to happy to have it all in one box.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[NutscrapeSucks]

And neither is trying to draw any conclusions about Apple based on the Apple I.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Moofie]

OK, Space Lady! I love you! Bye bye!

Re:History Repeats Itself

[BasilBrush]

a) I didn't as a Mac WOULD do any of this any better. In terms of the general purpose motor analogy and the Invisible Computer concept, the Mac is in the same position as the PC.

b) You either didn't read or ignored my comment that the particular examples I put forward were for demonstration purposes only. The concept needs more like a book to discuss properly. The book I mentioned earlier in the thread in fact.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[MightyYar]

"For example, just carrying a cellphone is a better "user experience" than having both cellphone + iPod. iTMS? Better buy a special Cingular cellphone or live with the poorer UE. [Of course the cell companies are even bigger bastards than Apple about this stuff.]"

A friend of mine just bought a Mercedes, and it "requires" a Motorolla v360 phone be used with it. Why a v360? Who the hell knows. Anyway, my friend bought a retail v360 for like $600 to go with the car. My point? While I agree with you and would prefer a more standards-based approach, I am the wrong person to be agreeing with you... My friend, who's financial means are obviously better than mine, thought it was worth $600 to have a solution that "just works".

"How about your car? Wouldn't it be better to just push a button and transfer all your music to your BMW directly from your PC? That's the future."

Again, I agree with you - and that's the problem. I am (and you apparently are) savvy enough to "sync" our cars to some central database. My other buddy who bought a BMW (this one is not rich, but thinks he is) looks at it from the other side: who doesn't have an iPod? Why should I sync two devices? If you don't have one, then buy one - it's insignificant compared to the price of the car. These are the same people that buy a new iPod because they "run out of room" - as if iTunes doesn't have 11 billion ways to load up just part of your music library.

I think standards-based modular approaches are better on a philosophical level, but I have to admit that my money goes toward vertical lock-in: I own two Macs (and a new PC), a locked T-Mobile cell phone, and an iPod. My camera is a Sony (the worst of the bunch in terms of lock-in). I am a corporate whore! I'm part of the problem now that I stop and think about it... :) I have all the geek stuff - even a Linux partition and hacks on my cell phone, but still, my money has gone to the bad guys. Oh, well.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[axemachine]

What!? Your Apple Kool-Aid ran out today and you just gave up!?

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Moofie]

Yeah, looks like your stash o' H4t0r-aid is doing just fine. What a relief.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Anonymous Coward]

There will always be a use for a GENERAL PURPOSE computer. There'll always be places where you need a machine that can perform all sorts of different tasks...load up whatever software you need...handle all sorts of hardware. That need isn't going to go away.

Nor did the need for a GENERAL PURPOSE electric motor. You can still go out and buy yourself a generic electric motor and fit it with an assortment of chains and belts to drive whatever it is that you need to. But look around you - how many uses of an EMBEDDED electric motor do you see, compared to how many GENERAL PURPOSE electric motors you see?

Computing appliances are definitely on the rise. People don't want to wait for a PC to boot up, they don't want to worry about viruses and spyware, they aren't interested in updating software and drivers... They just want to turn the thing on and do something with it - like your TV, or game console, or radio. They just do what they're supposed to.

We've already seen an increase in EMBEDDED computers to do specific tasks - computing appliances, basically. MP3 players just play back your music - like a casette player or CD player. We've got set-top boxes to record and time-shift your television. We've got set-top boxes that let you play games. And I honestly see this trend continuing to the point where GENERAL PURPOSE computers are as rare as GENERAL PURPOSE electric motors. We'll have computers all around us...but nobody will say "I'm going to go look that up on my computer" - it'll be a specific appliance with a specific purpose and a specific name. Just as we don't say "I'm going to go look that up in the book" - it's a dictionary - a specific appliance with a specific purpose and a specific name.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Fordiman]

Close. I don't think we'll ever see an end to the component model for computers.

I do think, however, that we're going to begin to see the end of the GP computer in the home.

More and more, the home computer, to the general consumer, represents just a few tasks: surf the internet, get your e-mail, listen to music, work on documents, and maybe a few other things. (Don't straw-man me here. I'm talking about the general consumer, not us slashdotters)

For a home kiosk, an end-to-end design would be best - and least likely to succumb to the issue of virii and spyware, if designed well. A boon to your usual "I don't play with my computer" type.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[GoatMonkey2112]

a) You're right, you didn't. I was thinking back to the original topic and it got projected on your post.

b) My response was for demonstration purposes only also. You can pretty much come up with an answer to just about any problem with a general purpose computer.

My basic point is that some things will go to dedicated machines, like TiVo and such (and maybe even for gaming before too long), while general computing is going to remain just as it is for a good bit more time. I could see a semi-dedicated music device appearing at some point, maybe an integration with TiVo actually. These other devices really just depend on where it makes sense for the user. I use Beyond TV for my PC instead of TiVo for example, TiVo doesn't do everything that I want it to.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[DrCode]

Perhaps a better analogy would be a table-saw vs. a chop-saw. The chop-saw excels at crosscutting and is far more portable, so it would be the right choice when you're installing a deck. But if you're doing general wood-working, you'd need a table-saw for ripping and cutting plywood. Most professionals will have both.

Similarly, an Ipod (or any MP3 player) has a lot of advantages over a PC when you want to play music. But if you want do do more (word-processing, spreadsheets, internet, DVD-authoring, games...) having one general-purpose PC becomes a necessity.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[TALlama]

To use the old car analogy...

Not many people nowadays purchase all the parts and assemble them in their garage. You go down to the car dealer and buy the whole contraption, tires and all. The parts are available, but only a small percentage of anyone actually assembles their own.

This is classic moving up the value chain: If I pay someone else to put the thing together, I can use it to my own ends (driving to work, hauling lumber, whatever) and I don't have to build it myself.

In this light, Microsoft makes perfect sense, because they built a product and people bought it so that they wouldn't have to build their own copy. Apple also makes sense, but they're going a step further and putting software and hardware together before people buy, just like Dell, HP, et al.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, don't argue with any of the specific suggestions here. They're out of my hat and for demonstration purposes only. The point is that looking at each application separately, hardware can be designed to support a specific problem far better than the general purpose machine can. Those optimal designs would certainly be different from my examples.

What you're ignoring is that there's value in having all of the information processing functions in one box, with easy transfer of data among them. A single document can encompass many types of data (word processing, spreadsheet, photos, drawings, etc.), and I really don't want to have to jump up and run around 5 or 6 machines in the office or at home to generate the data and move it about.

Maybe some types of games, GPS-linked maps, etc. are happy living on dedicated boxes, but that doesn't mean that all computer applications are.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[im_thatoneguy]

I disagree based on the pathetic speed of the Apple's product releases. And the console market in general.

Case in point. If you want a highspeed Intel based workstation. PCIe, SATA, RAM up the wazoo, maybe even dual dual core and in a tower format, you can't get it from Apple. Why? Who knows, I guess somebody in management decided we aren't ready for it yet. So if you want an intel workstation that runs OSX the best option is an Imac... That's right. I had to tell somebody that the best intel/mac workstation available right now was an Imac.

Console are much the same story. I don't want to have to wait 3-4 years to upgrade my computer. If I buy a highperformance workstation, I expect it to have the most top of the line components available today, not several months ago. I don't want to be a slave to the whims of the manufacturer as to when I can upgrade, what I can upgrade, and from whom I will purchase my upgrades.

I agree we'll probably see web terminals gain popularity. The mac mini, almost being an example of one. Dell has similar offerings. These computers will be clear purpose built, home PCs.

The difference with electric motors is, we've already made the transition. We have PCs, not mainframes... so that analogy is exhausted. In fact I would wager we'll move back towards the mainframe analogy as we demand more and more wireless functionality on our wireless devices. Web based apps are already an example of a move to the mainframe approach.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Anonymous Coward]

I am curious, while Microsoft has built Windows into a complete monolithic monster, how come they believe computer hardware should be better built around components. :)

Re:History Repeats Itself

[mcrbids]

Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!

Based on your posts, I sure hope that either 1) that's a lie, or 2) I never, ever have to ride on or near one of your rockets!

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Skreems]

That's the difference, though. Apple (as far as hardware) and Microsoft both build their products from components that they make themselves. Dell and HP truly are similar to your car analogy, though... they take parts made by other companies and put them together, along with some custom work (motherboard, car body, etc). To truly compare to Windows, car companies would have to design and manufacture custom tires, spark plugs, windshield motors... everything that goes into the car.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Achromatic1978]

Apple (as far as hardware) ... build their products from components that they make themselves.

Oh Lord, I nearly sprayed coffee all over my screen! You are kidding, right? You might want to take a visit to Taiwan, to Asus / Quanta and see the MacBook Pro production line. A lot of components on that line: Asus. ATI. Intel. Via. Texas Instruments. About the only thing that Apple was responsible for was the specification of the units, and the Apple logo.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[arminw]

....Specialized computers are manufactured for practically every consumer product that uses electricity.....

Not only electricity, but also gasoline. Our Toyota Prius doesn't even have a key to start it, but a power button, that has the same symbol thereon as the the power button on my computer. The whole car "boots" and the computer embedded therein controls the electric drive, gas engine, battery and safety systems. The "key" stays in my pocket at all times. The car unlocks when I get within about a foot of any of the doors with the key still in my pocket. The whole car is a specialized computer that gets me from point A to B with pretty good efficiency in this day of $3 gasoline.

Even so, I believe that the PC as we have known it will be around for a good while yet, because it can be programmed to do things that its designers may not have thought of when they built it.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Skreems]

I was including parts built to custom spec by 3rd parties. Sorry, should have made it more clear. As I understand it, PC motherboards and chips are supplied directly to Apple, and are not available to others except as part of a whole system. That may be wrong too, but that's what I thought.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Achromatic1978]

Unfortunately, it is wrong. The ATI Mobility Radeon chipsets are supplied to several other laptop manufacturers. The Intel chipsets and mainboards, too. Broadcom manufactures 802.11abg chipsets used in many others.

Not all parts are available to end users, but they certainly are to all system builders - the MacBook Pro is a commodity PC in all senses, except for the EFI.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[arminw]

....A widescreen panel that rotates....

In the early 1990s, a company named Radius made a monitor for Macs that rotated 90 deg and switched the screen driver software at the same time. It would display portrait for word processing and landscape for spreadsheets.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[toddestan]

You don't have to worry about the CPU overheating and frying the motherboard.

Unless you buy a Macbook Pro, of course.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[ffub]

"History Repeats Itself"

Marx's one joke was wrong, History does not repeat itself, it just rhymes.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Skreems]

does the same hold true of their desktop systems? MacBook isn't their only product...

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting this as AC because knowing that you won't see me gives me a strange sense of empowerment.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Moofie]

Why would I lie? Actually, civil aviation is my first love.

Having said that, impugning my skills because of what I post on /. seems pretty stupid. What is it that you do, that I can avoid?

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Jasin Natael]

Why bother? I realize that a hardware solution was necessary back in the day, but your Mac already has all the hardware it needs to run a portrait monitor in addition to its main display. I took a 17" Dell LCD that was a freebie with a PC I used for a server last year, and propped it up sideways on a CD spindle next to my iMac G5. A little hocus-pocus, install Screen Spanning Doctor, and BAM! The best of both worlds.

Dual-Monitor is actually loads better, because then all the little frilly palettes and crap can stay off the valuable horizontal real estate of the portrait monitor. Now, if only Pages could maximize the way I want it to...

Jasin Natael

Re:History Repeats Itself

[glassjaw rocks]

The whole "Apples are good for graphic editing and rendering" mentality is bullshit. Fanboys spew out this crap and in turn, ends up on internet sites for you uneducated peeps to absorb. My modular PC that is composed of many branded components that are deemed reliable in all my experience, can render in bryce or 3dsmax up to 3 times faster than any apple. Thanks for playing.

you know what he is saying...

[Anonymous Coward]

customisation of computers is dead!

take it how the manufacture gives it...

Re:you know what he is saying...

[Anonymous Coward]

And you know just how manufacturers like to give it to you...

Clear dominance...

[iamlucky13]

Which is why Apple is dominating the PC market share...oh wait.

Re:Clear dominance...

[richdun]

I don't know, 80%+ is a pretty good chunk of market share. Especially when that's the market (iPods) that leads to very high margins, customer loyalty, and culture icon status, not the other market where there a half dozen big players at between 10% and 30% market share.

Re:Clear dominance...

[smbarbour]

I do not own an iPod (or any other portable music device except a PDA that can play MP3s and Ogg files from an SD Card), but if I did I would likely NOT get an iPod. Why should I pay a premium for a device to have an Apple logo on it?

That said, it is pretty ironic that a "personal computer" manufacturer's top selling product isn't a "personal computer".

But then again, your response of 80% market share was regarding the iPod which was not the "market" that was being referred to.

Re:Clear dominance...

[shawngarringer]

Is Sony's top selling item a desktop computer? Is HP's? Is IBMs? How about Toshiba? Those are the brands people think of when they think computers. Of course the exception is Dell -- but all they do is make computers. In fact, I'd say that one of the halmarks of a successful computer company is having your feet in many pools at once, some of which are much, much more profitable than desktop PCs.

-Shawn

Re:Clear dominance...

[AndyG314]

Why would this post possibly be offtopic? Looks like an offended apple fanboy got mod points to me.

Re:Clear dominance...

[admdrew]

Actually, Apple's iPod accounts for around 50% of the DAP market, which is certainly substantial and more than any other product (or company), but not the "80%+" you mention.

The difference between digital audio players and computers (when it comes to brand or type) is the user interface and compatibility. Audio players in general are very much alike in terms of usage. On the computing side, however, "switching" from PC to Mac is a big deal for a lot of people.

It's interesting that it's usually the technologically-inclined that choose one side over the other (and have a more difficult time making the switch), considering PCs and Macs are fairly cross compatible. I know the /. crowd *understands* that we can do pretty much everything on either platform, but we choose to argue in the fashion of "PCs aren't elegant and crash all the time!" or "Macs can't play my games and are too expensive!"

Personally, I can't see myself switching my main computer from Windows PC to Mac, primarily for gaming reasons. If I were to need a laptop in the future, though, I'd probably go with a Mac; they look sexy, and I have no desire to get a gaming laptop.

Re:Clear dominance...

[admdrew]

Is Sony's top selling item a desktop computer? Is HP's? Is IBMs? How about Toshiba? Those are the brands people think of when they think computers.

First off, the parent mentioned personal computing, something IBM no longer does. Second, Sony isn't primarily known for its laptops (coughplaystationcough).

I'd venture a guess that Toshiba's top selling item *is* a destop computer; they're probably closest to Dell when it comes to range of products offered. HP, on the other hand, has been more well known for their printers over the years than anything else.

Your argument against the parent's discovered irony isn't very good. Your exception (Dell) just happens to be the largest PC maker, making it one hell of a big exception.

I'd say that one of the halmarks of a successful computer company is having your feet in many pools at once, some of which are much, much more profitable than desktop PCs.

Remembering that 'hallmark' means "distinctive characteristic or attribute," neither Apple nor Dell fit your statement. Apple is (primarily) in two pools: Macs and iPods, as is Dell: PCs and servers (well, there was the repackaged Creative DAP the "Dell Jukebox," but I don't think that's around anymore). I would, however, agree with you on this, if only with other companies (Microsoft comes to mind).

Re:Clear dominance...

[smbarbour]

Actually, I don't think of those when I think computers. Sony and Toshiba, I think "commodity electronics". HP, I think "printers". IBM, "Servers".

When I think computers, I think, "Intel, Asus, DFI, Soyo, etc."

At the same time though, Sony, Toshiba, HP, and IBM don't have "Computer" in the company name like "Apple Computer, Inc." does. My statement still stands. It is ironic that a computer company's biggest product isn't a computer.

It is almost like:
"Look at us! We have a proprietary digital music player! We sell music! (Oh, and we also have some computers.)"

Re:Clear dominance...

[richdun]

80%+ is the number I've seen for hard drive based players, with the nano and shuffle taking a good chunk of the flash based market (somethign over 50%, but I can't find recent numbers).

But very well put. I personally am I life-long PC gamer who has been using a PowerBook G4 as my primary "work/school" computer for the past two years. It's all about use, not power or performance or whatever. PCs are better for use with games, since most games are developed for PC then a year or so later ported to Mac (if you're lucky). Macs are better for use if you like a simple, clean interface for media (music, video, and visual arts). Each do the other, just not quite as well. Would I install OS X on my custom-built PC if Apple supported it? Sure, that's what the two extra 160GB hard drives are for. But it could never replace Windows totally (save for built-in virtualization at near-native or native speeds) for Battlefield 2, Steam, etc.

I totally agree - you'd think a crowd like /. would understand the importance of "the best of both worlds"

Re:Clear dominance...

[Karlt1]

Actually, Apple's iPod accounts for around 50% of the DAP market, which is certainly substantial and more than any other product (or company), but not the "80%+" you mention.

Where did the 50% number come from? According to this article: http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/04/25/ipod.gainin g.market.share the ipod marketshare is 77.9%

Re:Clear dominance...

[richdun]

At the risk of continuing a semantics war, my biggest point in saying what I did above is that "personal computer" is such a nebulous term these days (not the pseudo-brand-name PC, the idea of what is a box with computing chips in it). TFA is stating simply that it won't matter who has the best "PC" soon when the vast majority of consumers go to a gadget computing experience - if some haven't already. If the newest "sorta kinda maybe Apple's going to do this" rumor is true, and it sounds plausible, you won't even need a PC to download music to your iPod. That's a world where a lot of people don't need a dozen different components to set up their buying experience, and the end-to-end company will dominate.

Re:Clear dominance...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because the parent completely misses the point of the article. As the article states:

"In the first war between these models, the war for dominance of the personal-computer market, Microsoft's approach won decisively. Aided by efficient assemblers like Dell, and by corporate IT departments employed to integrate the components, Microsoft's component-based Windows platform crushed Apple's end-to-end Macintosh platform.

"But in the post-PC era we're in today, where the focus is on things like music players, game consoles and cellphones, the end-to-end model is the early winner."

So the article *already says* that Apple's model got crushed by the Wintel model. The parent's jab about Apple's current marketshare is thus pointless. The issue at hand is whether things are now changing so that Apple's model will be better from this point forward.

Re:Clear dominance...

[admdrew]

Heh... I could've sworn I saw a "49% of all MP3 players are iPods" headline recently, but I must've been seeing things, so I'm sure you're right with ~80%. My bad.

Re:Clear dominance...

[smbarbour]

True, true... But I'll keep my non-gadget oriented technology, thanks. I prefer my techonology in the non-commoditized form.

you won't even need a PC to download music to your iPod
Isn't this technically possible via FireWire already?

Re:Clear dominance...

[richdun]

Isn't this technically possible via FireWire already?

I think so, but of course I'm not sure how easy for the masses this is. But the logical next step I was referring to is if (and it might be a big if) Apple gets into the cell phone and possibly the MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator or something, someone who leases time on someone else's cell network) business that they could cut out the need for a PC or other device to capture the music from some central place and just have it download directly via an EV-DO or similar network. Right now no matter how it gets to your iPod you need a PC to rip, download, etc. the music at some point in the process.

hmm

[epiphani]

from the journalist-gets-paid-to-state-the-obvious dept.

I am SHOCKED!

[10Ghz]

Walt Mossberg things Macs are better than PC's?!?!?! Impossible!

Re:I am SHOCKED!

[jcr]

The man has long exhibited a keen grasp of the obvious.

-jcr

Really ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that will be true, if iPods will be replacing PCs in all their functions.
I do not see that happening anytime soon, the whole post-PC thing sound
like an utter crap. The need for a generic computational device is there
and it is going to stay.
We do not see Apple dropping PCs (as in personal computers) from their
product line. Quite the opposite, they strive to beat PC vendors in that.
The reason - huge market and demand, that is not going anywhere.
Anyone who does not see that is welcome to surf web and do his taxes on
iPod.

Re:Really ?

[tfb]

More than half of Apple's income comes from iPods. The `PC' market may be enormous but the profit margins are tiny, and Macs run a severe danger of being commoditised the way other PCs have (and the way laptops are being at present). I wouldn't be at all surprised if Apple leave the `PC' hardware market in the next few years (and I'm speaking as a Mac owner).

Re:Really ?

[Draconum]

I have a strong feeling that the poster of this comment thinks that an iPod is the same thing as an iMac. For clarification, an iPod is an MP3 player, and an MP3 player ONLY unless you do something crazy and install ucLinux on it. an iMac, iBook, Macbook, powermac, mac mini, etc. is a computer. There, enough said about that.

post PC era?

[a_greer2005]

when did the PC die? Netcraft never mentioned that!

Re:post PC era?

[BasilBrush]

It's not that it died. It's just that it's no longer the most significant, most used or most vital computer people use.

What?

[Luscious868]

The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows.

What? Then please explain the following:

http://television.aol.com/in2tv/
http://www.movielink.com/
http://www.vongo.com/

There are still quite a few things on the Internet you can not do with a Mac. Leopard, if it includes built in virtulization, can't get here fast enough.

Re:What?

[rritterson]

That's only a DRM issue and has nothing to do with the platform itself.

As a slashdot user, I'm disappointed you didn't go on a rabid rant about how DRM is evil and will destroy everything we've ever worked for.

Re:What?

[Skadet]

Um, it's pretty obvious why those sites don't work on a Mac --- wait for it.... DRM.

WMP isn't developed for Mac anymore, thus the DRM wouldn't work.

Maybe I misunderstood your complaint, but you should bitch to media companied that require DRM rather than whine about Macs being incompatible. In this case, the incompatibility saved your ass from supporting DRM!

Re:What?

[ZachPruckowski]

You can't do most purely-internet things with Windows running Firefox either. A lot of the stuff on the Internet that doesn't work with Linux or Mac either installs a .exe (and thus isn't purely internet) or requires ActiveX (which is enough of a headache that I'd rather not have it on PCs either).

Re:What?

[amliebsch]

Maybe I misunderstood your complaint

He's not complaining or whining, he's refuting a claim that "everything works the same," and proving by counterexample that the claim is false. "Why" it's false or "whose fault it is" are irrelevant.

Re:What?

[Skadet]

Ok, I'll bite.

he's refuting a claim that "everything works the same,"

Define: straw man
"a weak or sham argument set up to be easily refuted"

The actual claim was:
"The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows."

Think of it this way:
"The Yugo gives you the same access to the highway system as Porsche."

Pragmatically true. But nobody would claim that "everything works the same".

Re:What?

[BodhiCat]

"It's a poor workman who blames his tools."

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of the stuff on the Internet that doesn't work with Linux or Mac either installs a .exe (and thus isn't purely internet) or requires ActiveX (which is enough of a headache that I'd rather not have it on PCs either).

I guess it depends a lot on what kind of websites one is visiting ;)

Re:What?

[TypeMRT]

What? Then please explain the following:
http://television.aol.com/in2tv/
http://www.movielink.com/
http://www.vongo.com/

iTunes Music Store
Bit Torrent

Re:What?

[kybred]

There are still quite a few things on the Internet you can not do with a Mac.

I can't visit those links with FireFox on XP. How does that matter to Mac users?

It's not a OS issue, it's a browser/website issue.

Re:What?

[Luscious868]

It becomes an OS issue when the browser required to view the sites is not availabe on your OS. I'm not knocking Macs, they are the only PC's I use when I'm not at work. I'm just pointing out that you can't quite do everything on the Internet on a Mac that you can do on Windows.

Re:What?

[SuperKendall]

He's not complaining or whining, he's refuting a claim that "everything works the same," and proving by counterexample that the claim is false.

The number of online movie purchasers however is a number so low that it is a statistical abberation, and thus does not in fact provide an effective counterexample.

I would warrant that number of people who have bought the single movie on ITMS (that disney high school movie) is greater than the entire customer base of the services mentioned, combined.

Since ITMS is the de-facto standard for DRM distribution of video, the claim that "everything works the same" still holds in general.

Re:What?

[joranbelar]

He's not complaining or whining, he's refuting a claim that "everything works the same," ...

No, he's not. He's trying to refute a claim that "The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows." Now, last time I checked, we all have access to the same Internet. Just because Microsoft locks half the available media up in proprietary DRM doesn't mean the Mac is any less capable of getting to the server that hosts it.

Re:What?

[MyNameIsEarl]

The actual claim was:
"The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows.

How about the Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows, without the threat of spyware and viruses bogging down your machine or having to view DRM'ed to hell files.

There are a lot of different ways to look at everything.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

This must be the stupidest comment ever.

I didn't go to AOL TV.com, but Vongo and Movielink only work on Windows 2000 and XP - so stating that these are "things" that you can't do on the internet with a Mac(which btw is not what you were disputing anyways, you were supposed to be disputing "access to the internet") is for all intents and purposes, retarded.

You can still gain access to the internet on a mac(same as windows - original post).
You can still go to the sites you listed - which IS internet access by definition.
It's when you get to the sites, that the content provider has tied everyone's hands behind their back and forces you to upgrade your OS to XP or win2000 ONLY.

By your example, there are still 3 major "things" you can't do on the internet with a windows PC. Unless it happens to be XP or 2000. Which of course revokes your own comment all together.

I'm sure you're just tying to make a point, but linking to weak content providers that might as well be working for M$ since their content forces an OS upgrade putting money in Bill Gates pockets doesn't make a point at all.

Re:What?

[hackstraw]

"Why" it's false or "whose fault it is" are irrelevant.

Not necessarily. There are download sites on the internet for Apple, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, etc systems where none of the junk will work on Windows no matter how hard you try.

These are specific services that have chosen to target a specific platform and call it good enough, which may be. I don't know, I'm not familiar with any of those services (and they won't work on any of my computers, so I guess I never will :)

I would bet there is a simple way for these companies to support standards vs the last two releases of Windows, but that was not concern for them. Neither is it a concern for Apple to port OS X to a SPARC platform.

"My" internet works fine with my Mac, Linux, and Solaris boxes.

Re:What?

[PatboyX]

your sig is relevant here, i feel. i see quite a bit of positive media attention being poured on Apple/Mac in recent years. their come-back is pretty much a journalists best dream: the underdog is steadily chipping away at goliath in popularity and hipness (huzzah for mixed metaphors!) but i wonder how many people are actually using only apple machines. i have a feeling that people are simply in the mood for something new...the grass is always greener and since PCs are so prevelant, who has not faced a windows/microsoft-based nightmare at the job, school or home? i use apple professionally and mostly microsoft-based computers personally so i have long ago abandoned any sort of fierce loyalty to one or the other that prevents me from seeing the horror involved in using either system. to get back to my original point: the apple machines and mac OS will be the revolution it wants to be when the people who talk the talk actually begin to invest in the machines. im sure (or at least, id hope) that the tech writers have more than a single system but until apple can divert that ipod desire into their other machines, i just dont see it as happening. their biggest markets now seem to be either high-end users or low-end users with very little wiggle-room between. you can either go barebones or balls-out which is, i find, not really what the average user is looking for.

Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mossberg is no different than John Dvorac and Robert Cringely: he gets paid to make noise. At the end of the day he's a journalist and doesn't understand technology. If he can get a few extra tens of thousands hits from Mac phanboys dieing to hear that Steve Job's 1984 prophecy that Apple will liberate humanity, then ... hey .. whatever. I guess Mossberg and his readers are happy.

Re:Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[syphax]

I don't think that's fair. Dvorak and Cringely have a business model that's based on coming up with crazy shit.

Mossberg is a technologist for the common (business) man. He writes about technology from the perspective of a normal person (what we might call 'user').

There is nothing overly provacative over this particular theory, except that it is probably wrong. In new fields, integrated, proprietary technology usually gets the headstart because it can innovate faster (not having to worry about standards and such). But eventually, as the new field matures, innovation slows and the advantages of standardization and commoditization catch up. Here is an excellent talk by Clayton Christensen at the 2004 Open Source Business Conference. It is really an excellent talk. Christensen may not be 100% right, but he is at least mostly right, and has some great insights and stories.

Apple is kicking butt right now because they developed an awesome family of music players that while proprietary, are not overly so, decent software for managing said devices (iTunes is great at some things, sucky at others, but overall is pretty decent), and the first sane online music store (and kudos to them for their successful negotiations with the record labels). It's excellence of execution more than a winning business model. Plus, the industry's perceived need for some sort of DRM, which will let Apple sustain it's closed system for awhile.

If we ever get past the DRM BS (hah!), we'd at some point be able to buy music from store A and play it on player B. At that point, Apple will lose margin in both markets (stores and players) due to increased competition (right now they are exploiting the oft-talked about but rarely observed concept of 'synergy').

Re:Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[Homology]

Apple is kicking butt right now because they developed an awesome family of music players that while proprietary, are not overly so,

Now, that is just hilarious!

Re:Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[Pfhreak]

Mossberg is no different than John Dvorac and Robert Cringely: he gets paid to make noise. At the end of the day he's a journalist and doesn't understand technology.

Not quite. Mossberg isn't a technologist, which is the point. He writes reviews that are meant to be purchasing advise for ordinary people, from an "I, like the reader, am not a geek, and here's my impression of Product ___" perspective. Dvorak and Cringley are paid to pontificate about technology, and pretend to be visionaries. Also, this article isn't about technology: it's about the differences in the business models, and the inherent advantages and disadvantages of each from the perspective of an ordinary person. This is even summed up in TFA:

In the component model, many companies make hardware and software that run on a standard platform, creating inexpensive commodity devices that don't always work perfectly together, but get the job done. In the end-to-end model, one company designs both the hardware and software, which work smoothly together, but the products cost more and limit choice.

His argument in the article is that the end-to-end model works better for music players because it produces devices that are really easy to use for ordinary people (which is a huge plus with something like a music player) because all the components interoperate better. The article's actually not a one-sided Apple fanboy piece, as the last paragraph shows:

Still, the end-to-end model isn't a lock. If Apple can't keep churning out cool products at reasonable prices, it could crash and burn. Unlike Microsoft, it doesn't have much help from other companies to succeed. But the iPod experience has shown that the PC model may not be best for all digital devices.

There's none of the "Apple is going to just switch to Windows" nonsense that Dvorak spews, nor the "Apple is going to kick Microsoft's butt guerilla-style." of Cringley. He makes no real predictions, just indications of what may or may not happen, and indicates what he thinks is the most likely. But, it's clear from how he words it that he's aware that that's just his opinion. So, no, Mossberg isn't like Dvorak or Cringley.

Re:Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Cringely is at least mildly interesting to read. Dvorac is a troll, and a stupid one at that.

Re:Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[cmacb]

"Mossberg is no different than John Dvorac and Robert Cringely: he gets paid to make noise. At the end of the day he's a journalist and doesn't understand technology."

Maybe that's all there is to it, but I generally thought Mossberg stayed within his area of competence, I.E. end-user product reviews. Maybe I haven't been reading him long enough. This is a muddled folk-lorish rant going nowhere.

For one thing there is no mention of standards, open or otherwise. Both Apple devices and PCs use many of the same standards, which is why I can plug most (or at least many) cameras into either a PC running Windows or Linux or an Apple computer running Windows, Linux or OS X and expect to see it show up as a disk drive, without having to install any special camera software at all. That is in fact a requirement I apply to most computer gadgets I buy. Anything that _requires_ me to install software from some provided CD I'll pass over for something that I can just plug in and have work. I don't mind that vendors bundle software to make their products more attractive, I just want it to be optional. I've _never_ been disappointed by buying products that say on the box: "Works with Windows, OSX, and Linux", but I know from painful experience that a device that only says "Requires x version of Windows" will not work with Apple or Linux, and there is a good chance it won't work with Windows either unless my configuration matches closely that of some developers machine somewhere. The extra effort that a vendor has to go though to conform to _actual_ standards, as opposed to "tinker with it on configuration X until it works" pays off in the short term as added stability, and in the long term as the ability to in fact continue to use the device long after the programmer has left the company or the company has gone out of business or changed product direction.

Both models that Mossberg alludes to (and I've never heard the terms he uses before, "end-to-end" vs "component" to me aren't very descriptive of anything) are only as strong as their adherance to standards makes them. Can you imagine if Apple said that they only support Apple branded USB thumb drives? Fortunately the days of modem use are comming to a close, but I've never had more trouble with a device category than the brilliantly conceived "Winmodem" which saved about 3 cents on the manufacturing side and cost people untold countless hours of futzing to get it working. I've replaced a few $10 Winmodems simply becuase the company that supplied the drivers no longer existed. Why in the world would I want what would otherwise be firmware to be implemented as an extension of the operating system, other than OS lock-in? Mossberg's terminology hides the fact that Apple does this too by using one-of-a-kind sound hardware, power control hardware, etc.

The other thing that Mossbergs article misses, is that while Apple is often the leader in totally new technologies such as Firewire and USB, they end up being the follower after the technologies take hold and most devices are being certified specifically for Windows. The switch to Intel and the de-emphasis of Firewire represents a total capitulation to the Wintel duopoly. Primary blame goes to Microsoft and Intel of course, but sycophantic journalists such as Mossberg have done little to raise awareness of the long term costs to consumers when they ignore standards completely and focus only on who has the shiniest new toy. Consumers are ultimately to blame too, as they will only get better products if they hold out for them. The willingness of so many people to just buy the first thing that comes out, or the first thing they see on the shelf has resulted in almost universal mediocrity as I'm sure buyers of the new Apple products are going to find out. Welcome Apple users to the world of "Good Enough".

Re:Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[syphax]

while proprietary, are not overly so,

What I meant to say (I go for speed rather than clean grammar/train of though) is that although the iPod is certainly designed for iTMS-FairPlay, which is a closed, proprietary system, it's perfectly usable as an MP3 player. So it does support a de-facto industry standard (yeah, mp3 isn't Free like ogg, but in practical terms it's free enough for most people), unlike, say, that Sony crap of recent memory. Note that in this context, fully proprietary systems get hosed b/c of convenience and network effects (I already have all these MP3 files, my friend sent me his demo as MP3, etc).

Re:Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[timothydsears]

No he isn't. Walter Mossberg has consistently given sound advice to a (mainly) non-technical audience. He's always concerned with one thing: the user's experience. For that reason I think he "understands" technology the way it should be understood.

I have read his column for years and he is nobody's phanboy. He endorsed Macs only a couple of years ago when OS X stabilized and dealing with Windows security flaws become more burdensome to users.

He's not interested in industry trends for their own sake. The others you mention write to a different audience and sometimes prognosticate. Judging by the attention they often get here, it must be entertaining. By comparison, Walter is helping ordinary users reduce needless complexity foisted on them by the technology industry and their marketeers.

Re:Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[Scudsucker]

I don't think that's fair. Dvorak and Cringely have a business model that's based on coming up with crazy shit.

For Dvorak, absolutely. But for Cringely...huh? He pontificates over at PBS, where the only ad on his page is a banner ad at the top for PBS shows.

Bah Humbug!

[erbmjw]

Even the Mac isn't as closed as its critics charge. It's still designed to work with Apple's own operating system and software.

The OS is not Apple's it is Open Source!

Re:Bah Humbug!

[oudzeeman]

the kernel is open source, a few other components are open source, but I wouldn't call the OS itself open source, since OS X has a lot of closed source proprietary technology

Re:Bah Humbug!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an interesting lesson here. It seems it only takes one critical proprietary component to make an OS propriety ... Linux beware! If MacOS was 'open' it wouldn't (for one thing) be artifically restricted to one manufacturers hardware. Apple leveraged open-source very effectively -- and continues to do so through Darwin and others -- but don't be fooled: MacOS is as proprietary as ever! The benefit to the open source world has actually been amazingly limited. And if you think only BSD code can be used without *effectively* giving back, think again: Apple is a master -- look at the konqueror/safari thing. It is possible to stay within the letter of the GPL, and completely avoid the spirit of it.

Re:Bah Humbug!

[TheRaven64]

Okay, here's a basic explanation of how F/OSS works, for those who obviously missed it the first time around:

1. Someone writes some software. They own this software, and the copyright on this software.
2. The owner of the software releases it under a permissive license

Even though the software is released under a Free / Open license, it is still copyrighted, and is still owned by the author (or whoever they sold it to). There are a very small number of exceptions, such as SQLite, which are released into the public domain, but Darwin is not one of these.

The situation is sometimes muddied when there are multiple contributors. Projects like Linux have multiple owners, since each contributor owns their own contributions. Projects like Darwin, OpenOffice, and GNU require contributors to assign copyright (or joint copyright) to the project's owner, and so the project remains owned by the initiator.

I Like Components...

[Quintios]

I like building my own PC's, being able to upgrade this part or the other, and being able to compare prices so I can minimize my expense as much as possible.

I don't know diddly about Apple. Can someone tell me how upgradable the typical Mac is? If I want to uprade the memory, cpu, hard drives, optical drives, gfx, etc., how easy is it to do this, and what's the longevity of the parts? How do prices compare between Apple and PC for these parts?

Re:I Like Components...

[magicjava]

Can someone tell me how upgradable the typical Mac is?

No where near as upgradable as a PC. Yes, you can upgrade a Mac, but if your a hardcore hardware junkie, stick with PCs.

Re:I Like Components...

[DebianDog]

Memory - REAL EASY actually the same as a PC CPU - It depends lot of G4 upgrades no G5 upgrades as of yet HDD - Standard SATA DVD,HD drives - They use off the shelf models but you will be stuck with certain ones Video Cards - Ditto

Re:I Like Components...

[lexarius]

Depends. If you get one of the towers (still only available with G5s), then it has the standard stuff. Uses standard hard drives, standard ram, standard AGP cards, standard PCI cards. You're probably not going to have much ability to swap out the mobo, but third party processor upgrades have been standard fare for a long time.

The rest of the machines (iMac, Mac Mini, the laptops) are approximately as upgradeable as a PC laptop, which is to say not all that much. Hard drive and ram can be replaced, of course. The Pro laptops have a PCMCIA slot, but not the others. No mini-PCI slots either (as far as I know), but who uses those anyway?

Re:I Like Components...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I like building my own PC's,

Really? I find the soldering work to be a bitch.

Re:I Like Components...

[gwhenning]

On a typical Mac (iMac or mini, the towers are still considered pro computers) you can upgrade the RAM or Hard Drive. Since they use small form factor CD/DVD drives with no bezel you can upgrade them, but they are hard to find. (Compared to a PC tower.) Beyond that your upgrade choices are a bit pricey, but the plus side is that you get a shiny new computer with the CPU upgrade.

I build my own PCs, but I order my Macs to spec. (Well except the RAM & HD which are cheaper to buy third party and install myself.)

Re:I Like Components...

[Quintios]

Really? I find the soldering work to be a bitch.

It is, but it's very satisfying when you can get it to POST for the first time! Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

Re:I Like Components...

[jackjeff]

It's not as closed as you think. It used to be, but things have changed a lot in the last 10 years.

I find it actually much easier. Somehow, when I open a PC I'm often scared by the spaghetti cables spreading everywhere, and the poor general design.. well there's no general design "each component was not mean to be with the others".

Have a look at my old G4, everything is neat and clean and the cables are not an inch longer or shorter than they should be, and attached on the box:
http://audiovideo.consumerelectronicsnet.com/artic les/viewarticle.jsp?id=13374

I don't want to start a flame war, I'm sure any PC builder could to the same thing (and I would really appreciate it), but so far I have not seen comparable. (I like those Shuttles though)

Now seriously, there's no longer any major architectural differences between a PC and a Mac. A Mac is a PC so you can buy your components anywhere. It can even boot windows. come on..

* memory, hard drives, optical drives: no more problem than on PC.

* cpu: not really easy to change. Even worse for motherboards. I think that issue is not as open as in the PC world, but the move to Intel will probably improve things.

* gfx: i have a radeon 8500 for PC working on an older G4. I had to flash the firmware of the gfx (because Mac BIOS was/is different) and be sure it'd work with the drivers on OS X. It's entirely up to the gfx manufacturers to support these, but truth is, it's not "that" easy to use PC's gfx just like that. ATI and GeForce are charging a lot for their Mac editions... (but Macs are by no way a gamer's machine anyway).

Re:I Like Components...

[be-fan]

A PowerPC Mac is almost a regular PC. You can use standard memory, hard drives, optical drives, etc. The graphics cards are standard, but the BIOS in them is not. It's usually pretty trivial, though, to flash a Mac BIOS onto a regular PC card.

The new Intel Macs are regular PCs. Within the limits of the form-factor, they are just as upgradable as a PC. For example, you can pop out the CPU on an iMac and stick in whatever Core Duo chip you want. You can't upgrade the motherboards on the current set of Intel Macs, but that's mostly a result of the fact that the iMac and Macbook use laptop components, and thus the motherboards use a custom form-factor.

Re:I Like Components...

[LKM]

Can someone tell me how upgradable the typical Mac is? If I want to uprade the memory, cpu, hard drives, optical drives, gfx, etc.

yes.

how easy is it to do this

On a PowerMac, it's about as easy as on any given PC. Same components, too.

Re:I Like Components...

[bennomatic]

Here's a bit of my own experience: at home I use a 5-year old G4 Quicksilver. The original hard drive is long gone, replaced with 2 120 GB drives. RAM is upgraded to 1.25 GB. The video card is upgraded to whatever the fastest card I could get which was backwards compatible with 4xAGP, which is as fast as my slot goes.

Last, but not least, the original (single) 867 MHz G4 CPU has been replaced with a dual 1.6 GHz G4 setup. The CPU upgrade required a firmware change and a screwdriver (to remove the heat sink). The rest was like, pop it open and pop in the upgrade. Doing all that made it go from feeling like a five-year-old computer to feeling almost brand new. Now the slowest part of my home setup is my DSL line. I wish I could get a full 5 Mbps connection!!

All that having been said, I'm still thinking about the new MacBook Pro Core Duo systems. I feel like after waiting 5 years, I deserve to make an upgrade :-)

Re:I Like Components...

[eclectic4]

"I like building my own PC's, being able to upgrade this part or the other, and being able to compare prices so I can minimize my expense as much as possible."

Remember, you would represent an extremely small portion of the computer using market. Very small.

"I don't know diddly about Apple. Can someone tell me how upgradable the typical Mac is? If I want to uprade the memory, cpu, hard drives, optical drives, gfx, etc., how easy is it to do this, and what's the longevity of the parts? How do prices compare between Apple and PC for these parts?"

As far as the actual tech work, it's mind boggingly easy. For example, on the G5 towers, things like the hard drive are replaced/added without using a single tool. The design is magnificent. iMac G5's could be repaired by trained monkeys. The MacMini is down to its logic board in 5 screws, etc... The only hardware they sell that could be considered difficult to repair, upgrade (and this is a relative notion) would be their laptops. Fitting things in those very thin machines are genius (when you open one up) but can be scary to those that do not know what they are doing.

Re:I Like Components...

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Upgradable?

You just buy a whole new Mac.

You are thinking in a WrongThought manner and need to get AppleReEducation so that you will only think RightThought.

Building one's one system is WrongThought. RightThought is trusting the GeniusEngineers in Cupertino California to know more about what you want or should want than you do. They know what you want, or what you would want if you just KnewBetter.

Remember ThinkDifferent doesn't mean different than Apple, it means choosing Apple instead of anything else.

Thinking different than Apple is DoublePlusUngood.

Re:I Like Components...

[atokata]

No mini-PCI slots either (as far as I know), but who uses those anyway?

There are a lot of wifi cards that plug into mini-PCI slots, IIRC.

Re:I Like Components...

[Confuzzled]

I don't know diddly about Apple. Can someone tell me how upgradable the typical Mac is? If I want to uprade the memory, cpu, hard drives, optical drives, gfx, etc., how easy is it to do this, and what's the longevity of the parts? How do prices compare between Apple and PC for these parts?

On the iMacs and Mac Minis you can change the hard drive, ram, etc. Additionally now with the socketed CPUs, you could in fact change that out as well (you'd have to consider cooling of a hotter chip though, since it wasn't originally in the spec).

On the Towers you can add and change graphic cards, etc. There are in general less graphic cards for the mac and they tend to be a bit more expensive though.

-c

Re:I Like Components...

[hackstraw]

I like building my own PC's, being able to upgrade this part or the other, and being able to compare prices so I can minimize my expense as much as possible.

Some people build their own cars, motorcycles, houses, and airplanes.

They are a minority for some reason, but they do exist.

Re:I Like Components...

[Golias]

No mini-PCI slots either (as far as I know), but who uses those anyway?

There are a lot of wifi cards that plug into mini-PCI slots, IIRC.

Yes, but every Mac, going back years, has an internal card bay specifically for Wi-Fi, complete with a built-in antenna in the laptop case itself. Also, all the current ones already have Wi-Fi built in (as well as Bluetooth).

So Wi-Fi is not a reason for needing mini-PCI on the Mac. At all.

Re:I Like Components...

[jmauro]

You can't upgrade the motherboards on the current set of Intel Macs, but that's mostly a result of the fact that the iMac and Macbook use laptop components, and thus the motherboards use a custom form-factor.

That and the Mac's don't use the x86 bios, but EFI. Regular Intel motherboards won't even begin to boot Mac OS X

Re:I Like Components...

[be-fan]

IIRC, Intel does sell EFI capable motherboards. In any case, EFI is an open standard intended for PCs. Apple is just early with their use of it. That's distinct from "proprietory" hardware like ADB, for example.

When you are the minority player in the market...

[gravyface]

you *have* to be interoperable with the market leader's file formats and software. Chalk this up as a "duh" and move on. Nothing to see here.

Software is the reverse

[ZachPruckowski]

In software however, I've seen a lot of the reverse: Apple's stuff working better because it uses the "bazaar" model, as opposed to MS's "cathedral". Tiger consists of at least a dozen interconnected programs, each of which is removeable and replaceable (including Dashboard, the Finder, Spotlight, Safari, the Dock, etc.) Whereas Windows is all sort of jumbled together and is less seperable or partially replaceable than OS X.

Re:Software is the reverse

[diamondsw]

Ha! Great in theory, but just [b]TRY[/b] to replace the Finder completely, the Dock, or Spotlight. Good luck. They should be easily replaceable (and this was the original vision in the Rhapsody Design documents), but they aren't in practice. It's still very much cathedral style, just like Windows (in that respect, anyway).

Re:Software is the reverse

[NutscrapeSucks]

Your post seems very off-base, so much so, I wonder if you even use a Macintosh.

From the user interface, Apple does not provide any way to remove or replace [Dashboard|Finder|Spotlight|Dock]. Yes, there's hacks to change these things, but similar things exist on Windows as well. All of this is very tightly integrated from the User's POV and not "removeable and replaceable".

On a technical level [Dashboard|Finder|Spotlight|Safari|Dock] are very integrated into system libraries and share a lot of code. Just like [IE|Explorer|Outlook|ActiveDesktop] on Windows. If there's any significant architectural difference between how IE works on Windows and how Safari works on OS X, I'd like to hear about it.

Re:Software is the reverse

[dingDaShan]

I have used macs extensively for graphics, and they lock up/freeze/generally go crazy just as much as the pc. Also, did anyone forget to mention that a pc has a better price to performance ratio. PC's generally cost more. More software, more parts vendors, more manufacturers all drives the price down and the quality up. Competition

Re:Software is the reverse

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

In software however, I've seen a lot of the reverse: Apple's stuff working better because it uses the "bazaar" model, as opposed to MS's "cathedral".

Dear God Man!

If Raymond read that, he would die, bury himself & start spinning.

From wikipedia (as ESR is a nutcase & I won't link to his new book).

* The Cathedral model, in which source code is available with each software release, but code developed between releases is restricted to an exclusive group of developers. GNU Emacs and GCC are presented as examples.
* The Bazaar model, in which the code is developed over the Internet in view of the public. Raymond credits Linus Torvalds, leader of the Linux kernel project, as the inventor of this process. He also provides anecdotal accounts of his implementation of this model for the fetchmail project.

Both Apple & MS follow cathedral models - what you're thinking of is a unixy 'lots of useful little bits you can string together' vs 'big monoloithic and single use' models.

Re:Software is the reverse

[Anonymous Coward]

That is spelled bizzarre not bazaar

Re:Software is the reverse

[mrtrumbe]

Really? So you use Safari to browse your filesystem, huh? And you probably use Mail to make appointments, manage your contacts and manage your calendar, don't you? And you probably use iTunes to view not only your mp3's but also your videos, right?

Well, the last point not withstanding, Apple has a history of building applications for very focused tasks. You browse and open files with the Finder. You browse the internet with Safari. You send e-mail with Mail. You organize your life with iCal. You manage contacts with Address Book. Etc. Etc. They have--annoyingly, in my opinion--taken a more MS approach on certain applications, as of late. Previewing in the Finder, for instance. Or the grouping of music and movies under the "media" umbrella in iTunes. But on the whole, their applications stay in their own little sandboxes.

Microsoft tends to take the opposite approach. Outlook does contacts, calendar and mail. Explorer does...everything?

Sure, Apple makes their applications play well through system services. But interoperability is just good practice and doesn't fundamentally change the "one application per task model." Why wouldn't you want your contacts easily accessible from an e-mail composition window, for example. But that is as far as Apple takes it; if you want to manage your contacts, move on to the next app.

Similarly, putting code to accomplish common tasks in shared libraries is just common sense. For example WebKit which allows Mail and Dashboard tools to render HTML. Notice neither of these apps browse the web. Html is a file format and allowing applications to understand this format is very different than them becoming web browsers in and of themselves.

Now the ability to remove any of these applications from your system is another matter entirely. With the exception of IE, I largely agree that removing the Apple components is roughly as difficult as removing the Windows components. That is an area I personally would like Apple to change their ways. Even if they only allowed it to be done from the command line, allowing the "system level" services like the Finder to be replaced would be a nice feature of the OS.

Taft

Re:Software is the reverse

[HaveNoMouth]

...each of which is removeable and replaceable (including Dashboard, the Finder, Spotlight, Safari, the Dock, etc.)

Well...you didn't mention how easy it was to remove or replace any of them. Safari is certainly easy to avoid. But the rest are pretty heavily hardwired into OSX. Dashboard is probably the second easiest to kill, or replace with Konfabulator. The awful OSX Finder can be replaced with Pathfinder which is finally starting to work like the Finder should have all along, but it took years of work for a company to figure out how to do it, when the Finder should have included enough hooks to make it easy for lots of companies to add functionality without replacing the whole thing monolithically. The Dock can now be fairly effectively eliminated and replaced with half a dozen different methods, but again, it took years for the community to figure out how to kill that damn bastard piece of software in a clean way. Steve Jobs' biggest flaw is that he doesn't understand the difference between cool shiny stuff and productivity software. His second biggest flaw is that he thinks his way is the only correct way, and users shouldn't be allowed to get rid of his shiny babies and replace them with useful tools.

If you know how to remove and replace Spotlight and return to previous Finder file searching capability (one of the few good things about the 10.3 Finder), would you be so kind as to inform those of us who think Spotlight is the Spawn of Satan?

P.S. I know about EasyFind . It's a stopgap. It's not as good as the 10.3 find function and it doesn't bind to Cmd-F.

Re:Software is the reverse

[NutscrapeSucks]

> Really? So you use Safari to browse your filesystem, huh?

Do you actually think one uses IE to browse their hard drive, HUH? Well, you are incorrect. Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer are two different programs integrated on the component level using libraries.

> Microsoft tends to take the opposite approach. Outlook does contacts, calendar and mail. Explorer does...everything?

You're confusing things. The fact that Outlook does 8 things is an application design issue, not a technical issue with how the OS is put together. Groupware customers want "all in one". Maybe you don't, but who cares.

Your response is just petulant nitpicking and ignores the facts in my orignal post. One can't easily replace Spotlight with a different search program. You can't replace Apple's address book with MS Office's and expect it to work. These are not easily replacable components, they are all designed to be tied together.

Re:Software is the reverse

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't address 'em all, but Path Finder can certainly be used as a FULL Finder replacement.

Prove it? I'm using it right now!

Admittedly you have to run a defaults write to make it perfect, but that isn't completely necessary to replace Finder. Finder now only runs when I tell it to.

Re:Software is the reverse

[ZachPruckowski]

I do use a Macintosh. In fact, I use one where I replaced the Finder with a commercial program. It's doable, much more so than in Windows. I could uninstall Safari if I wanted to, I've seen people who have done it without problems. My point is simply this: There is a folder at "System/Library/Core Services". A root or admin user can remove most of the stuff in there and replace it with a properly crafted program, and everything will be fine. Granted, that's tough because you're dealing with some interlocking with proprietary software, but in 8 months of use, I've seen two problems with replacing the Finder: there's a risk from updates, but I just put the original Finder back and then copy over it again. There's also a little more work to get the sudo feature when working with files. but that's also not a big deal. So look around before you fire from the hip.

Re:Software is the reverse

[NutscrapeSucks]

It's doable, much more so than in Windows.

You can change the shell in Windows simply by altering a registry key. (it is HCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell). In fact, up unti XP, Windows shipped with two shells (Explorer and Program Manager).

Re:Software is the reverse

[dn15]

True, but since they're separate programs, *Apple* could write a new file browser, or application switcher/launcher/taskbar, without rocking the rest of the boat too badly. And that separation is worth something even if you and I can't take advantage of it as easily. It makes the system as a whole easier to adapt to future needs.

