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Apples Are For Grannies?
RoboJock writes "So much for Justin Long — the young, hip 'n' trendy face of the Apple Mac (as seen in the 'Mac vs. PC' ads) is even further removed from the average Mac owner than everyone suspected... By three or four decades. According to research discussed at Silicon.com, 'nearly half of Mac owners are 55 and older — that's almost double the share for average home-PC users.' It seems the young guns don't have the extra cash to stump up for smooth shiny aesthetics." From the article: "For the digital youth, high-street box shifter Gateway is the brand of choice, taking the number-one slot among PC buyers aged between 18 and 25. Dan Ness, principal at MetaFacts, said in a statement: 'Apple can claim long-time loyalists but its future among the young technoliterati is an interesting dynamic.'"
During the 80s, Apple inundated the public schools with cheap computers in the hopes of getting us young, impressionable children use to the idea of using Apple PCs. It was a good idea but, sadly for them, most of our parents bought IBM compatible. For me the idea of a good Apple computer that I enjoy using is an old IIe that I played the Oregan Trail on in elementary school. Many of those teachers from the 80's, however, are still die-hard Mac fans. That's what they used in their work environment and they have often been hesitant toward changing even if they are now 20 years behind. Now, those teachers are 40+.
I call BS on this.. Looking from a personal perspective, I bought my first mac myself when I was 13... iBook 500 g3.. set me back $1800.
I'm currently the owner of a Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz MacBook Pro. I'm a 19 year old college student. My two 18 year old roomates have macbooks; one has a white one, one a black. My brother (16) has an iBook g4, as does his roomate, my cousin. One of my other cousins (14) has a black macbook.
Looking at sales figures, my school, which has educational purchase partnerships with dell and apple, is currently selling 50% dells and 50% apples to students (Waaay up from the 75/25 split it has been closer to for previous years).
And, subjectively, I'm seeing more and more macs amongst my peers. Apple's sales figures recently support this. It wasn't long ago when apple was having a tough time selling a million macs in a year. They're now well over that (1.6 or so million) in a QUARTER.
appleguru.org
What does "high-street box shifter" mean?
You're obviously not a POME (prisoner of mother England), or as the Ozzies say it, "whinging POME bastard".
"high-street box shifter" is roughly a main street high volume store
Well I think the same can be said of something like the VW Beetle. When the new Beetle debuted in the late 90s, it was being pushed as the trendy hip-mobile for young urbanites. But when you actually looked at who owned and drove these things, it was the 45-55 crowd. Hell my own mom (in her 60s) wanted one because it reminded her of her 20s when she wanted the original VW Beetle. I think this is laregly planned on the part of these companies. Just like the Mustang is all the rage now with the 45-55 male set. It reminds them of when they were 18 and they used to lust after the original Mustangs.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
This configuration is what you get with a standard Ubuntu (or just about any other distro) install (install in about an hour on everything I've tried). Add EasyUbuntu for the mp3 codec(5 minute tweak).
What else would you spend any time on? This is a no-brainer.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
For my 65+ year old inlaws, it only took me about an hour to setup the various proprietary codecs and plugins (thanks Adobe, Apple and Microsoft!) as well as decss so they could surf the web and play DVD's. OS X is great in its own way, but Ubuntu on a $499 Lenovo laptop makes for a sweet "simple" system for computer-phobes.
STFU about slashdot bias.
Quick search and I found this article from two years ago. Go down to the third paragraph. I have been reading auto magazines off and on for the past six years and Toyota has been trying to address what they believe is an 'image problem' for at least that long.
I find it's both. It's shiny and pretty, and when you know how to use it it's insanely functional. There are all kinds of key commands that make productivity on OS X far surpass that on XP (for me). There's system wide automatic spellchecking, good window management, and I've yet to mention how wonderful Spotlight is.
Like any OS you're going to have to learn it to get use out of it. If you don't put in the time you're not going to get the result.
As for the digging around in your OS, I've found OS X to be _much_ better than XP. Let's see, I can use bash, or I can use a shell that isn't as useful as the one that came with OS/2. Once again it takes some time to learn the OS X conventions, where files are, what you can change without breaking things horribly, etc. And I'll be the first to admit that Linux is (generally) more hackable. XP fanboys go ahead and flame me, but I think I am right here.
A lot of linguistics and foreign language majors like Macs because very simple key combinations give you, at least, basic accenting abilities.
Wow, I just typed "Option-c" on my Mac to do the same thing... ç
I like being able to change the internals of my computer without buying a whole new machine, and that's something that Mac just doesn't offer.
Oh bullshit, Satanic Puppy. See those cute little rectangular slot-like things on the side of my MacBook? They're USB2 ports. See the one right next to it that looks like an elongated capital D? That's a FireWire port. See how you can plug all kinds of goodies into them? Like this 320GB hard drive here? Or this card reader?
And when it comes to doing stuff like adding more RAM or a bigger, badder Hard Drive, did you know that if you do it yourself, you don't void the warranty? Apple is getting smarter about geeks who like to tinker. They sell "DIY Kits" for things like RAM and HD upgrades now. The MacBook maxes out at 2GB of RAM, though. Then again most computers do nowadays, except the ultra-leet MacPro. 16 GB/2 TB is the max there if I remember correctly.
Hell, if you want a Mac you can tinker with endlessly, the MacPro is the ultimate dream machine for that. Twin Core 2 Duo Xeons, baby. 4 cores. Right now that's the Bull Goose Badass Mac. And it's 100% open, and you won't have to call Apple and ask "mother may I" if you change more than three things on it. Don't like the video card? Change it.
As far as this MacBook goes, $1,300 is pretty modest coin for a lightweight, widescreen Core 2 Duo notebook with 1GB RAM standard. That's how much it cost. And I got a $200 student discount. Three words: eat my cyberdust.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.