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Is Apple Doing All It Can to Beat Vista?
aalobode writes "The New York Times is running an article on the narrowing window that Apple has for beating Microsoft's Vista. According the Times, not enough has been done to capitalize on the Mac user experience versus the 'world of hurt that is Vista'. It also points out that that restructuring of Apple leaves ambiguities about Apple's exact commitment to the computer end of its business. The article calls MS Vista's certified vendors, developers and driver writers a flywheel that takes a while coming up to speed - and then becomes unstoppable."
they both can start by lowering their prices
Once SP1 hits, the flywheel's going to spin a LOT faster.
Well, I agree on the flywheel example. Very good one actually.
I've been tempted to buy a Mac, but I game - and for the cost of a 17" Imac with pretty crappy video, I recently built a Core2 Quad 2.4ghz, 2gb ram, 500gb disk, Geforce 8800GTS, etc.
If apple were to release a PowerMac chassis at a slightly less inflated price, i'd be pretty keen... but double the cost of what I built? No thanks...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Steve Jobs has picked the iPhone as Apple's next platform. Maybe he should of focused on getting Leopard out this year to steal Vistas thunder. Only time will tell if he has made the right choice.
I think that the place where Apple design realy shines is in portable stuff. Both their iPod and laptop lines seem to be good examples. I have seen a lot of people switch to Apple laptops the last two years.
I was never too thrilled about their iMac, it seems that in the desktop arena, Apple design does not give so much of an edge, and their only advantage (and disadvantage) is their OS.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
It would help a lot if people who want to run OSX aren't artificially tied to the Mac platform.
:(
I know, I know - the hardware is where Apple makes most of its money, but I think they could also make a fair bit from a licensing scheme similar to that of Windows - "OSX Certified" stickers could place a premium on parts like motherboards, network cards, sound cards, and the like.
Apple can't really say that their OS only works on their hardware any more, because it's quite easily hacked to run on anything, so they may as well make the best of the situation.
I know I'd be more likely to buy "OSX for generic PCs" than Windows Vista, but sadly, it's unlikely to happen. It looks like for the moment, I'm stuck on a Hackintosh with no networking if I wish to use OSX
Not even 5% of the availability or support for Linux distros, in any case.
.Net and ASP apps on the one hand; and Web-based apps on the other, mainly on Linux servers. Apple Macs have less than 1% presence in the h/w space; so there's no incentive for s/w development on the Mac platform.
In the US, in any market; the marketshare is something like this:
Top 3 or 4 vendors: 80%
All the rest share the balance 20%
In Europe, I believe in all sectors except the IT sector, the top vendors collectively share less than 50% market share - thanks to strict measures to combat monopoly and anti-trust issues.
In India (where I live) the only desktop s/w that as any sizable usage is Tally (a financial accounting s/w). All other appln. s/w have a very fragmented marketplace; and it's nearly a 50-50 split between desktop,
Last week, I was evaluating a PACS solution for the hospital I consult with - and a s/w vendor suggested Osirix - an open source app. that works only on Mac hardware. We will be implementing this shortly. A few years back, SGI had products in this niche, but they have disappeared now (I used to work for an SGI dealer).
Apple did try to set up shop in India, but strangely packed up and dismissed the thought a few months later. Unless Apple build up their presence in the hardware segment; they will not be a meaningful alternative to the Windows world - Vista or otherwise. Except in miniscule niche segments perhaps.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Whether or not [commercial] developers develop for an operating system has the largest impact on how well an operating system suceeds. With the .net framework, Microsoft has secured a very strong foothold in the programming world. Using the .net framework, you can create powerful, attractive, large applications very rapidly. While, it hasn't taken hold so much in the gaming development world, xna and directx 10 may change this. Moving to development for linux or mac when you are already a .net developer is a daunting and painful experience. One issue with developing on the mac is that you have to use a strange language called Object-C if you want to develop cocoa applications(which you do). Object-C is a bizare attempt at making C object oriented that was created before C++ was introduced.
With the New York Times putting fawning articles like this in front of millions of readers every day, why would Apple want to spend money to do the same?
As a lifelong Apple fanboy (all Apple since 1982, thanks), I can say without a doubt that there's not been a better time to be an Apple fanboy in 20 years. We actually have some street cred now. IT departments no longer laugh dismissively at the idea of perhaps a Mac in the office, maybe. (Though corporate America is a long way from embracing Macs. And Apple originally lost the PC war because most consumers bought what they had at work for home (and, hey, it was a little cheaper).) People are actually buying Macs. Sales are up; growth is up. The article makes a big deal of Apple not starting its relationship with Best Buy soon enough to gain a retail presence. Hello? NYT, two years ago Apple barely had the cred and was still working on retail presence for the iPod. I bought my iPod at Target; I've vowed never to buy so much as a blank CD at Best Buy after some of its shady business practices, and if Apple wanted to just make the Mac available to more people, it'd sell them everywhere the iPods are sold. How far away is that? Well, they'd have to be able to make enough Macs to put them there, but I bet we'll see it someday.
Most people want uniformity in their lives, and don't want the hassle of having to learn two operating systems etc. Even if Vista sucks, people are likely to wait for it to improve rather than go buy a Mac. If I was replacing all the machines that I use (at work and home) at once, I would definitely want a Mac. But I am never going to replace all machines at once. Most businesses, even when starting up, are not going to chose Macs because it will be difficult to hire IT folks to support them (since there are fewer IT people who know Macs), and it will be additional cost to train the new employees on how to use Macs (since 98% of them have never used a Mac).
Bottom line, however hard Apple tries, it is going to make miniscule chages in its market share as far as Macs go. It is better to break into new markets (iPhones, iPods).
You know, this isn't a text message. You can say "software". You don't have to say "s/w"
and hasn't since Jobs took over. There was a period when Apple's main goal was to increase market share. When they licensed the mac os to run on third party hardware (I have a mac clone from back in the day). It almost killed apple.
Ultimately, to take any significant chunk of the PC space, apple would need to start releasing hardware on a much smaller profit margin in order to compete with Dell, Gateway, Acer, and Lenovo. This would destroy Apple's profits and company, as the Apple clones fiasco empirically demonstrated.
On the other hand, Apple's current strategy of releasing high profile hardware to a niche market has done phenominally well for them. They've stayed profitable, and have boosted their marketshare to an incredible high compared to historical values.
If you'd bought apple stock and google stock at the time google went IPO, your apple stock would have outperformed your google stock by 3 or 4 times. Apple is doing *very* well and has no incentive to move away from their current low volume, high profit margin strategy. They are essentially skimming the creme of the consumer crop with their products.
I bought a Mac Book Pro more than a year ago. Still love it. At work, I support PC's with only a sprinkling of Macs. We have Exchange for E-mail. Entourage still doesn't play nice with our server (not sure why, I only manage two small AD domains).
Just wondering out loud - do Blackberries work with OS X? Hmmm.... looks like you can synch with and Exchange server and OS X.
http://www.pocketmac.net/products/pmblackberry/
We currently have a consulting group that manages our Exchange server - they only support Blackberries with Outlook - no Entourage support.
Maybe the new release of an Office suite for OS X might help, but the only way I can see Apple gaining on HP, Dell, etc, is by ramping up production and selling Macs in all the major outlets - Circuit City, Walmart, etc, instead of the cool but boutique-type Apple stores.
If Joe and Mary Computer shopper don't see it as they wander the mega-store aisles, they cannot buy it. Visibility. Show the product!
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
The reason I'm not using Mac OS X nor Vista is the cost. When I have Ubuntu so readily available, why would I want to use anything else? Compiz brings me all of the 3D GUI goodness of Vista and OS X. It's really nice not having to worry about the auto-updater updating files randomly and without my permission, like happens with Windows. I also can use Konqueror, which is just like Safari, but I find it's faster. And all of my Windows games run great on Ubuntu when I use WINE. So see, with Ubuntu I get the Vista experience and the Mac OS X experience, all for basically $0!
No amount of polishing is going to transform Vista. OSX is the only current viable mainstream OS and Apple really could shift a lot of boxes if they produced a low end desktop machine. The Mac mini is almost a goer, if Apple could reduce the price or sell it as a loss-leader until they hit profitable volumes, then they'd take a considerable slice of the market.
When the next mac goes the way of the iphone and itouch, then it will beat Vista. Think about it: no_keyboard + touch_the_screen_for_all_your_computing_needs = DOMINATION!
Silly people. Jobs was talking about this numerous times.
Apple never targeted broad audience. True, it can sell to very broad audience, but still Apple prefer to have few but loyal customers.
What also crossed my mind, is difference between Windows/Vista and Mac OS X. How does MacOS becomes platform of choice? Because you have to choose MacOS (as well as Apple hardware) by yourself. This establishes kind of barrier. But people who would cross the barrier are people who made their choice. The barrier works both ways: it takes some money investment to cross it (acquire hardware/software) and it takes some paining experience to come back to Wintel (which lacks all the polish, integrity and utility of Apple offering). But still, you are to make the choice by yourself.
And now ask yourself, who of us had chosen Windows?? Right, nobody. It's the thing which came preinstalled.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Is MacOS X a better OS than Windows? Sure. Is Apple better than Microsoft? I don't see it. They just aren't quite as successful. Even if Apple does displace Microsoft, I see no sign we will see any big ethical improvements when it comes to fair competition. Thus I find it hard to get excited about OS X's fate, no matter how well done it is. If Apple becomes had a record of being more open to competition, I'd care a lot more.
OSX won't replace Windows anytime soon because it's tied with the Mac and only Apple can make and sell a Mac. There is no way Apple can manufacture as many Macs as the Windows-PCs made by Dell, HP & Co. Ff everybody stop buying Windows-PC and go buying Macs, there simply won't be enough offer to meet the demand. Prices will skyrocket or delivery times will get impossibly long and most people will have to buy PCs no matter what.
OSX can replace Windows only if Apple sells it as Microsoft does, but that means becoming a software company and compete with other manufacturers for the hardware, and likely lose the HW market. Remember what happened when Mac clones started to be successful in the past? Apple shut them down.
Probably Apple is still not interested to change its business model and is happy with OSX being a niche OS, maybe a large niche, but still a niche compared with Windows market share. After all the revenues aren't that bad and MS has no particular reason to look at them as particularly dangerous. I suppose they're thinking, we're making a lot of easy money now, so why take risks and change?
Vista is the worst thing I've ever installed on a PC. I have a quite high end system. Core 2 Duo running at 3.2Ghz with 2GB ram. Still after a few months use I struggle with constantly disc swapping and 5 minutes waiting everytime I alt-tab out games, for example Warcraft 3. After a week without a reboot Vista use 1.8GB of memory. Some is probably caching, however as I said I struggle with a lot of swapping to the disc and a reboot of Vista helps A LOT!
:(
In two years people will say that 2GB ram for Vista is minimum, and recommended amount of memory is 8GB ram(No I'm not joking). It's like when WinXP was released, 128MB was minimum, and recommended was 512MB. Today it's 256MB minimum and 1GB recommended.
My laptop with WinXP and 512MB ram is way more responsive than my desktop with Vista and 2GB ram
The only thing Apple needs is more (especially high end)games and I'm sure people will get a Mac next time. Imagine if Crysis were only to be released on a Mac!
Ha! That reminds me of one of my vary favorite jokes.
An old Penny Arcade shows Tycho in a wrestling ring being beat to a pulp by a guy labeled "Windows XP upgrade" (ok the picture is allegorical) and he's calling out to Gabe, "Why? You told me this would be easy, an hour at most! My world is pain!"
And Gabe replied, "Sometimes when you want to hurt someone very badly you have to tell them terrible lies."
Maybe the new release of an Office suite for OS X might help, but the only way I can see Apple gaining on HP, Dell, etc, is by ramping up production and selling Macs in all the major outlets - Circuit City, Walmart, etc, instead of the cool but boutique-type Apple stores.
I was surprised the other week to see an Apple section in my local Best Buy, out in the open and obvious and stuff. Which was nice, because I wanted to buy a mini-DVI adapter. There was even a big sign by the door advertising this new addition. So maybe they are trying?
