Psystar Open Computer Notes, Benchmarks and Video

Engadget has had a chance to play around with Psystar's Open Computer and has a few things to say about the controversial machine. "Okay, so we've been playing with the Psystar Open Computer for a few hours now, and we've formed some early impressions and put together a short video of it in action. We haven't really tried to stress the system yet, but based on our other experiences with OSx86 machines, we're expecting things to generally go smoothly. That said, there are some definite rough patches and issues, all mostly having to do with the fact that OS X isn't really built for this hardware."

Comments

Did the Slashdot crowd jump to conclusions?

[plantman-the-womb-st]

Seems it's not a fraud box after all. Who'da thunk?

Re:Did the Slashdot crowd jump to conclusions?

[mrbluze]

Did anyone notice how long it took from button-push to actually seeing something on the screen? Felt like an eternity! 10 seconds or something. Same for waking from sleep.

My 3 year old dell laptop wakes up in about the same time in Linux and less in Windows XP.

Re:Did the Slashdot crowd jump to conclusions?

[actionbastard]

Seems it's not a fraud box after all. Who'da thunk?

That is irrelevant.
Right now, as you read this, Apple legal, ST_VE, and whomever else, are looking over their
Psystar 'Open Computer', to determine how it violates Apple's IP and EULA.

Their response will be measured, firm, succinct, and final.

Psystar will be out-of-business in a month.
Bon Apetit, suxors.

Re:Did the Slashdot crowd jump to conclusions?

[rudy_wayne]

Seems it's not a fraud box after all.

I guess it depends on your definition of "fraud". Selling a computer that is "crazy loud" and has several things that don't work is pretty close to fraud as far as I'm concerned. It's obvious that they didn't put a lot of effort into this. They're just trying to get them out the door as fast as possible so they can make some money before Apple shuts them down.

Re:Did the Slashdot crowd jump to conclusions?

[marimbaman]

I guess it depends on your definition of "fraud". Selling a computer that is "crazy loud" and has several things that don't work is pretty close to fraud as far as I'm concerned. It's obvious that they didn't put a lot of effort into this. They're just trying to get them out the door as fast as possible...

What? Sounds like every other PC maker I know of... :)

Re:Did the Slashdot crowd jump to conclusions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, did you?

Re:Did the Slashdot crowd jump to conclusions?

[vought]

Seems it's not a fraud box

No, just a piece of shit.

Re:Did the Slashdot crowd jump to conclusions?

[PopeRatzo]

Selling a computer that is "crazy loud"

And we all know that's impossible to fix.

There is something inherent about running OSX on the CPU on which it is meant to run that makes it "crazy loud"?

By the way, we also know it's going to be a failure because the box isn't refrigerator white. That's a "fatal flaw".

Re:Did the Slashdot crowd jump to conclusions?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is something inherent about running OSX on the CPU on which it is meant to run that makes it "crazy loud"?

Actually, yes. OSX doesn't know how to talk to the fan controller.

Re:Did the Slashdot crowd jump to conclusions?

[plantman-the-womb-st]

http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/08/04/18/1858222.shtml and the comments therein is what I meant by fraud.

Two/three weeks ago seemed everyone here in slashdot world was screaming their lungs out saying this company and product was a "hoax" and anyone ordering one of these was getting ripped off.

I could be wrong, but if you purchase something, the company ships it as ordered and it is what it was claimed to be even if a little noiser *than you'd hoped* I doubt very much you could claim fraud.

Re:Did the Slashdot crowd jump to conclusions?

[Sloppy]

Apple legal, ST_VE, and whomever else, are looking over their Psystar 'Open Computer', to determine how it violates Apple's IP and EULA.

Now all Apple has to do, is look over the contracts between them and Pystar, and find the term that Pystar violated. Oh wait, Pystar isn't licensing anything from Apple. And they're (presumably) reselling legally-purchased copies of Mac OS, so there's no IP violation either. Oops.

Apple might be able to pull something off, but I wouldn't assume they'll succeed. IBM wasn't able to take out Compaq, either.

Re:Did the Slashdot crowd jump to conclusions?

[Weedlekin]

"ey're (presumably) reselling legally-purchased copies of Mac OS, so there's no IP violation either."

If you RTFM, they're pre-installing hacked copies of OS X that aren't the same as the ones in the box, and users can't install the licensed software in the boxed set on the Psystar machine. Pre-installing is copying, so Apple can get Psystar for both commercial copyright violation, and commercial DMCA violation (bypassing a security measure for profit -- whether Psystar wrote the software to do this is irrelevant, because the act of distributing it is a contravention of the DMCA).

"IBM wasn't able to take out Compaq, either."

They did however take out a number of companies who were manufacturing machines with direct copies of the IBM PC ROMs in them without having IBM's permission to do so.

Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[backpackcomputing]

The price of the Psystar seems cheap compared to Apple branded products, although there appear to be several rough edges. A base system with the Leopard 10.5 OS, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB HDD and Core2Duo processor costs $555 plus shipping. It does not come with a monitor or keyboard. By comparison, for example, a Mac mini with 2GB of RAM, but a smaller HDD and slower CPU costs $949. Although, the aesthetics of the mini can't be denied. http://backpackcomputing.com/

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[Adambomb]

Although, the aesthetics of the mini can't be denied odd, i would have said that aesthetics is the one area where you will always have someone denying its value.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[Joe The Dragon]

The Psystar systems can take a real video card the mini can't also the open pro has a bigger case and likely less fan noise.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[falcon5768]

Look at the specs though, you cant compare the two. Where the clone is faster and has more memory, it lacks firewire, wireless (while you could get away with no wireless unless your using it for a media PC, firewire I find essential no matter what until Apple adds external SATA), and the options to select it bump it up to the same price as the only slightly slower Apple Mini.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[Reality Master 201]

The psystar sound like the deck of an aircraft carrier. Even on the relatively crappy video I've seen so far, the first thing that jumped out was how damn loud the thing is.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[mabhatter654]

The mini is a great value compared to other small windows PCs like the shuttles (for size it can't be beat at the price) or the ITX boards (mini is much more powerful for the price). The issue is that the mini has Zero upgrade path for a Windows switcher with halfway decent hardware. You can't have internal 3.5" drives (7.2k or 10k). You can't pick a reasonable video card. You can't put two drives in there, or upgrade your burner... etc. Buy an off the shelf HD3850 or 9600 and you've topped every 3D offering Apple has even at $3k+, at least to play a few games, even if they're windows games... at least you don't need a second machine to keep what you've got invested in the Windows world.

I regret my Macbook for that one simple point. The graphics are more poor than on the iBook I picked up used at a garage sale. (no, I'm not replacing a $600 Windows machine with a $2000 notebook just to play the SAME games on it.) When a 3 year-old game like WoW is painful on a dual core 2.1Ghz processor/ 2GB ram something is seriously wrong with the hardware selection. Where's a "just" Mac equivalent like this Psystar from for the hacker switchers from Actual Apple?

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[larry bagina]

The previous psystar video had horrible fain noise.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

The mini is a great value compared to other small windows PCs like the shuttles

Oh horse shit. I love my Apple, but I've built numerous Shuttles for people and I usually come in right around what a mid-range mini would cost. The difference is that the Shuttle machines do not use laptop components and can accommodate real video cards and can generally be expanded to four or eight gig of ram. And yes, I usually load Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS on them. They run rings around the mini.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[BLKMGK]

How is the mini a good value compared to an XPC? You can put together a 3Ghz E8400 XPC with an 8800GTS etc. for a pretty decent price. Hell use a 65nm quad and you're still not doing too bad. I'd like a mini and all but 2Ghz for HOW much?! I must admit that building a Hackintosh is VERY tempting when looking at the prices critically. $800 with 1Gig of RAM and THAT video card?

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[njcoder]

What part of "it's not cute" don't you get? Leave your techno mumbo jumbo out of this.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

The mini is a great value compared to other small windows PCs like the shuttles (for size it can't be beat at the price) or the ITX boards (mini is much more powerful for the price).

Mac mini + 2gig of ram + Superdrive + 160GB HD = $949.00

Shuttle SG31G2 + 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 + Western Dig 320GB HD + Pioneer DVD/RW + Asus GeForce 8400GS passive vid card + a Wolfdale 3.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU = 608.94

So.. now you can either add OEM windows for around a hundred or linux/*bsd for zero. Either way it makes the mini look like a real piece of shit and you like an idiot.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[1729]

This is a desktop if your using wireless on a desktop you sir are an idiot! Uh, why?

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[MojoStan]

The Psystar systems can take a real video card the mini can't also the open pro has a bigger case and likely less fan noise. The previous psystar video had horrible fain noise. The Psystar in that video with the horrible fan noise was not the OpenPro, which uses the famously quiet Antec P182 case. That video, and the current article, featured the cheaper Open Computer, which uses the much cheaper Asus TM-211 case.

However, the current article says the loud fan problem seems to be caused by incompatibilies between the motherboard/case fan controller and OS X (and maybe the hacked EFI). If the same motherboard/case was used with Windows, it would surely be much quieter.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[Martin Blank]

What's wrong with wireless on a desktop? I've done several installations for people who wanted a primary computer hooked up to the router, but had their kids' systems (and I think TiVo, in one case) hooked up via wireless because they didn't want the hassle of running cables to other rooms. It's not a good case for transferring large files all the time, but it works perfectly fine for them for the Internet browsing, e-mail, and gaming that they were doing.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[amabbi]

The mini is a great value compared to other small windows PCs like the shuttles (for size it can't be beat at the price) or the ITX boards (mini is much more powerful for the price).

Mac mini + 2gig of ram + Superdrive + 160GB HD = $949.00 Shuttle SG31G2 + 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 + Western Dig 320GB HD + Pioneer DVD/RW + Asus GeForce 8400GS passive vid card + a Wolfdale 3.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU = 608.94 So.. now you can either add OEM windows for around a hundred or linux/*bsd for zero. Either way it makes the mini look like a real piece of shit and you like an idiot. Mac mini: 6.5" x 6.5" x 2"
Shuttle SG31G2: 11.8" x 7.9" x 7.3"

Geez louise. You don't know how to read, do you?

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[tomhudson]

if your (sic) using wireless on a desktop you sir are an idiot!

It's a lot easier than running cables through concrete.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[MojoStan]

Look at the specs though, you cant compare the two.

and the options to select it bump it up to the same price as the only slightly slower Apple Mini. Slightly slower? Did you read TFA? The MacBook (which is comparable to the Mac mini) got pwned by the cheap Psystar. This shouldn't be surprising, since the MacBook (and the Mac mini) has a slower notebook hard drive, a slower CPU (with slower frontside bus), and the slower notebook version of Intel's integrated graphics (lower GPU clock speed and less allocated memory).

Where the clone is faster and has more memory, it lacks firewire, wireless (while you could get away with no wireless unless your using it for a media PC, firewire I find essential no matter what until Apple adds external SATA), The $600 Mac mini only has a DVD/CD-RW combo drive and 80GB hard drive, while the entry-level Open Computer comes with a DVD writer and 250GB hard drive. You need to spend $800 on the Mac mini to get a DVD writer and a whopping 120GB hard drive.

Of course, I'm not saying the Psystar "hackintosh" is a better value than the Mac mini. In fact, I think the Psystar is a piece of crap when it's running OS X (no fan speed control and not update-able). It's kind of ridiculous to compare the two, but I guess we're "forced" to since Apple doesn't offer a headless desktop Mac with desktop (not notebook) parts. At least the Mac mini works like it's supposed to.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[mh101]

Don't forget the Psystar system doesn't include iLife either, so that's one more thing you'd have to buy separately to get the equivalent of something from Apple.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[goombah99]

Look at the specs though, you cant compare the two.

and the options to select it bump it up to the same price as the only slightly slower Apple Mini. Slightly slower? Did you read TFA? The MacBook (which is comparable to the Mac mini) got pwned by the cheap Psystar. no it didn't. The cpu performance was comparable. THe disk perfromance was not bad. Yes, the video card performance lagged but by less than a factor of 2. who cares? what niche buys the cheapest piece of crap so loud you can't stand to be in the same room with then cares about graphics speed within a factor of 2?

if you want faster disk or a dvd burner s on a mac mini you can put one in with a screwdriver or even smarter add a firewire drive.

besides which this argument is about TCO not chest beating performance or spec for spec. it's about what's the entry level price for a mac.

  If you want chest beating then the pystar is not what you want anyhow. if you want to talk TCO, then those slower disk and slower graphics cards save you about $160 a year in power bills if you leave this thing on 24/7. the mac mini draws laptop size sips of power and has power management to boot. this thing runs at full bore.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[PopeRatzo]

If some little outfit had built a homebrew box that ran the XBOX360 or PS3 system, you'd all be throwing bouquets of roses at them, even if it was loud as hell.

Can we just admit that the only reason this company is getting trashed is because it dared to assault the holy Apple Grail?

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[MojoStan]

A base system with the Leopard 10.5 OS, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB HDD and Core2Duo processor costs $555 plus shipping. It does not come with a monitor or keyboard. Since TFA reveals that the motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L (and the black case is obviously an Asus TM-210), I think we can further evaluate its "value" by "building" a nearly identical system on Newegg. Here's what I got:

• ASUS TM-210 Black 0.6mm SECC MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case 300W Power Supply $54.99
• GIGABYTE GA-G31M-S2L LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard $66.99
• Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 Allendale 2.4GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80557E4600 - Retail $119.99
• SUPER TALENT 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model T800UX2GC5 $37.99
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250310AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $59.99
• LG 20X DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH20NS10 - OEM $24.99
• APPLE Mac OS X v10.5.1 Leopard - Retail $109.99
• TOTAL: $474.93 (plus shipping)

Since companies like Psystar can buy parts at much lower prices than we can, it seems like Psystar is making a nice profit on each system. In contrast, when I try to "build" a Newegg PC that's comparable to a cheap HP or Dell, the HP or Dell is always cheaper.

The price of the Psystar seems cheap compared to Apple branded products, although there appear to be several rough edges. The two articles I've seen on shipped Psystar computers seem to indicate that they did a craptacular job of hacking OS X to work on their hardware. I'm sure most of us can do a better job by referring to OSx86 Project. I'm sure the "rough edges" can be avoided by simply asking on the OSx86 Project's forums, "Which motherboard works correctly with OS X?" (including fan control and OS X Software Update)

By comparison, for example, a Mac mini with 2GB of RAM, but a smaller HDD and slower CPU costs $949. Although, the aesthetics of the mini can't be denied. Of course. Although, comparing an expandable minitower to a SFF computer with laptop parts is ridiculous. Also, don't forget the bundled iLife that comes with the Mac mini (assuming the buyer wants it).

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[uhlume]

Good luck getting acceptable wireless signal through concrete.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[MidnightBrewer]

Bear in mind that you'll still be forced to buy the artificially imposed "Mac edition" of whatever card you're looking at, which means the price will be over-inflated and you may run into problems with the drivers functioning properly. I'm curious to see how third-party upgrades go.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[roguetrick]

Since companies like Psystar can buy parts at much lower prices than we can, it seems like Psystar is making a nice profit on each system. In contrast, when I try to "build" a Newegg PC that's comparable to a cheap HP or Dell, the HP or Dell is always cheaper. From what I've heard, this might be just some dude in his garage. If thats the case, he might be buying newegg. Still, nice profit.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, my stock 8800GT works great in OS X (obviously not running on a true Mac). You just need to do a little configuration file editing.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[HuguesT]

I think you missed the OpenGL benchmark. The macbook got owned by a factor of 7, not 2.

Firewire drives are more expensive and slower, speaking from experience.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[falcon5768]

Your experience is wrong. Firewire BY DESIGN is faster than USB 2 (argue that how you want, but despite being 80mbs faster on sheet it cant reach that speed by design) and SATA. How could you even think to be taken seriously when you dont even know the capabilities of the drives.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[makomk]

You're sort-of right - most of the Shuttle PCs are much bigger. Then again, they're also fully-upgradable (minus the motherboard and PSU) machines based on desktop hardware and with space for two 3.5" desktop hard drives, a desktop optical drive, and a real graphics card. (They're also generally quite nice to work on internally, considering the size.)

No-one really does PCs similar to the Mac Mini - I'm not sure there's really a market for it. Shuttle does one that's only slightly larger, but with a bigger price tag and stuff like Radeon integrated graphics and a full-sized 3.5". This is niche hardware, hence the high price tags - if it was more mainstream, the prices would be much lower.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[tomhudson]

Good luck getting acceptable wireless signal through concrete.

Try the newer wireless "n" - it works in stair wells, through walls, etc. much better. p I brought one to work Monday (I figured I'd give dlink a try - my other one is a linksys - and I'm pleasantly surprised at how good it is) and it works in stairwells, in the restaurant downstairs, etc. I'm surprised ... but I'm not complaining.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[goombah99]

Yes but on most graphics ops it was less than a factor of 2. if all you want to do all day is 100% open GL and no cpu or other ops and don' t mind going deaf, buy a pystar.

seriously that's why they do multiple benchmarks. no one just does a benchmark's apps. it's like saying a TI DSP is powned the x86 since it does FFTs faster.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[MBGMorden]

Um, no. This computer runs a hacked copy of OS X using PC_EFI (by netkas) just like virtually every other OSx86 system. Those do NOT require a "Mac Edition" video card to run. I'm running a similar home-built Mac system and I'm using a regular old MSI Geforce 7600GT on mine. I had it in my Windows machine before it got donated to the Mac. It works just fine.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[MBGMorden]

No-one really does PCs similar to the Mac Mini - I'm not sure there's really a market for it. Shuttle does one that's only slightly larger, but with a bigger price tag and stuff like Radeon integrated graphics and a full-sized 3.5". This is niche hardware, hence the high price tags - if it was more mainstream, the prices would be much lower. (emphasis mine)

This agree with wholeheartedly, but the ironic thing, is that if you ask for an upgradeable machine a la the Shuttle (upgradeable like 99% of the computer systems made), most Mac fanatics will tell you that that's just a niche market that Apple doesn't want to support.

Yeah, confuses me too. Only in Mac-induced backwards land is the most common type of computer in existence deemed a "niche".

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[mrchaotica]

...then cares about graphics speed within a factor of 2?

A factor of two is the difference between 15 FPS (not usable) and 30 FPS (usable).

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[drinkypoo]

If you can run a cable, you should run a cable. If not, you should use wireless. The hassle of dealing with wireless at this point is, I think, not worth it (although I admit that it's not really THAT agonizing - when it works.) And in marginal situations (anywhere that's too far to conveniently run a wire may be too far to get consistent signal) it's really a bitch to have your network have problems when someone walks between you and the AP. But let's face it, some people will not run a cable no matter what. Hooray for WPA2.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[jedidiah]

A shuttle doesn't really offer much in the way of shrinking the PC footprint.
They are still pretty huge when compared to a mini or an older style bookpc.
They just aren't the same class of machine. They're big and ugly.

