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'Perfect Storm' of Mac Sales on the Horizon?
fkx writes to mention an eWeek article suggesting that, finally, the PC-using public is going to 'get' the Mac. According to the article, the new advertising, increased functionality of OSX, and Intel-based machines are all raising the profile of Apple's machines to new heights. From the article: "However, this cycle isn't your usual processor upgrade cycle that comes every time Intel or Advanced Micro Devices tweaks a process. This is a major shift that affects all parts of the Mac customer-developer-vendor ecology. Longtime Apple watchers can count two earlier events of similar magnitude. The first such transition occurred in March 1994 with the arrival of the PowerPC architecture. The Motorola 680x0 architecture that had served the Mac platform for a decade was quickly supplanted by a set of new, more powerful machines. "
Even I, a long time PC user wanted to get a MacBook, but... I don't have 1100 to drop on one. Damn me not having much money!
Yay, I have a sig.
I'm waiting with baited breath for the release of the Intel PowerMac. I've never, ever, ever owned a Mac in any form. I've got a ton of Windows workstations and Linux servers, but never a Mac. This will change in August. I'm tired of ridiculous Windows behaviors (disk defrag inadvertantly deletes required system DLLs...nice), and ready for new ridiculous Mac behaviors, knowing I'm not giving dollars direct to Microsoft ever again.
RW
... It is. Windows XP works pretty well, and there's really no more reason to switch PC platforms than there is to change your heat pump. It works. You'd be an idiot (quite literally) to waste time and money for no reason. That's the public attitude.
Sorry to upset you. Mod me down.
At least in my college-age demographic it is. I'm seeing a HUGE desertion of PC's in favor of the MacBooks (the MBPs are a little bit out of the range of the average college student). It's going to be a good year for Apple.
As long as George Clooney dies, I'm all for it. Heck, take Marky Mark too.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Mac Minis making a giant wave, and the boat... almost... makes it...
Well count me in. After a few years of wavering I'm buying a MacBook. Apple has dealt with almost all my objections and done enough to get my money.
Sig is on vacation
basically getting a mac now means being able to do all the stuff you've always done on your pc - plus all the stuff a mac can do. in the past there was always what you were 'giving up' - now that's gone. it is now the windows machine that runs less software.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
One chap in my neighbourhood purchased a Mac - his family had always used a
PC before. This shows that Mac Sales are going to explode.
Nothing to see, move along.
Isn't everyone tired of the phrase "perfect storm" yet? Why do people keep using it?
*Just kicking it does not include gaming.
... doesn't care. A computer is about as exciting as a heat pump. It's a dusty tan box that sits under their $50 pressboard "computer table" from Wal-Mart that they turn on to check email and surf porn, and every so often, open a pirated copy of Word to update their resumes. A car, on the other hand, is one of the biggest status symbols that Americans have. That, and many people rely on cars to do important stuff, like get to work. Computers aren't used for anything more important that a paperclip for most people.
... if only because that's how long it takes them to graduate and get lives.
Seriously, though, College is where the main 'adoption' of new systems takes place, so it makes sense that colleges would get it first. Mac and Linux are used there much more than in the 'mainstream' world.
They face stiff competition when an almost identical Compaq laptop is $300 cheaper -- and has a bigger screen. Same CPU, same RAM, same graphics chip, same ports -- except the Compaq also support 802.11a -- same HD, etc.
With the Compaq you can opt for an AMD Turion 64 w/ATI graphics chipset instead of the Intel and it's CHEAPER. The Mac has the built-in camera but the Compaq has the option of a built-in Lightscribe DVD+-DL burner for $25 more.
Yes, the Mac is more fashionable but the big point is going to be OS X -- will the general public (i.e. -- not Apple fanboys) be willing the make the switch at a 30% premium?
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
We're an x86/Linux family at the moment, but my wife sometimes gets frustrated by the lack of some commercial/proprietary software for Linux. She hasn't used a Mac in probably 10 years, and I have my doubts if she's going to find things any easier than on Linux, but she's certainly free to try it out.
Best-case scenario: She gets a 64-bit laptop pre-installed with an OS that she loves. She uses it for a few years and then hands it down to me and I convert it into a Linux mini-server.
Worst-case scenario: She gets a 64-bit laptop pre-installed with an OS she doesn't want after all, and we install Linux. This is no change from the present-day situation.
Mac hardware sales will certainly increase due to people like me. I have my doubts about the marketshare of MacOS though.
Like the commercial where the mac says "everything kind of just works on a mac", when showing how it could "talk" to the digital camera. If you want compatibility, I'm sorry, but windows has everything beat because of it's huge market share. There's also the one where it implies that Windows can only do things like black and white pie charts while the mac can do "fun" stuff. Aside from the fact that if you want gaming you need windows, a mac is hardly the only computer that can do video and photo editing.
I'll give them the virus commercial (though linux would also solve that problem) and I guess the one where the mac is easier to set up, but the others really bend the truth. Surly they are going to turn off some people who use windows and see that some of what they are saying just isn't true.
How many will be happy with the first generation problems? Or are the problems not as numerous as some claim?
But even the glitches dont stop me wanting the new intel mac. Though I will probably wait til Leopard.
Sorry to rain on anyone's parade, but Apple has always been more monopolizing and litigous, if not as predatory and successful businesswise, as Microsoft.
... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
Exactly--what the Mac fanbois don't want to admit to themselves much less anyone else is that Apple is just like Microsoft, only not nearly as successful at it.
Stand by for Apple apologist fanboi negative moderation in 5
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
bow to our new ov;lkj aw forget it.
Apple does seem to be getting 'up in our faces' alot more lately. Their new tv ads are a huge slap in the face to Microsoft, and may actually be the thing to get people wondering. Their only downfall is their prices, you see a Macbook, who's behind it, some clean cut suited up fellow sipping latte at starbucks.
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
Windows now has about 95% of the desktop market. Nobody is suggesting that will drop to 5% overnight.
Yes, the vast majority, of windows users will stay with windows, no question. But there is always that segment of the market which will be shopping for a new PC soon, and may consider a Mac.
How large could that segment be? 5% would be huge. If Apple could get another 2% - 3% of upcoming PC sale, Apple's sales would double. Clearly that is very significant.
No, it was something else. Considered it for a year? People get meet and get married quicker than that. The DRM thing may not sit well with you, but really, what is the real reason you are not purchasing? Broke? Scared? By buying a Mac, you could still buy your DRM free music on CD's and rip them, so what gives? C'mon big boy, give it to us! >Apple has convinced to me with iTunes and DRM lock-in, I will not support that company even though I have considered its hardware for the past year.
I play games, games dont play on mac (Yes there are some games for mac, but the selection compared to PC is largely lacking), hence . . . no mac
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
At least not with the current pricing.
MacIntels are horribly overpriced*. I mean I appreciate OSX and stuff, but every single Mac is overpriced by at least 20-30% compared to similar pile of MSRP PC hardware. More if you hunt for discounts and/or use white box systems as comparison. Mac Mini is the only system that is anywhere close to sane price considering the contents of the box, and it's bit too entry level for my use. Every other model so far is priced silly. I keep looking at those shiny things, but every time I take the price, and look up what I could buy for that on the Windows side, the result is not pretty for the Mac - even if I do price in some software to match the pile Macs come with.
20-30% pricecut across the line and I might belive that they can dent the Windows PC marketshare.
I mean MacBook Pros are 'competing' in price/features with Thinkpads, and those are one of the most expensive PC laptops. Yet MacBooks seem to be built to similar quality as low end crap laptops you can get considerably cheaper (Acer, HP etc massmarket low end crap pushers).
They either have to come down in price, or start putting out stuff that has the quality that the pricetag implies. This means dumping bottom-of-the-barrel taiwanese contract builders, and not skimping on parts costs at the expense of quality. Plus better warranty terms. Similarily priced Thinkpads come with 3 year warranty out of the box. Macs come with 90 day phone support and 1 year warranty. For a 2.5keuro+ laptop. Getting that 3 years is over 300 euros extra for AppleCare plan...
Shiny, average-quality manufacturing, overpriced. Nice OS and application bundle tho.
*I'm comparing prices in europe. If US prices are bit more sane, more power to you. Doesn't change my opinion.
My old laptop is aging and I want something new. The Macbooks look good, feel good, seem to be so much more secure, and, in general, have only one drawback which is price. That's a one-time thing and I'm at the point where I'm ready to suck it up and spend it. This after twenty years of PC use. I can't be the only one drooling over these things.
More than that, the next iteration of OSX promises to be more efficient while Vista is likely to be far less effecient, need way more resources, and still suffer the same fates as my previous Windows machines.
Beyond all that, have you seen the Mac stuff? It's so cool looking!
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
All in all, I look at the new Macs the same way I do IE7. I may not be interested in actually using them, but I'm glad to see they're getting more capable.
It's another set of eyes attempting to tackle the same problems. The 2 companies in competition may copy the good features of each other, or they may decide that they can do it better by heading back to the drawing board, and come up with a new way to tackle the problem.
Either way, we win.
I don't know about you guys, but I am the unfortunately "go to guy" for computers in my family. Until my family buys a Mac for me, I can't help them with their Mac problems. Thus, they won't get Macs. Sorry, family.
Linux adoption numbers by ordinary joe-users will increase because of this phenomenon. Two factors:
1. Money. More than any other platform, on the Mac, money makes the world go 'round. People will switch from the Windows PC, realize that they have to pay for constant upgrades and all the latest n' greatest doodads. Macs are marketed as a fashion statement. How do you feel when you are wearing unfashionable clothes? Your Mac friends start saying, "hey, I got the model up from that one, when are you going to be cool like me?" But when you start spending tons of money for everything, you tend to really think about your priorities: "Do I need to be completely pampered, or will a basic system that works do it for me?" To say nothing of the *advantages* there might be to switching to Linux.
2. Already switched once, not going back. With the momentum gained by switching platforms, people are less likely to fear another switch, and the chances they'll go back to the Windows PC (oh darn, where'd my spyware go?) are very slim.
I'm excited to see what the hordes of new users we see in the Linux world will do for the overall "Linux experience." The rising tide, I think, will raise all the little penguin boats.
The *only* way that the general computer-buying public (read: not geeks) will massively switch to Apple is if Apple produces something that can compete in price with the $350 machines for sale at Walmart. Until then, the author of this article is living in a dream world.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
...from one percent market share to TWO percent market share...
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
The medium IS the message...
The message is buy a macintosh...
The only TPM equipped machine that is shipping with the TPM ENABLED by default, completely contrary to the specification. For those of you that can read a chip spec please feel free to go to TCG and read up on the chip and what it does. Enlightenment is a fine thing. One of the most interesting things to note is that in all specs the DEFAULT setting recommended is disabled. By shipping the TPM enabled, it implies remote ownership. This means, although you have a macintosh in your possession, you don't actually 'own' it, Apple does. But we all trust Apple with all of our data, don't we?
Interesting that there's a 'perfect storm' with a media confluence supporting the uptake of Apple equipment, yet the equipment is not HIPAA nor PIPEDA compliant, in that there has been a complete lack of disclosure of the presence of the chip. Check their system specs to find out.
Isn't it more interesting to note that Microsoft is unable for the first time in more than a decade to release an OS?
Transitive trust for everyone!
if I claimed I was emperor just because some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
The only real 64-bit machines where the the G5 based powermacs and imacs. The new intel machines are a big step backwards in that regard, especially regarding address space.
I've got to say, I love my Mac. I used to love 'em, switched to PCs during the late Windows 3.1 timeframe, and then switched back last year.
Macs are growing, and they are growing fast. Apple's US laptop market-share DOUBLED in the last six months. Now one in eight laptops sold in the US are Macs. For an alternate OS, that is huge. And because the MacBook was released during the middle of that period, there was a disclaimer with those numbers that the trend will very likely continue.
And why not? Mac laptops are sexy. They look great. They have almost every feature you could want (I still don't understand why for such a media friendly company, they don't have media-card slots). They are light. They are thin. They are quiet. It amazes me that many new Dells and such have to have their fans on all the time and it's quite audible. When they dare to do anything complex, a little jet-plane enters the room. My Mac (admittedly a G4, although I hear the recent Intels aren't bad at all) is dead silent. It took me like 2 weeks to realize there was a fan in the thing (not that I was looking). When going full-tilt with graphics, it's about as loud as most people's Dells and such are at idle.
Macs have had (and still do) a few issues. Graphics cards is a major one. I hope the switch to Intel helps this more, because my 1 year old laptop has a sorry graphics card compared to what was available on PCs at the time (Radeon 9700 or 9800).
That said, the stars are converging for Apple. They have HUGE brand trust and are "cool" thanks to the iPod. Their hardware looks and performs excellent. The OS is amazing. I've been running Vista for about 18 months in the form of Tiger. When Vista comes out, I'll get Leopard and be ahead again. I help neighbors and such with computers and I can't tell you how many problems could be solved with a Mac. "I want to edit movies." If you had a Mac, you'd have all you need thanks to the amazing iLife. But they were on a PC so they had to buy a FireWire card, video editing software, DVD burning software, and none of it was as easy to use as the Mac software. I know people who can't find their files. They just don't get the filesystem organization (you've seen 'em: everything in My Documents). Spotlight would save them so many hassles. I've set them up with Google Desktop... but it's no the same. Spotlight is integrated into EVERYTHING. Even the standardized File dialogs.
