Vista might help push them in that (i.e., a different) direction. If their current machines don't run Vista well, and they have to upgrade, I wouldn't be surprised to see some organizations making the leap to Macs. If you gotta fork out the money for new machines, that might just be the excuse pencil-pushing budget geeks need to justify a Mac switch. If they already have XP licenses for hundreds of machines, boot camp is their answer.
Sorry, still haven't had a chance to try Eve-online, but I'll get back to you. I recently installed all the latest crop of racing sims, and I'm freakin' amazed at my fps rates. I'm consistently at 100 fps or higher, which is plenty good for me. Doom III runs much better on my iMac than it does my 2.5 P4 with a much better video card (invidia GeForce something or other). It isn't even playable on my PC at certain points of the game. So my contention still stands...the intel iMacs are very good gaming machines. I doubt I could build my own pc for any cheaper to get the same results, since I already tried this once 15 months ago. I haven't looked, but I bet I can find a website in less than 5 minutes that shows how to swap out the built in graphics card on the iMac, so in three years or so, I don't see that being a problem. I upgraded the video card in my friend's second generation iMac way back in the day, and that was supposedly not possible, so I'm sure I'll be able to do it again.
IM at work will most likely only happen in Mac-centric environments, and only when the overwhelming majority of Macs are a less than a couple of years old (i.e., equipped with iSight and iChat). My experience in computer education is that schools (and most likely, businesses) are too lazy or ill-equipped to actually install all the necessary components for IM. Since all recent Macs have this capability right out of the box, this is the only way I'd see it happening. I have so many family and friends back in the States that I don't chat with, because they can't configure their AIM to do video or receive files with the ease of Mac-to-Mac iChat. It really bothers me that my ex won't take the time to configure her pc so I can video chat with my kids.
I thought it was the Zune? Speaking of...I have an idea, tell me what you think. Since the Zune is so great, but not available here in the UK, I was thinking of snapping up the hundreds of unsold Zunes here at the Air Force base I work at and selling them on the economy. They are $250, so if I sell 100 of them for £200, with the $/£ rate at 1:2, that's $150 profit per unit! Oh wait, nobody wants to buy one? Damn....
an integrated machine that doesn't fold up so that I can take it places is just a stupid fucking idea (iMac),
Yeah, that "stupid f'ing idea" looks horrible on my desk with its one wire (power cable) coming out of the back. How awful! I guess if I actually wanted to take it somewhere, I WOULD buy a MacBook (or a Pro). Oh wait, I already did that too.
1) You can build your own PC, can't do that with an Apple
2) Until recently, you could put MacOS and maybe wiggle a few flavors of *Nix or *Nix clones on a Mac, PCs had pretty much everything but MacOS, and some industrial-grade operating systems available for them.
3) There's a lot more software avialable for Windows for Apple, you can also find more or at least comparable amounts for Linux and BSD as well.
4) The majority of hardware/peripherials you find is labeled for Windows. While you can often use them on other operating systems (Linux, BSD, MacOS), the stuff that works on Macs is still a lot less common, probably even less common than that which will work on Linux.
Hello, this is 1993. I would like my arguments back. What's this I hear that Macs only have one mouse button?
Is there really a sound financial case for buying more expensive hardware, with extra memory, and buying a second OS (I'm presuming windows, of course) just so that I can run some included Apple apps that are mostly home-based?
Now, I am presuming many things:
- Most laptops will still be bought by businesses.
- Most businesses don't do the media stuff that is so well optimized on Macs
You've uncovered Microsoft's (not so) dirty little secret here! Based on your excellent points, I have to ask; why would anyone buy a PC for home? I don't take work home, and even if I do have to from time-to-time, there is nothing that Office for Mac can't handle. It usually works better to boot, especially the quality of PowerPoint templates and (snicker) clip-art. At least Microsoft understands that the typical Mac user has some taste when it comes to clip art and templates, and gives the Mac version somewhat usable stuff to work with.
I've never called anyone a troll or labeled anything as flame bait because I hate those terms and think people throw that stuff around too easily.
This, however, is flame bait, and you are a troll.