OTOH, most people don't really need small and cute.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[drinkypoo]

Firewire drives are more expensive and slower, speaking from experience.

You bought crap, because if everything is working properly, IEEE1394 is faster than USB2. Actually, this is true even with crap, usually. Here's why: While USB2 is allegedly 480Mbps and IEEE1394 is only 400 (FW800 aside) the reality is that USB is processor-bound. I have some disks with Prolific interfaces and both USB2 and 1394, and I attach them to my nw9440 via one interface or the other, I get 2-4 MB/sec more on 1394 when just shoveling data, and what's more, when I use USB2 I use about 12% processor just running an uncompressed tar from my local SATA disk to the external, where on 1394 it's about 2%.

IEEE1394 has less latency, less overhead, and higher real-world throughput than USB2. It also supports up to 255 daisy-chained devices per bus (although in the real world, most host adapters only provide for 127 per adapter... shucks) and provides peer-to-peer functionality - which means that with proper driver support, you can do dual-attach with a single cable, and carry TCP/IP over it at the same time if you like.

IEEE1394 is superior to USB2 in every way. If we had gone that direction, it would probably be the same price as USB2 or even cheaper today, because it is easier to implement. It uses a very simple register-based system of messages. We could also have native 1394-interface disks; Basic 1394 carries 50MB/sec, 800Mbps will thus do 100MB/sec, 1.6Gbps is in the works and if it ever sees the light of day considering our cold reception that's 200MB/sec... For many purposes this is more than enough, although the 1394 WG claims or used to claim that they were also planning on implementing 3.2Gbps over fiber (with copper for power.)

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[jedidiah]

If you're really concerned about space, the XPC probably isn't going to cut it.

If you're not concerned with space or with the XPC being butt ugly than any old
desktop PC would probably do too.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[illumin8]

Look at the specs though, you cant compare the two. Where the clone is faster and has more memory, it lacks firewire, wireless (while you could get away with no wireless unless your using it for a media PC, firewire I find essential no matter what until Apple adds external SATA), and the options to select it bump it up to the same price as the only slightly slower Apple Mini.

You know, from a company selling these to the mass market, I would have expected better. I built a hackintosh in my spare time, using an Intel 975BX2 motherboard. I have working Firewire, my fan control works (whisper quiet, you can't even hear a fan), sleep/wake works, basically, it's as good as a real Mac. I'm surprised they can't build a decent hackintosh, when a luser like me can build one in my spare time. I guess they probably decided to cheap out on the components. After all, the 975BX2 motherboard cost about $180. You can't really cheap out on components if you want a "good" hackintosh.

What worries me the most about this whole situation is that until now, Apple hasn't had much reason to crack down on the hackintosh community. Sure, there's a few hackers/geeks like me that want to build them in our spare time, and they pretty much let it slide until now. Unfortunately now they have to crack down on it because otherwise the beige box vendors will start eating their lunch. If Psystar does this and gets away with it, what would stop an organized company like HP or Dell from doing the same thing? I hope they don't start putting some serious copy protection into Mac OS X, but chances are they probably will now. Fuck Psystar for making them do this.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[t0rkm3]

Or even running cable under the floor (through the ceiling) and the drilling, and fishing the cable out so you can mount a female connector to a wallplate.

Instead, I set up a wireless network with WPA and iptables on every host... Time to set up new wireless cards, 2hours for 4 machines (My SGI Fuel has no wireless). Not getting insulation in unmentionable places? Priceless.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[Lars T.]

If some little outfit had built a homebrew box that ran the XBOX360 or PS3 system, you'd all be throwing bouquets of roses at them, even if it was loud as hell. That's because that would make it quieter than either.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[pressman]

Yeah, try capturing ProRes 422 or DVCProHD encoded video to a USB 2 drive and tell me how fast it is.

Try capturing the same footage to a FireWire 400 drive. It actually works, but you should be using FireWire 800 when capturing those formats anyway... at the very least.

Even capturing DV/DVCPro NTSC video to USB 2.0 is a risky endeavor. Dropped frames galore!

USB 2 is great for storing images, audio, and work documents but for anything that requires dedicated bandwidth, you can't count on it.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[Martin Blank]

Wireless works fine in most cases. I oversee three wireless networks as part of my job using nearly 60 APs from two different vendors (not including the five different wireless NICs in use), and the only real issue that we had was due to an application that didn't like NATs, forcing us to allocate more IP space to the wireless network. In one case, there's an entire room of about a dozen people that could have been hooked to a wired network, but they instead use the wireless network exclusively because it gives them mobility that they otherwise would not have. Most of them don't have a network jack at their desks, for that matter. None of them use desktops to my knowledge, but the connections are secured using PEAP and WPA2, validating both hardware and user before they're granted access.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[iamacat]

Ask their kids to look into power line networking. Much better MMORG frame rates this way.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[WNight]

The value of aesthetics, yes. But not the fact that the MMini is stylish. (After all, bell-bottoms are stylish, but the value of that is in question.)

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[WNight]

Laptop users have more of a reason to use wireless than desktop users, right? As the earlier poster mentioned. He was talking about desktop users using wireless.

Wireless is worse than wired for speed, cost, security, and fussiness. It's what you use when the convenience outweighs the risk.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[WNight]

Yeah, and maybe the Psystar is being marketed to people who would... oh, I dunno, spend all day in OpenGL apps?

Maybe you should just shut up and use your Mac. Nobody is telling you not to.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[WNight]

You're an idiot. Sorry, but it's true. Someone had to tell you before you spent your whole life being one.

Fuck Psystar for making them do this. Ok, we'll go over this slowly.

Psystar is making Apple do what precisely?

Apple could just keep selling the machines that fanboys insist are the best, and those fanboys presumably buy these machines so nobody should even notice.

So if Apple does so anything, who will be making them?

Apple of course. They're responsible for their own actions, like everyone else.

If they shit all over their OS just to keep people from exercising their legal rights - fuck them. Seriously. They sell a product and are already messing it up (hardware detection) so that it has less value. (What if your legal Mac got hit my a power surge and you tried to build a Hackintosh to rescue your data - Apple would prefer that you could not.)

And you blame this on Psystar? Did they get a time-machine and go inject Jobs with Assholium back in the late 90s?

I think you should really examine the actions taken by all the players and try to see who's intending to fuck over everyone else and who's just playing the game legally.

Psystar is doing what Apple, and all other companies, do - buy a product (HD, OS, Video card) and resell it. Legally. Apple has no more rights to the OS post-sale than Hitachi does to your hard drive post-sale - both contain copyrighted programs. Selling something exhausts all your legal rights to it. Hitachi doesn't feel the need to be jerks - claiming rules don't apply to them.

Sure, that's the way copyright law has always worked. And sales. But Apple finds that annoying? Oh my god, well we'd better totally overhaul the whole fucking system then? We should probably just make Steve Jobs king of the fucking world while we're at it.

Try supporting someone other than Microsoft2 you sycophantic losers.

Fuck all you idiots for continually blaming the wrong people and for freaking out whenever Apple yanks your chains. You're the stupid reactionary element that make our society so sad.

Thanks a lot assholes.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[BLKMGK]

Umm, I already own two socket 775 XPC. I find them neither butt ugly nor particularly in the way on my desk. In the past I've owned about 4 other XPC and find that they are much less of a bother than full sized machines except when it comes time to upgrade them, upgrading a Mini is significantly more difficult. Unless you're willing to pile stuff on top of a Mini or turn it on it's side the footprint it takes up isn't all that much smaller than an XPC.

Frankly, I don't buy hardware simply because it looks pretty. If that's high on your list and you're okay spending too much then by all means buy yourself as much Apple hardware as you can stand. The Mini is a nice box, it's still overpriced.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[illumin8]

If they shit all over their OS just to keep people from exercising their legal rights - fuck them. Seriously. They sell a product and are already messing it up (hardware detection) so that it has less value.

You're an idiot because you don't even understand that your basic premise is wrong. Apple doesn't do any hardware detection. They just don't support standard MBR style boot, so you need an EFI bootloader. Before you go talking out your ass you better do your research first.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[Martin Blank]

It's true that wireless has lower speeds than wired, and is generally a little more fussy, but the cost and security arguments are not necessarily true. How many people encrypt their traffic on a per-user basis over the network? We don't. Even our IPSec VPNs are gateway-to-gateway. How many people have even the most rudimentary NAC on their wired networks? Not many; even without DHCP, it's not hard to plug into a network and figure out the IP range and default gateway.

As to cost, the deployment of the two APs for that room cost just a little over a thousand dollars with cabling included; it would have been between four thousand and six thousand to cable the room. Another, much larger room was cabled for fifty thousand dollars, but the six APs that we put in (determined afterward to be overkill) cost under ten thousand.

It all depends on what you value most. If you require the highest reliability, then wired works. But there are certainly cases -- and they're less uncommon than you may think -- where wireless is a better way of setting up the network.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[HuguesT]

should have said : slower than internal disks.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[mabhatter654]

Apple says they won't support it... that's the problem. Since the G4 Cube people have been asking for small and upgradeable for years. But even in the era of the Cube, Apple still tried to sell it for much more than the comparable tower machine which was silly. Now that they have a smaller, cheaper machine they won't add cube-like functions to it. Grrrr...

Second issue is that Apple doesn't seem to be letting anybody make aftermarket video cards... they've completely shut everybody out. Hence they're announcing a "new" upgrade to 8800gt for Mac Pros in the same email as 9800Gt for regular PCs... why no 9800GT for Mac Pro?

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[WNight]

Well, there are further security issues like people locating your hardware from outside, traffic analysis, etc. Usually not an issue...

The biggest threat is that wireless is a network jack for the attackers. While the regular traffic might be encrypted it's usually fairly easy to spoof an existing host. If all non-VPN traffic isn't dropped it's a matter of exploiting some machine remotely and gaining access - likely to a machine on the VPN.

How big was the $50k room? That's almost your cost for an IT guy for a year and I could wire a HUGE room in a year.

Do you mean that you then converted that room into wireless with the six APs for under $10k?

What sort of APs are you using? (At $1k+ each I'm guessing they aren't Linksys WRT54Gs.)

Was this Wireless-A, or G? I'm assuming A because there aren't that many non-overlapping G channels...

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[WNight]

You're so intellectually dishonest. Try answering some questions instead of merely attacking me over a perceived mistake, as if it would change my question.

I repeat, how exactly is Psystar forcing Apple to do anything. Could Apple not tolerate the resale of their products much as every other company does?

Now, onto your mistakes. Apple's strategy, as outlined by Jobs, is to use software updates to brick hacked hardware, and hardware updates to prevent those hacks.

He was speaking mostly of the iPhone, but the same actions can be seen in the iPod, OS X, iTunes, etc.

Apple starts by engineering their own platform, EFI as you mention, the ipod hardware, etc, but when these aren't enough to stop people reusing their OS or hardware they institute checks specifically designed to stop those uses.

The iPhone is hardware and apple controls the software (to connect to AT&T), so they use opposite methods than with OS X or iTunes where they don't control the software (you can crack it) but they control the authorized hardware (Macs, iPods, etc). But it's exactly the same tactic.

How is Apple forced to do pretty much exactly what Microsoft was doing to them, that they bitched about for so long? (Designing hardware and software to maximize incompatibility and destroy their competition's products.)

Fan Noise

[rampant mac]

"It's LOUD. Crazy loud. OS X doesn't seem to interface with the fan controller, so it runs at full tilt all the time. It doesn't really come across on the video, but it's loud enough so that it's hard to talk on the phone when the machine is running. There's no way we could deal with this thing on a daily basis."

I watched the video, and he's completely wrong. The fan's so loud that at about 2 minutes into the video it drowns out a passing fire truck.

If you looking for a similar experience, hold a hair dryer (on low heat) about 3 inches from your ear. :)

Re:Fan Noise

[dpbsmith]

Yep, not a Steve Jobs product.

The products he's been involved in have been either truly silent or blessedly quiet.

There's a difference, by the way, and truly silent is better.

They may overheat, of course... but until they do, they're a pleasure to use. You don't realize how fatiguing fan noise is until you work with a machine that doesn't have any.

It was a sad day when I had to clip a Kensington fan to my Apple ][+

Re:Fan Noise

[mrbluze]

The fan's so loud that at about 2 minutes into the video it drowns out a passing fire truck. Nah that's just the commentator's hairy, distorted, monotonous voice.

Re:Fan Noise

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, not a Steve Jobs product.

The products he's been involved in have been either truly silent or blessedly quiet. My Power Mac G4 MDD would like to have a word with you. :)

Re:Fan Noise

[nomadic]

If you looking for a similar experience, hold a hair dryer (on low heat) about 3 inches from your ear. :)

Unfortunately I think they're using the same asus case I ordered for a media center PC I wanted to put together. That just sucks, I need to find something quiet.

Re:Fan Noise

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't exactly call the G3 and G4 macs silent.

Re:Fan Noise

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure Mr. Jobs was around when my dual-G4 MDD came off the assembly line. Not only is it loud, but it manages to combine the noise of all the fans into this hideous, soul-destroying G-minor chord. If you recall "the most annoying sound in the world" from Dumb and Dumber, you'll get the idea.

That said, my C2D mini is delightfully quiet. Maybe it just took a while for Steve-o to get his mojo back.

Re:Fan Noise

[drinkypoo]

Macbook pro is SO NOISY. Not any noisier than a PC but not so much that it makes my 17" core duo laptop with quadro graphics (nw9440 ez901aa#aba) seem like a monster - although my system IS slightly louder and WAY bulkier. I'm actually soon to get a G3 iBook, I think I'll use that for most things in the future. My nw9440 will be a game and graphics machine (it also hosts development copies of websites, because it's the fastest machine in the house.)

Re:Fan Noise

[Lars T.]

Unfortunately I think they're using the same asus case I ordered for a media center PC I wanted to put together. That just sucks, I need to find something quiet. Hey, they should have tested the machine in the case before they pasted the photo of the case on their website.

Re:Fan Noise

[immcintosh]

I watched the video, and he's completely wrong. The fan's so loud that at about 2 minutes into the video it drowns out a passing fire truck.

He isn't wrong. He's just saying that the fan drowning out a fire truck doesn't really make how loud the fan REALLY is come across properly ;)

"it just works"

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of what makes a Mac a Mac is the whole "it just works" thing. Many people don't quite get this until they've actually used a real Mac for more than a few weeks. Plug things in and you don't need to dick around with fighting to get it to work right. Sleep and hibernation that work the way they're supposed to. But with a machine like this, you toss all that out the window - which means one of the most attractive things about owning or using a Mac (aside from the joy of OS X) goes out the window too.

Re:"it just works"

[QuantumG]

It just works until it just doesn't and then you're just fucked.

Bend over.

Re:"it just works"

[RiotingPacifist]

If something "just works", your not trying to do anything cool enough on it
e.g install MacOS on non apple hardware
convert a 5 y/o box into a PVR
mount your HDD through a loop over a coat-hanger.

Re:"it just works"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I don't get it either. I've used Macs too, and while they may require less fiddling overall, there are plenty of instances where they don't "just work". It doesn't recognize every device you plug into it, software still crashes, they are very finicky about memory modules, and I could go on. The more you try to go against "The Apple Way" of doing things, the more you'll run into it. I wish the "just work" meme would go away.

Re:"it just works"

[shadwstalkr]

Except that it doesn't. I use Linux mostly, but I work in a physics research lab that uses exclusively* macs. We still use several G4s with OS X 10.3.9. I can't install network printers on half of them, for no apparent reason. I can't mount them using firewire on newer macs. No error messages, it just stalls.

We got two new iMacs last month. One of them turns off randomly. Both of them crash randomly when we use our analysis software (a two-year old powerpc program). The OS is so slow it's nearly unresponsive (to me, the people that only use macs don't have a problem with it). On a related note, the iMac makes no hard drive noise, so I can never tell if it is just slow in responding, or if I didn't double click fast enough. File sharing is a pain to figure out. I can't easily change my icon theme without buying third party software. Don't get me started on the usability of the single menu bar. I can't find any easy way to uninstall Garage Band, et al, so that the automatic updater stops bothering me about them. I can't find a way to move windows between desktops ("spaces"), and all new windows seem to open on the same desktop that the program originally opened on, making multiple desktops virtually useless. I need third party software to have an automatically changing desktop wallpaper. Our IT guy told me that to take apart the iMac you have to buy suction cups from Apple to pull the glass off before you can unscrew the case. The "mighty mouse" can fake a right button, but you have to lift your index finger off the left side for it to work. My advisor was so used to this that he didn't even realize he was doing it. I can't drag windows around by alt-clicking on the window. I can't close a window that is minimized without showing it.

These are just the bad things that I can think of off the top of my head. There are a lot of great things that I haven't mentioned. Maybe coming from Windows I would be blown away, but in Linux all this stuff actually just works, plus all the stuff that does work on the mac. If macs work for you, great. Just realize that you're paying a 100% tax for a pretty box, and stop telling me that it just works.

Note that I'm not claiming in any way that macs can't do something. All that I am saying is that if I, a power user of several decades, couldn't figure out how to do it over the last year it didn't "just work." I welcome any solutions to problems that I mentioned, except solutions that include spending money.

* The computers that run our expensive research equipment are windows. It's cheaper for them to give you a computer with windows than it is to develop a cross-platform solution.

Re:"it just works"

[hagbard23]

I'm not doubting you might be having hardware problems, but several of your complaints are not actually problems.

Move windows between Spaces: Hit your spaces key, and drag the windows between spaces. Easy peasy.

Automatically change desktop wallpaper: right-click (or control-click) on desktop, select "Change Desktop Background". I have a folder of Digital Blasphemy pics, so I hit the + button at the bottom of the left hand side, and navigate to that folder. Then I check "Change Picture", select "Every Hour", and check Random Order.

I have a feeling that Spaces is "supposed to" separate things by application, not necessarily by window. Linux and Windows throw all windows into one huge Alt-Tab clusterfsck, where Apple says: Command-Tab is for switching applications, and Command-` is for switching windows within an application.

Menubar at the top of the screen? Ever hear of Fitt's Law? Rather than the fiddly wasted screen space of dozens of menu bars repeated in every window, I've just got one.

Uninstalling Garage Band? Just delete the folder. No uninstaller application needed.