Then there is the Intel switch. Biggest complaint from people I've told about Macs in the past? "Then I have to buy all new software." This is people who run everything from just a handful to expensive things like Photoshop. Now with Intel, you can get a Mac and run those programs though Parallels or dual-booting. End up not liking the Mac (I doubt it), you can run Windows FULL TIME. You have very little to lose for what you stand to gain. If this was available when I was looking, I would have bought a Mac about a year earlier.
Games could use a focus. Apple REALLY needs to advertise the OS. The latest ads were a good start, but I show people my Mac and even little things (the keyboard and screen responding to ambient light) wow them. Apple needs to get people to know about this stuff. Then there is stuff like Exposé that just blows their mind. They have seen NOTHING like it on the Windows side (as opposed to things like Spotlight that have rough equivalents).
My biggest problem with Apple for the last 4 years or so (both as an observer and now as a user) has been their lack of advertising of OS X. They seem to be stuck with an almost word-of-mouth sales techniques. Maybe with recent moves (more stores, going into Best Buys and using Apple personnel to run the Mac section) will help.
The Mac market is already exploding. Just wait to see what happens after WWDC. With the real power desktops out, I wonder how much their market share numbers will jump. What will Leopard do (especially if they advertise it). What will happen in Back-To-School season (between the MacBook and their recent free-iPod-with-Mac-purchase programs), and Christmas?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
In the article author writes mostly about "content creating customers" on Mac, which, true enough, can eat up as much CPU as available. Those users will easily buy new two dual-core CPU pro version of Mac -- they don't pay for it themselves, or write it off as business expense. Other users (Computer Klutz kind) don't care about speed and paying premium for Apple Pixie Dust, that gets sprinkled on top of new stuff. They swallowed transition from the "superior platform" to something that was boo-booed by them for years, because it got magic sauce of apple logo on it. They run old applications on old machine because it's "good enough" (and it's true, word processing on G3 is fast enough). And they won't upgrade until their old computer dies or they suddenly get a thousand bucks gift from Santa they can throw at new machine. Question is what is the ratio of klutzes to pros. All pros will upgrade to new platform when applications are there. Will all klutzes upgrade? I doubt it.
Magical Torrent of Upgrades in this case is solely rests on new Intel platform's shoulders, that should invite "switchers" (I keep seeing ads for Mac with big "NOW RUNS WINDOWS!" stickers on top), which makes me think it won't be a "torrent", it will be a stream. And Vista and Mac OS X mean very little for this stream
Hyperom.com
Is the Mac ready for the desktop? :-)
I really haven't looked at Apple products seriously for about fifteen years. Back then there was a compelling reason to buy Apple if you were a graphic designer. You couldn't get designers to use anything else. Now, you can get pretty good results using Windows or Linux. Maybe there is still a good reason to insist on spending more money for a Mac but I don't know what it is. I think the perfect storm for Mac could be people realizing that Linux gives them the same advantages in terms of security and it's free.
The unfortunate truth is that many people don't have the guts to try a Mac. Yes, that's really where it comes from.
:) But I've never been in a position where I was using Windows regularly, so a "PC user" should tell us what this switch is really like. But I think it takes guts.
Microsoft should be punished for its shoddy products and its business practices. But suppose you believe that, what is the price of your moral fiber? Well, you sure can't play a lot of PC games. And hell, you can't even view certain web sites! Chances are there are clueless I.T. staff at your workplace who have either managed to standardize on software that runs only on Windows, or they only "officially support" the PC and give you a download link to the crappiest Mac software you've ever seen. The list goes on.
It's tough to change. Just as most people won't stand up for their beliefs when it can get them fired, or choose more convenient products instead of being steadfast environmentalists, etc., the average shmuck will not throw Windows away.
I am a Mac user. I'm not an environmentalist.
"Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
Except their products are, you know ... good.
When's the last time you saw one of Apple's products bomb spectacularly in a demo? I can remember exactly when the last time I saw such a thing was. It was the WWDC keynote where Jobs previewed Tiger. The computer started behaving oddly, and almost before the audience picked up on it, Jobs flipped a switch and the back-up system appeared on the big screen. Demo continued.
When's the last time a Microsoft product demo failed catastrophically? YESTERDAY.
So much for "just like Microsoft."
The Asus W3J offers everything you get in a mid-range Macbook Pro, is smaller, lighter, comes with larger hard disk, more memory, and more video memory for about $500 less. I like the look of the Macbook Pro, but you're still paying a rather fat premium for the Apple coolness factor.
Cheers,
NuBus is hardly proprietary. It is the IEEE 1196 standard originally developed at MIT.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
What PC users don't get is that with a Mac you're not paying for the specs, you're paying for the user experience. And that's easier to sell to the average Joe than technobabble. Mac OS X might look pretty, but it's pretty powerful under the bonnet too. There are heaps of cool features not even Mac users know about (which Apple should rectify).
I absolutely agree that this perfect storm is on the horizon. At my company we will be a part of this storm when we convert all of our management team to MacBook Pro(s) from their current Dell D610(s). The only thing we are waiting for is EVDO cards. Apple made the smart move and switched out the card architecture from CardBus to ExpressCard which is a great platform. Unfortunately there is no (working in OS X) EVDO ExpressCards. An EVDO card is used by companies like Verizon and Sprint to provide broadband access nationwide. Dell started moving their laptops to ExpressCard and have released a card that works in Bootcamp, but our team needs/wants native OSX. I don't blame them. Here's hoping the storm doesn't delay our orders.
believing the big bang requires a certain amount of supernatural faith
I'm looking forward to getting a mac at some point. I'm tired of XP and sick to death of linux. I want a computer that works and looks great and doesnt require time spent getting it to function correctly. In other words, I want a retail product like a Mac. I think Apple has a real chance here as long as jobs can keep his mouth and ego in check and not do something really stupid. We shall see.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
I will consider Apple when they stop lulling the average consumer into accepting DRM, and when they start to play nice with open source - actually giving back what they promised (it's fine that their own stuff is closed and pricy).
Apple today is just as evil and consumer hostile as Microsoft. As someone said: "Apple has built a brand based on user and creator friendliness. They should not be permitted to bathe in the glow of helping creators and user-friendliness while propagating user-hostile technology like DRM."
Don't be evil, and deserve your customers. Apple today is not your friend.
The mac will be (slightly) more expensive, a *lot* easier to use,
Usability is something that can be measured and quantified. Where has anybody ever demonstrated that the Mac is actually easier to use than Windows, KDE, or Gnome?
Apple has been slowly recovering much of it's market, as well as expanding in areas it previously had no experience in, and dominating them on top of that.
MSFT is strongly pushing DRM for video content whereas Apple so far has been silent on the matter. I do not foresee Apple making a sharp about face and forcing HDMI down our throats at this stage in the game. If you value your freedom of fair use, I would suggest looking at Apple.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
All of them, including myself, consider their computer to be an indispensable part of their lives and find it upsetting, even traumatic -- I'm not exaggerating -- when the machine crashes or they get the BSOD, or any of the VERY numerous problems associated with PCs and Microsoft products.
These are the people who are moderate to heavy users, but *aren't* sufficiently skilled to fix whatever the problem du jour is. And this is where things get interesting with respect to the Mac.
A very close family member who IS a software engineer has said to me on more than one occasion after fixing the aforementioned problem of the day; "you should get a Mac next time" and "You really are a Mac user at heart, you want things to just work and that isn't going to happen with a PC running windows."
And so, after 15 years of owning PCs I am very seriously considering switching when this machine becomes obsolete or something gives out. I expect that to be within the next 12-18 months and yes, I'm saving money for a Mac. I've had concerns about software being available, but more and more, I see that the programs I run are also available for the Mac.
With that last hurdle taken away, why WOULDN'T I, and people like me, switch?
The answer is, we will.
You see, if you can give people a genuinely better alternative that *also* allows them to feel good about their purchase, they will go with that alternative. Most of us don't want to support a monopoly and are disgusted with Microsoft's business practices.
Until lately, however, switching to a Mac hasn't really been a viable option for those of us who have used PCs for many years. Now that this is changing, you'll find more and more PC users happy to switch over when upgrade time come around.
Every tool I've ever seen anywhere came in three price point: the cheap for the newbies, the medium for the professionals and the pricey for the amateurs. Yes, that is the correct order of things. A layman buys a $5 hammer because he doesn't understand what to look for and price is the only thing he has available to make a decision. The amateur understands things like features and ergonomics and promptly buys the $80 hammer with chrome-plated titanium shaft. The professional who actually uses a hammer on a dayly basis buys the $20 model -- not the cheap crap but certainly not the overpriced gimmick either.
I can see the same thing for cameras and for binoculars and watches and, well, as I said: every tool I've ever seen. The laymen fall for the "cheap" thing, the amateurs fall for the pretty polished gimmickery (and are mighty proud that they didn't fall for the low-price thing) and the professionals buy the product that actually gets the job done without any of the superflous bells and whistles that tend to attract the amateurs.
Now with computers you get the additional wrinkle of the hardware/software thing. Spend more on the HW and run a cheaper OS? Pay dearly for the OS in the hopes of squeezing the most out of less well-endowed hardware?
Personally I have reason to shun macs in any way. But I also see no reason whatsoever to prefer them.
I don't eat MacFood, I don't have a MacJob, why would I want a MacBook?
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
People will switch from the Windows PC, realize that they have to pay for constant upgrades and all the latest n' greatest doodads.
I've spent more money on Windows PC than Macs every year since I switched, including the year I switched, and the year I bought a Mac for my daughter.
Are you parroting some Microsoft astroturfer, or did you just make that up?
Hi, my name is Brent, and I've got a problem.
Oh, wait, wrong meeting.
I made the switch a couple of weeks ago, but the interesting thing I'm noticing is that the tech community, the network admins and programmers, are going to be the last ones to make the switch, and that's why it's going to catch us geeks off-guard.
In my day job, I'm a SQL Server administrator. I rely on MS tools to get my job done, and I can't do my job on OSX - or at least, I couldn't until Parallels came along. Boot Camp is a nice idea, but since I have to have SQL Server Management Studio running all day, dual-booting would mean I'd have a shiny laptop running Windows. Big flippin' deal.
Most of the guys around me said, "Why make the 'switch' when all you're doing is running Windows AND Mac OSX all the time? How can that possibly save you time or energy?" Well, it doesn't - it involves more work - but I'm having a great time doing it. As I write this, my keyboard is glowing. That's coolness.
All of us network admins and infrastructure managers rely on more Windows-centric tools than we'd like, more stuff tying us down to Windows longer than our end users. The end users seem to use more generic applications like Office, and they're able to make the switch even faster than the supposedly high-tech guys.
Normally, when a Big New Thing comes out, the geeks are the first one to make the jump. Apple's making it so easy to make the switch that the push is coming up from the end users. Attention, Windows network admins: there are probably people right now in your organization thinking about making their next computer an Apple. Be prepared when they start asking support questions like, "Which of our applications don't run on a Mac, and why?"
What's your damage, Heather?
(Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!))
---
After 10 years of Win, I switched to a MacBook last week. So did nearly half my buddies. I definately believe the hype, this is going to be big.
It's always confirmation bias!
Is this some kind of joke? Or has Apple done a complete about-face on the iTunes Music Store and is no longer DRMing the videos and TV programmes currently downloadable from there?
Sorry, as cool as they are, I'll never buy an Apple portable until there's a physical right-button on it. No combination of clicking or a two-finger tap or whatever idiotic "solution" that Apple offers will ever be as simple as a real button. A Macbook with one button is like a supermodel with a cleft palate.
Please Apple - join us here in the future.
Speaking of DRM lockin. Have fun with Zune and Vista. Have fun buying a new computer complete with an HDMI monitor and video card just so you can view HD content in full resolution in Vista.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The article is so full of logical holes that the author would get a failing grade in a college essay.
He makes various implicit claims about how Macs supposedly have better "performance", better support for media, are a better platform, and how Apple has executed better on its strategies. He doesn't support any of those claims with facts or arguments.
As it is, the whole article is a marketing piece for Apple, not any kind of analysis.
every single Mac is overpriced by at least 20-30% compared to similar pile of MSRP PC hardware.
I figured about 40% myself.
That's about what OS X is worth, it seems.
And I guess it is. I'd pay that much extra for a Thinkpad running OS X, or for a retail copy of OS X I could legally run on that Thinkpad. I'd love to see Apple make the jump to a real software company instead of pretending to be a hardware company that buries the software cost in hardware markups.
But as a pseudo-hardware company they're never going to compete with Dell on price. They have to pay for the OS development one way or another, and I don't think people are going to be as sanguine as myself about paying $500 retail for OS X.
