"What is interesting is the application (implementation, and that anyone could write apps for it (as opposed to iPhone, for example)." This is inaccurate.
If you actually read the press on both you will find that the iPhone *will* be open(ish) in the near future but that Apple wants to control the quality, (i.e. you will likely have to be certified by Apple to write for iPhone and the distribution might also be through Apple.)
At the moment, the "WinCoffeTable" is in the same category in that they have a small group of certified developers that write applications for the thing. MS apparently envisions a similarly "semi-closed" certification route for the product.
The idea of having to take a Microsoft certification course to write apps for a coffee table is amusing though.:-)
I find your response informative but it distorts the facts a bit by casting Apple as having an "irresponsible" attitude towards security.
You say: "Apple has a terrible track record..." And: "Apple has historically been terribly irresponsible..."
For evidence you quote their response time to bug-fixing, and imply (without stating it outright), that Apple may also have lied about the existence of bugs in their software in the past. Since the lying part is not backed up in your post and I can find no evidence of it anywhere else, I will ignore that part.
I would suggest however, that a simple tracking of the turnaround time between bug being discovered and bug being patched is hardly a good measure of an operating system vendor's overall security performance. It's certainly a bit of a push to describe the company as "terribly irresponsible" based merely on that fact.
At the end of the day, there has never been a serious Mac security breach of any kind and (so-far) no remote exploits at all. Windows on the other hand has had many of both varieties. Windows has beenm and still is in some respects "insecure by design," which is a far more serious thing than just not being timely with patches. Add to that the undeniable fact that Windows operating systems have suffered from bugs and exploits that have not only not been fixed by Microsoft, but have been allowed to re-occur in later versions of the operating system and you have a recipe for "irresponsible" behavior in regards securing an operating system.
The only problem is the irresponsible party is Microsoft, not Apple.
All over the web today there are stories about FireFox's (supposed) bloat, but no actual facts on whether it is or is not actually "bloated." Since "bloat," to most people, apparently means the state of a program having more features than is necessary, it's hard to see how the average user would ever be able to definitively answer this question. The question is probably better phrased as "Are you having major performance problems with FireFox 2.0?"
I don't know how the file size (the other definition of "bloat"), of a FireFox installation compares with other browsers but it doesn't seem like an overly large file to download. It also seems to me that when I check my FireFox preferences it actually has a very basic, simple feature set similar to what's available in almost every other browser. If the feature set is roughly the same as other browsers, how can it be rightly called "bloated?"
I think the problem with FireFox is one of performance, not "bloat" per se. I run FireFox on a Mac with only a single extension and a single theme. My computer is relatively new, the OS is up to date, it has a Gig and a half of RAM and a fast video card. On this machine FireFox is as slow as molasses. It takes ages to start and ages to load a page. It also crashes (a lot!).
I use FireFox because of AdBlocker and because as bad as it is, it's still the best there is on the Mac right now. This will likely change in October when the new Safari comes out so this summer's FireFox 3.0 release will have to be extremely, extremely good just to keep the same market share IMO.
Everyone is jumping all over Apple for their "secrecy" when it clearly has nothing to do with these kinds of episodes which happen at all kinds of companies, not just the clever secretive ones.
Others are guessing about which Apple employee will get fired, when all reports indicate an outsider as the source, not a real Apple employee. As consumers of news therefore, it seems that the majority of us have failed to even discern the basic facts here.
As producers of news, the kiddies at Engadget are the real culprits here and the creators of the whole mess by means of their thoughtless and incompetent "journalism."
They are the ones that did not bother to simply phone up Apple and ask for a confirmation as any decent journalist would normally do. They are the ones that continued to run the false story on the main page even after they received a correction from Apple itself (they put that *after* the break for about an hour after they found out and did not change their headline). They are the ones that filled up their own comments area, calling the people protesting their move "jerks" and telling them to "shut up." They are the ones that deleted posts on their site that were too critical of their actions.
The problem is simply one of a lack of journalistic standards and a blurring of the line between "I'm a rich kid who likes computers and has a website" and "I am an IT reporter." Incompetence and asshattery plain and simple.
The fact that this research is nothing new is also the thing that cought my eye about this article. No where does it mention previous research on these topics. In fact, to read the press release you would think they developed these ideas all by themselves when there is actually a lot of "prior art" and prior research on this.
I don't have the references, but as recently as a few years ago there was a patent issued (and a start-up company associated with it), that re-formatted text as single words presented to the user full-screen. The two scientists that came up with the idea found out that reading speed and comprehension could be dramatically increased if each word in a sentence was flashed full-screen for a split-second, followed by the next, and the next, etc. This flickering presentation worked quite well, and was touted as "ideal for portable computing" where small screen text size is an issue. Despite the fact that it works, it never caught on because people just didn't want to read like that. The only use I have seen of it anywhere is in a couple of TV commercials.
Research in the early 90's (again no reference, possibly the same source?), also determined that individuals with Dyslexia and other reading disorders could effectively eliminate their problems by focussing on one word at a time.
Cardboard sheets with little rectangular holes in the middle were handed out to Dyslexia suffer's in High Schools and their problems with reading evaporated (at least as long as they always read material using the square). Again the problem here really is that people don't *want* to read that way or use a cumbersome aid even though to do so would technically imporve their reading skills.
Sure we could all read websites faster and more efficiently if they were written in Haiku's, but don't hold your breath waiting for it to catch on as a world-wide standard.
You are making the mistake of believing that since Apple Customer Service is rated highly in general, that they can't also completely screw customers over from time to time also.
Not that anyone really wants to read such long drawn out (and usually personal), tales of woe but...
Is a long detailed account of my own customer service nightmare with Apple (on my very first order ever!)
The upshot of the thing is that I got screwed, and through the process identified a couple of clear problems with the customer service they provide, yet they don't even provide mechanisms to report bad service other than the telephone number. I know telephone support is fairly standard, but if you don't want to or can't hang on that phone for them to get to you, (for me it would cost a bit of money I wasn't prepared to spend), there are simply no other options.
I am a strong supporter and advocate of Apple, but my first experience with their customer service left me cold and angry. Their communication in particular leaves a great deal to be desired. Now because they don't seem to want to even know about my experience, I am probably going to just go around bad mouthing them to everyone.
Judging by what Greenpeace has been saying about Apple lately and how it has all turned out to be false, I think the title is rather tame actually. Some of Greenpeace's statements have been borderline libelous. How sad that such a once noble group has sunk to the level of scam marketeering.
Speaking as someone who grew up in the land where Greenpeace was founded, has been to protests they organised etc. (I even went to their first "Save the Whales" benefit event), I am shocked at their (now) cheap grandstanding behaviour. I am as left-wing as it gets, (to me Barak Obama is a little too conservative), but even I don't buy into that crap they have been spewing lately.