Just because something is different doesn't mean it's broken

Re:"it just works"

[gujo-odori]

That's mostly true, but there's an exception to everything. You should see my MBP and my HP Photosmart 7350 not talk to each other :p

Re:"it just works"

[ZerMongo]

There are so many things wrong with this post it's mind-boggling. Not just like "hey I have a difference of opinion," but clear, factual errors. A few: * I can't easily change my icon theme without buying third party software. Go to any icon on the Mac. Cmd-I or ctrl-click and "Get Info." Click on the icon. Ctrl-C to copy it. You can now ctrl-P to paste that icon and use it for any other icon. You can usually do this with .jpgs as well (open an image in Preview. Select all, copy. Click on the icon you want to change in "Get Info" box. Paste) but .pngs are a bit hit-and-miss. * I can't find an easy way to uninstall GarageBand Drag app to trash. Done! * I need third party software to have an automatically changing desktop wallpaper. This one's a toughie. Open up the desktop & screensaver system preferences, and at the bottom of the list there's a checkbox that says "Change Picture:" followed by a drop-down list of times. Now, you have to mouse over the check box and CHECK it. * I can't find a way to move windows between desktops ("spaces") Provided you set it up properly, grab the window and move it to the edge nearest the window you want it to move to. It automagically moves it. I know this isn't an exhaustive critique, and some of your points were valid. But Christ man, think before you post. It sounds like you don't want to learn, so you haven't bothered.

Re:"it just works"

[UnknowingFool]

We got two new iMacs last month. One of them turns off randomly. Both of them crash randomly when we use our analysis software (a two-year old powerpc program)

Well if you got new iMacs, they are Intel iMacs. PowerPCs programs would not necessarily work unless they were compiled for Universal.

File sharing is a pain to figure out.

I acutally have the opposite experience. I have Windows and Linux machines at home. It takes only a few clicks to turn on Windows Sharing and share files. Windows unfortunately makes me reboot if change the workgroup.

I can't find any easy way to uninstall Garage Band, et al, so that the automatic updater stops bothering me about them.

To uninstall any application drag it to the Trash.

The "mighty mouse" can fake a right button, but you have to lift your index finger off the left side for it to work.

Yes that is slightly annoying. However any USB mouse pretty much works on a Mac so you plug in a multibutton Logitech or MS mouse if you want.

I can't drag windows around by alt-clicking on the window.

For OS X, you can only drag windows by clicking on the titlebar.

I would say that it seems some of your issues are because you are a power user. You have expectations on how it should work because they worked that way in Windows and Linux. Unfortunately your experience with Linux and Windows does not translate. It's not that it doesn't just work. It doesn't just work the way you would like it to work.

Re:"it just works"

[SpinyManiac]

Try Ctrl+Tab next time you're on a Windows box.
It's been a while since I last used Linux, but I bet it has an equivalent too.

Re:"it just works"

[tknd]

Menubar at the top of the screen? Ever hear of Fitt's Law? Rather than the fiddly wasted screen space of dozens of menu bars repeated in every window, I've just got one.

I know Fitt's law but this isn't exactly the best application of it. Fitt's law works best for corners, not edges. If you jam your mouse to the edge of the screen, it will still slide in one direction. To some degree the menu bar at the top does make the buttons "bigger" but not as big as the corners are.

Having a single menu bar at the top does have the benefit of saving space and ensuring that the bar is stationary, but there are some downsides. The bar will change depending on which window you are working with. So if you have two windows side by side, you have to first click the window you want, then you will have the right menu bar. Additionally if you have a really large screen but a small application like say a calculator, then when you want to access the menu for the application you have a travel a longer distance to reach the menu bar. There are trade offs to both designs and it isn't clear that one is better over the other. That's just UI design "art" if you will.

Now my personal opinion is any UI that makes heavy use of the menu bar needs to die (in fact all menu bars need to die). It's too easy to stuff things into the menus without thinking about usability beforehand. That's how we end up with stupid UIs.

Re:"it just works"

[Farmer Tim]

Cool is in the eye of the beholder.

convert a 5 y/o box into a PVR

In my house is an Elgato EyeTV connected to a 2003 eMac via FireWire (which my 74 year old father set up two weeks after having a stent inserted in his carotid artery and with mount your HDD through a loop over a coat-hanger.

Um...no, that's just reckless, sub-Meccano grade stuff. Get back to me when you've securely shoehorned six HDDs into a computer that only has four drive bays, designed and built a bypass for the PSU that lets it run on a battery bank without an inverter or switch to mains automatically when available, mounted the whole thing in a rack and installed it in an outside broadcast van, which I did a few years ago with a G4 tower.

Re:"it just works"

[Farmer Tim]

Apparently [left caret]30% is an html tag, but not one that gets picked up in the preview. Brilliant.

That should have read:

In my house is an Elgato EyeTV connected to a 2003 eMac via FireWire (which my 74 year old father set up two weeks after having a stent inserted in his carotid artery and with less than 30% blood flow to his brain). So far from being cool, it's a task for a brain-damaged septuagenarian.

mount your HDD through a loop over a coat-hanger. ...and so on.

Re:"it just works"

[Anonymous Coward]

If something "just works", your not trying to do anything cool enough on it
e.g install MacOS on non apple hardware
convert a 5 y/o box into a PVR
mount your HDD through a loop over a coat-hanger. Rubbish
http://www.macvroom.com/node/5
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/05/31/now-thats-a-mac-mini-pvr/

The Mac is just a computer. You can hack just as much as any other machine.

Re:"it just works"

[Snowmit]

I'm writing this on a Macbook - the first computer that I own that I didn't build from parts. When I decided to get a Mac, a friend warned me: "When you first get the Mac you'll spend a bunch of time fighting with it because it doesn't act like Windows. Once you get past that and start learning to use the Mac as a MAC, you'll find it much more pleasant to work with." He was right.

It sounds like the Grandparent has already decided that Macs suck and so can't even be bothered to figure out that half the things they want to do can be done already, making me wonder about the other problems and whether they are diagnosing them properly.

You can move windows between spaces by
1) hitting the spaces key, then dragging it to a window
2) by dragging a window to the side of the screen and watching it slide over
3) by grabbing a window and then hitting the button combo for the screen you want it to be on.

You can also set programs to auto open in certain spaces or to always appear in all spaces if you want that kind of thing.

Re:"it just works"

[Hackeron]

One of them turns off randomly.

Hardware problems likely.

Both of them crash randomly when we use our analysis software (a two-year old powerpc program).

I've only used rosetta briefly and it was stable for me, but running analysis software under hardware emulation? - not the best idea.

The OS is so slow it's nearly unresponsive (to me, the people that only use macs don't have a problem with it). On a related note, the iMac makes no hard drive noise, so I can never tell if it is just slow in responding, or if I didn't double click fast enough.

So your complaint is the iMac is too quiet? -- install the OS onto a loud external USB drive then go into System Preferences -> Startup Disk and let it boot from USB by default.

File sharing is a pain to figure out.

Click on System Preferences -> Sharing and tick File Sharing -- from there your public folder is shared onto the local network, to add anything else just right click -> Get Info -> Sharing.

Mac also supports NFS (not tried NFS server though), but you can mount NFS shars with mount_nfs -P host:share destination.

I can't easily change my icon theme without buying third party software.

Never tried but I'm sure you can find free icon collections and just overwrite the default icon files in the original location.

Don't get me started on the usability of the single menu bar.

KDE has this feature although it's a bit crippled and isn't system wide - but it's without a doubt one of my favourite things in OSX.

I can't find any easy way to uninstall Garage Band, et al, so that the automatic updater stops bothering me about them.

OSX doesn't have software installation (some packages come with installers but they just copy the application over to /Applications) - every application is a special self contained directory that you simply drag to trash when you are done with it - because OSX has spotlight, it creates any file associations as soon as you copy the application somewhere spotlight keeps a track of (think a pimped out inotify daemon on Linux).

I can't find a way to move windows between desktops ("spaces"),

Click on spaces in the dock and drag+drop the window wherever you want.

And all new windows seem to open on the same desktop that the program originally opened on, making multiple desktops virtually useless.

Go into system preferences -> spaces and assign whatever applications you want to whatever space you want.

I need third party software to have an automatically changing desktop wallpaper.

This is in system preferences -> desktop -- it's right there on the first page: "change picture: every": 5 seconds, 1 minute, 5/15/30/60 minutes, every day, when logging in and when waking from sleep.

Our IT guy told me that to take apart the iMac you have to buy suction cups from Apple to pull the glass off before you can unscrew the case.

I've never tried to take apart an iMac but a quick google search shows this: http://home.comcast.net/~woojo/DFFA53A0-F23D-4541-9015-481FD3B6532E/iMac_Disassembly.html - no suction cups needed.

Macs are generally harder to disassemble and when I had to take apart my Macbook Pro for a hard drive upgrade, there were something in the range of 4 groups of different screw types to keep track of - but at least the screws don't just fall out like my on my Fujitsu laptop and then the warranty people claim you unscrewed them and forgot to screw them back in :)

I guess anything that has smooth edges and no little plastic doors will be harder to disassemble.

The "mighty mouse" can fake a right button, but you have to lift your index finger off the left side for it to work

Re:"it just works"

[John Betonschaar]

Added to that: you are running a heavy physics PPC application on a new iMac (which is x86). No wonder your machine is slow, it's running through an emulator which makes it about 4 times slower on average and using 8 times more memory. For a physics app I would guess its even worse. Use a G5 machine for such applications or get/recompile an x86 version.

I would also recommend upgrading your OS version, 10.3.9 is like stone-age OS X.

All the other 'issues' don't really impress me. Changing your Icon Theme? Uninstalling an application? Changing the background image? Problems with the right button on the mighty mouse?

It just sounds like you don't know a lot about OS X yet and refuse to take a few minutes finding out how to solve these issues, and you are using outdated software compiled for a different CPU architecture. If these are the only issues you have with OS X, you don't actually have issues with OS X, you just have issues with the way it works, and with the applications you need to use on them.

Re:"it just works"

[damnbunni]

>> Uninstalling Garage Band? Just delete the folder. No uninstaller application needed.

Doing that will leave about two gigs of sound samples on your hard drive.

Garage Band puts its samples somewhere in the Library.

Re:"it just works"

[pond0123]

I agree that MacOS has its problems; I have a laptop which works really well and a new Mac Pro tower which has serious problems with (at least) the nVidia graphics driver and has been a pain in the rear from the start. That said, quite a lot of what you say is inaccurate or at least highly debatable; I comment on those points below. On the others, I agree with you.

...OS is so slow it's nearly unreponsive... Very strange; I've not used iMacs, so maybe they're really bad, or perhaps they're old PPC machines - never used PPC-based Macs myself. Both my 10.5.2+Intel-based laptop and tower respond more or less instantly; they're at least as quick as any Linux installation I've used and in my experience to date far less prone to random delays and stalls than Windows, but I guess YMMV.

...iMac makes no hard drive noise... Too quiet? An interesting complaint! If bouncing dock icons, launch animations, hourglass indicators and so-on aren't sufficient for you, install something like iStat Menus (donationware) so that your menu bar will tell you what the machine's doing at any given time. Personally, I prefer the peace and quiet.

...file sharing... System Preferences -> Sharing -> tick 'File Sharing' and follow the on-screen instructions. A pain to figure out? I think not.

...uninstall Garage Band et al... Drag the application to the trash. Really - that's it. That's all you do. If you're worried about run-time preferences files etc. being left behind, install a freeware solution like AppTrap to ask you if you want to tidy those up too.

...move windows between desktops... Spaces is new to OS X and rough in places. 10.5.3 promises some improvements; we'll see. In the mean time, to move windows between spaces, you jump out to the Spaces view (e.g. press F8) and drag them from one space to another, or start a drag on the window title bar (click&hold) and activate a space-change keyboard shortcut (finger gymnastics ahoy). There isn't a way involving, say, some title bar menu or similar - and that's lame.

...third party software to have an automatically changing desktop wallpaper. System Preferences -> Desktop & Screen Saver / Desktop tab -> Tick the 'Change picture' checkbox and select the rate of change from the pulldown menu.

...drag windows around by alt-clicking... No, though there are all sorts of 3rd party extensions for this and the behaviour you describe is specific to the window manager you're used to under Linux; plenty others don't do it. You can at least press F8 and move the window within the Spaces overview.

I've not found the need to drag windows from odd corners. My guess is that you're used to window managers which let windows obscure one another (raise on focus) but don't provide an easy way to get at the windows underneath, so you use alt+click on a protruding bit of window to get around that. MacOS has a solution I find much better, but that's strictly IMHO and it took me a while to start using it - get used to Expose on F9 and F10.

Overall I prefer a window manager with a simple 'send to back' icon and no forced raising, because I grew up with RISC OS and I'm used to using windows that way, but such beasts are few and far between.

All that I am saying is that if I, a power user of several decades, couldn't figure out how to do it over the last year it didn't "just work.@ I'd never used OS X in my life prior to acquiring a Macbook and it didn't take me more than 5 minutes to figure out where the wallpaper changer is, but I guess one man's obvious is another man's obscure ;-)

Ultimately, if you want an OS to work the same as Linux with your preferred window manager, then you may as well just run that. It's a lot cheaper.

Re:"it just works"

[Anonymous Coward]

While I'll admit I'm sitting in front of a linux box right now so I can't check these items directly. This is what I can think of from memory.

I can't find any easy way to uninstall Garage Band, et al, so that the automatic updater stops bothering me about them. 1. Does dragging "Garage Band, et al. to the trash not work? That's how things are usually uninstalled on a Mac.
2. There is also an option to ignore updates in Software Update if you want to keep them around but not update them for some reason.

I can't find a way to move windows between desktops ("spaces"), and all new windows seem to open on the same desktop that the program originally opened on, making multiple desktops virtually useless. I think by default, F8 would sort you out for moving between spaces. Also, the Spaces preference pane in System Preferences can bind certain apps to certain spaces.

I need third party software to have an automatically changing desktop wallpaper. System Preferences can do this as well. Down to the granularity of every few seconds I believe.

Note that I'm not claiming in any way that macs can't do something. All that I am saying is that if I, a power user of several decades, couldn't figure out how to do it over the last year it didn't "just work." I'm sure you are very proficient with working on your Linux box. As someone who recently started using Linux more often I can understand your points. However, because you don't know how to do something doesn't mean it doesn't "just work". Spend a few seconds on Google or read the normally minuscule manual that comes with your computer and/or OS and you'll figure out how to do some of these simple tasks. I think if Apple launched a "Take a brief tour of Leopard" hand holding demo for these features that some other OS's might do, people would be offended.

Re:"it just works"

[Megane]

six HDDs into a computer that only has four drive bays ... a G4 tower

That's why I'm still using my dual 1GHz MDD after all these years... four internal drive bays and a couple of external FW drives plugged into individual ports on a PCI FW card, and gigabit wired Ethernet too. It's a big reason why I never got a G5. (the other reason is that I've been keeping my laptops upgraded instead)

There was a bit of trouble in late 2006 when the boot drive wouldn't spin up other than at boot time, but that's it. And thanks to Apple's power supply replacement program, I even have a spare power supply (they decided it wasn't worth the shipping cost to have the noisier power supplies returned).

Oh yeah, and it can still run 9.2 if I get nostalgic.

Re:"it just works"

[ThirdPrize]

I would say it "just" works. The number of people out there having issues with their Mac/iTunes/iPod set up is amazing.

Re:"it just works"

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy way to uninstall Garage Band et al? Drag them to the trash. You do NOT need third party software to have automatically changing desktop wallpaper - it's built into the OS. And as for file sharing being a pain to figure out, I'd assume that to be platform agnostic.

Re:"it just works"

[burris]

There are trade offs to both designs and it isn't clear that one is better over the other. That's just UI design "art" if you will.

Sorry, but you're wrong. It's not art, it's science. The stopwatch doesn't lie.

Re:"it just works"

[illumin8]

This is a poorly written anti-mac troll.

File sharing is a pain to figure out.

How so? You just go into system preferences, and check a single box to enable file sharing. Easier than any other OS available.

I can't easily change my icon theme without buying third party software.

There are a ton of freeware utilities that will change your font theme without having to buy anything.

I can't find any easy way to uninstall Garage Band, et al, so that the automatic updater stops bothering me about them.

If you want to uninstall Garage Band, just drag it from the Applications folder to the trash.

I can't find a way to move windows between desktops ("spaces"), and all new windows seem to open on the same desktop that the program originally opened on, making multiple desktops virtually useless.

Click the frickin' Spaces icon, then drag the windows between desktops as much as you want.

I need third party software to have an automatically changing desktop wallpaper.

Another lie. Click on desktop/screen saver preferences and you can tell it to automatically change your wallpaper every X minutes. Built right into the OS and doesn't require any third-party utility.

I can't drag windows around by alt-clicking on the window.

No, in order to drag windows around you just have to click and drag, just like any other OS. Is that really so hard?

I can't close a window that is minimized without showing it.

Right-click on the dock icon and choose Quit.

All that I am saying is that if I, a power user of several decades, couldn't figure out how to do it over the last year it didn't "just work."

You might think of yourself as a power user, but you're an idiot if you can't figure this stuff out. Grandmas and housewives have no problem using Mac OS X, unlike some other operating systems. Spend 10 seconds on Google or Macosxhints.com and figure it out. Or better yet, just shoot yourself and take yourself out of the gene pool. If you can't figure out how to use a Mac you are a complete tool.

Re:"it just works"

[Lars T.]

Try Ctrl+Tab next time you're on a Windows box. And what is that supposed to do? Switch between windows? Is that new in Vista?

Re:"it just works"

[WNight]

It's because they don't use human-readable files as the basis of everything. Say what you will about Linux's CLI usability, the GUIs are very simple and rarely cause problems as Windows and Mac ones do. In Linux the GUI merely makes a change to the config file - the same one you could edit directly if you wanted.

In Windows/Mac, the GUI isn't just a front end. If there's a bug in the GUI it's not going to make correct setting and there's nothing you can do.

Trying to get dual monitors working (playing DVDs) in Windows was this way. Theoretically easy, but there was a bug. Setting the right settings wasn't enough. First you had to set some, then apply, then the rest, then apply, then go into and come out of settings, then make the next change. Otherwise even with everything looking correct it just wouldn't do whatever it needed to do.

Linux was harder, as in it required actually editing files, but easier in that all the difficulty was right where it was expected. I didn't have to diagnose GUI bugs at the same time as trying to make the video work.

GUIs are easier, if they work, but not building a human-readable layer underneath means that it'll be far harder to do anything not explicitly planned for.

Easier for casual users does not translate into easier for advanced users.

Re:"it just works"

[WNight]

If you listen to Apple that's not true.

Of course, they seem to have some bias...

Re:"it just works"

[EvilIdler]

The way I fiddle with icons is simply to use "sips -i" from the terminal on all images.
This creates an icon for each image which can always be copied and pasted from the info panels.