Re:Software is the reverse

[MoneyT]

I wonder if you use a macintosh. Dashboard, Finder, Spotlight and the Dock are all removeable from the use interface, you just have to know where to look. Understandably Apple did not put the Finder in the Applications folder. Yes, on a technical level all of the programs are very integrated, but not in the way that microsoft applications tend to be integrated. With the possible exception of Spotlight, removing any one of those applications will not adversely affect any other program on the system provided the program does not expect that application to be there (hence my exclusion of spotlight which many apps use because frankly it works as intended). Now, removing the actual system libraries will break things, but as anyone who has used path finder, launch bar etc removing the Finder or the Dock or Dashboard will certainly not cause a system failure.

Re:Software is the reverse

[zygote]

By "replace completely" do you mean REMOVE and replace or just stop using? I think you could -- depending upon who you are -- replace all those components (e.g. stop using them) with relative ease. Just download some free apps and off you go.

I've pretty much "replaced" Dashboard with Konfabulator (aka Yahoo! Widgets) I use Locate or Find instead of Spotlight and am trying to get used to using Quicksilver instead of the Dock. I've never used Mail in favor of Eudora.

So far nothing in OS X has broken because of this nor does the system try to get me to return to using those by jumping in the way of my choice.

Re:Software is the reverse

[mrtrumbe]

Do you actually think one uses IE to browse their hard drive, HUH? Well, you are incorrect. Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer are two different programs integrated on the component level using libraries.

Despite the executable names differing by a character in current versions of the OS (explorer.exe vs. iexplorer.exe), what is the material difference between the two? Try opening an "IE" window and typing c: in the location bar. Unless you've screwed with the menu/view settings the window will look nearly identical to a file explorer window. Now try opening a windows explorer window and type http://microsoft.com/ in the location bar. The window will now look just like an IE window. There is no material difference between the two. Microsoft has said they are tied on many occasions in the past. Who's exactly is nitpicking here? (Notice I left off the flamebait adjectives. I'll refrain from namecalling...)

You're confusing things. The fact that Outlook does 8 things is an application design issue, not a technical issue with how the OS is put together. Groupware customers want "all in one". Maybe you don't, but who cares.

I think you are the only one making this distinction. The original poster left it at "software," so where did you get the idea he was ony referring to OS components? In fact, I would say he was referring largely to non-OS components. Apple, in their overall application design, favors small and focused applications over large "do everything" applications. They are all designed to work well together, but that doesn't stop anyone else from writing applications that work equally well with everything else. Inherently, when components or applications are small and have a focused feature set, it is easier to swap out that functionality with other, similar software.

Maybe you missed the part where I AGREED with you about Apple not making their components as easily replacable as they could be. Things like the Finder aren't easily replaced. However, there are many applications which ARE easily replaced (like the dock--see here for an example: http://www.softchaos.com/products/ws3/ove.html). If you hadn't noticed, I focused on the application design aspect of Apple and Microsoft's software. You, apparently, are only interested in what bits are replacable.

Taft

Can Network With Windows Machines

[jchawk]

Yea because getting Active Directory and a Mac is so easy to do... :(

This is my only complaint about macs in a PC dominated world. It's a struggle to get AD working properly. Once this is a simple point and click wizard I'll be thrilled!

Re:Can Network With Windows Machines

[Drizzt Do'Urden]

On Mac it's called Assistant, you insensitive clod! ;)

Re:Can Network With Windows Machines

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say this is the place to look.

It links to this as well.

Re:Can Network With Windows Machines

[Anonymous Coward]

Your stupid right?

(comment above was rhetorical, incase you are stupid)

Re:Can Network With Windows Machines

[tbone1]

Your stupid right?

You learned spelling and grammar from tenured teachers, right? Because I'd say that your left is pretty stupid as well.

Re:Can Network With Windows Machines

[Groink]

Our facility is mostly (100+) production Macintosh workstations thrown in with some XP workstations (for the business/admin arm of the company), using mostly Windows servers in the backend. We use Thursby's ADmitMac to authenticate to the domain and access remote user folders (yes, the Desktop is hosted on a Windows machine), as well as for printer and file sharing. It works very well; much better than Apple's own AD plugin. All our users love being able to roam from workstation to workstation and keep their preferences and personal files/media.

The only problem is that some apps on the Macintosh want to see a local user with admin rights. And some goofy stuff with being able to change passwords through the ADmitMac interface. But all in all, integration with Active Directory is pretty tight.

Re:Can Network With Windows Machines

[Midnight Thunder]

Yea because getting Active Directory and a Mac is so easy to do... :(

This is my only complaint about macs in a PC dominated world. It's a struggle to get AD working properly. Once this is a simple point and click wizard I'll be thrilled!


Well, as other have pointed out AD is a properiety technology. On the other hand if the network admins knows what they are doing, then Macs can easily be supported. Truth is LDAP is actually supported by the AD Server, but a number of admins never bother to activate it. Similarly Exchange supports SMTP and POP, but it needs to be activated. The issue here is not so much the Macs, but the system admins making it possible.

The article submitter...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is "Carl Bialik from WSJ" with e-mail address "wsjarticles@wsj.com"
This for an article published on the WSJ web site.
I think that about says it all.

---
This anonymous post was brought to you by the image-protected password "profuse"

Re:The article submitter...

[ObligatoryUserName]

... is "Carl Bialik from WSJ" with e-mail address "wsjarticles@wsj.com"
This for an article published on the WSJ web site.
I think that about says it all.


What exactly does it say? It says that someone working at the Wall Street Journal was one of the first people to know that article was live and knew it would be interesting to Slashdot. (If it wasn't interesting it wouldn't have gotten posted, right? If there was posting-payola involved they wouldn't have made it so obviously submitted by the newspaper, would they?)

That someone from the WSJ would submit their articles isn't surprising is it? Slashdot has been around for quite a few years now and its original mainstream claim to fame was its large audience(Slashdot effect). There might be a hint of impropriety if the submitter had hidden their identity, but as it is, what's the problem?

Re:The article submitter...

[Quintios]

I think I saw some comments a week or so ago that people were complaining that the WSJ was using slashdot to get more hits to their website. So someone from WSJ submitting articles might help support that argument.

Re:The article submitter...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm...where have you been? Slashdot has posted stories from the Wall Street Journal website with the same submitter for several years now. Found nothing wrong with it and the WSJ is a "respectable" news source. Have you seen the price of annual subscription fee to view the whole website or ordering the paper edition? It is not like they need the extra money with a couple of thousand page hits.

convert

[xao gypsie]

This is prolly just going to get modded to an oblivion, but i recently found my wife's older g3 ibook. i added some ram, got a new battery (4 hours of life!!!), and put panther on it, and even the g3 run better than my athlon xp 3000 with windows (now it just has bsd).

I am so impressed with the way os x works. it is fast, accessible (through the bsd subsystem) and i can do anything on my ibook than i can on my desktop (no i dont game). After my experiences running a mac, i will never buy another non-mac pc. even if that means that i have to wait to save more money, they last longer and run better than windows machines.

Re:convert

[minus_273]

i actually still use my blueberry G3 ibook as well. I have never had to upgrade. The new BTI optimized batteries get you almost 5 hrs actually, even when using airport (wifi). Considering it is a 7 year old computer and i've seen no need ot buy a new ibook, i think that says a lot. If you use xpostfacto you can install Tiger on it as well if you want it (yay! spotlight!).

Re:convert

[xao gypsie]

i used to have the opinion that macs are superior in every way but price. and now that i am using my ibook, i realize that that is also wrong. they save you money in the long run because they actually hold their value. upgrading isnt constantly necessary (especially cause i dont game anymore). I have all the programs i could ever need, and then some. the hardware will last me a long time. although those new macbooks are damn sexy. i need to start dropping more hints with my wife...

Re:convert

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you get modded down? You Rah Rah'd Apple. That's an instant +3. You should have mentioned how every single Mac in the world "Just Works" like 12 times then sum it all up with a Netcraft confirms it remark and you've got a +5.

Re:convert

[minus_273]

"they save you money in the long run because they actually hold their value."

I couldnt put it better. Your G3 ibook will still fetch a 400-500 on ebay if you ever wanted to sell it.

Re:convert

[NutscrapeSucks]

even the g3 run better than my athlon xp 3000 with windows

Statements like this are so off the wall, they really tell you nothing more than "I've Drank the Kook-Aid!!" The reality is that the vast majority of 3Ghz PC users would find an old G3 iBook to be unacceptably sluggish and difficult to use.

Re:convert

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that your Mac doesn't have a shift key?

Re:convert

[xao gypsie]

Your G3 ibook will still fetch a 400-500 on ebay if you ever wanted to sell it.

you can pry it from my cold, dead fingers....hahaha

Re:convert

[iroll]

I am a firm believer in "right tool for the job," and I call BS. Unless they're editing videos or playing Doom 3, normal users probably won't notice much difference between a properly configured G3 and a properly configured Dell 3GHz computer. I'm talking about a normal "Mom" user workload:
-surfing normal websites (not watching YouTube's flash movies in full screen)
-listening to iTunes or some other jukebox
-chatting on AOL/iChat/MSN/yahoo/etc ...and maybe a couple other light tasks.

My Mom wanted a cheap laptop this year, but she also wanted something in the 2GHz P4 on a gig-e network. And some days you'd think it was a 486!! Mostly this is due to the awful overload on our exchange, terminal server, and active directory servers (which a "normal user" still perceives as "my computer sucks"), but even local programs can be rediculously slow starting (go grab a coffee while waiting for it to load Firefox). If the vast majority of 2GHz P4 users had to deal with this, they would HAPPILY switch to the G3; if nothing else, the experience would be comparable.

So, before you pooh-pooh a G3, remember that the vast majority of users just want their web browser to open and render pages at a reasonable speed. They want to play MP3s and reload their iPod. They want to chat and update their myspace profile. They want to get FP on slashdot. At these tasks, there is a perceptable difference in speeds between the G3 and a P4, but to call it "unacceptable" is gross exaggeration.

Re:convert

[NutscrapeSucks]

Meanwhile back in the real world, my non-technical friend was complaining about her iMac G5 being "slow".

I suppose one could stick a few hundred bucks worth of memory and disk into an iBook G3 and *maybe* get a decent user experience out of it But IMO anyone used to a faster computer would not find these machines acceptable for anything more than light websurfing, especially in the usual configurations.

Re:convert

[gobbo]

i recently found my wife's older g3 ibook. i added some ram, got a new battery (4 hours of life!!!), and put panther on it

Panther is really necessary on these machines, due to the 800x600 display--Expose is a lifesaver. If there's one mod I'd like to do to the old 366 firewire machine I still use for mobile stuff, it would be changing the screen to 1024X768. Sure, it looks like a purse/toiletseat, but you can throw it, burn it, kick it, run over it with the car, and it won't die, or even need a reboot, and it renders Final Cut Pro projects just fine, when it isn't surfing or playing kid's games in Classic. Six years old and counting.

Re:convert

[iroll]

NOOOOOOOO! I swear I previewed and everything; half of my comment got deleted.

My Mom wanted a cheap laptop this year, but she also wanted something in the less-than 5lbs department.

Then after that I told how awesome it was.

Then I told about my computers and how a slow computer is fine for surfin the web.

Then I told about how I've used fast computer that felt rediculously slow, like a 2GHz P4 on a gig-e network. And some days you'd think it was a 486!!

Dammit. Where's that post delete button? :( :( :( :( :(

Apple May Not Win...

[moore.dustin]

but they will certainly not lose either. Having used both Windows and Mac for a while now, I can honestly say I do not prefer one over the other for general use. When it gets down to working though, each OS can offer me different things in different areas. An example would be that when working I would like to use a Mac for design and image processing of whatever kind. At home I may want to play a game or two and I would not get a Mac for that now would I. Creating a niche for certain things could what got the company to this point as it is, but they are only just now expanding on the success the last couple years.

I am certainly happy that Apple/Macs are getting better and better and are able to compete with Microsoft/Windows. All that does for us is give us better products faster from both companies and I am certainly not going to be upset with that.

Video and the Wii

[minus_273]

this is also available for free in video (WMV) where he also talks about E3 and the Wii's similarity to apple's approch and also compares media center PC and Front Row.

Re:Video and the Wii

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't compare Front Row and Media Center; he compares the remote controls used to operate them, essentially lifting from Steve Jobs' keynote comparing the number of buttons on each. In Mossbergian fashion he exaggerates the difference (bet he bought the Sony's 'emotion engine' crap too; how long before he claims MC remotes have one MILLION buttons?). How many times- MC supports live TV and DVR functionality too. That needs more buttons. That aside, I guess his approach to journalism provides a good analogy to Front Row: proud to be lesser, as long as the hipsters buy it.

I'm sorry, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a Mac running Tiger connected and authenticating to my company's AD in a matter of minutes, and it has run trouble-free for a year. What exactly is so hard about it?

But what about the Games!?

[azcoffeehabit]

Apples end-to-end device model seems to me to only be coming out of Apple's devices. Of course when you make the device, make the computer, make the operating system, and sell the service you are gonna have a good end-to-end device model. If you don't than you have a serious problem within your company.

I don't see any third parties being given access to the Mac's core to provide alternative end-to-end device solutions. Their end-to-end model is nothing more than Plug-n-Play when it comes to third partys.

My critisizm... Where are the games?
One of the biggest reasons new PCs are purchased as well as all of the new componants for the PCs are the games. Video games can be directly attributed to the reason computers are getting pushed faster and faster in the consumer market. Up until vista, the non gaming user would never need a 128Mb DX10 graphics card. People don't need a PPU to use Excel. Heck, even laptops have been hovering at 1.7Ghz for the last 3 years!

Apple has yet to get the support of the gaming development companies. Sure there are a few games getting released now and then, usually months or years after the general PC/Console release.

Has Apple even attempted to get into this market?

Re:But what about the Games!?

[GateGuy]

It is true that the games that are published for the Mac usually lag behind their Windows counterparts by months or years. But I like to think of the Windows gaming community as a big filter; only the best of the Windows gaming world make it to the Mac.

Side note: my first post (very long time lurker)

Re:But what about the Games!?

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point, that's just about all PCs are good for: high end gaming. Low end gaming is owned by the consoles. Office apps have historically been owned by the PC but there is no technical reason for this to continue. Internet apps work on PCs, Macs and Linux so they aren't unique to IE anymore. Basically, the only reason left to get a PC is to use the latest motherboard with the latest graphics card (and the latest physics card in the near future) to play the latest games.

Re:But what about the Games!?

[Pengo]

I have been a PC gamer for years and it has been the primary reason that a Mac usually sits to the side of my windows machine, and not in front of it. As I have gotten older and my free time is more and more sparse, I tend to enjoy less and less video games and more and more console games as I can jump on and off and enjoy.

The only game I have played on a computer in the last year is World of Warcraft, which now plays nicely on my MacBook Pro.

The rest of my entertainment from video games consists of an occasional round of Fight Night 3 on my xbox 360 or some hack'n'slash with Oblivion (again on the 360) or Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (again on the 360).

My gaming career was on the PC, never gave the consoles much credit as I could build a PC to do much better graphics and seemed to have more fun online playing games.

But , other than my occasional WoW binges, who wants to be cramped in a corner of the house huddled behind a PC when you can spend that time hanging with your kids playing fun games behind a 65" high-def TV with graphics that match what I am seeing on my PC, without any compromise of playing online with other people (via. xbox live for example).

To get to the point of my rant, that's the biggest reason my Mac is now a viable computer for me.. not the interoperability, but more the fact I don't really game on my PC any longer.

Re:But what about the Games!?

[ioErr]

IANAGD (I am not a game developer)

Apple tried to make Mac OS more attractive for game developers, back when it was still Mac OS and not Mac OS X. There was a set of libraries called Game Sprockets to help game developers with things like controller support and 3d sound, but the project was killed in the switch to Mac OS X. Right now there things like OpenGL that can be used for games, but nothing specialized for games.

Big companies like Blizzard can afford to have a small Mac unit, and some companies actually care about developing cross platform products. But most Windows shops would rather stick with DirectX and ignore small markets like Mac OS X and Linux. In those cases it doesn't matter much how easy or difficult it is to develop games for the Mac -- the barrier to entry is compatibility.

Re:But what about the Games!?

[Arandir]

One of the biggest reasons new PCs are purchased as well as all of the new componants for the PCs are the games.

Says who? Please cite some references.

Re:But what about the Games!?

[Slithe]

Since OpenGL will be used in the Playstation 3(and maybe Wii), the market for OpenGL will grow exponentially, which means more games might be ported to Linux and OSX.

Re:But what about the Games!?

[azcoffeehabit]

Says me,

Video games can be directly attributed to the reason computers are getting pushed faster and faster in the consumer market. Up until vista, the non gaming user would never need a 128Mb DX10 graphics card. People don't need a PPU to use Excel. Heck, even laptops have been hovering at 1.7Ghz for the last 3 years!

Are my arguments invalid or flawed? What do you attribute to the achievements that Nvidia has made in the graphics market to? Aside from compiling code or rendering video (maybe SETI) why else would you get a 3.8Ghz processor, 4G of RAM? You surely wouldn't have a need for SLI 512M 2-way GPU video cards?

Re:But what about the Games!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a couple of friends who have recently switched over to the Mac and swear that they will never go back after having many PC's over the last 10 or so years. They have said that the Mac works so much better with the types of things that they do on a regular basis (photos, music, video burning). This has me wanting to go to the other side too however I am a gamer. I saw an interview with a game developer at E3 a few years ago where the interviewer asked, "Will you be porting this game to the Apple?" to which the developer replied, "With Apple only having 4% marketshare it isn't feasable to port it to the Mac." My thought on this is that it is like the chicken and the egg. I think that people are tired of having systems that don't work or at least don't work well and would welcome the opportunity to have a stable usable system like the Mac. If the developers would write more for the Apple then I think Apple's market share would increase accordingly. I for one am tired of my home built XP box crashing when I do something like oh say start a game with nothing else running or when installing said game. What was I thinking? Expecting that installing something and following the instructions to the letter would work. Just my $.02.

Re:But what about the Games!?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not games. It's FPS games. All other games generally come out for both platforms about the same time. It's just FPS games.

Re:But what about the Games!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Corvette racer for years, and its the prime reason why my BMW sits to the side of my Corvette in the garage, rather than in front of it.

My racing career was in Corvettes, and I never gave motorcycles much credit, because I didn't want to split my dome open like a ripe melon.

But lately, I have enjoyed racing my brand new Ducati crotch rocket! Besides the occasional rainy day, who wants to huddle in the cramped cockpit of a Corvette? On the Ducati, I get sunshine and fresh air! And my supermodel wife loves it too; riding on the back, she can wrap her arms around me, instead of having to sit so lonely beside me in the car.

To get to the point of my rant, let's face it, I've got more money than you, and my toys are nicer. You should listen to my opinion, because I can afford to buy the best of everything new (and I do!) and I can tell you that I like the motorcycle best right now, regardless of utility.

What, did this come off as boastful?

Re:But what about the Games!?

[Arandir]

Your arguments are not evidence, they are just logical extensions of ungrounded premises.

When you go into a computer store, the salesman is going to try to sell you the fastest (most expensive) computer he has. Most people don't know any better, and so they do. Ask your Aunt Tillie if she should rather have a slow 3.2GHz processor or a faster state of the art 3.8GHz processor, and she will want the latter. Apple switched to Intel on its laptops because the market perception was that they were slow... but the Mac is not a gaming platform, especially with their laptops. Other than Alienware and other niche systems, computers do NOT come with high end video cards unless you specifically ask for them.

Re:But what about the Games!?

[azcoffeehabit]

Your point is very correct in that there is a part of the market that only wants the fastest out there even when they would never reach topping out such a system.

I see it this way, If software never pushed the hardware to it's limits the consumer would never have a need to upgrade the hardware. The software that is most generally available that is capable of pushing CPU, memory, disk, sound, and graphics of a system to it's limits are video games. Not only that, video games are built a year or so ahead (in terms of hardware capabilities) which will push the "hardcore gamer" to the lastest hardware.

Humans are also very attracted to "shiney things". "Look at what can be done on this hardware vs this hardware" and nothing says shiney than the newest of the video game worlds.

With this being said, and adding your statement into the discussion I will clairfy my statement and say
Video games can be attributed to the pushing of faster and faster computer hardware into the consumer market.

Ask your Aunt Tillie if she should rather have a slow 3.2GHz processor or a faster state of the art 3.8GHz processor, and she will want the latter
hahhaha! You could also sell her on a "slow" 3.8Ghz vs a "fast" 3.2 and she would still go for the "fast" 3.2. Of course, this isn't very ethical ;)


My arguments are logical extensions to grounded reason. :P

Re:But what about the Games!?

[GaryPatterson]

Apple don't write games, but they're happy to help those that do:

http://www.apple.com/games/

Maybe you need to do a little looking around before making a blanket statement.

End to end?

[The New Stan Price]

PCs have had "end to end" for a long time, it's called LAPTOP.

Seriously though, if it were not for customizable PCs, Apple would probably not get such a great deal on the integrated hardware chips they use. Sure they would get the bulk discount, but there would also be less competition and therefore prices would be higher.

Apple is just another PC maker

[aka_big_wurm]

They just happen to have an os.

But really what makes OS10 so much better than Windows?

Re:Apple is just another PC maker

[drinkypoo]

What, you want a list? I don't think slashdot allows comments that long.

BTW, I don't even own a mac right now. Last one I had was a Rev A bondi blue G3, which was a festering piece of shit. OSX still rules though.

Re:Apple is just another PC maker

[IamTheRealMike]

Apple isn't a PC maker, because if what they made were truly PCs MacOS would install on regular PCs as well. The fact that they are technically almost identical yet product tying is used says a lot about the success of the "end to end" model of design IMHO. If it was really so great, how comes they ended up simply selling PCs with an operating system?

Incidentally, I don't really like this market tying. Monopolies aren't allowed to do it because it's harmful and distorts the market, I don't see any reason why non-monopolies should be allowed to either ...

Re:Apple is just another PC maker

[magicjava]

But really what makes OS10 so much better than Windows? Unix.

Re:Apple is just another PC maker

[Anonymous Coward]

But really what makes OS10 so much better than Windows? Unix.

Unix? Who told SCO? All the while SCO is going after the GNU community, Apple is stealing SCO's intellectual property? Oh noes!

This post brought to you by the password "daemon".

Re:Apple is just another PC maker

[MyOtherUIDis3digits]

See the ads

Re:Apple is just another PC maker

[linguae]

But really what makes OS10 so much better than Windows?

Currently, I have a PC dual-booting between Windows XP and FreeBSD. FreeBSD is for much of my regular day-to-day work (word processing, coding, etc.), while Windows is for compatability (MS Office and other softare that are Windows/OS X only) and for certain software/files that don't have a FreeBSD program (my iTunes music, for example). The solution works, but I'm in the market for a new computer currently.

With OS X, I don't have to dual-boot between Windows and FreeBSD. OS X supports all of the proprietary software that I need (such as MS Office and iTunes, for example), while it also has a built-in Unix environment. I can kill two birds with one stone.

My only wish to Apple is that they release hardware that is more cost-competitive to other PC offerings, since the only difference between a Mac and a Dell/HP/Gateway/Lenovo/Toshiba/etc. is the operating system and Macs usually come loaded with extras (like Bluetooth and Firewire). You can't get OS X (legally) without a Mac, and I'm not a software pirate or DRM hacker, so you must buy Apple hardware. Macs are very cost-competitive when you compare feature-to-feature, but Apple doesn't do low-end, whereas the rest do. For example, from Gateway, one of my friends got a 17" Gateway laptop with comparable specs to the 15" MacBook Pro (minus Bluetooth, Firewire, and OS X) for about $1800. You can't buy a $1800 17" MacBook Pro from Apple (even though the 17" MacBook Pros have an excellent value for their cost). My point is that Apple does cost more than a regular PC, but only because Apple sends out their machines fully loaded.

I personally wish that Apple would release OS X so that way I can get a very cheap, expandable PC with OS X. I like OS X better than I like the hardware (which is nice, but I see great offerings from other manufacturers). However, since that isn't going to happen anytime soon, I'm in the market for a MacBook Pro (although I'm waiting until Apple releases their iBook replacement before I make up my mind).

macs are great

[dingDaShan]

but where is the software? ilife is great, but where are the alternatives? The biggest problem with a mac thus far has been the lack of software compatible. Games are another big issue. Even a mac that runs windows doesn't have the power to run the top of the line games like Half Life 2, Battlefield 2, and other graphics intensive games. Macs have traditionally had 'average' graphics cards included with them. Unless the only games that you want to play are the Warcraft series, macs can't take the games.

Re:macs are great

[Wizard Drongo]

I call bullshit. My pal has a MacBookPro. It's damned cool. If I had £1500 I would have one too. It runs every game you can think of for Windows very well. Doom 3 plays flawlessly at native res, with all the options. So does HL2, GTA3, Tomb Rider Legend, and a whole shitload of older games. I don't think it can currently play older DOS-based games, but that's more that XP can't do them old games, and the MacBookPro won't run anything older than Win2k. No matter whether you love or hate Mac's, or your opinion of the switch to Intel, there is no excuse for the FUD you spouted. Now, the old PowerPC macs, yeah, due to the limitations of virtualisation couldn't do 3D, but that wasn't Apple's fault. They didn't write VirtualPC. Microsoft and before them Connectix did. But the new Macs run games exceptionally well. So much so that when the MacBookPro was launched, it was (famously) the fastest windows laptop you could buy! Please get it right in future!

Re:macs are great

[Anonymous Coward]

but where is the software? ilife is great, but where are the alternatives?

The same place all the non-free alternatives to Microsoft Office on Windows are: Nowheresville. Who the hell would pay for something that does exactly what iLife does when iLife comes free with the computer? Good luck finding a venture capitalist to fund that idea.

The biggest problem with a mac thus far has been the lack of software compatible.

Again, WTF are you talking about? Name a common file format that a Mac can't deal with.

Macs support more standards than Microsoft does. Macs can still read and write PC-formatted floppies (if you plug in a USB floppy drive) out of the box. Macs can read and write to FAT and FAT32 formatted hard drives, and can read NTFS formatted hard drives out of the box. Macs can effortlessly join Windows networks and authenticate with Active Directory, out of the box. OS X can create PDFs out of the box. OS X can create and expand .zip files out of the box. The Mac version of Office can read and write Windows Office files, often more easily than two differing versions of Windows Office can.

Re:macs are great

[dingDaShan]

If I had £1500 I would have one too.

the key is cost. For that much in a pc, you can much more for the money. A toshiba laptop with a bigger display, twice as much RAM, the same core duo processor, a tuner, bigger hard drive, and more costs the same http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/test_report/0,prodi d,28245,00.asp Are you sure that you aren't just a mac fan because they look pretty? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Listen to the money. Money talks

Re:macs are great

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact: macs usually more than PC's with similar specs This does not make them better or worse. People can like macs or not like them. However, they should not be looked at as a holy grail that is far superior to a pc.

Re:macs are great

[MyOtherUIDis3digits]

So does HL2, GTA3, Tomb Rider Legend...