As for spyware - I think that may be the thing that turns people to alternatives in droves. A fast CPU is not much of a help when it is running a lot of malware instead of your applications. I've never really lost the perception that a MS platform is a home computer games machine despite how good NT has been getting (in a locked down system obviously) - MS may have left things too late to fix these problems before the mainstream perception is that the MS operating systems are for playing games and you do real work on something else. People don't see server 2003 - they see XP home full of spyware.
"If all Iran does with their nuclear program is produce electricity..."
"If all the government does with subcutaneous RFID chips is to track down criminals..."
No, it doesn't depend on the intent of the user - evil technology is evil in anyones hands, and Apple is only marginally less evil then your typical corporation. Just because Apple IS GOD doesn't alter the facts of Trusted Computing which you conveniently want to ignore.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Sorry, no. I mean, I have a powerbook, but that's because I love the hardware -- as soon as I get Linux on this thing, I'll be booting it pretty much exclusively.
If you value your freedom of fair use, why are you giving anyone a kill switch? I would suggest you take a long, hard look at using Linux for anything you care about.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I work with Windows and Linux systems at work. When I come home, I do my computing on a Mac. I think Applie finally has a winning combo with OS X, an Intel-based platform that will also boot Windows, and peoples' change in computing habits. Some of the things Apple got right in OS X that they haven't done so well on in the past are going to help the transition. First, you've got the interoperability thing, which keeps getting better as versions of OS X increase. You have a powerful OS underneath a bulletproof wall of GUI eye candy. If you want the command prompt and unix-like functionality, it's there. Otherwise, you don't have to see it.
One other thing Apple seems to be doing is reducing the importance of a structured filesystem. If you open iPhoto, you see a set of photos, not a list of filenames. Same with iTunes. Something that I think computer people forget is that "normals" don't care about computers. Business users want to do their jobs and leave. Home users want to fill their iPods, and send pictures of the kids to Grandma. Making it so users don't have to remember how to navigate through a folder structure or other "computer stuff" really makes it easier to use.
I don't know what will make it into the final version of Vista, but I'm sure they're going to take a stab at this too. Now all Apple has to work on is convincing people that the Mac is worth the premium price they get for it. That seems to be the #1 argument I hear about why someone would choose a Windows box over a Mac.
Unfortunately, Apple has had, sadly, a track record of adopting "standards" that other PC vendors didn't adopt.
It's all very well that NuBus was a "standard," but the only major companies that adopted it were Apple, TI, NeXT... and they all adopted slight different implementations and very different form factors. The TI boards were about 9x9 inches if I recall correctly, and certainly weren't interoperable with Apple's.
Even little details: Digital and MS-DOS use as the line break, UNIX uses , and Apple, bless its heart, uses .
FireWire hasn't been a total dud, but it certainly wasn't the mainstream peripheral bus Apple hoped for. Outside of the Apple world it's a video interconnect standard, not much more. One small reason why Apple hardware costs a little bit more is that, effectively, Apple is forced to implement both FireWire and USB 2.0...
SCSI was a smart move on Apple's part, but some of the value was compromised by the fact that up until, oh, 1993 or thereabouts, you couldn't just plug any old SCSI drive into a Mac; it needed a model-specific driver, and those drivers involved a lot of black magic and more or less undocumented information. The SCSI standard says nothing about the physical connector, but Apple managed to pick a different one from Adaptec, the dominant PC vendor, and that didn't help either. Worse yet, they picked one that didn't allow one ground wire per signal wire... and was, in fact, the same connector as the standard 25-pin RS-232 connector.
About the only good thing you can say is that whether by chance or design, plugging a printer into the Mac SCSI port didn't fry either of them. I know that because I was doing support for a research institute and when the MacPlus first came out, just about all of the first half-dozen people to buy one tried to plug a printer into the SCSI port.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I'd just like to point out(mostly because it annoys me) that Apple's last quarter earnings are completely meaningless on their own due to the number of people that defered buying an Apple laptop due to the CPU switch. People like to talk about Apple's last quarter like Macs are some sort of raging success story, but the fact is, Apple's last quarter saw a huge increase because anyone with half a brain wasn't going to run out and buy an apple laptop in the previous quarter when the new intel MacBooks were going to ship in the very near future. You need to look at the whole year(which still might be great) so that things like this are smoothed over and you get a better picture of how the company is doing.
Basically, what all the Apple advocates are doing is going to a department store that they really like on a Sunday and saking "how much did you make yesterday?" and then going to a department store that they don't like on a Tuesday, asking the same question and telling everyone, "See, my favorite department store is doing better."
The biggest problem with Mac-addicts is that they have a much more scewed view of the world then everyone else. Once you start looking at things objectively, you realize that the OS/X UI sucks just as bad as XP, gnome, and KDE. They all have annoying bars at ether the top or bottom of the screen that do nothing but waste space. (FYI, that was sort of a joke and the truth at the same time.)
for most of the geeks :-) Before being bashed by FOSS gurus, let me show my example.
:-) (just remember that IBM and BEA's VM's performs better than Sun's)
...), and it can become a pain to get things working. On Linux, things are far better than Windows. You have almost the same tools, but its far easier to get things working: just apt-get / emerge / whatever and you are ready to go. In a Mac, just "port install" what you need, just like linux. The difference between Mac and Linux is in the tools. The same ones + a fantastic editor (and cheap for some, expensive for others). Ok, its not that smart to left an inexpensive OS to go to an "expensive" one just because of an editor. But trust me, it worth.
:-)
:-(
I'm a Java and Ruby (on rails) programmer. I've dropped windows about 2 years ago, and used various flavors of linux in this meantime (debian, ubuntu, gentoo and ubuntu again). Less than one year ago I bought my first mac (mac mini).
Java development in Windows is "standard", in linux is good and in Mac it is great. You have the same tools as Windows or Linux and, since java is "portable", all other tools (frameworks) works fine. The difference between Windows and Linux/Mac is that Windows restricts you *a lot*. Ex.: I put all my libs in just one place, and make sym links to them in the projects I need. In Windows, its not possible (afaik) (yes, a simple example, but try to keep the libs updated on a windows box...) . And the difference between Linux and Mac is performance. *Usually*, a Java application runs faster on Mac than on Linux, because the Java VM in Mac is done by Apple, meaning that its built by the ones who knows the OS. In Linux, as you certainly know, is a certain pain to install Java (you need to follow one or another howto to get things working), and the performance is *usually* worse than in a Mac, because the VM is done by Sun, which is concerned mainly in getting things working. Yes, they care about performance, but not that much
When programming with Ruby, Mac is really awesome. Again, Windows looses here. In Windows, you have a set of tools (editors/IDE's) that also exists in other platforms, but its performance is poor (afaik). Also, some Ruby libs requires some sort of compilation (mysql, rmagick,
Besides these work-related details, you also get an OS that just works, with enough applications to do what you usually do on a PC, a good terminal (I definitely cannot use the "cmd" anymore), a more than nice UI and so on... And for people who asks me "why use a mac", I just ask the same: "why use a Windows". There is no reason to use Windows. I can't find something that Windows does better than Mac (ok, I left an space here for some +5 Funny comments).
But yes, there *are* reasons to use Linux instead of Mac. Specially if you want "all the freedom you can get", if you don't want to spend a penny in software or simply don't care about the UI.
Of course, I talked about just the OS itself. The hardware *is* more expensive, specially here in Brazil (macs comes from US, which means they are taxed in *only* 100%). But if you think a bit better, it probably worth. In my case, I spend more than 10 hours/day looking at a computer, so, it certainly worth for me
And I'm sorry, this would be a single-line comment, but it simply grows
ilex paraguariensis for all
... of perfect storms ....
By now, most people know the cheapest solution is not the best or even good for them. There are ultra cheap TVs on the market, but most people don't buy them. Likewise, I know people burned by ultra cheap PCs and won't consider them again - thing has pathetic amount of ram (and OSes eat ram these days - the default minimum today is not enough in 2 years or even today with any type of semi-intensive program).
I have saved on Mac MORE than the amount of times I used to spend on Windows fiddling with it. No, it's not even geek like fiddling, as it didn't give one any deeper understanding how the system to work (registry), it was fiddling to get the system to work, period.
If you compare Mac to something like Ubuntu Linux with PC hardware, yes, than you have a fair comparison - Ubuntu is great, doesn't break often, nor get viruses, etcetera.
But since these people probably run Windows, I have to ask: Do you value your time as much as I do? I'm tired of Windows, ad-aware, spybot search and destroy, A/V software, and the 6/12 month reinstall with all the joy that comes from that.
I'm not going to couter with form factor, but what is it about 20-30% premium? It's not an order of a magnitude more expensive. My sanity/time is worth 20-30%.
I take stock in the article; I'm about to switch, yet many would peg me as an unlikely candidate.
;)
You see, I'm a contractor who specializes in Windows solutions. Microsoft technologies are my livelihood. Microsoft is all over my resume: MCAD certified, a member of BaltoMSDN, etc... I attended a few DevDays and even spent the money for a Universal MSDN subscription back in 2004. But tell me I'd be a PC guy 15 years ago, and I would have said you were crazy.
Not until late 1991 did I change my plan of tossing out my Apple ][e for a Macintosh and instead went with a 386dx-40. Maybe it was the stack of VGA games, or Deluxe Paint Animation's power, but after seeing a 386 run... I knew it was where I wanted to geek out. And I think that for awhile it was the right choice. But no longer...
Despite the programs and speed for my AMD64 it's still not as "cool" as the Mac's I use at my church every Sunday. I don't know how to quantify what this "cool" is, but I'm sure the fact the GUI paradigm is both simple & slick, and I can drop down into a Unix Shell feeds the geek in me. The fact Parallels exists for Mac is what has convinced the "IT consultant" within me (who needs Microsoft tools to pay the mortgage) that a not-too-painful transition path is possible.
Last year I bought a mini-mac for my TV. I love that machine.
After WWDC I plan to purchase a 17" Mac laptop pimped out with a lot of RAM and Parallels.
Hopefully in two years I can be adding insightful posts about being a Mac Developer using XCode.
I agree, I was using OS X on my Gateway for a while. And while it was good, some stuff just annoyed the crap out of me. Yeah, I was running on unsupported hardware, but the behavior for alt-tab (mapped as apple-key-tab) was annoying. I like being able to scroll through each window. It bothered me most when I was ssh'ing into the school boxes from mac os and had multipled instances of firefox and emacs running and it was a pain in the butt to figure what was where. Yes, I knew about expose, but even so, I am just so used to alt-tab, which also works in solaris (to my satisfaction.)
I would probably get a macbook pro for the iLife suite, because I haven't yet gotten my sound card working in OS X. (I want garageband.) However, I do not want a machine with only 512mb ram standard. 1gig is the minimum necessary now, especially if I was going to be dualbooting with windows for work.
I also like have the right click button. I don't think I'll ever get used to shift click.
-Ed
So you see what had happened was....
On second thought, maybe not...
I'd much rather have control over my hardware platform. With the Mac, you give up that control.
For what? Their software platform?
Sorry, as "technically" appealing as it is, I can't stand the finished product. Now don't get me wrong. Some people LOVE MacOS. I don't.
So I'll stick with a real PC platform, rather than a proprietary platform that happens to use PC parts.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The problem is that if the HDMI DRM crap is implemented with Vista, then the content providers simply won't let Apple users run it without similar provisions in place....In the end, everybody loses.
This kind of unsupported assertion always makes me smile, since it was but a few short years ago that a 100%-200% markup was the usual claim!
For the consumer products, this math falls apart if you are willing to attribute any reasonably conservative (but none-zero) value to the nice form factor. For the the pro line, the math fails if you match all the hardware features.
And that is assigning a zero value to OS X over XP, and a zero value to the total lack of malware. For the consumer line, one really has to consider iLife. For anyone with kids (or pets) and a DV camcorder, iMovie and iDVD are worth the cost of entry all by themselves.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Apple: lax DRM, allows the user to pretty much do what they want except copy their music to someone else's computer (although they could authenticate on up to five computers).
Microsoft: DRM specifically allows refusal of all copying and burning, secure video channels, secure audio channels and supports the upcoming HDMI fiasco.
Apple: No validation when you install the OS, or at any point afterwards. (There is a hardware validation, but the user is never presented with it.)
Microsoft: Key validation requiring the OS to call home periodically, certain hardware changes may trigger key de-authentication.
Apple: The user will be honest.
Microsoft: The user cannot be trusted.
Yep. Apple are *just* like Microsoft. Those last two are debatable, but sum up where I see both DRM camps coming from.
But hey! What do I know? I don't buy the Microsoft apologist fan-boy stuff either! Stand-by for overbearing reaction to each sentence I've written by a rabid Zune-rabbit-patting Microsoft zealot in 3... 2... 1...
It's pretty Maccy. And if Mark Shuttleworth controlled the hardware in the same way that Jobs does then it would all "just work" in the same way that a Mac does. And it would be 400+ euros more expensive. I just bought a Mac. Hardware, finish, etc is nice. Very nice. Can't wait to install Ubuntu on it ...