Re:"it just works"

[EvilIdler]

GarageBand leaves gigabytes worth of loops in the Library, though.
Some programs which DO need uninstallers don't have them.

Re:"it just works"

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the optional install of sound samples is in the Shared user folder. It is not part of the application.

Re:"it just works"

[abhi_beckert]

Except that it doesn't. I use Linux mostly, but I work in a physics research lab that uses exclusively* macs. We still use several G4s with OS X 10.3.9. I can't install network printers on half of them, for no apparent reason. I can't mount them using firewire on newer macs. No error messages, it just stalls.

Ask around on forums, I'm sure it can be worked out. As someone who uses linux, surely you don't have a problem with doing research to fix something?

We got two new iMacs last month. One of them turns off randomly.

Warranty?

Both of them crash randomly when we use our analysis software (a two-year old powerpc program).

Just a thought, maybe that's because your analysis software is shit?

The OS is so slow it's nearly unresponsive (to me, the people that only use macs don't have a problem with it).

Slower than many linux distros is probably true, but "unresponsive"? You're either running crap software or don't have beefy enough hardware to run it.

On a related note, the iMac makes no hard drive noise, so I can never tell if it is just slow in responding, or if I didn't double click fast enough.

You're talking bullshit. When you double click something, there is an animation that you can't possibly miss. Unless you're talking about third party software, which must be pretty crap if it gives no feedback when you do something. And the default double click speed is very slow, so I find it hard to believe that you sometimes "don't double click fast enough" but you can change it in system prefs.

File sharing is a pain to figure out.

You have a list of servers that are auto-discovered, you click on one of them, the files come up. Alternatively you run the 'connect to server' menu item and type in the server's address. To become a filesharing host you tick a box named "personal file sharing" in the "sharing" section of system prefs, then drag files into your public folder. That's hard to figure out? wtf?

I can't easily change my icon theme without buying third party software.

The most popular software for doing this used to be an open source app (which still works perfectly), but virtually all icon/theme artists use proprietary file formats now... I agree, it sucks. :(

Don't get me started on the usability of the single menu bar.

OK, I won't. Personally I only use the menubar once or twice a day (i use the keyboard for everything on mac and windows, and none of the linux machines I use regularly have X installed), so I couldn't tell you which menubar system I prefer. I wish I could turn them off altogether.

I can't find any easy way to uninstall Garage Band, et al, so that the automatic updater stops bothering me about them.

Right click on garage band, select move to trash. Done, it's uninstalled.

I can't find a way to move windows between desktops ("spaces"), and all new windows seem to open on the same desktop that the program originally opened on, making multiple desktops virtually useless.

Drag a window to the edge of the screen, it will move to the next space. Or if you use hotkeys to change spaces, "grab" the window (start dragging it) and hit your hotkey, it will move to the space. Or if you use the expose-show-spaces-thing, open it up and drag a window to another space. In system prefs you can assign programs to specific spaces.

I need third party software to have an automatically changing desktop wallpaper.

Define "automatically changing". Depending on what you mean, this may be built in.

Our IT guy told me that to take apart the iMac you have to buy suction cups from Apple to pull the glass off before you can unscrew the case.

I'll admit I've only ever replaced ram, which takes seconds (most of the time spent waiting for it to shutdown/start up) and doesn't involve anything

Re:"it just works"

[abhi_beckert]

Do you know anything about OS X? Virtually all configuration files are xml "property lists", except for the occasional binary property list (which are much more efficient for large files and can be converted to/from xml without a single command).

The gui is just as separated from the rest of the OS as it is on linux. All of the flashy gui features, like time machine, spotlight, etc are just primitive overlays on top of command line tools, and the command line tools will almost always let you do a ton more than the gui allows.

Re:"it just works"

[SpinyManiac]

It was a response to this:

I have a feeling that Spaces is "supposed to" separate things by application, not necessarily by window. Linux and Windows throw all windows into one huge Alt-Tab clusterfsck, where Apple says: Command-Tab is for switching applications, and Command-` is for switching windows within an application.
So it's the equivalent of Command-` on a Mac - switching between windows (or tabs) within an application.
It predates Vista, I believe it was introduced in 95.

Nice sig BTW.

Re:"it just works"

[Lars T.]

It was a response to this:

I have a feeling that Spaces is "supposed to" separate things by application, not necessarily by window. Linux and Windows throw all windows into one huge Alt-Tab clusterfsck, where Apple says: Command-Tab is for switching applications, and Command-` is for switching windows within an application. So it's the equivalent of Command-` on a Mac - switching between windows (or tabs) within an application. Well, the problem is, many apps don't support it - the Explorer at least doesn't. And while switching between tabs (in Firefox) is nice, I also can do this in Safari (Apple-Shift-Arrow key) - but why then can't I switch between windows too (not with the key-command that's supposed to be switching between windows at least)?

Nice sig BTW. Thanks.

Re:"it just works"

[mrcolj]

That's the magic of Apple and "usability." Everything's so "intuitive" that if it's not intuitive to you you're screwed. Everything a Mac can't do is called "something you don't really need to do." Every bug is a design feature. I was out with a bunch of friends, all young and techie iPod lovers, and every one of them, when we got to talking, "hated" their iPod, and all mostly for the same reason: there was such a huge learning curve because Apple's response to everything is "just use it, it'll just work." And after 25 years, we shouldn't keep believing them.

Re:"it just works"

[SpinyManiac]

Which explorer are you referring to? IE7 will switch between tabs with Ctrl-Tab, earlier versions don't have tabs. Of course I've only used IE on Windows, and reluctantly at that.

Ctrl-Tab only works with child windows contained within the main app window, rather than different instances of the same app. MDI rather than SDI.

The closest thing Windows has to switching between different instances of one app is Alt+Tab in XP and above, with "Group similar taskbar buttons" enabled (the default). That way all the windows of one app will be clustered and you can Alt-Tab or Alt-Shift-Tab between them without having to search through the other apps as well. As far as I'm aware, there's no way to switch between the multiple documents in different instances of one app with one shortcut. You'd have to Alt-Tab between the windows and Ctrl-Tab between the documents in each instance.

If this post doesn't make any sense then I rewrote it too many times. ;)

Re:"it just works"

[Lars T.]

Which explorer are you referring to? IE7 will switch between tabs with Ctrl-Tab, earlier versions don't have tabs. Of course I've only used IE on Windows, and reluctantly at that. The Explorer, not IE. Or is it called Windows-Explorer? Your explanation about SDI vs. MDI explains that.

Re:"it just works"

[WNight]

Most, but I found it less so than Linux. Admittedly I've used OS X less than ten hours.

As for 'can be turned into XML', so could the Windows registry. The point that is that its native format isn't human readable. You can use these tools, but then you're trusting the tools like trusting the GUI.

Re:"it just works"

[abhi_beckert]

Converting the registry to xml is not the same as plist/bplist. A binary property list is exactly the same file format as the xml property list, they are completely interchangeable. Binary property lists are only used when disk space is a concern, a 10MB binary property list is likely to be 80MB in XML.

They are exactly the same format, and you use the same tools to edit them (property list editor in the gui, the 'defaults' command from the cli, and the property list serialization api's from within a program).

Re:"it just works"

[WNight]

But isn't the Windows registry just a tree structure? Couldn't it be reduced to XML in just as trivial a fashion?

what's in a name?

[v1]

pystar, any relation I wonder to starmax ? (the last Mac clone)

Re:what's in a name?

[illumnatLA]

pystar, any relation I wonder to starmax ? (the last Mac clone) Not much at all... Starmax was a Motorola product--the people who made the Mac processors up until the Intel switch.

Re:what's in a name?

[HAKdragon]

Motorola made PowerPC chips in the beginning, but IBM was the one making the G3, G4, and G5 chips.

mac mini

[postmortem]

is seriously outdated. Yes, it has C2D. But it has 5400rpm drive and intel GMA950 which is from 1st supporting C2D chipset, intel has gone thru two more generations since then.

Is it too much to ask to have GeForce 7300LE like on Apple TV? At least that GPU can decode something.

Re:mac mini

[falcon5768]

I think the biggest issue with the Mini is that its outdated (its not meant to be powerful at all) but that its 600 bucks for something you could build for 300.

Re:mac mini

[Traxxas]

Fit that $300 in the same case as the mini. BTW I paid $300 for my mini, new.

Re:mac mini

[Joe The Dragon]

and they stick a DVD / CDRW in there they should have DVDRW in all systems now days.

Re:mac mini

[RiotingPacifist]

Get me a factory and deals with suppliers and ill do it for $150

Re:mac mini

[toddestan]

The Mini is still a good deal for an ultra-small system, take a look at the PC equilivents of the Mini and you'll see most of them are underpowered too. The problem is that most people would be willing to accept something the size of, say, a Shuttle if it meant a massive improvement in performance for the same price.

Re:mac mini

[Anonymous Coward]

An old PPC Mini maybe.
I have one of those old Minis and they rock with Debian installed; OSX was near to unusable with the amount of memory they were sold at that time, but Linux screams on that little marvel.
Unfortunately the X86 ones are now insanely priced; if I had to purchase a small client without a requirement for x86 compatibility I would get anytime an old PPC Mini over a new one.

Re:mac mini

[falcon5768]

IE the Cube, which was a awesome system, but again mispriced for its capabilities (being priced at a point where compared to the G4 Powermac 100-200 dollars more, it was junk)

Re:mac mini

[Blahbooboo3]

Wow, that's quite a deal. How did you get a Mini for $300 new?

Re:mac mini

[Lars T.]

is seriously outdated. Ermm, yes. It was updated almost 9 months ago, and that was a quiet update. And all I know is Apple just lowered the Euro price for it - which could either mean they are trying to get rid of the old models to introduce a new one, or that an update will not be coming soon.

So it's a used Mac for a used Mac price.

[gelfling]

In performance and price it's a 2-3 year old Mac, I guess. The fan problem though could probably be eliminated with a cheap PCI slot blower fan.

Re:So it's a used Mac for a used Mac price.

[RiotingPacifist]

OTOH, the parts are new,

Anything novel here?

[Lachryma]

How is Psystar's Mac install any different from what someone would get from, say, the Kalyway Install Disc?

In fact, is there anything to suggest that Psystar isn't just making a quick buck from someone else's hacked Mac OS X installer?

Re:Anything novel here?

[tknd]

Everyone thought they were bluffing, and it turns out they were not. So now you start seeing all these comments about other issues that nobody cared about to begin with (like how it compares with the Apple hardware).

I've been thinking about it myself and I wondered why a company would dare to do something like this. And all I could think of is that it is a disruptive product, and if they did their legal homework, they know they can get away with it. Because the product is so disruptive, they basically get free marketing without even trying. Apple should go after them to protect the brand and market, but it is probably a lose-lose scenario for Apple at this time. Chances are there isn't a whole lot of money there right now and Psystar might have thought about the legal issues beforehand. That means right now Apple will probably lose money in lawyer fees even if they come out winning because there's no money flowing into the company yet. But if they allow this company to continue it could potentially cause problems with the Apple brand and market. It will be interesting to see how Apple responds to this (lock down their software? lawsuit? or ignore it all together?).

Re:Anything novel here?

[Anonymous Coward]

And not to mention stealing a certain Russians Pc_Efi loader

They've shown that it's possible

[Animats]

Presumably a better version will follow. There's no reason it has to be a full tower case with noisy fans. And if they get some volume, they can revise the BIOS to work better with the MacOS.

It would be amusing to see Dell or HP in talks with Apple. They both need something better than Vista. It would actually make sense for Apple to sell off the desktop market to another vendor, and concentrate on portable devices. "Never trust a computer you can't lift", remember.

Re:They've shown that it's possible

[r_jensen11]

It would be amusing to see Dell or HP in talks with Apple. They both need something better than Vista. It would actually make sense for Apple to sell off the desktop market to another vendor, and concentrate on portable devices. "Never trust a computer you can't lift", remember.

They do have things better than Vista. They're still selling XP, and they're also offering various Linux distributions.

Re:They've shown that it's possible

[larkost]

You are assuming that they did any real work in developing this setup. Instead they put together pieces of work that the OSx86 community had been working on, and put together some hardware that could run it and started selling the combination. They don't seem like the type of company that is going to be putting many development dollars into much of anything.

Re:They've shown that it's possible

[falconwolf]

It would be amusing to see Dell or HP in talks with Apple. They both need something better than Vista. It would actually make sense for Apple to sell off the desktop market to another vendor

It would be a mistake for Apple to sell off their desktop market. Apple seel hardware as much as software. Actually Apple is a systems integrator, they design whole systems so they "just work".

Falcon

Re:They've shown that it's possible

[nomadic]

Instead they put together pieces of work that the OSx86 community had been working on, and put together some hardware that could run it and started selling the combination.

Are you talking about Psystar or Apple?

Re:They've shown that it's possible

[Tatsh]

BIOS? I saw the original video and it used the Darwin boot loader which is what the hacked ISO's use to load OS X. All Mac's use EFI, and the reason why the Psystar box does not is because of no open compatibility layer between BIOS booting and EFI (like Apple's Boot Camp), beyond the fact that EFI is probably more expensive to get motherboards of. Psystar did not do anything illegal if they sell these machines simply stating that they could potentially run OS X in my opinion.

The true better one that may happen though is the one that comes out with a TPM device that has the same functionality as the TPM device in a real Mac, allowing a store-bought copy of OS X to be installed. That will be something else (for once), and Apple will sue for sure, but I'd like to see the results of that lawsuit, especially if the reverse-engineering of the TPM device is done via the Wall method (with proof), rather than straight memory dumps and etc.

In short, the only obstacles to building a true clone are the TPM, true EFI booting, and the worst, sanction from Apple (which will probably not happen any time soon). All Apple has to do is licence the TPM hardware (or disable OS X from using it) and sanction clones, but again, not happening.

Wow, the mail must work slowly there

[Anonymous Coward]

They obviously haven't received Apple's C&D letter yet

Anonymous Fanboy

[mrbluze]

A lot of what makes a Mac a Mac is the whole "it just works" thing. Many people don't quite get this until they've actually used a real Mac for more than a few weeks. Plug things in and you don't need to dick around with fighting to get it to work right. Sleep and hibernation that work the way they're supposed to. But with a machine like this, you toss all that out the window - which means one of the most attractive things about owning or using a Mac (aside from the joy of OS X) goes out the window too.

You don't happen to work in a macshop or something, do you?

Heaps of computers 'just work'. Maybe not Windows ones. And heaps of Macs just die suddenly. They are pretty, they are easy to use, but they still aren't worth the money.

One small problem...

[sessamoid]

"The DHCP lease drops every fifteen minutes or so and you have to manually renew it in prefs."

So you have to go into preferences and renew your dhcp lease every 15 minutes or you have no internet? Yeah, these'll sell well.

If I were apple I'd like this

[goombah99]

This thing is such a turd that If I were apple I'd be overjoyed someone made it. A mac mmin actually costs less, delivered! You lose less than a factor of 2 on graphics speeds and smidge on disk writes on the mac mini.

In return the mac mini has wifi and blue tooth, temperature control, software updates, you can re-install the operating system, optical audio, ilife, ...

oh and it doesn't sound like a supersonic jet landing. The mini has lower power bills too.

it's difficult to think of the niche where anyone could possibly want a turn like this.

SO apple should be please that no one can make a cheaper computer, since it sort of puts it to all the whiners who complain about the "apple tax".

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[Enderandrew]

* Having a Mac without supporting Apple.

* Having a Mac on the cheap where you can upgrade your video card.

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[goombah99]

* Having a Mac without supporting Apple. okay then please remove the OS if you don't want to support apple. Where do you think the desirable OS comes from?

* Having a Mac on the cheap where you can upgrade your video card. You may possible have some application where you need a fsater video card. remember we're only talking less than afactor of 2 between the 8600 and the integrated graphics in most cases.

You application can't be a pro-app since any pro would not be trying to save a few bucks on the machine if it's idiosyncracies cost them billable hours.

So assuming you are in this really tiny segment where you need an even faster graphics card you also need to consider the following.

most apps won't actually utilize the graphics card's boost since they can't count on it being there. Some pro apps will of course. And games may too. But most won't. But on macs the coders know they can optimize for a limited set of cards so they do.

so you've got to be in a pretty unusual case if you want the cheapest piece of shit computer with a graphics card faster than an 8600.

1)

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[kripkenstein]

it's difficult to think of the niche where anyone could possibly want a tur[d] like this. Sure, but I think that misses the point.

This is a first-generation product. It's not polished at all. But, if Apple doesn't sue Psystar out of existence - or, better, if Apple tries and fails - then Psystar can put together a good version later on. So, I would look at this as a proof of concept, a testing-the-waters type of thing. I would say it's succeeding in that it's generating lots of noise (both in the press and the fan...), we have to wait and see if it passes the legal test. But if so, Psystar - or some other company - can put together a very compelling product and make a small fortune.

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[nomadic]

This is a first-generation product. It's not polished at all.

So a buggy and flawed first generation system? They're not just cloning the hardware, they're cloning Apple's development model too!

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[BrentH]

Please, stop the FUD. The Geforce 8600 is not only easily 2x faster than an integrated Intel X3100, it's easily 20x faster. Have a look at a few benchmarks and judge yourselves. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Graphics-Media-Accelerator-X3100.2176.0.html http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/graphics-cards/3dmark06-v1-0-2-hdr-sm3-0-score,538.html Note that Intel tends to optimize it's chips for these kinds of benchmarks, realworld performance their chips tend to perform even worse than Nvidia or Ati's chips.

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[Anonymous Coward]

I may not want a PsyStar, but I do want what their PC should be: a mac mini on commodity hardware with a few expansion options (graphics, a second hard drive), for less than the price of a graphics workstation (i.e. a Mac Pro).

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[Anonymous Coward]

You lose less than a factor of 2 on graphics speeds You just pulled that figure right out of your ass. Hint: for any graphics-intensive gaming, the GMA950 is unusable. In a Mac Mini, graphics cannot be upgraded, meaning the whole Mac Mini is immediately ruled out as an option for any home user into any modern game. So please start your comparison with the iMac if you're going to consider the sort of market segment that is most likely to use the Psystar: the home user/hobbyist.

and smidge on disk writes on the mac mini Could you convert smidges into marathon runners for me, please? Or maybe you could actually do the math and see that a drive with higher rotational speed optimised for performance rather than portability wins hands down.