What's worse, is that Greenpeace's campaign against Apple seems personally and selfishly motivated instead of a campaign in support of the cause of environmentalism. If they published such lies and misinformation because they were foolish or mis-informed, that would be one thing, but it seems that their only motivation was to force Apple to knuckle under to their way of doing and reporting things.
GreenPeace was fully aware that Apple was not in fact the worst polluter, fully aware that it had rather a good record both overall and relative to companies that GreenPeace had conversely rated very highly. Yet because Apple refused to play their game, they put them at the top of a list of companies with bad environmental records? That is classic FUD.
With the iPhone what we have is a big party and another glam-chick pining for attention. She'll attract eyes when she comes through the door but when people realize how shallow of an offering she is they will wait for her younger sister to arrive. Talk is indeed cheap, and the metaphor used here is also cheap, (and borderline offensive.)
In terms of your actual argument, it's all based on your assumption that the product offering (iPhone), is "shallow" (Possibly like the "chicks" you are used to hitting on at parties). You then give nothing to back up that point.
As a frequent user and longtime owner of a variety of PDA's and smart-phones over the years, the iPhone is a product I can hardly wait for, and I can refute the money argument just from personal experience alone.
I already know that it will cost less than several PDAs that I purchased over the years thinking they were right for me. The iPhone retails for less than my last CLie for instance, and less than at least one of the MS PPC's I have bought. The iPhone will retail for about the same price as the last Motorola cell phone I bought and will also take better pictures (based on the samples I have seen), than my current digital camera which also cost more than the iPhone will retail for.
The latest rumours are that the retail price of the iPhone will be subsidized by aproximately 100 to 200 US dollars, making it cheaper to buy than any of the last few devices I have had in any of these categories, yet it combines all the devices in one. In terms of the actual value of the device, there is nothing to indicate to me that the iPhone will be "weak" or "shallow" in terms of features per dollar. In fact, it's shaping up to be a very good value indeed, replacing at least two or three devices I currently carry at a fraction of the cost.
If Windows is available as an OS option on the OLPC project, then some buyers will certainly request it (at least that has to be Microsoft's hope). The three dollar windows/Office combo is also being made available to, and targeted at, the very same group of customers (government purchasers of developing nations who want to buy a large number of computers), as the OLPC project.
The idea that any government in the market for these devices, would buy a large quantity of the OLPC laptops, and then the same large quantity of the three dollar Windows licences, and then go to the trouble of installing Windows on all those laptops is just plain silly. The OLPC laptop would more likely have Windows pre-installed if the buyer so desired. It just makes no sense otherwise.
If Ghana or any other country in that position says they want to buy a million laptops, but they want them with Windows instead of with the OLPC software, do you really think that Negroponte will turn them down? Especially after he personally (and somewhat secretly), cooperated with MS to make sure that their software ran on the OLPC laptop? At the very least, (even for the less paranoid amongst us), this news is "cause for concern," as the saying goes, and absolutely reeks of the OLPC being co-opted, regardless of the eventual outcome.
You can say it comes down to user choice perhaps, but guess who is going to be backing up truckloads of money to these nations in order to make them "choose" a Windows deployment over the original OLPC software if it is at all possible or available as an option?
Finally, there is nothing on the pages at the link you provided that says anything about this one way or the other, it is merely a listing of the original OLPC configuration and software that was written prior to the situation at hand.
Maybe I'm dense, but I can't see the connection between the quotes and your response. Negroponte insists that the platform is open, and that all software included will be open. This means third-party developers cannot be prohibited from developing non-open software for it -- Microsoft (and Apple) are apparently doing so. The fact that the project turned down Apple has nothing to do with expense but with licensing, which is exactly the same reason they would turn down a similar offer from Microsoft. Nothing in the OLPC project so far contradicts this policy. Where is the co-opting? Where is the evidence that the 75% cost increase has anything to do with Windows? $100 was always considered a very optimistic price target; $175 is still pretty damn cheap, and possibly still unrealistic. The connection is that the statement was false. I was pointing out the incompatibility between the stated goals of the project and the inclusion of Microsoft Windows as an operating system.
The reason Negroponte supposedly turned down Apple at the time was because he did not want proprietary, non-open software on the OLPC computer. Most of the project's goals centred around the OLPC software, the way it was integrated with the hardware choices and the way in which it was specially crafted for the OLPC experience. The open source operating system software is designed for the social-historical context prevalent in developing nations, Windows is crafted for business people in North America.
It's good to be open, but the original project only envisioned Open Source software running on the machine (Windows is not), and did not envision multiple choices of operating systems. As an OS choice, Windows will have to ship as the default boot if the purchaser so requests it (and you know many of them will), or at the very least be in a dual-boot scenario to the OS designed for the project. Most likely, those with Windows will have to ship with Windows alone and not even use the OLPC software as the hard drive is hardly big enough to hold both OS's.
So, instead of using a unified, lightweight software/hardware design crafted particularly for their situation, most of these kids will be faced with bloated Windows Office software running on a third rate PC. The user experience will suffer, the usability will be atrocious, and the kids will learn to be consumers of MS Office software instead of learning something about the nature of the machine they hold in their hands.
That sounds to me like Negroponte and his project have been co-opted and the way in which it was all done in secret is most disturbing of all.
It's particularly a slap in the face to Apple considering their early offer of free software and the fact that OS-X would clearly be a better choice. OS-X can run in less space than Windows, is portable to more processors, and has better performance. It also has much more flexibility in terms of interface and is at least partially open source.
True: Microsoft is working on a Windows based system that can be executed on the OLPC laptop. False: There is no strategy change. The OLPC is continuing to develop a Linux-based software set for the laptop in conjunction with Red Hat. But since the OLPC project is open we cannot (and maybe even don't want to) stop other people from developing and supplying alternate software packages. This statement makes no sense, (and the whole adoption of Windows argument Negroponte is using), in the context of the fact that Apple offered to give them a version of OS-X for the thing for FREE at the very beginning.
Apple was turned down on the basis that the laptop was all about the special open sourced based software. Now all of a sudden it's about that, but it's okay if it costs 75% more and runs a cut-rate version of Vista.
On the surface, it seems like Negroponte was certainly co-opted by Microsoft.
Speaking as someone who works with Macs all day long and has had to troubleshoot problems like this many many times, the person who wrote this article seems like a bit of a fool to me. The kind of person that has just enough knowledge to be dangerous (to himself). This reminds me of those situations like when your Dad (thinks) he knows about computers, and in fact my Senior Citizen detector was going off on every line he wrote.