Can you say Freudian Slip?

Re:macs are great

[Anonymous Coward]

Xp can't run what? I can still run Dr. Sbaitso, the old DOS based demo that came with my original Sound Blaster Pro floppy disks, by double-clicking on the sbaitso2.bat file.

Re:macs are great

[Wizard Drongo]

aye, but the display is the same res, you don't need more than 2 Gig of ram (although I agree it is nice..) a tuner, yeah, fair enough if you want one. Bigger hard drive, yeah. But it's not a mac. It's like saying you could have a car with a much bigger engine instead of a Lotus. It's not a Lotus. Besides (I haven't _read_ the link, no time, but I am assuming), the toshiba will not be the same standard of apple engineering. This isn't just fan-boying. Apple stuff really is superb engineering. Great Design. Like the optical in/out being in the same physical ports as the analogue in/out to save space. Most pc laptops have 30 odd ports and look clunky and heavy to boot. The MacBookpro is like one inch thin! You can pay less for similar tech specs, but not similar quality. I suppose you pay for what you get. If you want a cheap mac, get the MacBook (replacing the iBook soon) or a Mac Mini. Besides, the toshiba can't legally run Mac OS X. For a Mac-only shop, this is essential.

The computers are components

[kfstark]

I loved customizing my computers 10-15 years ago. It was fun and the end product was a cool computer. That was the end product.

The end product now is a system of interconnected devices.

Computer, phone, stereo, television, DVR, camera, video, IPod, game system, internet. These are the components of the new system. You would buy slightly different versions of each one to customize your complete system, but you don't worry about customizing each component. You only worry how the component will work with all of your other components.

Apple wins hands down on integrating into this newer interconnected system.

--Keith

Re:The computers are components

[zakezuke]

I loved customizing my computers 10-15 years ago. It was fun and the end product was a cool computer. That was the end product.

Well, I won't say I hated it... if I trully hated it I wouldn't have done it. I remember at one point I had a Pro Audio Spectrium 8bit which offered semi-decent audio but for some reason I needed to upgrade to 16bit. Righto... onwards and upwards to the PAS 3D which was not fully supported in win95 though having a really nice digitizer. Same deal with some obscure 14.4 Mwave non IBM modem which was in theory upgradable to 28.8 or 33.6... not really supported in win95 and the upgrade was well only supported if you happned to set your IRQ to one setting, the setting I didn't want for it conflicted with something else. And not to speak of odd ball tape drives or scanners.

So while I had lots of fun in those days, i'm happy they are for the most part gone.

Re:The computers are components

[Anonymous Coward]

And Apple wins hands down because of what factors, exactly?

Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Skadet]

I like building my own PC's, being able to upgrade this part or the other, and being able to compare prices so I can minimize my expense as much as possible.

You end up paying one way or another. How many of us have found/been given a part (a 28.8 modem in my case, when the 14.4 was king) and spend hours getting it to work? I suppose if you don't value your time at all, your argument makes sense. But more often than not, you can either 1) buy a quality component that Just Works but costs a lot, or 2) "shop around" and "minimize expense" (at the register) and spend a few days tweaking it to work, costing you time with your wife/girlfriend/kids/dog.

My roommate, for example, bought an MB/CPU combo from Fry's along with the rest of the components necessary for a working computer. By all accounts, the thing should be cranking away, but Windows won't get through setup. For the heck of it I tried installing an old version of RH I had lying around, no luck there either. Long story short, he's wasted TONS of his own time and countless hours of mine all in the name of saving a few bucks.

By the way, the 17" Powerbook that's on my desk -- picked it up about 5 months ago. Never crashes. Installed a bluetooth KB & mouse without having to reboot(!). Running an external monitor, and it remembers that if I have my second monitor hooked up, I want the LCD's rez to be lower, but if I don't have that second monitor hooked up, I want full rez on the LCD. Point being -- the stuff just works.

I don't know diddly about Apple...

Maybe if you spent less time shopping around you'd have time to relax and read about Apple or some other tech that interests you? (BTW plenty of good resources to answer your questions above on the web).

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Quintios]

I suppose if you don't value your time at all, your argument makes sense.

The sad fact is, I enjoy having to muck with stuff. I think I'm truly in the minority here, but it's fun to tinker, especially when you can eventually get it to work. If I couldn't ever get stuff to work I'd probably be buying Macs.

Maybe if you spent less time shopping around you'd have time to relax and read about Apple or some other tech that interests you?

Very good observation. Course, I'm a heavy gamer so I tend to look at the PC market first. Maybe with Windows on the Mac I can switch?

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[magicjava]

Quintios, you'll probably want to wait until the intel towers come out later this year. The other Macs really are difficult to upgrade. Just take a stroll into an Apple store, pick up a Mac Mini and see if you can tell how to even open the case. Even with the towers, you'll probably want to visit an Apple store and ask them how the machine can be upgraded to what you want.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[toleraen]

Your example is absolutely terrible for the point you're trying to prove. You're talking about building a computer from scratch vs buying a prebuilt computer. You should be comparing buying an apple to buying a dell. And from that point of view, I know for a fact that you can buy a dell (with everything you need) for much cheaper than any mac.

And btw...your friend tried to save a few bucks by purchasing everything at Frys? Good lord! Do you buy your discount clothes at Macys too? My friend priced out his computer at frys, went home, in 15 minutes had priced it out on newegg, and saved about $350. Ordered it, came one day later, and in two hours we had a system built from the ground up, and completely operational.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Zephiria]

I'm sorry but a well built, properly built pc with parts that have been pre checked for both quality and compatibility will be very stable.
the problem is that many people ( I wont say your friend in specific as I don't know their skill level) just go out buy bits slap it all together and expect it to work, which is wrong.
If you don't know what each part does and how it interacts with the others then you probably shouldn't be building that PC, sure it'll probably work if you don't know but probably not as well (stability wise) as a system setup by someone that researched it all.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Guy Harris]

The sad fact is, I enjoy having to muck with stuff. I think I'm truly in the minority here, but it's fun to tinker, especially when you can eventually get it to work.

You enjoy having to muck with stuff? I.e., you'd prefer a system that forced you to muck with stuff to a system that allowed you to work with stuff but didn't require it?

I think it's fun to tinker, too, but I'd prefer to have a system where the stuff I care less about tinkering with Just Works, leaving more time to timker with the stuff I care more about. (I.e., given a choice between mucking around with an X server configuration file to get the server to work with a machine's video adapter, and not having to do that and thus having more time to do development on a piece of free software, I'd pick the latter.)

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Golias]

The other Macs really are difficult to upgrade. Just take a stroll into an Apple store, pick up a Mac Mini and see if you can tell how to even open the case.

What is the deal with this fear of the Mac mini?

Hard-core overclocking freaks, who think nothing of sinking an entire $1500 game PC into a bath of cooking oil as a solution to keep the processor cool at 112% of the reccommended clock speed, are suddenly terrified of using a putty knife to back a few soft plastic clips on the CASE of a $600 computer.

"Woah! d00d, I heard a rumor on Slashdot that Apple might void your warranty if you even add memory to it! Better just put it up on a pedistal and never even look directly at it, or it might a'splode! I'll call a Certified tech to get this keyboard plugged in."

All I can do is shake my head in disgust.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Quintios]

Truthfully, I've never had a system that forced me to mess with it. The first computer I put together had a bad cache chip (486 DX2-66, remember outboard cache?) It took me about a week before I went into the BIOS and turned everything off, and then the computer worked very very slowly. Another day of reboots and I figured out what the problem was.

Since then I haven't had a computer that has given me any serious problems. Most times it's a driver download or a BIOS setting. But then I've had a tape backup since 1993 (upgraded over time, of course) and I make a Ghost copy of my base install with no drivers, so if I *do* screw something up I can always go back. Not everyone does this.

But I agree with a lot of what people say, having a computer that JUST WORKS is a great thing and completely underrated.

Macs are for people that don't want to muck, or don't enjoy mucking, or don't install a bunch of software and shareware and freeware. I think *that* is the biggest source of problems for folks, it's the software, not the hardware. Wouldn't you agree?

Anyone here still running After Dark screensaver? *shudder*

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[NutscrapeSucks]

At no extra cost, Apple could have made the Mini serviceable without tools. It might not be difficult, but Apple intentionally didn't make it easy.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[narkalepse]

I suppose if you don't value your time at all, your argument makes sense.

A hobbyist does not think of his hobby as a waste of time. He engages in it because he enjoys it. I also enjoy building PCs and do so at cost for friends and family, strictly because I find it fun.

Although, I admit, anymore I recommend an Apple -- they provide better hardware than I can get on newegg or at frys.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Golias]

At no extra cost, Apple could have made the Mini serviceable without tools. It might not be difficult, but Apple intentionally didn't make it easy.

More than half of the PCs I've owned in my life required tools to open.

I reject your claim that "Apple intentionally didn't make it easy" to open, because I own one and can tell you first hand, that it's incredibly fucking easy to open. A small child could do it.

You slide a putty knife in on one side to bend back a few of the clips, pull it open a little bit. Do the same on the other side. Then just swing it open.

It opens in less than a third of the time it takes to open a typical cheap ATX case that's screwed shut.

Why is it clipped like that? Bacause Apple's priority with the mini case design was size and air flow, not simplicity of popping it open.

But you still didn't answer my question: Why is it that otherwise "1337 hardware haX0rs" seem to be so terrified of slipping the top off from this simple and inexpensive computer???

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Moofie]

You're talking about process (building a PC). I'm interested in results (solving problems using a PC as a tool). Which part you're interested in informs which devices are worth your time/money.

It's a big world...isn't there room enough for both schools of thought, and all combinations thereof?

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Americano]

This is a really good point. Here's my Mac converstion anecdote:

My home PC that I used for about 3 years ran Windows XP; All in all, a reasonably good, if sometimes frustrating experience, to be honest. I'm not doing anything hardcore on my home system... email, web browsing, an occasional doc in word, quicken, itunes, instant messaging, web site maintenance, and some light-light-lite programming (mostly perl-based "use CGI;" stuff). At one point, I tried dual-booting it with Linux, to check what the state of the art was with Fedora Core 4. Linux was more frustrating in this sense -- I spent about three weeks configuring, searching Google for this-or-that error message, mucking about with drivers & upgrades, and finally got back to the state I was in with Windows -- it mostly worked, most of the time.

Then, my hard drive failed. Lucky me, I had backups... so no data loss. But at that point, I was thinking, "hmm... why not buy a new system, instead of replacing a hard drive in a 4 year old piece of hardware?" and I started looking around at Dell, HP, and then some of the Apple systems. When I saw how small and silent the Mini was, I was *really* interested -- my apartment isn't huge, and I'd like to use my space for more than housing computer equipment. And I have to be honest... after buying it, and getting converted over into the equivalent Mac programs, I haven't looked back, or even considered buying a new PC. The OS is stable, the applications that I use at home are available & work well (Mail, OpenOffice/x11, Firefox, Itunes, Quicken, Dreamweaver, Adium for IM, Skype...), and the system is silent, and takes up next to no space on my desktop. In short, I'm hooked because I don't have to fiddle constantly with security patches, configuration files, antivirus, hardware drivers, or anything else. I have more time to spend doing other things that are more fun & important to me.

Sure, I could have probably done some research and built a small form-factor Windows or Linux PC, but I would have spent TONS of time doing so (I am admittedly NOT a hardware guru, and so the research & work I would have done would have been considerable), and I would end up with the same windows & linux frustrations I dealt with previously.

And that's not to say that Mini is without its frustrations. But most of my frustrations so far have been a function of getting used to new keyboard shortcuts & importing data into new software. I like to think that I'm reasonably objective -- having used several Unix variants (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX), a couple Linux distros (Fedora Core, RedHat 6.x,7.x, Gentoo), and just about every release of Windows since NT 4.0, I don't think I qualify as a "cult of Mac" whiny fanboy. If you're not a gamer, and you don't enjoy fiddling with hardware and drivers, the Mini & OS X pretty much get it right, at least insofar as an "average" home user is concerned.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of us have found/been given a part (a 28.8 modem in my case, when the 14.4 was king) and spend hours getting it to work?

It took you hours to replace your 14.4 modem with a 28.8 one?!?!?

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Skadet]

I'm a heavy gamer so I tend to look at the PC market first.

And here's our problem. If you want to run the bleeding-edge games at maximum resolution and bit depth... well, it sounds like you're in exactly the right place.

Weighing the positives and negatives, I prefer console games for this reason. Yes, PCs offer better control. Yes, PCs can be upgraded and modded and tweaked so the game looks JUST how you like it. Yes, internet play is better. But for me, I prefer to go buy a disc, pop it in and play (eg. no installation, no driver upgrades, no patch downloading, no controller configurating, etc). I want maximum play time from the moment I purchase the game to the moment I stand up. Consoles give me that, at the expense of better graphics or customization, or even good controllers. It didn't used to be that way, when I was younger I loved to tinker. Right now though, I'd rather spend my time with family and friends and retreat to an easy game or two on occasion. Others let games play a bigger role in their lives (heck, my brother for one), and that's fine.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[crabpeople]

"My roommate, for example, bought an MB/CPU combo from Fry's along with the rest of the components necessary for a working computer. By all accounts, the thing should be cranking away, but Windows won't get through setup. For the heck of it I tried installing an old version of RH I had lying around, no luck there either. Long story short, he's wasted TONS of his own time and countless hours of mine all in the name of saving a few bucks."

So your roomate and you dont know what they are doing. They can either try and figure it out (this is the fun part for people like me) or get someone more knowledgeable to do it for them. The point is that you cant even attempt to build your own macintosh. Maybe that'll change with them going x86, but who knows.

"1) buy a quality component that Just Works but costs a lot, or 2) "shop around" and "minimize expense" (at the register) and spend a few days tweaking it to work,"

What is this "spend a few days" making shit work business? ive not in recent memory, found any add on cards that werent plug in, install drivers, done. This is 10$ network cards, sound cards, etc. Top of the line and bottom of the line cards and stuff install exactly the same way, so i dont know what your on about. all that installing taking all of 20 minutes, MAY of course take a n00b a few days. Whoes problem is that?

its like anything. You can pay to have someone fix it for you, or you can be self sufficiant and learn to fix things yourself. The best story on apple that i have is my bosses ipod. My bosses ipod died. Doesnt boot up but the battery still holds a charge. This ipod is out of waranty. So i call up apple. They wont fix it. I say "ill pay you money if you repair this ipod" they say, 'we dont do that'. So now i have a $600 piece of junk that i cant get fixed unless i drive to a major city and find an apple store. I am not even sure if they would fix it then, as the person on the phone only knew that they didnt fix them by out of waranty RMA.

Buying a mac is limiting yourself. FINE. thats fine, im sure alot of people never even open their pc's case. not me.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[toleraen]

Well, as far as I can tell, I wasn't responding to what you're interested in...I was criticizing the OPs idea that:

1. You can spend the extra $ and get a Mac that "just works"
or
2. You can save a bit of $ by building, but then end up wasting time. Since time = money, you pay for it in the end. And then they are under the assumption that PCs don't "just work".

I counter-claimed saying that you can't compare the two, because they aren't related to each other. Point 2 is not a valid alternative to point 1. Either you replace point #1 with "you can spend the extra $ and build a mac" (which obviously you can't), or replace #2 with "you can save a lot of $ by purchasing a prebuilt PC (dell, hp, etc) which is guaranteed to "just work". There was absolutely no mention of how the OP was going to use the end result. So "we" are discussing process here. The process of obtaining a working, functional, operating computer. So please, take your smugness to another conversation, because no, there is not room enough for both schools of thought here.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[NutscrapeSucks]

Very few OEM PCs use screws anymore. Latches and Doors are pretty much standard. I don't disagree with your assertation about "haX0rs", but I do believe that Apple wanted to make it more difficult for Joe Mac to use non-Apple RAM in the things.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[magicjava]

Wow. That's some profoundly bad advise you're passing out. Quintios, please don't listen to this guy.

If you're not familar with the hardware, go to the Apple store and see for yourself what it looks like. Talk to the salespeople and get a clear idea of what it would take to upgrade your computer to the way you want it. Macs are not PCs and are not built the way PCs are when it comes to upgrades.

Never stick a putty knife into a computer. I can't believe someone would even suggest such a thing.

Upgrading your Mac yourself does void your warrenty. See for yourself on the Apple website: http://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/hardware.html

You will always be limited in what hardware you can add to a Mac compared to a PC. That uber video card you've been drooling may not work on a Mac.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Moofie]

"So please, take your smugness"

Huh?

"there is not room enough for both schools of thought here."

And I'm the smug one? It's your way or the highway? Guess what, homey. Patrick Swayze you ain't.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Golias]

Holy crap, that's a lot of FUD you're spreading.

If you're not familar with the hardware, go to the Apple store and see for yourself what it looks like.

Or better yet, ask actual Mac owners, who have actually made upgrades to their Macs yet still enjoyed full coverage on the rest of their Macs. I'm one of them. I upgraded both the memory and the hard drive on my mini. Zero problems carting it up to a "Genius Bar" and getting supported.

Never stick a putty knife into a computer. I can't believe someone would even suggest such a thing.

The magical special tool which most Certified Apple Repair techs use to open the Mac mini is (drum roll) a bevelled putty knife. It's perfect for the job. Have you actually seen a Mac mini in person? Ever?

Upgrading your Mac yourself does void your warrenty. See for yourself on the Apple website: http://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/hardware.html

That link does not back up your claim. It just sayd that the warranty doesn't cover the shit that you, yourself, break while trying to upgrade it. That's true of pretty much any hardware warranty.

Don't believe me? Snap off the clips that secure the RAM on your Dell motherboard and call them to fix it for you.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Golias]

Yes, it's true that the PC industry has come around to the non-use of screws. (A policy, I would maintain, that came about as a direct result of keeping up with Apple, who dazzled people with their easy-open G3 tower back in the day.)

However, most of the PCs I've owned, up to and including the one I own now, closes the case with screws.

And hey, the mini doesn't use screws either. Just bend a few plastic clips out of the way, and it's wide open.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[NutscrapeSucks]

A policy, I would maintain, that came about as a direct result of keeping up with Apple, who dazzled people with their easy-open G3 tower back in the day.)

You're confusing things. Screws started to disappear years before the G3 (even from Macs). IBM sold many screwless PS/2 machines. My Mac LC had no screws. The Hinged door thing, OTOH, has been copied somewhat by Dell and others.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[halfcuban]

I suppose if you don't value your time at all, your argument makes sense. But more often than not, you can either 1) buy a quality component that Just Works but costs a lot, or 2) "shop around" and "minimize expense" (at the register) and spend a few days tweaking it to work, costing you time with your wife/girlfriend/kids/dog.

I do value my time, and that's why I don't buy expensive stuff that Just Works (TM). Buying expensive stuff is only a time saver if the time saved is worth more than the work hours you put in to earn the money to buy the pricier item. I don't know about the other slashdot users here, but if its between a 600 or 700 dollar Just Works (TM) Mac Mini and a bargain basement PC with minimum specs required to put Linux on and run as a media center computer, I'm taking the Linux machine. The dollars saved are considerable, the time investment for myself is not significantly more than setting up a a Mac Mini for the same application use, and I have a computer that is significantly more customizable (something I prize) across the board. That may not be true for a person who is now knowledgeable in computers, but then again, I think the whole point learned in this whole discussion thread is that, at the end of the day, ones computer choices as far as OS', hardware, etc, are completely dictated by what you want to do, what you're willing to invest (time and money wise), and finding a suitable solution for yourself. Despite what many people say on here, a world where any OS was completely and utterly unchallenged (even if that OS happened to be Linux or MacOS) would be disastrous.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Photar]

Well, the cheapest dell you can get is $279. The cheapest dell you can get with an equivilent processor unsuprisingly costs about the same.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

I think you may have misread that. It says

This warranty does not apply:

• (a) to damage caused by use with non-Apple products;
• (b) to damage caused by accident, abuse, misuse, flood, fire, earthquake or other external causes;
• (c) to damage caused by operating the product outside the permitted or intended uses described by Apple;
• (d) to damage caused by service (including upgrades and expansions) performed by anyone who is not a representative of Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider;
• (e) to a product or part that has been modified to significantly alter functionality or capability without the written permission of Apple;
• (f) to consumable parts, such as batteries, unless damage has occurred due to a defect in materials or workmanship;
• or
• (g) if any Apple serial number has been removed or defaced.

Basically, if the upgrade didn't cause the problem, you should still be covered.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Anonymous Coward]

Still can't stay on topic to the parent post? What a shame. I guess some people are just incapable of addressing the actual topic at hand. Do you have difficulty conversing normally? I thought I had implied it pretty well in my last post, but I'll just go out and ask it, since you can't seem to tell that I'm trying to spark conversation about what I posted above...

How does what the OP said, followed by what I replied with bring up the topic of so called "results"? I believe the discussion was based on saving money, building a computer, and buying a pre-made one.

And no, it's not my way or the highway. When I'm trying to have a conversation about flour, and you keep asking why the cookies are burnt, people are going to look at you weirdly. If you're going to try to change the topic, at least bring up a freaking point or two. Don't just sit there and try to bring up some great feeling that everything can work together if you look at the big picture, when people are looking at just one little piece of it. That's why I called you "smug", because you sound like you're trying to bring this great idea to light, when nobody cares.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Anonymous Coward]

Although, I admit, anymore I recommend an Apple -- they provide better hardware than I can get on newegg or at frys.

I find that hard to believe, other than maybe the cases (especially laptops) are more stylish (to you).

If you think the rest of the components are better than what you can get at parts stores, you're mistaken.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Skadet]

So your roomate and you dont know what [you're] doing....

What you're saying is that simply because I've had bad luck/a knowledge deficit/whatever with PC hardware doesn't mean I can generalize my experience to everyone. Fair enough.

But I have to make that same claim against you, too.

(and for what it's worth, I've been building PCs for >15 years now, a chunk of that was at an actual shop, building the machines, which we then sold. If anything, that should make my "Dude, just get something that works and stop the insanity" plea carry more weight; I'm still stumped by my roomie's machine though.)

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[MonkeyBoy]

To be fair, screws started disappearing from Macs with the introduction of the Macintosh II. The IIci had literally two little plastic clips that held the top of the case on.

From the factory both the II & IIci came with a single screw holding the top of the case on, but everyone I know who opened a IIci case never reinstalled that screw - for the most part the II was the same way, though the sheer size of that beast could cause the case to flex & pop the top if you weren't careful while moving it.

Now back in the day of the Mac II, screws were definitely the rage in PC computing. And Apple never entirely abandon screws. Anyone who fought with a 8x0/9x0/8x00/9x00 knows this all too well. And most, if not all, of Apple's All-In-One designs used/use screws extensively.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[MayorDefacto]

Hard-core overclocking freaks, who think nothing of sinking an entire $1500 game PC into a bath of cooking oil as a solution to keep the processor cool at 112% of the reccommended clock speed, are suddenly terrified of using a putty knife to back a few soft plastic clips on the CASE of a $600 computer.

To be fair, I did wind up putting a huge scratch in the side of my Mini when my hand slipped while popping the case off to upgrade my memory. $600 computer or not, it bugs me that my sexy case was sullied by a huge gash caused because Apple's tool of choice (yes, it's in the official service manual) is a freaking putty knife.

Of course, a bit of rubbing compound took care of everything...

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[nickrooster]

Installed a bluetooth KB & mouse without having to reboot(!).

Wow! What kind of wacky Operating System are you using that you would have to reboot after a Keyboard and Mouse install? I have never had an issue with getting drivers for a piece of hardware under Linux at all in almost 5 years - except for a wireless network card, and even that was point it at the windows driver and away you go. I almost never have to reboot - except on a kernel upgrade.

It is amazing to me, at work and in the world at large, that people put up with a horrible non-modular kernel like the beast that is NT

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fry's? c'mon. those motherboard combos are bad news. actually, i take that back. the motherboards are bad news, but the CPU's are just fine. i bought an Intel 630 combo not too long ago. the ECS motherboard went straight to the junk pile, and the CPU went into a quality Asus motherboard that i bought somewhere else.

it sounds like the last time you assembled a pc was back in the early 90's, pre-Windows. plug-n-play on Windows actually works quite well now. it only takes less than 10 minutes to install a modem. it's for true!

when i shop for pc components, i spend less than a day researching prices. i don't waste much time at all. browse, point, click.. isn't that what online shopping is about? so by the time my lunch break is over, i have my list of parts. and i'm ready to buy. when i get home, i submit my order. parts are at my house in 3 - 5 business days. free shipping. no (apple|sales) tax.

assembly and configuration is a breeze. and it's not only because i've been building my own computers for several years now.. like i said before, plug-n-play works. if windows doesn't have any drivers for your hardware, then there should be a shiny disc that came along with that particular hardware. just pop it in the cd-rom drive and go.

so yeah, my component-built pc is built from quality parts. it didn't take me hours or days to put it togther and configure. the total monetary cost was much cheaper than a comparable Mac. the total time/effort (1 hour) is irrelevant since i don't consider this to be a chore or hassle. no crashes and very stable (i don't overclock). it just works.

i don't know about some people, but i don't mind saving a few bucks here and there. if i can save money from building my own pc, then that leaves me with a little more money to spend on the wife/girlfriend/kids/dog.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[toddestan]

It's not like you have to constantly muck around with the thing if I do it right. My built PCs usually require a good part of a day to assemble and muck around with to get running - then they usually Just Work for a long time. Probably the number one reason I end up having to muck around with them after the initial build is that I don't follow the rule 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' (hey I like to tinker), then followed by when I upgrade something which sometimes doesn't go smoothly. To me, the money saved is well worth the extara amount of time I have to spend getting it running.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[LunaticTippy]

I'd expect the cheapest dell to be exactly the same price as the cheapest dell with an equivalent processor.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Photar]

Perhaps taken out of context my comment is hard to understand.

It is now safe to ignore this article...

[bealzabobs_youruncle]

as soon as you see "post PC-era" you know it is irrelevant.

Sync with devices

[jacksonj04]

One other thing Macs do, a nice byproduct of their device model, is they can sync to things properly. Using .mac, files just magically get between PCs. Emails are always accessible. Your contacts and calendar work in all applications, and sync nicely to your iPod. Photos can be used in the DVDs you burn...

What do PCs have that is close to that?

Re:Sync with devices

[glesga_kiss]

PCs, or more specifically, Windows PCs have all that. And just like the Apple incarnations, you are restricted to using their own stuff in every case. With Outlook, Exchange and home directories, you get all that you are talking about. Instead of an iPod, you get a mobile phone that can play media and syncs your contacts/appointments. This is nothing new.

Show me a system where I can connect Apple mail to a Linux server and have it sync to a Microsoft phone. Then I'll be impressed. Otherwise, it's just Apple software talking to Apple software, no better than anything MS has put out.

Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[mrchaotica]

The problem is not that Macs don't support Microsoft's proprietary technology; the problem is that Windows doesn't support real standards like NFS and Kerberos!

Re:Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[drinkypoo]

NFS is poop. You actually get better transfer rates using samba between two Unix systems than you do using NFS. Besides, if you use Windows Services for Unix, Microsoft does support NFS. But it still sucks.

Re:Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[jelle]

"NFS is poop. You actually get better transfer rates using samba between two Unix systems than you do using NFS."

You're either trolling, or there is something very wrong with your network or your nfs setups. I can easily fully saturate the network cards using nfs. For me, nfs is faster than any tcp socket, including samba.

Re:Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[Guy Harris]

For me, nfs is faster than any tcp socket, including samba.

Including NFS, too? (Were using NFS-over-UDP or NFS-over-TCP?)

Re:Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[mrchaotica]

There's more to be concerned about than throughput. For example, there's shared file access semantics (such as whether the filesystem allows concurrent reads and/or writes, and how strong the cache consistency is, etc.). I'd be willing to bet that Samba doesn't allow more than one computer to have the same file open at a time, for one thing, while some other distributed filesystem would.

I'm looking into running AFS on my home network, because it's got support for synchronization with intermittantly-disconnected nodes (like my laptop).

Re:Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[jelle]

> "For me, nfs is faster than any tcp socket, including samba."
>> "Including NFS, too? (Were using NFS-over-UDP or NFS-over-TCP?)"

nfs defaults to udp and if you have decent switches, it doesn't need any of the things that tcp offers (see below). Why add the overhead and problems (see below) of tcp to an nfs mount?

http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/performance.h tml

5.4. NFS over TCP

A new feature, available for both 2.4 and 2.5 kernels but not yet integrated into the mainstream kernel at the time of this writing, is NFS over TCP. Using TCP has a distinct advantage and a distinct disadvantage over UDP. The advantage is that it works far better than UDP on lossy networks. When using TCP, a single dropped packet can be retransmitted, without the retransmission of the entire RPC request, resulting in better performance on lossy networks. In addition, TCP will handle network speed differences better than UDP, due to the underlying flow control at the network level.

The disadvantage of using TCP is that it is not a stateless protocol like UDP. If your server crashes in the middle of a packet transmission, the client will hang and any shares will need to be unmounted and remounted.

The overhead incurred by the TCP protocol will result in somewhat slower performance than UDP under ideal network conditions, but the cost is not severe, and is often not noticable without careful measurement. If you are using gigabit ethernet from end to end, you might also investigate the usage of jumbo frames, since the high speed network may allow the larger frame sizes without encountering increased collision rates, particularly if you have set the network to full duplex.

Re:Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[drinkypoo]

I'm not suggesting that samba is the answer, just pointing out that it's faster. With Coda and AFS (and others) around, I just don't see why someone would want to use NFS unless they are supporting legacy clients that can't do any better.

Re:Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[NutscrapeSucks]

I'd be willing to bet that Samba doesn't allow more than one computer to have the same file open at a time, for one thing, while some other distributed filesystem would.

Samba supports the standard PC distributed record locking used by Novell/IBM/Microsoft/etc since the beginning of time. (Think shared Access DBs.)

Re:Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[Guy Harris]

nfs defaults to udp

On some OSes. On others, it doesn't; see, for example, the Solaris 9 mount_nfs man page:

proto=_netid_
_netid_ is a value of network_id field from entry in the /etc/netconfig file. By default, the transport protocol used for the NFS mount is the first available connection oriented transport supported on both the client and the server. If no connection oriented transport is found, then the first available connectionless transport is used. This default behavior can be overridden with the proto=_netid_ option.

The Solaris 10 man page says much the same thing, but it explicitly indicates that this means "TCP first, then UDP if TCP isn't supported", and also mentions RDMA.

Why add the overhead and problems (see below) of tcp to an nfs mount?

Because the first problem they mention:

The disadvantage of using TCP is that it is not a stateless protocol like UDP. If your server crashes in the middle of a packet transmission, the client will hang and any shares will need to be unmounted and remounted.

is an implementation problem with the version of Linux's NFS client being described, not a problem of TCP. That paragraph can be replaced by "Linux's NFS-over-TCP client implementation, as of the writing of this document, is incomplete". A complete NFS-over-TCP cient implementation will, if the server crashes in the middle of a packet retransmission, attempt to open a new connection and, if that succeeds, will retransmit any requests to which it hadn't gotten any replies. An implementation that does that will not hang (if the server comes back) and will not require any unmounting and remounting of NFS mounts. The Solaris implementation is complete in that regard, as are, I suspect, most if not all of the Solaris-derived ones (such as commercial UN*Xes that have licensed Sun's implementation); I suspect the BSD implementations are complete in that regard as well.

The other problem listed is

The overhead incurred by the TCP protocol will result in somewhat slower performance than UDP under ideal network conditions, but the cost is not severe, and is often not noticable without careful measurement.

but, as they note, "the cost is not severe", and just because you happen to have ideal network conditions at time T, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll have them at time T + delta T.

Re:Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[jelle]

Ok. I'm with samba for Slowlaris and HPYucks. Maybe it's me, but I have not yet seen a fast Slowlaris or HPYuck NFS client or server.

"Because the first problem they mention:"

That actually is a problem with using tcp not udp... the server is stateless with UDP, hence if a server crashes the clients simply wait until the server comes back, after which everything resumes as if nothing happened. With TCP, the server doesn't know about the connection (the state) when it comes back, with UDP it doesn't need to know, so when the server comes back it can do the retransmit and the client continues as if nothing happened.

That is on top of the overhead... both things you don't want, so go for udp unless you have a very bad network (for example, bad switches, overloaded routed links between client and server, or very long distances)

Re:Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[Guy Harris]

That actually is a problem with using tcp not udp... the server is stateless with UDP, hence if a server crashes the clients simply wait until the server comes back, after which everything resumes as if nothing happened. With TCP, the server doesn't know about the connection (the state) when it comes back, with UDP it doesn't need to know, so when the server comes back it can do the retransmit and the client continues as if nothing happened.

If the server comes back, it's not going to do a retransmit by itself, it'll transmit a reply in response to a client retransmit.

Whatever state happens to be maintained in the TCP connection is irrelevant to RPC or NFS; when the client gets a timeout from the TCP layer (if the server takes too long to come back), or gets a "connection broken" indication due to the server sending an RST in response to a TCP-layer timeout (if the server comes back quickly enough), then, as I explained in my previous posting (you know, the one to which you're replying), the client can just open a new connection and retransmit (probably at the NFS layer rather than at the RPC layer; RPC over TCP often doesn't bother with retransmission, leaving that up to TCP, but NFS clients, at least with hard mounts, do retransmissions themselves if they get back errors from the RPC layer) the requests to which it hasn't gotten any replies. The server will then transmit replies to those requests, and the client continues as if nothing ever happened.

I saw exactly that behavior from the Solaris client when I was developing the NFS-over-TCP support for the NetApp servers; this really does happen.

Re:Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[jelle]

Sure, 'the client can'... so it may be 'fixable' by adding code to the nfs client, but that's a bunch of extra code for something you don't need with UDP. Why do things the hard way?

If something is fixable, that alone doesn't mean it's the right way to go.

The retransmit rates I see for nfs (nfsstats) on even the busiest clients are less than 0.05 percent. At rates like that, whatever TCP gains by doing smaller retransmits cannot weigh up agains the additional latency of SYN/ACK/RST TCP packets. Switching nfs to tcp will slow things down.

I can see why Slowlaris would default to TCP, after their NFS UDP checksumming-bypass debable in SunOS: Their users are still afraid of UDP (I've seen the corruptions myself).

(http://www.sunmanagers.org/archives/1992/1589.htm l)

"when I was developing the NFS-over-TCP support for the NetApp servers"

Your own colleage shows that TCP is about 5% slower than UDP. Where he gets that that is not an issue is a mistery though... The rest of the slides just make my point of TCP being the hard way to do nfs.

http://www.connectathon.org/talks06/eisler.pdf

Re:Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[Guy Harris]

Sure, 'the client can'... so it may be 'fixable' by adding code to the nfs client, but that's a bunch of extra code for something you don't need with UDP.

But if you're going to offer TCP support in the client, you should offer correct TCP support, for which you need the extra code.

The retransmit rates I see for nfs (nfsstats) on even the busiest clients are less than 0.05 percent. At rates like that, whatever TCP gains by doing smaller retransmits cannot weigh up agains the additional latency of SYN/ACK/RST TCP packets. Switching nfs to tcp will slow things down.

Presumably you meant "...the additional latency of ACK TCP packets"; if you're getting a significant number of SYN or RST packets, it means your client and/or server is closing connections a lot, in which case you're probably not going to be getting very good performance :-). So how many long-latency NFS requests - i.e., requests where the ACK can't be piggybacked on the NFS reply - do you see on your network?

The rest of the slides just make my point of TCP being the hard way to do nfs.

The rest of the slides don't talk about UDP implementation issues, such as Bill Nowicki's work on dynamically adjusting retransmission timers in NFS-over-UDP, so they only present one side of the story.

Uh... HTF is that a bazaar?

[Slithe]

None of the programs you mentioned are open source. How exactly do they follow Eric Raymond's bazaar model? Most of Microsoft's 'integration' was done for marketing reasons rather than technical reasons, except for the kernel mode video interface. There are programs that will trim the fat from Windows installations, so the components cannot be integrated THAT tightly.

Minor correction

[phillymjs]

The Pro laptops have a PCMCIA slot, but not the others.

The Powerbook G4s have a PC Card slot. The Macbook Pros have an ExpressCard/34 slot.

~Philly

Re:Minor correction

[nsayer]

The Powerbook G4s have a PC Card slot.

It's actually a CardBus slot.

Re:Minor correction

[Garabito]

The Powerbook G4s have a PC Card slot

Except for the 12'' model

Ultimately, Apple only needs a solid minority...

[Stick_Fig]

...to come out a winner long-term. The PC market is huge, and as long as Apple keeps its niche comparable to the market share that other hardware companies have (i.e. its market share should be compared with HP and Dell, not Microsoft), then they've succeeded in the market.

Let's stop making this a Apple v. Microsoft fight, because it hasn't realistically been one for a while.

USB != "Windows" device

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is the USB standard a "Windows" standard? As far as I know, I can also plug my USB mouse and keyboard into my Playstation 2 and they work. These are not "WINDOWS" devices. These are UNIVERSAL devices. So what makes a Mac so damn special for supporting USB?!?!

Re:USB != "Windows" device

[dbialac]

They were the first to include it on their entire product line. Intel had been pushing USB for years, and only a few niche computer manufacturers like Sun incorporated USB previously. Apple brought it to the mainstream. That fact, though, is old news as pretty much everything does USB these days.

O RLY?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real proof is what the name of the Mac version of Duke Nukem Forever will be.

THAT MADE NO SENSE!!

[Anonymous Coward]

From above:

Even the Mac isn't as closed as its critics charge. It's still designed to work with Apple's own operating system and software. But it can handle all the common files Windows uses, can network with Windows machines, and can use all of the common Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice.

In order for the Mac stuff to be interoperable it must have the ability to be used on other systems, not vise-versa. Can any of Apple's OSX apps run on anything else besides a Mac. Can you use music you purchased from the iTunes music store on another MP3 player besides Apple branded ones? Can you play songs purchased at any of the other online stores on your iPod? How is Apple any better than Microsoft when it comes to interoperability? At least with Microsoft I can still build my own system if I wished to do so. I'd hate to see a world dominated by Apple, where that was no longer possible.

whatever...

[araczynski]

until the mac (and accessories) costs as little as the pc, and
until the mac plays ALL the games that i can play on the pc, and
I don't give one stinking fart what anyone thinks of the mac. nor will i for a second consider even getting one.

Re:whatever...

[tbone1]

until the mac (and accessories) costs as little as the pc, and
until the mac plays ALL the games that i can play on the pc, and
I don't give one stinking fart what anyone thinks of the mac. nor will i for a second consider even getting one.

And until you are willing to pay money for quality software and hardware, you aren't in Apple's target market. While Apple has had a few quality issues, like any manufacturer in any industry, overall their quality is pretty high. The hardware lasts. My old 6500, in the course of nine years of heavy use, had a Quantum hard drive fail after five years, a bearing go in a fan after six, and the Apple monitor just died. My Performa 631-CD still has all the original equipment after 11 years and still runs fine. My wife's old original iMac still runs OS X (though it's no speed demon, I'll grant you). Yes, we have upgraded since then, but by choice, not because we had to.

And just what accessories are you talking about? All Macs come with USB and Firewire ports, and I've rarely seen something . Do you mean a clunky old PS/2 keyboard? 1997 called, they want their standards back.

If you want to play games, fine, then the Mac isn't for you. I use mine for iLife, web surfing, e-mail, development, and the weekly multiplayer Neverwinter Nights on family game night. While you might be able to build a cheap box, my time is limited because of job and family; the cost of building and maintaining my own box, and keeping Windows secure and running infection-free, would cost me too much of my time.

Re:whatever...

[Anonymous Coward]

Keeping Windows infection free, cost too much of your time?

Please... Stop shielding your eyes and taking the easy way out with Macs. If everyone switched over to OS X like you'd so please, the damn viruses would be ROLLIN in. Mac doesn't lack viruses b/c its uber safe, it lacks them b/c it's uber transparent. Who wants to design a virus for a Mac? No one important will be using them, so you can't be half of the ass you want to be as a virus coder/hacker guru.

And as for stopping viruses? I don't know where you go on the internet, but it's not that difficult to keep your PC virus free. You make it seem like its a daunting task. It's not one that'll make me tuck my tail between my legs, and run away from PC's.

I've had three PC's my entire life (20 yo.), this last being a year old. I've never upgraded them before, b/c there's no need. I've never repaired one before, b/c I take care of my computer (even when I was 12, so it's not that diffucult folks...). No, I did not spend a ton of time on my PC. Yes, I have a life, a very good one so none of that crap, "Only Mac people are cool people, who aren't nerds."

Your defense of you end-to-end Mac doesn't interest me. All your doing is avoid problems that will soon find your safe-haven Mac OS X. Given Mac hasn't dealt with viruses before really... how do you think they'll handle the customer support with that one?

"A virus? Uh... buy a new MAC! Yes, perfect solution." If even a solution at all...

Yeah... Er... I'll stick to the guys who're ready to face thier problems, even if they do it poorly. I truely beleive Apple will turn thier cheek if a Virus outbreak occured.

No profit in customer satisfaction >_>...

except...

[UltraAyla]

Heck, the newest Macs can even run Windows itself.

Except after running windows, some of those macs ONLY run windows. Oops

Re:except...

[n0dna]

Because its obviously a Hardware Problem if the user can't follow directions and accidentally blow out their own HPFS partition.

Re:except...

[glesga_kiss]

Because its obviously a Hardware Problem if the user can't follow directions and accidentally blow out their own HPFS partition.

According to the article linked, it sounds more like a software problem in bootcamp. Repartitioning is always risky, on any platform.

Missing the change...

[alexhmit01]

Here is the thing to remember...

1985, Apple's offering is about $4000, the IBM offering is ONLY $3000... A few years later, Apple's offering remains about $3500, IBM compatibles are $2000...

Now, remember we have 20+ years of inflation... That $4000 machine from Apple is like spending $10,000 in today's dollars ($8000 from inflation, another $2000 from income increases)

For a while, the price differential was huge.

Now? The "Apple is expensive" crowd is sounding increasingly absurd. The Mac Mini is like $500-$700, the Dell is $400-$600... Sure there is a price differential, but it's now small. $100-$200 difference is NOTHING compared to the $1500 ($3000-$3500 in today's dollards) difference.

A family today often has two computers, maybe more. My Apple //c was the family computer for 5 years, because even the cheap Apple was expensive.

Five years ago, the idea of a central home computer with WinTerms seemed like a possible future. Now, why bother, the workstations are basically free. We don't have modular systems, we have digital hubs...

10 years ago I went to college with a computer containing: a motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card, 3D acceleration card, ethernet card, SCSI card, sound card, 2-3 hard drives, CD-ROM, CD-Recorder, etc....

Now, I use a MacBook Pro, but it wouldn't matter if I had a PC... I'd have a machine with a keywork, mouse, monitor, and box. Upgrades? Everything is on-board, USB/Firewire peripherals add my expansion. Do I need to upgrade a video card? Why bother, when you can get an entire computer for $400-$600 why do I need replacable parts? Only on laptops where a $2k-$3k replacement cost may matter do I even think about how nice it would be for a speed up.

Computers are cheap and disposable.

Alex

Re:Missing the change...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Computers are cheap and disposable if you only buy pieces of shit"
Fixed.

Re:Missing the change...

[Pfhreak]

1985, Apple's offering is about $4000, the IBM offering is ONLY $3000... A few years later, Apple's offering remains about $3500, IBM compatibles are $2000...

I'm assuming you're talking about one of the non-US dollar currencies, as the two Mac models available in 1985 were both available for under $3000 USD ($2500 for the Mac 128K, $2800 for the Mac 512K).

For a while, the price differential was huge.

While there has always been a noticeable price difference between an entry-level Windows box and an entry-level Mac, but it's never been "huge": entry-level Macs hit the $2000 mark in 1986 with the Mac 512Ke, and $1000 in 1990 with the Classic, and continued working slowly down throuh the several-hundred-dollar range before the Mini came along.

Re:Missing the change...

[Sigl]

Back then Macs were expensive for people who could only afford $3000, not $4000. Now they are expensive for people who can afford $400 instead of $500. Macs haven't become less "expensive" they've only increased the group of consumers down to those who can afford much less. The groups on both sides of the argument have increased in size but I don't think either side has gained much ground over the other. You even mention families with 2 computers. Some of those families can afford 2 PCs but only one Mac.

The "Apple is expensive" crowd is sounding increasingly absurd.

It does get increasingly absurd to people who can afford an extra $1000 in computer equipment. Spending an extra $100 on computers means nothing to you but some people just decide not to buy a computer altogether. "Apple is expensive" is not absurd to someone who only makes $20k a year. As long as this group of people remains large the argument remains sound.

Re:Missing the change...

[pwnawannab]

10 years ago I went to college with a computer containing: a motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card, 3D acceleration card, ethernet card, SCSI card, sound card, 2-3 hard drives, CD-ROM, CD-Recorder, etc.... Now, I use a MacBook Pro, but it wouldn't matter if I had a PC... I'd have a machine with a keywork, mouse, monitor, and box. Upgrades? Everything is on-board, USB/Firewire peripherals add my expansion. Do I need to upgrade a video card? Why bother, when you can get an entire computer for $400-$600 why do I need replacable parts? Only on laptops where a $2k-$3k replacement cost may matter do I even think about how nice it would be for a speed up. Computers are cheap and disposable.

Just to relate to your experience: I too find myself lately using more and more "stuff on board" but not because parts are cheaper. Because it's convenient.

2 years ago when I went to college I was recycling every part building new machines out of the old ones but discovery phase is over. So now I am content with my out of the box road worrior.

Re:Missing the change...

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you claim "absurd", you might want to incldude ALL of the facts.

That Dell for $400-600 comes with a mouse, KB, speakers, minimum 1 year warrenty, 6months of internet access, and at least a 17in flat panal or probably a 19in flat panal. Did you intentional leave that part out because it might not prove your point? You can continue to ignore that facts and but you look really stupid when you tell people your absurd price theory.

Last week Dell had this online:

$349 with free shipping

        * Intel Celeron D Processor 325 (2.53 GHz, 533 FSB)
        * Genuine Windows XP Home Edition
        * 256MB DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
        * Dell USB Keyboard and Dell Optical USB Mouse
        * Free Upgrade!! 19 inch E196FP Analog Flat Panel
        * Integrated Intel® Extreme Graphics 2
        * 160GB Ultra ATA/100 7200RPM Hard Drive
        * 56K PCI Data Fax Modem
        * Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability
        * Integrated 2.0 Channel Audio
        * 1Yr Ltd Warranty, 1Yr At-Home Service, and 1Yr HW Warranty Support

Not the fastest thing in the world but that was just an example. Don't even bother to waste your time picking apart my example, it is exactly that, an example. I can actually go to thier web site and look around and post much better deal or may have to wait maybe a day or two when they rotate the specials again. They have many other faster options under $600 and they have different specials every week. A quick stop already shows quite a few dual cores for around $500 with a 19in LCD right there now and a "loaded one" for $699 and no rebates.
So in summary.. Don't let a little thing like some facts get in the way of your opinion and keep spreading your incorrect information. I'm sure the others that blindly agree with you will moderate accordingly instead of actually looking to see for themselves.

Re:Missing the change...

[NutscrapeSucks]

as the two Mac models available in 1985 were both available for under $3000 USD

1985 was the failed "computer for everyone" period. After cheap Macs failed to sell, Apple moved the systems upmarket with the Mac II. These were intentionally very expensive (because they were very much better than PCs).

I think if you look at the history over all, Apple has never had a consistant policy about competing with PCs on price. Sometimes they have (Performas, original iMac, original iBook), and they've sold a lot of machines. Othertimes they haven't (recent G4 period).

Re:Missing the change...

[vux984]

Now, I use a MacBook Pro, but it wouldn't matter if I had a PC... I'd have a machine with a keywork, mouse, monitor, and box. Upgrades? Everything is on-board, USB/Firewire peripherals add my expansion. Do I need to upgrade a video card? Why bother, when you can get an entire computer for $400-$600 why do I need replacable parts? Only on laptops where a $2k-$3k replacement cost may matter do I even think about how nice it would be for a speed up.

This doesn't quite add up.

You argue that you would never need to upgrade because you can get an entire computer for $400-600, but you use a macbook pro which is 4x that amount, and will easily cost $2000+ to replace, when you want to upgrade, hardly a whole new computer for $400.

Tell you what, 2 years from now, you go and "upgrade" your mbp laptop with a 400 dell. Let us know how that works out for ya. :)

Serioulsy though; I'd much rather have a 3 year old Athlon XP 2500+, with a new nvidia 7800 than a brand new $400 dell.

Re:Missing the change...

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers are cheap and disposable.

Maybe yours is. But there are those of us who have lived off the modular design model for many years and are better off for it. Mainly those of us talented enough to design and build our own workstations. I'm sorry, but I refuse to keep investing in I/O cards I already own. I don't throw away hardware unless it can no longer meet my performance needs. Then again I spend more on SCSI hard drives than you do for an entire computer. But I can then move this high end expensive hardware to my new workstation when I do my next upgrade. In the mean time I can swap out my graphics card with a better one with out dumping my entire system:

Do I need to upgrade a video card? Why bother, when you can get an entire computer for $400-$600 why do I need replacable parts?

Maybe YOU don't, but there are PLENTY of people who do and will! You can buy all the $400 to $600 computers you want, they will play games like shit. Now maybe you don't care about that, but I do. I work AND play on my computer. I spent $400 on my last video card, and it was worth every penny!

Just remember, you may not take direct advantage of the modularity of computers by replacing your own hardware or building your own systems, but the cheap computer market is only made possible by the fact that computers ARE modular. Pretty much all of them are. YOU may not be able to replace the modular components, as they have been soldered to the motherboard, but they are modular none the less. System designers have a wide array of off-the-shelf ASICs (application specific Integrated Circuit) to choose from. And common bus interfaces to tie into. Most computer platforms use some sort of PCI standard, even if there are no expansion slots physically installed on the board most of your sound, USB, and firewire ASICs tie into these common bus types. With out this open standard, modular approach to computer hardware we would all be stuck in the days of expensive, custom hand made wire-wrap boards!!! So, you have been taking advantage of the modular design used in modern computers all this time, you just failed to realize this. Not your fault, not everyone is familiar with the details of hardware design down to the actual circuit level. Now you know...

At this point an Apple IS a PC and BOTH are modular in design, even if you cannot physically remove and replace the modular components that where used to build the system. Apple doesn't design a lot of ICs, they use off the shelf ICs just like Dell and everyone else. They used to get their CPUs from Motorola or IBM, now it's Intel (and probably AMD Opterons later on, once they wise up! heh). But I am willing to bet they used the same realtek/acs cheap ass ASICs for usb, network, and other built-in I/O in both their older and newer designs. Or perhaps WinBond, or any of the other standard ASIC producers on the market. Why re-invent the wheel at twice the cost for half the volume run? Apple couldn't afford to custom engineer chips even if they wanted to, neither can Dell. Well, not if you plan on selling systems at low margins any way...

So, to recap: all modern computer designs (even embedded) = modular

Re:Missing the change...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a jackass. Right, maybe. But still a jackass.

Re:Missing the change...

[Some_Llama]

I HAVE a 3 yr old Athlon 2800+ that used to run a geforce 4 as the video card, the total cost to build the box was less than 500 dollars at the time, i just recently upgraded to an Nvidia 6800 OC (by BFG tech) and for less than 250 my system now plays everygame on the market with all of the eye candy on max (I play 1024x768 with no aa or af) so I figure im set for a few more years before i'll need to upgrade anything else...

Re:Missing the change...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now? The "Apple is expensive" crowd is sounding increasingly absurd. The Mac Mini is like $500-$700, the Dell is $400-$600... Sure there is a price differential, but it's now small. $100-$200 difference is NOTHING compared to the $1500 ($3000-$3500 in today's dollards) difference.

And yet Apple is still an "also ran" with very small market share. Perhaps you should ask why that is.

Re:Missing the change...

[Ex-MislTech]

if you only buy pieces of shit

I could not agree more, a semi-decent video card is going to run at least $100 .

A good sized hard drive that is not some seagate/quantum/maxtor piece of crap is
going to be about the same . High End Seagates are ok, but their IDE stuff is crap .

Any processor over 2.6 with a 800 mhz FSB is going to run you $200 and up .

If you want some cheap no name power supply that may spike and blow the whole damn
motherboard, then go right ahead and buy one, a good power supply with a good warranty
is going to set you back at least $50 and if you want a really good one more like $70+ .

DVD dual layer recorders are cheap, only $40 or less , but it adds in too .

You can use onboard sound with craptacular drivers, or you can shell out $50 for a decent
sound blaster audigy card that does require the CPU to do that majority of the work for it .

Some motherboards come with good onboard NIC's like the Intel ones, but some come with
crap ones like RealTek and other no name crap chipsets .

I like Dell's as a model to work on due to screwless cases, and the service #, but some of
their budget machines I would not own due to the use of cheap drives, and cheap power supplies .

If I had to pick one of the major OEM's dell would be it, but for most serious ppl I tell them
to get one made by someone that has been doing it for many years and get good parts .

The phone support for the home market has been farmed out to overseas, and the wait time is
a bit long and more often than not they tell u to stick in the restore disk and blow away
all ur data . Especially with malware and viruses now hiding themselves in the system restore
and windows pre-fetch .

Ex-MislTech

Re:Missing the change...

[Ayanami Rei]

Any processor over 2.6 with a 800 mhz FSB is going to run you $200 and up .

