I think most consumers just don't want to be bothered with something different. In fact, many are downright scared of not being part of the Windows herd.
It means they actually have to think about their computing decision.
I think the Apple Stores are going to help a lot here. Definitely the coolest place to buy a computer.
I somehow don't think they're afraid of cannibalizing flat panel iMac sales - they're selling every one of those they can build.
I think Jobs is simply embarassed by the older machines. He'll sell one to you if you'd buy a PC instead, but he'd really rather not. So he puts them in an inconspicuous corner of the page and hopes for the best.
It has more than a little echo of Lenin's final letter as he lay dying, where he gives a balanced appraisal of all his potential successors.
The only problem is that he didn't think any of them were any good.
I wonder how many other people caught that reference? The fact that it came from Russia triggered my memory; it's exactly the type of thing a Russian would write.
No returns on a $5,999 (their "special" price) Sony Plasma Screen "due to the cost of this piece"?
Is the item itself an April Fools joke, then?
Linus' autobiography was at least real.
I can't help but think this faux advertising is going to result in at least a few sales, therefore being the only April Fools joke I can think of that's not really an April Fools joke at all...
It feels a bit like perverting the whole meaning of April Fools.
I have a big one and I love it, but I'm still having some carpel tunnel problems. I think they are due to a poor office environment at work and not due to the keyboard.
It does not apear to load on Netscape 4.x, at least with my Linux version. Probably some tags aren't closed, or it's using some JavaScript my browser chokes on.
You're wrong. The pricing plans are laid out quite clearly in the reviews; the real problem is that they are both very high and horribly inflexible.
As he pointed out in the article, you could easily use up all the credits offered on even the most expensive plan with less than a day of intense browsing.
He pawned his CDs, which is an odd expression - did he borrow money off them and get them back later, or did he lose them in the pawn?
If he lost them, he is a pirate if he still listened to their contents. If he pledged them to borrow money for a larger hard drive, and then redeemed them from pawn, then what he's done is in fact perfectly legal as far as I can tell.
Hope that helps clarify things.
D
PS If he pawned the CDs and lost them by not paying back the loan, that was pretty dumb. Pawnshops normally loan about half the value of the item, so it was a bad move for him indeed.
Sadly, a lot of the Mac forums have been attacked by particularly mean-spirited trolls of late, and that's what has caused virtually everyone to go after Mac versus PC debaters with a jaundiced eye.
The software problem is never going to be fixed; if you insist on 10,000 different word processors, you really have no choice of platform. Of course most people use only one word processor at a time, so I'm not sure if this problem is as bad as it looks from your side of the fence.
But the rudeness? Let our little world calm down for a while, and you'll find us a pretty darn nice bunch of people. Some of us can get a bit defensive when being attacked, and I'm sorry for that.
But the iMac is still a killer computer, and you should still give it a try. Visit an Apple Store if there's one in your area, and you'll find a great bunch of helpful people.
I just put all the applications I ever use on the dock, and arrange them as I want. That lets motor memory take over. Motor memory came frustratingly slowly until I grouped the applications into categories, with all the video applications together, all the graphics ones togther, and so on.
The other thing you have to do is turn off magnification in the dock. It looks wonderful, but changes the positions of icons badly, and it scales horribly when the system's under load.
There's a big tension between the open and proprietary worlds.
People here talk so much about how great it is to be open, that they forget that most truly innovative products are proprietary. People like Steve Jobs who are truly passionate about the quality and look and feel of their products seem to prefer keeping their source code secret.
I hated PC clones because the idea of creating a product that's just a copy, with no original thought behind it, appalls me. And yet that's what the KDE folks are doing - creating a clone of the Windows GUI.
I don't want my computer to be a copy of 50,000,000 other computers out there. I want it to be distinctive and innovative.
And because of that, I'm willing to pay a price in openness.
Open systems are like that suburban subdivision with 10,000 houses all alike. Proprietary systems are like the John Lautner house I visited yesterday . Interesting, quirky, different.
It's software - and products - that are designed with love and care, as copies of nothing - that can reach true greatness. So I would like to take this time to salute the proprietary systems and the creativity that goes with them.
D
David Dennis uses Apple and SGI as his primary computing platforms at home. At the office, he sufferes through the ugly fonts of Linux - but at least it's not Windows.
Basically, Apple made Control-Clicking something the equivalent of a second mouse button. No problem.
