Slashdot Mirror
Apple's Leopard Strategy to Kill Microsoft and Dell?
RX8 writes "A Digital Trends article suggests that Apple's Leopard agenda is to get Windows users to use Apple hardware then convert them to the Apple camp and that Apple will also be directly targeting Dell by offering a better experience when it comes to media and related tasks. Lastly, they suggest that Steve Jobs held back on showing more Leopard features so people would not get too excited and stop buying in 2006. 'If you get too excited about what is supposed to be an incredibly amazing product you simply won't buy a new Apple this year.'"
Don't forget that the author is Rob Enderle, who tends to defend Microsoft and SCO with all his heart and bitches regularly on Apple and Linux... Do a quick Google on him...
"I haven't seen Jaguar, yet"
Jaguar?? I presume you meant to say "Leopard"
"I do know watching a 640x480 WMV on OSX is like upsampling a 160x120 video into 1080 high-def- UGLY"
Not at all. A 640x480 wmv file on windows has the same resolution as on OS X. They play fine with the flip4mac plug-in for quicktime. VLC can handle a lot of them too.
I chose to end my comments, not with a rim shot, but a long decaying F#7sus4
They already do, Apple's machines are competitive with Dell's offering of the same price (depends of the rebates you grab though, but Apple's price are lower than equivalent Dell machines without rebates), and you get OSX + slick cases (versus ugly dell cases).
They just don't compete on the very low end stuff (dell goes much lower in price/configurations quality)
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
FTFA:
"However, Steve Jobs is the master of being your best buddy while planning to stab you in the back. His biographies are filled with stories that do more than suggest that if he wants what you have, you'd better grab it and run for the hills."
Please. History is littered with the corpses of companies with which Microsoft formed a "strategic partnership"-- The MS people stick around and play nice for a while, then one day the other company gets notified that Microsoft wants to go in another direction so the partnership is over. Then a couple months later Microsoft unveils a competing product and kills the company with which they partnered.
The best historical example I can think of is Go Corp in the late 80s/early 90s-- Microsoft partnered with them, stole their stuff and created Pen Windows to crush them. You can get accounts of it from both sides if you read these two books. However, Microsoft is doing the exact same thing right now: They are desperate to take marketshare from iPod/iTunes. To that end, their partnerships to make portable players and sell music under the "PlaysForSure" moniker have been miserable failures-- so now, they are screwing their partners and rolling their own solution in-house, Zune, which is stated incompatible with all the PlaysForSure stuff.
~Philly
Could you please flag articles by this unmitigated idiot so I don't wast the click. Reading his drivel is not worth anybodys time.
WMV's look identical on the Mac as they do on Windows. Its the exact same file. They can be played through QuickTime using Flip4Mac, VLC, or mplayer without problems.
WMV and Real are just as good on the Mac as they are in Windows.
For proof that this post is rubbish, look at the fact that the poster refers to "Jaguar" That was the code name for 10.2. That was many years ago.
Debunked.
Not to ruin a good joke, but just for future reference when you're using this kind of joke, "Puma" has already been used (it was the codename for Mac OS X 10.1) - it's just that Apple didn't really promote the "cat" codenames as official product names until 10.2 with Jaguar.
H.264 is an Open Standard, as a part of MPEG-4. Apple's implementation is not Open Source, but there are Open Source implementations of H.264, the most notable of which is X.264.
When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
This is just something that's never going to change with Apple. They have a standard of quality that makes their brand quite valuable, and that's due to not stooping too low and slapping the Apple logo on a piece of crap. If you get their cheapest Mac, you can still rest assured it will be an awesome machine in its own right. You get the cheapest Dell, and you're just in for a poor experience.
Besides, remember the $100 laptop project? Steve Jobs offered OS X for free to run on those things. The project rejected the offer because they wanted it to be open source, then went with Red Hat (who just so happened to have donated to the project). So because of them, the world missed out on having a $100 Mac. Ugh.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I thought this was a neat trick, since I wasn't aware that Intel were shipping 2.8GHz Core Duos. The Dell site is a horrible mess, so I wasn't able to find the machine you were looking at. I did find the Dimension 9200. This was $1,574 with a 1.86GHz Core Duo. I also found the Dimension 5150c, starting at $779 with a 2.8GHz Pentium D as an option for $50 more.
The Pentium D is based on the old NetBurst microarchitecture which (in case you missed the last five years) is slower than pretty much anything else clock-for-clock. It's also very high power and hence heat, so needs more cooling, meaning it's likely to be louder.
If you are going to compare like with like, then please do so. Please post links, and please at least try to have slightly more clue than '2.8 is a bigger number than 1.8 so it must be better.'
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I take it you've not looked at the specs. Four graphics cards, each with dual-head, is a built-to-order option.
you want the best processor you need go out and buy it because apple does not offer core duo 2 extreme edition like alienware and dell
The Core 2 EE is the top of the consumer line. I don't know how it compares with Woodcrest, but I would be very surprised if it beats it.
the best sound cards are for PCs
The really high-end kit tends to work with OS X. The middle of the range stuff, like Creative Labs' offerings, is often Windows-only though.
things like watercooling or high end psu are only supported by PCs
I take it you missed the PowerMac G5 shipping with watercooling as standard. In fact, I'd be very surprised if you found a PC case with better thermal engineering than a Mac Pro. I've taken a PowerMac G5 apart, and it's quite amazing on the inside. As for PSUs, the one shipped with the Mac Pro can handle 4 hard drives, 4 graphics cards, 4 cores, and still have enough power left over for external FireWire devices. How much more high end do you want?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
± 29 dB
Mac Pro
dual 3.0Ghz Xeon woodcrests
1 Gig RAM
4x 500GB SATA
nVidia Quadro FX 4500
23" cinema display
Mac OSX
3-Year AppleCare
$7676
Dell Precision Workstation 690
dual 3.0Ghz Xeon woodcrests
1 Gig RAM
4x 500GB SATA
nVidia Quadro FX 4500
24" widescreen flat panel
Windows XP x64 edition
3-Year Basic onsite
$8546
Dude, just don't buy RAM from Apple.
---k--
</stupid>