In return the mac mini has wifi and blue tooth, temperature control, Wifi on a desktop is pretty much retarded; I'll take the low latency, stability, and speed of GigE, thanks. As for Bluetooth, that's a $10 dongle from eBay, for those who need it. Mind you, my white iMac didn't come with Bluetooth either, so Psystar's only a few months behind. As for temperature control - whaaa? I assume you don't mean there's a refrigeration unit in a Mini, so probably you mean something like changing fan speed/CPU clock speed. What makes you think I can't do that on a Psystar?

software updates I'll give you that one: that Psystar will need to supply patches to enable major updates (10.5.x to 10.5.(x+1)) are precisely the difference.

you can re-install the operating system The PC world's had this problem for a while. Solution is to image your drive as first step. CCC works nicely.

optical audio Gimmick. Relevant only to pro's (and self-deluded audiophiles) who would be buying neither a Mac Mini nor a Psystar.

ilife Came with my iMac. Never needed to use any apps therein.

oh and it doesn't sound like a supersonic jet landing My iMac is the only machine I run in the same room that I work in, and that's too loud. Everything else gets a looong USB and video cable into my work room. So, loss for Apple here, for forcing me to work in a louder room thanks to hyper-integration.

The mini has lower power bills too. Aye, this may be a factor. Probably not for the home gamer/enthusiast, though, whose priority isn't "lower power bills".

Now, if I actually wish to expand my computer with any PCI cards, or if any component develops a fault, the Psystar immediately wins hands down. One of the nicest things about open PC hardware is that parts are easily replaceable and upgradeable - this is great for the environment, my wallet, and my time. Even if I hypothetically lacked the knowledge to replace a blown PSU, I'd take comfort in knowing that the local PC shop will do it for <=$20 with an off-the-shelf part, whereas replacing a blown Mini PSU leave me with a quote wondering whether I should just get a new computer.

Summary: The Mac Mini and the Psystar are not targeted at the same people.

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

yup. so true for the mac mini. but so wrong for the rest of their hardware. Kinda like buying a 2 gig ipod nano.... much cheaper than an iPhone, but not quite the same.

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[Anonymous Coward]

The... Mac Mini doesn't have optical audio. Sorry dude, not trolling. Just stating the facts.

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[Anonymous Coward]

yes it does. go look.

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[Digi-John]

Well god knows he doesn't want the machine to play games, and nobody does CAD on Mac because engineers are usually more intelligent than that... so no, I guess I can't see any reason to have a good video card in a Mac.

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[Bobartig]

There are two niches where this turd might really be popular. I agree that its a turd, and I'll use that nomenclature below, but it does have some uses:

- Cheap gaming rigs. You can build a great gaming machine around a turd for under $1k, but the only decent Mac for Gaming is an upgraded Mac Pro, which is like almost $3k.

- Mac-based file server. Maybe you're a noob like me, and you want to run a box on your network that has 4x 1TB HDDs with some RAID configuration. Mac OS X can handle this with built-in niceties like bonjour sharing and noob-friendly VNC. Again, the only mac that can do this a Mac Pro because the others don't hold additional internal drives. With a turd, you can get up and running for ~$400 plus the cost of drives.

Why Psy more?

[Anonymous Coward]

The AppleTV is a nice silent box that runs Linux. It cost $250.

No, I don't really want to run OSX. I bought a Mac Mini. I bought an apple tv, not because of OSX or some Apple logo. I wanted a small quiet box.

A noisy box that runs OSX ? Worst of both worlds?

I don't get the Paystar, I mean Psyatsr.

Yes, Apple should get over itself, and certify OSX on a limited number of PC's like certain Dell models ...

[Hasta la] Vista flopped, It is a key opportunity to compete directly with MS. I still prefer Linux, but just FYI mr Jobs.

Wrong price

[goombah99]

A mac mini delivered costs 599. Go over to mac mall and you get 2Gb memory, parallels, ilife, a printer, and free shipping for $599

Conversely, the a Pystar running mac OS costs
399$ + 155$ (OS) + $50 shipping. = $604

if you want firewire add $50 , the mini comes with it. (note you need pystar to install the firewire for you).

if you want wifi, blue tooth, optical audio, etc.. you'll have to buy them. Maybe they will even work with the OS too. who knows.

then of course the annual power bill is a lot less for the mac mini since not only is it lower power, the operating system power management actually functions.

Re:Wrong price

[goombah99]

More to add to this.

First it's really dumb to be comparing things spec for spec when were talking about what's the cheapest way to get into mac osx computing. the ground floor is a batter value from apple.

But let's suppose you want to trick out the apple with larger faster drives or a dvd burner.

Now it's not a big deal just to crack the case on the apple and put in a bigger drive and the dvd burner.

But an even smarter solution , for just a little more cash is to buy external HD and external DVD and plug them in. Even externally the footprint of the machine is less than the pystar and you get valuable portable devices.

If you were buy fleets of these then you could save money over the pystar by buying just one DVD burner and one uber disk drive and networking it.

And please don't go pricing this out using apple components, those are notoriusly expensive. (not that you don't get some value in assurance of quality, says the man who bought cheap disk drives and learned his lesson). Buy third party and add them.

Re:Wrong price

[backpackcomputing]

Although not an exact comparison, Psystar definitely offers a bigger hardware bang for the buck, particularly with respect to the HDD and the CPU. I didn't see the $599 configuration described above at macmall.com. Here are the $$ stats below comparing the three different vendors: Here is what $555 plus shipping gets you at Psystar: Case Color: Black Intel Processor: Core2Duo/2.2GHz E4500 Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM SATA Graphics Processor: Intel GMA 950 Firewire: Not Included Operating System: OS X 10.5 Leopard (+ $155.00) Memory: 2GB DDR2 (you could get 3 firewire ports for an extra $50) Here is what $949 buys at Apple.com: * 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo * 2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x1GB * 160GB Serial ATA drive * SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) * User's Guide (English) * Accessory kit Here is what $769 (after $25 rebate) buys at macmall.com: Apple Mac mini Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz,4MB L2 cache, 667MHz FSB, 1GB DDR2 SDRAM, 120GB SATA HD, DVD-RW/CD-RW Super Drive, Intel GMA 950, AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0, Apple Remote, OS X 10.5 Leopard MacMall Part #: 7288185 Platform: Macintosh Your Price: $794.00 Mail-In Rebate(s): $25.00 Net Price: $769.00 http://backpackcomputing.com/

Re:Wrong price

[goombah99]

Price drop: mac is now $569.
link

NEW! Mac mini
1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1GB/80GB 7200rpm/Combo Drive
Gigbit Ethernet/ wifi / bluetooth
firewire/usb 2.0
infrared remote
Intel GMA 950 graphics with 64MB shared memory
Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard
optical audio
Built-in stereo speakers + 12 watt amplifier
FREE Shipping, Parallels Desktop 3.0, Epson Stylus Printer

upgrade to a second gig of memory +$49
add a cheap external (fast) diskdrive if you want more storage.

Re:Wrong price

[pkphilip]

This is the first release. I am sure they will improve on this.

What sets it apart from the Mac Mini is that it is upgradeable. So if a new fancy graphics card comes out, you have the option of using it. Mac Mini is not very upgradeable and Apple upgrades are frightfully expensive.

As for the fan, that can be easily adjusted in the BIOS settings and so it can be made much quieter. Also, they have an option of using a different fan.

If you look at the performance figures, the performance is definitely much better than a Apple Mac with the 2.2 Ghz Core 2 Duo on all tested benchmarks, so I don't quite agree with the author that there is not much of a difference.

If this company is able to hold together and release a next version of the box with these issues resolved, then it could really sell.

But yes, it is misleading when they say that the full Mac Clone comes for $399 when they are pricing the OS separately.

Re:Wrong price

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but with the Psystar you could connect two monitors; you can't get that with the mac mini.

Re:Wrong price

[foo fighter]

Yeah, but what does it cost to upgrade the Mini's video card?

Oh yeah, you can't.

How much to get a better or different optical drive on the Mini?

Oh yeah, you can't.

How much to add network interfaces to the Mini?

Oh yeah, ...

Well, maybe you get the point. The Psystar system isn't about the Mini's price, it's about the Mac Pro's price.

Re:Wrong price

[Megane]

Yeah, but what does it cost to upgrade the Mini's video card?
Oh yeah, you can't.

Why would you want to upgrade the Mac Mini's video card? To play games?
[SFX: sound of room laughing]

How much to get a better or different optical drive on the Mini?

Oh yeah, you can't.

Apparently PC morons like you can't think outside the box.

How much to add network interfaces to the Mini?
Oh yeah, ...

About four bucks, and I bought extras that day. (Regular price is fifteen bucks.) If you put the USB info string into Google, you can find OS X drivers for it from the OEM manufacturer's web site. And again you can't think outside the box.

Re:Wrong price

[jedidiah]

pppffff

Been there, did that.

The entire industry has been there and did that and the conclusion that an
Atari style cabled octopus was a bad idea. There's a reason that all-in-one
systems came to dominate the landscape.

A bunch of unecessarily external devices takes an otherwise pretty machine
and makes it into an ugly mess.

A bunch of USB/FW devices is the quickest way to make a Mac look ugly next to a PC.

"valuable portable devices"?

Do you people actually subject yourself to this nonsense?

Re:Wrong price

[foo fighter]

Why would you want to upgrade the Mac Mini's video card? To play games?

Uh, yes? The integrated graphics on the mini are already dated. I can get a better play experience with a faster GPU.

And sorry, but that YouTube video doesn't play on my iPod Touch.

Apparently PC morons like you can't think outside the box.

Apparently elitist assholes can't think about not having ugly external devices strung all over their home.

It's interesting that you think I'm a PC guy when the only computers in my house are Macs (including iBook G3, iBook G4, PowerBook G4, February 2008 MacBook, original Mini, and other various portables and ancient machines).

About four bucks, and I bought extras that day. (Regular price is fifteen bucks.) If you put the USB info string into Google, you can find OS X drivers for it from the OEM manufacturer's web site. And again you can't think outside the box.

USB network interfaces are a fucking joke. Let me know when I can run any of these off USB.

Re:Wrong price

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen guy, you're a pathetic fanboi. If you want us to take you seriously, start listening. You've been told repeatedly why people are interested in this. If you disagree, say it once, don't run people down after every comment they make in order to force your totally irrelevant opinion on us.

We don't care what you think, especially if you get a list of reasons why people want this and your response is to argue irrelevancies.

Can I add internal cards to a mini? No?

Then I don't fucking want one, and it doesn't compare. How stupid are you that it takes a dozen repetitions of this for you to get it?

Re:Wrong price

[pressman]

The Mac Pro's price is really close to where it should be.

One day of editing in my Final Cut suite has paid my salary for the day AND a large chunk of the initial investment in the system itself.

One week of 8 hours a day billable work and that machine has already paid for itself several times over.

The PsyStar? Probably going to have massive down time which eats into my hourly billing rates, so I might get 4 billable hours per day as opposed to 7 or 8.

Our clients pay big money to make sure our systems are up and running when they come in to edit their pieces. The more up time we have, the more money we make. The initial capital outlay for the PsyStar is less, but when you're doing video or serious graphics work, every billable hour counts and with an unsupported system, you are literally eating into your profits.

Getting work done reliably makes money. Cheaping out up front to save a few bucks will ultimately cost you far more money in the long run.

Re:Wrong price

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheaping out up front to save a few bucks will ultimately cost you far more money in the long run.

Only if cheaping out results in lower reliability. What if cheaping out results in higher reliability (a fair (but not certain! This is not an Apple flame!) chance of that happening, when competing against Apple).

The PsyStar? Probably going to have massive down time..

What would cause that? I'm certainly not vouching for PyStar (I'll admit I'm clueless about their quality), but is there any iota of a hint of a suggestion that the machine might possibly be less reliable than Apple's machines? Did you run a Pystar and an Apple next to each other and learn that one brand works better than the other? Has anyone?

Apple's reputation for reliability has been pretty average. I've seen some good machines from them, and I've seen some "road Apples." I'd expect a random challenger to be about the same. Pystar could be worse, and they could be better, too. So where is the evidence, which is letting people (like you) figure out where in the spectrum they are?

Re:Wrong price

[Achromatic1978]

LOL. Really. Your honest assessment is that "Oh, the Psystar computer WONT BE WORKING half the day, every day"? Seriously, what are you smoking?

"With an unsupported system, you are literally eating into your profits" - uhh, hrm, let's think about that. The only way any system, supported or not, eats into your profits is when it is not working. Now, notwithstanding your ridiculous 'pulled out of my ass' figure of 'four out of eight hours downtime for the ohnoes-unsupported system by virtue of well, uhh, I can't think of a single cogent reason other than because I said so', one, what is it exactly that you think "just won't work" magically because it's on a different system? Two, who do you think won't support you with the Psystar system? Hardware failure? Commodity parts, buy them at any retailer, have them installed in the same time your Apple Genius Bar will, if not quicker (let's not hope you're in NY or any other 'megacity', as that's often where there are delays in Apple support, due to backlog). OS failure, or FCP failure? I'm struggling to see this. And three, laughingly, just how does an Apple system NOT eat into your profits when its down? I'm pretty damn sure there ain't no SLA on your systems.

You haven't made a very good argument, not at all.

Re:Wrong price

[WNight]

You think you sound smart, because you're using big-boy phrases like "Cheaping out up front to save a few bucks will ultimately cost you far more money in the long run."

Instead, you're a pathetic follower repeating what your fanboy friends have said.

The PsyStar? Probably going to have massive down time which eats into my hourly billing rates, so I might get 4 billable hours per day as opposed to 7 or 8. Massive downtime? How? The parts are going to melt?

You have no idea how computer downtime occurs. If it works, it'll work constantly. If it fails it won't provide any billable hours until the smoking hardware is replaced.

And, just maybe, have any of you pompous fuckers stopped to consider that the people buying Psystar's might not be looking to do exactly what you do?

Re:Wrong price

[pressman]

Sorry for being hypothetical and exaggerating a little.

So my FCP system which is supported by Apple, Aja, Adobe and several other 3rd party vendors is going to get much needed technical support IF it goes down. That has only happened once in the last year of almost constant 40 hours of work per week.

When it did go down, we had Apple and Aja people on the phone within minutes and had the machine back up and running at full speed within an hour.

Now, let's say I get the Psystar, which, by all reports runs OS X not very well. If I have a problem with it and I call them and Aja for support, how much luck do you think I am going to have? The Aja card wouldn't be supported by Aja on a Psystar, so we have to resort to using message boards and other less than expedient methods to troubleshoot our problem.

Yes, half of my time as downtime is an exaggeration, but this machine WILL be down more often and won't have the support I need so troubleshooting will take longer, lots longer resulting in more unnecessary downtime.

The Apple machine with it's higher price tag brings with it a promise of greater stability, support and return on investment. I never said my Mac doesn't suck profits when it's down, but I guarantee you that these PsyStar machines are not up for the tasks I need it to accomplish and would be down far more frequently than my MacPro.

You aren't going to see PsyStars popping up in video post houses or big design firms any time soon because of the inherent lack of support you'll get.

Re:Wrong price

[pressman]

And, just maybe, have any of you pompous fuckers stopped to consider that the people buying Psystar's might not be looking to do exactly what you do?
Sheesh. I try to make my case (not as well as I would have liked to) for why this won't see the light of day in a serious work environment and that makes me a fanboy and a pompous fucker.

Seriously. I tried to make a serious point and you come in and try to validate your ego (not your argument) by making personal insults. Bravo! You make YOUR point VERY well.

Take a class in debate and writing and semantics and maybe a class in etiquette and come back when you want to discuss things with the adults.

First rule: Attack the argument and not the person. You'll get much farther in life doing this.

Re:Wrong price

[pressman]

What would cause that? I'm certainly not vouching for PyStar (I'll admit I'm clueless about their quality), but is there any iota of a hint of a suggestion that the machine might possibly be less reliable than Apple's machines? Did you run a Pystar and an Apple next to each other and learn that one brand works better than the other? Has anyone?

Yeah, people are reporting that it kind of runs OS X, but not nearly as well as other homebrewed x86 Macs and certainly not as well as a Mac from Apple.

The reports on these things are popping up all over the place now and the reports are not all that good. No support for software update, loud as hell, etc.

Yes, it runs OS X. That much can be said.

Re:Wrong price

[pressman]

Oooooo! I forgot something. If you think "Cheaping out" is a big boy phrase... ouch. Back to remedial English for you.

Re:Wrong price

[Anonymous Coward]

wowe! your in the 1% of computer users who can actually utilise the power of a mac pro, so fucking everyone should have to spend up big to buy a computer with more power than they want or even know what to do with. fan-fucking-tastic reasoning there jackass. I put your post in the same box with those guys who own SUVs and actually take them offroad, but get all defensive when people bitch about the number of idiots buying them and never leaving the city. IT'S NOT MEANT FOR YOU DIMWIT!

Re:Wrong price

[pressman]

The point is about support. If the average Mac user or Windows convert gets wind of this and starts buying it and has troubles with it and can't get reasonable support, it undercuts what getting an OS X box is supposed to be about... just being able to get work done with little hassle.

If some Windows convert gets one of these for it's price and it doesn't work like a Mac is supposed to... it undermines Apple's efforts at creating a positive and constructive computing environment.

If these things are as flaky as Windows on a bargain basement PC... that's not good. I'm not talking about inexpensive yet high performance home-built PC's made by professional techies. I'm talking about Windows users who, for budgetary reasons, buy the cheapest PC they can find to run Windows. If it behaves like those, that's not good and will harm Apple and OS X which are currently marketed as ridiculously easy to set up and use with a support system in place to help.

This thing is great for hobbyists who know what they're doing under the hood, but for the vast majority of casual users... this thing could be a nightmare.

Re:Wrong price

[WNight]

If you'd made a case, or even tried, I wouldn't have mocked you. But instead you stated your guesses as facts and made conclusions based on them.

The Mac Pro's price is really close to where it should be. Should? God determined this? Or maybe you mean, the price is reasonable for you, considering the value the machine provides to you?

The PsyStar? Probably going to have massive down time Really? You know something about the parts? Is their hardware more likely to fail than any middle-of-the-road PC hardware?

so I might get 4 billable hours per day as opposed to 7 or 8. Ahh yes, because if computers fail they mysteriously run half-time, instead of releasing the magic smoke and never working again.

So, we have you not understanding the likely failure modes, not knowing anything about the relative hardware differences, and not being able to distinguish your opinions from universal facts.

As for "big boy" phrases, I mean ones that you use to think you're a big boy.

Everyone understands that lower quality parts might break sooner. But you've got to say it in a pompous "consider the big picture" sort of way. You also make the mistake of saying it like a law. Cheaping out *may* cost you in the long term, but it's far from guaranteed. Also, this assumes that Psystar is cheap - maybe Apple is expensive instead and Psystar is normally priced.

