I either missed the sarcasm, or you live in an entirely different world than most people. Why in the world are you bragging about a hard drive install taking an entire day? I've installed maybe 20 Mac hard drives and each one of them took less than 10 minutes. I've installed probably 10 PC hard drives, and all have them have taken over 30 minutes to an hour, with several reboots, and mucking about in the bios.
What kind of users do you serve that would rather have no access to a drive for an entire day than having access in 5-10 minutes?
The "DRM bait" is a foolish assertation. I've owned iPods and iTunes since before the Apple FairPlay DRM was implemented, and was perfectly satisfied with the product. Therefore, the recent inclusion of DRM to iTunes stores played no role in my decision to use iPod + iTunes + Mac OS. I don't have to use iTunes, but I do, because there isn't a better marketplace for browsing, nor a better market with more selection. At least we agree that we are both still waiting for a better vendor of MP3 music. Unfortunately, it isn't going to happen, because the labels won't sign off on any music without some sort of DRM scheme.
I think the point he was making is that the perception of lack of software on other platforms is just that...a perception. I have been advocating Macs to friends and family for over 15 years now, and I have only been stumped once -- my ex mother-in-law needed some CDL truck driver dispatching software that I couldn't find an alternative for. I ask; how many of you have truck-driving mother-in-laws?
The lack of games for Linux/Mac OS, on the other hand, is a reality. Then again, if one is using games as the driving factor for ones OS of choice, I begin to doubt the critical-thinking skills and credibility of ones posts on/.
calling those various "other" markets "niche" doesn't make the needs of the millions of people that are in them go away.
As a Mac user, I've been saying this for the past 20 years, when people call the Mac a "niche" market.
A common fallacy is dismissing one "niche" in the face of a bigger/badder solution, such as Windows. I don't really care that 95% of the world uses Windows. Like this guys' Mac software list, that's the stuff I use, and I don't need Windows for anything else.
My point simply was that the features the OS itself provides are not nearly as important as the software it can run.
This is a valid point, but the difference between the OS X and Windows operating systems are night and day. With Windows, it is painfully obvious when you are using a system wide OS feature and when you are using a third party app. With Mac OS X, the experience is more fluid and integrated. I'll introduce a 10 year-old argument that is still valid: drag and drop a picture/sound file/text field, etc. from most any program in Mac OS X to any other program, and it just works.
I for one will be buying Vista, if only for my PC to get closer to my Mac in usability. You may need programs, but since I already have programs I need, I want a good user experience.
Sure, you'd rather have a shiny new car that runs perfectly. So would I. But it 'taint available. When it is, I'll buy one -- probably.
Why haven't you bought an Intel Mac yet? I hear they are available. Its like a car that is shiny and new and doesn't breakdown (OS X), but gives you the ability to try out the shiny and new car that breaks down and is recalled every three weeks (Windows Flavor-of-Choice).
I'm not so sure your claim is correct. I know for sure that OS X runs decently enough on a 350ghz G4 Mac (mine is 6 years old). I doubt ANY PC that is 6 years old will be able to run Vista, but I could be mistaken.
As many times as he dropped the name "Macintosh" in this article, I would suggest he works for Apple? Even I, die-hard Mac user, noticed the "slight" bias. What I don't get is why he keeps comparing Vista features to Mac OS X features, when the overwhelming majority of Vista users will be people who know nothing about Macs. Why would you continually compare something to something else that most people aren't familiar with?
Sounds more like this guy was phishing than spamming. I have no legal problem with spam, although I'd like to punch them all in their faces. Phishing, though, is fraud, period. It is defrauding someone of their account information and then using it to steal their assets. I'm not a lawyer, but if someone where convicted of hundreds or possibly thousands of fraud charges, I would expect at least one year per count, wouldn't you?
Hey thanks for the info. I'll have to check when I get home, but my question about the partition is that the XP partition that mounts on my OS X desktop as "untitled" doesn't show up over the wireless network with my other two macs.
You have embraced single vendor lock-in because it meets your needs of a PC (or MAC) and an Apple branded digital music player
Not entirely true. I have embraced the Apple solution because they offer the best product from the player all the way down to the store. If there is a more elegant, easier to use solution with just as much content (that worked with OS X) then I actually wouldn't mind using a different player, store or OS.
I was curious about this as well. I couldn't get the article to open at work, so I can only surmise what it said from the comments thus far. My question is, will this allow me to read and write to my XP partition (can only read now), or will it allow me to access the XP partition over the network, without being booted up in XP mode?
IT CAN'T REMEMBER THAT YOU WANT TO STAY LOGGED IN! That checkbox on the login page, as far as I can tell, DOES. NOTHING.
That is my favorite feature! I particularly like when you click "login" and it gives you the error that says "You must be logged in to use that function!"
In their defense, I'm sure they spend 99% of their resources on hosting and covering their butts from criminal activity, and have little time to actually rework the design of the product.
Re:MySpace suceeds *because* of its shortcomings..
on
Inside MySpace.com
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· Score: 1
Hell, they did *everything* wrong and thats what made it right.