Why? I'm sorta waiting for Steve Jobs to start giving away free Kool-Aid to all the raving Apple fanbrats.
Macs are proprietary, non-standard, overpriced, and there aren't nearly as many good apps that run natively on Macs as there are on Winblows or Unix/Linux boxes. Yeah, I know what OS/X is underneath the hood...so why would I want to waste money and time buying and using a Mac when I have plenty of PCs that will run better non-Windows OSes that cost me nothing?
When I see the usual suspects raving about the latest new Mac product from Apple, I think to myself, "Go Lemmings, Go!" They never get much respect from most knowledgable, serious computer users, but they sure seem willing to jump off a cliff if Jobs tells them to.
Think about it. Apple gave in to the Unix crowed when it needed a real OS. It caved in to the Wintel crowd when it needed a real hardware platform that would run apps that matter. What does Apple have left? A UI it snagged from Xerox PARC in the 80s and which has stagnated because of some bad design choices ever since.
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
Is this the level to which we've descended? Argument by analogy? Ugh. Alright, I'll bite: Yes, people buy new cars, but in America (as in most of the world), they still buy them with steering wheels on the left! It's been the "Year of the Mac" every year for the last 15 years! I have nothing against Macs, but let's be serious for half a moment: any notion that Mac popularity is going to accelerated by some sort of user revolution should be viewed with the same skepticism as the idea that BeOS (UNIX on the desktop, Atari ST, etc.) will do the same. Good luck!
Not meaning to troll, but what the hell are you talking about? For protected HD content from the new formats, you'll eventually require an HDCP-compliant display and output device. Which you can have over DVI or HDMI, and there are a few monitors that already support this. This goes for blu-ray and HD-DVD players just as much as ANY computer system, be it Vista, XP (assuming they actually write playback software) or OS X. Microsoft isn't pushing for content protection any more than Apple is, it's been required of them so people don't complain that their new MCE05 system won't play so much as a DVD. Love them or hate them, Microsoft isn't stupid about this - they know that content protection is a royal pain in the ass for consumers, but either they play along or they don't get the content. And with their digital home push, I'll leave it up to you which one their choice is.
The content industry said that HDCP will be required for legal full-resolution playback on content with the ICT set (nothing now, but at some point (supposedly 2010 or later), all of the content on the winning HD format). So either support it or you can't play. Blaming Microsoft is either really ignorant or really fanboyish. Apple will require it too, the only difference that Apple controls its hardware so well that it should be fairly transparent to the end-user, unlike PCs where we tend to have a lot more give. Of course, displays are the one area where Apple products tend to have that give, but at least with the notebooks and iMacs, you can be damned sure that the display will be connected by an HDCP-compliant connection when they're packing a next-gen optical drive. I wouldn't be especially surprised to see Apple to be giving the Mac Pro an HDCP-compliant output at WWDC, or upgrading their Cinema displays for the same. Microsoft just writes the software - they have NO control over the hardware it goes on - so they take flak when these inconsistencies occur. If it was all well-done, everything with digital output and/or input would have been compliant for the start, and none of us would have been any the wiser since it's all transparent. But it's not, and Microsoft makes an excellent scapegoat. Blame Sony, they're the ones that actually helped come up with the stupid idea (with many others I'm sure, but they're also an excellet scapegoat) - just like CSS and AACS, but those two (well, we'll wait to see with regards to the latter) are transparent enough that it's usually not much of an issue.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Now that a mac is running the same basic hardware that a 'pc' does, ( to the point of it even running windows now ), what is a mac?
From a long itme Apple fan, it looks like 'yet another expensive clone' to me, and except for brand loyalty i dont see a reason to choose one, at a higher price. I firmly believe in the end, this was a bad move.
Thankfully my G5 has many more years of life in it, and iwont be forced to make that decision anytime soon.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... MS had just had another technical disaster of a presentation (there've been so many, I can't actually remember which one this was), but it was very shortly before Jobs got up on the stage and had his own problems. His patter went something like: ... well it is only a beta OS at the moment ... and that's why *WE'VE* got backup systems...
:-)
(flicks switch to change systems)
Never one to miss an opportunity
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Even I, a long time PC user wanted to get a MacBook, but... I don't have 1100 to drop on one. Damn me not having much money!
The only new computers I've bought are PCs, I also bought a used Amiga and two used Macs, but the next new one will be a MacBook Pro. I plan on getting a 17" one, hopefully within a couple of weeks. However I have to first get the money my sister owns me, which comes to about $3000 which will be enough to pay for the MacBook. If I could wait to replace the PC I'm using now, which is about 7 years old, I'd wait until Apple released MacBooks with the new cpus. But it's on it's last leg and I don't want to wait to get a laptop, er notebook.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I have been doing Mac consulting for over a decade, and at my current company for more than five years. Apple's resurgence is no BS-- it has built slowly since I took this job in 2001 at the dawn of the OS X era, but in the last year and a half I have been dramatically, ridiculously busier than before. Small and medium sized businesses are getting very interested in Macs these days, and plenty of them are doing more than just looking. The Intel switch has already done amazing things for Apple, particularly in the quarter just past. Also, Microsoft's serious ineptitude w/r/t getting Vista out the door has only helped Apple in the last couple of years-- people are sick of XP and all its problems, and have grown tired of waiting for the Next Big Thing out of Redmond.
What has begun is only going to pick up steam, as the article said, once the Intel CPUs come to the pro towers and Xserves at WWDC in a week and a half. Plenty of my clients are still on viable-but-aging G4s and are licking their chops in anticipation of upgrading to the latest and greatest. We may not see a real surge from them, though, until the next version of Adobe Creative Suite drops in early 2007.
It's a great time to be a Mac guy-- the demand for my skills is only going to keep growing, and unlike dime-a-dozen MCSEs, the relative scarcity of Apple Certified System Administrators (I'm currently one of only four in my entire state) should prove rather lucrative in the next few years.
Ha! According to whom? Any Mac fanboy can tell you that it's quite the opposite. From 1990 through 2001 (the year of the iPod) Apple was always described in the media as a company in a downward spiral. "Beleaguered" was the term, if I remember correctly. As for the comparison to BeOS (UNIX on the desktop, Atari ST, etc.), well that's just silly. First of all they never had the most popular consumer electronic gadget, and second they had no advertising (compared to Apple).
I am thinking about getting a Macintosh but the question for me is, how well does it run Linux? I tried OSX and hated it (just not customizable enough), plus it just isn't for me. Does anyone know what Linux distros run on x86 Macintosh?
It's just a plain law of the US market, anything that becomes popular will become crappy.
It happened with scifi, it happened with anime, it happened with with ipods (the older mac only ipods were MUCH more dependable), and it is already starting to happen with apple's computers.
between their trusted computing sellout, their crappy cases corroding on people, the complete destruction of the performance of their quicktime media player, and i've noticed i'm having to fight more with the damn thing to get it to reconnect after resetting my modem.
Jobs is abandoning a tradition of quality in an intoxicated grab for market share.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
As long as dell and those like them are pumping out 300 euro PC's, apple will never achieve market dominance like some would want it to. People want something decently fast that they can check their email, do their cirriculum vitae and perhaps surf some porn, but is cheap. Kids want their parents to buy them a PC that can play games. parents want something that accomplish's this, but is cheap. dell, and the countless others like them, once again provide. PC's are a mass produced commodity nowadays. unless apples new marketing campaign converts 50 million people at once, i dont think that the PC will be going "out of fashion" so to speak, anytime soon.
For the last two decades I've always upgraded my machine by piece-mail. A new case, a new HD, a new mobo, a new video card.... So at every purchases it's only been a few hundred at most.
And how do you upgrade just the cpu/mobo without upgrading ram or the hd? I've got an old HP I'd like to upgrade but when I upgrade my cpu/mobo I'll hav to upgrade my ram and more than likely my hd as well as both the bus and the hd interface will be different. As my graphics card may not be compatible with a new mobo I may have to upgrade it as well. I don't see how over a preiod of more than several years you can upgrade a piece at a tyme.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Rather than be redundant, I refer you to this astute post
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
You just keep reiterating why you think it's plausible, but plausiblity isn't the same as evidence.
So: where is the evidence?
...I'm buying a Mac.
I'm a college student, so yes, the equivalent of ramen here, but I must say, that $1100 ($1000 after a student rebate) is a bloody good deal. Yes, yes , it's 30% over priced, yes, yes, no lightscribe DVD+- whatever, but my god, it's a fucking Mac. At the very least, it'll make women sleep with me.
Also, I don't know that megahertz really matters too much to me anymore. Apple I think sees this - though a dual-core 1.8gig chip is no laughing matter. I figure I'll top up to a gig/gig and a half of ram, and maybe I'll need to bump up the internal drive.
PS to everybody not in the US: Buy in the US and get someone coming over to bring it for you. That way you save a bunch of bucks (enough of a price difference to make it worth the hassle, if you're on a budget).
I see.... so tried is a new euphemism for pirated?
Paradimes in OSX that suck: 1) To eject a CD-ROM, USB-key, or external storage, I drag it to the trash. That seems illogical to me.
I think the word you were looking for was "paradigms". Drives are dragged to the trash because you are not only ejecting the media but you are writing the file system buffer back to the drive (in the case of read/write media) and deleting its cache. With XP, you are also supposed to eject USB devices before disconnecting them for the same reason.
2) To install a program, I "click-and-drag" it to my "hard drive". I had to google how to install something in OSX. Double-clicking the downloaded file yielded some puzzling prompt I can't recall.
First of all, did it occur to you to RTFM? Second, you are not "installing" anything but rather copying the application bundle from the disk image for folder on the desktop to your applications directory. I call FUD on this one since most applications will run from a disk image let alone from the desktop. You should not expect it to behave like windows.
3) Driver management is a nightmare. Sure, it works great with Mac hardware, but who wants to be locked into one brand? Oh wait, Mac-happy fan-boys do.
What driver management? Oh wait, you are running a pirated/cracked version on your Dell. Did you expect it to work on your Dell? Locked in? How do you like the WMA ecosystem and being locked into windows?
4) OSX feels like an OS that is 50 feet thick. And by that I mean it feels like there's layer upon layer of abstraction, as if it were trying to protect me from seeing how a computer really works. So you are saying that you do not like user friendly OS design and Object Oriented systems? If you want to hack away, go to http://developer.apple.com/ and read the documentation. Install the Developer tools and play with Interface builder. The power of the OS is all there for developers to extend. I think you are confusing complicated interfaces with "power". Open up a terminal windows and fill your boots.
5) OSX is not very business friendly. It doesn't fit business-logic.
What an absurd statement. Could you quantify that? By business friendly do you mean MIS friendly? Is it too damn easy to use that you are afraid business people might just use their computers are tools without needing so many MSCE's on their payroll?
6) The bundled applications were inferior. Give me Outlook Express over Apples default mail application any day. That thing was an utter, illogical, painful experience to configure.
More FUD and bullshit. You have got to be kidding me. Mail in Tiger has features features in common with Outlook 2003 like message grouping by topic threads. What is there to configure beyond email accounts and signatures?
7) OSX is slow. Seriosuly, it's just not as snappy as winXP. Granted, I was running OSx86 on a Dell laptop, but I've used OSX on a mac before, and it really is a little laggy from all the superflorous garbage it distracts you with. "Ooooh, dancing icon. Thor like!"
Yeah, having a GUI with a GPU accelerated compositing engine can be a bit slower than a simple bitblitter graphical stack like GDI+. Try out Vista and you will see how it is not as snappy either when running the Aero Glass interface.
To anyone who is considering buying a Mac: Try using OSX first!
That is one thing we can agree on. I would also suggest people try out Vista before blindly upgrading to it.
In my honest opinion, I think Windows Vista will pave over OSX when it's released.
Right. Do you even know anything about the current state of Vista compared with what was promised at PDC 2003? I use XP more than I use OS X simply because that is what I use at work and I used XP at home until the end of 2002. I'm afraid that your "experience" with a
pirated
X86 Tiger install does not qualify you to critique the OS X.Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Single window switching found here:/ 25871
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx
Any 2 button mouse will work fine as well.
Oh yeah? im saving for my first car, i have 3k, and a macbook pro is close to 6k, i love the aluminium so its my only option. Help!
MacBook Pros start at $1,999.00. It's the 17 " with 2 GB RAM that gets to $3,099.00. And if you're member of Apple Developer Connection you can get it for $2,479.00.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"Lax DRM" is the camel's nose underneath the tent. Did you expect them to start out with something blatantly intrusive? Of course not. They're helping to boil the frog, along with MS and the rest of the "trusted" computing gangsters.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
Ok, I was sufficiently annoyed to look up the research behind the example I gave (the 'infinitely-deep menubar'). Here's the wikipaedia reference, which quotes papers from Fitts himself.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
My biggest problem with Apple for the last 4 years or so (both as an observer and now as a user) has been their lack of advertising of OS X.
In the mid-90s, Apple tried for quite some time to hammer home just how much better the MacOS was compared to Windows. They put multi-page spreads in major newsweeklies, touting the virtues of the Mac, point by point.