The stupid thing is that he blames Apple in the end but at the same time seems to narrow the issue down to a driver problem with his tablet PC. That's just bad thinking all around. The art of troubleshooting is in the elimination of possibilities. If it works everywhere but on his tablet PC the problem is definitely in his tablet PC, which he even mentions in the article yet simultaneously doesn't know where the problem is? WTF?
He also links to an entire *other* article he has written about driver support that indicates he knows very little about what to do on the Mac when the hardware is not instantly recognised or indeed, much of anything about drivers. The problem he relates in *that* article is about getting a brand new "high end" HP printer and it's driver to work with his old G4.
When this computer was manufactured, it would have shipped with OS 9.0, then he would have upgraded it to OS-X, then 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 etc. Then he goes out and buys a bleeding edge HP printer and is stymied when it doesn't "just work"??? He also has to go through extensive tech support to find out that the thing probably would work with an older driver, but it would have a reduced feature set. Hello? Hasn't he heard of the "Generic PostScript driver"??? This is the solution for all old hardware and if he had the experience he claimed, he would probably know that.
As others have pointed out, Quicktime uses standard calls and standard protocols, it's an *.mp4 file for cripes sake. The problem here is more likely with some proprietary screen-re-drawing code in the tablet PC.
This guy is that very dangerous combination of a "dabbler," but with a world-wide audience.
This whole article is based on rumour and popular belief more than it is any scientific evidence. Note how the article is half over before any advocates of this theory (other than "some scientists"), are mentioned.
If the effect was firmly discovered by (new) scientific testing then the description of that experiment, it's result, and the group that conducted it would be in the first or second paragraph. If it was hard science, a detailed description of the experiment and the methodology would also be in order.
Instead, after a lot of talk that amounts to "some scientists say..." we get news of a "limited" experiment (in the second to *last* paragraph no less!), where a single cell phone was placed near a hive by (apparently) a single scientist (Dr Jochen Kuhn), on which we are given no background on at all. There is no date given for this test, no details, and no indication why a cell phone was suspected in the first place. We are not even sure if this experiment was in reaction to the disappearing bees phenomenon or if it was merely something that someone did once.
The last paragraph (a single sentence), is a quote from an American scientist who was deeply involved in the whole "cell phones give you brain cancer" debacle from the early to mid 90's about how he thinks this could be possible. Then they paste a chunk of stuff on the end from the files about previous wacky theories of the evils of cell phones.
Gee, do you think that any of these people quoted have an axe to grind vis a vis the evils of cell phones? Do you think the reporter has any real facts to base this article on? Or is it likely it's just another science writer with a deadline to meet that is going through his old files for something to write about?
I'd bet that "cell phone by a hive" experiment turns out to have also been done in the 90's when panic about cell phone radiation was at it's peak.
The idea that consciousness might rely on quantum effects was (AFAIK) actually first proposed by one of the most brilliant minds of the last few hundred years, Robert Penrose, in his book "The Emperor's New Mind."
Ironically, he was roundly criticised at the time for even suggesting that quantum effects could be involved in macro-scale phenomena. The fact that this book was also a rather devastating analysis of why Artificial Intelligence is in a goal that can never be reached in any practical sense, has also been mostly ignored even though little evidence that contradicts this base assumption has ever been brought forward.
His overall theory of the origin of consciousness has some problems, but is full of interesting concepts that perhaps deserve a second look in light of developments like this.
The thing that bugs me the most about these kinds of issues is the reporting of them in the media.
If you read the slashdot summary (or even the whole first page of the article), you get the impression that some people think the bug is pretty much the same thing as the 2005 one and that Microsoft disagrees. The story is structured like a "He said, she said," kind of thing and no one is painted as right or wrong. If you *do* manage to make it to the second page of the article however, you find out that several very respected security professionals and security companies present detailed compelling evidence to the effect that Microsoft is both incompetent and disingenuous in their opinion on this bug.
It is the same bug (essentially) reported in 2005, and it should have been caught in a matter of hours or even minutes after the 2005 bug was initially reported to them. This by reason of Microsoft's own self-stated bug hunting and code modification procedures.
The conclusion is absolutely inescapable that Microsoft completely failed to follow their own basic rules of coding and security auditing here. They also are lying or at the very least splitting hairs about it being a "separate issue," and they seem to be deliberately trying to pull the wool over peoples eyes about it. Yet this story has been reported around the web as a kind of "maybe McAfee is right, or maybe Microsoft is right," thing for the most part??? Why?
On top of all of that, this is yet another (of about three instances I have found so far), where it's clear that Vista is not "all new code" as MS likes to maintain it is. It seems like this bug occurred because the same old *.ani code from the previous versions of MS Windows was included in Vista with literally no oversight and no checking.
Why do people buy products from these people again? And why do they always seem get the benefit of the doubt in the media?
... the discovery of a 100-million-year-old micro-organism which has survived its entire lifespan without sex. I know this post is just continuing the poor wording of the original article but no organism is likely to live for millions of years.
I think what they mean to say is that the particular species has been evolving for that length of time without sex, not that a single organism has been living for millions of years without sex.
This whole article is an embarrassment to SlashDot
on
AppleTV Hits the Streets
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· Score: 5, Insightful
This whole article is an embarrassment to SlashDot. The OP starts off by "wondering" if Apple TV will support DivX when the information on supported formats has been posted on the Apple TV web site for months.
Most of the responders seem to know nothing about the product. Asking embarrassingly stupid questions like "does it have a keyboard?", "When are they going to have non-Disney movies?" and telling us that you can only play DRM'ed video on it???
There is hardly a question posed here that would not be answered by a ten second trip to the Apple TV website and anyone following the product even the slightest bit would know the answer to them. Most of the "opinions" on the product here are ill-informed nonsense at best. On top of that, there is a lot of bitter, mean-spirited, childish banter that one would expect on kids sites like Digg or Gizmodo, not SlashDot. I am truly embarrassed to see this kind of junk here.
For those who want to know:
- doesn't support DivX
- a keyboard would make it a computer, not a set-top streamer
- non-Disney movies already available (have been for a while)
- *does* play non DRM'ed music and video (just like iPod)
I am not going to bother trying to refute every point made here or talk up the device, but for a cool techie site populated by intelligent IT people who are supposed to be in the know on stuff like this... this article and most of the related comments are a joke.
Since more than half of all PCs are used in business, Apple owns an even larger portion of the consumer markets installed base, where Apple choses to compete.
Pulling out business PCs, Apple's share of the consumer PC installed base is above 15%, which correlates with the software available for the Mac.
While Apple may be a success this just doesn't make sense. Granted I am from holland and so have no way of knowing how the situation over there is BUT here at least 1 out of 10 business pc's is most certainly NOT a mac. Not any company I have visited except artistic places and they hardly count because of their size.