One of two things would have to happen for me to consider apple to be an actual option to MS. Apple would have to lower its hardware cost to match that of a system I could get from Dell/Acer/HP with similar specs, or they'd have to allow me to buy just the OS and install it on any machine I build myself. There's practically no chance of this ever happening. Well, their loss if they don't want my business. XP and Linux work just fine. I even like Vista more than XP on the one machine I installed it on, it's definitely an improvement--and I've never had a problem with drivers, most get downloaded automatically anyway.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
First bubble to break, Apple and Microsoft are not competitors. Unless Vista fails to do what people buy it to do, and that something is something Apple can do, but GNU/Linux can't do, then and only then would Apple see another sale.
All of the GNU/Linux distributions may be confusing, but they honestly offer different strengths and weaknesses, so don't expect there to be a single Unified_Linux_Sans_RMS any time soon. People and bussinesses pay money for goods & services that they value, but Apple and Microsoft simply don't have the overlap, a real enough overlap, for Jobs to cry about at any Lost-Opportunity cost here.
The NYT article is simply a torchbearer, a torchbearer in search of a leader, the leader they thought they had. That's not a slam at Jobs, he is leading his own path, the NYT is just a noisy backseat driver. Are we there yet? Have we crushed the richest man in the world yet? Have we turned the world into one big Cool-Hippie-Beatles-Peace-Free-Drugs-Woodstock world yet?
I find it surprising to come from the NYT, but this is such a troll of an article. starting "if you want a new PC you're screwed because everyone knows Windows is shit" going on to say "Apple has a much superior operating system" and ending with "Apple only has a 3% market share because it doesn't want a bigger market share, if they wanted a 90% market share they could have it any time they wanted" And all this suported by the most selective of fact picking.
try that, & the stock markup FraUD softwar gangsters (as well as a rather large contingent of greed/fear/ego based baby murdering southern baptist fanatics (philistines)l:) will fairly well disappear.
see you there?
meanwhile, back at the debacle we lovingly call man'kind', yOUR fearful 'leaders' continue to develop more&more cruel & unusual ways to create additional debt & disruption for most of US, while our fellow humans across the water continue to explode by yOUR $hand$.
infactdead corepirate nazis still WAY off track
(Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 01, @09:35AM (#20433195)
it's only a matter of time/space/circumstance.
previous post:
mynuts won 'off t(r)opic'???
(Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 30, @10:22AM (#20411119)
eye gas you could call this 'weather'?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8004881114646406827 [google.com] [google.com] [google.com]
be careful, the whack(off)job in the next compartment may be a high RANKing corepirate official.
previous post:
whoreabull corepirate nazi felons planning trips
(Score: mynuts won, robbIE's 'secret' censorship score)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01, @12:13PM (#20072457)
in orbit perhaps? we wouldn't want to be within 500 miles of the naykid furor(s) at this power point.
better days ahead?
as in payper liesense hypenosys stock markup FraUD felons are on their way out? what a revolutionary concept.
from previous post: many demand corepirate execrable stop abusing US
we the peepoles?
how is it allowed? just like corn passing through a bird's butt eye gas.
all they (the nazis) want is... everything. at what cost to US?
for many of US, the only way out is up.
don't forget, for each of the creators' innocents harmed (in any way) there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/US as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile will not be available after the big flash occurs.
'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious life0cidal glowbull warmongering execrable.
some of US should consider ourselves very fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate.
it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc....
as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis.
concern about the course of events that will occur should the life0cidal execrable fail to be intervened upon is in order.
'do not be dismayed' (also from the manual). however, it's ok/recommended, to not attempt to live under/accept, fauxking greed/fear/ego based pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking hypenosys.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
I think it will see resistance even after SP1, even from customers who've paid for it twice over under Software Assurance.
When you can't get the people who've already paid for it to install it, what does that say about it?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The article doesn't do Apple credit I think. Apple may not be doing well in the desktop world, but they are right there with the big boys when it comes to notebooks. Here is an article that tells us that Apple's notebook market share was 17.6 percent in June 2007. But having said that, I also must say that I think Apple's policy to only sell their hardware in their own stores and in 'Apple certified retailers' is a way to make certain that they won't get a large marketshare on the desktop. Apple's policy ensures that people can not really compare Apples and other computers side by side, and people who own Apple computers will continue to be considered hip, or weird, or stupid, depending on who you ask. O, and one more thing! Here in the Netherlands Apple certified the Media Markt to sell their computers. In Enschede a few iMacs and notebooks are cramped on some shelves that are just behind the computer the employees always use to check availability and prices of the things they sell. That means there is no space for customers to have a good look at the beautiful iMacs et al. that are displayed there. I asked a Media Markt employee a few questions about the new iMac, and he turned out to know next to nothing about it. He even admitted that. If I were Apple I would make damn certain that the people who sell my hardware in 'certified' shops know their stuff, and put my precious hardware on display in an easy to reach place. My experience at the Media Markt made me decide not to buy the iMac there but online. I'd rather wait a few weeks than have to do with clueless salesmen.
-- Cheers!
My current employer has been switching us all to Macs. Got me a MacBookPro - I love it, I was productive in a day. We are a *nix/Java shop so it was a no-brainer really.
With this in mind, when it came time to get a new home PC - I bit the bullet and got an iMac. I've only had it for a week, but I love it. Sure - I probably could have got clone Wintel box cheaper, but when I found myself using my MacBookPro at home rather than my Windows machine - it wasn't a hard decision.
Yes - I've got Bootcamp and Windoze for games and a few MS only apps, but overall I won't be looking back.
RedFive jedi_knight111@hotmail.com
I have been no fan of Vista and had stopped using it at all back in February, but I recently slapped it on a spare PC to see if it had improved (and no shock) it has in many ways. The WSJ is right, the big MS machine is coming up to speed and the transition pains are disappearing... at this point any competitor has missed the boat.
I have gotten to the point where I just don't care about these kinds of articles. I don't believe their statistics, I don't believe their reasoning, and I don't think that they have any particular insight into the future. This particular article strikes me as particularly un-insightful, and hardly worth the trouble.
For example, Apple now has 17.6 percent of the laptop market, according to PC World. Those are the computers that people actually use personally. As a frequent traveler, I can say I believe it, the number of Apple laptops you see at airports has grown greatly. It is not uncommon to see more Apple's than every other type in the transit lounge. This didn't fit into his pre-conceived notions, so didn't make the article. He could have talked about this, or about whether laptop use leads to increased use of office machines, or whether Apple's home entertainment solution is working or not, but he just chose to repeat some industry conventional wisdom he probably heard from some Dell sales guy. Mod him down.
Two things are stopping Apple from having the percentage of market share that Microsoft has:
1. Fucked up pricing (why spend $$$$ more when you can get a PC that does the same thing for less?).
Why should a user have to pay for OS updates (they're free and frequent with MS, yet you have to pay for each version of OSX)? Why do Apple Mac's cost so much when they're really just a closed up PC with different OS and fancier cases?
2. Holier-than-thou attitude.
Don't deny it. When it comes to the 'Mac culture', it's a resounding "my Mac is better than your PC because... blah blah blah...." with much chest beating. Majority of PC users don't actually care about Mac's. If anything, they wouldn't mind one. Most don't go into an Apple shop and say "Your dumb Mac can't play S.T.A.L.K.E.R.". Even support. iPods suck balls hard. I used to work in a retail store that sold iPods when they first came out. I had to call Apple 3 times in the first week with faulty units. I got 3 different D.O.A. policies from 3 different Indian call centre workers (yea, that iPod that you overpaid for sure didn't go into tech support). Ranging from 'Two week DOA policy, send it back to the distributor' to 'We're Apple, we have no DOA policy'. One tech support guy had the balls to tell a customer 'We don't manufacture faulty products, you clearly broke it' when it had the infamous frowny face error.
Look, if a Mac was given to me, I'd love it. Truly, they're great at what they do. Better than PC's in some areas. But the reasons Apple aren't the company they should be, appear to be the fact they don't want to be #1. Maybe Steve Jobs likes to be the underdog. I don't know.
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
I have been a PC user at work and a Mac user at home for the past, oh 20+ years, and I've never thought to myself (while sitting at home)...."Gee, I wish I had that crappy computer from work here at home too!" Now that my company gives me a PC laptop, I bring it home (so it doesn't get stolen from work) and it sits in its bag while I use my $1000 cheaper MacBook.
I'm not sure why you can't understand that a Mac at home does not suddenly limit your productivity at work. If anything, it only highlights how unproductive you work computer is. "hassle of having to learn two operating systems"? The only hassle I see would be having to learn how to learn to maintain and keep a PC running at 1/3rd the productivity of a Mac.
And I'm not sure you've read the article or the other posts, but it is fairly clear that Apple isn't trying "hard" to take over the business world. They aren't trying at all, and they and their users are perfectly fine with that. They aren't breaking into new markets either, just making existing markets better. If Mac OS X only does one thing for the business world, I would hope it would be the same thing their other products do: force the competition to improve their offerings. Everybody wins that way.
I have an Apple G4 (Quicksilver) running OSX (Tiger). I have a scratch-built PC running Windows Vista. I have a Toshiba laptop running Linux (Mandriva Spring 2007.1, and which happens to be the machine I'm typing this up on). I use each machine about equally.
And quite frankly, when set up properly (before you give me static, read that last part again), I see no difference in security or stability with any of the three. They all lock up every now and then for unknown and strange reasons. I've never had a virus or spyware on any of the three. They all have their various hardware and software installation pains in the ass. They each have their strengths, and they each have their shortcomings.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
flywheels slipping their bearings and coming crashing through the firewall?
Or flywheels that shatter from poor balancing?
Or what happens when the clutch locks?
is an indication that Apple is trying to get noticed for more than just their iPods.
I recently purchased my first Mac, an Imac, off of E-bay from one of those diehard Apple fans. The type that replaces perfectly good machines for newer models; mine was just 10 months old. Looking at his auction history he replaced a less than 6 month Mac Book Pro for one of the LED versions in February.
I think what Apple is missing is a headless Mac that sports more capability than the Mac Mini. They could do very well using the Apple TV form factor and have a system with good discreet graphics leveraging their use of similar tech in iMacs. Sell the unit with a mac keyboard and mouse, with notes that "your windows mouse" will work just fine. Price it in the range of 899 to 1699 depending on disk space and graphics power. Lure those Window's "gamers" that use the excuse. Hell, help Microsoft by having an OEM version of Windows available for bootcamp via coupon. People won't have to use Windows, won't being paying a Windows Tax, but with an OEM disk already made to install on a partition of their Mac from Apple they could make the whole thing a breeze.
I would move my parents to Mac but they have some Windows only software an no non-OEM Windows install meaning I would need to buy them both the Mac and Windows so they could continue as they do now.
While I find OS X pretty nice overall its not without aggravation. Its very easy to lose application configurations doing stupid things like changing user names and some software out there; cough FIREFOX; doesn't use the install process properly lending to the aggravation of converting to the platform.
Still I cannot believe they entered Best Buy without the expressed idea of appealing to a wider audience. It would be corporate stupidity not to try and grow your market. Mac users are not special. Their incentive to move away from their low volume high profit strategy is that they are close to the limits of what that market will support. The new trick is getting window users to their platform by making it so simple as to be a non-issue.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Maybe they can displace Windows market share, but anyone making this argument has no grasp of the businesses at hand. Apple in comparison is a pretty small company, they make their own proprietary crap mostly, their own closed development software and a bunch of trendy gadgets. Plus they get handed loads of cash by MS whenever they get into fiscal trouble.
.Net show you the direction MS is going, full cross platform and the lowest cost hardware platform on earth. Apple is trying a similar move with the iPhone, but it's just not good enough. The average American would certainly rather having a gaming console/PC for half or a third of the price of a picture phone. It would seem to me to be an unstoppable platform and if MS can lower the hardware costs for the sake of game sales, that means they could lower the hardware costs even lower if they have more resale value. Giving XBox full PC software support would make the hardware that much better. Yea I know there is Linux, but you know, if Linux was gonna sell, it would and it's not as a home user platform. You don't even have to wonder why, the sales speak for themselves and that's all I'm talking about here.
If anyone is not putting the pressure on the competition it's MS. They have the money to just waste with or without a return and still easily come out on top.
If you guys really had a grasp of the market you wouldn't ask yourself these questions. MS is an entirely different business model than Apple and they really aren't in that much competition with each other. There is no way Apple can gain significant share by just having a good OS. That will never be enough to make developers and consumers quickly move to Apple and anything else will give MS the time to reshape their model.
