The RAM I will give you-- looks like even Dell's Adamo does the soldering bit; but if you dont think that the entire goal of this is to force all repairs and upgrades to go through Apple, you are naieve. This isnt some "villain with cape and mustache" scenario, its just Apples modus operendi. They want to be in complete control of everything-- hence the security screws they use on some of their macbook models (as well as the iphone, etc). Youre not going to convince me that THOSE are for reasons of slimness, or price, or actual "security"; theyre to make sure that the average user, even those who might be inclined to google "how to repair x", will be dissuaded, and will take the mac into a repair center.
I understand its not about being evil, Apple wants A) to make sure that as few as possible macs are left in an "unpleasant to use" scenario, and B) to get as much revenue as possible. Using custom firmware, making it hard to do upgrades, making it hard to do self-repairs, etc all accomplish both goals, so they do them. Are you honestly denying that Apple's specialty is in hermetically sealed "magical" gadgets that "just work"?
Not to mention the fact that you are allowed to exceed the speed limit (at least in Va) for passing.
There is a big difference between a system that simply records what speed you were going at what time, and relying on the accident scene cops to assert the location of the crash (and thus what the speed limit was); and having a system that has to figure out what the speed limit is, where you are, whether you are speeding, whether you had close calls, etc. I rather think they will go with the former because it is simple and reliable to do (have something read the speedometer reported data, and write it to flash with a timestamp), and the latter is very complicated (need a lot of sensors, possibly need to replace speed-signs with RFID integrated ones, or reliable integrated GPS circuitry), and prone to error.
Except the lack of any real centralized managability or updates, and the fact that you are paying quite literally double for every piece of hardware in the office, yea, great investment.
Every time I feel myself thinking along those lines, I go to Mac.com and price out a laptop or desktop, and realize why I dont own one. Theyre overpriced intel machines with an overhyped OS.
But you can upgrade the RAM aftermarket - easily in fact, and it's user serviceable
Not in Macbook Airs; theyve already started down that road. A friend just asked me today if they should upgrade from 2GB to 4GB in their soon-to-be Air (for $100!), and I was going to reply that no, its far cheaper to do aftermarket, but then I remembered-- they have begun soldering the RAM chips directly to the motherboard.
How much space does a laptop ram clip take up? Its what, a 1mm connector and 2 metal clips? Yea, thats TOTALLY not for anti-consumer reasons. Those custom flashes that they do on the drives (described above)? Yea, totally not anti-consumer.
If youre looking for good home-user support from Dell, then yea, youre doing it wrong. Their business support-- particularly tape autoloader, or other such storage unit-- tends to be quite good. Better, in fact, than my experiences with Cisco.
There is no reason they couldn't place a panel somewhere to allow access to the drive.
Of course there isnt a reason, Laptops tend to be smaller than All-In-Ones, and every non-mac laptop Ive ever seen had access panels for the WiFi cards, Drive, and RAM.
Absolutely the reason is that they want you to pay Apple techs, and because theyre being anal about appearances.
Why is temperature data necessary? Why is mobo-based ambient temp not sufficient? Whens the last time you had a hard drive burn out before the processor shut down?
This is all beside the point; they ALREADY HAD a way to poll the temperature. "Making it better" might be their excuse (as it is with Dell's H700 and H800 RAID cards refusing non-dell-flashed drives), but it is simply a cover for their real purpose-- controlling the market and pricing structure. They want to make SURE that geeks like me cant suggest to friends "get the el-cheapo Mac, and upgrade RAM / Drive aftermarket for 1/5th the price".
Also, all iMac desktops come with bluetooth, wireless cards, HD webcams, etc.
80% of laptops these days have all of those. I dont know about All-In-One desktops (by Dell, et al), but I could install Bluetooth, wireless, and a VERY nice logitech HD camera for under $150. I fail to see where the extra $1300 is justified.
Both are manufactured to spec in China by Foxconn. Check the label.