Would you care to elaborate, or am I just falling for the bait?
That's what I thought. But if I am to save a jpg, then open it and save it again 20 times, it won't do anything. So I don't understand the point made above. Why are we delving in silly hypotheticals like changing it back and forth from jpg to bitmap to jpg? Who does that?
The same goes for 128 Mp3s. I thought someone was claiming every time you make a copy of a 128 sampled mp3 file it resamples it and loses quality. IF that was the claim, then they were clearly wrong and proved it so with their own logic, no? If I buy an iTunes song, then burn a cd copy, then distribute that copy to 50 other devices, the bottom line is that the copies are the same as the purchased drm file, so what's the problem? I supposed I could keep degrading the quality of the file by trying to compress it 50 times, or I could just redistribute the copy of the file in its original format. Am I missing something here?
So, how do they compare against Intel Core 2 Duo PCs with better graphic cards?
Because I some how doubt they are going to give worse performance.
The point is that a 2.33 Core 2 Duo Mac with an 256 X1600 graphics card is plenty to max out graphic settings. Who cares if you can buy a $700 video card and get 250 fps, instead of 100 fps you get with an "inferior" video card?
Graphic cards aren't everything, you need fast RAM, a motherboard that can support RAM at such speeds etc.
So are you saying the iMac uses slow ram and has a motherboard that can't support it? (667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300))
I still have x86 computers from seven years ago, I upgrade them a bit still, because they're capable of doing more. None of my Macs have even survived this long (mostly due to hardware issues, but also because they're becoming utterly useless in what they can do).
I've experienced the exact opposite. So much so, I'm just gonna call bull and say you don't really have a mac, otherwise you wouldn't make such wild claims. My G4 tower is 6 years old and it runs just fine. I upgraded the cpu from 350 to 800 about 2 or 3 years ago, but that's all I've ever done. The main reason I have mostly macs is because they last more than the two or three years (max) that the pc's I've owned do. Hell, this work pc I'm on now is only a couple of years old (P4 1.7GHz) and it is practically a dinosaur. It barely runs Win 2000 and probably can't even run XP (I'll have to ask the computer nerds why the rest of the PCs at school use XP, but our older ones in the office only have 2000). At least my 6 year old G4 can run the current version of Mac OS X. Old pc's, if they can muster the horsepower to run XP, still have compatibility issues with XP builds that you don't see with any of the G4 or newer Macs. This problem will only become more obvious with Vista.
But let's not let our own experiences cloud our judgement and let's look to the data instead. I'm not sure what's wrong with your Apple hardware, considering they are consistently #1 in both customer satisfaction and repair rates. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2006502,00.as p. Arguing against the quality of Apple hardware is done out of spite and not by looking at the data that exists.
Second life -- Just try all the settings maxed out.
I'll give it a spin and let you know.
I would say the iMac is a GREAT gaming platform for 99% of the games available.
Perhaps. But then again, I don't really see how it's superior to most modern PCs (with similar specs) for sale out there.
I didn't say it was superior to modern pcs, but when you look at it, it IS a modern PC. How can something be superior to itself? I'm disputing your challenge that the iMac is not a viable gaming machine, regardless of the less-than-ideal X1600 video card.
You obviously aren't asking a question, since you already have the answer you want to hear. Point me to a demo, and I'll let you know how Eve-Online plays on a 2.33 Core 2 Duo iMac with 2 gigs of Ram and a 256mb X1600 video card. I'm going to guess it plays it just as well as any PC with the same specs, because, it is the same computer. If my iMac can't play this game, then what PC can? Is it just video card power that is needed, because I'm hard pressed to find consumer lines of PCs that have a faster processor than my iMac.
Here is a source for my information, Executive Order 12958, Classified National Security Information, April 17, 1995:
http://www.dss.mil/seclib/eo12958.htm
EVERY classified document produced by the US Government is subject to a declassification timeline, usually much sooner than this magical 25 year timeline. Only certain documents are afforded an exemption from declassification guidelines, and only when declassification would reveal sources, methods, or plans. Any Private in Army Intelligence knows this, so why can't the media get it right?