See no matter what happens, MS can still hire more consultants, dump more money at the problem, buy more advertising and bribe more retails and business allies. Even if MS model starts to fail they have plenty of money and fame to just tweak it. If Apple truly threatened MS market share, MS already has many ways on the back burner to fight back. The reality is, that MS is the one not being aggressive. Apple could try, but chances are they would only effectively piss MS off and considering how much more money they have to spend, currently that would be a mistake. Apple needs to stay put and see how much money they are going to loss on the iPhone in the long run. Seems to me in a couple months it will be an overpriced and under reliable platform without much good software. OH, the fate of Apple, to not have enough developers interested in their platforms.
Market share or competition with MS is not what Apple needs. They need more developers and ways to generate interest among developers to make their platform appear more ideal.
MS already has MSNBC and the Xbox, they have a voice in the public spotlight that Apple does not and they have the worlds most useful console system. If worst came to worst, MS could put a PC in every home for less than the 188 dollar laptop that's supposed to spread education throughout the developing world.
Well, why not sell them an xBox with a keyboard and mouse. With the deal MS has with Intel the hardware costs are lower than anything else out there by far and since the xBox already runs win32 it's set. MS just knows it's a lower profit business model so they aren't going to make moves like that unless someone makes them more aggressive.
You guys really don't see what they are doing. After MS made their billions they adopted a strategy to ride out their success as slow as possible which maximizes profit. As long as they don't sit around obliviously while major chunks of market share erode they are doing just fine.
The xBox and
The windows has more or less closed for Apple already anyhow. The windows was at the end of the XP life cycle because the main driving point in people switching to Apple is malware, without a doubt.
Mac OS reminds me of people who run AOL. Sure it's safer and mo
IMHO Vista is a sh!t. But, IMHO, you are doomed to use it anyway.
Below is all my IMHO, folks. Be friendly, don't take me as troll. But you still doomed to see Vista, no matter how shitty Vista is. Because:You would say what is the proposal? Let's try to think. ;-) In my opinion:
P.S. I am MacOSX, Solaris, Linux and BSD advanced power user and developer of software for more than 10 years. Don't tell me soap stories about "nice Linux Desktop", please. Just fucking please.
>Yes, cos I don't like apple hardware, it's expensive
you must be old here
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2002/20020712l.gif
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Wrong question, wrong answer. Microsoft is slowly hanging themselves. Let Apple be Apple. If people like MacOS, so much the better. Or not.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
If you don't mention Ubuntu, currently the fastest growing OS on the planet, then you are really telling the news, are you?
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Nope, they're still more expensive. Take whatever specs your mac is and build one comparable from Dell or wherever, it's going to be more, probably by greater than 1000 dollars for the high end (And mac mini doesn't count). For example, I got a laptop from Acer for under 400. Apple doesn't make ANY computer for that amount, their cheapest laptop (which still doesn't meet the specs of my cheap acer) is over a grand. I could have bought TWO laptops for that, and still had money left over!
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Vista loses before comparison. Doesn't mean OSX is worth much. BSD is enhanced, if anything.
If I'm Steve Jobs, why should I care whether Apple is "beating" Vista? Investors sure don't, if their stock price is any indication.
What matters to Apple is whether Apple is doing well as a company. They don't really have to care what's happening to MSFT. In fact, I'd expect that AAPL tends to go up at about when MSFT goes up because a large percentage of the stock price is based on the industry rather than the company.
I am officially gone from
One word:
Tablet.
I mean a real tablet, not some hacked up third party solution.
If there were an awards group for computers akin to the emmys or oscars, and not these individual magazine awards, Apple would be winning a lot of them. Not all of them, but a lot.
For some people, shows like the Sopranos and Heroes are exeptional shows and deserve the award they are nominated for. However, most of america is watching Survivor, Big Brother, Real World, or American Idol, which is shlocky crap that will never win a real award (that Emmy for best reality show is a joke, since they are all crap). It's this shlocky crap though that gets the stations more money.
Apple is fine with having the mindshare among their loyal customers they are good quality machines. I know several people I know at work who've switched to Macs in recently years, and I consider them very intelligent and thoughtful consumers. In that way they have been winning for quite some time and are continuing to do so.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Once again another poor premise and an article to take up space in the Times from someone who clearly knows nothing about the industry.
The whole premise of the article is that Apple is trying to compete for Microsoft's Windows business. Of course all of us in the know, know this is not the case and Steve Jobs himself has said that this is not Apple's goal. Apple has consistently said that they will pick their battles and work to create the best experience on a PC, not the most market share. Their iPod product line is the prime example of Apple picking the battles they can win.
For Apple to compete with Microsoft to win the most market share, Apple would have to completely change their whole way of doing business and then all they could do is compete on price which wouldn't work because Microsoft could slash their prices until Apple was driven out of business.
The author's claim of a lack of stores to try before you buy is FUD as well. Apple has all of the major metropolitan areas covered with Apple stores and their recent agreements with Best Buy, CompUSA and others only assure that their products are well exposed to the greater public. So I for one have no idea where he's coming from on this one. Plus Apple's whole marketing scheme is to get people interested in their computers through their iPod products which are pretty much available everywhere. Apple figures that if you like their iPod, you'll be apt to take a chance and try their computers. And it seems they're right given the recent sales numbers.
A more intelligent article would be one which compares how each of the companies have earned their market share and sales and discusses whether a true sales and consumer loyalty approach like Apple's will prove to be more sustainable than the monoply and forced upgrade sales approach that Microsoft has taken upon.
I'd buy a mac laptop if the integrated touchpad had two mouse buttons.
Seriously. I like OSX, and even if I didn't, I can bootcamp it up now with XP. I love all the little touches - the feel of the laptop case is solid, the keyboard feels very responsive, the power connector that's magnetic - why has no one else done that? Why does every laptop on the planet not have a slot load CD drive? The LCD looks fantastic. I like the port layout. In EVERY respect, it's a fantastic piece of hardware.
Except that they need two mouse buttons.
Seriously, apple, wtf? I know you're doing stuff for the sake of "being different" and "standing out", but to me, one mouse button isn't being different, it's ignorant and to be honest, insulting to your customers. And it ain't like OSX isn't set up for it - I just set up four powermacs at work, and their mice have two buttons from the factory, you just have to set up OSX to recognize it. Two button mice have been the standard for at least 12-13 years now. Hell, on my desktop, my mouse has 7 buttons and a scroll/tilt wheel, and I use all of them. The mouse button is a deal breaker. Let's get with the times, and you might even sell more hardware.
sig?
It's unfortunate that that happened to you Apple has 3 types of customers 1. The ones who buy their hardware, set it up, are blissfully happy and never have to call Applecare 2. The inquisitive customer, the ones who Call Applecare about the features and perks and howto's about their hardware/software and are blissfully happy as well 3. Then there is the bracket you unfortunately fell into. The hardware repair group. No matter how many product repairs or replacements you give to this user they always ALWAYS get a broken one until they get so pissed they hate apple. As if the universe is saying "You don't belong here!" you always get the less than 1% lemon of the group. I always feel bad for #3's when they call in, pages of case notes as soon as you get their account up and I know that somehow the one I have sent out will by the force of the universe be broken too. but the 1's and 2's make up over 95% at least otherwise Apple would not exist and I would be afraid to answer the phone. I would say give them another shot but if you have already experienced being #3 it'll just happen again for some reason.
I have always believed the Mac Mini to the Apple's most important product. Even more so than the iPod that is easier for Sony and others to eventually get right and compete against. With a complex desktop OS, things are different as the barrier to entry is greater. What Apple forgets is people have needs and like choice. If I look for a car from Ford, I can choose form a small compact (Ka, Escort etc) through to the Mondeo or US equivalents. With Apple, there is no small foot print solution unless you buy a Mini and add a small 15" monitor. But when people go shopping and there is a Mac mini on display, it is normally hooked up to a huge 30". The original iMac and the first LCD one were compact (width wise) and the LCD one had that excellent swivel monitor. The base could be positioned anywhere. Same with the Mac Mini. Now, where Apple went wrong is with Apple TV. It is NOT a convergence device. It does not do enough. What they should have done is created two versions of the Mac Mini, one a convergence device full of decent graphics and video hardware and the other, a low cost entry level small business / student machine. Instead, it's currently stuck between a rock and a hard place.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
shouldn't apple try to beat XP instead?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
I've run those four operating systems in the last few months, have all but Vista in my home. I also worked for a company selling good computers, now with Vista. They don't run Vista, not at work or at home. Vista just doesn't have enough over XP to justify it, especially considering the HW requirements. For a decent Vista experience (apart from all the bugs and problems, like the network/audio issue) you need 2GB RAM and a twin core CPU and a DX10 GPU. And Vist doesn't beat MacOS X or Ubuntu in any way that I've seen. Usability wise MacOsX has a clear advantage over all the others, in my experience Ubuntu (after being set up and configured which can take a little tinkering if you're unlucky) takes second place, XP third and Vista comes squarely last. Why? Vista just isn't organized sensibly, when people complain about Mac stuff like the iTunes interface, they should try going through Vista networking after hitting a snag. Or the control panel in general. It's just not good. If completely set up it's not that bad, but no better than XP on the whole. Xp is stable enough now, and the interface is functional but not fancy. Some things could be better, especially networking and system configuration of all sorts. Frequent restarts are required (as in Vista) to keep the systems running well. Ubuntu needs more setting up, the control panel menus are decent, if a little crowded. If you hit snags you can get online help, or help from any UNIX/Linux nerd. Usually easily solved given enough knowledge (meaning, can be solved using a certain technique, not so hit and miss like in the Win systems). Networking works great. Graphically it can be simple or amazingly cool, your choice. To have it really nice (running Beryl or Compiz) with 3d desktop feature, all kinds of transparancy effects and such a load of graphic goodies that bot MacOS and Vista go into jealous fits you need only modest hardware. Mine is a AMD Sempron2800CPU, 768MB RAM (overkill) and a 128MB Geforce 6600GT GPU, it runs ALL the graphic goodies I can throw at it with NO glitches, generally using less than 300MB RAM to run the OS and graphic goodies (and one browser and one video window....). Restarts are few and far between. Crashes, not yet... MacOsX needs minimal setting up or tweaking. The biggest tweaks I've done are setting different behaviour on the trackpad (two finger right clicking etc.) The Preferences pane is dead simple. Changing settings is the easiest of all the systems and connecting to other computers (any OS) is also simple. The laptop I'm writing this on was last restarted (shut off or restarted) over 40 days ago. I've seen mods for other OS's to make them look lik MacOs, not to make MacOs look like XP or Vista..... In six months I've had to restart twice because of crashes, that OS bug has since been fixed. My personal belief is that the Vista Horrors will drive a few people over to Mac and more to Linux, but not that many. People invent all kinds of reasons to endure subpar experiences and turn stuff like which hardware, operating system and software into a religious type debate instead of looking at these things like tools. IMO you should use the OS and SW which can do the stuff you need to do. For most people Ubuntu is way more than adequate. I have different needs as I do hobbyist level audio recording, which means that XP and MacOs are the only usable OSs for me (the Vista audio path and drivers are completely unusable at the moment). MacOS has worked much better than XP for me in for that, and does everything else that I need as well. If you play games, then off to XP land you go. For business applications any of those three should do nicely, just based on which applications you need (and no MS Office preaching, please, it's not a bad solution, but not the only one). MacOS X is really nice to work in, but most of the HW is a bit expensive, which is a definite point against Apple, and plus point for XP (two plus points to Ubuntu on that count...) Notice a pattern there? There is no application at which Vista is currently outperforming any
>Take whatever specs your mac is and build one comparable from Dell or wherever
yes, this has been done. over and over. and either Apple wins bit a little bit or loses by a little bit.
so how about YOU show us the numbers that say otherwise?
The first question to ask is: could Apple even handle having a larger share of the market? They'd need to expand their range of hardware, they'd need to expand support staff, they'd need add a boatload of new APIs and functionality to their OS, and on and on. Outside of Apple, there would need to be a huge infrastructure of consultants, supports staff, technical authors, and other people supporting Apple hardware and software.
And that isn't even taking into account technical issues and missing functionality in their software platform. Having a nice looking desktop user interface and being able to talk a good talk on UNIX compatibility isn't the same as having a software platform that people can use in a corporate environment.