Well said! Pandering to the average know-nothing Joe has always been a successful marketing strategy. The average person is pretty ignorant when it comes to design taste, but even AVERAGE would be a welcome relief on some of those myspace pages! I'm sure the best program on the planet could come around and offer the greatest social network ever seen, but most people would stick with their crappy myspace site, because that's where all their friends are. It is somewhat of a microcosm of the PC/Windows world dominance phenomena, dont you think?
Hypothetically speaking, there are 100 PCs, and 93 of them are used by businesses. For every 100 PCs, there are 10 Macs, 8 of them are used by home users. If this were true (I'm sure it isn't, but it makes my point), there would be a bigger market for Mac based media-on-demand. The main point you overlook is that the overwhelming majority of media formats work on Mac and PC, so there is no mystical cost of "porting". Macs may be a tiny fraction of the market, but there are still MILLIONS of customers. Who turns their back on millions of customers?
Also, show me one non-tech person with a working home theater/pc setup and I'll show you 10 ma-and-pa's with their Mac Minis and a little white remote controls. Even my parents can hook up a red white and yellow cable and push the enter button on their remote.
YouTube uses some awful compression scheme to keep file sizes down. I doubt anyone would pay for a subscription service with similar quality. As far as getting video easily to a TV, I think it is pretty easy right now. My MacBook has Mini DVI so it hooks right into most tvs. I keep my video content on my iMac, because it has a 500gb hard drive, and stream content wirelessly to my MacBook hooked into the tv. The Mac TV is available soon for people who want to spend $300 to do the same thing as hooking up a laptop or a Mac-Mini, but not have a fully functionally computer at the same time. These are Mac-centric solutions, so I'm sure there are plenty of PC solutions as well.
Let's come back in two years and examine the state of Mac market share, especially in the area of on-demand media. If 9 out of 10 pcs are sitting in an office somewhere, they aren't doing the home media market any favor.
Companies are short-sighted if they don't see the obivous trends in Mac OS growth, especially since the release of Intel Macs, and ESPECIALLY in the home market.
#1 -- Mac OS may not be as widely adopted as a business tool, but it holds distinct and tangible media benefits over Microsoft solutions.
#2 -- Yep, Mac users are screwed. My question is why would you turn your back on millions of potential customers who have an easier and more elegant system with which to integrate your product? I would have loved to try out Napster or Yahoo music services, but alas, no Mac compatibility.
I envisioned movies and tv on demand over the internet back in 1995. I never dreamed it would take so freaking long for bandwidth to develop, or that so many legal roadblocks would get in the way.
These are some good points. It sounds like a good idea with potential, but I really hate the fact that nothing I've gotten off the web (legit or otherwise) has had surround sound! I live overseas, and one of my only sources of tv shows (Battlestar, The Office) is iTunes, or bit torrents. I prefer the peace of mind of a legit iTunes purchase and the assurance the quality will be fine full screen (can't say the same for random torrent from the web), but still, no surround? Lame.
Well that makes sense, if you are a cd user. I actually took a break from CD like devices during the heyday of mp3 music, so neglected to even think of that possibility. In a couple of other posts where people made the claim iTunes can't play on cd , I thought they where claiming that FairPlay prevents burning to CD. True, you can't burn them to CD directly as MP3s so you don't get the benefit of having a couple hundred songs on a cd. It is only a matter of time until a freeware/shareware solution pops up.
My point is still, if I just HAVE to have mp3s on cd, I can burn a PCM encoded cd, then rip them to the computer as MP3s then burn them back to a disk. People say that is a lot of work, but how do you do it now with songs from your CD collection? You have to rip the cd to mp3 then load them back up to a cd as mp3s, correct? I suppose if you can find songs online that are un-drmd, like eMusic, you can skip that step, but their content is very limited. Yahoo has better content, but doesn't work with Macs or iPods. That actually pisses me off more than iPod+iTunes DRM. And God forbid if the record industry manages to force rented music on us all that expires once we stop paying the man!
Yeah, that would be a great idea. That way we can get back to mediocre products from Microsfot et al.
I don't know anyone who bought an iTunes song and then figured out they needed an iPod to play it so the went out and bought an iPod. Nor do I know anyone that bought an iPod and thought their only source of music was iTunes. If either of these scenarios were true, then I'd say Apple is vendor-locking their music.
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Yeah, good thing the entire creative industry has dumped the Mac! Apple never did get that whole "font" thing down did they ;-) ?
What kind of users do you serve that would rather have no access to a drive for an entire day than having access in 5-10 minutes?
The "DRM bait" is a foolish assertation. I've owned iPods and iTunes since before the Apple FairPlay DRM was implemented, and was perfectly satisfied with the product. Therefore, the recent inclusion of DRM to iTunes stores played no role in my decision to use iPod + iTunes + Mac OS. I don't have to use iTunes, but I do, because there isn't a better marketplace for browsing, nor a better market with more selection. At least we agree that we are both still waiting for a better vendor of MP3 music. Unfortunately, it isn't going to happen, because the labels won't sign off on any music without some sort of DRM scheme.