It's as if you think your opinion doesn't carry enough weight if you simply say "I think the Psystar is going to suck" so you dress it up by adding more words until it's unclear that it's still just your opinion - but you don't actually consult any studies or cite anything that would make it more.

Yes, I do know the *rules* of debates. Did you see a debate anywhere? You made no arguments, boldly stating your opinions as facts, and when called on your mistakes - perhaps rudely - you jump for any excuse instead of actually addressing it. Your fanboy attitudes and unwillingness to investigate the actual issues mean that you are not debating - you're lecturing.

Neither am I though. I'm merely pointing out your failure. I'm not trying to score, just disrupt your game. Your argument, or debate, that you thought you were having is on the floor in shambles. It was before I came along. I merely laughed at you and pointed out the specific flaws.

I'm not trying to prove that the Psystar will rock. What possible proof could I have? Yeah, as much as you. None. Neither of us could successfully make any argument that depends on knowing anything about the Psystar, because neither of us do. I understand that, you apparently do not.

My Psystar sucks

[ForumTroll]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Psystar fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Psystar for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Powerbook G3 running OS 9, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Psystar, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, Safari will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even TextMate is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Psystars, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Psystar that has run faster than its Mac counterpart, despite the Psystars' similar chip architecture. My Powerbook G3 with 16 megs of ram runs faster than this Psystar machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Psystar is a superior machine.

Psystar addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Psystar over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

Re:My Psystar sucks

[Creepy Crawler]

Who modded a win3.1 troll up(insightful)?

What a moron.

Re:My Psystar sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

This topic is chock full of Apple astroturfers.

Apple hates the idea of competition, so they'll be doing anything they can to preemptively poison this well.

Stacking tech forums with shills is pretty standard for the majors now.

Re:My Psystar sucks

[Miseph]

Yes, a moron with a sense of humor.

It was a joke, laugh.

Re:My Psystar sucks

[MidnightBrewer]

You work on various Psystars? I hope as tech support and not because you bought them (especially based on your own negative review of the system). Also, are you sure about that 17MB? If that takes more than 10 seconds on a G3, I'd be worried.

Sorry for the nitpicking. Anyway, while I'm impressed that Psystar is actually shipping, I can't imagine why anybody would actually want to purchase it. OSX seems to be only generally functional, you lose out on the benefit of automated software updates, and implementing many things requires hack after hack, thus throwing the benefit of "just works" out the window completely.

My question is, can you at least set the system up for multi-boot into Windows or Linux without any further headaches beyond the usual? If not, then I fail to see any benefit whatsoever in giving this company money; no support from Apple, no support from 3rd-party hardware vendors (try explaining to them what you're running their equipment on and see how long that lasts), and fidgety performance. No thanks.

Re:My Psystar sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Because this is a classic copypasta, one of the best ever. The only better one I can think of at the moment is "Netcraft confirms BSD is dying".

finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[CDMA_Demo]

Ok, so Apple takes BSD, slaps a bubbly GUI on top of it that becomes popular. Because of its popularity, bunch of hackers decide they'll run it differently anyway. The result? More BSD! And i'm sure apple loves that, don't they?

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that slapping a "bubbly GUI" on top of BSD was soooo easy that several FOSS outfits have done it.

They also implemented the Mach micro-kernel as well, didn't they?

Then they made it work seamlessly didn't they?

Ummm... no.

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[abigor]

Apple did not take BSD and "slap a bubbly gui on top of it". You should consider learning something about software one day.

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[ozmanjusri]

Yeah, that slapping a "bubbly GUI" on top of BSD was soooo easy that several FOSS outfits have done it.

Gnome and KDE are the main FOSS desktop environments for BSD. In addition, there are a lot of window managers that look & feel more or less bubbly. AfterStep, Blackbox, ctwm, Enlightenment, fvwm, Sawfish, twm and Window Maker, to name a few.

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[drsmithy]

Apple did not take BSD and "slap a bubbly gui on top of it". You should consider learning something about software one day.

Excellent point. They actually took NeXTSTEP and slapped a bubbly GUI on top of it.

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[mrchaotica]

Actually, NextSTEP already had the GUI. All Apple did was add a legacy compatibility layer ("Carbon") and change the bitmaps.

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[pressman]

Wow, what an oversimplification of what the "dekstop" is. The Mac's Finder is a very useful app in and of itself. Yes, things like multiple desktops have been available elsewhere before Leopard, but the Finder and the UI make for a very USEFUL session in front of the computer.

The computer recedes away and you have a space to work. Unlike Windows or most other desktops that seem to constantly remind you of the computer. Of course you can get your work done. Millions do every day, but the experience of it is far less refined and transparent.

When using a tool, the experience should be transparent. When I'm editing video, I really need to NOT think about the tools I'm using and just edit the video. Accessing and using the tools should be a rote action, reflex. If I have to think about the tools, it slows me down and puts me in left brain mode which is counterproductive to the process of editing which is a right brain activity.

Navigating through directories, managing files, finding commands in a menu, should be as seamless and transparent as possible. The Mac OS Finder has always striven to achieve that goal. The fact that it's "bubbly" adds to the effect, making using the computer a less technical event.

(Finding commands in a menu... ugh. More people really need to learn their keyboard commands but you know what I mean.)

So again, how Aqua looks is just one element of what the Mac OS Finder is and it's not just bolted on to make things pretty. It's designed that way to abstract the computer and make it more of a work environment that you don't have to consciously think about all the time.

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[ozmanjusri]

That's all a bit emo for me.

I started my editing career on a four-plate Steenbeck, migrated through Fairlight, Amiga Vlab Motion, Premiere (on Mac), Quantel and Smoke.

There's very few editing setups I haven't used at some time or other, and I can guarantee that the OS is the least of my concerns, provided it doesn't crash.

It'd be lovely to have the luxury of geting all precious about "how Aqua looks", but frankly, I'd rather just get on with the job.

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[pressman]

Yeeeeeeah.... uh. A lot more went into it than "changing the bitmaps". I don't think you understand the great lengths Apple goes to to make working on the computer "not a chore". It's not just about making things pretty, but about making a seamless experience where the computer becomes a working environment and you don't have to think about what's going on behind the scenes.

An environment where you can just get stuff done.

I know that doesn't appeal to the FOSS crowd, but remember, you guys are a vast minority of computer users. Granted, a very important and overly vocal minority, but a minority nonetheless.

The vast majority of us just want to get stuff done.

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[mrchaotica]

I don't think you understand the great lengths Apple goes to to make working on the computer "not a chore". It's not just about making things pretty, but about making a seamless experience where the computer becomes a working environment and you don't have to think about what's going on behind the scenes.

No, I do understand... my point was that all that stuff was already in NextSTEP! It's just that it was gray and square instead of round and colorful, had the dock on the side of the screen instead of the bottom, and used right-click context menus instead of a menubar at the top of the screen. These are not important differences (except for the menubar one, which was only important for being familiar to existing Mac users).

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[pressman]

All I'm trying to say is that people who think that Mac OS X is "just a beautified version of BSD/NextStep" are way off base and that Apple has put a fair amount of effort into creating a useful, intuitive and unobtrusive computing environment.

Yeah, I cut film, yes actual film, and have moved through the digital age as well. The most important thing for me is system stability and asset management... at least with my current FCP system I have stability. Asset management requires the cooperation of my co-workers, so I'm in deep doodoo there.

And these days Avid needs to stay light on their feet. We have an Avid system here at work that hasn't been used in over 2 years, but both our FCP suites are booked upwards of 40 hours every single week.

Emo? Come on. What are you? 18? Obviously not if you worked on a Fairlight and Amiga system. Wasn't "emo" the teen-alternapop flavor of the month a few years back?

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[pressman]

And who started Next? Oh yeah... Steve Jobs! He placed a priority on Usability even then and he is still pushing usability as a foremost feature of the OS.

They bought Next for a reason and that was that they knew they could take an extensible architecture and make it work in a way that Apple customers had come to expect.

They also got Jobs back in the deal which sweetened the pot.

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[mrchaotica]

What's your point? The tone of your post makes it seem like you're trying to argue with me, but I can't figure out what you're trying to argue about.

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[Bobartig]

For pro editing, Apple isn't all caught up in Aqua's looks either. As you probably know, the UI in Final Cut is basically a carbon copy of Avid.

Re:finally, freeriding BSD paid off for apple

[pressman]

My point is that development of the OS X desktop/finder/UI hasn't stopped. The tone of your post suggests that all they had to do to revamp NextStep into OS X was add a compatibility layer and twiddle some pixels.

I'm just trying to put some perspective on what I thought was an overly simplified view of what OS X is.

Getting reserved characters to work in file names was a huge undertaking. I remember reading articles in 1999 about what a Herculean task it was to make OS X behave like Windows and Mac OS 9 when it came to simply naming and managing files.

Most people really want to put &!@#$%^*() in their file names for some reason and with NextStep that was a big no no. This is a usability issue and one Apple worked really hard to overcome with OS X. So it wasn't simply slapping on some pretty pixels and a compatibility layer and moving the Dock around. (I move it to the left, btw)

So, I'm not trying to argue, I think you're just oversimplifying how big the reworking on NextStep to OS X really was.

lets use pico-ITX for a change

[CDMA_Demo]

you can make your own, in a box of your choice. And costs cheaper....

Re:lets use pico-ITX for a change

[Anonymous Coward]

you can make your own, in a box of your choice. And costs cheaper.... if your time has no value.

Since you must work for free i'd like to hire you.

Re:lets use pico-ITX for a change

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you must work for free i'd like to hire you.

And since you're obviously posting on the clock, you're fired. Enjoy having no life since friends don't make you money.

Re:lets use pico-ITX for a change

[fractoid]

And since the GP is obviously in the same timezone...

Or, wait, were you saying that your pico-ITX is your only friend?

Re:lets use pico-ITX for a change

[jedidiah]

Most people can't magically trade their free time for money.
Even if they could, they wouldn't get very much for it.

So arguments like yours really are quite absurd.

Just getting a cheaper base machine that doesn't have the
doodads that don't interest you and upgrading THAT can be
cheaper than going with someone else's ready made solution.
It's pretty darn easy too.

It helps when the parts are built to be integrated by a
third party or when the machine is built with upgrades
in mind.

The mini isn't. If you don't like what it comes with you
are kind of out of luck. It's much more difficult to deal
with than some "inherently difficult PC" if you want to
change something.

A mac clone like this is a competitor to the Mac Pro, not the mini.

It's likely meant to sit in the huge chasm between the mini and the pro.

Re:lets use pico-ITX for a change

[Duradin]

A mac clone like this is a competitor to the Mac Pro, not the mini.

I'd say a box like that clone isn't even in the same league let alone ballpark of a mac pro (if it is even playing the same game is questionable). If I was considering a mac pro there'd be no way I'd seriously consider that B-52 in a box clone.

Mac becomes PC

[Anonymous Coward]

"...we're expecting things to generally go smoothly. That said, there are some definite rough patches and issues, all mostly having to do with the fact that OS X isn't really built for this hardware."

Its not your fault Mac, all your parts and software are made by different manufacturers ...

How easy is it to roll your own?

[RelliK]

How easy is it to build your own machine with specs closely matching Apple's and install OSX on it?

Re:How easy is it to roll your own?

[PenguSven]

Simple: 1) Goto www.apple.com/store/ in a browser 2) Select desired form factor. 3) Identify predefined configuration and click "Configure" 4) Purchase. You wouldn't beleive how well it will meet Apple's specs. And you wont even have to install OSX, it'll be pre-installed. Seriously though, all this shit about "i want OSX but I don't want to buy a mac" is ridiculous. Either buy a mac, or go back to your parents basement and fuck your dog some more. You wouldn't buy a cheap-ass Hyundai and then try to force the seats and interior from a Mercedes into it, would you? If you really want to install osx on your POS frankenstein PC, go ahead, and wait to see how many things don't work because SUPRISE SUPRISE, OSX is built to work with APPLE HARDWARE. Stop being such fucking dick brains and get a real fucking job so you can buy a real fucking computer.

Re:How easy is it to roll your own?

[Neo-Rio-101]

It's actually not that easy. First you have to get a hacked iso, and do an install. Then you have to go and hunt around for patches for audio and your graphics chipset. I have an ATI 3870 Radeon HD and setting that up wasn't a picnic.

Then, since I have a wireless connection - I had to find a suitable wireless controller that would work with Mac OS X 10.5 -- and there was only ONE I could find, and the driver was for 10.4 .Still I got it working in 10.5, but sometimes, the system failed to recognize it and I had to plug and unplug it in the USB socket in order for it to show up.

I think third-party wireless controllers supporting MacOS X are going to die a slow death because Apple has built in wireless across their range of computers.... So expect more wireless driver hacks.

All in all, it's a headache to set up.

Re:How easy is it to roll your own?

[PopeRatzo]

You wouldn't beleive how well it will meet Apple's specs.

Sure, at those prices, it should meet NASA's specs.

Let me repeat: if some small company had cloned an XBOX 360 or PlayStation3, you'd be delirious with joy.

Re:How easy is it to roll your own?

[PenguSven]

Well if they'd "cloned" an XBOX or a PS3, you'd still have an XBOX or a PS3. if they made a half baked rip-off that played 90% of the games, worked with 50% of the accessories and would only work at SD resolution, you'd have something comparable to this Psystar monstrosity. also, given that I don't spend my life playing games, I couldn't give two shits if someone made a hybrid 360/PS3, much less cloned one.

Re:How easy is it to roll your own?

[Snowmit]

I don't really get the "but it's so expensive" argument.

Thanks to the move to the Intel chipset, it's easy to compare specs between Mac and Vista boxes. Maybe desktops are different from laptops but when I was looking into laptops, the Macs were generally of similar or better specs than the Vista laptops at the same price point.

I guess the difference is that you can get cheaper Vista laptops with lower specs that the cheapest Mac?

Re:How easy is it to roll your own?

[Budenny]

The problem is not that you have picked a Mac, and now want to find the exact same thing but cheaper. This you cannot do usually.

The problem is, you have picked a spec of a PC based on the performance you need and the money you have, and want to find similar performance for the same price in a Mac. This also you cannot do. The reason is, the product line consists either of junk you can put in a coat pocket, which you do not particularly want to do, or small unexpandable boxes which unaccountably have screens welded to them, or large standalones which when properly equipped cost...as much as your car.

So as you stare at what's on offer, you not unreasonably conclude that by comparison to what you actually need, Macs are way too expensive. What you need is real simple, its something with the the kind of spec you can buy anyplace for under $1,000, and without another screen welded to it, when you prefer your screens separate, and anyway, you have three perfectly good ones and don't see why you should be forced to buy a fourth.

Re:How easy is it to roll your own?

[dreamchaser]

I guess we have different definitions of 'not easy' then. I found it almost trivial to find what I needed online and install OS X on my Hackintosh. The 'hacked' ISO's are painfully easy to find online and if you build your machine to the right specs installation is a breeze.

Re:How easy is it to roll your own?

[drsmithy]

I guess the difference is that you can get cheaper Vista laptops with lower specs that the cheapest Mac?

The difference is there are a few gaping holes in Apple's hardware lineup. So if you needs happen to fall into one of them, you either need to a) settle for a lesser machine than you want, b) spend a disproportionately larger amount of money to get more than you want, or c) give up because Apple simply doesn't have anything at all in that market space (eg: laptop with a docking station).

Macs are reasonably well priced if what you want is exactly the same as one of their products. If you want to think a little bit outside of their boxes, however, you're screwed.

Re:How easy is it to roll your own?

[Achromatic1978]

Amusing analogy. Spot the fanboy. More accessories will work, not less, due to more expansion options. Games will work better, due to orders of magnitude better graphics card. You failed to spout a single coherent comparison that makes this far weaker than the original, despite your crappy analogy attempt.

Re:How easy is it to roll your own?

[PenguSven]

you just didnt read what i wrote, did you. i said if you "cloned" a PS3 or XBOX360, but that half the accessories etc wouldn't work then it would be comparable to this piece of shit. i never mentioned accessories for a mac. Hell. why the fuck is ANYONE even taking seriously a company that is selling a computer with OBVIOUS compatibility issues? Who the fuck buys a computer that drops it's DHCP lease every 15 minutes. I mean, how is that NOT a show-stopper?

Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[macsforever2001]

I figure Apple is not going to bother to sue Pystar. After all, when people see what a load of crap the computer is and how it does not integrate with Apple's wonderful software, people on the fence will realize what a really great *system* Apple has to offer in the Macintosh. People need to realize that Apple is a hardware company and a software company and a service company. The Macintosh is a combination of great hardware, software and support all working together. When you have a problem with Mac OS X or your Macintosh, you pick up the phone and call Apple. Or you walk into an Apple store and ask a genius. Can you do that with Pystar? Hardly.

It's the integration stupid.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[Wrath0fb0b]

Yes, but it's also shinning more light Apple's infuriating decision not to offer a reasonable quad-core desktop that doesn't cost more than my car. People look at the PsyStar and see it's insufficient, but when they go to the Apple store, they have to chose between the Mini and the Pro -- the Psystar fails to fills the gap but it doesn't make the gap go away.

I really just don't understand it, Apple could get away with selling an equivalent of the Dell 530 (minitower, Q6600@2.4, 2GB, 250GB, 8XXX GPU, $600ish) for $1000+, and consumers would lap it up. Perhaps that would cannibalize some of the Mac Pro sales, but they would quickly make up in volume what they lost. More volume means more apps, more drivers, better support on the web and a healthier Apple. Instead, they sacrifice it at the altar of temporary profits.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[nomadic]

The Macintosh is a combination of great hardware, software and support all working together. When you have a problem with Mac OS X or your Macintosh, you pick up the phone and call Apple. Or you walk into an Apple store and ask a genius. Can you do that with Pystar? Hardly.

First of all, please put quotation marks around "genius." Secondly, for such "great" hardware, Macs sure tend to have design flaws; I've owned two and both were glitchy throughout their lifespan, and both eventually broke down for good (which I've never had a PC do; I have a 20+ year old PC that last time I checked still works). As for the support, the only way you can get reasonable support is to pay for it, which is a lousy thing to do to your customers. And they definitely overcharge for their computers, which they give you very few choices when configuring. There is no real reason to not provide a discrete graphics cards in the mac minis, for example.

The only thing Apple does really well are the aesthetics, and their operating system, and even that's only a recent thing (pre-X MacOSes were almost as bad as Windows).

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[PopeRatzo]

yep. no matter how you look at it, putting pressure on Apple to offer better prices and more hardware configurations can only be a good thing, even if you are Fan Number One.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing Apple does really well are the aesthetics, and their operating system, and even that's only a recent thing (pre-X MacOSes were almost as bad as Windows).