If you claim such a high percentage of installed base you better explain to me why I never ever see them. There are Apples out there but they are single machines surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of Dells, HP's, Compaqs and even IBM's. Are the mac's perhaps up in the boardroom with a hundred machines for every director?
That is not his only mistake. I didn't read your entire long post, (I stopped when you started swearing). This point above however, you seem to have entirely backwards. The authors point was that since "half of all PC sales are in business" then Apple's consumer market share must be larger than the overall market share might indicate.
You then mention anecdotal evidence of your view of the business market, telling us that ".. 1 out of 10 business pc's is... NOT a mac."
This is classic apples and oranges.
If you didn't see the obvious flaw in your own argument, why should I trust you when you say the author is "blowing smoke"?
If you are going to be caustic, you should try to be accurate and unbiased at the same time.
Specifically: "Anecdotal evidence" is a fair term and not meaningless as you suggest. An anecdote (singular) is a single point of "anecdotal evidence" but there is nothing to suggest that multiple points of anecdotal evidence don't also occur (even though the author only mentions the one).
In short, your equation of "anecdotal evidence" with a singular point of "non-evidence" is false. Anecdotal evidence is by definition evidence gained through word of mouth which may or may not be false, may or may not be based on one or many "anecdotes" and should not generally be equated with "always false" as you seem to do above.
Anecdotal evidence can be misleading of course as is evidenced by the example you offer yourself (of your computer lasting for eight years). Anecdotally, you have a computer that has lasted for eight years. Factually, you have had the same computer case for 8 years and have replaced the computer at least three or four times in that period, possibly more.
Interestingly, this would put an estimate of your computer's lifespan pretty much exactly where the author of the article puts it. 2 years or less.
I think the big point though is that this is actually illegal in a lot of countries. All of Europe for instance. It may not be a big deal to some, but a smart move on MSFT's part it is not.
To do this after all the antitrust troubles they have had over there, and then to hide it....
Like you, I don't feel this stunt is particularly nefarious in origin but regardless of MSFT's intent, it just reeks of incompetence that they even allowed it to happen. For one of the biggest companies in the US to just ignore the laws of one of their biggest trading partners and assume that no one will find out about it can only be categorised as a dumb move.
A smart company would make sure they are in compliance with the law of the land in all their markets, no mater how much they hated it. It doesn't seem to me like it even occurred to anyone at MS that this might be illegal.
The number of "true believers" in the US has always been astronomical, the number of people who self-identify as "born again" Christians or fundamentalists is off the charts relative to almost any other western country you want to name. The level of education in the US is also corespondingly low relative to other western countries.
BS on all fronts. What exactly is a "true believer" in your book? Anyone who is not an atheist? As to the born again/evangelicals, please come back with a % of total US population - its nowhere near as high as you think. As to other countries being more or less religous - many are more so, such as Latin America and southern Europe. That the UK, Germany and France are now less so is only a relatively recent change. To answer your question, I use the term "true believer" in it's usual sense of being an adherent or believer in a cult or other mystical or religious system who believes not due to any logical decision nor as a result of critical analysis of the system in question, but as a matter of faith.
It's good for you to call me on the lack of concrete references and the slightly hyperbolic language, but I feel most of what I said is fairly self-evident. In truth I was also a little angry that such a ridiculous excuse for scientific research as this article would even be published here, much less hotly debated.
None of these admissions invalidates my basic point - which is the same as several other contributors - nor do they argue against it. The study is flawed in that it speaks only of one culture and then argues biological necessity from that limited view.
You are right about this last point I made about Education being somewhat unconnected to the question of the religiosity of the average American individual, but here is my reasoning.
I meant to connect the two only in the (unfortunately not explicitly stated by me), sense that the opposite of religious thinking is critical thinking and practices of logical analysis. So the deterioration of education systems and the poor state of education in the US relative to other countries - even ignoring the active imposition of religious subject matter - is relevant only in that it leaves the average person without the tools necessary to question their religious upbringing. I didn't mean to imply that only dumb uneducated people believe in God. I meant only that without the formal education and know-how to question their beliefs, many will not do so.
Better education and especially the strengthening of critical faculties does frequently act to counter religious belief. America in particular has actively sought to de-emphasise critical thinking in the education curriculum in the last few decades and increased religious or "magical" thinking is one result of that.
"According to a Sunday New York Times article, 6 in 10 Americans believe in the devil and hell, 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and life after death, while 92% believe in a personal God. The big (obvious) flaw here is that this is a survey of Americans only. It's well known that the US is one of the most religious countries on the face of the earth. The number of "true believers" in the US has always been astronomical, the number of people who self-identify as "born again" Christians or fundamentalists is off the charts relative to almost any other western country you want to name. The level of education in the US is also corespondingly low relative to other western countries.
If a significant portion (in this case in the high 90 percent range due to the claim made), of the entire world's population bleived in these things the author might have a point. I doubt the figures will bear such an argument however.
the mini is weak and is not that easy to service.
the mac pro cost is too high for most office use.
There needs to be mid-tower that is easy to open up to add ram, and pci-e cards, change out bad parts, and so on.
The i-macs with there build in screen don't work that well as they take up more space then a monitor + desk top on the ground. These comments really make little sense, you don't seem to have much experience with Apple or Macs.
1) The mini is a bit uh... "basic" but it's certainly equal to any entry level Windows PC. In fact, that's what it is,... an "entry level" basic PC. Where I work, we give the Mac Minis to the average secretary or clerk and they do fine with them. They never break down and never need to be opened for the entire life of the machine, so service is a moot point.
2) Mac Pros shouldn't be in the equation here, they are not "desktops" in the corporate sense and have no place on the average employee's desk.
3) In my organisation, we have a policy that a desktop is refurbished every three to five years with a new machine or significant upgrade. There is no need for a mid-tower that is "easy to open" during that time frame because there is almost no need to upgrade, open or "fix" the Macs. Macs have hardware failures of course, but they generally either work fine or fail completely. Mostly they "just work." It's the exact oposite of the "cheap windows box" model.
4) The comment about the iMacs taking up more space "then a monitor + desk top" (sic) is just crazy. They take up much less space, as is pretty obvious. The iMac is actually the "mid-tower" that (you think), you are missing here, it's just more compact and a different shape. It's also the one that you should be comparing with your corporate Windows desktops.
In my experience, during the period the users have the computers on the desktop they typically go through two sets of peripherals (mouse & keyboard), they may buy an extra peripheral like a scanner, video deck, etc., and they always want more memory at some point. The only reason to go "inside the box" is to put the memory in, which is as easy on the Mac as it is with the Windows box.
We treat serious hardware failures (a very rare occurrence) by simply swapping out the machine for a new one or a temporary replacement. One cable, one button and 15 minutes to a half hour later, the user is up and running on a replacement machine with the exact same desktop, apps, files, etc. that they had on the old machine.