Consumers did not care.
Advertising works when it appeals to emotion. That's why the iPod ads have been so successful. By advertising on features, Apple is playing to the "check the boxes in your feature list" mentality that rules the PC industry. Individual features aren't compelling. The overall experience, and in advertising terms, the feeling of using a Mac is the real differentiator. That's why in the most recent Mac ads, Apple has stayed away from details, focusing instead on broad, easily-understood concepts.
Sophisticated computer users can already easily look up the specs online. Mainstream users need to be pursuaded with emotion.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
all Macs, even the entry-level models, are thicker and more performance-minded machines.
The problem is that macs cost even between 130% and 165% (my own spot check) the price of an identically equipped dell. (yes, minus mac OSX) Add all the bad press that they have been getting on QC and sweatshops, plus the forthcoming release of Zune (which looks to be REALLY big) and the perfect storm may just erode the massochistic mac faithful that value style over substance.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Until your "OS that just works" prevents you from doing something you want. Then you'll be very interested in "dicking around" trying to get things working. I'm not pro or against Mac per sé, but even I can tell that a proprietary OS (ragardless of BSD underpinnings) is capable of locking you out of certain things, should the manufacturer wish it.
Hmmm... Let's see. Looking at my "old" five-year-old G4 Powerbook.
PC Card interface (PCMCIA)
USB
Firewire
Ethernet
DVI
S-Video
ATA (IDE) hard drive interface
Laptop SDRAM
Yup. That's a closed architecture if I've ever seen it. Not.
The new laptops have standard laptop DDR memory as well. As a special bonus, I didn't shell out for the Airport card; I have a Microsoft-brand 802.11g PC Card wireless interface installed instead. (It was lying around and therefore free to me.) No extra drivers to be installed. It just ran under OS X as an airport device. How exactly could this laptop be any more open? Have you changed your Dell or IBM laptop motherboard lately for a 3rd party replacement? How about the CPU?
And the desktops are even worse! AGP and PCI on the motherboards. What were they thinking? Next thing you know, they'll be moving to PCI-X in the next generation.
The 1990s called. They want their "Macs are a closed architecture" whines back.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
I'd buy a mac in a heartbeat. I would still have to use a windows PC though for some software i use.
:)
The truth is, Windows sucks. Its a peice of shit. Windows 32bit... should be dead. We should all be running 64bit windows, Not VISTA 32bit.
Microsoft is going to continue the 32bit mistake, with vista.
Microsoft has no balls when it comes to progress. They dont take risks. They worry about everyone running dos applications from 89. It's time they stop caring about 32bit, 16bit app support and cut the cord. Go all 64bit Vista, force the stupid hardware manufacturers to deliver 64bit drivers, and not 32bit drivers.
I'm tired of Microsoft. I really am. There is no innovation. They take forever to release an operating system, and its never anything new. Vista will have a new ui... and will require me to buy a new pc... yay. I hope it offers more than that...
Linux isnt ready...
The MAC is.
I've been saying this for a while, due to the success of IPOD... people have a perception of quality when it comes to Apple produc ts. They will pay more for it because they understand that it works better, and their IPOD was so dam cool.
Apple has balls, they really do innovate... Microsoft will do just fine with Vista, but many people will go Mac. I'll join them someday as well. I can not stand Microsoft products. Just look at Their media player attempt. Its garbage. Its version 11 and they dont have a good media player. Sure its trying to copy Itunes (quite poorly) but its a horrible video player. It has terrible playback controls and functions. Its a toy. Media Player Classic beat it years ago, as did winamp, and quicktime (on the mac) quicktime pc sucks). The dam media player is version 11. Version 1-10 sucked... 10 dam versions... and now 11... ? IT still sucks.
Microsoft does not make software will everyone in mind. They dont care what people need from their software... they design it, how they feel you should use it. Maybe thats why it takes them so long to code an os. They dont listen to the people yelling at the door... they ignore them and make whatever they want, and whatever the MPAA/RIAA want them to do.
Its apparent that Jobs was always correct about Microsoft. They steal ideas after they're safe to do, and they always do it poorly.
That is more true than ever, the evidence is 98, 98SE, Mill, 2000, XP, Vista, Media Player 11, IE etc. They are late to the party because they cant do it right... and it takes them forever to even get close.
I've had enough of this crap.
The fact that vista is 32bit is the last straw. Microsoft cant progress us into the future because they're a lame duck. They're holding back 64bit because the average user can get away with 32bit and 4gigs ram max, and a cripple ware os.
My sister just bought a new Macbook for college in the fall. I asked why she bought a Macbook over a Dell, and she said she liked "the way it looked" and she new that it could run windows if she didn't like OS X.
She gets the new Macbook and loves the design. She booted into OS X and after a few days of trying to do all the things she was familiar with in windows, she handed me the Macbook and said "put windows on this thing, I'm tired of trying to re-learn everything".
So I put windows on it, and showed her how to switch between each OS. She said "I don't care, I'll never use OS X".
I suspect a lot of Mac hardware will never run OS X. Don't get me wrong - I love OS X. Frankly, it is what Linux should be. But many "style conscious" users will pay Jobs and Co. for a cool looking machine just to run windows. I think the public is going to "get" the Mac, but only in a superficial way.
-ted
1) To eject a CD-ROM, USB-key, or external storage, I drag it to the trash. That seems illogical to me.
/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
That's illogical to me also considering you could just click the little eject button next to the item's name in a Finder window. To eject a CD, you could have hit the eject button on the keyboard if you had the correct hardware. You dragging icons to the trash indicates it's been years since you've been on a Mac before this experience.
2) To install a program, I "click-and-drag" it to my "hard drive". I had to google how to install something in OSX. Double-clicking the downloaded file yielded some puzzling prompt I can't recall.
You had to Google to find out how to drag an icon from point A to point B?
3) Driver management is a nightmare. Sure, it works great with Mac hardware, but who wants to be locked into one brand? Oh wait, Mac-happy fan-boys do.
echo 'it works great with Mac hardware'
4) OSX feels like an OS that is 50 feet thick. And by that I mean it feels like there's layer upon layer of abstraction, as if it were trying to protect me from seeing how a computer really works.
Knock yourself out:
5) OSX is not very business friendly. It doesn't fit business-logic.
You'll have to elaborate on this, because it makes no sense.
6) The bundled applications were inferior. Give me Outlook Express over Apples default mail application any day. That thing was an utter, illogical, painful experience to configure.
Now you're just...nevermind.
7) OSX is slow. Seriosuly, it's just not as snappy as winXP. Granted, I was running OSx86 on a Dell laptop, but I've used OSX on a mac before, and it really is a little laggy from all the superflorous garbage it distracts you with. "Ooooh, dancing icon. Thor like!"
Knock yourself out:
To anyone who is considering buying a Mac: Try using OSX first!
Your advice should read: Try learning OSX first!
In my honest opinion, I think Windows Vista will pave over OSX when it's released.
I wish this were the first line in your post.
This is my signature. soid st egr.hyTa rsiugm usnin Any questions?
While all Mac fans surely welcome the increase in "our" profile and corresponding relevance, etc, I hope it doesn't go too far. Just enough so we can hold our heads up in polite company and stop having to feel apologetic for being the minority. I reckon about 25% market share would be about optimum - easily enough to kill complacency in other sections of the market, drive innovation, yet retain enough exclusivity. It would also help prevent or slow down the backsliding that I see in institutions such as our local university, where we have about 40% Macs installed, and most Mac users jealously guard them - but the powers at the top want to force a single standard on everyone, and guess what that is? A higher profile for Mac would at least force them to investigate why their users are so keen on them, take them more seriously, and maybe they'll even learn something.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That is because Mac users want more performance and are willing to pay a premium for that performance.
That is not the main buying point. In the past, Mac have been known to be inferior in performance to PCs, and Mac users kept buying them, even at a premium. The main thing Mac users want is design, and not performance. Otherwise they would have switched to PC years ago.
"To eject a CD-ROM, USB-key, or external storage, I drag it to the trash. That seems illogical to me."
Well, if you had a mac, you'd notice the eject button on the keyboard, but if you want to use OSX on your dell, just press and hold F12 until it ejects the disk. You can also right click the drive on you desktop and select "eject", or use the "command E" key combination. So, it's not like dragging it to the trash is your only option. Honestly, in the face of all the options, your comment is more of a troll than a complaint.
"Double-clicking the downloaded file yielded some puzzling prompt I can't recall."
No, all applications should run from a disk image. Some do come as a "package" that you need to run to install the application. For the most part, I'd say that dragging a file to the Applications folder in the dock is easier, and more intuitive than running an installer.
"Driver management is a nightmare."
I don't think you mean to say "driver management" since managing drivers is easy. The hard part is finding drivers for hardware that OSX doesn't support natively. This is a problem that would go away if you bought mac. The vast majority of printers, digital cameras, and any other accessory you may want to attach to your computer are supported. Unfortunately, Apple only supports the video cards it actually puts in it's computers. That's where your problem is.
"OSX feels like an OS that is 50 feet thick. And by that I mean it feels like there's layer upon layer of abstraction, as if it were trying to protect me from seeing how a computer really works."
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Most everything you'd want to do is right out in the open. There's a command line built in, which is more than you can say for windows. And OSX tends to be more free of "wizards" than Windows is. I guess any GUI would be too much of an abstraction for you.
"OSX is slow."
Well, it runs acceptably on my ~6 year old power mac G4, and it runs well on my girlfriends ~4 year old iMac G4. You should probably stop by an apple store and try it on a real mac before you deem it "slow". I use WIN XP at work, and it doesn't seem to run any faster to me.
"Give me Outlook Express over Apples default mail application any day."
That's just crazy. I don't even know what to say about that. That's like saying you'd rather drink battery acid than a milkshake.
To anyone who is considering buying a Mac: Try using OSX first! Just do it on a Mac for god-sake!
...Mate, ok, ill help you out a bit, im not trying to be an ass here ok. Time. To find other stores, try Google, and look for "Apple Brazil" etc, im sure they have ways to buy apart from just Apple. I hate this so much, most countries dont have an "Apple Store" as I think you might know, If i were to buy a mac it would be through the likes of Noel Leeming or Harvey Norman.
Again, I'm not getting at you, but its also "Whale Rider", yeah, I and every other New Zealander saw it, I had read the book before hand. Did you like the movie? We do have a lot of other things here in NZ apart from Lord of the Rings and Whale Rider (and Narnia too if you want to be a smart arse), try "Once Were Warriors", my god is that a great movie, most New Zealanders saw that too, its a classic New Zealand novel by one of our most famous authors, and the movie is great. check it out on imdb and then buy the dvd! Have a good saturday or whatever, Sunday afternoon here.
---
I'm tired of ridiculous Windows behaviors (disk defrag inadvertantly deletes required system DLLs...nice)
I can't find any information on this from my sources. :(
I've gotten a number of error messages from Windows and didn't find anything about them by Googling. In a few cases I did get answers when I tried Teoma. Ah, now it's Ask.com
FalconShould there be a Law?
I know you can add a two button mouse, but what is so hard about just making that the default?
Witch looks like a cool program, I'll have to check it out, but still, I wish that was the default behavior to look at each window, not just each app.
-ed
So you see what had happened was....
Its not the top of the line, but the x1600 in iMacs and MacBook Pros is pretty darn decent when paired with the core (soon to be 2) duo, and 2GB of RAM.
I'm pretty sure Microsoft owns a good chunk of Apple ^_^
The last I heard was that MS "invested" $200M in nonvoting Apple stock, this was after a lawsuit ans was part of a "settlement" or agreement. But that was back in 1998 or so. I read recently a post that said MS sold that stock, but I don't know if it's true.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Is using the same architecture PC manufactures have been using for over 30 years. Brilliant. Apple hype never fails to amaze and bewilder me.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
... It is. Windows XP works pretty well, and there's really no more reason to switch PC platforms than there is to change your heat pump. It works. You'd be an idiot (quite literally) to waste time and money for no reason. That's the public attitude.
Then maybe I had a bad computer or install because the first tyme I ever used XP was on a new Dell in a class I was taking in college. The first day of class I pushed the power button to boot it up and while booting it froze and the BSOD popped up. The only thing that worked was to push in and hold the power button until it shutdown then I had to reboot. That's one reason when I get a new computer it will be a Mac, two more reasons are Activation and WGA. MS doesn't need to more more than that I paid for Windows, especially if it comes installed on a new Dell, HP, or anyother. Nor do they need to spy on me. And it isn't just Windows I've had problems with, I've bought two computers from Gateway, one from HP, and one from Microway. The first Gateway, well both Gateways, were laptops and within a few months of getting it the hd failed. Then a couple of weeks before the first year ended that I had it the motherboard failed. The same thing happened with the HP, which I'm using now. On the second Gateway laptop a few weeks after I got it the LCD display cracked and all Gateway would tell me was that I wold have to pay to fix it and that the cost could be anywhere between $200 and $1200. The technician wouldn't even give me a closer estimate than that. The only PC I haven't had hardware, or OS, problems is the Microway which runs NT4. Unfortunately the cpu is a DEC Alpha and DEC's FX!32 didn't work very well when I tried to install software, most of the software I tried to install wouldn't. Because of this I've hardly ever used it. On the other hand I've bought two used Macs. The first one was an SE30 and it lasted me several years before it died. The second one is a Power Macintosh 7300/200 and I got a few years use out of it before I had any problems with it. I know it's only ancedotes but from my experience Macs are trouble free whereas PCs cause too much trouble.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Out of curiousity, which of the two companies is actively selling DRM encumbered video? I agree, HDMI is a terrible thing, another opportunity to charge people more in exchange for hardware that does less and in the process help stamp out fair use. But Apple's no more our friend in this than Microsoft.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
The days of computers being of ineterest only to the elite few have long passed-- and just about every house with a child over six has an expert who cares which brand they use.