If you all want open access to intel sources, great: just don't expect any security in exchange.
750 gig hard drives are innovative because they breached a temporary barrier in the manufacturing process. Until some of you big mouths actually go out and try to engineer something using current technologies, then figue out a way to exceed current maximum capacity with NEW manufacturing/engineering technology (such as this hard drive) then your complaints about innovation are irrelevant.
If you reencode (is that a word?) an mp3 or a jpeg with the same setting, it doesn't do anything on successive tries, does it? If you crank up the compression rate it does, but what if you keep the settings the same, say 128 or "high"? I thought jpegs just sample the values of each pixel to each other and throws out what it doesn't need. If the settings for "high" have already thrown out the unneeded pixels, it won't continue to throw away pixels on successive identical setting compressions, will it? I don't know, but I just figured mp3 settings did the same thing, basically. If you keep resampling an audio file at 128, it is going to do, well, nothing after the first time. This would explain why the file sizes don't decrease on successive resamples, unless you actually decrease the sampling rate.
Go pull out an oscilloscope and do a frequency analysis on that "lossless" copy, will you? Then come back and tell me that it's the same signal. You'll be surprised to find that it IS NOT.
Good thing my ears aren't an oscilloscope, otherwise I might actually be able to hear a difference!
So why would someone want to run OS X on something OTHER than an Apple made computer?
To get the hardware that's right for them. Apple provides too few choices. For example, the only machine I would get for 'real' gaming, is the top one from Apple, because they don't have something in between that would allow me to use a decent graphics card.
My 20" iMac is the best PC gaming machine in my house (out of two "real" pcs and 2 macs running Win XP). My PC's have better video cards, and faster cpu cycles, but are outperformed by the Core 2 Duo iMac. The Core 2 Duo in my iMac more than makes up for the inferior X1600 256 mb video card in the iMac. For example, I get over 100 fps in Live for Speed with maximum everything settings at 1620xwhatever resolution. Neither of my PCs can break 50 fps, with "superior" video cards. The X1600 isn't a spectacular video card, but it maxes out the last round of video game technology (Half Life 2 runs exceptionally well with everything maxed out and looks beautiful). So until games bring more to the table, the X1600 is just fine.
Like you said, maybe there aren't enough choices for "YOU" but for me (and millions of others)the iMac to Mac Pro jump isn't a big issue. Stating the iMac isn't a viable video game machine because you can't upgrade the video card isn't a valid argument at this point, but may be an issue in the future. Unless you can point me to a game that is more demanding than Half-Life 2 with maxed out settings (I'm sure there are some, but I'm not exactly a hard core gamer), I would say the iMac is a GREAT gaming platform for 99% of the games available.
Don't blame linux or os x for being "broken" when "broken" really just means "different". This is generally more a problem with old geezers/technophobes, but also a problem with people who are used to Windows's way of doing things.
It's been said by some that the people who have the hardest time switching are the "power users", because they have a lot of knowledge of "how to do *somewhat advanced thing*" that isn't the same across OSes. An example would be something like changing the screen resolution, or maybe a bit more advanced, setting up a printer; or adding/removing users.
I had a Windows nerd friend help me last weekend install Win XP on my intel Mac, and I spent the first 30 minutes educating him that Macs can indeed to all that and more, just not the way he is used to. In nearly every case, the Mac way is simpler, and more elegant, once you drop the preconceived windows-way of doing things and figure out how to do it on a Mac. I hate it when people try to apply Windows logic to a Mac (no, there still isn't a registry, get over it). This is the #1 reason behind all the Linux/Macs suck comments: blatant ignorance.
Apple won't want to compete with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray because they are looking beyond 1990s technology. Why are people still fixated with shiny metal disks? Streaming on-demand HD content is the future, and Apple will deliver it first. So all the suckers who spend their money on competing HD DVD standards to be "cutting edge" will look awfully silly in five years time (if not sooner).
you can't transfer music from an ipod to a computer (easily)
Senuti is pretty easy.