I don't know how you could get Enlightenment to work right with less than three buttons, though. Time to get out the checkbook and buy a three button mouse. I must say I love the Kensington Expert Mouse (which is actually a trackball).
I will admit that control-clicking is a great deal more cumbersome than a right click, but you get used to it with surprising speed.
Unless you're doing X-Windows programming, your MacOS X machine will operate virtually identically to your Linux box.
I spent some time yesterday programming with my Titanium PowerBook G4 in the Fashion Island shopping centre in Newport Beach, outside near the koi pond, in an amazingly idyllic setting. Worked great; all the tools were there, including Apache and IE.
Since IE is available, you actually have a more mainstream environment than Linux, which just has Netscape/Mozilla.
It's a lot like a cult, but it's pretty benign at cults go; all it does is suck as much money as you feel you can spare. Even the cult recruiters (aka Apple Store employees) are surprisingly low key and just plain nice. (Of course this is part of the danger.)
Right now, I'm looking at the Apple Cinema HD Display with the rapturous intensity of a kid looking at a giant bowl of ice cream.
You're not THAT far off. Both Flash MX and Photoshop 7 are X-compatible, and they should be in stores within a month or so. (Flash MX should already be released, but I have yet to see it. I think you can get a downloaded version today, but I'm the old-fashioned type of person who likes getting paper manuals and the like).
I'm afraid the best Apple dual processor system is always going to be in the $2,999-$3,500 range. Plenty of people are willing to pay those prices, after all. There's no doubt at all that this is an advantage of commodity hardware and operating systems.
But let's be fair: You wanted an alternative to Windows with a nice design and compatibility with mainstream applications. Apple provides it, and it's wonderful. They charge a big premium for it, but that's the way of the world; they have to hire a whole army of people to design and feed the OS.
I think it's worth $3k or so - but I know how tempting it is to cheap out when you really can't afford it.
But that must be a really lousy 20" monitor. Try viewing it for a while at high resolution and you might settle for the iMac's crystal clear 1024x768 display:-).
The iMac has a stunning LCD screen and an amazing adjustment mechanism that works fantastic under virtually all conditions. I'd say that's worth a few bucks.
It's true that it would be more cost-effective to buy the monitor separately - I replace computers much more often than monitors as a general rule. But that Apple LCD is so nicely integrated with the system that it strikes me as being well worth the extra cost of not having a separate monitor.
I actually think my TiBook 400 compiles faster than my Athelon 1.3ghz system, but that might be because the multitasking seems a lot smoother. When I compile on the TiBook, I can run my web browser while compiling without visible performance problems. Not on the Athelon running Linux and Netscape 4.x.
As a result, if it's slower, I don't notice. I actually think my quality of computing experience is higher on the Mac than the Athelon.
(The Athelon actually has a faster disk drive, 512mb RAM and SuSE Linux 7. I have no idea why it doesn't perform well).
Even Be uses Unix-style tools such as bash, and Unix commands such as rm and cp. There are great advantages in conforming to such a standard. So there is a definite benefit of using at least some of what Unix has to offer.
But I must agree that Apple was right to throw away X-Windows, which I suspect was your real point. X-Windows dooms you to hideously ugly graphics, and as such had to be discarded for the company to get even the faintest hint of consumer acceptance.
Aqua was designed to look stunning. Consumers like stunning things. I'm a geek, but I have grown to love Aqua because it's so beautiful. It's true that there are still some annoying performance issues, but I really love seeing type that looks as though it was typeset by a fine printer, and a lot of the curves and transparency tricks are lovely. It's definitely the easiest operating system for the eyes, neither so bland as to make me fall asleep (Windows pre-XP) or so gaudy as to cause me to go blind (XP).
No argument there. I bought my 1600SW as a $695 closeout, so it was a major, major bargain compared to the old Cinema Display. It would be nicer if it were brighter, but that's hardly worth the major price difference from what I paid for the SGI.
The new Cinema Display, though, is, because it brings higher resolution to the table, too.
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I think most consumers just don't want to be bothered with something different. In fact, many are downright scared of not being part of the Windows herd.
It means they actually have to think about their computing decision.
I think the Apple Stores are going to help a lot here. Definitely the coolest place to buy a computer.
D
I somehow don't think they're afraid of cannibalizing flat panel iMac sales - they're selling every one of those they can build.
I think Jobs is simply embarassed by the older machines. He'll sell one to you if you'd buy a PC instead, but he'd really rather not. So he puts them in an inconspicuous corner of the page and hopes for the best.