And many of those households it's the 6 year old that's the expert.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm pissed of at my work PC always being a pain in the ass! Whether it's freezing up for no damned reason (grrrrrrrrrr, I get so mad when don't have Office open, a browser, or anything, and the CPU is at 100%, freezes, and I have to reboot), having to restart to install or uninstall most programs, or whatever, it makes my life miserable. Right now my PC-laptop is shoved under the couch to keep me from stomping on it. My roomie's desktop PC is okay so far, but no PC that I've used long-term has made me happy.
Yeah, it will be a new platform to learn, but so? I've got no plans to run Windows on it unless I find that I must to work remotely (which may be a possiblity, and will irritate the life out of me). But really, only a complete computer idiot will object to learning something new these days.
A sweetie would let me use his iBook for webs tuff when I was at his place, and he told me early on I'd like it. It was different, but I did like it. And it wasn't the pain that my PC is. And it will be nice to learn a new platform. And, being in the land of Apple, Jobs' turf, it's not such an unusual thing to have a Mac.
My only potential concern may be that a program I want to use won't work on OS X, and I'm determined not to revert to Windows. If there's anything I want not Mac-compatible, there's got to be an equivalent that is, right?
It's a girl!
If their TVs' quality is like that of their cameras, I'd buy ANYTHING BUT a Sony.
Sony is a tv company, has made tvs for many years but has only recently entered the photography market I'd get a Sony tv if I liked the specs and the price but as far as cameras are concerned the only companies I'd get a camera from right now is either Canon or Mamiya.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Huh. And here I was, playing high-def (1080i, I assume?) video on a 933 MHz Dell from about three years ago.
Oh, wait... do you consider using Linux and building your own stuff to be cheating?
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
For over 10 years we heard about how megahetrz didn't matter. About how we were primitive. About this and that. Now Appled changed to Intel... and guess what? Macbois jump on board as if Intel is a magic thing that just popped out of nowhere to help them. Not the case, and it just shows how much Apple has lied for the past years, and how much Mac users bought it as true, and how much they can't see that they have been lied to, and are STILL being lied to.
Great Intellect...
I don't want my computer to be an overpriced status symbol, nor do I care to be "hip" (nor do I think Macs are "hip", but that's just me). I can see it being the BMW of geeks, but every once in a while you need a pickup truck, you know? And really, how many "hip" people care if you use a Mac or a PC? You are still a nerd to them.
Great Intellect...
I won't bother with price comparisons as they're handled elsewhere and always have mitigating factors, but Dell has worse QC problems. Two very public laptop fires in the span of a month sure doesn't inspire me with confidence.
The release of Zune will be big. Its uptake is entirely different.
And if you're a Windows user, I doubt you see the irony of calling Mac users masochists.
My brother bought a new Macbook Pro for starting graduate school in the fall, one of the reasons that I convinced him to switch was because he could run Windows on it if he needed to. Well, it's been several weeks of running entirely OS X and he's now not sure that's it's even worth the hassle of installing Windows because he likes OS X so much.
Incidentally, Apple stores are the only computer stores that I, a female computer geek, can walk into and not have to start throwing around teenage hacker language that I never use in real life in order to get a decent level of customer service. It's not at all why I switched to Mac (I got sick of fixing Windows problems, and I like being able to go to command line being the two main reasons), but getting rid of one more hassle is always a good thing.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
Shutting up about whether or not they plan to implement DRM is NOT the same thing as being in opposition to DRM.
As such, they can go to a DRM hardware platform at a moment's notice. And your only recourse is to accept it.
Anyhow, unless you're running on a truly humongous monitor, high definition video is largely wasted on the computer platform.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
And to uninstall a program, while it might seem like a no-brainer to drag an application to the trash to uninstall it, that does not get rid of it if you've added it to the dock. For more advanced users that's not a big deal, but it's certainly not more "intuitive" than using an uninstall applet that gets rid of everything - start menu shortcuts and all - in one swat.
How often have you uninstalled software running on Windows? Unless the uninstaller is well written uninstalling software always leaves little bits and pieces sprinkled on your hd, dll, inf, and what have you. Even in the registry where they can mess up the operation of Windows. Now I know software adds preferences to Macs but I don't know if left there they will cause any problems. Actually the only thing I've installed on a Mac was Norton Utilities and that was back in '92 I think. But I've installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled a lot of software on Windows. Once I even had to reinstall Windows because a software install went wrong. Actually I've had to do a reformat and reinstall of Windows because the system kept crashing. The first tyme this happened I had a new Gateway when I started having trouble. When I called tech support the tech walked me through a number of things then told me I needed to reformat the hd and reinstall Windows. And now, again I'm having trouble, this tyme with my mouse. Sometimes the cursor doesn't move at other tymes it's jumping all over the place. I had the same problem last December and first I reinstalled Windows but when I still had the problem so I got a new mouse. That helped for a while but then I started having the same problem, so again I got a new mouse. Just days later with the new mouse, it started doing the same thing. Now I had both mice hooked up using ps2 but the mouse came with a usb adaptor so a few days ago I plugged it into my usb hub after I uninstalled the mouse from the control panel and rebooted. I still have the problems.
FalconShould there be a Law?
As both a Mac and a PC user I find the Mac interface to overall be more intuitive to use. However, this can be completely different if you are ingrained in your old PC habits and ideas. Old PC habits are hard to change and that can turn the Mac experience into something you are fighting against daily.
Ingrained habits can certainly get you. It did with me. I started using Macs when they came out in the '80s and used them for years. I also used PCs some but not much. Eventually several years ago I went to using only PCs. After using only PCs for two or three years I took a class that used Macs and I was so lost. Now it may be due in part because of the change in MacOS, the Macs in class used OSX and I'd never used it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I've never really understood this attitude.
:)
I know quite a few people that do similar things, and it really seems like they spend more time futzing with their cobbled-together systems and trying to decide what to upgrade next, than actually doing stuff with them and just enjoying having something that works the way it's supposed to.
I'm not advocating a 'disposable culture' here, just saying that it seems to make a lot more sense to me to save up money for a while, get something that's really nice and you'll really enjoy using and not have to worry about for a while, use it until it's absolutely unbearable (which I define as 'no longer will run critical pieces of software'), then repeat, keeping the old machine as a backup/server/space-heater/whatever.
Maybe there's a fundamental difference in how people view computers, I suppose. I guess if you look at it as a hobby, and enjoy the upgrades, that's one thing; I really don't. My hobby isn't working on my computer, it's working with my computer. It's a tool, and one that I want to just work as transparently as possible, so that I can do stuff with it. So to that end, I just figure on dropping about two grand every three or four years (although I have done mid-cycle upgrades of hard drives and RAM) and then not having to worry about it.
I thought about a car analogy here, but I decided to do everyone a favor and skip it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You know, I hate Mac OS X. And I'm not alone. I'm not some Windows-loving Microsoft apologist. I run Linux on my notebook, on my servers, and in a lot of other places. But there's just a lot of things about Mac OS X that bug me. At my university, one of my CS courses had a recitation that took place in the Mac lab. We had iMac G5s running Tiger that I used for 4 hours every week. Frankly, the Macs had the disadvantages of Linux and the disadvantages of Windows:
- Compared with Debian, software selection is rather pathetic. Under Debian, you can apt-get "foo" (or use Synaptic), and there's a pretty good chance that you will find whatever FOSS application you are looking for. "fink" isn't installed by default on Mac OS, and it's kind of a pain in the ass to install.
- Tweakability is severly lacking compared with Linux. There are "binary blobs" everywhere that you "shall not touch". Mac OS is almost as closed as Windows.
- Hardware support sucks. Part of what makes PCs great is that you can choose from many vendors. I can build a PC myself, or get the $150 eMachines PC (Black Friday at Best Buy) with monitor, or get a brand-new $500 laptop, or even get a used PIII box on eBay for under $200. Mac OS limits you to what Apple offers. What if I want a system that's smaller than the MacBook? What if I want a system with non-integrated graphics for under $1000? What if I want an SFF system that takes full-sized drives? What if I want to be able to upgrade my graphics? What if I want to add a TV tuner? Apple effectively has five products - PowerMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Mini. One of those products still isn't available in an x86 version. And what if I don't want an Intel CPU? What if I want to run x86-64 code? No Apple product can do this currently, but my two-year-old Athlon 64 junker can!
- Paying for OS upgrades sucks. GNOME and KDE get new features with every release. GNOME releases every 6 months, and I can get those upgrades for free. In this regard, OS X isn't really any better than Windows, although at least you have the option of paying for upgrades with OS X.
- The Dock sucks. It moves around a lot, it doesn't have text labels except on mouseover, it takes up a lot of room on the screen (and autohide makes it even more annoying), it's not very configurable, and it doesn't work well with a lot of applications. I ended up dragging the Applications folder to the Dock and using it as a quasi-Start-menu, but once you have done that, you might as well make it a button so that it's not constantly moving around. Moreover, put it in the darn corner so that I can click it easily. Apple users always talk about putting menubars at the top of the screen to take advantage of Fitt's law, yet they rarely talk about having an application launcher / window list that does the same. The Apple menu was far more useful in Mac OS 9 - I have no idea why they replaced it with a menu that is used far less frequently.
I have thought of buying a Mac and running Linux / Windows on it, but what's the point? Why pay more for a Mac unless you really like Mac OS X? I don't, and I know many others who do not. Slashdot users always talk about how great Mac OS X is, but I don't see it. I see a proprietary platform that lacks the openness of Linux and the compatibility of Windows. I see a GUI that is increasingly less consistent and increasingly more annoying. You can do so many things easily with Linux that are difficult to do with Mac OS X or Windows (hostap, anyone?). If I want the broadest library of software and the best hardware support, I run Windows. If I want a platform that is open and massively configurable, I run Linux. Where does Mac OS X fit?
"Guts" ? Mmm... Maybe I should get better informed with the evolution of the English slang. I knew "brass", "bread", "greens", "motsa" and "wad".
Thanks to you, I know I can add "Guts" to the list of terms used to designate money in my own personal lexicon.
My Background: My family bought their first Mac back in 1988. Since then we have probably bought 8 or 9 Macs. You can consider me a "Mac Fanboi" if you'd like because I easily fit the category. I tend to avoid using Windows machines, but I can do what I need on them just rather wouldn't like to deal with them. Right now I'm typing this on a G5 Tower I bought 2 years ago.
So now that that's out of the way this is what I have noticed. Being a Mac user in the 90s really sucked. Sure I still liked using Macs, but for whatever reason as soon as anyone found out you used one you'd be persecuted and ridiculed to no end. I lived through it and would try to counter arguments made, but the points I tried to make usually fell on deaf ears. I learned that while I wouldn't deny using a Mac or back down from an argument, I wouldn't go out of my way to declare myself a user. So I continued to use my Mac and enjoyed it...
Now in the past few years things have changed quite a bit. Most of the people around me started asking me why I used a Mac and overall everyone seemed curious about Macs. I'd tell them what I liked, would give them a demo, or whatever they wanted. I've actually helped at least 5 people I know move to Macs. This would have been unheard of before. I'm not even going out of my way, people are coming to me. While I don't have numbers or whatever on conversion rates, I can tell you there is a wave of people (however large or small) that are moving. IIn fact, I just got an email this last week from a high school buddy wondering if I still used Macs because he just bought a Macbook Pro and was loving it (never would have expected it coming from him). Apple is doing better than ever, and while they will probably never bee the guy on top, they are making ground.
Remember the Slashdot pool is very specific. While people fight over stuff like "closed systems," customizing hardware, or whatever other nerdy stuff you want to argue about, the average user: checks email, writes papers, downloads photos off their camera, and other basic things. They hate dealing with viruses, spyware, crashes, driver problems, or things that don't work. While Macs aren't perfect, they sure make a computer less an obstacle and more an extension of what the user wants to do.
and today's college student is tomorrow's employee/manager/consultant/IT pro/whatever. The education sector is one area that it pays to be in. Whoever has the future users will eventually gain the marketshare.
Granted I realize that Apple had a lot of the education market in my generation (I'm 27 now) but, Apple has grown up a lot in terms of it's offerings and what it can do (as have I). They've come a long way from the II/? systems that I programed BASIC on when I was 6 and the System ? machines I used when I was 12.