I must disagree. The "classic" Mac OS interface ran circles around Windows. In fact, good old "platinum" still has some touches I like over OSX's aqua (app menu, launcher, chooser, bordered windows).

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[Free the Cowards]

If your car costs less than $2300 then it's probably safe to say that you are not Apple's target market.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[Wrath0fb0b]

The baseline Mac Pros are unusable as shipped. 8 processors and 2GB of RAM? Seriously? Also, they're FB-DIMMS so getting up to 8GB will set you back ~$500. A decent hard drive setup (minimum would be 2x320GB RAID0 plus another for backup) will set you back another $200 or so. I'd prefer eSATA (most nice motherboards have that now) and a second optical drive (for mastering) - another $100 for both.

All told, once you actually get the thing usable, it's closer to $4k which is the KBB value of my current ride. Don't get me wrong, the Mac Pro is a hell of a lot of computer for the dollar but I wish they had a $2k model without an LCD duct-taped to it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883104031

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[SpinyManiac]

Hmmmm, I have a hunch macsforever2001 might have a slight pro Apple bias. ;)

Legalities aside, I don't think there's anything wrong with the Psystar's concept but their execution stinks. The jet engine fan noise tells me that they either didn't bother with any real testing or they just don't care. Neither is a glowing endorsement of the company. Like you said, it's the integration.

Incidentally Apple calling their fixit guys geniuses is wrong in so many ways.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[Nazlfrag]

It's not Apple's fault, it's never Apples fault, it's your fault for not being pompous or arrogant enough to keep owning a Mac. What you call 'glitchy' and 'design flaws' are merely brought about by your heretical lack of faith. Look, it's simple - the reality distortion field is fuelled by arrogance, not enough and your Mac may appear faulty until you reapply the RDF. You mock the 'Geniuses', but I assure you if you visit one you will be bombarded with so much arrogance your RDF will be solid for months to come.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[ArAgost]

First of all, your bad experience with two Macs is at best anedoctal. Secondly, the "overcharge" is still a myth, since there is still not *any* computer that is equal feature-wise and doesn't cost x00$ more (this surely applies to laptops and imacs, not really sure about the mac pro). Third, minimizing the importance of the OS is quite laughable, since that's the main reason people switch to the mac.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[plantman-the-womb-st]

"Secondly, the "overcharge" is still a myth" http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883104031 $2,794.00

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121330
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211271
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152052
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143116
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151154
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129024
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117144 x2 -- Total $2,544.88

You are right though, not the same specs. The cheaper one has a bigger hard disk, more memory, better video card and no $30 bluetooth dongle or wifi dongle. Plus I get my pick of OS, which I'd go with XP or Ubuntu. Sorry, many disagree with me but I've always thought the Apple UI was ugly. It's just so damned friendly looking, ick. Plus the extra bonus, the case isn't white. Never did like the white case thing, reminds me of kitchen appliances.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[ArAgost]

To which you should add firewire 800, shipping (free with the mac), OS price in case of XP, the fact that your memory is unbuffered and non-ecc, some kind of guarantee/tech support. Still it's probably not the same (and that's why I included a disclaimer about the mac pros in my original comment), but I guess you can understand that someone doesn't think the difference is worth the hassle of building it. (and I forgot: the mac pro case isn't white, and really doesn't compare to that antec stuff)

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[macsforever2001]

yep. no matter how you look at it, putting pressure on Apple to offer better prices and more hardware configurations can only be a good thing, even if you are Fan Number One.

Totally agreed.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[macsforever2001]

First of all, please put quotation marks around "genius."

Well it's better than being a member of a geek squad. :)

Secondly, for such "great" hardware, Macs sure tend to have design flaws; I've owned two and both were glitchy throughout their lifespan, and both eventually broke down for good (which I've never had a PC do; I have a 20+ year old PC that last time I checked still works).

While Macs certainly are not perfect, my experience is the opposite of yours. I'm currently about to recycle 8 obsolete Macs going back as far as 1989 (IIcx) and they all still work. Meanwhile a bunch of current PCs at work are having all kinds of problems. Our Macs are humming along just fine. That said, there have been some lemon Mac models. You clearly have been unlucky.

As for the support, the only way you can get reasonable support is to pay for it, which is a lousy thing to do to your customers.

You can go to an Apple store any time and ask for Mac help from a mac "genius" (there are you happy?) even if you don't buy Applecare. Plus if you find a fanatical Mac fan, you can often get free help that way ;). Do you expect hardware support for free beyond the warranty? Who gives you that? Certainly not Pystar - that's the topic at hand. My point is that you cannot even pay Pystar for good support.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[plantman-the-womb-st]

Fair enough, good call on the memory, change out the $60 one for this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134648 and toss in a http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815108108 and it meets your specs. The new total coming too $2,739.87 plus $16.40 for shipping to my zip code. The price of the OS, free, I'll take the Ubuntu option. The shipping on that Mac I linked to isn't free, it's $29.49 according to newegg. As far as a guarantee, every part on my list has at least a one year manufacturers warranty, so the parts are covered. So, still cheaper, still more machine. Though you are right about the case, the Antec stuff is a lot more atractive. I personally find it more appealing than the white (looks pretty white in these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883104031 photos) case that Apple offers.

The conclusion, the Apple hardware is overpriced. Do keep in mind I'm paying retail for these parts, I'd bet that someone with a resellers license and agreement could build it much cheaper.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[Cro Magnon]

If I were an Apple lawyer, I would allow Psystar to sell their boxes, but since it needs a hacked OSX, they would have to rename it the Psystar Operating System to avoid tainting the Mac brand. Then anyone who wanted to buy the POS computers could do so and know just what they're getting.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[ArAgost]

If you buy it on apple.com shipping is free, and the case being metallic it's still not white.
However, even being your facts right the conclusion isn't that Apple hardware is overpriced. It just says that you can build a machine that's similar (slightly better) to just one of the models Apple sells, for around the same price.
Engineering, assembling, marketing have non-zero costs and these get passed along to customers. That's why every company that sells an assembled pc sells it for more than the price of the components alone!
Your analysis works only on the mac pro... because you can't build yourself a laptop or an all-in-one, and guess what? Once you can't take away those costs, Apple is just priced like everybody else in the market, if not cheaper.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[Free the Cowards]

Sorry, but you do not get to complain about the lack of a midrange Mac and simultaneously refuse to accept any Mac Pro with less than 8 cores, 8GB of RAM, an internal RAID, eSATA, and a second optical drive. Come on, now!

You said four cores, so select the four core option: minus $500, taking you to $2300. 2GB is just fine. It's not fantastic, but it does the job. If you absolutely must upgrade, toss in a 4GB upgrade kit for $170. Now your total price is $2470. You have a decent 320GB hard drive, a fine optical drive, and a fine GPU. You certainly may want to upgrade the rest, but complaining about the lack of a midrange Mac and then claiming that the lowest-end Mac Pro is "unusable" is totally asinine.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[Wrath0fb0b]

The point is that the Mac Pro uses all server components (Xeons, FB-DIMMS) which is entirely overkill. What I mean by "midrange" is not "feature-incomplete", it means using regular socket 775 motherboards. Consider my current rig - Q6600@3.2, 4GB, 8800GTS, 2x250 RAID0, 2xDVDRW, eSata, 1394: costs ~$1100. I would gladly pay $1650 (a 50% markup!) for an Apple branded version but $2500 is asinine.

That's the mid-range that's necessary!

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[Free the Cowards]

I understand all of this and accept your point. But in your last post you rejected the idea of the $2300 Mac Pro and refused to accept any model which wasn't totally loaded to the gills, and thus had an enormously high price. This is completely incompatible with complaining that there is no mid-range Mac, which would of course have lower specs than the Mac Pro, not higher.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[WNight]

I think the GP poster meant for stability. Hell, GS/OS from '88 looked nicer than Windows until fairly recently. But you could crash OS9 as easily as Win95 or Win3.1 - only OS X has taken the Mac past Windows and into the realm of real stability.

Re:Apple Won't Bother with Pystar

[WNight]

Why? If I buy a Ford car and add a nitrous system I'm still allowed to call it a Ford. It's not stock, but it's a Ford.

Psystar isn't misleading anyone - they bitch about having to hack OS X to install it - everyone knows this is modified.

Selling things means you give up your right to control them. Even trademarks. I could take the trademark off of an Apple computer and legally put it on a truck, or another computer. I couldn't use it for trade dress for a non-Apple product, but I could even sell it as what it is - an Apple trademarked symbol. Apple's copyright doesn't help, because Psystar isn't copying OS X, they're modifying their copy which is as legal as highlighting in your textbooks.

Nobody is being mislead. There is no crime. Except fanboys. Crimes against nature.

The Importance of OpenMac

[saterdaies]

The machine doesn't look that impressive. The thing that's really important is that they've forced the ball into Apple's court. At this point, Apple can respond to the violation of the EULA and see if a court says that the provision is legal or they can ignore it.

If they ignore it, others are likely to follow Psystar (after a long enough time to see that Apple doesn't go after them). Of course, in this case, there's still some threat, but I don't think it's outrageous to argue that if Apple ignores it for over a year that the provision looses some weight.

Personally, I hope they get sued. If they win their suit, it will be a new era for the Macintosh. If they loose their suit, they've lost, but at least we know.

Re:The Importance of OpenMac

[capologist]

If they ignore it, others are likely to follow Psystar (after a long enough time to see that Apple doesn't go after them). Apple probably will ignore it. From reading TFA and the other Slashdot comments, the Pystar looks like a piece of crap. So if Apple ignores it, they send this message:

"You're free to try to clone the Mac, so long as you don't produce anything that any sane person might consider purchasing instead of a real Mac. Of course, if you somehow manage to produce something that has a snowball's chance in hell of actually competing with us, we reserve the right to go after you."

Re:The Importance of OpenMac

[Concerned Onlooker]

" If they win their suit, it will be a new era for the Macintosh"

If I understand your point it would be more like the end of an era for Macintosh. As most everyone understands, or should understand by now, Apple is a hardware company. The terrific software they develop is in order to sell hardware. If Apple allows any piece of junk to run OS X then they've lost their business model. I hope Psystar goes down in flames, actually.

Re:The Importance of OpenMac

[Tatsh]

A machine made of hardware that comes directly off the list of compatible hardware from the OSx86 Wiki is supposed to be impressive?

Also, I think it's all fun and all to run Mac OS X natively on non-Apple computers and I have done it many times. But we all know it's hell to update and often requires getting a new 'hacked' ISO.

If they really do go forward, they will get sued if they market it as a Mac clone. But it looks to me, again, like a machine made of hardware that was found to be 100% compatible with OS X from the lists on the Wiki. They have not made their own version of the TPM in all Macs that actually start OS X, nor have they used any Apple EFI firmware. There's their defence, and Apple can only say that they marketed and are promoting piracy (violation of EULA). I am not sure which is worst nor who will win in such a case.

Apple will definitely win the case where someone makes a true Mac clone, using the Apple EFI firmware, and making a TPM that does what the real Apple TPM does, allowing store-bought copies of OS X to be installed. I would gladly buy one of these computers if they are cheap (while they last).

Re:The Importance of OpenMac

[argent]

If Apple allows any piece of junk to run OS X then they've lost their business model.

So they won't do that, or they'll change their business model.

Maybe sell "transportable" OSX for $519 instead of $119.

Maybe quit restricting their hardware to boutique toys, to kill the potential market for things like this.

They've got more options than just doing the same thing when it quits working.

Re:The Importance of OpenMac

[Budenny]

This is one of the weirdest arguments you hear on this subject. If Apple hardware is so great, why are clones a threat at all? What about all those arguments showing that every time anyone tries to duplicate a Mac, they end up spending more? Why on earth would Mac buyers move to cheap junk, if Apple hardware is such great value, and it works so well with the OS?

Or could it be that Apple hardware is not that great value, not cost effective, doesn't work with the OS any better than any other hardware, and that Mac buyers are only putting up with it so as to get the OS, and that given half a chance they would move to hardware they really want....? And this is why clones really are a threat?

Re:The Importance of OpenMac

[swb]

Mod parent up. The Mac fanboys are in something of a logical bind; if Apple hardware is so superior, a clone wouldn't be a threat. If MacOS is so superior to Windows, then clones would be a benefit, and OS sales would easily balance hardware losses (which of course there wouldn't be any, since the hardware is so superior).

I'd pay a premium for some kind of dongle that would let me run MacOS on intel hardware, but probably as a VM instance and then I might switch it around to run Windows in a VM under MacOS.

Re:The Importance of OpenMac

[jellomizer]

If they win their suit, it will be a new era for the Macintosh. If they loose their suit, they've lost, but at least we know.

A new Erra for Macintosh. Like back in 1990's where Apple was licesing its OS to 3rd party venders and finding that it nearly killed them. Because all it did was split the Mac Fans to buy 3rd party systems. What make you think things are that dramaticly different now.

Yea OS X has some advantages over Linux and Windows and it currently has good market share. But are people buying it because of OS X or because of the Hardware. If it was only because of the hardware Apple is fine. But if it is just because poeple hate Vista and Linux, then Apple will be loosing hardware sales tand will not make it up on the software end.

Re:The Importance of OpenMac

[WNight]

Apple, a hardware company? What a joke!

Everything they sell is 100% based on parts from other companies. They spec good hardware, yes, but they don't make any of it.

What you Apple people fail to see is that anyone can spend what Apple does and buy nice hardware. That's not magical, it's just not buying the cheapest thing. Personally, I've never had an problems with PCs (of my own) but I buy specific parts that review well on sites I trust.

Re:The Importance of OpenMac

[WNight]

Did you agree to the EULA? Do you consider it binding?

Why?

If you bought a toaster and it had a post-sale (hidden like a EULA) "contract" that purported to control the brand of bread products usable, would you accept that limitation or ignore it and use it as a brand-agnostic bread heating machine?

Did you know that US Copyright law specifically says that using a copyrighted computer program (even where copying (to HD, RAM, etc) is required for that use) is totally legal. It's part of the required steps to use it, and what possible justification would there be to sell a product you didn't intend the customer to have the right to use.

You'd have an implied license for anything you did need to do (if the law didn't already fully grant you this right) because Apple couldn't legally sell a product they knew was unusable in the condition they sold it. If you needed the EULA, it wasn't a sale, and if it was a sale you don't need the EULA.

You own OS X when you pay for it. At that time Apple loses all rights to control what you do with it.

(They do lose all rights - copyright law restricts ME, it doesn't empower them. The government has a list of things I cannot do, it's the same with OS X as with a newspaper.)

Re:The Importance of OpenMac

[Mr2001]

As most everyone understands, or should understand by now, Apple is a hardware company. The terrific software they develop is in order to sell hardware. If Apple allows any piece of junk to run OS X then they've lost their business model. Er, that's backwards. If they're a hardware company, then shouldn't they be competing on the quality of their hardware? And since Psystar can't compete on hardware quality, wouldn't that mean Apple has nothing to worry about?

Here's an alternate theory: Apple is really a software company, but they pretend to be a hardware company. Competition in the hardware market is a problem for Apple because their hardware isn't actually competitive.

I hope Psystar goes down in flames, actually. I hope they stick around and pressure Apple to address the glaring holes in their product lineup: notably, the lack of a 15" laptop or expandable desktop for under $2000.

Re:The Importance of OpenMac

[argent]

What make you think things are that dramaticly different now.

In the 1990s Mac OS sucked, and Apple had a pretty broad variety of systems available, so there wasn't any real untapped demand for Mac OS on hardware that Apple wasn't producing. Now, Apple could solve the latter by adding a few models to their product line, but even after the success of the Mini they seem incredibly reluctant to do so.

The other potential difference is that in the '90s they had to appeal to clone makers, so they couldn't charge enough for the transportable version of the OS to make back the lost hardware sales. Now, they don't need to worry about that, so they can charge $500 for a legit unlocked OS X and find buyers.

Apple Upgrade Tax

[copponex]

The complaints I have about apple:

1) Highway robbery for RAM/HDs from their website
2) Bank robbery for their hard drive prices for XServe
3) Spreadsheet performance (Excel 2008, OOo 2.4, Numbers '08)
4) Closed, shitty file formats for their iWork and iLife products
5) Pain in the ass to install free *nix software

Their computers are over priced, but are perfect for casual, non-technical yuppy types, or people who have to use Final Cut / Logic Pro.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[aquarajustin]

5) Pain in the ass to install free *nix software Have you ever tried MacPorts? It is far from a pain in the ass.
http://www.macports.org/

Their computers are over priced, but are perfect for casual, non-technical yuppy types, or people who have to use Final Cut / Logic Pro. What operating system do you use? From my experience, Mac OS is generally the system that is used by non-yuppy technical types who have reached enlightenment. ;)

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[Free the Cowards]

The complaints I have about apple:

1) Highway robbery for RAM/HDs from their website That's why you buy the extra RAM/HD elsewhere. If you buy extra RAM from Apple then you're a fool.

2) Bank robbery for their hard drive prices for XServe I haven't bought any XServes but I assume they can also be obtained elsewhere.

3) Spreadsheet performance (Excel 2008, OOo 2.4, Numbers '08) That's what you get for using spreadsheets!

4) Closed, shitty file formats for their iWork and iLife products Well, um, so there!

5) Pain in the ass to install free *nix software Fink and MacPorts make this as easy as it is on any other *nix. The only difficulty is choosing between the two.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[codemachine]

Actually Fink and FinkCommander make it pretty easy to install unix software. Especially if you have Apple's X11 or install the latest from Xorg.

MacPorts is another option, as another person already mentioned.

Maybe not as easy and integrated as apt-get is in Debian/Ubuntu, but better than Cygwin. Some would say better than Solaris even.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[abigor]

They are also perfect for busy programmers like me who deploy to Unix/Linux and who are sick to death of the endless clusterfuck nightmare that is desktop Linux. Of course, desktop Linux is perfect for casual, non-professional hobbyist types, or people who place no value on their time.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[Nitewing98]

The complaints I have about apple:
1) Highway robbery for RAM/HDs from their website No Mac user with any intelligence buys RAM or HD's from Apple, that's common knowledge.

2) Bank robbery for their hard drive prices for XServe See #1 above, though I'm not an XServe owner and can't testify that outside drives would work.

3) Spreadsheet performance (Excel 2008, OOo 2.4, Numbers '08) What? Each product you mention has a different code base, I don't see how ALL of them could have similar performance? Are you implying that Apple's processors don't do math fast enough? (oh, wait, they're using Intel, the same as everyone else)

4) Closed, shitty file formats for their iWork and iLife products Agreed. You got me here.