D
It has more than a little echo of Lenin's final letter as he lay dying, where he gives a balanced appraisal of all his potential successors.
The only problem is that he didn't think any of them were any good.
I wonder how many other people caught that reference? The fact that it came from Russia triggered my memory; it's exactly the type of thing a Russian would write.
Funny idea.
D
How can it be 1024x1024 when it's rectangular, not square?
The horizontal pixels must be about double the size of the vertical.
Sounds like it would be a royal pain to produce stuff for this thing.
D
Also see the World's First RFC 1149 implementation
D
No returns on a $5,999 (their "special" price) Sony Plasma Screen "due to the cost of this piece"?
...
Is the item itself an April Fools joke, then?
Linus' autobiography was at least real.
I can't help but think this faux advertising is going to result in at least a few sales, therefore being the only April Fools joke I can think of that's not really an April Fools joke at all
It feels a bit like perverting the whole meaning of April Fools.
Oops.
D
I have a big one and I love it, but I'm still having some carpel tunnel problems. I think they are due to a poor office environment at work and not due to the keyboard.
D
It does not apear to load on Netscape 4.x, at least with my Linux version. Probably some tags aren't closed, or it's using some JavaScript my browser chokes on.
D
You're wrong. The pricing plans are laid out quite clearly in the reviews; the real problem is that they are both very high and horribly inflexible.
As he pointed out in the article, you could easily use up all the credits offered on even the most expensive plan with less than a day of intense browsing.
D
He pawned his CDs, which is an odd expression - did he borrow money off them and get them back later, or did he lose them in the pawn?
If he lost them, he is a pirate if he still listened to their contents. If he pledged them to borrow money for a larger hard drive, and then redeemed them from pawn, then what he's done is in fact perfectly legal as far as I can tell.
Hope that helps clarify things.
D
PS If he pawned the CDs and lost them by not paying back the loan, that was pretty dumb. Pawnshops normally loan about half the value of the item, so it was a bad move for him indeed.
it should be awesome, although sadly I haven't been able to find one yet in the stores. Availability is said to be sometime in April.
1920x1200 resolution is just what I need!
D
We must have some really terrible artists in the Linux world, then.
There are Adobe fonts for Linux that look horrid. The same Adobe fonts look stunning under MacOS X.
Why?
D
The cheapest one is US$ 1,199, which is about CDN$ 1,798.
If you want more power, I've seen refurbished PowerMac G4/Titaniums in the US$1,500 range, which is about CDN$2,250.
You might have to order from an American reseller to get these prices, and I don't know what duty amounts to, but they're certainly in the ballpark.
Hope that helps.
D
Sadly, a lot of the Mac forums have been attacked by particularly mean-spirited trolls of late, and that's what has caused virtually everyone to go after Mac versus PC debaters with a jaundiced eye.
The software problem is never going to be fixed; if you insist on 10,000 different word processors, you really have no choice of platform. Of course most people use only one word processor at a time, so I'm not sure if this problem is as bad as it looks from your side of the fence.
But the rudeness? Let our little world calm down for a while, and you'll find us a pretty darn nice bunch of people. Some of us can get a bit defensive when being attacked, and I'm sorry for that.
But the iMac is still a killer computer, and you should still give it a try. Visit an Apple Store if there's one in your area, and you'll find a great bunch of helpful people.
Hope that helps.
D
I just put all the applications I ever use on the dock, and arrange them as I want. That lets motor memory take over. Motor memory came frustratingly slowly until I grouped the applications into categories, with all the video applications together, all the graphics ones togther, and so on.
The other thing you have to do is turn off magnification in the dock. It looks wonderful, but changes the positions of icons badly, and it scales horribly when the system's under load.
Hope that helps.
D
People here talk so much about how great it is to be open, that they forget that most truly innovative products are proprietary. People like Steve Jobs who are truly passionate about the quality and look and feel of their products seem to prefer keeping their source code secret.
I hated PC clones because the idea of creating a product that's just a copy, with no original thought behind it, appalls me. And yet that's what the KDE folks are doing - creating a clone of the Windows GUI.
I don't want my computer to be a copy of 50,000,000 other computers out there. I want it to be distinctive and innovative.
And because of that, I'm willing to pay a price in openness.
Open systems are like that suburban subdivision with 10,000 houses all alike. Proprietary systems are like the John Lautner house I visited yesterday . Interesting, quirky, different.