The OS X cds are not drm'd at all, and you can use any friend's disk to install onto your own mac if you want (exception, intel macs need intel os x disk, I think). The reason is that Apple doesn't make money from the sales of OS X, they make money from selling the hardware that runs the OS. There is simply no reason to copy protect something they give away freely. If you need a Mac to run OS X, and you get a copy of OS X with your Mac, then there really is no need to pirate the OS (upgrades being the exception, I suppose).
I'm still trying to figure out why anyone would spend $1,000 for a Radeon X1600 graphics card and a keyboard that lights up (yes, blatant oversimplification between the two, but...)
By bad shifting, I simply mean shifting at the wrong time and over-revving the engine, or downshifting too early, causing excessive engine braking and causing the rear end to swing around, even when you are going in a straight line. There are pedals with clutches, or you can use a thumb button, but I prefer to leave auto-clutch on; I was merely talking about games not taking into account engine rpm's in general.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, still haven't had a chance to try Eve-online, but I'll get back to you. I recently installed all the latest crop of racing sims, and I'm freakin' amazed at my fps rates. I'm consistently at 100 fps or higher, which is plenty good for me. Doom III runs much better on my iMac than it does my 2.5 P4 with a much better video card (invidia GeForce something or other). It isn't even playable on my PC at certain points of the game. So my contention still stands...the intel iMacs are very good gaming machines. I doubt I could build my own pc for any cheaper to get the same results, since I already tried this once 15 months ago. I haven't looked, but I bet I can find a website in less than 5 minutes that shows how to swap out the built in graphics card on the iMac, so in three years or so, I don't see that being a problem. I upgraded the video card in my friend's second generation iMac way back in the day, and that was supposedly not possible, so I'm sure I'll be able to do it again.
IM at work will most likely only happen in Mac-centric environments, and only when the overwhelming majority of Macs are a less than a couple of years old (i.e., equipped with iSight and iChat). My experience in computer education is that schools (and most likely, businesses) are too lazy or ill-equipped to actually install all the necessary components for IM. Since all recent Macs have this capability right out of the box, this is the only way I'd see it happening. I have so many family and friends back in the States that I don't chat with, because they can't configure their AIM to do video or receive files with the ease of Mac-to-Mac iChat. It really bothers me that my ex won't take the time to configure her pc so I can video chat with my kids.
I thought it was the Zune? Speaking of...I have an idea, tell me what you think. Since the Zune is so great, but not available here in the UK, I was thinking of snapping up the hundreds of unsold Zunes here at the Air Force base I work at and selling them on the economy. They are $250, so if I sell 100 of them for £200, with the $/£ rate at 1:2, that's $150 profit per unit! Oh wait, nobody wants to buy one? Damn....
I've never called anyone a troll or labeled anything as flame bait because I hate those terms and think people throw that stuff around too easily. This, however, is flame bait, and you are a troll. Would you care to elaborate, or am I just falling for the bait?
Worst post ever. Full stop.
The same goes for 128 Mp3s. I thought someone was claiming every time you make a copy of a 128 sampled mp3 file it resamples it and loses quality. IF that was the claim, then they were clearly wrong and proved it so with their own logic, no? If I buy an iTunes song, then burn a cd copy, then distribute that copy to 50 other devices, the bottom line is that the copies are the same as the purchased drm file, so what's the problem? I supposed I could keep degrading the quality of the file by trying to compress it 50 times, or I could just redistribute the copy of the file in its original format. Am I missing something here?
So are you saying the iMac uses slow ram and has a motherboard that can't support it? (667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300))
I've experienced the exact opposite. So much so, I'm just gonna call bull and say you don't really have a mac, otherwise you wouldn't make such wild claims. My G4 tower is 6 years old and it runs just fine. I upgraded the cpu from 350 to 800 about 2 or 3 years ago, but that's all I've ever done. The main reason I have mostly macs is because they last more than the two or three years (max) that the pc's I've owned do. Hell, this work pc I'm on now is only a couple of years old (P4 1.7GHz) and it is practically a dinosaur. It barely runs Win 2000 and probably can't even run XP (I'll have to ask the computer nerds why the rest of the PCs at school use XP, but our older ones in the office only have 2000). At least my 6 year old G4 can run the current version of Mac OS X. Old pc's, if they can muster the horsepower to run XP, still have compatibility issues with XP builds that you don't see with any of the G4 or newer Macs. This problem will only become more obvious with Vista.