If they have gone out for a donut may not even know their computer has been replaced.
Do you have quotes to backup that statistic?
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd like to know who they were just so I can tell if they were sucking up to Apple or if it was a real, honest to $diety review. I did a little searching, and while almost every single review I could find does praise the touchscreen as "fantastic" (or a similar adjective), some do worry about "keypad junkies" (I assume they exist), not liking it. There are however some excellent reviews that support my initial remarks.
Here are two:
Hands-on iPhone previewhttp://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/blogs/index.cfm?entryid =670&blogid=4
February 24, 2007
"Let me tell you from personal experience, the iPhone is much more impressive in your hand - when your finger's running across its multi-touch screen - than anything Steve Jobs' performance could express.
It feels small and thin. The screen is remarkably responsive. I typed on its onscreen keyboard with my index finger and, after about a minute, I felt I was already well on my way to being a proficient iPhone typist." You could call iPhone perfecthttp://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/215441, CST-FIN-Andy18.article
January 18, 2007
"The touch-interface works flawlessly, in terms of both technical function and user interface design... I think the iPhone's virtual keyboard is a huge improvement over the mechanical thumbpads found on the Treo and any other smart phones of its size. The buttons are significantly larger, you don't have to hit them dead-center, you lightly tap them instead of punching them down, and the software is smart enough to know that you meant to type 'Tuesday' instead of 'Tudsday.' "
My point was that "dissing" the iPhone based on the touchscreen, when almost every hands-on review has absolutely gushed over that one particular aspect of the device is a bit disingenuous at best, and is likely an uncalled for manipulation of the facts.
It would be fairer to say that initial reports are that the touch screen is fabulous and is likely a better candidate for replacing the keypad on PDA's than anything that has gone before. In any case, the only way to know is to wait until it comes out so it can be tested side by side with other existing units.
Slashdot Mirror
If you actually read the press on both you will find that the iPhone *will* be open(ish) in the near future but that Apple wants to control the quality, (i.e. you will likely have to be certified by Apple to write for iPhone and the distribution might also be through Apple.)
At the moment, the "WinCoffeTable" is in the same category in that they have a small group of certified developers that write applications for the thing. MS apparently envisions a similarly "semi-closed" certification route for the product.
The idea of having to take a Microsoft certification course to write apps for a coffee table is amusing though.
I find your response informative but it distorts the facts a bit by casting Apple as having an "irresponsible" attitude towards security.
You say: "Apple has a terrible track record..."
And: "Apple has historically been terribly irresponsible..."
For evidence you quote their response time to bug-fixing, and imply (without stating it outright), that Apple may also have lied about the existence of bugs in their software in the past. Since the lying part is not backed up in your post and I can find no evidence of it anywhere else, I will ignore that part.
I would suggest however, that a simple tracking of the turnaround time between bug being discovered and bug being patched is hardly a good measure of an operating system vendor's overall security performance. It's certainly a bit of a push to describe the company as "terribly irresponsible" based merely on that fact.
At the end of the day, there has never been a serious Mac security breach of any kind and (so-far) no remote exploits at all. Windows on the other hand has had many of both varieties. Windows has beenm and still is in some respects "insecure by design," which is a far more serious thing than just not being timely with patches. Add to that the undeniable fact that Windows operating systems have suffered from bugs and exploits that have not only not been fixed by Microsoft, but have been allowed to re-occur in later versions of the operating system and you have a recipe for "irresponsible" behavior in regards securing an operating system.
The only problem is the irresponsible party is Microsoft, not Apple.
All over the web today there are stories about FireFox's (supposed) bloat, but no actual facts on whether it is or is not actually "bloated." Since "bloat," to most people, apparently means the state of a program having more features than is necessary, it's hard to see how the average user would ever be able to definitively answer this question. The question is probably better phrased as "Are you having major performance problems with FireFox 2.0?"
I don't know how the file size (the other definition of "bloat"), of a FireFox installation compares with other browsers but it doesn't seem like an overly large file to download. It also seems to me that when I check my FireFox preferences it actually has a very basic, simple feature set similar to what's available in almost every other browser. If the feature set is roughly the same as other browsers, how can it be rightly called "bloated?"
I think the problem with FireFox is one of performance, not "bloat" per se. I run FireFox on a Mac with only a single extension and a single theme. My computer is relatively new, the OS is up to date, it has a Gig and a half of RAM and a fast video card. On this machine FireFox is as slow as molasses. It takes ages to start and ages to load a page. It also crashes (a lot!).
I use FireFox because of AdBlocker and because as bad as it is, it's still the best there is on the Mac right now. This will likely change in October when the new Safari comes out so this summer's FireFox 3.0 release will have to be extremely, extremely good just to keep the same market share IMO.
Everyone is jumping all over Apple for their "secrecy" when it clearly has nothing to do with these kinds of episodes which happen at all kinds of companies, not just the clever secretive ones.
Others are guessing about which Apple employee will get fired, when all reports indicate an outsider as the source, not a real Apple employee. As consumers of news therefore, it seems that the majority of us have failed to even discern the basic facts here.
As producers of news, the kiddies at Engadget are the real culprits here and the creators of the whole mess by means of their thoughtless and incompetent "journalism."
They are the ones that did not bother to simply phone up Apple and ask for a confirmation as any decent journalist would normally do. They are the ones that continued to run the false story on the main page even after they received a correction from Apple itself (they put that *after* the break for about an hour after they found out and did not change their headline). They are the ones that filled up their own comments area, calling the people protesting their move "jerks" and telling them to "shut up." They are the ones that deleted posts on their site that were too critical of their actions.
The problem is simply one of a lack of journalistic standards and a blurring of the line between "I'm a rich kid who likes computers and has a website" and "I am an IT reporter." Incompetence and asshattery plain and simple.
The fact that this research is nothing new is also the thing that cought my eye about this article. No where does it mention previous research on these topics. In fact, to read the press release you would think they developed these ideas all by themselves when there is actually a lot of "prior art" and prior research on this.
I don't have the references, but as recently as a few years ago there was a patent issued (and a start-up company associated with it), that re-formatted text as single words presented to the user full-screen. The two scientists that came up with the idea found out that reading speed and comprehension could be dramatically increased if each word in a sentence was flashed full-screen for a split-second, followed by the next, and the next, etc. This flickering presentation worked quite well, and was touted as "ideal for portable computing" where small screen text size is an issue. Despite the fact that it works, it never caught on because people just didn't want to read like that. The only use I have seen of it anywhere is in a couple of TV commercials.
Research in the early 90's (again no reference, possibly the same source?), also determined that individuals with Dyslexia and other reading disorders could effectively eliminate their problems by focussing on one word at a time.