It's software - and products - that are designed with love and care, as copies of nothing - that can reach true greatness. So I would like to take this time to salute the proprietary systems and the creativity that goes with them.
D
David Dennis uses Apple and SGI as his primary computing platforms at home. At the office, he sufferes through the ugly fonts of Linux - but at least it's not Windows.
Basically, Apple made Control-Clicking something the equivalent of a second mouse button. No problem.
I don't know how you could get Enlightenment to work right with less than three buttons, though. Time to get out the checkbook and buy a three button mouse. I must say I love the Kensington Expert Mouse (which is actually a trackball).
I will admit that control-clicking is a great deal more cumbersome than a right click, but you get used to it with surprising speed.
D
Unless you're doing X-Windows programming, your MacOS X machine will operate virtually identically to your Linux box.
I spent some time yesterday programming with my Titanium PowerBook G4 in the Fashion Island shopping centre in Newport Beach, outside near the koi pond, in an amazingly idyllic setting. Worked great; all the tools were there, including Apache and IE.
Since IE is available, you actually have a more mainstream environment than Linux, which just has Netscape/Mozilla.
D
It's a lot like a cult, but it's pretty benign at cults go; all it does is suck as much money as you feel you can spare. Even the cult recruiters (aka Apple Store employees) are surprisingly low key and just plain nice. (Of course this is part of the danger.)
Right now, I'm looking at the Apple Cinema HD Display with the rapturous intensity of a kid looking at a giant bowl of ice cream.
D
You're not THAT far off. Both Flash MX and Photoshop 7 are X-compatible, and they should be in stores within a month or so. (Flash MX should already be released, but I have yet to see it. I think you can get a downloaded version today, but I'm the old-fashioned type of person who likes getting paper manuals and the like).
:-).
I'm afraid the best Apple dual processor system is always going to be in the $2,999-$3,500 range. Plenty of people are willing to pay those prices, after all. There's no doubt at all that this is an advantage of commodity hardware and operating systems.
But let's be fair: You wanted an alternative to Windows with a nice design and compatibility with mainstream applications. Apple provides it, and it's wonderful. They charge a big premium for it, but that's the way of the world; they have to hire a whole army of people to design and feed the OS.
I think it's worth $3k or so - but I know how tempting it is to cheap out when you really can't afford it.
But that must be a really lousy 20" monitor. Try viewing it for a while at high resolution and you might settle for the iMac's crystal clear 1024x768 display
D
One of the biggest issues is that it's easier to pirate PC software than Mac software if all your friends use PCs.
Of course with Windows XP's anti-piracy features, that's fading fast as a reason, at least if MS starts doing that to Office.
D
The iMac has a stunning LCD screen and an amazing adjustment mechanism that works fantastic under virtually all conditions. I'd say that's worth a few bucks.
It's true that it would be more cost-effective to buy the monitor separately - I replace computers much more often than monitors as a general rule. But that Apple LCD is so nicely integrated with the system that it strikes me as being well worth the extra cost of not having a separate monitor.
D
I actually think my TiBook 400 compiles faster than my Athelon 1.3ghz system, but that might be because the multitasking seems a lot smoother. When I compile on the TiBook, I can run my web browser while compiling without visible performance problems. Not on the Athelon running Linux and Netscape 4.x.
As a result, if it's slower, I don't notice. I actually think my quality of computing experience is higher on the Mac than the Athelon.
(The Athelon actually has a faster disk drive, 512mb RAM and SuSE Linux 7. I have no idea why it doesn't perform well).
D
But I must agree that Apple was right to throw away X-Windows, which I suspect was your real point. X-Windows dooms you to hideously ugly graphics, and as such had to be discarded for the company to get even the faintest hint of consumer acceptance.
Aqua was designed to look stunning. Consumers like stunning things. I'm a geek, but I have grown to love Aqua because it's so beautiful. It's true that there are still some annoying performance issues, but I really love seeing type that looks as though it was typeset by a fine printer, and a lot of the curves and transparency tricks are lovely. It's definitely the easiest operating system for the eyes, neither so bland as to make me fall asleep (Windows pre-XP) or so gaudy as to cause me to go blind (XP).
D
No argument there. I bought my 1600SW as a $695 closeout, so it was a major, major bargain compared to the old Cinema Display. It would be nicer if it were brighter, but that's hardly worth the major price difference from what I paid for the SGI.
The new Cinema Display, though, is, because it brings higher resolution to the table, too.
D