PC's had/are having their day because they are/were a commodity that could be cheaply aquired and had mass appeal for so long (because of their inexpensiveness and Windows inital ease of use). Hell, it created an industry JUST TO SUPPORT THEM. Mom and Pop could open a store selling PC's and make money from sale one. That's not so with Apple. It's not ness a closed archetechture as much as it is a closed market.
I own a powerbook and have switched my oranization (small business, 7 machines) to mac, but I"ll still hold my breath before tolling the deathknell of wintel.
But, Apple getting in good with the college students and such is definately an investment in their future. Especially with virtualization on the horizon. Not only that, but Apple offers dev tools with the OS, as well as guides etc on howto do develop software for the platform. Last time I looked at windows dev tools, they cost a small fortune (at least to a student) to purchase and work with.
At most conferences I go to, you can always rely on one or two others to have a DVI to SVGA cable handy if you forget it, but usually you're SOL if you need the latest version of Keynote. I feel superior at these conferences.
Not at OSCON. At my two talks, I had about 90% Macs in the audience. The amount in the hallways was a bit higher. I bet in the unlikely case that my Mac died, I could have asked for a replacement laptop with the latest Keynote and got more than one offer in either talk. Obviously, I was not as l33t as normal, and this is unacceptable. Maybe a nice black MacBook Pro would be a good choice for fashion victims like me. Apple, you listening? 15" Aluminum Powerbooks are too plebian!
Short story, though - In the highly desirable "O'Reilly geek" segment, Apple has won. Yay!
Andrew
Andrew van der Stock
You have to be one of the most zealous Mac fan boys I've ever seen (based on this and many of your previous posts). Dude, for god's sake, it's a fucking computing platform, and while a pretty nice one it's nowhere near the "be all, end all" solution you make it out to be.
They don't want to pay a premium for a Mac and shell out for a copy of XP. Besides, at least for now, using both OSes requires constant rebooting, which makes the idea pretty much a non-starter.
I won't shell out for XP on a new PC forget about getting it to run on a Mac, but I think it's a smart move for Apple. I also don't like the idea of havig to reboot to switch the OS. Now I may get and use Parallels to run 2000 in a window. I've heard that with Parallels though you can't cut and paste between Windows and Mac, and that is something I would want to do.
And, FWIW, the "Macs are more secure" marketing point goes right out the window the moment you run Windows on your Mac, which further reduces the incentive to pay the Mac premium.
It only goes out the window if you do something such as allow file sharing between MacOS and Windows, but if you don't then when Windows goes out you can still use MacOS. If they aren't tied to gether as in file sharing when Windows get infected it won't infect MacOS. Now if files are shared then there may be a possibility something like a Word macro may infect MacOS. But why wouldn't you setup file sharing so you can use them in both OSes? So that could be a problem.
FalconShould there be a Law?
...and if you don't buy the DRM crap and ask everyone you know not to buy it and they ask everyone they know etc. Then the manufacturers will just drop the whole idea,,, that was the way it used to work.
No. My company's network is laid out in a specific way, with specific goals and specific guidelines in mind. Allowing Joe Slacker to hook his Mac up and "groove" on our network isn't one of them.
All the laptops allowed on the network are company provided. Hence, they're all PCs and run locked-down Windows installs (and in the case of some of the networking staff, dual-booting Linux).
There is no legitimate need or funding for support for MacOS. And, in the case of the technical support staff, no desire.
I can understand how an utterly clue-free manager could cause problems with that. We've encountered a couple of mid-level managers who wanted to substitute the work-provided systems with their home machines, be they Macs or just their Dell Inspiron. However, it is spelled out in our network policy what exactly constitutes an authorized system on the network.
And when asked when we're going to support Macs, our response is, and has been some polite variant of "Hold your breath and count to infinity."
Our web apps support Mac via web browser. And that's about as much support as they're getting. And more than they deserve.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Content providers wouldn't let Apple do it anyway, whether or not Microsoft did it. A compliant system for HDCP requires that the signal path be fully encrypted from source to display, even in the software in the middle. If Apple were not to implement it then they wouldn't get certified, same as Microsoft, and consequently any hi-def content HDCP protected would get degraded.
Apple has something near as powerful as HDMI, that's called TPM, and that can do more than they are using right now.
It is the friggin' default
Where I work (a big investment bank in London), nearly all the techies in my project and another down the corridor have switched to macs. There are a few die-hard games players that want toys but they are in the minority. A lot of the techies I know outside work are also mac users. This has all happened over the last 2 years.
...
Most of these techies are really tired of putting up with the pathetic development environment that windows offers. Unfortunately we are forced to use windows in our day jobs. Of course, we have to switch off half the anti-virus software just so that we can compile code and work with our IDE's. We also need to reboot our machines regularly - although mostly done for us when emergency patches are applied overnight.
The fact is that there is nothing I do in my day job that wouldn't be improved by switching to a mac. It would certainly reduce the mismatch between dev and production environments which are all linux. But, I'm sure my employer got a great deal with M$
Window management on the Mac is the complete opposite from Microsoft Windows.
There actually *IS* a logic to the green "maximize" button - it (usually, with a few annoying exceptions) means "make this window as large as necessary to display its content (but no larger)".
On the Mac, literally *everything* is drag-and-drop - from text, via graphics, to file paths (drag an object from the Finder into a Terminal window or into an Open/Save dialog to instantly insert the file path there). And it is so across ALL applications that support the Macintosh window server (one reason why X11 apps will never be mainstream despite Apple's inclusion of the X11 framework), and it works across Exposé and Apple-Tab application switching. It's a pretty fundamental part of the Mac experience to work in layers of windows.
9 times out of 10, maximizing a window will add several inches of blank white or grey space to the left and right of content, while blocking access to and view of all other windows. That's just a waste of space, and it actually slows down a lot of tasks.
Hence the green-button behaviour.
On Windows, you often *need* a window maximized because you have the menu bar situated *within* the application window (and because you have the brain-dead "window *within* a window" paradigm).
Keep the application window too small, and you end up with a multi-row menu bar - an even greater ergonomic nightmare than the Windows menu bar is in its default, maximized state.
-analogika.
... history tells us over and over again that the masses would prefer to buy a broken dysfunctional Windows system, even knowing it to be so, over ANY clearly superior product, so long as they can get the Windows system cheaper.
And think about the likelihood that Microsoft, if it were actually faced with sales defections, would not sell Vista below cost in order to retain market share -- and then consider your answer in the light of what they have done with the Xbox (and will do with Zune).
Look back at the demise of OS/2, which had only a modest price premium over Windows 95 or Windows 3.1, and was snuffed into oblivion largely by the disdain of the consumer -- both public and corporate. While factors like Microsoft's forcing Windows to be the default install and squeezing the competition off the store shelves was a big factor, those things did not prevent users from purchasing a copy of OS/2 and installing it. The herd mentality was what killed OS/2.
Same thing with the promise of Linux taking the corporate world by storm. Here we have a situation where companies could skip a hardware upgrade, saving millions just by that alone, and avoid forever the annual or biannual Windows refresh and site licensing fees, which is an even larger amount over the long haul -- and how many have done just that?
For Macs to be successful in this devoutly desired "perfect storm" of sales, a large chunk of the herd will have to convert both hardware and software to something different and unfamiliar to them, forsaking the familiar comfort of viruses, worms and malware for clean simple straightforward apps that operate a bit differently.
How many corporations are capable of changing to a Mac platform, even one that runs Windows via either Boot Camp or Parallels, when they have entire support organizations dedicated to the premise of a seamless Windows world as far as the eye can see?
They will cheerfully pony up the ginormous amounts of cash to replace their entire hardware install bases in order to upgrade to Vista, based on the premise that they are "saving money" by not having to purchase 3rd-party anti-virus programs, or some other similarly vacuous concept. And John and Jane Publicus will merrily follow in kind with their home systems, because "that's what they run at work". The notion of needing only software that can read and write the same format documents is just beyond them.
I say this as a long-time Mac owner, so I know whereof I speak. A "Perfect Storm" of Mac sales is a marketing fantasy, nothing more. Ripples in the sales picture between 3% and 6% (or 8% or 9%) are just that -- ripples in the sales picture. For Macs to re-gain a market share in the double digits would require a substantial fraction of the herd to break away, and for herd animals, that just doesn't happen. They get concerned and agitated at the thought of leaving the herd, and most that do will eventually return to it.
Free will and rational thought are illusory concepts that have no place in human societies. Just take a look at the front pages (via pixels or atoms) of any major newspaper and ask if this is the logical, rational way in which the world seems to work.
Beam me up Scotty -- there's no intelligent life on this world.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Big call for a company that hasnt explicity stated that it WONT push heavy DRM. If it smells like fan boy...
Viruses, Infections, Spyware, Trojans, Adware....
Geewhiz, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away I used to be a rabid Apple fanatic. I mean the Apple ][ days. I Looooooooved my machines. Sniffed at Commodore, IBM and all the rest. Then the company made the fortune 500 on the backs of all the ][ users. They then decided that they were no longer interested in the home user they wanted the corporate market. I think most can recall the AppleIII ( which was out during the ][ days just not doing well) the Lisa and of course the very first Macs. So the dark Sith lords decided to dump all support and reasonable priced ( at that time) products for home users. I heard the message loud and clear "Thank you for helping us get our business going...now fuck off and die" After buying a ][, then a ][+ and a ][e and was looking at the ][ gs I heard they would no longer support any ][ series. If you wanted Apple you were going to get a Mac or nothing. Considering my ][e cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $2500 before I added extras the thought of paying about double for a Mac was rather distasteful. So I got turned to the dark side. Am I a M$ or *nix fanboy..not by any means. But then again I am not an IMO's pizza fan boy either but I buy from them rather than from Dominos who tried to fuck me. I am constantly amazed by the number of folks who will roll over and wave their legs in the air anytime their ( insert favorite item here ) maker decides to fuck em hard and doesn't even give em a reach around. I feel Apple screwed me ( and a bunch of others ) so they will never get anymore of my money.
In the three years I've been using my Mac, my PC has been stuck with its 2003 hardware and besides the Battlefield series it's not been seeing much in the way of games.
... Vista beta on an Athlon XP could be wrong in some people's eyes!) but I've less and less use for it. With an Intel Mac around now too, the PC's main purpose is as a fileserver with a copious stack of old hard drives.
... but ask any switcher and you may get the same kind of thing from them. Even if they still love mixing Mac with PC.
I used to play a lot more before i got my PowerBook. But the buggyness, loudness and the feeling that my computer was getting in the way of my work made me contemplate the switch and then go with it.
I think a similar tale is often found with switchers. Your habits change over the first few months with your new machine and you find yourself at a distance from your older kit. There's nothing essentially wrong with my PC (well
Does Apple own my soul? Have I bought into a cult? Nah. I think it's more about the interdependence between what hardware you have and what you actually wind up doing with it. In the old days games were what I did, as they actually behaved better than the desktop itself a lot of the time anyway. Since then, yeah I'm a bit busier and don't want to play as much anyway, but also I don't really feel compelled to. I'm fine with my computer doing whatever. It's like a need has finally been satisfied.
Not the sort of statement to make on Slashdot I know
"they know that content protection is a royal pain in the ass for consumers, but either they play along or they don't get the content."
Or they could make a little use of their undeniable monopoly to push the standards-makers to back off on the content protection requirements. You don't think they have any clout in writing the standards? They gain from the DRM requirements in that it will make media playback in Linux (and even pre-Vista Windows) more difficult. They gain a little, customers lose a lot.
...at my desktop and nearly none of my work apps have Mac versions yet, or have declared any intent to provide such in future. Looks like I'm stuck in PC land for another few years at least. There are alternatives for some, but if I actually wanted to switch, I'd have done so already as all are available on the PC. For the rest there just plain isn't an alternative yet.
Currently looking at:
3D Studio Max
Promotion
IS Nitro dev tools
ProDG
A slew of inhouse tools, both old (MFC) and new (.Net+C#)
The inhouse tools are the big killer. It'd take us months just to get back up to speed.
I wonder how many professionals are faced with the same prospects? If there's any truth to the article, it's probably that now the Mac's traditional niches (dtp, photo/video/audio editing) are pretty much saturated, the main stream casual user is the likely next gain within reach.
The only thing missing now is gaming. That's still a mess on the Apple side, where it really oughtn't be. If I were Apple, I'd be courting devs and forcing open revenue streams to entice others. Publishers (the people who control all the cash) just have no incentive to try Apple now, and without publishers you have no way into distribution. A couple of years of heavy investment in starting up the iTunes equivalent of XBox Live Arcade would do wonders to Apple household uptake in the future, I reckon.
"You'll love it, especially if you love the command line environment of Linux."
/proc/bus/usb/devices, or lsmod, or insmod something. It's cryptic, but at least I know where to look for clues.
... I might as well use a F/OSS system like Linux on cheaper commodity hardware.