Cardboard sheets with little rectangular holes in the middle were handed out to Dyslexia suffer's in High Schools and their problems with reading evaporated (at least as long as they always read material using the square). Again the problem here really is that people don't *want* to read that way or use a cumbersome aid even though to do so would technically imporve their reading skills.
Sure we could all read websites faster and more efficiently if they were written in Haiku's, but don't hold your breath waiting for it to catch on as a world-wide standard.
You are making the mistake of believing that since Apple Customer Service is rated highly in general, that they can't also completely screw customers over from time to time also.
1
Not that anyone really wants to read such long drawn out (and usually personal), tales of woe but...
here: http://jeremy-bee.livejournal.com/2516.html#cutid
Is a long detailed account of my own customer service nightmare with Apple (on my very first order ever!)
The upshot of the thing is that I got screwed, and through the process identified a couple of clear problems with the customer service they provide, yet they don't even provide mechanisms to report bad service other than the telephone number. I know telephone support is fairly standard, but if you don't want to or can't hang on that phone for them to get to you, (for me it would cost a bit of money I wasn't prepared to spend), there are simply no other options.
I am a strong supporter and advocate of Apple, but my first experience with their customer service left me cold and angry. Their communication in particular leaves a great deal to be desired. Now because they don't seem to want to even know about my experience, I am probably going to just go around bad mouthing them to everyone.
That's just dumb on their part.
Judging by what Greenpeace has been saying about Apple lately and how it has all turned out to be false, I think the title is rather tame actually. Some of Greenpeace's statements have been borderline libelous. How sad that such a once noble group has sunk to the level of scam marketeering.
Speaking as someone who grew up in the land where Greenpeace was founded, has been to protests they organised etc. (I even went to their first "Save the Whales" benefit event), I am shocked at their (now) cheap grandstanding behaviour. I am as left-wing as it gets, (to me Barak Obama is a little too conservative), but even I don't buy into that crap they have been spewing lately.
What's worse, is that Greenpeace's campaign against Apple seems personally and selfishly motivated instead of a campaign in support of the cause of environmentalism. If they published such lies and misinformation because they were foolish or mis-informed, that would be one thing, but it seems that their only motivation was to force Apple to knuckle under to their way of doing and reporting things.
GreenPeace was fully aware that Apple was not in fact the worst polluter, fully aware that it had rather a good record both overall and relative to companies that GreenPeace had conversely rated very highly. Yet because Apple refused to play their game, they put them at the top of a list of companies with bad environmental records? That is classic FUD.
In terms of your actual argument, it's all based on your assumption that the product offering (iPhone), is "shallow" (Possibly like the "chicks" you are used to hitting on at parties). You then give nothing to back up that point.
As a frequent user and longtime owner of a variety of PDA's and smart-phones over the years, the iPhone is a product I can hardly wait for, and I can refute the money argument just from personal experience alone.
I already know that it will cost less than several PDAs that I purchased over the years thinking they were right for me. The iPhone retails for less than my last CLie for instance, and less than at least one of the MS PPC's I have bought. The iPhone will retail for about the same price as the last Motorola cell phone I bought and will also take better pictures (based on the samples I have seen), than my current digital camera which also cost more than the iPhone will retail for.
The latest rumours are that the retail price of the iPhone will be subsidized by aproximately 100 to 200 US dollars, making it cheaper to buy than any of the last few devices I have had in any of these categories, yet it combines all the devices in one. In terms of the actual value of the device, there is nothing to indicate to me that the iPhone will be "weak" or "shallow" in terms of features per dollar. In fact, it's shaping up to be a very good value indeed, replacing at least two or three devices I currently carry at a fraction of the cost.
Now who's being naive?
If Windows is available as an OS option on the OLPC project, then some buyers will certainly request it (at least that has to be Microsoft's hope). The three dollar windows/Office combo is also being made available to, and targeted at, the very same group of customers (government purchasers of developing nations who want to buy a large number of computers), as the OLPC project.
The idea that any government in the market for these devices, would buy a large quantity of the OLPC laptops, and then the same large quantity of the three dollar Windows licences, and then go to the trouble of installing Windows on all those laptops is just plain silly. The OLPC laptop would more likely have Windows pre-installed if the buyer so desired. It just makes no sense otherwise.
If Ghana or any other country in that position says they want to buy a million laptops, but they want them with Windows instead of with the OLPC software, do you really think that Negroponte will turn them down? Especially after he personally (and somewhat secretly), cooperated with MS to make sure that their software ran on the OLPC laptop? At the very least, (even for the less paranoid amongst us), this news is "cause for concern," as the saying goes, and absolutely reeks of the OLPC being co-opted, regardless of the eventual outcome.
You can say it comes down to user choice perhaps, but guess who is going to be backing up truckloads of money to these nations in order to make them "choose" a Windows deployment over the original OLPC software if it is at all possible or available as an option?
Finally, there is nothing on the pages at the link you provided that says anything about this one way or the other, it is merely a listing of the original OLPC configuration and software that was written prior to the situation at hand.
The reason Negroponte supposedly turned down Apple at the time was because he did not want proprietary, non-open software on the OLPC computer. Most of the project's goals centred around the OLPC software, the way it was integrated with the hardware choices and the way in which it was specially crafted for the OLPC experience. The open source operating system software is designed for the social-historical context prevalent in developing nations, Windows is crafted for business people in North America.
It's good to be open, but the original project only envisioned Open Source software running on the machine (Windows is not), and did not envision multiple choices of operating systems. As an OS choice, Windows will have to ship as the default boot if the purchaser so requests it (and you know many of them will), or at the very least be in a dual-boot scenario to the OS designed for the project. Most likely, those with Windows will have to ship with Windows alone and not even use the OLPC software as the hard drive is hardly big enough to hold both OS's.
So, instead of using a unified, lightweight software/hardware design crafted particularly for their situation, most of these kids will be faced with bloated Windows Office software running on a third rate PC. The user experience will suffer, the usability will be atrocious, and the kids will learn to be consumers of MS Office software instead of learning something about the nature of the machine they hold in their hands.
That sounds to me like Negroponte and his project have been co-opted and the way in which it was all done in secret is most disturbing of all.
It's particularly a slap in the face to Apple considering their early offer of free software and the fact that OS-X would clearly be a better choice. OS-X can run in less space than Windows, is portable to more processors, and has better performance. It also has much more flexibility in terms of interface and is at least partially open source.
True: Microsoft is working on a Windows based system that can be executed on the OLPC laptop.
False: There is no strategy change. The OLPC is continuing to develop a Linux-based software set for the laptop in conjunction with Red Hat. But since the OLPC project is open we cannot (and maybe even don't want to) stop other people from developing and supplying alternate software packages. This statement makes no sense, (and the whole adoption of Windows argument Negroponte is using), in the context of the fact that Apple offered to give them a version of OS-X for the thing for FREE at the very beginning.