5) Pain in the ass to install free *nix software It's no harder to use Fink or Port than it is apt-get or aptitude. If you use the GUI's (FinkCommander and Porticus), then you get the same functionality with a Mac UI. Either way, this comment is junk.

Their computers are over priced, but are perfect for casual, non-technical yuppy types, or people who have to use Final Cut / Logic Pro. Or for IT types (me included) who get tired of using Windows at work and dealing with blue screens and drivers that don't work (or that Windows "can't find") or software that "just breaks." My Mac has always been a calm oasis in the desert that is Windows, where I can focus on what I'm doing, not how to fix something that's broken.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[DurendalMac]

1. Yeah, kinda pricey. Buy RAM and HDs elsewhere if it's a problem.
2. Apple has dropped the price on XServe HDs to the point where they're only a minor mugging. $650 for an additional 15k RPM SAS drive (with the drive tray) isn't a horrid deal. The SATA drives are bit much, though.
3. Huh? Numbers is 1.x, and the others are not Apple's problem.
4. So save them into MS formats if you don't like it. The beauty of iLife is that it supports Office 2007 formats and earlier.
5. As others have pointed out, it really isn't.

Yep, casual, non-technical yuppie types. Hell, I'm only a sysadmin with a degree and a good job. What do I know?

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[Anonymous Coward]

I think 1 and 2 fall into the same category. If you are working in a production environment, and will ever rely on Apple for warranty or tech support, use the components they sell. If I buy a car, and the manufacturer recommends a certain size tire, and I put a different size on, and they fail, I wouldn't expect them to warrant any damage from said modification. I agree, Excel 2008 is slow. OOO, I've never used, and Numbers, for a 1.0 release, has been pleasing so far. Most of the time, I use Excel. As for 4, there are always other options. For instance, iWorks saves into a number of formats that can be used elsewhere. I actually like iLife using xml so heavily, and that other, 3rd party apps can work in concert with them.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[HuguesT]

Oh yes, recompiling non-trivial packages like Inkscape, with the *whole* of the Gnome libraries, boost and so forth is so like my idea of fun.

Macports may be good, but if you know a binary repository that would be useful, thanks. When I need a new piece of software I usually need it right now, not in 3 days time when the compilation is all finished. I also need the rest of my computer in the mean time, not some kind of thrashing piece of hardware in the midst of a pointless recompilation frenzy.

Macport is a huge PITA. what's the point of making *everyone* recompile the exact same piece of software?

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[HuguesT]

Re: between fink and macport, the choice is easy: neither.

Fink is essentially not being maintained actively. I'm on the developer mailing list, I receive maybe 10 mails a day. The software in the repository is very much out of date. I also have terrible experience with missing packages.

MacPort is for those who have a spare Mac to do their compiling on. I don't have that. Ever tried compiling the Gnome or KDE libraries? I've done my share of 24h compiling stretches when X11 was young, I thought we had moved beyond that, but no, apparently.

So when I need something non trivial like a new version of emacs or TeX, this is scouring the net time and searching for a precompiled version somewhere. Thanks to everyone who provide them!

This is why I have a spare Linux machine, which costs less than a mac, for these times when I need new software not yet available.

For F/OSS, Apple Macs are a second class citizen, simple as that.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[Zonk (troll)]

Fink and MacPorts make this as easy as it is on any other *nix. The only difficulty is choosing between the two. Yeah, spending all day waiting for things to finish compiling and dealing with broken packages is just so much easier than doing an apt-get or using synaptic...

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[Megane]

My Mac has always been a calm oasis in the desert that is Windows

I think Windows more like a stormy sea, and Vista is the Perfect Storm.

The desert is Linux on the desktop.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[drerwk]

Oh yes, recompiling non-trivial packages like Inkscape, with the *whole* of the Gnome libraries, boost and so forth is so like my idea of fun.
I assume you tried the 10.4 and 10.5 dmgs at http://www.inkscape.org/download/. Did they not work for you?

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[anothergene]

1 - Don't buy apple RAM. It is officially a user servicable part. HDs are easy enough to replace on your own too.

3. Why is that apple's issue? Other then Numbers.

4. Like Office is any better?

5. No more a pain in the ass the Linux.

the over pricing is a fallacy. Do a side by side comparison with a piece of crap dell speced to the same level and you more often then out that the prices are similar if not lower for the apple.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[TheLink]

"The desert is Linux on the desktop"

Yeah, and the Linux fanatics keep saying how great a beach it is...

And if you don't like the way things are, you always have full unhindered access to the C.

Uh huh, desktop users want to "swim in the sea", not swim in the C ;).

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[Digi-John]

You'll have to tell that to, oh, most everyone in computing here at the national lab. I'm sure all the Ph.D's will be pleased to hear how non-professional they are, with their Linux desktops and Linux supercomputers.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[Achromatic1978]

That's the most pathetic excusing I've ever seen - you can't buy a system without RAM/HDD from Apple, so you just have to suck it up, huh? And then go buy your RAM elsewhere. Great. And you (and every other fanboy that uses this argument) has the unmitigated gall to blame the user - "anyone who buys RAM from Apple is an idiot/fool"... right.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[Achromatic1978]

1 - Show me where on Apple's Store you have the option to buy any Apple system with zero RAM. Oh, wait, you can't. So you're going to get gouged on it, and that's quite alright to all the fanboys in this thread defending it (and there are, of course, several of you). I mean, I have pretty much zero impetus to believe that, oh /that/ RAM that you have to buy isn't being gouged either.

Before anyone rushes in and makes some trollish remark about "being able to afford it", that ain't a problem - the problem is people who seek all manner of justifications to attempt to defend what is, quite simply, highway robbery.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[Free the Cowards]

Apple charges a 100-200% markup on RAM and HD upgrades. Do you think that anyone who pays this markup is not a fool?

I'll be the first person to say that the situation with Apple's RAM and HD upgrades sucks. It's stupid and it makes them look bad. But what it does not do is limit your buying options. Aftermarket parts are trivial to install, are vastly cheaper, and often have a better warranty than what you'd get on identical parts from Apple. It's lame, but also inconsequential.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[cadeon]

I was going to rebunk you on everything except #1 (which is totally true, IMHO), but then I realized that you've already been modded flamebait and therefore I shouldn't feed the troll.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[cadeon]

Oh my God thank you for making light of this.

I use a mac as my desktop and linux on my servers. I can be productive, build my app and run it just fine on my mac, and not have to worry about the constant updates and GUI fighting that I do with linux desktops. . . and when it's all said and done and needs to go to a production server, drop it on a linux box and watch it hum.

There are many in this thread saying that Apple is proprietary. Well Yes! Duh! They are! Apple is a For Profit company doing exceedingly well at making a profit because they put out a good, cohesive desktop system that pretty much just works. Thankfully they are open to the idea of F/OSS and therefore don't go out of their way to keep it from happening on their platform- in fact, Apple supplies a lot of tools to let you go to town hacking all you want. That's a _lot_ better than the alternative, being cygwin on windows.

I've always seen OS X as a "Linux variant" - don't beat me up guys, I know that's not true- that has a company driving it and focusing it. With focus comes restrictions, but those restrictions are more than outweighed by the productivity increases thanks to the existence of some standards.

Pidgin recently forked because nobody could agree upon how the text input box should be sized. QED.

Ubuntu has done wonders for focusing linux, and that's why it's made strides on the desktop- but it's nowhere near what OS X has done. Not just in usability, but in the underlying tools and things like Applescript and Automator that the flamemakers tend to know nothing about.

Also- I saw a complaint about the iLife / iWork file formats. 1) These applications export to more standard formats, and 2) They are just folders, with an actually pretty easy to follow layout inside the folders. I don't think it'd be too hard to write a parser- at least not as hard as when OOo tried to open Word files the first time around.

Anyone who complains about price hasn't priced hardware recently. If you want a decent computer, it costs money. Apple doesn't sell a bargain machine because they don't want to sell and support cheap shit that will be useless next year. That's why their machines have longer lives.

Thank you for providing me a comment to grab on to.

Re:Apple Upgrade Tax

[HuguesT]

yes they did in this particular instance, but not every piece of software in Macport is available as binary.

Frankenmac anyone?

[Kildjean]

The included copy of Leopard was out of the shrinkwrap, but there's no way to install it -- it shows up in Startup Disk but it won't restart, and it's not recognized at boot. I wonder how from a legal stand point of view this will stand not only to apple but to consumers. What is the purpose of including an OS that is being forced to work on a hardware it was not made for and then, leaves consumers stuck if they need to re-install. This computer not only should leave a bad taste on apple, with an unauthorized modification of their product experience. To the Joe Schmoe of users, it will prove a disappointing experience because they will be buying a product that because runs OSX they will think it will run like a true mac and it wont, proving to be a disappointment and it will ruin what owning a mac should trully be.

Re:Frankenmac anyone?

[WNight]

Certainly, Apple could sue Psystar senseless *if* Psystar fails to make it perfectly clear that this is a modified product.

But I think they've been pretty clear about it. They're proud of what they've done.

This isn't a counterfeit trying to resemble an Apple, this is Apple OS X welded into a cheap computer like a Porsche engine in a VW Bug. But if it's what you're looking for...

TPM is a red herring

[argent]

The real copy protection, such as it is, is EFI and some obfuscation.

http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter7/tpmdrmmyth/

"great hardware"?

[argent]

I've got one of the early overheating battery-warping Macbook Pros, with a keyboard that aggravates my RSI, and a built-in camera I can't do anything useful with because I can't turn it around (no, videoconferencing has abut as much appeal to me as reaming my sinuses out with a dremel tool). When I had a problem with my hard disk, I called Apple, and they said that I could ship them the computer and be without it for at least a week, or wait a week and go to a "genius bar" to get it replaced. No, they couldn't just ship me a replacement drive, because I couldn't replace it without violating my warranty.

I'll take a computer I can open up and replace the hard drive in any day. I'd have split the difference between the cheap Thinkpad I actually wanted and the Macbook Pro I had to get instead with Apple, if they'd sold a copy of OS X that would run on that Thinkpad. And they'd make better margins selling a copy of OS X for $519 and pocketing $500 of it instead of selling a laptop for $2000 and pocketing $500 of it.

Re:"great hardware"?

[drinkypoo]

If you didn't have ATI graphics I'd offer to swap you my nw9440 for it... it's basically a first-gen MBP with Quadro graphics, a PC BIOS, and an uglier case.

Re:"great hardware"?

[argent]

If it was a Thinkpad I'd jump at it. I've had mixed luck with Compaq when I was doing network administration: some were very very good but too many turned out to be lemons.

Looking at the specs that one looks pretty nice, though. Does the Lightscribe work under OSX86?

(ugly case? I much prefer the matte black)

Re:"great hardware"?

[drinkypoo]

The lightscribe probably works fine, I've never used it :) The case ugliness I refer to is the size of it as compared to MBP, since I like this color (it's more of a graphite, it's semi-metallic.) This system definitely has not been trouble-free, although I've solved everything except, so far, Ubuntu hibernation... And Ubuntu modem support, it has a Conexant modem and even with the Linuxant driver it is super flaky.

Re:"great hardware"?

[argent]

Ubuntu?

If it's not running OS X why did you even bring it up?

Re:"great hardware"?

[drinkypoo]

Because I'm sure it COULD run the PC OSX stuff PROVIDED that QuadroFX 1500 support is working these days - because almost all of its other hardware is basically identical to a MBP.

Re:"great hardware"?

[argent]

Ah, gotcha. I thought you were talking about a hackintosh.

I'd be happy with 2-core if it didn't suck

[argent]

Yes, but it's also shinning more light Apple's infuriating decision not to offer a reasonable quad-core desktop that doesn't cost more than my car.

I'd be happy if they just had a dual-core or even single-core desktop that didn't suck.

That means: no built in monitor, a decent hard drive, a box you can open without a putty knife, and an nVidia GPU. Preferably with a socketed CPU and a swappable video card, but I'll even compromise there.

Similar or better specs?

[argent]

Maybe desktops are different from laptops but when I was looking into laptops, the Macs were generally of similar or better specs than the Vista laptops at the same price point.

When I was making the decision to go with the Macbook ($1200) or Macbook Pro ($2000) I was really tempted by one of the low end Thinkpads.

For $900, it had the exact same specs as the Macbook... in fact it had the same damn chipset, CPU, and GPU. For $200 more (still less than the Macbook) I could get it with a real nVidia GPU instead of the crap Intel it shipped with. For $1100 I'd have gotten a laptop that had every bit of hardware I actually wanted from my Macbook Pro, PLUS a far better keyboard, a two-button touchpad, a trackpoint controller, a hard drive on a sled, an optical drive that could be swapped out and upgraded, and for a little more an actual docking station. Things I can't get in my Macbook Pro at any price.

The only way you get Wintel hardware to cost as much as Mac hardware is if you discount every feature or option that the Mac is missing as worth $0, but make every feature or option that the Mac has a hard requirement.

Apple is just waiting for the perfect time ...

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Apple is waiting for the perfect time to introduce some sort of software update that'll break the mac clone, and they're probably thinking that after THAT... no one will ever do this again.

Re:Apple is just waiting for the perfect time ...

[Duradin]

How will Apple break the clone if the clone can't update?

Re:Apple is just waiting for the perfect time ...

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

backdoors. itunes. whatever. apple will find a way.

Apple DHCP issues

[argent]

Apple's DHCP has had problems with leases falling over even on real Apple hardware.

The solution is to run a script like this:

#!/bin/sh
 
while true
do
  ipconfig set en0 BOOTP
  ipconfig set en0 DHCP
  sleep 300 # renew every 5 minutes
done

If you prefer, start with MoreSCF and get a less hacky solution that's location-aware and all.

Re:Apple DHCP issues

[drinkypoo]

Why is that the solution? What is apple using for a DHCP client? Wouldn't it be smarter just to disable it and use dhclient or similar? At least that would, you know, work :) (I bet you could tie it into the apple system, too, since it's highly scriptable.) That's the best thing about Apple using open standards, it's easier to hack up than OS9- (resedit aside.)

Re:Apple DHCP issues

[argent]

Why is that the solution? What is apple using for a DHCP client?

It's some kind of home grown network administration thing, you can tell by the use of "ipconfig" instead of "ifconfig" (DEC did the same thing, but called it lanconfig). I don't know if you can just turn off the DHCP part of it... I've had mixed luck doing things like that. Trying to replace their funky automounter with amd turned out to be a bad idea, for example.

I'm not buying a Psystar... but

[keirre23hu]

You can get a firewire card for about 20 bucks give or take.

Re:

[clint999]

"The desert is Linux on the desktop" Yeah, and the Linux fanatics keep saying how great a beach it is... And if you don't like the way things are, you always have full unhindered access to the C. Uh huh, desktop users want to "swim in the sea", not swim in th

I admit I am must be an ignorant idiot

[Douglas Goodall]

I waited thirty years to buy a workstation that would make me happy. I wanted lots of pure horsepower, huge amounts of ram, gobs of hard disk, harware raid, lots of I/O, real Unix, X, a friendly GUI.

Lets talk about horsepower. On the day the 8-core 3.0Gz Xeon Mac Pro became available, Intel was only shipping those cpu chips to Apple and nowhere else. 8 cores was exactly what I wanted.

Ram that worked efficiently with the processors in this configuration had to have extra heat sinks and I wanted thoroughly tested ram that would not make errors when things got warm. Just because other sources of ram seem ok doesn't mean they meet the timing spec under all circumstances when viewed with logic analysers under load. Too many years of hearing, "Dos boots, the cpu board must be ok", left me feeling there were a lot of idiots in the world.

Four internal SATA II drives are a good fit, especially if you get a raid card and four of the new WD 10000RPM SATA II Raptor drives (to be available this month).

If I am going to use firewire, don't bother me with 400 ports, give me the good stuff. Two gigE ports is nice.

As of Leopard, Mac OS X is Real Unix and the X Window implementation is ok for my uses. The Leopard GUI is a lot nicer than OpenLook in my opinion.

Yes the Mac Pro is made of "server class components". That is what I always wanted and it is what I am happy to pay for.

When I was looking for the workstation of my dreams, I looked all over at the systems available at any price. I looked into what I could buy from Sun, HP, Dell, or build myself. I evaluated whether I would be happy owning a 10K plus dollar Sun Sparc machine with multiple processors. What I discovered is that if I wanted something better than the 8-core Mac Pro, I would have to buy a small mainframe and call it a workstation.

I intend to use this machine and it's peripherals for many years. As time moves on and specs change, I should be able to pick up a spare Mac Pro frame refurbished or used for less down the road. I feel that between Apple Care and having Apple repair my expensive workstation if it needs repair, I can trust that my investment will not be wasted. I expect the machine to last long enough to depreciate. Even with the Apple Tax, if it lasts long enough, the price per year will be within my flinch range. I have bought a dozen two thousand dollars machines in the last few years and they are not doing it for me. HP, Toshiba, Sony, Dell have all taken my money and let me down.

I Bought everything but the hard drives from Apple. I paid extra to assure that they would be 100% and there would not be any mysteries plaguing my system.

A year later, the new model is .2Gz faster and can have more ram added. This doesn't seem to bother me any. I haven't exceeded the need for 16GB of ram yet.for the application I am writing. If a client needs the max config, they can buy a newer Mac Pro.

I have used all the rest, and this time I wanted the best. Call me anything you like, and make fun of me for being ignorant and buying the system and it's ram from Apple. But at the end of the day, I have a kick-ass workstation that is the most reliable machine I have ever owned, and I don't regret a penny of the money that was spent putting it together.

Just an overpaid one perhaps?

[argent]

It must be nice having an unlimited toy budget, and if I had one I'd be happy dropping a few grand on a Mac Pro, but look at the Macs the rest of us have to put up with before telling us how cool your tower is.

Re:Just an overpaid one perhaps?

[Douglas Goodall]

I want to walk in your shoes. Just what are the rest of you putting up with that I haven't while I waited to do better? Should I be ashamed to have set my professional priorities high enough to afford quality tools. When your day comes and you put hard earned money into the tools for your work, you may not want to hear that you are an idiot. I just know you have to pay for quality.

Re:Just an overpaid one perhaps?

[argent]

Just what are the rest of you putting up with that I haven't while I waited to do better?

Well, that's the other side, isn't it? Time is money. A loaded Mac Pro in a year, or a Mac mini now? Well, the mortgage isn't getting paid by my sitting on my thumbs and not working... so a mini it is. A mini plus a Wintendo to install and test software on, PLUS a KVM and monitor, still cost me less than an iMac... let alone a Mac Pro.

Should I be ashamed to have set my professional priorities high enough to afford quality tools.

No, but do you not think there might be a bigger market for Macs if people who are less willing (or able) to make a Mac Pro a top priority get to play too?