Overall, despite all the bluster, I don't think Apple is even aiming for Microsoft's market. Apple is happy to skim off the high margin, low volume market. Right now, they can afford to say "your wallet is too small", or "we don't do that" and send customers away. If they want to compete with Microsoft, they need to meet the needs of the vast majority of users--corporate, home, and engineering--and they need to do so on price, performance, functionality, features, and compatibility, and they don't. They aren't even trying or even making the investment (Apple's R&D investment is comparatively small).
Hoping that Apple can take over the market quickly because Microsoft stumbled with Vista is wishful thinking--taking market share away from Microsoft is a slow, steady process. Apple makes it particularly hard on themselves because they have created a bottleneck by being the single hardware vendor that runs their software, and by not giving an inch on compatibility with Windows.
nt
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Uh... Don't you just place two fingers on the trackpad, then click? (Admittedly, it might depend on the age of your hardware...)
The reason Microsoft is so successful is because they are for the "most" part a software and services company. One of the first "Third Wave" (Alvin Toffler) business models which has gained momentum from the excellent Intellectual Property laws in the United States and a few other countries (but no all of them). If you realize that you can license software, make it once, distribute it X number of times at relatively no cost to reproduce you're a great business.
Apple is focused on an integrated experience and they are what is commonly called a "botique" shop. They have their fans and they have excellent products. I do not think Apple wants to take on a burden of supporting commodity hardware on their software platform because of the enormous energy (and waste of time) it would take just to get another 3% (think Linux on the Desktop).
Apple is Lexus, currently Microsoft is Toyota so to speak (more mass audience and choice). With Vista Microsoft is becoming a better built "high-end" auto in some circles, think Maybach. The flyweel is getting extremely fast and gaining momentum. Vista is an infant platform. Once all of the groundwork is done (Think Vista at this time), enhancement for Windows 7 we'll all be reading articles on how great the the Microsoft platform is.
Strange. Vista sure doesn't feel like a world of hurt when I boot it up every day and go about my business.
If you want a Mac you can buy a Mac, they are available online. Dell was #1 for a long time with only online sales. The problem is not availability. Macs are available for online purchase and they are available at apple stores and most big big electronics stores.
I am a multi-OS user and thought about giving Macs a try. But when you look at the lackluster choices in Hardware it easy to see why Macs are a niche. They sell only niche hardware. All in one desktops may look cool but they have all the functionality of a laptop without batteries.
Macs have a 3% market share and I bet that is more 5% laptop share and 1% desktop share. That 3% market share is another problem, because there is not much 3rd party software available. If you think 3% market share is not a problem, you are confused. This is a great limiter on 3rd party support. It is almost insignificant market compared to the PC market. 20% would be a good number to shoot for that would be too large to ignore as is, if I write shareware, Macs aren't even on the radar.
So we have niche hardware with limited software availability. An ok internet box for mom maybe, but anyone with wide ranging needs will look elsewhere.
If Apple wanted to grow market share they would sell some mainstream hardware, like a decent mini tower, or something (return of the cube?) with expansion capability and NO built in monitor. No the hideously crippled mini doesn't count, again it is a web surfing machine and little else.
I really wanted to give Macs a shot, but I could not get beyond lackluster hardware choices.
Let me address the argument, sure to follow, that only more technical users want expansion capabilities. Think for a second who makes computer purchasing decisions. It is always the techy friend or family member. By eliminating them from the user base, you essentially eliminate a large free sales force.
It is hard for me to look at Apples poor Mac performance and not think they have little interest in this space and are happier selling devices than computers and that is another reason to avoid Macs.
Where are you pricing a 17" iMac, eBay? Apple currently makes 20" and 24" iMacs.
I am a former Apple employee who still maintains close ties to the company. I am also a former professional economist; I went to grad school for my Ph.D., but didn't finish my dissertation. I can state affirmatively without breaking any NDAs that The Fine Article is full of bullsh*t.
Let's start with his sales figures. "The Mac's *worldwide* market share was 3 percent as of June 2007, according to Roger L. Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, a consulting firm in Wayland, Mass." (Emphasis mine) Worldwide market share is a poor indicator of Apple's markets. It is mostly a US-focused company and will stay that way in the near future. In the US, Apple's market share is around 5-6%, according to the most recent figures I could find. More importantly, the growth rate is more than four times higher than the industry growth rate, 32% vs. 7.2% (IDC estimates via Apple's latest quarterly report). It doesn't take long for that kind of second order effect to dominate. Comparing the market share now (after the events of the 1990's) to Apple's market share when its mainstay was the Apple II is really bad analysis. I would expect better from the author, a professor of business who presumably knows basic microeconomics.
His figures for the share of computers in use are suspect as well. "Funny thing, though: based on the ratio of Windows and Macs actually in use, no gains can be seen for Apple. The Mac's share of personal computers has actually edged a bit lower since Vista's release in January, and the various flavors of Windows a bit higher, according to Net Applications, a firm in Aliso Viejo, Calif., that monitors the operating systems among visitors to 40,000 customer Web sites." Measuring OS usage share by measuring browser hits is a seriously flawed methodology. There are know sources of bias that lead to higher than actual market share figures for Internet Explorer on Windows, including sites that require users of other browsers to spoof the user agent header, measuring usage on sites that have ActiveX elements that drive away non-Windows users, and extra files being sent to Internet Explorer in order to work around problems in the IE rendering engine. Furthermore, the author is looking at the wrong figures and the drop that he's looking at is statistically insignificant anyway. The figures that he refers to are 4.68% (2007Q1) vs. 4.63% (2007Q2). Windows Vista was released to the general public on January 30, 2007. Thus, the base figure he should be using is 4.06% (2006Q4), which predates the release of Vista. A simple statistical test based on the Net Applications market share figures for 2004Q4 through 2007Q2 shows that a 0.05% difference is not statistically significant. Heck, any reasonably trained economist should be able to eyeball this and say that given that trend, a 0.05% difference is not statistically significant.
As far as the whole Best Buy thing goes, the author completely misses the point behind Apple opening its own retail stores. Apple tried for years to work with CompUSA, Sears, Best Buy, and other consumer electronics retailers to sell Apple computers to the masses. Each attempt was a dismal failure, as the personnel at the retailers could not sell something as complex as Apple's equipment. They were barely able to sell TVs. The only sort-of, kind-of successful experiment in there was the store-within-a-store at CompUSA, which was done by putting Apple employees into CompUSA stores. Even that didn't work too well, as the Apple section got lost in the middle of all of the other stuff. Apple is trying again to expand it's retail reach, but I would put the odds against it. Big box retailers' emphasis on low price and minimal service is completely at odds with how to sell Apple computers.
"Apple has not even begun to try to re-enter another domain from which it had withdrawn its Mac sales teams: large corporations." That would be news to Apple's entire Enterprise Sales team -- several hundred people. I work with them on a daily basis, even now. They've been there all alon
Shhhhhhh! It's an Indian cultural thing.
Shortening words and writing incomplete sentences is the Indian way of expressing their coolness.
And oh, the parent is a lot better - most tend to spell like 13 year old girls who listen to Britney Spears, when they probably are 30 year olds (who still listen to Britney Spears, of course).
And yes, I am an Indian too, so I trust you me. India - screwing the Queen's English since 1947. Ba-da-CHING!
The NYTimes has often been very sympathetic to Microsoft. With all the innuendo in the story, I have to wonder if Microsoft's invisible hand is behind this story....
My house has two Windows users. I bet that in two years, they'll be on Macs. They've had crashes, "time to reload again", and all that stuff for so long, and Vista is full of delights like "throttle network when you listen to music".
We switched to OS X Server for my home network. Now, I'm not exactly unable to run servers conventionally; I ran a number of BSD servers of various sorts for years, I've done SysV, I've done Linux. I did tech support for BSDi back in the day; I do know how to do this.
OS X Server is, for my purposes, just enough less work to justify (for me) the cost. Their GUI works well and mostly handles the quick "hey, did I remember to set up both Samba AND NFS for this" stuff. It does all three types of file sharing I need out of the box, without me having to mess around with them. It has taken over DHCP, and having administered an ISC dhcpd for years, I like OS X a lot better. (Admittedly, less flexible, but frankly, I can live with that in exchange for the ability to push a button labeled "restart".) I have a Mac Mini with most of a terabyte of disk drives sitting on it. It's nearly silent (one of the enclosures makes noise, though) and it Just Works. I've never even SEEN a PC that small and quiet.
My laptop's a MacBook Pro now, too. I had a ThinkPad, dual-booting Windows and BSD. It worked fine; I still use NetBSD as one of my main desktops. However, Windows was a nightmare. It took, from running the restore CDs, roughly two hours to patch the system up to current, during which time it was at significant risk of getting owned. Every time I rebooted to Windows, I had to run software update and then reboot again. I need either Mac or Windows for printer drivers and art software, for now, and a Mac works better for me than dual-boot did.
I know very few people who are interested in Vista, and a lot who are seeing it as a compelling reason to switch. The big advantage of Windows has been that they're already using it. If they're going to learn something new, they would rather learn something more stable -- and given the history of the Mac (now on its third CPU architecture and third or fourth kernel architecture), it's scary that the Mac has to be it.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Repost.
Forgot the bloody formatting and didn't preview, sorry!
I've run those four operating systems in the last few months, have all but Vista in my home. I also worked for a company selling good computers, now with Vista.
They don't run Vista, not at work or at home.
Vista just doesn't have enough over XP to justify it, especially considering the HW requirements. For a decent Vista experience (apart from all the bugs and problems, like the network/audio issue) you need 2GB RAM and a twin core CPU and a DX10 GPU.
And Vist doesn't beat MacOS X or Ubuntu in any way that I've seen.
Usability wise MacOsX has a clear advantage over all the others, in my experience Ubuntu (after being set up and configured which can take a little tinkering if you're unlucky) takes second place, XP third and Vista comes squarely last.
Why?
Vista just isn't organized sensibly, when people complain about Mac stuff like the iTunes interface, they should try going through Vista networking after hitting a snag. Or the control panel in general. It's just not good. If completely set up it's not that bad, but no better than XP on the whole.
Xp is stable enough now, and the interface is functional but not fancy. Some things could be better, especially networking and system configuration of all sorts. Frequent restarts are required (as in Vista) to keep the systems running well.
Ubuntu needs more setting up, the control panel menus are decent, if a little crowded. If you hit snags you can get online help, or help from any UNIX/Linux nerd. Usually easily solved given enough knowledge (meaning, can be solved using a certain technique, not so hit and miss like in the Win systems). Networking works great. Graphically it can be simple or amazingly cool, your choice. To have it really nice (running Beryl or Compiz) with 3d desktop feature, all kinds of transparancy effects and such a load of graphic goodies that bot MacOS and Vista go into jealous fits you need only modest hardware. Mine is a AMD Sempron2800CPU, 768MB RAM (overkill) and a 128MB Geforce 6600GT GPU, it runs ALL the graphic goodies I can throw at it with NO glitches, generally using less than 300MB RAM to run the OS and graphic goodies (and one browser and one video window....).
Restarts are few and far between. Crashes, not yet...
MacOsX needs minimal setting up or tweaking. The biggest tweaks I've done are setting different behaviour on the trackpad (two finger right clicking etc.) The Preferences pane is dead simple. Changing settings is the easiest of all the systems and connecting to other computers (any OS) is also simple. The laptop I'm writing this on was last restarted (shut off or restarted) over 40 days ago.
I've seen mods for other OS's to make them look lik MacOs, not to make MacOs look like XP or Vista.....
In six months I've had to restart twice because of crashes, that OS bug has since been fixed.
My personal belief is that the Vista Horrors will drive a few people over to Mac and more to Linux, but not that many. People invent all kinds of reasons to endure subpar experiences and turn stuff like which hardware, operating system and software into a religious type debate instead of looking at these things like tools.
IMO you should use the OS and SW which can do the stuff you need to do. For most people Ubuntu is way more than adequate. I have different needs as I do hobbyist level audio recording, which means that XP and MacOs are the only usable OSs for me (the Vista audio path and drivers are completely unusable at the moment).
MacOS has worked much better than XP for me in for that, and does everything else that I need as well.
If you play games, then off to XP land you go.