It is foolish to spend that amount of money on a processor for home use unless you are getting additional cache. Out-of-the-box marginal clock rate increases are a useless markup used to recouperate costs by processor vendors. Don't get suckered into that.

Pick the lowest multiplier chip on the fastest FSB you can afford. Then overclock the system bus a bit. You will achieve enthuisast performance for a fair price. (Plus you can always drop the system bus down for watching movies with a near-silent PC instead)

Re:Missing the change...

[ktakki]

For a while, the price differential was huge

For a while.

In 1985, I began putting together a MIDI-based recording studio. I had a choice between Mac and PC (ignoring lower-end stuff like Atari, etc.). I ended up with a 512K Mac because:

• The street price (not list) was $1299, a couple of hundreds less than a clone PC (non-IBM branded).
• The MIDI interface for the Mac was a passive $125 model from Opcode. The only MIDI interface for an IBM clone at that time was the Roland MPU-401, which was a combination ISA card and breakout box. It cost more than twice what the Opcode cost.
• The Mac had a great looking GUI for its time (though crude compared to even System 7) on a clear paper-white screen. The PC had...MS-DOS on an amber-on-black monitor.
• The Mac used convection cooling and was totally silent. The PC, not so much
• The Mac had a much smaller footprint than the PC, an important consideration in a home studio where space was a premium.
• That 21-year-old Mac still boots up and runs. An off-brand PC clone might work now, too. But I doubt it would.

So, cheaper, better, probably more reliable. Did I mention cheaper?

k.

Re:Missing the change...

[MoneyT]

The problem is, the modular upgrading only makes sense in two senarios:

piece wise continuous upgrades

high end systems with reuse

For most people though, by the time they go to upgrade their computer, they're doing it for a specific reason and usualy because it isn't fast enough or current enough to do something specific.

So you go to upgrade the processor

But in order to do the processor, you should do the mother board, because slot technology has changed and it's a good chance the processor you want (or need) is not availible for your mother board.

Since you're upgrading the board, you need to upgrade the memory.

And if you're upgrading for a game, you need a better graphics card

At this point, a sound card and the HDD are the only real pieces left that's worth seriously keeping, everything else you are already paying for in the board anyway, and by this point for most people, an HDD upgrade wouldn't be a bad deal since they're spending so much already.

Re:Missing the change...

[nolife]

For the average mom and pop, upgrading as you described is not something they are going to do. For everyone else, those older components are not lost. I just upgraded my sons computer. He started with a $200 complete package that included a 1.3 Duron and an MSI MB. For $185 dollars, I got a socket 754 AMD64 3000 cpu and an Asus pci-e MB with built in Nvidia video (which isn't too bad but waiting for the 7600GT to get below $150 which is getting very close). I added 1 GB I had left over from my upgrade (in all fairness that would be another ~$60. So, for roughly $250 he has a machine about 10x faster then the previous one. Now I placed his Duron/MB and memory in my 24x7 headless Linux jack of all trades file server and his old GF4 in my daughters computer (also a Duron 1.3) and put the P3/600 that was in that Linux machine into my other Linux machine. I retired the AMD 450 that was in there. So, for $250, I have upgraded 3 machines a decent amount.
That jack of all trades Linux machine started out as a DX2/66 in 1995. Granted every single part has been swapped out many times over but other then HD's and god only knows how many different versions of Linux it has had on it but I've never actually bought anything for it (and I still have the same home directory, I see a lynx.cfg from 1997).

Re:Missing the change...

[klez23]

Well, in your case, I'd say that Mac's built-in system-wide spellchecking might be worth whatever your price differential is.

You got "incldude," "warrenty," "panal," & "intentional" (instead of "intentionally") all in one paragraph! Ow, my Powerbook's screen is all red just from typing that!

Re:Missing the change...

[JasonTechnophile]

:%s/warrenty/warranty/g
:%s/panal/panel/g
:%s/thier/their/g
:wq!

Re:Missing the change...

[Achromatic1978]

The Mac Mini is like $500-$700, the Dell is $400-$600... Sure there is a price differential, but it's now small.

What a stupid-ass comparison. Why? Here's a clue. The Dell comes with an LCD, keyboard and mouse. So how about you add around $250 to your Mac Mini. Doesn't sound so small when it's:

"The Mac mini is around $750-$950, the Dell is around $400-$600"

Re:Missing the change...

[arminw]

....At this point an Apple IS a PC and BOTH are modular in design....

The thing that escapes you and other posters is the fact that it is the SOFTWARE that makes any computer do its thing. Apple's systems are distinguished not so much by good looking and reliable hardware, but by the easy to use, largely malware resistant software they come with. NO Windows machine comes with software for creating and manipulating content the way Apple systems do. The integration of handling pictures, video, and sound is MUCH superior in Macs and that is all software based and comes with every Mac, out of the box. If a user wishes to only surf the Web, send a few e-mails and do simple word processing, then a cheap Dell running windows is no different than a more expensive Mac running Windows. Buying a Mac would be a waste for such simple uses.

Re:Missing the change...

[farble1670]

Now? The "Apple is expensive" crowd is sounding increasingly absurd.

absurd, really? i am sure that this makes you feel better about dumping $2k or whatever on your macbook pro, but it's simply not true.

http://www.cheapstingybargains.com/2006/05/dell_in spiron_e_4/

summary: 15.4" screen, 1.66Ghz dual core, 1GB ram, 40GB HD: $709

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/wo/0.RSLID?mco=A71494FA&nclm=iBook

summary: 14.1" screen, 1.42GHz, 512MB, 60 GB: $1299

the apple has a smaller screen, a slower processor, 1/2 the memory, a slightly larger HD, and it costs almost twice as much. wanna talk desktops?

http://www.cheapstingybargains.com/2006/05/dell_di mension_/

summary: 3.0Ghz p4, 512MB, 160GB: $629

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/wo/0.RSLID?mco=5FC8A26&nclm=Macmini

summary: 1.67Ghz core duo, 512MB, 80GB HD: $799

the apple has a slower processor (but it's dual core), 1/2 the HD space, and it's $100 more. and also, the dell comes w/ a 17" flat panel, keyboard, and mouse.

love your mac. there are a lot of reasons. i'm typing this from a powerbook. but please, be honest with yourself about the cost.

Re:Missing the change...

[toddestan]

Computers are cheap and disposable.

Maybe the Mac Mini is cheap enough to qualify as cheap and disposable, but the rest of Apple's line up is certainly not that cheap unless you've got a lot of money to burn.

Re:Missing the change...

[NateTech]

The price differential is still a larger margin on high-end products (an Apple mainstay in their strategy) -- the difference between a MacBook Pro and an equivalent PC-based laptop is a much larger gap than the low-end products you mentioned.

Still - I agree that I want a MacBook Pro... I like what Apple's doing and am willing to pay a premium for it.

Re:Missing the change...

[Golias]

Throughout the late 80s all of the 90s, and well into this century, every single time I've wanted to upgrade a PC CPU to keep up with the game market on an older system, I needed to buy a new motherboard for the CPU I wanted.

Every

Single

Goddamn

Time.

I finally gave up in the lie of how PC's are so much more "upgradable" than Macs.

I was, however, able to drop a G4 500 into my G3 350 tower once, and the price was reasonable. Not great, but reasonable, considering how many other ways I had that particular G3 tricked out. It was the one time in my entire life that it made financial sense to drop a new CPU into an old computer for the sake of a speed boost.

In every other situation, I've found it to be a much better deal to simply sell whatever I was using and buy (or build) a complete new system.

Re:Missing the change...

[Golias]

He started with a $200 complete package that included a 1.3 Duron and an MSI MB. For $185 dollars, I got a socket 754 AMD64 3000 cpu and an Asus pci-e MB with built in Nvidia video (which isn't too bad but waiting for the 7600GT to get below $150 which is getting very close). I added 1 GB I had left over from my upgrade (in all fairness that would be another ~$60. So, for roughly $250 he has a machine about 10x faster then the previous one.

That's colorful math you've got there: $200 PC plus $250 worth of upgrades = $250.

In addition to a PC for each kid, it looks like you are running TWO "file servers" for pretty much no other reason than to justify not throwing away your kids' old hardware after a couple years. If you simply bought your kids new PC's instead of making them live on the puny drives that came with their DX2/66 systems, they would have plenty enough storage space that you would not need to waste all that electricity on running a 24/7 Linux lab.

Then again, maybe you find having a room full of computers in your house with no designated users to be kinda cool. I get that. I had a Linux server once, mainly for Apache, but also for a few other things... until I realized that everything I was doing with it could be done as a background task on my new Mac, and that meant one less machine to administrate.

Re:Missing the change...

[Anonymous Coward]

....At this point an Apple IS a PC and BOTH are modular in design....

The thing that escapes you and other posters is the fact that it is the SOFTWARE that makes any computer do its thing.

No, actually, this doesn't escape me. I was stritcly discussing the modular design aspects of modern computer hardware. My point was simply, from a hardware standpoint, Apple is now a PC. Literally, in every way, a PC compatible peice of equipment. The fact that people are now running Windows XP on Macs is further proof of this.

At no point did I attempt to debate the differences in various OSes. Nor do I wish to comment on some of the assumptions you have made about the differences between OSX and Windows. I have no long term interest in either of these OSes, and cannot wait until every workstation I own is running Linux. Yes, I use Windows on some of my systems. This does not mean I like the OS at all, nor do I support any of M$'s efforts or agenda. In fact, I honestly cannot wait until M$ is gone... so please, don't lump me in with the microsofties...

My love of the PC platform is due to the fact that I can build my own system, to my exact needs and desires, using a multitude of interchangeable hardware. Apple customers do not have that option, but neither do Dell customers. People who buy pre-built systems have differing needs and desires than those of us who "roll our own". How ever my original post was attempting to point out that, no matter which type of customer you are, we have all benefited from the modular design aspects of modern computer hardware, that and open standards. Also to try and point out that there are LOTS of people who like having the ability to replace their hardware. I know most people would rather not have to deal with this, even if they know how to. But many of us do actualy like building, repairing, and upgrading our own stuff.

Re:Missing the change...

[Anonymous Coward]

Faster? Slower? Not even Intel buys into the more GHz = faster thing anymore.

Re:Missing the change...

[nolife]

Well you could look at it as $450 total but then I would not have had a computer for the first three years. So, I paid $200 and three years later I paid $250 more. I could have paid the total $450 three years ago but that computer would be obsolete as well now as well. I paid twice and had a pretty capable computer both times because the technology gets much better and much faster as time goes on. You do understand that concept right? Are you suggesting I would have been better off buying another complete computer 3 years later and somehow that is better and I should just throw the other one away? Should I have paid $450 or $1000 three years ago instead of $200? That $1000 computer would still be slower three years later then my $200 +$250 upgrade I have now (which also allowed two other computers to be upgraded as well)
My file server runs 24x7 and has for about 10 years, no KB, no mouse and gets rebooted only when the power goes out and the UPS dies. I use it to collect my mail from my various accounts and it runs imap, updating my dynamic DNS, radius for my wireless auth, pulling usenet headers on a schedule, DHCP, everyones home directories (windows and Linux), my SSH server when connecting from remote, local Battlefield server, and does scheduled backups of the local machines on the network (my Windows and Linux desktops). It is basically an appliance for me and just sits there and runs and I don't think I've logged in locally to it in years. In fact, the entire OS is on an old 1GB drive and the other drives are just for storage.
I can watch any of my movies or listen to any of my music on any computer, read any of my mail from any of my mail accounts on any computer locally or remote (another advantage of using IMAP+procmail+fetchmail is ONE set of filters and rules and any mail client local or remote that I use sees the same exact configuration and layout, no need to configure every computer with spam filters and rules and create folders). I can pull usenet headers on any usenet client from my local server and not have to pull from the internet for every different client I use, many different things. My second Linux machine is a desktop just like any other desktop system. It has a completely different purpose. Just because they are both Linux does not mean I have the same functions on each. Running what I do on the server machine would not be a good idea and stable on a Linux machine I use as a desktop on occasion.

Then again, maybe you find having a room full of computers in your house with no designated users to be kinda cool.
Yeah, you have everyone figured out don't you, I live in my own house, not a room in my parents basement. The way you live and do things is not the only way and anyone who does something different is not stupid or confused. I was simply replying to the parent. I happen to enjoy working on computers and I do it for a living as well so it is a hobby and profession for me. I am lucky enough to have a hobby and a profession where my experience in each helps the other. None of them are required and I could get by without a single computer in the house at all but I do not have to.
I have 7 machines and a modified Xbox and four people in the house. Everyone has there own PC and or laptop and I have a Windows box at my entertainment center connected only to the TV and my reciever. If you want to automate and maintain those machines and provide services for those computers with your one MAC that you also use as your primary machine as well, have at it. That is your choice.

Re:Missing the change...

[Golias]

Yeah, you have everyone figured out don't you, I live in my own house, not a room in my parents basement.

I'm a little baffled. When did I even imply that you're living in your parents' basement? You seem to be responding to criticisms I didn't actually make.

Re:Missing the change...

[nolife]

Then again, maybe you find having a room full of computers in your house with no designated users to be kinda cool.

It seemed you were implying that I only one room available to me.

Re:Missing the change...

[Ex-MislTech]

I 100% do not do overclocking , because I believe the few extra
dollars saved is not worth risk of instability or slowly heat stressing
the chip and reducing its total life expectancy .

After all I still have some 266 Mhz machines in use for mundane reasons .

I also now only buy Intel chips after many bad experinces with AMD,
though I blame them more on mobo/chipset issues, rather than the CPU's .

And by using only Intel now I tend to pay a little more, but I make money
with my machines, and like to see many consecutive hours of stability .

As for Cache, yes I like to have it, and the Celerons are missing it AND other things .

I could buy a "gimp" processor, but I like to have full performance available
for all the things I do, some at the same time .

I'd rather spend 2 - 3 hours of my work and get the better cpu .

Ex-MislTech

No, only the most popular ones.

[Slithe]

The problem is that quality is not determined by marketshare (as a Mac user, I am sure you can agree with that). True, you will be shielded from most buggy, poor quality games that die in the market-place before the developers can even THINK about a port. Unfortunately, you will miss out on a lot of gems that, for whatever reason, did not sell well. Surefire hits like the Sims, Warcraft (and WOW), Unreal, and any idSoftware game will be ported to the Mac, but less popular games, such as the excellent Gothic series, may never be, because the few more sales would not justify the cost of a port. Just like Linux, OSX may be shielded from a lot of crappy commercial games, but most of the ported titles will cater to the lowest common denominator, which disatisfies gamers with alternate tastes.

Apple's "Network" TV ad says it all

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't all this just a long-winded summary of the following commercial?

http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/ (click on "Network")

WinXP on Apple HW has grass roots excitement

[AHumbleOpinion]

Am I the only one who can't understand why newfound "Intel Apple fans" are the only ones thrilled about running Windows ?!?

You are. We live in a world where one sometimes needs or wants a Windows app. Emulation can be slow (PPC emulating x86), file compatibility can be spotty, ... Not having to own two machines is a huge improvement. Dual booting is fine for now, virtualization would be better still.

After decades of Mac zealotry ?!? Even MS's own employees have a thing called Mini Microsoft http://minimsft.blogspot.com/ .. Somebody must pay hard cash to keep up the good blogging of Macs running XP ...

No. Pick a site that has a World of Warcraft dual boot showdown, WoW on OSX/GL vs WoW on XP/D3D. XP/D3D kicks butt (for now), no more having to normalize the two computers, one computer running both OSs, a far fairer comparison. Comparisons like this generate a lot of organic grass roots excitement. Comparisons like this and being able to coneniently run formerly troublesome software is something worth getting excited about.

The Apple world is quite Orwellian. Yesterday's "enemy" is today's partner, get used to it. IBM, Microsoft, Intel, they've all flipped sides at least once. If you are going to be associated with Apple, get used to this and learn to go with it.

And savings often comes later...

[QuasiEvil]

Hours getting a modem to work? Sheesh, but then again that's why I only did external modems. RS232 is so simple it's really damn hard for any manufacturer to screw it up. Internal modems always seemed like a kluge, except for the ones that literally had a UART connected to the bus, and then that was connected to the modem guts. Software-based modems? Don't get me started - total ugly kluge to save a few bucks. It's like anything else - if you buy a serious kluge, you're going to have trouble.

I probably build an average of a system every two months (friends, family, etc.) for other people. In the last six years, I haven't had any components that "just didn't like each other". Most of them go off without a hitch, and wind up being very easy to upgrade (future cost savings) because they all use robust, standard components, not some bizarre crap an OEM/VAR decided was a good idea. I find that most of the ways that VARs add "value" is really adding nonstandard crap that can't be fixed, supported, or upgraded later.

The savings come in when I can do selective upgrades. Upgrade my vid board because I want better framerates for a new game I just picked up? No problem. Need a dual core because of some new project? No problem - planned for that when I bought the motherboard. Want to upgrade the PS to an 80% efficient one, or an ultra-quiet one? No problem. Consider that I haven't upgraded my actual case in five years, nor my power supply in the last three, yet I've gone through several rounds of motherboards/procs. Each time I just upgrade pieces, I save over either having to a) do without or b) go buy a whole new box.

Bottom line is decide what fits your needs. If you know what you're doing, build a machine if you want. If you're willing to invest time in learning, build a machine if you want. If you have no clue and/or don't want to invest the time to learn, pay somebody else to do it for you. Ain't specialization a great economic concept?

Re:And savings often comes later...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your model is that you say:

Consider that I haven't upgraded my actual case in five years, nor my power supply in the last three, yet I've gone through several rounds of motherboards/procs.

I am using my 6 year old laptop with the latest MacOS X and it still runs like a champ. Sure I paid a bunch for it when I got it, but I haven't had to upgrade at all. It was even my desktop for a while and then I went and bought a Mac Mini and it operates like a champ as well. Total Cost I think was $2700 over 6 years and now I have 2 computers instead of one. I don't anticipate an actual NEED to upgrade from the mac mini for another 4-5 years. Then again, I use my computer for work 95% of the time, I don't play a lot of games on it. For games I am much happier with my PS2/XBOX

Re:And savings often comes later...

[Photar]

I had a best data ace 14.4 modem / soundcard. When I bought it the package said that it was software upgradeable to 28.8. I had nothing but trouble with this thing. One problem was that the modem would only work while the mouse was moving. If I stopped moving the mouse, the lights in the tray(windows 95) would quit blinking. But when I would move the mouse it would make crazy static sound in the speakers.

Then 6 months later when the 28.8 drivers were finally released, you had to pay $20 for them, and then the sound was disabled while the modem was on. Also, it slowed the system way down.

Re:And savings often comes later...

[midknight32]

... and you'd think that something as simple as an external RS-232 serial-port modem would require extra work to be made so that it would blue-screen a computer.

I kid you not. One brand of commonly available external modems is "not supported on windows 2003 server."

By "not supported" they mean the computer hangs and blue screens anytime any modem-related function is accessed.

Needless to say, there should be NO EXCUSE for this on an external, serial modem. But I also have to retell this story whenever a client who wants a fax server wonders why I'm buying an even more expensive external serial modem than the cheaper external, or why not an even cheaper winmodem instead?? *shudder*

This is a typical engineering problem

[Anonymous Coward]

An example is/was hi-fi equipment. The Brits made wonderful sounding systems. If something broke you had to get an exact replacement though. They would do things like changing the speaker to make up for a resonance in the tone arm.

The American approach was modular. You were supposed to be able to put any speaker with any amplifier with any turntable. If you knew what you were doing, you could come up with an excellent sounding system for not much money. Of course, it was equally possible to spend many thousands of dollars and produce a really bad sounding system.

So, which type of engineering prevailed? You could make an argument either way. In any event, not much hi-fi equipment is being made in either country anymore.

As far as computers go, you could look at laptops as an end-to-end solution. You could look at desktops as more modular. Meh. I don't think I'm willing to predict that Apple will win in any Apple vs. world showdown any time soon.

It's a QA issue

[Locke2005]

Microsoft has to test their software on thousands of different CPUs with thousands of different add-on cards, creating a test matrix that is simply impossible to manage. So they simply test on a few configurations, then wait for users to report problems with the others. Apple only has to test their software on devices Apple has sold in the last few years; it is physically possible for them to cover all current configurations. (There is a limit to what they test, and I suspect that most of the problems not caught by Apple QA occur only in older machines.)

I've said for years that this was Apple's big advantage, although I've never heard it called component model versus end-to-end device model. Quite simply, doing adequate quality assurance on Microsoft software is impossible for all practical intents and purposes.

Actual Email sent to Walt Mossberg

[Pablo_El_Diablo]

What possible value does your latest article offer to us the readers? It is merely an unwarranted defense against an attack that never came. If Apple is so great, shouldn't their products and services speak for themselves? Why do you feel the need to toot Apple's proverbial horn and bash their competitors? Is there a specific product or service that you are recommending to us, or did you just want us to know that on a general basis Apple is better and more sophisticated than it's Redmond based counterpart?

Given this latest fluff piece, and the new "I'm a PC, I'm a MAC" commercials that reference your reviews from the WSJ, I would say it's pretty obvious that you are no longer an objective technology critic. The only real question left is how much Apple is paying you for these product endorsements.

-----

Actual Response less then 15 minutes later....

From: Walt Mossberg [mailto:mossberg@wsj.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 2:14 PM
To: Dan Knox
Subject: Re: Get off of apple's nuts

I am a subjective opinion columnist, and for 15 years, I have been writing the occasional essay, in addition to reviews, to help frame tech trends for my readers. I have been flooded with comments and compliments on this one. As of this moment, it is the most-read and most-emailed story on the Journal's web site today. So people seem to be finding it interesting.

As for you, you seem only able to smear me. You are perfectly welcome to tell me I'm wrong. But you have no right to accuse me of corruption. I take no money, goods, or services from any company I cover, even those (including Microsoft and IBM and many others) that quote my columns in their ads or on their product packages. I don't own a single share of stock in any of them. I don't even accept discounts. If I buy an iPod or a ThinkPad or a Treo, I pay full retail like everyone else.

Are you always in the habit of assuming that anyone with whom you happen to disagree must be crooked?

Walt

======================

Walt Mossberg

Personal Technology Columnist

The Wall Street Journal

mossberg@wsj.com

http://ptech.wsj.com

-----

Actual email sent to Walt Regarding this weeks Mailbag on Apple "Viruses"

Walt,

Aren't you endangering users by not discussing security exploits instead of focusing in on the "viruses" specifically? The term "virus" in reference to modern security flaws / exploits is really a misnomer anyhow, the real threat to Mac users is the incredibly lazy approach they are taught when learning best security practices. As a systems administrator that maintains a network of both Windows (based) and Apple computers I was shocked at how long the most recent safari exploit took to fix and how even now it's a band-aid. Looking at the apple website (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61 798) I can see a number of "bundled security patches" over a period of months. If you believe there has been no serious exploits for OSX take a look at this sans.org article from February (http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2006-02-20 Wow! That certainly doesn't look like a "theoretical" flaw). It appears as though apple is working extra hard at creating an even less educated user base then Microsoft. Apple went through a lull with OS9 and early OSX user numbers and now that their user base is growing exponentially with the assistance of border-line fluff pieces such as today's Q&A mailbox it appears the real security approach apple is taking is "security through obscurity". I'm not at all defending Microsoft but in their case it's much harder to obscure the facts. They don't have the luxury of releasing "security update bundles" on a freewheeling schedule because of hundreds of thousands of users rely on them for mission critical applications and require a certain level of transparency and standardization. Like I said, I am in no way calling Microsoft's system perfect or even good but it is evolving and it is a major concern for the compa

Re:Actual Email sent to Walt Mossberg

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus H. Christ.

Learn the difference between "then" and "than". Not to mention "its" and "it's". When you can communicate properly in English, then come back and bother everyone with your opinions.

Re:Actual Email sent to Walt Mossberg

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG!!!!1!!!111 He used it incorrectly once. It must have been so hard to decipher.

Re:Actual Email sent to Walt Mossberg

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post accomplishes two things:

1. It shows Walt answering one out of two emails from you. Pretty good in my humble opinion.

2. It shows you're an egotistical SOB.

Re:Actual Email sent to Walt Mossberg

[Swift2001]

"Are you always in the habit of assuming that anyone with whom you happen to disagree must be crooked?"

Walt asked you a good question, which you never answered.

By the way, an extensive security update just arrived in Software Update yesterday, and I believe it clears up some of your overheated security objections. The vulnerabilities in OS X are a matter of concern, but the fact is, nobody has been bitten. So it is somewhat comic to hear someone assume that Mac worms and viruses are somehow approaching Windows. I've also heard the MS FUD about how vulnerable Linux is, and there's always scary-sounding stats behind it. Except any linux users I talk to laugh like crazy when you cite these articles.

I hope that Vista cleans up the mess on the MS side. I have a virus checker on my Mac, but so far, all it's done is identify some viruses passed along to me in e-mail from poor, benighted Windows people. I've deleted it, saving the world some troubles.

Re:Actual Email sent to Walt Mossberg

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd point you to the security sites that catalog the dozen or so unfixed IE vulnerabilities that have been in the wild since 2005 or earlier (some so old that they go back to IE 5), but I doubt you'd understand the message. After all, Microsoft went from releasing updates when they were finished testing, to updating on Tuesdays, to updating *once a month* except when user uproar gets loud enough that major news outlets are reporting the vulnerability. Heck, Microsoft derated a vulnerability from critical so they wouldn't have to provide a fix to NT 4 users who are still in the issue-fixes-for-critical-bugs phase of support, arguing, essentially, that a user visiting a web page was enough to meet the 'user must take additional action(s) to trigger the bug' standard. Without going much further on the absurdity scale, I can safely say that *no* windows vulnerability can be triggered without the user taking the additional action of turning on their computer.

Re:Actual Email sent to Walt Mossberg

[idsofmarch]

Still waiting for a response... I doubt it will come. He appears to be in the business of answering the moronic questions and misleading his readers. While ignoring readily available facts and using his apparent fame as a coverup for not responding to valid emails.

That must be it. Of course, there's absolutely no other reason he'd stop reading or responsding to your emails; I mean since you're the only guy who writes to the Mailbag and you're not annoying or combative. I guess that's why nobody hires international news correspondents to write software or run networks. Comments like this are probably why nobody hires software engineers or network admins to write international news columns.

Your critiques are valid, but are poorly written, difficult to address and smack of simple name-calling.

Re:Actual Email sent to Walt Mossberg

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, he used "then" instead of "than" twice, and IIRC, "it's" instead of "its" once. That's three strikes, and he's out! Life's too short to read drivel from people who can't bother to write correctly (but ironically, not too short to write about said drivel -- go figure).

Re:Actual Email sent to Walt Mossberg

[GaryPatterson]

You know, Apple patch their stuff pretty quickly. I've not heard of a single user being bitten by a security exploit through OS X.