The mac seems to be alright, if you only need a single user sitting at the console, like Windows. But I can't work with it in the same way that I work with Linux. What's especially nice about Linux is I can leave my computer on and access it from anywhere else on the internet. X11 is the common denominator for every application, so I can ssh in and run even a graphical program remotely. That doesn't seem to work naturally on OSX...I could probably track down how to run sshd, I suppose...but there's still no Cocoa-to-X translation so I can run OSX programs remotely.
The other problem I've had with the Mac is finding as good a library of F/OSS software (especially prebuilt). It seems to be harder to find things prebuilt for OSX, or that are ready to configure/make/make install (without having to track down a bunch of libraries first) - particularly if I want the latest version. (For example, the Apple-provided netpbm utilities seem to be missing some of the variations that Linux has...on linux, it's clear that a download/configure/make/make install is the thing to do. Is that OK on OSX too?)
Apple also tends to have a proprietary feel about limiting features. For example, OSX has a SMB client to view Windows shares (but doesn't have a SMB server, I think). I could probably install Samba (would that interfere with OSX's built in network, or would that be ok?), but it would be no different than installing it on Linux - I'd still have to do text-based administration using smb.conf. (Apple seems to think that being an SMB server merits another $600 for the server version of OSX...even Microsoft throws it into XP Home.) If I wanted to worry about client licenses or limiting features unless you shell out $600 more, I could go back to Windows.
I'm also curious as to whether anyone's made a Cocoa-like library for linux. It seems like someone could probably write a library that emulates most of Cocoa's features, but acts as a wrapper for Qt or Gtk. Then, if I wrote for Cocoa, I could use it cross-platform on Linux or possibly even Windows.
I've also had bad luck upgrading hardware in Macs. (I've never had an "It just works" moment with a Mac.) I tried installing an ATAPI CD-RW drive in a Mac that had come with a read-only drive. Reading works fine, and I can write discs using a third party shareware utility, but the Finder won't recognize the drive as a writer. I saw something that would let you create some sort of device description file that was supposed to make it work, but it didn't. On linux, it _just works_. There's no magic description file. I also tried to find a wireless networking card for the Mac. The store had an entire aisle of cards & USB devices for Windows, but exactly one for the Mac. What should have been a $30 item (for Windows) was $200. Now, that's as much CompUSA's fault as Apple's, perhaps, but still, couldn't Apple have a talk with some hardware vendors about writing drivers? (Network cards still seem to come with Novell and OS2 drivers...they can't do an OSX driver while they're at it?) Or write drivers on their own, like Linux does? Plus, the sequence of "run installer/reboot/hope OSX recognizes the network this time" makes it about as difficult to debug as Windows. At least with Linux I can cat
I dunno, it just seemed like for most of the things I wanted (SMB server, apache, php, postgres, cross-platform development, bash, assortment of little utilities like tar/gz/netpbm, bigger free packages like Gimp/OpenOffice because I don't have $1k for photoshop/MSoffice when I can get most of the functionality I need for free) the Mac offered little to no advantage over Linux. I couldn't take advantage of Apple's graphical configuration because I'd be using third party packages. I just don't see how OSX would significantly improve my workflow, so
You are obviously someone who likes to "fiddle" with a computer, as opposed to using it for a specific task. Since that's the case, you should definitely stay with Linux or Windows. OS X is good for users who just want to do average things with a computer--without all the "tweaking" and dinking around that other OSs require. I think most people would consider that a plus, but in your case it's a minus. Different strokes.
I'd say the comparison to BeOS, Atari ST, etc. fits. The downward trend in market share is reminiscent, at least: "...Apple's share of the worldwide PC market has tumbled from 4.6 percent in 1996, the year before Jobs returned, to just 2.2 percent in 2005." http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/bus iness/columnists/mike_langberg/14191452.htm?source =rss&channel=siliconvalley_mike_langberg
Hang on to the side of your pressboard desk from Walmart because this is probably going to be a big shock to you; not everyone surfs porn or uses pirated copies of software!! Have you caught your breath yet??? This one will give you chest pains...believe it or not, some folks actually produce beneficial and even wage-earning output from these silly little paperclips!
The amazing thing was that it worked at all prior to defrag.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Going to 64 bit at the application when you don't have to (and if you have to, you know it) blows away performance. That's why Windows on the AMD64 is still as 32-bit as it can get away with, and why Mac OS X on the G5 is only 64-bit for background jobs.
This isn't to say that there aren't good arguments for many of your conclusions, but this isn't one of them.
Apple's not ready in the slightest for the hoards of "average" users for support.
I've had two dead MacBooks, and their idea of customer service is falling apart under the load of the crud they're releasing.
Read all about it here.
From someone who enjoys computers of all types and has had one since 1982, my MacBook was an overpriced waste of money at this point.
+++OK ATH
Hate to rain on everyone's parade, but a "Perfect Storm" of Mac sales isn't likley to happen anytime soon, if that means widespread purchases & use of Macs. The iPod "halo effect" is there, but it's weak, and we're already seeing it in the current sales numbers FWIW. Corporate IT people still scoff at the Mac - maybe not as loudly as before, but they would never bet their jobs on any kind of a switch (and betting their jobs they would be if they migrated their departments). I certainly haven't heard of any big companies adopting Macs en masse recently. Mac sales will probably continue to increase a bit on home sales, but even an incredibly optimistic near-50% growth per year still gives Apple only single digit market shares as 2010 closes in. And growth like that is not likely to happen. To put things in perspective, last year's total PC market was estimated by IDC at about $218B, and Apple accounted for just over $8B of that from Mac sales. Apple has a long way to go before Macs stop being a rarity.
In the 90's there were so many preposterous predictions of a 'beleaguered' Apple's demise that MacObserver started the Apple Death Knell Counter. With Apple's (deserved) good fortunes now and the irrational exuberance shown by many of the same pundits maybe someone should start an Apple World Domination Counter instead.
I got my first Mac a couple months ago (a G4 Gigabit Ethernet, soon followed by a Quicksilver 2002). The computers and OS are neat, but the RDF and blind PC bashing of the Mac owners I've corresponded with often makes me want to run for the hills. If you want the rest of the world to join you in OS X, chill out a bit!
Also, poking around in the Powermac cases quickly reveals why they cost so much: multiple layers of steel and plastic when I'd be perfectly happy with a cheaper and just-as-functional beige box, needlessly complex latching mechanism, sound-deadening gasket between panels (and the top panel still buzzes and rattles if I put the computer in certain spots on my desk). Everyone raves about Apple styling, but it's only cosmetic, and it comes at a steep price. The aftermarket gouges you on Mac-specific accessories, too.
They are nice computers. For now, I'll keep one foot in the Apple world, one in the Windows world, and one in the Linux world.
-Rich
test...sorry
Well, let's see.
Yeah, I admit, it was funky, although logical in a kind of twisty way, when Apple chose that paradigm.
What metaphor should they have chosen?
A picture of a cowboy getting off his horse? (un-mount. Get it?)
uhm, uhm, uhm, a picture of a mainframe tech pulling a tape off a tape drive?
(And how does one tell an icon representing mount from umount?)
A picture of a folder falling off the desk? Or the folder being moved from the desk to a filing cabinet? Well, how about the cabinet itself being wheeled into the safe? Or, maybe, wheeled out the front door?
The only decent idea I could come up with back then was having a duplicate trash folder on the desktop, with the icon changed to an open door or window.
Something to represent off-line?
Well, trash is off-line.
An open door or window also might invoke off-line.
Now that the descendents of boom-boxes are common small appliances even in less developed countries (yeah, less than what, and in what ways), the eject button ideograph makes a good descriptive image, too.
There were some (3rd party) system extensions that allowed one to change the icon on the fly -- when you started to drag the icon of a removable volume on the desktop, the trash icon changed to an icon of the user's choice. Common choices for the alternative icons were open windows and doors, and also that eject button image.
(I didn't like extensions multiplying like rabbits, and I didn't mind the trash metaphor, so I never even bothered keeping the duplicate trash with a different icon.)
So, now, in Mac OS X, when you start to drag the icon of a volume on the desktop, the trash icon changes to that eject-button ideograph. Where's the beef?
(I did note that dragging a volume icon from that panel on the left of the metal Finder window does not change the trash icon. I could presume that preparing the puff-of-smoke swallows the event?)
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Whilst many Apple products /are/ quite stable, let's put the real credit for this where it's due: Jobs is a master showman - all else aside, I remember reading the behind-the-scenes look at one of his presentations, where he spends weeks personally involved and scripting, testing and re-testing, tweaking every little detail.
You have to be one of the most zealous Mac fan boys I've ever seen
No, he's not. You're an anti-fanboy, just as annoying, and a lot more common. FOAD.
I read through most of the + modded comments so far and I did not see where anyone hit on what would seem to me to be a major point of issue. How much of a "Perfect Storm" of sales could Apple deal with before excessive back order times limited additional sales increases? I don't know the actual numbers, but using say 10% as a current market share for new sales, an increase to 30% would require a 200% increase in manufacturing, quickly. Could they pull this off, and keep quality high? How about support lines and service turn around time? I know call centers can be set up over night but would they have adequate staff sufficiently trained for such an event?
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
I don't make predictions, and I never will.
While some of the differences he noted as benefits of the Mac I interpreted as real, some fraction were trivial (possibly beneficial but not enough for me to care) and some were related to software which comes pre-installed on a Mac (especially multimedia software), which the average user may or may not care about.
Also, many of his complaints about Windows are, in my opinion, about specifically about his Windows box. As the "computer guy" among friends and family, I note that people who complain the most about their Windows PCs are people who bought low-end boxes. For my part, I have been buying from PC "boutiques" for years now and am very happy with them. While really high-end Windows boxes from places like Falcon Northwest are pricey, very good Windows hardware can be obtained from vendors like Velocity Micro for a modest premium over commodity hardware (Dell, HP) prices. Running Windows XP on such hardware, I have experienced very few of the issues featured in typical complaints about Windows (crashing, etc.).
But I guess I cheap PC lappie won't be as "cool" as an Apple. Seems like the majority of the folks I see at the local cyber-cafe have Macs, though they are a small fraction of the market. I guess that's what you want when you want to be seen.
Let me start by saying I'm typing this on an HP running Windows and I've used Windows exclusively since 2001, and mostly since '98. The only reason I didn't say exclusively since '98 was because of a class I took where we used Macs as well as having an old Mac. My point in saying this is to say I'm not a Mac fanboy, though I do like Macs. I have bought four brand new PCs for myself, two Gateways, the HP I'm using now, and another one from Microway. Of the four the only one I have not had hardware or software problems with is the one from Microway which runs NT4. Well in a way I did, do, have a hardware problem with the Microway. The cpu is a DEC Alpha I haven't been able to install most of the software I bought.
The first Gateway I got and the HP I'm using now have both had tha harddisk and the motherboard fail within the first year of buying new. The second Gateway, a laptop, the lcd display cracked within a couple of months and Gateway wouldn't cover it. Now I have also bought two used Macs, an SE 30 I bought in 1992 which was about 2 years old and a Power Mac 7300/200 I got in 2000 which was about three years old. The Power Mac I only used a few months without problems but the SE 30 I used until 2000 when the floppy drive finally failed. I was able to use it for 8 years without problems. The PCs I've had I haven't been able to use one year without problem.
Because of this, my personal experiences with both Macs and PCs, my next computer will be a Mac. I don't want to have trouble using a computer, I just want it to work! I've gotten that from Macs whereas PCs have bedeviled me. If it doesn't work it doesn't matter how cheap it is.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Is using the same architecture PC manufactures have been using for over 30 years.
Riiiiiiight.
ExpressCard/34, FireWire, USB 2.0, EFI and Core Duo processors have been around soooooooo long.
But the first, second and third through 73rd times I hit the menu looking for a command that doesn't exist because I don't know which window has focus I think, Why can't they make a mac more like Windows?
The idea of focus is a pretty advanced concept for most users and it isn't obvious to me that the Mac is less aggravating in this respect. Why does any OS let ANY app steal focus?
For my other pet peeves, I still think double-clicking an icon is more intuitive for installation than dragging and dropping (especially in this web age when we mostly don't drap and drop things anymore AND why oh why does it do ANYTHING when I double-click it if I'm supposed to drag it?). I still hate creating a burn folder, took me forever to figure that one out and NOT because I'm SO used to Windows. In part, it's because the content-to-be-burned is displayed as a shortcut, so the question is, did it create a shortcut or will it actually burn content? And it wasn't obvious to me that Itunes needs a special action to transer Itunes files that are ALL completely unprotected. Wasted more DVDs that way.
Yes, Mac OSX is way ahead of those other guys. But there's no reason why further improvement hasn't been made.
A friend of mine just got bit by the Windows Genuine Advantage bug.
She decided that instead of spending $150 on "genuine" XP license, she was going to put it toward the purchase of a new MacBook.
Her wonderful experience with her iPod certainly made her more comfortable with the idea of switching.
Are you saying that your Gateway was one-button?
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
I was talking about how if I decided to buy a Mac Book pro I would want to have a two button trackpad.
And my gateway comes with two buttons.
-ed
So you see what had happened was....