For business applications any of those three should do nicely, just based on which applications you need (and no MS Office preaching, please, it's not a bad solution, but not the only one). MacOS X is really nice to work in, but most of the HW is a bit expensive, which is a definite point against Apple, and plus point for XP (
90% of home users are going to buy what they know and that's PC. They don't want to learn anything new; they want minimal disruption and a "faster" computer. Sure, if they knew that they could find a reasonable alternative for their "must have" apps (Outlook and Word: "how would email work without them?") and a rebuild of their existing machine would make their computer run like new they probably wouldn't even buy a new machine. Unless something is truly broken, they only need to upgrade for gaming reasons. They're going to buy Vista because a) they probably don't have a choice anymore b) will be told that it's the "new" Windows and buying an old version would be silly.
10% are willing to try something new -- they're fine with learning a new way of doing things and they know that there's alternatives out there. They're very pleased that their computer doesn't clash with their decor anymore.
90% of your business users will use whatever IT tells them to use. IT is afraid of new things; they do not -- and cannot -- understand all the implications of a new operating system and painful experience tells them to leave well alone until some other fool^H^H^Hcolleague out there puts it on their networks and tells everyone about how horrible it is and how they had to spend all night trying to get it to do what it's supposed to do. And they'll ask the vendors -- the vendors have to adopt early for fear of being caught with their pants down when their clients ask them about it -- who will tell them to wait for the Service Pack to come out. IT will solemnly nod their heads and quietly pat themselves on the back for averting disaster.
10% of your business users have very nice suits and will use whatever they goddamn please. This will be whatever they goddamn wanted and it had better be goddamned working by lunch time on Monday morning.
body massage!
Apple NEEDS a mid-range head less system and more hardware choice.
The mini is overpriced priced and the laptop hardware in it drives costs up and still has the real old gma 950 in it and all systems should have a super dr.
The imacs are not that much better while they do use a desktop HD, the laptop ram, cpu, slot loading DVD RW, and video push the price up. Also the smaller size of the new imacs mean that high-mid and high end video cards are out as well as more then one hd and you are stuck if it's build in screen.
The Macpro is over 1 and half years old and is still at the same price and same setup base system 7300 gt and only 1gb of ram and $300 to go to 2gb apples prices, OWC has it for $100. But still $100 a gig? Also the raid card for it is rip $1000 for a 4 port sata only raid card?
The mid-range system can replace the high end mini with on board video or a low end video card g33 / g35 chipset and pci-x 16 slot for video with x4 slot for other cards and desktop parts.
maybe have high end system for gameing with dual video cards x38 or NV chipset.
Or you can have a dual dual macpro with the low end xeon cpus and the new chip set with ecc ddr2 2/3 ram.
The mini can be dropped in price making it a very low end system.
You can't be serious. OS X beats Vista already. OS X was ahead of Vista years ago. Hell, I have Vista x64 Ultimate, and I still prefer XP! Nowadays I only use XP or Vista when I have a game that I need Windows for. And since Vista, the only games I have been playing have been ported to Mac. I just haven't got around to picking up a copy.
Last Post!
apple is a corporation, but it is not the standard computer corporation. it loves profit, but there are a whole lot of other priorities that drive the people that work there. sort of like one of its largest markets: the art and video industry.
there are a lot of film companies that like to make movies, but there are large number of people in those companies who are perfectly happy with living the rest of their lives without dominating the 'market share'.
they also avoid the psychological problems that come from being attacked by the SEC for monopolistic practices.
The OEM system install has been the gold standard in the consumer market for damn near thirty years.
The choice is the system bundle--- a choice that is reinforced by the migration to the laptop, the desktop replacement, the media center, the high-end gamer's PC.
Internal upgrade options are limited, expensive, and beyond the comfort level of most users.
Apple is happy as long as they can make good hardware and software that runs well on it. They are like a luxury car. They aren't even bothered with trying to appease the mass market. Apple will fail if they open up OS-X to run on vanilla hardware.
I find this an interesting article for the most part, but it's really kind of "preaching to the choir" isn't it?
The author talks about not taking advantage of this small window of opportunity to attack Vista. He also goes into great lengths about all the fabulous things Apple has already done to position itself as an alternative to Vista including the transition to intel processors, the fantastic ad campaigns, and the refinement of OS-X. Although he only says that "the official Mac line is that it has gone swimmingly" which seems imply falsehoods, he does manage to mention that sales are up over 30% across the board!
To me this sounds like unprecedented growth and execution, not a failure.
He then answers his own unproven assumption (that Apple isn't doing enough) by expressing "what could be done" as:
- ramping up their retail presence
- offering more for corporations.
But these two things are exactly what Apple *has* been doing for the last couple of years. In fact, Apple's focus has been so intent in these areas that it's on the verge of dropping the ball this year on a number of other issues as a result. How could Apple could ramp up the retail expansion any faster than they already have lately without stumbling? How could they focus any more on their high end and back-end server stuff for corporate environments with Leopard? Being certified as UNIX this year doesn't give them enough cred? Coming out with a fully exchange compliant server and simultaneously offering it's own end to end solution to compete with exchange server based on open formats and open source code is not enough? Coming out with a brand new corporate smart phone to challenge RiM is not enough?
Apple is already going through intense, rapid expansion on all fronts probably more than at any time in it's history and the very issues he mentions are already already major focii of their expansion plan.
I'm not saying it's a stupid article, but it's kind of pointless in that all it really does is restate some recent history, (MS took five years off and OS-X has come in from the cold), add some overly obvious business advice, (expand retail, expand markets, consolidate marginal markets), and then it just kind of wrings it's hands and worries about how far Apple can get before the "giant flywheel" of Vista gets it.
I'm worried about the flywheel too, but I fail to see what more Apple can do on any of these fronts that it isn't already doing. In particular, expanding retail locations any faster than it already is, would be a dangerous course for Apple and in the end probably bad business advice.
My beef with Apple is that I have to buy their hardware just because I want OSX. I already have the hardware, why should I buy again more hardware? I already have too much old hardware lying around the house. I don't care if the action of making OS work on third party hardware nearly killed Apple, that's their problem, not mine. People say OSX doesn't cost a lot compared to XP or Vista or whatever Windows but when the end result is that I have to spend $1500+ CAD on a computer just to use OSX on a portable device, I call their statement bs.
as of a month or two ago (last results i saw), those web analyzing stats that supposedly tell who is running what had OS X instals way ahead of MS Vista. obviously XP is still the tops, and a lot of people are waiting to upgrade a stable XP machine, but i was totally surprised to see OS X outnumbering Vista by such a significant lead.
all that being said, i don't think Apple is displeased with market share. of course they are going to keep running ads promoting their product over whatever MS is shipping. Apple is having record quarters and years. they are selling tons of iPods, iPhones and this last quarter was very strong for Mac sales. iirc they broke some personal record for hardware shipped (maybe laptops?). the company is strong across the board, why put all their effort into fighting MS? at this point MS doesn't seem to feel a significant threat from Apple, so they make some comments, but they are not actively trying to kill the company. that's probably better for everyone. i'd rather see a few companies challenging each other to make better products and not just slag the other options. i think we can mostly agree that MS acts as though they hate Linux a lot more than Apple.
yes, this has been done. over and over. and either Apple wins bit a little bit or loses by a little bit.
so how about YOU show us the numbers that say otherwise? You say it "loses by a little bit"? $2000 is "a little bit"? I just priced up a Mac Pro on the Apple Store (Canada) and a normal PC from my local store, Memory Express.
First, the apple store one:
Two 2.66GHz Dual-core Intel Xeon
4GB Memory (4x1GB)
500GB 7200rpm SATA 3Gb/s HDD
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (The QuadroFX was $1680 MORE, and no x2xxx or nvidia 8xxx series available at all)
Optical - One 16x Superdrive
Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse
Mac OSX - English
Total: $4092.00
And the Memory Express one:
Processor : Intel Core(TM)2 Quad Processor Q6600 2.4GHz w/ 2x4MB Cache 1 $299.95
CPU Heatsink / Fan : Intel Retail Heatsink and Fan 1 $0.00
Motherboards : eVGA nForce 680i LT SLI w/ DualDDR2 800, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, 1394, Dual PCI-E x16 SLI 1 $219.95
Memory : Kingston HyperX 2GB PC2-6400 Low Latency Dual Channel DDR2 Kit (2 x 1GB, NVIDIA SLI-Ready) 2@$169.95=$339.90
Case : Antec P180B Advanced Super Mid Tower, Black 1 $144.95
Power Supplies : Antec TruePower Quattro 850W Power Supply 1 $194.95
Hard Drives 1 : Seagate 500GB Barracuda 7200.10 SATA II w/ NCQ, 16MB Cache 1 $119.95
Optical Drive 1 : LG Super Multi DVD Writer 18x18x10 DVD +/-RW Dual-Layer, SATA w/ Lightscribe, Black (OEM) 1 $39.95
Video Cards : Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB PCI-E w/ Dual DVI, TV-Out 1 $189.95
Keyboards : Microsoft Ergonomic Value Pack, Keyboard and Mouse, OEM 1 $49.95
Operating System : Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate x64 (64-bit) DVD, OEM, 1-Pack 1 $214.95
Assembly : Please Assemble Hardware + Load my O/S 1 $70.00
Email Quote
Sub-Total: $1884.45
GST: $113.07
Total Cost: $1997.52
Alberta Recyling Fee(For residents of Alberta only): $10.00
Total(With Recyling Fee) (For residents of Alberta only):
$2008.12
So take the difference between these (roughly) equivalent systems: $4092-$2008=$2084
Yes you can buy TWO of the custom systems for the price you can buy an apple with! And that's even counting that I put a better mobo and power supply in the custom one than really necessary (I should have picked a cheaper ATI-based mobo & smaller PSU), so shave off another $100 at least. And go through the menu at the apple store to see how MUCH the upgrades were. It is really nuts. It was $839 to go from 1GB to 4GB of RAM, which is just stupid. And the HDD upgrade from 250 to 500GB was twice as much as the entire 500GB drive for the custom system. This is all discounting the fact you can't GET a good graphics card for the Apple, like any 8800-series card, which is why I picked the "best for non-insane prices" at the mac store, then took the closest equivalent at my local store.
I couldn't get a whole lot closer with the limited options Apple gives at its site, but the bottom line is clear: Apple is at LEAST 2x as expensive on high-end machines, and you'd be nuts to go with them if you're looking for performance. I was seriously considering buying a Mac for my next computer and probably dual-booting to windows for games (with bootcamp)... then I priced one out like this and promptly dismissed the idea. Apple MIGHT be able to compete on the low-end or on laptops, but on the high end they're insane if they want people to pay these prices.
Its not about beating Vista, Ubuntu or anything else. Sorry but the point everyone's missing here is that the Mac OS X based computers with Intel chips inside doesn't NEED to beat anything. It runs those OS' just fine. Any limitations of Apple hardware on those OS' is at least shared as many companies also share the same hardware. I stopped using Linux after the having enough of not being able to use a 802.11g card to work online. Why? well the hardware creator wouldn't give up the snippet of code to make it possible and legal. So I suffered until I had enough and ejected it from my system. Windows and Mac OS X will never have that problem. Mac even less as EVERYTHING in your system is supported by Apple and comes with a driver built-in. Peripherals are usually supported by their creators but in some cases Apple has made some of those drivers available too. Lets try that with an Express24 Wireless Internet card on a Windows PC. I digress. If I would be wasting my money trying to outrun Vista- just run Vista. Operating systems are software and that's it. OS X included- of course its not free like Linux but it is cheaper to support and cheaper to buy than XP or Vista and doesn't come with any of the DRM hassle that those other mentioned MS OS' do. Are Apple's Macintosh Computers expensive- um yes and no. You couldn't find the same offering for anything in the same price range on the PC unless you had an insider who could pilfer the parts from their warehouse for you. Plainly the consumer is matched in terms on price points for a decent Mac and a nonexistant PC offering with the exact same specs. The last point that should end it all is that even if you could make a PC with EXACTLY the same specs as say a Macbook Pro 2.4Ghz portable for the same price- it wouldn't be able to run OS X. (I'm speaking legally here- hacks not included in any legit argument EVER).. Lets see: Gateway, Toshiba, Sony, Dell, HP etc.. will run XP, Vista and a range of Linux iterations. Apple Macintosh will run XP, Vista a range of Linux iterations and Mac OS X. I think I'm getting the better deal with the Mac. One company doing what 5 others haven't and can't. But that's the way with any innovative computing/device technology at the consumer level these days isn't it. Where is the ZUNE today compared with the iPod of ANY iteration? Where is the iMac killer of the PC world? What is the BEST PC portable (of those 5 companies) that matches those of the Macbook Pro 2.4Ghz for example. No boutique brands can match it without trying to slip a stupid 19" display and quad XEON into a 5 inch thick casing and 240watt power brick, and 4 HD RAID with 16Gb RAM. C'mon those systems would never make it into a commuter railway on a daily haul to and from work or school for that matter- so be realistic with your answers.