Apple was turned down on the basis that the laptop was all about the special open sourced based software. Now all of a sudden it's about that, but it's okay if it costs 75% more and runs a cut-rate version of Vista.
On the surface, it seems like Negroponte was certainly co-opted by Microsoft.
Speaking as someone who works with Macs all day long and has had to troubleshoot problems like this many many times, the person who wrote this article seems like a bit of a fool to me. The kind of person that has just enough knowledge to be dangerous (to himself). This reminds me of those situations like when your Dad (thinks) he knows about computers, and in fact my Senior Citizen detector was going off on every line he wrote.
The stupid thing is that he blames Apple in the end but at the same time seems to narrow the issue down to a driver problem with his tablet PC. That's just bad thinking all around. The art of troubleshooting is in the elimination of possibilities. If it works everywhere but on his tablet PC the problem is definitely in his tablet PC, which he even mentions in the article yet simultaneously doesn't know where the problem is? WTF?
He also links to an entire *other* article he has written about driver support that indicates he knows very little about what to do on the Mac when the hardware is not instantly recognised or indeed, much of anything about drivers. The problem he relates in *that* article is about getting a brand new "high end" HP printer and it's driver to work with his old G4.
When this computer was manufactured, it would have shipped with OS 9.0, then he would have upgraded it to OS-X, then 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 etc. Then he goes out and buys a bleeding edge HP printer and is stymied when it doesn't "just work"??? He also has to go through extensive tech support to find out that the thing probably would work with an older driver, but it would have a reduced feature set. Hello? Hasn't he heard of the "Generic PostScript driver"??? This is the solution for all old hardware and if he had the experience he claimed, he would probably know that.
As others have pointed out, Quicktime uses standard calls and standard protocols, it's an *.mp4 file for cripes sake. The problem here is more likely with some proprietary screen-re-drawing code in the tablet PC.
This guy is that very dangerous combination of a "dabbler," but with a world-wide audience.
This whole article is based on rumour and popular belief more than it is any scientific evidence. Note how the article is half over before any advocates of this theory (other than "some scientists"), are mentioned.
If the effect was firmly discovered by (new) scientific testing then the description of that experiment, it's result, and the group that conducted it would be in the first or second paragraph. If it was hard science, a detailed description of the experiment and the methodology would also be in order.
Instead, after a lot of talk that amounts to "some scientists say..." we get news of a "limited" experiment (in the second to *last* paragraph no less!), where a single cell phone was placed near a hive by (apparently) a single scientist (Dr Jochen Kuhn), on which we are given no background on at all. There is no date given for this test, no details, and no indication why a cell phone was suspected in the first place. We are not even sure if this experiment was in reaction to the disappearing bees phenomenon or if it was merely something that someone did once.
The last paragraph (a single sentence), is a quote from an American scientist who was deeply involved in the whole "cell phones give you brain cancer" debacle from the early to mid 90's about how he thinks this could be possible. Then they paste a chunk of stuff on the end from the files about previous wacky theories of the evils of cell phones.
Gee, do you think that any of these people quoted have an axe to grind vis a vis the evils of cell phones? Do you think the reporter has any real facts to base this article on? Or is it likely it's just another science writer with a deadline to meet that is going through his old files for something to write about?
I'd bet that "cell phone by a hive" experiment turns out to have also been done in the 90's when panic about cell phone radiation was at it's peak.
The idea that consciousness might rely on quantum effects was (AFAIK) actually first proposed by one of the most brilliant minds of the last few hundred years, Robert Penrose, in his book "The Emperor's New Mind."
Ironically, he was roundly criticised at the time for even suggesting that quantum effects could be involved in macro-scale phenomena. The fact that this book was also a rather devastating analysis of why Artificial Intelligence is in a goal that can never be reached in any practical sense, has also been mostly ignored even though little evidence that contradicts this base assumption has ever been brought forward.
His overall theory of the origin of consciousness has some problems, but is full of interesting concepts that perhaps deserve a second look in light of developments like this.
The thing that bugs me the most about these kinds of issues is the reporting of them in the media.
If you read the slashdot summary (or even the whole first page of the article), you get the impression that some people think the bug is pretty much the same thing as the 2005 one and that Microsoft disagrees. The story is structured like a "He said, she said," kind of thing and no one is painted as right or wrong. If you *do* manage to make it to the second page of the article however, you find out that several very respected security professionals and security companies present detailed compelling evidence to the effect that Microsoft is both incompetent and disingenuous in their opinion on this bug.
It is the same bug (essentially) reported in 2005, and it should have been caught in a matter of hours or even minutes after the 2005 bug was initially reported to them. This by reason of Microsoft's own self-stated bug hunting and code modification procedures.
The conclusion is absolutely inescapable that Microsoft completely failed to follow their own basic rules of coding and security auditing here. They also are lying or at the very least splitting hairs about it being a "separate issue," and they seem to be deliberately trying to pull the wool over peoples eyes about it. Yet this story has been reported around the web as a kind of "maybe McAfee is right, or maybe Microsoft is right," thing for the most part??? Why?
On top of all of that, this is yet another (of about three instances I have found so far), where it's clear that Vista is not "all new code" as MS likes to maintain it is. It seems like this bug occurred because the same old *.ani code from the previous versions of MS Windows was included in Vista with literally no oversight and no checking.
Why do people buy products from these people again?
And why do they always seem get the benefit of the doubt in the media?
... the discovery of a 100-million-year-old micro-organism which has survived its entire lifespan without sex. I know this post is just continuing the poor wording of the original article but no organism is likely to live for millions of years.I think what they mean to say is that the particular species has been evolving for that length of time without sex, not that a single organism has been living for millions of years without sex.
This whole article is an embarrassment to SlashDot. The OP starts off by "wondering" if Apple TV will support DivX when the information on supported formats has been posted on the Apple TV web site for months.
Most of the responders seem to know nothing about the product. Asking embarrassingly stupid questions like "does it have a keyboard?", "When are they going to have non-Disney movies?" and telling us that you can only play DRM'ed video on it???
There is hardly a question posed here that would not be answered by a ten second trip to the Apple TV website and anyone following the product even the slightest bit would know the answer to them. Most of the "opinions" on the product here are ill-informed nonsense at best. On top of that, there is a lot of bitter, mean-spirited, childish banter that one would expect on kids sites like Digg or Gizmodo, not SlashDot. I am truly embarrassed to see this kind of junk here.