The lack of games for Linux/Mac OS, on the other hand, is a reality. Then again, if one is using games as the driving factor for ones OS of choice, I begin to doubt the critical-thinking skills and credibility of ones posts on /.
A common fallacy is dismissing one "niche" in the face of a bigger/badder solution, such as Windows. I don't really care that 95% of the world uses Windows. Like this guys' Mac software list, that's the stuff I use, and I don't need Windows for anything else.
This is a valid point, but the difference between the OS X and Windows operating systems are night and day. With Windows, it is painfully obvious when you are using a system wide OS feature and when you are using a third party app. With Mac OS X, the experience is more fluid and integrated. I'll introduce a 10 year-old argument that is still valid: drag and drop a picture/sound file/text field, etc. from most any program in Mac OS X to any other program, and it just works.
I for one will be buying Vista, if only for my PC to get closer to my Mac in usability. You may need programs, but since I already have programs I need, I want a good user experience.
Mac OS X is a sophisticated piece of software with excellent quality control and high security standards. Hackers aren't sophisticated people.
I'm not so sure your claim is correct. I know for sure that OS X runs decently enough on a 350ghz G4 Mac (mine is 6 years old). I doubt ANY PC that is 6 years old will be able to run Vista, but I could be mistaken.
Sounds more like this guy was phishing than spamming. I have no legal problem with spam, although I'd like to punch them all in their faces. Phishing, though, is fraud, period. It is defrauding someone of their account information and then using it to steal their assets. I'm not a lawyer, but if someone where convicted of hundreds or possibly thousands of fraud charges, I would expect at least one year per count, wouldn't you?
Hey thanks for the info. I'll have to check when I get home, but my question about the partition is that the XP partition that mounts on my OS X desktop as "untitled" doesn't show up over the wireless network with my other two macs.
I was curious about this as well. I couldn't get the article to open at work, so I can only surmise what it said from the comments thus far. My question is, will this allow me to read and write to my XP partition (can only read now), or will it allow me to access the XP partition over the network, without being booted up in XP mode?
I'm 37 and my wife is 28. Except in my case, there isn't much "trying" going on. We both have myspace accounts too. Do I win?
That is my favorite feature! I particularly like when you click "login" and it gives you the error that says "You must be logged in to use that function!"
In their defense, I'm sure they spend 99% of their resources on hosting and covering their butts from criminal activity, and have little time to actually rework the design of the product.
Also, show me one non-tech person with a working home theater/pc setup and I'll show you 10 ma-and-pa's with their Mac Minis and a little white remote controls. Even my parents can hook up a red white and yellow cable and push the enter button on their remote.
YouTube uses some awful compression scheme to keep file sizes down. I doubt anyone would pay for a subscription service with similar quality. As far as getting video easily to a TV, I think it is pretty easy right now. My MacBook has Mini DVI so it hooks right into most tvs. I keep my video content on my iMac, because it has a 500gb hard drive, and stream content wirelessly to my MacBook hooked into the tv. The Mac TV is available soon for people who want to spend $300 to do the same thing as hooking up a laptop or a Mac-Mini, but not have a fully functionally computer at the same time. These are Mac-centric solutions, so I'm sure there are plenty of PC solutions as well.
Companies are short-sighted if they don't see the obivous trends in Mac OS growth, especially since the release of Intel Macs, and ESPECIALLY in the home market.
#2 -- Yep, Mac users are screwed. My question is why would you turn your back on millions of potential customers who have an easier and more elegant system with which to integrate your product? I would have loved to try out Napster or Yahoo music services, but alas, no Mac compatibility.
I envisioned movies and tv on demand over the internet back in 1995. I never dreamed it would take so freaking long for bandwidth to develop, or that so many legal roadblocks would get in the way.
These are some good points. It sounds like a good idea with potential, but I really hate the fact that nothing I've gotten off the web (legit or otherwise) has had surround sound! I live overseas, and one of my only sources of tv shows (Battlestar, The Office) is iTunes, or bit torrents. I prefer the peace of mind of a legit iTunes purchase and the assurance the quality will be fine full screen (can't say the same for random torrent from the web), but still, no surround? Lame.
Well if they must lock up their own broadcasts, they can always buy a Zune! Microsoft...always one step ahead.
My point is still, if I just HAVE to have mp3s on cd, I can burn a PCM encoded cd, then rip them to the computer as MP3s then burn them back to a disk. People say that is a lot of work, but how do you do it now with songs from your CD collection? You have to rip the cd to mp3 then load them back up to a cd as mp3s, correct? I suppose if you can find songs online that are un-drmd, like eMusic, you can skip that step, but their content is very limited. Yahoo has better content, but doesn't work with Macs or iPods. That actually pisses me off more than iPod+iTunes DRM. And God forbid if the record industry manages to force rented music on us all that expires once we stop paying the man!
I don't know anyone who bought an iTunes song and then figured out they needed an iPod to play it so the went out and bought an iPod. Nor do I know anyone that bought an iPod and thought their only source of music was iTunes. If either of these scenarios were true, then I'd say Apple is vendor-locking their music.