The other hope for Apple is something like the iPhone. The iPhone is a game changer in the mobile market, Apple will take this new platform up and down the market. Its big breakthrough in terms of market dominance will be down market, when kids everywhere are using an iPhone mini. The iPhone/iPod dominance will help the Mac, but really only help the Mac, with the so-called halo effect. That has already happened to some degree. People are back into Apple because of the iPod not because of the Mac, the Mac just benefits.
When I got my MBP my biggest concern was the trackpad. After years of using ThinkPads w/the nipple control I wasn't sure how the trackpad would work for me.
Turns out that the trackpad w/gestures is far more efficient. (at least for me)
You're worried about the lack of the second trackpad button? It is there as a two finger tap and it works great.
As I thought I understood things, in Year 1, XP was laughed at a little as "the Fisher Price" OS, but otherwise good enough as it went. Then there was the spectacular Destruction Pack 2, which *took down* many things that were previously working. I myself surveyed some devices that I had to delay purchasing until the factory corrected the firmware to keep them from crashing pretty badly.
Will anyone tolerate that again with Vista? My instinct is to hold out for Windows 7 or beyond.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Just like the justifications for the war in Iraq, Apple is moving their targets in the face of defeat. There were no WMD, there is no democracy, there is no stable government in Iraq. As each justification proves false, a new ficticious justification is created.
Likewise, as Apple's failure to capture any marketshare proves false, Apple just changes their target in order to maintain the illusion that users "prefer" the so-called "easier to use", and even more funny, the "more secure", OS X. MOAB proved the illusion of "Apple security", the clear majority of happy Windows users disproves the "easier to use", and the low sales figures disproves the "gaining market share" canard.
Apple will eventually start counting iPods as OSX installs, in order to boost their market share figures.
It's another SteveJob! Stay the course, guys! Victory is just around the corner!
Very interesting points about antitrust. I'll have to disagree with the idea that low market share makes the platform totally unattractive, though.
The biggest plus to developing for the Apple platform that I've seen is that few other people develop for it. It's something of a captive audience. A significant number of Mac users play World of Warcraft because it runs on OS X. Also, less competition among suppliers means (if we are to believe basic economics) means higher prices (and by higher I mean higher than free). Furthermore, viruses have made PC users gunshy about trying new software. Many simply will install any software not made by Microsoft or Adobe. Not true of Mac users.
I'll give you "Apple is an unattractive platform for Indian developers," though. 1% is pretty sad.
"Seriously, why would you want to buy a Mac if you can have Ubuntu,"
For the average person who wants to do web browsing, write a few letters, and work with music and pictures, iLife is a killer application. I do slide shows in iPhoto/iDVD and you can do a good job quickly. I keep a Macbook Pro around for precisely this reason. Stuff that takes days on my Windows PC can be done in 2-3 hours on a Mac with better results.
What I'm surprised at is how few people are even aware of the iLife suite. Apple would be well advised to advertise, advertise, advertise. Microsoft can't beat this suite for precisely the same reason they can't beat iTunes. Microsoft in incapable of writing a suite like this. It is not in their nature. They would screw it up.
What you're correct about is that if you have little interest in working with photos and music, then I can't see a compelling reason not to get something like Ubuntu. I'm using Vista now, and frankly, and slowly getting fed up with it. It takes everything wrong with XP, eliminating the good parts, and adding a layer of slowness that makes you feel stupid for choosing it in the first place. Oh right. Aero. Like poking yourself in the eye with a stick.
As to people waiting for the service pack, Microsoft better make it a grand-slam home run, because what they've got now is pretty crappy.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
For example serial. What other way can you get textual BIOS output on a server for logging and such (for that matter, grub output and early kernel output). Granted, the desktop world is different, but serial has no replacement in at least one role.
I personally don't know if any role that floppies, IDE, and parallel ports fulfill that aren't technically served by a better technology (add PS/2 ports if you wish), but at the same time, I haven't bothered to buy a new printer in many years, and as such, still parallel port. Same with an old scanner. Sometimes technology is 'good as I'll ever need' in a particular genre, and I don't feel bothered to upgrade. And even if you expect upgrades to be 100%, there is a time during which you'll need both in one place for things like hard drive data transfer.
The core question here is what is the cost of adding the IDE ports, floppy ports, serial, parallel, etc. Well, until very very recent chipsets, the system chipset would have integrated IDE controllers, so the cost-add is only that of passive traces/connectors being put down, which is extremely small. Even with chipsets that have sunsetted integrated IDE, the cost of IDE chips is low. The components to drive a serial/parallel port are similarly either integrated or unbelievably cheap to add. The short of all this is that in the x86 motherboard space, it is a market that demands every corner be cut as much as possible. You can be assured that the cost delta of supporting legacy has been examined time and time again, and it's just not that significant a difference. Now compare this to putting all that only on adapter cards/usb. A PCI adapter can't hook into the integrated chipset, so it has to have active components. An adapter faces a more rigorous interoperability requirement, therefore needs more testing of that nature and potentially more development. Ultimately, the combination of board+card to achieve what a competitor does all-in-one will end up being more expensive *and* less convenient to a customer needing it. Especially since in most cases that you advocate, the board manufacturers would replace the cost of a simple passive connector add with a card/active chip/passive connector add. You could say the chip manufacturer's would be the ones to drop support, but the justification is just not that good and won't lead to significant cost savings (at least, for the n-1 case, supporting too many generatinos of old tech would get more complex in a non-linear way).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The platitude that "Mac Works Well" is a sales point.
Since the entire existence of the two companies Apple has played the hardware game. And their hardware force-lock is absolutely, completely deliberate. So your wish itself is a wee bit off mark, because you're in effect wishing that Apple would reverse its thunderously announced corporate strategy. MS played the "license everywhere" game, to whatever effect.
*Both* companies are trying for Lock-In. That's why I don't see Apple's lock-in that much better than MS's. Their OS is a little cleaner now, but as the feature article and a couple nearby posts show, "all it takes is for senior management to drift a few years" before it all goes to smoke again.
Frankly, Steve Jobs has done a thunderous job to get Apple back this far. There truly were some company-crushing decisions made for about 10 years before he hauled everything back to usability.
Unfortunately, I'm not quite prescient enough to futurecast what the next 7 years will bring.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
No discussion of other OS possibilities (ie linux) at all. It also ignores the Vista orphans (those like me who will be forced to go to any other OS when XP reaches eol because they would NEVER allow Vista on their systems). Really I don't think companies need to do that much to compete with Vista...Microsoft has all but ensured they will chase away as much business as possible themselves.
Apple really should have pounced by now. I also haven't seen any new "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials, which were really effective. Apple really needs to get on the ball here.
whynotuseos9
I've written about this before, but I think the best argument I can make is to point to the dot-net addict site, and point out that wherever he compares .NET to ObjC, it's almost a guarantee he'll prefer ObjC. He's authored several (a dozen ?) books on .NET, and is a self-confessed addict, I'm guessing he's a better advocate than I.
:: signs everywhere when he sees a C++ program). It's far simpler than C++ (and provides a full object-orientated system), it's much better designed than .Net, it's faster than Java for most things (those byte-code compilers win over everything sometimes :).
Most people come late to Objective C, it's only really used on the Mac, and the [method syntax] throws people off (though I don't think it's any worse than a C programmer seeing all those
The only real drawback in modern times was the [retain]/[release] memory management, and even that is pretty simple - it even works with the built-in distributed objects across applications. With Leopard, we get managed memory, while still keeping the ability to link with any C library - did I mention it's a formal superset of C ? So *any* C program will compile under ObjC. And then you get to the real crux of it's strength - the dynamic nature of the language. Messaging an object ([myObject doSomething]) is not the same as calling a method (myObject->doSomething()), and you get a lot of power from that.
And, of course, it comes with a very powerful, elegant class-library. It's *hard* to write a non-MVC application in Cocoa - you have to really try. I think you only start to appreciate the subtlety of the class-library design after you've used it for a while. Easy things are easy. A lot of hard things are easy, and pretty much anything is possible. I've had a few "so that's why" moments over the past few years, and another cog slots into place.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
This is a new exclusive arrangement so it may take a while before it becomes more visible.
Indeed, there's simply nothing to compete with Ableton Live and Logic Audio/Studio on Linux either.
The stability of the audio playback justifies the purchase of a Mac alone. Not to mention that Logic Studio is immensely powerful and only costs a few hundred dollars when it used to be a thousand.
Those who like to be creative and not mess around with techie issues all day would be wise to forget Vista, you'll never get it working reliably as a music composition and recording workstation. Especially considering Microsoft throttle the network bandwidth to favour audio playblack, so that totally throws out the possibility of using gigabit networking and node software (where you use an additional computer for more processing power).
When it comes to doing big business - to making a real dent in the Universe(tm) - Apple use exaggerated (unfounded) arrogance to hide the fact they're fish out of water incompetent boobs. Their current offering "Tiger" is so riddled with really stupid bugs it's pathetic and it takes them YEARS to patch the simplest of security holes. Microsoft have a shit system to work with; Apple had a lot better. Given all that it's an incredible feat Apple could fuck up so bad and end up at the same nadir as their brethren to the north.
Why does Apple have to "beat Vista" to be successful? Seriously, when did this become a zero-sum game? Apple's stock is rising meteorically. Apple's computers are gaining market share (slowly, but surely). Apple continues to develop OS X. Apple continues to develop new hardware for their PCs. Apple continues to open new stores worldwide. Apple continues to make money selling computers -- lots of money.
Who gives a rats ass if they beat Vista? Who ever said that was their goal? We accept that there are dozens of auto manufacturers out there. We accept that there are dozens of pharmaceutical manufacturers. We accept dozens of consumer electronics manufacturers. Why is it so important for Apple to beat Microsoft? This is absolutely a non-story.
The mini is actually more expensive and comparatively (in terms of their product line) less powerful than the original Mac mini when it came out.
They need a mini "pro". Full sized hard drive, enough room inside for decent cooling, full power USB ports, a real GPU.
No Apple is not doing all it can to beat Vista nor are they trying.
Dell laptop: $499 (Inspiron 1501)
Apple MacBook: $1099
No contest on price Dell wins, therefore the college kids and Dillberts use Dell's. Apple has already turned into an electronic appliance company and already killed off their computer market. It won't be long until they shut it down completely.
The king is dead, all hail the king.
I'm runing XP, and strictly because I have a few apps I need that don't have the equivalent ones on Linux. I have absolutely no reasons to move to Vista, and so I won't. By the time the apps I'm runing on XP are no longer supported, there are good chances Microsoft will have some successor to Vista, and at that time I'll take a closer look at what's available on other platforms.
I have also observed that many individual users who got Vista are rather computer-illiterate and did so they could proudly claim "they had the latest and the greatest" Microsoft OS. Blah.
"Huge opportunity dooms Apple (Again!)"
Their main claim to doom is that people can't put their hands on a Mac in a retail setting. That's neither true nor relevant. There are plenty of places to put you hands on a Mac. The value of that five minutes of exposure is also debatable.
I don't know much about the author but a quick review shows he's not an advocate of freedom or even choice. The more I dig, the worse it gets. He seems to like M$ and has book titles like, "The Microsoft Way: The Real Story of How the Company Outsmarts Its Competition". Other major titles show equal lack of insight or forsight. It's amazing that the NYT would listen to someone like that, but hey he's a business professor who lives in San Jose, so he must know something ... right?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
"The investment that will be required for this business to come up to "speed" will become legacy within a couple of years. The cost does not generate any new revenue for the business and no longer gives them a productivity advantage."