For those who want to know:
- doesn't support DivX
- a keyboard would make it a computer, not a set-top streamer
- non-Disney movies already available (have been for a while)
- *does* play non DRM'ed music and video (just like iPod)
I am not going to bother trying to refute every point made here or talk up the device, but for a cool techie site populated by intelligent IT people who are supposed to be in the know on stuff like this... this article and most of the related comments are a joke.
That is not his only mistake. I didn't read your entire long post, (I stopped when you started swearing). This point above however, you seem to have entirely backwards. The authors point was that since "half of all PC sales are in business" then Apple's consumer market share must be larger than the overall market share might indicate.
You then mention anecdotal evidence of your view of the business market, telling us that ".. 1 out of 10 business pc's is
This is classic apples and oranges.
If you didn't see the obvious flaw in your own argument, why should I trust you when you say the author is "blowing smoke"?
If you are going to be caustic, you should try to be accurate and unbiased at the same time.
Specifically: "Anecdotal evidence" is a fair term and not meaningless as you suggest. An anecdote (singular) is a single point of "anecdotal evidence" but there is nothing to suggest that multiple points of anecdotal evidence don't also occur (even though the author only mentions the one).
In short, your equation of "anecdotal evidence" with a singular point of "non-evidence" is false. Anecdotal evidence is by definition evidence gained through word of mouth which may or may not be false, may or may not be based on one or many "anecdotes" and should not generally be equated with "always false" as you seem to do above.
Anecdotal evidence can be misleading of course as is evidenced by the example you offer yourself (of your computer lasting for eight years). Anecdotally, you have a computer that has lasted for eight years. Factually, you have had the same computer case for 8 years and have replaced the computer at least three or four times in that period, possibly more.
Interestingly, this would put an estimate of your computer's lifespan pretty much exactly where the author of the article puts it. 2 years or less.
I think the big point though is that this is actually illegal in a lot of countries. All of Europe for instance. It may not be a big deal to some, but a smart move on MSFT's part it is not.
....
To do this after all the antitrust troubles they have had over there, and then to hide it
Like you, I don't feel this stunt is particularly nefarious in origin but regardless of MSFT's intent, it just reeks of incompetence that they even allowed it to happen. For one of the biggest companies in the US to just ignore the laws of one of their biggest trading partners and assume that no one will find out about it can only be categorised as a dumb move.
A smart company would make sure they are in compliance with the law of the land in all their markets, no mater how much they hated it. It doesn't seem to me like it even occurred to anyone at MS that this might be illegal.
It's good for you to call me on the lack of concrete references and the slightly hyperbolic language, but I feel most of what I said is fairly self-evident. In truth I was also a little angry that such a ridiculous excuse for scientific research as this article would even be published here, much less hotly debated.
None of these admissions invalidates my basic point - which is the same as several other contributors - nor do they argue against it. The study is flawed in that it speaks only of one culture and then argues biological necessity from that limited view.
As for numbers, a little later in this same thread, a helpful person posted this link which seems to back up my claims quite nicely.
http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_atheist.htm
You are right about this last point I made about Education being somewhat unconnected to the question of the religiosity of the average American individual, but here is my reasoning.
I meant to connect the two only in the (unfortunately not explicitly stated by me), sense that the opposite of religious thinking is critical thinking and practices of logical analysis. So the deterioration of education systems and the poor state of education in the US relative to other countries - even ignoring the active imposition of religious subject matter - is relevant only in that it leaves the average person without the tools necessary to question their religious upbringing. I didn't mean to imply that only dumb uneducated people believe in God. I meant only that without the formal education and know-how to question their beliefs, many will not do so.
Better education and especially the strengthening of critical faculties does frequently act to counter religious belief. America in particular has actively sought to de-emphasise critical thinking in the education curriculum in the last few decades and increased religious or "magical" thinking is one result of that.
If a significant portion (in this case in the high 90 percent range due to the claim made), of the entire world's population bleived in these things the author might have a point. I doubt the figures will bear such an argument however.
the mac pro cost is too high for most office use.
There needs to be mid-tower that is easy to open up to add ram, and pci-e cards, change out bad parts, and so on.
The i-macs with there build in screen don't work that well as they take up more space then a monitor + desk top on the ground. These comments really make little sense, you don't seem to have much experience with Apple or Macs.
1) The mini is a bit uh... "basic" but it's certainly equal to any entry level Windows PC. In fact, that's what it is,
2) Mac Pros shouldn't be in the equation here, they are not "desktops" in the corporate sense and have no place on the average employee's desk.
3) In my organisation, we have a policy that a desktop is refurbished every three to five years with a new machine or significant upgrade. There is no need for a mid-tower that is "easy to open" during that time frame because there is almost no need to upgrade, open or "fix" the Macs. Macs have hardware failures of course, but they generally either work fine or fail completely. Mostly they "just work." It's the exact oposite of the "cheap windows box" model.
4) The comment about the iMacs taking up more space "then a monitor + desk top" (sic) is just crazy. They take up much less space, as is pretty obvious. The iMac is actually the "mid-tower" that (you think), you are missing here, it's just more compact and a different shape. It's also the one that you should be comparing with your corporate Windows desktops.
In my experience, during the period the users have the computers on the desktop they typically go through two sets of peripherals (mouse & keyboard), they may buy an extra peripheral like a scanner, video deck, etc., and they always want more memory at some point. The only reason to go "inside the box" is to put the memory in, which is as easy on the Mac as it is with the Windows box.
We treat serious hardware failures (a very rare occurrence) by simply swapping out the machine for a new one or a temporary replacement. One cable, one button and 15 minutes to a half hour later, the user is up and running on a replacement machine with the exact same desktop, apps, files, etc. that they had on the old machine.
If they have gone out for a donut may not even know their computer has been replaced.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd like to know who they were just so I can tell if they were sucking up to Apple or if it was a real, honest to $diety review. I did a little searching, and while almost every single review I could find does praise the touchscreen as "fantastic" (or a similar adjective), some do worry about "keypad junkies" (I assume they exist), not liking it. There are however some excellent reviews that support my initial remarks.
Here are two:
Hands-on iPhone preview http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/blogs/index.cfm?entryi
It feels small and thin. The screen is remarkably responsive. I typed on its onscreen keyboard with my index finger and, after about a minute, I felt I was already well on my way to being a proficient iPhone typist."
You could call iPhone perfect http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/215441
"The touch-interface works flawlessly, in terms of both technical function and user interface design
My point was that "dissing" the iPhone based on the touchscreen, when almost every hands-on review has absolutely gushed over that one particular aspect of the device is a bit disingenuous at best, and is likely an uncalled for manipulation of the facts.
It would be fairer to say that initial reports are that the touch screen is fabulous and is likely a better candidate for replacing the keypad on PDA's than anything that has gone before. In any case, the only way to know is to wait until it comes out so it can be tested side by side with other existing units.