Perhaps you can do more research on *actual* vulnerabilities rather than *theoretical* vulnerabilities.

OS X has some holes. They get fixed when they're discovered. Deal with it.

Hmmm...

[manowarthegreat]

Shouldn't this be from the someone-said-it-so-it-must-be-true dept?

It's not an end-to-end model.

[Inoshiro]

Capitalism is a funny system because of a few basic assumptions it needs to function well. One of those assumptions is that users will know things, like what is a better product to buy. Because of this, people who sell shoddy equipment on unreliable gear will not succeed.

Now let's apply this. I have a PowerBook that is very reliable. I also have a desktop that's very reliable (in fact, 3). However, these desktops are component-based machines; they run Linux. How is it that these component-based macchines are as reliable as my end-to-end model PowerBook? I bought components which aren't garbage. AMD CPUs, Kingston lifetime warranty RAM, Enermax power supplies, etc. It's more expensive than what most people probably buy, but I've never had a peap of trouble. I know what components to buy because I take the time to look into it, and because I only buy components that the Linux kernel supports (which, for some reason, happen to me more reliable than random Taiwanese garbage).

With Apple's model, we skip this step. Apple themselves takes the time to try and get quality components that work reliable with OS X. Since they vend the machine and the hardware, they can't hide behind the "Windows sucks" excuse the way cheaper component suppliers can. However, and this is important to note, they're still interested in shrinking costs as much as possible to maintain their fat margins, and they still like to charge a high markup. Plus, they're not immune from mistakes (note the GOBS of heatsink goo on the heatpipes of the 15" MacBook Pros). This means they don't always do as good a job as someone who knows what I do.

Really, it's just moving the burden of choosing chocolates from shit from the consumer up the chain a bit, but even then it's not perfect. If you want thinks done right, do it yourself -- learn about PC construction, or pay someone you trust (be it Apple or your friend). If you just go buy the cheapest thing you can, you're on a roller-coaster ride to the bottom in terms of quality and consistency -- that's why Wal-mart's stuff is different (they have different product badged the same to cut costs), and also why Wal-mart is not always the best place to shop.

Adam Smith's invisible hand requires you to do research!

If apple ruled the world....

[cfoushee]

Its true the the apple of today makes every attempt to be able to allow you to use other formats on its closed system, but that is because they are the minority and forced by market pressures to do so. If they were the 800-pound gorilla instead of microsoft they would be 100 times more controlling and dominating then microsoft, as that is their business model. They would best friend as long as you did things on their terms...basically as long as you were assimilated you'd have no problem.
You might even think things would be better under their toltarian rule...they promise performance, quality, and interoperablility. But the apple of today would not be the same apple unless it was forced too. So for all you happy go lucky apple users, be careful about raving about apple too much because the more converts you make the less apple will do for you, because if apple ruled the world they wouldn't have to make you happy to keep you, they would keep you by giving you no other choice.

SUN

[WebfishUK]

But wasn't the end-to-end model SUN's approach as well? There must be more too it than just building the OS and hardware in harmony. SUN even dabbled in funky designs remember the JavaStation?

The market has changed

[Ryan Amos]

There's a good reason for this: Home PCs are commodity equipment. Unless you are a gamer (which means you're not part of Apple's target market anyway,) you will probably buy a $500 HP or Dell. All the $500 Dells I've ever worked with don't have more than 3 32-bit PCI slots anyway. No AGP, no PCIe. Usually only 1 SATA connector and 2 EIDE connectors.

The point is, you're not going to be upgrading your economy PC from Dell or HP anyway. If something faster comes out, you just buy a new PC because they're $500. Apple is now in this price sphere though, and the Mac mini looks sexy and small compared to a $500 Dell in a mid-tower case. Home PCs are commodity hardware, and this fits Apple's business model a whole lot better. Who cares if it's expandable if you're just going to replace it anyway?

The Mac mini is Apple's $500 box, and when you compare it spec wise to a comparably priced Dell or HP, it stands up. Of course, a $500 Dell comes bundled with Google Desktop and MusicMatch Jukebox, and the Mac comes with the whole iApp suite, which is more powerful and easier to use for a home user than anything even available on Windows.

Which would you choose? The $500 Dell or the $550 Mac Mini?

Re:The market has changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if I did'nt already have a computer, I'd buy the Dell.

It comes with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard.

Re:The market has changed

[dodobh]

http://www.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/ dimen_lo?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

The basic Dell box is 249 USD, including monitor and keyboard. The Mac mini does not come with monitor and keyboard. The cabinet itself isn't as large a volume as the monitor, so the size of the box itself is pretty much irrelevant.

What you are noticing is that people buy at certain price points. They will not buy above that point. They also have lower price points below which they will not buy. For a lot of buyers, that band is between 500 to 1200 USD. For others, it is sub 500. Different markets.

Re:The market has changed

[linguae]

The Mac Mini starts at $600 now, not at $500. The entry price increased when they switched from PowerPC to Intel.

Re:The market has changed

[Ryan Amos]

Right, but the traditional anti-Apple argument has been about expandability and price. Of course there is a price point, that's the way it is with any product. Macs have, traditionally, been priced out of the consumer market.

The size of the box is very much an issue. You can actually put a mac mini *underneath* most monitors. That clears up a lot of desk space.

Also, the monitors Dell bundles are crappy 15" CRTs, and the keyboard is worth $5, tops (Dell's bundled keyboards have been especially awful recently.) If you already own a computer you no doubt have better. If you don't own a computer, then Apple's whole 'digital lifestyle' pitch probably doesn't appeal to you (if it did, you would have bought a computer before now.)

Re:The market has changed

[dodobh]

For where I come from, 200 USD is a month or two of income, so the price difference is significant. The digital lifestyle pitch is irrelveant :). Oh, and you can put the cabinet under a table and the monitor and keyboard on top, so the whole "space saving" thing is irrelevant.

And that is from someone who grew up in a 400 sq ft flat.

Apple gave up the end-to-end model

[version5]

Wikipedia tells me that when Apple started to make a come back with the iMac, they discarded legacy Apple ports like Apple Desktop Bus, GeoPort and SCSI. That's why they can support Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice, and with AGP and PCI-E support, high performance video cards too. They also support the standard internet protocols, RSS feeds for podcasting and a POSIX kernel.

So how is this a good example of an end-to-end model?

Re:Apple gave up the end-to-end model

[Ohreally_factor]

Minor correction: SCSI is not an exotic Apple port/interface. Before Firewire it was the best for attaching external devices that needed the bandwith.

A better example would be Apple's video connection, up to and including ADC (Apple Design Connector).

Me TOO!

[j79]

The thinks that most journalist things are better, typically turn out to be the thinks most slashdotters don't thing is worth the headline space!?!? IMPROBABLE!!

Re:Modularity was because things broke easy

[vertinox]

To the extent that the PC is modular, it fills that role better, because increasing the functionality beyond the design conception is cheaper and easier. Perhaps some people would be willing to give up the flexibility of a PC in favor of something like a game console: slicker, better at doing what it was intended to do, but limited to its designed functionality.

The reason PCs were so modular back in the day is because A.) They were expensive and sometimes you didn't need to buy everything and B.) Cheaper and easier to replace parts of the computer than the whole thing.

Remember the good old days when a 386 or 486 came with just the cpu, ram, HDD, and maybe a video card? And the thing still costed $3,000 for the base unit?

However, you could add on a modem, sound card, and CD-Rom for extra money? And those were even $500 per unit.

Also, computer parts didn't seem as reliable back then depending I still have an old IBM ps1 that is still kicking and has all its original parts but there were plenty of computer that come in our shop that the modem, video card, or cpu died and we just had to swap out just that part. It sucked when a part died and you could remove it and get a new one. Which is why I loathed integrated video and modems because they were the first to go. (Damn you Packard Bell! Damn you!)

These days... You can get a cd rom, modems, sound cards, basic video cards for $20 bucks brand new.

And they are generally reliable enough that you can just integrate them in the system without the problems of old... Heck, you can't hardly find a mother board these days without sound and network not built in.

If it breaks, you can literally throw out the whole thing and get a new one for a fraction of what it cost when you originally bought the thing a few years ago.

What we are seeing is not that modularization isn't as good as end to end, but the prices and quality of hard ware these days make a moot point.

you just watch it there

[Main Gauche]

----"while proprietary, are not overly so"

--"Now, that is just hilarious!"

I'll have you know that I have a friend who is pregnant, but not overly so, you insensitive clod!

OT Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does your sig paraphrase Hanns Johst's Schlageter, a play he wrote to celebrate Hitler's birthday and which celebrates the martyrdom of an early Nazi terrorist in France?

Why did the PC die?

[Savage-Rabbit]

when did the PC die? Netcraft never mentioned that!

Well... according to the Apple marketing team the PC died of boredom. This was probably the result of 20+ years of running Windows but that's just me reading between the lines of Apples commercials.

re: Mossberg

[King_TJ]

Even as a bonafide Mac user/lover myself, sometimes I cringe to see yet another Walt Mossberg WSJ article praising something from Apple.

Does he ever discuss non-Apple products at all? If so, does he ever say anything positive about *any* of them?

Newspaper writers should be writing unbiased reports ... not acting on a personal agenda to further their particular favorite products/companies.

I don't get the WSJ on a regular basis, so maybe I'm being a bit unfair to Mossberg? All I know is, it seems like every other week or so, I can find at least one reference to a new Walt Mossberg column telling us how innovative, well-designed or useful an Apple product is.

Apple's marketing has even quoted him, preceding the quotes with claims about him being one of the most respected technology columnists in the media, etc. I'm starting to think they pay him off to write this stuff.

Silly

[OrangePlus]

This has to be one of the silliest arguments I have seen in a while. Since Apple has gone Intel, the new Macs are nothing more than private label PC's running MacOS. It's clearly a "component" machine, since Apple does not make it's own cpu's/gpu's etc etc. It doesn't fabricate the chips in the iPod either. This entire argument is simply whether or not big software companies should private label the hardware they run on or not. Now you want to seriously argue that question, compare the iPod and the X-Box.

Re:When you are the minority player in the market.

[poot_rootbeer]

you *have* to be interoperable with the market leader's file formats and software.

That's true of the majority player in the market, too.

How do you think Microsoft's sales would do if they announced that the next version of Office would not be able to read or write any existing Word or Excel files, not even via converters?

MOD UP

[SuperKendall]

A very nice and relevent video segmnent, complements the article well!

Re:then why all they hype?

[Anonymous Coward]

last time I looked (less than a month ago), and put together a Dell and an Apple with identical specs (something that we can now do), the Dell was $300 cheaper. If I have to replace a computer lab of 20 machines, I'd rather use the spare $6000 on something else.

Yeah? How about 6 full days of 9am-5pm Windows support (at $125/hr)? Of course, a 20-machine Windows lab will need much more support than just 6 days worth.

I'd rather just spend the extra $6000 and get machines that need less maintenance.

Did I Miss Something?

[BoredWolf]

Or did TFA have absolutely no rational explanation for why Apple is better?

iPod, Apple's iTunes software, and the iTunes Music Store work so well together that users can just relax and enjoy the music.

iTunes works just fine with Windows, too. My sister hasn't had any trouble whatsoever with the software/hardware using a Windows PC.

It can handle all the common files Windows uses, can network with Windows machines, and can use all of the common Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice... Mac users can choose among thousands of third-party programs, including multiple Web browsers, word processors and email programs.

None of this has anything to do with Mac vs MS. It deals with drivers, program portability, and USB. What this guy hasn't realized is that there hasn't been any "Windows choice advantage" for years, and that most people know that. Windows is what most people know, therefore they continue to use it. Just because you bought an iPod doesn't mean you need to jump-ship and pay an extra thou to get an iMac. This article is simply a plug for Apple products... and I sure as hell wouldn't count Running Windows in the 'Mac Benefits' column if I were the writer.

Re:Did I Miss Something?

[Ohreally_factor]

What you missed (through no fault of your own), is Mossberg's embracing of Apple for that past few years. He's written many articles and reviews on why he thinks Macs are better calling the flat panel iMac (G5 or intel) "the best personal computer one can buy at any price."

Again, not your fault that you haven't seen his other writings which give the reasons for his assumptions.

Re:Modularity was because things broke easy

[cmacb]

"Heck, you can't hardly find a mother board these days without sound and network not built in."

I won't not fail to come back and not read this post when I don't have less time on my hands to not figure out what it doesn't say.

Or something.

It's really about adaptive

[Swift2001]

End-to-end has some great points. If you choose a limited amount of devices that you support (according to industry standards, by and large, and the exceptions are more and more Microsoft-generated), then you can ensure much more ease of use. Support of Internet standards, common file standards, all of those things are important, and have received a lot of attention in Jobsland. More work is to be done. But most important, possibly, is that, since you have a limited number of platforms to support, you can do transitions more successfully. Since OS X was released, there have now been 4 major changes, with a fifth on the way. And that includes Motorola, IBM, and now Intel processors. Meanwhile, Vista, with its necessity to support every piece of equipment that you find in PCs, will take about 7 years to produce a version of Vista with much of the innovation actually removed. Leopard will be out before Vista, I'll bet; and since BootCamp is just one of its features, I can't wait to see what they've got in mind. Working from a solid core, and developing for a narrower subset of machines, you can really ramp up the speed of changes.

Busted

[SuperKendall]

Sounds to me like he had your number on that first email, and I'm afraid your rambling was a bit too much to take on the second, I couldn't finish reading it so I rather doubt Walt did as well.

Accusing someone of corruption is a pretty easy path to take when you lack the intellect to come up with real counterarguments.

How is that closed?

[jejones]

From TFA: "Critics attack the iPod and iTunes as 'closed' and 'proprietary'...but..iTunes and the iPod work on Windows computers, not just Macs. So how is that closed?"

From The Blues Brothers: "We have both kinds o' music here—country and western!"

Microsoft Exchange?

[Tipa]

We don't run it here, but Microsoft Exchange does exactly that.

Re:Microsoft Exchange?

[jacksonj04]

Close, but Exchange is all proprietary (I know, because it's what I use for corporate PIM) with a limited API. Apple uses open standards such as iCal for cross-app compatability.

Re:then why all they hype?

[tbone1]

If Apple is so great, why are they having to push all this advertising?

Uuuuhhhh ..... yeah. Look, man, I'm by no means a fan of marketing, but this statement makes you either a troll, an idiot, or both. Or do you think they can just make their products, tell no one about it, and expect the world to magically just KNOW what they're doing and throw flipping great wadges of cash at the doors of 1 Infinite Loop?

Because if you really believe that, I hope you work for my employer's competitors.

Look beyond

[SuperKendall]

What you are talking about is merely shifting the components used in a way that they can use more commodity parts, and offer more standard ports.

However this is an excellent example of going with the end-to-end model, because the goal is for the consumer to think as little as possible to get something to work. When you buy a printer now you don't really have to worry about an adaptor to make it work on the hardware side, and on the Mac side OS X ships with printer drivers for just about everything so you generally don't need to install software after buying a printer.

Simialrily I have seen a number of USB devices that come with driver discs that I just toss, but would have to use if I wanted to plug the device into a PC. That is a pretty big difference from the standpoint of the average user.

Re:Look beyond

[version5]

You are just defining "end-to-end" to mean "ease-of-use". The fact is that Apple once used an end-to-end model, but starting with the original iMac and co-inciding with their resurrection, they've considerably backed off from that. Arguably, that was one of the main reasons they came back, because it simplified things for peripheral developers, and lessened the pain for people switching from windows, because now they can run most of their windows devices.

The fact that Apple partners with other companies to ship OS X with printer drivers is a good example of how not end-to-end they are. It could be argued that Apple has had more success with the component model because Microsoft believes it can dictate terms to its peripheral developers.

I really like this part of the column: "Even the Mac isn't as closed as its critics charge. It's still designed to work with Apple's own operating system and software." Oh, good -- Apple isn't closed because it interoperates with its own software. Isn't that like saying that I'm a teamplayer, but only when team size == 1?

Re:When you are the minority player in the market.

[gravyface]

This is not really the same thing -- you're talking of backwards-compatibility, I'm talking of interoperability -- but I see where you're going with this.

Being interoperable with other platforms, files, etc. has nothing to do with the end-to-end model "winning".

99% of the tax software in the North American market supports Quickbooks file format; this has nothing to do with the superiority of Quickbooks software architecture, it has to do with the superiority of Quickbooks marketshare.

I dont know - I use a PC and the sites do not work

[Tran]

for me eihter. I get:
"Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must use Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, which supports certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies. Click here to get the latest version of Internet Explorer.

We do not support Mozilla or Netscape. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."

Of course I use Opera ( 9.0) but have turned off activeX support. Not platform issue at all. Safari could support ActiveX as well, but whould they?

Touche

[phillymjs]

I stand corrected.

Out of all of my clients and friends who've owned Powerbook G4s over the years, I have only ever seen one person actually use that slot-- I didn't know the specs on it because I've never really had the need. :)

~Philly

Re:Touche

[nsayer]

When they first released Airport Express, it was unavailable for Titanium powerbooks, but it was possible to hack the Airport Express driver so that it would work with a Linksys card stuck in the cardbus slot. My site wound up getting mentioned on The Screen Savers.

The site has languished since Apple stopped preventing the driver from working without hackery. But that's the best use I've found for the Cardbus slot so far.

Re:The post submitter...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post says "cop-out".

A different math with Macs

[gobbo]

Most Mac users don't bother to poke away at upgrading components piecemeal, they sell the whole machine on the used market and trade up. This is due to several factors, including a kind of anti-geekery and the hardware engineering, but most importantly, it's economics.

PC users often don't realize that the used Mac market is expensive. Macs simply hold their value much more than x86 boxes. This is due to supply and demand, in part, but also because Macs really are, on average, slightly slower to sink into obsolescence. For instance, I have a six year-old low-end iBook 366MHz laptop that has built-in firewire and still works adequately as a very basic mobile video editing station, running the latest OS. The same $350 would buy you a faster, newer PC laptop with a better screen, but not necessarily one that is as capable or durable.

The economics are in favour of simply buying a new(er) machine; subtracting the gains from selling on the used market generally nets a better performer than replacing components.

Re:then why all they hype?

[ericbrow]

If it's setup and managed properly, you don't need to pay for any support from Microsoft. If you know how to work an operating system, you don't have to pay for support. If you purchase the pc from any reputable vendor, you have free hardware replacement IF there are any hardware problems. Apples still need to be updated. Apples still have the occasional hardware problems too, which, in my personal expirence, are way more expensive and time consuming to correct than a similar problem from Dell or Gateway. My best story is of a Dell and Mac that both had dead network cards. The Dell took a $30 card and 15 minutes to correct. The Apple was an $800 fix that "had" to take place at an authorized repair center (2 hours away), and took 6 hours on the bench.

Personally, I've found loading Linux, and then searching lists for fixes to problems is the cheapest way to go.

Re:Shit thread.

[Anonymous Coward]

Flame me down!

Well, since you insist ...

Minor paradigm shift opportunity

[gobbo]

The sad fact is, I enjoy having to muck with stuff.

You have an opportunity to muck about in a different way with the latest appliance-style Macs. The form-factor of the iMac or the mini is hostile to internal fiddling. However, they're great for things like case-mods or built-in installations, especially the mini.

Really, part of what you're buying when you get a Mac is the great case and integrated engineering. Not perfect, mind you, just well-done. If you want to mess with the basic hardware components, well, there are a few options, but it only makes sense with older towers, do you really want to go into a somewhat justifiably expensive new dual-G5 water-cooled tower with multiple independent fan systems and screw with it?

That said, I've upgraded the hell out of some older all-in-one seemingly un-upgradeable Macs, like old iMacs etc. Not really worth it, in the end, other than the tinkering fun. It's more fun messing with the software side of things, on Macs; since you can now run most of the software on the planet, there are endless options.

I'm a heavy gamer so I tend to look at the PC market first. Maybe with Windows on the Mac I can switch?

You can run windows on a mac, sure, but if you're the bleeding-edge type, you'll always be disappointed in gaming on a Mac. They are, by design, aimed at a different demographic: the average consumer or the workflow-intensive media producer. I'm guessing the next generation of towers will be a very different story, you may want to wait for them.

Re:then why all they hype?

[ericbrow]

Commenting on a slanted editorial and incredibly inaccurate advertising isn't so much a troll. Calling someone an idiot and making disparaging remarks is a troll. Using words like "wadges" doesn't really help your case either.

Showing 5 or 6 commercials every hour, on every channel, is pushing advertising, and the sign of a desperate company. I don't buy from anyone who does this. Anyway, they're giving away enough Macs to anyone willing to write an article about how fantastic they are to make sure they're letting the world know about their products.

Re:Modularity was because things broke easy

[azuretek]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who cringed while reading that.

Re:I dont know - I use a PC and the sites do not w

[mcdermd]

The only MS ActiveX that ever existed for Mac was a Beta SDK back in the mid 90's that only worked with IE2 and IE3 for Mac (and poorly at that). Sorry, MS ActiveX remains an option for MS Windows only.

The price difference is still there

[TheAxeMaster]

I took a look at the apple page before replying to this. Probably the most common laptops available equate to the low end macbook pro. 15.4 in screen, mid range processor, etc. All basically the same as most general purpose Dell, HP, Gateway laptops. The low end macbook pro STARTS at 2 grand. Dell will sell you a 15.4 in laptop at 699. Lets even say there needs to be some upgrades to match the specs and call the dell in at a grand. That is still HALF.

Desktops? Sure, the mac mini is relatively cheap. But you also don't get a keyboard, mouse or monitor either. Add those things to a mac mini and you're sitting at around a grand (you've got to get the stylish mac accessories, right? right.). The dell is still 4-600. Price is still a big factor, is it the deal breaker? Not always, but simply ignoring it is idiotic.

People who don't care about hardware configuring will just buy prebuilt systems reguardless of who makes them. I'd say 90% of people who buy dells don't change the hardware options much, maybe just add some ram. And I garauntee you a similar percentage of people who buy apples do exactly the same. Don't fool yourself into thinking it is something other than the masses following the advertisers around like so many sheep. Remember that the ipod didn't suddenly become popular because it was better, hell it was the 3rd generation hardware at the time. But you run a few commercials and make people think its the hip thing to have...

Re:The price difference is still there

[igb]

The point is that in the real world, it's the delta, not the multiplier. £100 + 20% is a delta of £20. But £10 + 50% is only a delta of £5. As the baseline price falls, the hard cash value (or problem) of a 50% disparity in price becomes smaller. Is a Mac Mini plus a reasonable screen more expensive than the latest special from Dell? Yes: probably twice the price. But that's only three or four hundred quid, which in the context of computer prices of a few years ago is neither here nor there.

ian

Re:The price difference is still there

[Haeleth]

The point is that in the real world, it's the delta, not the multiplier.

In theory. Sadly, it's not that simple. In practice, as the delta gets smaller, the multiplier gets more important, not less. Look at how things are advertised: cars will be "save £2000", not "10% off". But bread is "10% off", not "save 7p".

Re:The price difference is still there

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, the grandparent did have it backwards. Out in the real world, the price is falling on all sorts of things that are interesting to those that might wish to purchase a computer, so it isn't just about the money itself, it is about what ELSE you can do with it when you save it. It doesn't matter if it is $100 or $1000, it would still be HALF of $200 or $2000, leaving $100 or $1000 that I could buy ANOTHER computer with, or another something else entirely.

Re:The price difference is still there

[arminw]

....Add those things to a mac mini....

The mini is marketed to people who already have such standard things from a previous PC and would like to have a cheap way to try out a Mac with its superior, yet largely malware free OSX software. How else can anyone can get a computer that will do music, movies and photos for that price. There is no software available for Windows that will even come close to what Apple offers to someone who wants to have some fun at creating content rather than being only a consumer sheep.

Been there, done that

[mangu]

What you are proposing was tried over twenty years ago and failed in the market. Specialized word processors, something like a typewriter with CPU, memory, LCD display, and disk storage were sold by several manufacturers. People, even professional writers, prefered general purpose computers.

Guess what? By the time a laptop computer's price is as low as a game console's, no one will buy consoles anymore. The trend in digital devices has always been toward integration of more functions. That's how telephones got cameras. If they can put one more function without increasing prices, sizes or weights too much they will.

Re:Been there, done that

[BasilBrush]

I remember dedicated word processors well. Just because they lost out to general purpose computers in the early 1980s does not mean that different dedicated word processors won't be successful in the future. Both the technology and the economics have and will continue to change.

Basically when hardware is expensive (70s/80s), having general purpose hardware makes sense to get maximum use out of expensive components.

When hardware is cheap (now and the future), there's far less incentive to share the components.

Guess what? By the time a laptop computer's price is as low as a game console's, no one will buy consoles anymore.

Complete nonsense. People already have both a laptop or a desktop AND a console. The trend is to selling more laptops AND more consoles.

The trend in digital devices has always been toward integration of more functions. That's how telephones got cameras. If they can put one more function without increasing prices, sizes or weights too much they will.

Camera phones are successful because the functionality is additive to what the phone already does. It's a mobile communications device. The camera lets you send pictures. Many other things that they have tried to add to mobile phones have pretty much failed in the market. e.g. MP3 playing, browsers of various sorts, game playing. Also some people now have multiple mobile phones, that they use for different occasions. Perhaps small and elegant for a date, and a smartphone for going to work. That's specialising.

I'm afraid you've got blinkers on in saying "digital devices have always". Digital devices are in their infancy. It took decades for the general purpose motor to be virtually totally replaced with specialized motor driven devices.

The trend towards specialization is even more in it's infancy. But it is the future.

evolution has already happened

[penguin-collective]

Computing devices seem to be following that same general curve...becoming more specialized, embedded, and specific-to-task

That process has already gone to completion. What's on your desk now is an "information appliance"; more specialized appliances for that niche have failed and continue to fail in the market.

And one reason why Macs and PCs have been so successful is precisely because they are not being used as computational tools--people who have to do heavy-duty computation do so by logging into UNIX and Linux servers (Apple and Microsoft advertising notwithstanding).

overblown analysis

[recharged95]

The only reason why Apple is successful nowadays is just cost:

Apple products are more affordable today than 5 yrs ago.

Sure an 60GB iPod can cost $300, but I can get a mini for $99, my entry costs into the brand are much lower than years ago. Of course, PC's are even lower, but the configuration/admin hassles show a cost difference of what? $50? In the old days that cost was likely $500. Hence, that's $50 becomes worth the price since most gimzo buyers can afford the extra cost nowadays compared to the old days.

Apple success is another typical tech story: being at the right place at the right time, economically. The social, coolness, technical capabilites, business thories, and such are just hype justification that some 'expert' wants to author.