The exact same argument applies to security. We know that security is such a low priority that it has to be legislated into being (see the state of California's laws in such events). Would you, if you were management at a company, downplay security? There's something to be said for doing things right the first time, and doing it in a way that can be kept updated over time. Sometimes decisions were made 20 years ago that don't apply now, though, and the companies should work to migrate. It's like checking and updating the security. It's cheaper to do it now while the costs are low than later when the costs are large, even if you don't believe there will be a time when these things fail (they will).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
OMG only two buttons, how lamo dude. My Linux machine has a mouse with 5 buttons, left button, right button, scroll wheel down, scroll wheel rolling up and scroll wheel rolling down! With the alt, shift and cntrl keys that gives me 30 diffeent combinations. My wife's mouse can also scroll wheel leaning right and scroll wheel leaning left.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Anyone unwilling to admit the damage Steve Jobs does to Apple is a fool.
Mac OS X is a laser-engraved stainless ratcheting screwdriver from Hammacher Schlemmer
Vista is a Swiss Army knife from Wal-Mart
Linux is a Swiss Army chainsaw from the flea market without kickback protection
The BestBuy closest to my home displays several different iMacs, but they don't really sell them in the sense that a sales person gives you a demonstration of the features, lets you play with it, and tells you why its a good choice. In addition, they only have their Mac-knowledgeable staff working on the weekends, and only about one out of every three of their stores carries Macs. So they are going to have to do a lot better than that if Apple is to increase their Mac sales over the holidays.
There is a little German car maker you might have heard of named Prosche. They make sehr viel money. Their stock is doing sehr gut. They don't really care about market share. Now, nobody bothers them about this or writes little essays about how Porsche will never catch up with Toyota or GM, because everybody understands they are playing for profit, not market share. For some reason, many people don't understand this with Apple. They keep talking about market share.
Apple has no debt. They are making lots of money -- okay, so is Microsoft. Their stock is up, what, 70 per cent this year -- Microsoft's has been dead in the water for years. Apple has two different product lines that are doing fine: Computers and iPods. They are working on a third, the iPhone. Microsoft has two products of the same type, Windows and Office, that make money. Everything else they have touched, like the Zune and the Xbox, has been a financial disaster.
Let Microsoft keep its market share. Apple is making money and making its shareholders happy. Like Porsche.
Did anyone else read whynotusexp as why not u sex p ? I thought it must be another esoteric /. gag, but it turns out I'm just retarded.
If you haven't used Cyberduck in awhile, try it again! It was one of those apps that started off slowly (I didn't care a whole lot for 0.xx) but 2.xx has been nothing short of excellent. I use it every day (and once I get around to getting a PayPal account, will definitely send some donations David Kocher's way).
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Sure, he uses the word "fucktard" but he does use it correctly.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
The elephant in the room of course is:
You are not doing all you can to defeat Vista as long as you will not sell it in direct competition with Vista. That means, on OEM hardware.
Now, that may or may not be the right thing for Apple to do. But until they do that, they are not even trying to compete with Vista.
Why is this so hard to see?
Yes, it's ending. The reason it will end is because handheld wireless devices will (really already have) become powerful enough to do what most people want to do with their computer, which is communicate in various ways, play games, find information on the web. Look at people in their teens and twenties to see what's happening, they are ahead of this curve. They have cell phones, not land lines. They might have a laptop, but they use it occasionally. They spend a lot more time communicating with their cell phone than their laptop. Banks will start optimizing their online account services to work from these handheld devices. The overly complex and clunky PC will be all but abandoned by ordinary users. Nobody will think that they need a PC like they need other "standard" appliances in a home.
Among those that do use laptops, they tend to be used as glorified typewriters. Many of them don't even have a real email address, due to the effect of spam they've migrated en masse to private email-like systems such as MySpace and FaceBook. (At first blush there may appear to be a hint of irony there, migrating their email communications to MySpace to get away from spam? Since the spam isn't in their inbox, it's not a pain, and it's not really ironic when you realize they've traded annoying spam for other forms of spamvertising that are easier to ignore. )
Sure, there may long be a workstation market that serves power users, but most people are not power users.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
That's the wrong way to do. Go find a PC like you want, and then price out the Mac. If Apple released a headless iMac, it would help, but right now the Mini is not powerful enough, the iMac is an all-in-one, and the Mac Pro just costs too much.
Honestly, do they even need to try? Vista is such a clusterfuck that Mac OS 9 could go against it and kick it's ass.
My name is Fred and I'm a Windows switcher. I couldn't figure out how to get my Mac to hang suddenly, or be hacked within 5 minutes of connecting, or completely break when installing "patches", so I moved back to Windows for the user experience that I'm used to... I'll bet there's a lot of others out there like me, just waiting to speak up!!
...You know, it's interesting. The PC has proved to be very resilient because, as Bill said earlier, I mean, the death of the PC has been predicted every few years. --Steve Jobs.
http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070531/d5-gates-jobs-transcript/
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
OS X with 192mb of RAM is painfully slow if you run any actual applications, and seems to swap nearly constantly. Even if you run Safari instead of Firefox. I find a relatively stripped down Linux desktop to be a lot less painful on that kind of hardware, though maybe you're right that some sort of monstrous GNOME setup with all the background crap enabled would be even worse.
At 512mb and above it's not an issue, though.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
As far as I can tell, most of Nintendo's resources and marketing are going into their "desktop" equivalent, the Wii, not their portable, the DS.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Gentoo Wiki
:-)
Go there, then do a find for "MacOS" How hard is that?
After you've enabled insecure ports on your NFS server, all accounts on the Mac can connect to NFS without using reserverd ports. So now, you don't really need to go through any system files (such as the fstab you were looking for, and BTW, google 'lookupd') to use an NFS client . The easiest way to connect to a NFS share is from Finder, click the "Go" pulldown, then select "Connect to Server". Or from Finder, press ?K
I can understand what you went through though, I tried using XP's NFS client to connect to my Linux NFS shares first, and that's what made me get a Mac.
So are you going to enlighten us as to the statements he made which were incorrect, due to his bias? Ah, no.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Hrm... damage. Is that what we call it now, when AAPL shares continue to rise? I bet the shareholders would like more and more of that damage. Is that "Rat Tart?" Can I have his spam? I like spam.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
And how long will you be using those two Acers?
I bought an Acer laptop for my wife, and bought myself a Macbook Pro (first generation) about two months later. Guess which one's lasting better despite being lugged around a lot more, used a lot more and generally abused a lot more. The Acer has been through three keyboards and two system boards in its short life, and already the power connector is going bad. This despite the fact that the Acer rarely leaves the house and my wife takes very good care of it.
Despite what I had hoped when I bought it, you DO get what you pay for with laptops. Her next laptop in the new year will be a Macbook; I ain't doing that "cheap laptop" thing again.
I think Apple knows that they have to stay just below MS's radar. If they become a threat, then MS can unleash Jupiter-sized retaliation. Apple wants to make money, not waste resources fighting giants for the giant's sacred turf.
There used to be an airline before Southwest that relied on low fairs for survival. As soon as they grew too big at too many hubs, the big guys worked together to squash them. Southwest learned from this and purposely does not get too big at any one hub.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't get the article. What's he talking about? OS X has already beaten Vista - it's the better product. Why should I care about any other interpretation of "to beat"?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
OOh, a fucktarded infidel. Remember, we will find a way around the laws so we can kill all of you atheist shits so you can all go to hell with the heathen.
Apple did try to set up shop in India, but strangely packed up and dismissed the thought a few months later. Unless Apple build up their presence in the hardware segment; they will not be a meaningful alternative to the Windows world - Vista or otherwise. Except in miniscule niche segments perhaps.
Miniscule except for doing things like printing TPS reports and what not. Insurmountable for producing media or entertainment of any type.
Whatever. When they left India did you all collectively say "Thank you, Come again" ?
This is just a rough thought, but if Apple sold 3 million computers in 6 months, and has 3% market share, then other Windows computer sellers sold 97 million? That seems a little high, seeing as how there are only 200 million people in America, but I understand there are 6 billion+ in the world but seems like the stats are a little old. I would like to know how many for this year. And not the 286s in the garage...
And little else.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
You might not remember history, but Apple does, and they don't want to repeat it. OS/2. BeOS. The Mac Clones. Until Microsoft's OS monopoly has ended, your "competition" would be more like "corporate suicide."
If Apple wanted to beat vista they'd stop using their hardware as a dongle for the OS. OS-X on normal PCs sold at Wal-Mart. That is trying to beat vista.
If they do that then I'll take notice. Until then as far as I'm concerned they're pulling their punches.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Considering Vista is uglier than a rusted out '59 Edsel with a tie-dye paint job, I don't think Apple has to try too hard.
This will expand market share, cut much further into Windows, and be a stepping stone to move users to Apple hardware.
The g4 mini had a real video card with 32mb later 64mb of it's own ram.
The OS war is kinda over. I dont think Apple is trying to become the dominate OS anymore. They are more of a hardware company these days.
That is why I wrote that it was (comparatively) a more capable member of the product line than the intel one.
But neither has a full size hard drive and enough room in the case for proper cooling, and both have underpowered USB ports. I needed an external USB hub to even charge an iPod Shuffle from my mini.
Yeah, I hear you guys. I don't use a lot of graphics/sound crap. I run a company, and what I want from my computer is to simply work. About 10 years ago, I got tired of sending my money to Bill and I decided to give Apple a try (since college, I've used everything from CP/M to OS/2 to XP, so trying a new OS isn't a new experience for me). I sent off for a spanking new Wallstreet Macbook, complete with OS 8.5. I sprung for new MS Office. I bought a new printer, because God knows, you can't have your IBM printer connect to a Mac. Got it. Set it up. All I wanted it to do was work. It didn't. The hardware is beautiful (I still have it today), but the damn thing crashed more often than the Wright Bros. It would die in the middle of an app and give you a cryptic message like "An error type 2 occured". WTF is that? Or it would freeze up and leave you with a box with nothing but a carat in it. What a POS. The best part was that it would read the error message to me, as if I couldn't figure out for myself that I had just lost my work. It Just Didn't Work. That experience cost me about $2500, and taught me not to believe fanboys. Now, my generic IBM laptop running Ubuntu works just fine. No freezeups. No BSOD. No new Office. It doesn't try to read the mail, or anything else, to me. It Just Works (TM).
Also Apple are both innovative and do get things done in a quite good way when they do something.
.Mac should be dead, free or available as a software package for setting up your own. :D
The free software movement are rather good at copying what is there and make something similair, but I don't see much creativity. For instance compare OpenOffice with Pages, or XMMS with iTunes (don't compare with Amarok and whatever the GTK-variant is called, they came after iTunes ffs.)
Why do we need KDE and Gnome to look like Windows copies? And why are so many unix users all hyped up over transparent terminals, wobble windows, docks and shit like that? It's just "hey, look, we can have this to!", but it's useless. Transparent terminals SUCK.
And how big are the chances that your photoviewer/editor in a free OS are as easy to use and "powerful" as iPhoto?
More things on the list of things which suck:
*
* Multiple user lists in iChat, what where they thinking?
* No MSN support in iChat, understandable but suck.
* Stupid formats and archives which doesn't work outside the mac world.
* No uninstaller! But there are apps which solves that (Yank, commercial, CleanApp, free.)
* Apple should stop with this non-computer shit, I'm a computer nerd, I care about computers, OS and software, not music players, phones, network appliances and design. FFS!
(and sadly I know this will likely never happen as it goes against their current business plan), they would release an official x86 compatible version of OSX. But if they truly wanted to "beat" Microsoft they will have to do this IMO. I, for one, will never switch to an Apple branded box despite my admiration for OSX. There will be no prying the DIY x86 away from me (and countless others no doubt).
Just imagine for moment if this were to happen...the resulting carnage to Microsoft's bottom line would be so deliciously. Talk about turning them on their back and attacking the weak spot for Massive Damage! Can you say "Mass Coverts"?
Dear Apple:
Few weeks ago I decided to go for a Dell Precision 690 workstation with all you can imagine instead of a MacPro and a couple of iMacs. Why? Because I have lot of old hardware (SATA disks, video cards and several nice gadgets) and I read carefuly that those pieces of hardware aren't Apple compatible, because even if you use Intel based computers you're still running propietary hardware. A shame, but I can't just put in the trash my stuff.
So, I purchased this monstruous workstation and overall I'm very happy with it. The problem is that Windows Vista is a total shit, hardware compatibility issues, stability, to much DRMs, slow, insecure, resource eater and so on...