But let's not let our own experiences cloud our judgement and let's look to the data instead. I'm not sure what's wrong with your Apple hardware, considering they are consistently #1 in both customer satisfaction and repair rates. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2006502,00.as p. Arguing against the quality of Apple hardware is done out of spite and not by looking at the data that exists.
I'll give it a spin and let you know. I didn't say it was superior to modern pcs, but when you look at it, it IS a modern PC. How can something be superior to itself? I'm disputing your challenge that the iMac is not a viable gaming machine, regardless of the less-than-ideal X1600 video card.You obviously aren't asking a question, since you already have the answer you want to hear. Point me to a demo, and I'll let you know how Eve-Online plays on a 2.33 Core 2 Duo iMac with 2 gigs of Ram and a 256mb X1600 video card. I'm going to guess it plays it just as well as any PC with the same specs, because, it is the same computer. If my iMac can't play this game, then what PC can? Is it just video card power that is needed, because I'm hard pressed to find consumer lines of PCs that have a faster processor than my iMac.
Here is a source for my information, Executive Order 12958, Classified National Security Information, April 17, 1995: http://www.dss.mil/seclib/eo12958.htm
If you all want open access to intel sources, great: just don't expect any security in exchange.
750 gig hard drives are innovative because they breached a temporary barrier in the manufacturing process. Until some of you big mouths actually go out and try to engineer something using current technologies, then figue out a way to exceed current maximum capacity with NEW manufacturing/engineering technology (such as this hard drive) then your complaints about innovation are irrelevant.
Apple bashing even in the absence of Apple product...now I've seen it all.
If you reencode (is that a word?) an mp3 or a jpeg with the same setting, it doesn't do anything on successive tries, does it? If you crank up the compression rate it does, but what if you keep the settings the same, say 128 or "high"? I thought jpegs just sample the values of each pixel to each other and throws out what it doesn't need. If the settings for "high" have already thrown out the unneeded pixels, it won't continue to throw away pixels on successive identical setting compressions, will it? I don't know, but I just figured mp3 settings did the same thing, basically. If you keep resampling an audio file at 128, it is going to do, well, nothing after the first time. This would explain why the file sizes don't decrease on successive resamples, unless you actually decrease the sampling rate.
Like you said, maybe there aren't enough choices for "YOU" but for me (and millions of others)the iMac to Mac Pro jump isn't a big issue. Stating the iMac isn't a viable video game machine because you can't upgrade the video card isn't a valid argument at this point, but may be an issue in the future. Unless you can point me to a game that is more demanding than Half-Life 2 with maxed out settings (I'm sure there are some, but I'm not exactly a hard core gamer), I would say the iMac is a GREAT gaming platform for 99% of the games available.
Apple won't want to compete with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray because they are looking beyond 1990s technology. Why are people still fixated with shiny metal disks? Streaming on-demand HD content is the future, and Apple will deliver it first. So all the suckers who spend their money on competing HD DVD standards to be "cutting edge" will look awfully silly in five years time (if not sooner).
The OS X cds are not drm'd at all, and you can use any friend's disk to install onto your own mac if you want (exception, intel macs need intel os x disk, I think). The reason is that Apple doesn't make money from the sales of OS X, they make money from selling the hardware that runs the OS. There is simply no reason to copy protect something they give away freely. If you need a Mac to run OS X, and you get a copy of OS X with your Mac, then there really is no need to pirate the OS (upgrades being the exception, I suppose).
I'm still trying to figure out why anyone would spend $1,000 for a Radeon X1600 graphics card and a keyboard that lights up (yes, blatant oversimplification between the two, but ...)
By bad shifting, I simply mean shifting at the wrong time and over-revving the engine, or downshifting too early, causing excessive engine braking and causing the rear end to swing around, even when you are going in a straight line. There are pedals with clutches, or you can use a thumb button, but I prefer to leave auto-clutch on; I was merely talking about games not taking into account engine rpm's in general.