In the end, IMO, Apple's reminds me of Sony, and unless Apple evolves, guess what, in 7 yrs we'll look back have wondered why we bought all these gadgets (i.e. 1G, 2G, Nano, 3G ipods) 'now' sitting in our storage boxes. That's what happnened with the Walkman (i.e. Walkman, AM/FM/Cass Walkman, CD Walkman, ESP Walkman, MP3 Walkman, etc...)--how many power supplies do you have?...

so this means

[hjf]

that we can basically say that Apple's success is a fact of Microsoft compatibility? duh! It's like dressing like the cool guys to be "popular" instead of trying to make your own trend...

Woosh!

[iamlucky13]

The article isn't about audio players. It's about personal computers, which are a far larger market. In one corner are the IBM-compatibles (is that term still used?) with their huge choice of compatible components and software allowing a purchaser to pick everything from front-side bus speed to what kind of case lights to use. In the other corner is Macintosh, based on purpose-built systems running Mac software. The entire discussion in the article surrounds the choice of personal computers, but the contentions are based on the success of the iPod. Mac is on a solid upswing, but they are still a tiny fraction of the overall computer market. Random crap like the fact that Microsoft is developing a media player means basically nothing in relation to the PC market.

If the author truly wanted to sound insightful, he would have talked about how the evolution of computers in our daily life is tending towards specific-purpose devices like media players, PDA's, game consoles, etc, as the first poster in the discussion noted with his electric motor analogy. I don't totally agree with that either, but it's a heck of a lot better argument saying that Mac has beat Microsoft by offering fewer choices.

Re:Modularity was because things broke easy

[vertinox]

I'm trying to emulate a southern accent on slashdot. Its out of habbit when I talk about repairing computers... Makes me feel like I am repairing a car.

ARGH!

[nsayer]

Must! Preview! FIRST!

s/Express/Extreme/g

Re:prolly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better is OS X's built in dictionary, which you may want to use to look up "probably".

Heck the new ones can even run windows.

[Last Warrior]

well gosh..

apple has been running MacOSX on normal intel hardware unbeknownst to us for years.

So heck.. intel machines can even run macosx now..
if it were not for the fact that it is not supported by apple and potentially illegal to break apples terms of use..

congratulations to apple for learning the most important lesson after so many years. In order to actively compete with your competition, you have to support what they support and often times support it better.

took them long enough.

yes, shure

[AlgorithMan]

yes, of course apple beats pcs... the same way in that surfing on pr0n sites beats programming... its fun, its easy, less frustrating, but it keeps you stupid - you learn nothing about how anything works...

thats apples ultimate goal - keeping people stupid, because stupid people are easy to controll...

Re:yes, shure

[geekoid]

Only an idiot would think people who don't want to hassle with there computer are stupid.

Re:yes, shure

[AlgorithMan]

imagine everyone would start using macs... noone ever does anything with the system anymore because its SOOO wonderfully easy. noone learns anything about how stuff works anymore (I mean come on... open source OS-X which is still designed specifically to not-work on non-apple hardware... thats worse than anything MS has ever done, OS-X comes with a built-in browser, mediaplayer etc too - where are the antitrust lawsuits there?) the result would be that in some years only apple would know how system internals work - leading to a world where apple can do anything they want, because the human iPod lemmings don't know what they're doing and if its right or wrong...

my point is - use apple if you want a system that works out of the box, stable and fast... like a game-console... but if you want to learn anything about computers, OSses, programs, algorithms etc. you should shure as hell use a pc...

Re:yes, shure

[GaryPatterson]

So using Windows on a PC gives you insight into transistor theory, electronics design principles and application development techniques?

No?

Unless you mean that things break all the time so you are forced to learn how Windows operates, then your point is a poor one. If you did mean that, then your point is that Windows requires too much effort for any but the rarest of users.

I know electronics theory. I know programming languages. I've used computers since 1981. I use a Mac because it works and I don't have to spend time screwing around just to keep it running nicely.

As for your last point - that's just a moronic troll.

But that's how Waltberg is using it

[SuperKendall]

You are just defining "end-to-end" to mean "ease-of-use".

That is correct, ease of use is a virtual continutation of the physical aspects of "end to end" and is in line with the philosophy behind what he was saying.

boring

[usrusr]

yet another sack of rice fell victim to misalignment with gravity

(the first sentences were interesting, but the OMG MAC CAN DO STUFF part in the summary ruined it completely)

Re:Modularity was because things broke easy

[Anonymous Coward]

It hurt me. Physically.

Re:then why all they hype?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always spend the $6000 (plus an extra million or so) training the entire University campus how to use OSX. :)

Freakin' A

[zogger]

Best idea for a keyboard I have heard of in a long time. Here's another one you can have for the design- raised shift keys. they don't need to be in the same plane and be just as hard to press down. Your hands are not shaped that way, not are your little fingers as strong or flexible. The shift keys operate off your little fingers and need to be slightly raised (like 50% higher than the rest) and angled inwards slightly, and only take 1/2 the pressure to activate that the normal keys do. Either that or a foot switch-really, just for the shift key.

Some keyboard guys need to do this, as well as thinking about the aging population with very stiff arthritic fingers. Just like they make a few big button phones, there's a reason, older eyes, older fingers, geting there meselfs..... And that demographic has ca$hto spend on stuff designed with them in mind. Goofy stuff, can openers, had to swap out the buck store one for a ten buck one with huge handles to twist for my GF, so her hands could do it. It was CHEAP at ten bucks for what it did (no, don't want an electric one at this time, I still try to do biodrive small do dads if possible). I got her an MS natural keyboard, it is closer to what she needs but not perfect.

Anyway, you go MAKE some money with that idea with the dedicated word processor keyboard with specialty keys (insert link key, anchor key, more). Most excellent idea.

The monitor...hmmm, perhaps one you could mash a button, twist, lock and have it either landscape wide or portrait tall and it would adjust the screen some way. I'd buy one of them.

I see your point but.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people out there don't like wizards and the do everything for me approach. When I use an mp3 player, I want to drag files from the hard drive and drop them on the the player. I don't wanna use a cutsie, artsy fartsy app to accomplish this, I just want them loaded on the player. If you MAKE me use an app to do that, I will not buy your product. EVER.

I think you've got it backwards...

[argent]

its fun, its easy, less frustrating, but it keeps you stupid - you learn nothing about how anything works... [...] keeping people stupid, because stupid people are easy to controll...

Hmmm? Apart from the "fun and easy" part, you're describing Microsoft and Windows. Apple does a MUCH better job of helping you learn how everything works. They always have, really, all the way back to the original "Inside Macintosh". But let's look at what things are like today:

Mac OS X - You can download the source code to the underlying operating system, the GUI is well documented, and built on top of the OpenGL rendering engine and the PDF rendering model which are both well understood and documented with multiple interoperable implementations. The GUI Framework (Cocoa) and the two scripting models (Applescript and the UNIX shell) are not only well documented, but they encourage exploration: Cocoa because it's implemented in a late-bound language that makes the API self-describing, Applescript because it includes mechanisms to enumerate the interfaces provided by an application, and the UNIX shell because it's based on a set of concepts that have now become so widely used that people forget how revolutionary they were in the early '70s... even Windows NT follows the UNIX design in myriad ways.

Windows NT - The operating system source code isn't published, the internals are deliberately kept secret (even in the face of lawsuits!), and the kernel API itself has huge areas shrouded in mystery. The GUI is implemented in dozens of vaguely interoperable toolkits that differ in subtle ways, and attempting to understand the relationships between them leads to a mass of undocumented interfaces and binary gibberish that you have to take on trust. Inter-applicaton communications involve a variety of scripted and non-scripted interfaces that have changed so often and so radically that developers hoard their older MSDN CD sets containing the venerable Visual Studio 6 as if they were jewels.

Windows ... not fun, not easy, very frustrating, and it keeps you stupid because you have to climb such a steep learning curve to really understand how anything works.

Mac OS X doesn't just help you understand how it goes together, it encourages you to do so. Right-click on any Cocoa application and a good many Carbon ones and you get the option "Show package contents". Select that and the applications frameworks (internal libraries and toolkits) and resources are laid out for your inspection. The localization folders (English.lproj, German.lproj, and so on) are there for you to work with (you want to do a Klingon version, just copy your own language's version and get to work), each containing the strings and window layouts for you to fiddle with... using the development tools shipped with every copy of Mac OS X right there on the CD or DVD...

Windows? You open up C:\Windows or C:\Program Files and it metaphorically asks "you don't really want to look at this, do you?" It discourages the user from digging into and understanding how it's put together. And, as anyone who's actually tried can tell you, there's a good reason for that. It's not a pretty sight... and then you need to buy the compilers, subscribe to MSDN, all to get a fraction of the detailed information Apple gives away for free...

Re:I think you've got it backwards...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac OS X? Isn't that the version of the operating system where Mac finally realized that pre-emptive multitasking actually existed. (everyone else knew for nearly a decade)

Isn't that also the one where Mac conceeded that their home grown flavor sucked so badly that they just wrapped BSD in a Mac box and called it a day.

There is plenty of room in the world for the Mac OS. Just realize that Mac is playing perpetual catch up. Do something intersting, innovative, new maybe? Then maybe you won't get flamed for pretending that a machine that can do some of what the major OS's are capable of is somehow better.

Not every computer user is happy with a sexy word processor / web browser.

Re:I think you've got it backwards...

[AlgorithMan]

that is exactly my point!

I see employers reading apple users application saying "alright, this guy knows how to boot a preinstalled os, surf the web, write text and enjoy multimedia..... WELL I THINK I'll employ the other guy - the one that knows ASM,C,C++,Python,PHP,MySQL - the one that has often disassembled and reassembled his computer, installed windows and linux hundreds of times and set up dozens of networks"

the world becomes more and more computerized, but as an apple user you are just a consumer - you just spectate how the world around you changes and you are unable to participate in this process, because you've played around with your toy while you should have learned how to participate

Re:yes, shure (sic)

[Bassman59]

yes, of course apple beats pcs... the same way in that surfing on pr0n sites beats programming... its (sic) fun, its (sic) easy, less frustrating, but it keeps you stupid - you learn nothing about how anything works...

If you took your head out of your ass for a minute, and actually spoke to someone who's not a homebound geek, you'd realize that the average person has a task to accomplish, and they use computers to help them accomplish those tasks. They don't need to understand how the computer does what it does.

Most people who drive cars don't have any idea how the internal combustion engine works. All they care about is that the engine starts when they turn the key and that it moves forward when the lever's in Drive and they step on the right-hand pedal.

Most people who use cellular phones don't have any idea how the system transfers calls from cell to cell without dropping the calls.

Computers, like cars and cell phones are tools--means to an end. Get over yourself.

thats (sic) apples (sic) ultimate goal - keeping people stupid, because stupid people are easy to controll (sic) ...

Methinks Apple's goal is to make money for their shareholders. Control over stupid people? That's Dubya's ultimate goal.

Rotating monitor

[Linknoid]

The monitor...hmmm, perhaps one you could mash a button, twist, lock and have it either landscape wide or portrait tall and it would adjust the screen some way. I'd buy one of them.

Your wish is granted. Really, I'm not a big fan of Gateway, but I saw one of those monitors, and I was definitely impressed.

Re:Rotating monitor

[KlaymenDK]

Not to sound ancient, but Radius did that a long time ago (b/w for dtp, on the Mac of course). But it's nice to see it reinvented, or at least remarketed.

Funny thing is, I have an IBM laptop and an IBM rotating display, but they don't play together so it's rather useless.

I disagree. It is a poor analogy.

[Ayanami Rei]

Unlike electric motors, computers do not have so easily quantified characteristics that might correspond to a motors "size" and "power".

Computers are defined not only by their computing capacity, but by their I/O devices, and the availability and organization of nearline storage. As networking, interface and storage technologies change, so will the computing devices.

Because its ultimately whats going in and out of the computer(s) that matters.

Many people will still own general purpose PCs in the future, if only to take advantage of the latest trends in storage and A/V/brain-interfacing technologies. These technologies will adapt for the most general purpose devices first, before expanding to specialized personal information devices and console-like entities.

I'm not saying they're isn't going to be segmentation/stratification in the market based on user sophistication or needs, but you're still going to see "general purpose" personal computers for a very long time.

Perhaps phenomenon similar to hi-fi audio industry

[mooncaine]

When I was small, there were more options for hi-fi audio components, for many years after the all-in-one systems had been on the market. But the components' appeal seemed to fade over the years, as a younger generation seemed to prefer the all-in-one sets, in spite of the fact that all-in-ones could rarely approach the audio quality, or even reliability, of the components. The cost was far less, and the all-in-ones did a passable job.

Now components are a smaller piece of the market, I think. That's how it looks from the street where I'm standing. I didn't do any research. I just see fewer hi-fi stores with fewer products to choose among now.

Apparently Mossberg thinks a similar shift will happen with personal computing. I hope that shift doesn't harm my interests. I want access to components for building general-use PCs that I can use for graphics production, games, web design or audio production ... for my home use. For the paying work, I pick the Mac, which has proven reliable for me for years now.

But when my old stereo power amp or tuner dies, I sure hope I can find a suitable, quality replacement. No all-in-ones for me. I can see similarities between the two industries in light of this article.

Mac who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but Mac lost the PC war over a decade ago. I know its hard to hear.

Now if you want to win the next PC war, your going to have to do so by being a little more innovative then Mac.

Sorry, this is the OS that didn't have pre-emptive multitasking until 5-10 years after their competators? Yeah Mac guys, you lost that fight too.

iPod? Yeah, as if the more educated forgot about the Rio players.

Mac could be the next greatest OS, but your going to have to prove it with real reasons.

The "Mac can do that too" arguement is loser fellas. You need to do MORE to change the inertia that Windows has, not play perpetual catch up.

Re:Modularity was because things broke easy

[dhakbar]

Is a habbit like a hobbit or something?

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Macs can't write to a fucking NTFS drive. How standard is that?

Apple Macs were never that expensive

[xixax]

In around the mid 90's did procurement for a mixed Apple/Windows shop.

Yes, you could by a yum-cha beige box PC for less, but as soon as you start talking comparable quality desktops (HP, Compaq, IBM) there was very little difference.

A bit later the parent organisation standardisd on WinNT, mostly to simplify support and desktop training.

Xix.

Now, I use a MacBook Pro

[falconwolf]

Fifteen or 17"? In one maybe two weeks I plan on getting the 17" and was wondering how your's is working, if there are any problems with it. A little while ago I heard someone say that when Apple comes out with a new product a person who wants to get one should wait at least until the second preferably third generation. I hope the MacBook Pros are ok as I need to get a new computer to replace my 6 year old pc and want a laptop.

Falcon

I wonder...

[ModernGeek]

... if the only people who spend their time building PCs and overclocking them are kids? I have a MacBook Pro, and I don't play around with computers as much as I used too. When I need the computer, it is there, it works, and there are no problems that keep me from my work. When I ran Windows and Linux on machines I had built, I'd spend all day fixing and tweaking it to run the best it could with as little money as possible. Now it all seems so pointless to mess with all of that. Sure, it was fun, and I learned a lot, but now I spend my time learning from wikipedia and other similar places.

Re:then why all they hype?

[GaryPatterson]

Do you have any idea how much Microsoft have earmarked for Windows Vista promotions? It's far more than Apple spends on marketing in any five year period.

Do you believe then that Vista is one fifth as good as OS X?

Amazing logic you've got there, and a solid grasp of the business world.

thankyou

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankyou very much for that link! Really nice! Now, to start throwing change into a coffee can....dang, I have several cans going now....just checked prices, $579 to 99 top three hits, not too bad really I guess. It really is slick.

An interesting example

[Budenny]

Its an interesting example of the intellectual contortions Apple mavens are led into.

We start out having to approve of everything Apple does. Then we realise that there is a key difference between Apple and other vendors: you can only run OSX on Apple branded hardware. So you have to argue that this model is better in some way. Defying the evidence of decades, you also have to argue that it is coming back. It is like the intellectual contortions of the old left on the Soviet invasion of Czecho. Clearly the workers must have invited them in, otherwise why would they be there?

Fact is, open hardware won hands down. 97% of PCs in the world, you can buy any hardware you want and run the OS of your choice. Windows, Linux, Unix. The only thing Apple has done is reduce its hardware competition. By doing so, its been able to keep prices and margins up. By doing that, it has reduced sales and market share.

Open PC hardware is the great contribution of the 20th century to human intellectual freedom. If you think this is a strange thing to argue, consider that nowadays software is more than an application - the distinction between software and knowledge has blurred. Is Mathematica an application, or is it a math encyclopedia?

We should all defend the open hardware model at every opportunity, and we need to resist and rebut the Macfascist point of view, that one good supplier is all you need, you don't need choice.

Re:An interesting example

[mooncaine]

I would have thought that I'd be right with you on that point, championing open software and hardware, except that I don't have time. I was dragged kicking and screaming [well, almost] from DOS and Windows to Mac use, and only with OSX's stability did I begin to really use the thing. My experience was: dang, this thing doesn't crash, doesn't need to restart often, the apps seldom crash, I haven't had to reinstall or do much system maintenance, and I'm getting more work done in less time because I don't have to futz with it. Costs more than twice what my PC cost me, though.

I'd rather be using Linux, on philosophical grounds, but I don't have time to deal with finding apps that approach the things I want, making it all work, etc. Maybe someday. I'd rather the majority of users were on Linux, but they're not, and I have to speak their language, which means I either use Windows or a Mac. I'd rather the OS be something in the background that we all take for granted and kinda forget about, so we can focus on the apps, on actually getting stuff done. I fall in love with an app first, not an OS or a platform.

Re:An interesting example

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

We should all defend the open hardware model at every opportunity, and we need to resist and rebut the Macfascist point of view, that one good supplier is all you need, you don't need choice.

What do you think about the nVidia/ATI/various WiFi proprietary interfaces issue?

Re:An interesting example

[Budenny]

Open to conviction, but don't really object in the same way. Don't use wireless, but would happily use ndiswrapper. Do use an Epson scanner with iscan. The issue seems to be, what would be the social consequences of the model were universally adopted? I agree that if all manufacturers of the most desirable graphics cards were in some way to make their cards unusable with Linux, we'd have a real problem, but they don't.

The problem with the Apple model is lock-in, and the deliberate use of lock-in to force you to buy hardware you'd rather not. If you look at the reactions when its proposed that Apple should release OSX to non-Apple branded hardware, what people are really saying is, Mac users would rather buy OSX and run it on different, generic, cheaper hardware. Given the chance they would. This is why they have to be forced to buy Apple branded, to run OSX. Similarly, this is why not to release iLife and iWork to Windows or Linux. We have to force them to buy our hardware to get it. Then Aperture. We have to force them to buy our hardware to get that too. Then, lets make it hard to move from iLife to another bundle of apps on Windows or Linux. That way, we'll keep the repeat business. Similarly with Aperture. Similarly with iTunes. Lets only allow iTunes to work conveniently or at all with our software, and our iPods. That way we can force people to carry on using iPods. Even if they might prefer different hardware at some point.

Understand the thinking. But we have to understand that if this model were generally adopted, intellectual freedom would wither. The freedom to run the OS of your choice on the (alternative) hardware of your choice is very basic. Don't know what happened to Mossberg, that he cannot see this. The freedom to inspect the code of your graphics card driver and rewrite it doesn't seem in the same league.

But, I'm open to argument.

Re:An interesting example

[The Cisco Kid]

So you have a problem with being forced to buy hardware you'd rather not, but you are ok with being forced to buy software you'd rather not.

I don't like the Apple model either - but what you are missing is that the closed hardware drivers model *leads* to the Apple model. I wouldnt be surprised if MS was secretly leveraging the HW makers not to release their specs (except of course to MS itself) (regardless of what either of them claims in public)

Also, OSX, as nice as it may be, isn't Free Software either. That said, I'd love if it were (officially) possible to run it on stock x86 hardware. (Perhaps you didnt realize you can do it unofficialy)

Re:An interesting example

[kamochan]

Fact is, open hardware won hands down. 97% of PCs in the world, you can buy any hardware you want and run the OS of your choice. Windows, Linux, Unix.

To wit: my 1999 powermac, currently cheap-ass to buy, runs Linux and NetBSD as well as OSX. It has PCI and AGP slots, ATA storage, SDRAM DIMMs, USB and firewire ports, wifi, etcetera. I updated a Radeon 9800, off-the-shelf chassis fan, off-the-shelf PSU, a modern ATA HD. OK, I had to cut one cable of the ATX PSU mobo connector because Apple's old connector has one pin differently.

How is this hardware not open? Granted, it depends on one vendor for CPU and mobo upgrades; PCs have two CPU brands to choose from.

As for your second question, I have to agree -- if your "OS of choice" is Windows. Luckily, it ain't mine.

Fact is, I'd recommend an old powermac as a Linux/Unix machine over a random PC box any day. It's physically maintenance friendly, robust, and it just works like Apple stuff is wont to do.

Open PC hardware is the great contribution of the 20th century to human intellectual freedom.

Considering the amount of time I have wasted during the past 15 years trying to make Open PC hardware to work, so that myself or colleagues could pursue even remotely intellectual goals by using the said PC, I would have to conjecture that the above statement was made in jest :-)

PLEASE!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mossberg is the same guy that praises every single Bose product that comes out. As anyone that knows anything about audio and they'll tell you how Bose is overpriced marketing nonsense. Mossberg apparently loves these type of companies - as do the rabid, fruity Apple fanboys on this site that mod each other up.

Re: Mossberg

[jcr]

Does he ever discuss non-Apple products at all? If so, does he ever say anything positive about *any* of them?

Yes, and yes. If you read the journal regularly, you'll see many Mossberg articles on other subjects. It's just that the Apple articles get more attention, probably because they're more interesting.

-jcr

Bingo. Mod parent up.

[pomo monster]

I'll spend my karma bonus on this.

Re: History Repeats Itself / Weiser and Norman

[iconara]

As I read the first comment I thought "well, that's not it, look at what Norman and Weiser are saying", and then I scrolled down, and there it was, my comment. Well said.

You refer to Norman's The Invisible Computer, which is one of the best accounts of the ideas that started with Mark Weiser which he named Ubiquitous Computing.

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this 'Third Paradigm' computing.

From http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/UbiHome.html

Also see Wikipedia/Ubiquious Computing

I belive UbiComp is the next thing, and that the iPod, among other things such as TiVo:s and whatnot are the first signs of what is to come. UbiComp is not just entertainment applicances though, rather, it's an idea that computers need not be big machines that do lots of things, there doesn't need to be a computer at all, as such. Instead we can make computable things, that do one thing, and does it well. Computers don't have to look like computers, they can be invisible, inside the thing. It's the logical next step: mecanical -> electronic -> computable.

/Theo, Interaction designer (a field of human Computer Interaction, which also incorporates Ubiquituos Computing)

As always, the truth is not with the fanatics.

[argent]

Then we realise that there is a key difference between Apple and other vendors: you can only run OSX on Apple branded hardware. So you have to argue that this model is better in some way.

Hell no. Closed models are never as good as open models, for the consumer. They may be good for the vendor, though. Consider Microsoft's agressively closed OS, for example.

Mac hardware is a lot more open than Windows. It even runs Windows (as it had the potential of once before, back when Microsoft was really supporting open hardware and supported Windows on MIPS, Alpha, and Power PC).

We should all defend the open hardware model at every opportunity, and we need to resist and rebut the Macfascist point of view, that one good supplier is all you need, you don't need choice.

It's a shame that the only choice for most consumers is between an operating system that's extremely open but only runs on Apple hardware, and an operating system that's closed as a matter of policy. Oh, you pay lip service to other UNIX versions, but you know as well as I that Mac OS X is the only UNIX variant that's useful to all but a tiny fraction of the market.

The idea that you should make do with one supplier... of hardware or operating systems... is a fanatic's position. Whether they're Apple or Microsoft fans, they're pushing an agenda. And they've done a damn good job of it, too.

An OS you can forget about...

[argent]

I'd rather the OS be something in the background that we all take for granted and kinda forget about, so we can focus on the apps, on actually getting stuff done.

That's actually an interesting point.

It's not in the vendor's interest for the OS to be something the the background that you all take for granted and kinds forget about, or else they'll never sell the second release.

This effect shows up in commercial and open source software (Yes, it does. KDE? Gnome? Why do I want to make my UNIX box look like Windows again?), but by making your money from the margin on hardware you've got a little less incentive to make the OS in-your-face... and, really, the in-your-face features of Macs are at least as much to show off the hardware as the OS... and frankly I'd rather have some bling-bling I can disable than have Internet Explorer tentacles in every damn applications.

Which is probably why Mac OS is more "an OS you can forget about" than either Windows or other UNIX variants like Linux.

Re:An OS you can forget about...

[mooncaine]

argent, I see what you mean, and, coincidentally, I just encountered Neal Stephenson's essay about OSes yesterday, and he was making the same point.

In the Beginning was the Command Line. To be completely honest, I must admit that I'm a fan of OSX, but I think that's because I find that it's doing things for me, instead of me doing things for it.

BTW, I coded that link to open in an new window, but apparently Slashdot doesn't allow it; I don't know why, but I'm curious.

Re:An OS you can forget about...

[argent]

I've read that before, and I can't agree with everything Neal says in there (and I think Cryptonomicon missed the boat in a lot of areas), but it's an interesting read.

Re:An OS you can forget about...

[mooncaine]

argent, I'd be interested to hear your comments on Cryptonomicon, but maybe it's too off-topic here. I hope you don't mind if I contact you via the information found at the URL you offer via /. .... I'm not looking to argue or debate, but just to know your thoughts on how it missed the boat in a lot of areas. Curious what insights you may have.

Regarding that keyboard...

[KlaymenDK]

...have you seen the "Optimus keyboard"? (http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/)

Not really generally available just yet, but it's a solid concept I look forward to becoming more mainstream.

::shakes head::

[Ayanami Rei]

There is no such thing "slowly heat stressing the chip and reducing its total life expectancy". All the chips from a generation have the same heat tolerances. The "more expensive" version of the same model clocked at a higher speed will wear out no faster than the lower clocked chip clocked at the equivalent speed. As a matter of fact, there is no wearing out to be had. Have you EVER had a chip that just stopped working? I've never seen it (AMD or Intel) and I still have a TBird 1333 and a Pentium 90 (overclocked to 180). You can, of course, set them on fire. But that's if you used insufficient cooling to begin with.

No, the only distinction is whether or not a particular chip can function at certain speed or if a manufacturing defect causes it to only work at a lower speed.

Since the manufacturer can't test every chip to determine its highest stable speed, and sell it as such, they simply pick a random sample, test them at a very high speed, and box up at that speed the ones that pass their tests. This leaves a very large portion of the lower clocked models with the potential to go much faster. Intel and AMD do not strive for low chip yields to segment the market so you stand a very good chance of getting more than you bargained for. This chance exponetially increases when you pick models that have high bus speeds but low multipliers since they are usually the most tolerant versions of each stepping.

Why are negations so easy to fail to miss?

[alienmole]

Read all about it.