I tried to install Ubuntu 7.0.4 and SuSE 10 and those Linux distros are more than crap comprared with Vista. My 2 Quadro 4600 video cards doesn't run together, so I can't use my 3 monitors, not a single legal and original apps and games I have "for Linux" run now, from X to console (Ctrl+Alt+F1) just crashed the entire system on all my attempts and so on.
So... now I'm frustrated. After Windows XP which was one of the best operating system I ever had in my systems, looking at Vista and Linux alternatives, I don't know where to scream.
I think, if Apple opens its eyes and release a PC version of their Mac OS X Leopard, there will be TONS of people out there that will migrate for sure (I'm not the only one in the world crying thanks to Vista et al). Being around $180 I'll be more than happy to buy my 3 licenses or the family pack of Mac OS X for PC if it become a reality some day. It should be difficult to achieve this for Apple, Mac OS X is already running on Intel platform!
Apple should be aware of doing this because their hardware are very beauty and well constructed and they will continue to sell computers for sure, but if Apple releases a PC version of Mac OS X they will gain instantly a market share that could be around 30% to 50%! And I'm speaking that this will happens in a matter of few weeks!!!
If Apple sells some 40 millions copy of Mac OS X for PC, just do the math: 40,000,000 * $180 = 7,2 billion dollars!!!! COME ON!!!! that's a lot of money not counting Apple hardware sell that will increase.
I even found the current running survey at phpnuke.org asking if you're interested in Mac OS X for PC. This means that there is interest out there. View the numbers... 75% says YES!
In resume... I'm frustrated and I have all my espectations on this great possibility to become a Mac addict.
Not only did I not have trouble last week getting good video on my Nvidia card, I didn't have trouble installing World of Warcraft and Burning Crusade under Cedega.
Maybe you haven't tried in a while. IE runs in Linux under Crossover Linux. So does Office.
If you don't need Windows to run Microsoft Office, what is it good for? We know what it's bad for: security.
Or maybe you're just incompetent. Or maybe you're a troll. In that case, my bad. Feeding trolls is bad.
My subject and comment express my opinion. My sig is reserved for bringing people's attention to other important issues.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Just wanted to point out that if you're using a printer from HP you should be fine. Other vendors that take money to be incompatible, maybe not.
I guess the market will decide whether it's more profitable to be compatible. HP has over 1000 open source printer drivers available right now.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Real world: Apple is the only platform that is close to being an appliance. Plug it in, use it. The rest demands way too much attention. Apple machines are easy to use and will do whatever it is you want them to do. Simple elegant and brilliant in all aspects. Microsoft is General Motors, Linux is Yugo, Apple is a mix of Honda and BMW. Still don't get it ? I don't care anymore. You're just too thick to get it.
For deployments Mac rocks also. They include an imaging application in the install CD, and a broadcast imaging server in OSX Server. Deploying an app in OSX is as simple as dropping it on the client's icon from the server, or it can be managed in groups. In short, management services of OSX macs are included in the base install and they're easy.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
For the rest of this post, unix=mac=linux, AOL=Compuserve=Windows. I know there are differences. It's a metaphor. Live with it.
The Internet and unix have always been around. Back when you lost your internet account because you graduated or left your military contractor job you used to have to make a deal with an internet service provider that would give you IP access. Sometimes you couldn't. Back then compuserve and AOL were quite popular. Watching people use that was so sad, but you couldn't teach them the error of their ways. They wouldn't listen because they thought they had a good thing.
Then the common man found out about the Internet and for some time we had to deal with questions like "who's a good source for Usenet News" and "if you finger yourself, can anybody see?" The AOL invasion in particular was hideous -- they multiplied the Internet population by about a factor of ten overnight.
That's the pattern I'm seeing repeat here. As people convert to Linux they're going to ask silly questions. They'll be up to speed before too long. Until then, bear with them.
And the people who want to keep using AOL and Windows? They're still out there and they probably always will be, just like there's people out there connecting with Windows. A few less every year, but don't berate them. They think they're doing OK because they don't know any better and most of them will come around eventually. The rest of them we can live without.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to go get some kids off my lawn.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
About a month ago I bought a laptop with Vista for my daughter and an Mac laptop for my son, with pretty similar hardware. At work I use XP.
After a month I absolutely can't stand Vista and I absolutely love Mac.
I would have never thought - but there it is. There wasn't even competition between the two, Mac jumped to the front on the first day and the distance is just increasing.
I start to feel guilty for my choice for my daughter. I was playing with the idea of getting her a MacBook, too and I could get her Vista to replace my P4 XP laptop - but I found myself really resenting the trade. I also would not want to spend almost 200 dollars for a replacement XP license. Instead, I'll get an external firewire drive, on which my daughter can keep and boot into her own version of Mac, when borrowing the hardware, until we all can get our separate Mac.
Apple is not some IPO. They are only one year younger than Microsoft (76 as opposed to 75). For the past decade or so, their market share has been more or less stagnant. They have grown significantly, but they have not grown significantly with respect to microsoft.
The same is true of linux.
There's no indication whatsoever that anyone will get a larger marketshare than microsoft any time in the next 30 years.
That is an important fact that wasn't mentioned once. Apple has taken its business strategy lateral instead of vertical. Intead of trying to climb the ladder that is the stale desktop market. They are jumping to ladder that have sprung up right along side the desktop market. Consumer devices respresents a sizeable growth oportunity that rivals the desktop market. Apple is growing faster than Dell because of it. Again, we are bantering about yet another redundant foray into why Apple isn't trying to takeover the desktop market. The fact that a reputable paper like the New York Times is chiming is not so much for analyzing Apple's missed opportunity but to highlight a continued frustration with Microsoft. Does anyone believe that Microsoft was truly responding to the needs of its consumer with Vista? High system requirements help OEMs. DRM serves sontent providers. UAC is an annoying nuisance that is self-serving shift of the blame to the consumer for security lapses. Where is the consumer to turn for an alternative? Linux? They are give it away for free from thousands of different sources and yet it is stuck with a fraction of the desktops. Whatever merits it has, apparently, consumers are not willing to trust with their computing needs. The only alternative is Apple with Mac OSX. Unfortunately, Apple Computer has long been replaced by Apple, Inc.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
> If you'd bought apple stock and google stock at the time google went IPO, your apple stock would have outperformed your google stock by 3 or 4 times. Not even close; see chart.
Seriously, just put two fingers on the trackpad and click. To scroll a window (like a scroll wheel) just put one finger down and move another on the trackpad. It's a thousand times better than just two buttons.
A fine example of using multiple accounts to add an air of legitimacy to your mindless waste of bandwidth.
And, you did it without quoting a Dell price sheet.
"You can see I know very little about pimp policy." George McGovern.
I don't know about that - my new Q6600@3ghz runs Vista just fine with 2GB of memory (@333mhz) and an 8800GTS/320mb display adapter.
... that'd be apache, postgresql, coldfusion plus ktorrent. :)
Performance is, put simply, ripping. On a single core it is, admittedly, a dog - it would appear that it particularly likes the fast memory speed, in addition to the additional cores that handle the otherwise crippling background processes.
I primarily use my Vista "productivity" partitions for MS Studio 08, Office 07, Textpad and lots and lots of browser sessions. I've got a separate partition for Vista DX10 games, and a WinXP for DX9 games. To maintain some Slashdot cred I should probably add I've got a separate box running Linux 24x7
ISO certified == THX certified
So if they could fix the problem of having to click to focus a window instead of just pointing to focus? It's the little things that count you know.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Like I said - even Windows wakes pretty instantly from standby, because it's not really off, just in a low power state. I suspect we're not comparing like with like. Do macs give you a choice whether to sleep with power completely off (hibernate)? This is essential for laptops; otherwise your battery power is slowly trickling away. 'Cause I challenge the assertion that a mac can boot from hibernation or even, as some seem to believe, from cold in two seconds.
The RAID card can do SAS too, and for its performance numbers, its price competitive with other cards in its class such as those from adaptec.
Apple machines will not always do whatever it is you want them to do. c.f. the iPhone, which despite Apple's recent assurances that they will not "intentionally" meddle with 3rd-party applications, will probably receive a firmware update tomorrow that will break the hacks.
This is unacceptable for me, as the iPhone is essentially useless to me without them.
If Apple insists on continuing down a "screw you, you'll take what we give you and like it" path, I'll be forced to ditch the iPhone on eBay, sign up for a different plan, and deprive them of my royalties. C'est la vie.
+++ATH0
If you think that a "funky looking" UI is a reason to prefer an OS, you're missing the point of Mac OS X. It's not only funky, it's also well designed, usable and consistent. Ubuntu is - so far - only funky.
I recently switched from an Ubuntu box to a Mac mini as my "media computer" hooked up to the TV. I loved the Ubuntu box, but frankly, there's no comparison: Mac OS X wins in pretty much every category except price.
It takes long to go to sleep because it writes the contents of the RAM to your disk. You can turn that off using /usr/bin/pmset.
Apple wants to make money. That is not necessarily the same thing as selling more copies of OS X.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
If Apple wanted to crush windows, they could do it quite easily. And make tons of money in the process.
How? Just sell the Apple OS as a separate software that could work on a normal IBM PC compatible computer.
We already know its possible to do it, there were leaked beta's that could be modified to run on a normal windows machine, and we know that early Development packages included a normal windows machine with the Apple OS running on them.
The current mac computers all use intel CPU's.
So we know there's no technical reason why they can't do it. Sure they'd have to do some extra testing, but it IS possible. I mean most of the modern mac internals are now standard PC kinda stuff anyway, as are things like Mac graphics cards.
I know a ton of people who would pay $100 to turn thier machines into a dual boot windows/mac instead of paying $500 or $1000 for an overpriced, under performing mac, and then the $100 for windows to run in boot camp.
I'd probably buy it myself in that case. Then I could stick with windows to play games, and the mac boot for everything else.
But apple apparently prefers to be a small market with large hardware margins on everything they sell.
Here's why I don't run Ubuntu:
1. Ubuntu does not run on my hardware (late-model iMac G5) and Ubuntu isn't going to make it work.
2. I don't want a "funky" UI. I'm not 17 years old.
3. Not all the software I want to run is available on Linux. (Yes, that means Adobe. It also means Transmit and Textmate and others. Why use a wanna-be on Linux when I already own the real thing?)
4. Buying a computer is always a matter of taste. It isn't only the look of an iMac that appeals. It's the simplicity.Linux' Achilles heel is that it runs on the same miserable ugly noisy overheated boxes that Windows uses.
All that from someone who used Linux for 10 years before he got off that particular treadmill.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
When your biggest complaint is you can't handle change. "It's different" is not an excuse to refuse to use something better.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
A fine example of using multiple accounts to add an air of legitimacy to your mindless waste of bandwidth.
Not me, spod. I don't have any sock puppets here. Want to explain what made you think I did, 'cos I don't see it.
Windows, Linux, Mac OS X? Who the hell cares?
The only people that actually argue about operating systems are the digital evangelicals under the age of 30. Everybody else just turns their computer on and gets real work done.
Me? I decided a long time ago that I liked buying a car that just starts up and works. I don't rebuild the engine every month, nor do I buy my engine from a different manufacturer. Every part in my car was engineered to work perfectly in concert. My car starts every time, gets great mileage, has a decent resale value, and doesn't strand me along the highway when I least expect it. My ride never gets carjacked, even though it turns heads for its state-of-the-art design. I drive in comfort and confidence and never worry about the wheels coming off or the engine seizing up. Its gets me exactly where I want to go in comfort and style so I can enjoy the scenery along the way.
Life is short, kiddies. Pick a computer, get a life, quit worrying about my OS. I'm fine, thanks.
Indeed. I think Apple should release the MacBook Pro X-treme Fatal1ty 0wnage Edition with a trackpad with 10 buttons, force feedback and a coolie hat.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Er...PR, anyone? Costs a lot of money, last time I checked.
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
1) Only buy the system when it has been recently updated.
2) The cheapest one are probably most worth it, 24" iMac is an exception.
3) Don't add any options.
4) DON'T BUY THE FUCKING BLACK MACBOOK.
5) Use education discount, free iPod, ADC student / other pay ADC if possible.
And your other desktop system are probably not close to the iMac in design, quality and expandibiliy sure.