Foxconn does custom jobs all the time; theres nothing particularly special about Apple's motherboards other than the form factor (possibly a few extra sensors). They use bog standard chips, connectors, sockets, and the most popular chinese mobo manufacturer out there.
Can you please point me to a study, datacenter or otherwise, showing a causative relationship between system temperatures under 120F (ie, 70f vs 90f vs 100f) and system failure?
I mean, yes, Im aware of the nVidia fiasco where some video chipsets were getting hot enough to crack and melt solder, or hot enough to damage defective capacitors (though non-defective caps would not have this issue), and obviously that gets to "destructively hot"; but Im not aware of anyone showing a real comparison between a bog-standard Dell PC (with real caps >_>) and an "airflow optimized" pc, showing the average longevity of each.
I rather imagine the difference is minimal; most electronics dont care whether they are 80F or 100F, and most chips these days have temp sensors anyways and will downclock or halt before real damage occurs. Possibly you could argue "wear on the HD bearings", but a new harddrive is certainly not $1500, so I dont see the value.
The average person simply has no need to upgrade the hard drive.
That doesnt make it a feature. Look at the price difference on a Dell server between their 2TB sata drives (like $450+ each) and the exact same model on Newegg (RE4, I believe; theyre like $150).
Taking away the ability of the user to replace their drive just pushes prices up. Can you imagine how expensive oil changes would be if you HAD to get them done at the dealership? Its called anticompetitive, and there is a reason that it is illegal when done on a large enough scale.
Since that hard drive is not a user serviceable part and never has been,
Redefining something as "not user serviceable" doesnt all of a sudden mean that Macs are better; I have yet to see a Mac that could not use a standard SATA drive. It sounds like this is not a case of "preventing damage" (when the hell have you seen harddrive damage due to heat? the processor is likely to overheat if the ambient temp is getting high enough for HD failure), but another attempt to limit user-serviced computers and to ensure that you have to pay for the upsell from Apple.
I seem to remember Dell doing this with their latest PERC H700s-- they refuse to take any non-dell flashed drive, even if its the exact same model. Its not a feature, its a reason not to buy the damn thing; damned if I want to pay a 300% markup on a drive for a custom firmware (as if Apple knows more about harddrives than Seagate...).
Im pretty sure temp data et al can be pulled without a custom connector-- thats what SMART reporting is for.
That objection aside, Im sure Dell or HP could do something similar if they chose-- In fact, Dell does use custom hardware, connectors, and firmwares on various parts. But by and large one of the draws of a standard PC is that repairs are cheap; if a hard-drive fails (which, lets be honest, is usually NOT a thermal failure, and occurs once every 4 years or so), it costs a whopping $40 (today's price) for a newer, faster 1TB hard drive. Custom parts make the entire thing more expensive-- with no competition, prices skyrocket.
And regardless, the hardware remains seagate. A custom firmware wont make the platters more stable, or the bearings last longer; the best you can have is a vibrational sensor that docks the head on a jolt, and HP, Lenovo, and several others all have that.
The iMacs were bought because they are aesthetically pleasing,
Sounds like they didnt do much shopping. Dell and HP have several knockoffs, and if you go to Newegg theres an entire section dedicated to "All-in-one" PCs (read, iMac knockoffs).
Ive heard the sentiment "but the hardware is better". I usually explain that there isnt any fairy dust that they sprinkle on the Seagate drives (Dell uses Seagate as well), Foxconn motherboards (again, dell uses foxconn), Hynix RAM, nVidia Graphics, or Intel processor to make it more durable; so if theres any "durable" theyre paying for, its for a really really nice, $1500 case.
People tend to not really look at the surrounding text when talking about this verse and instead take it out of the context of the conversation, a dangerous practice albeit a common one on both sides.
But then, parent was never concerned with understanding what was meant, or by learning whether or not he was mistaken. His goal was to try to make christians look ridiculous at any cost, even if it meant being dishonest about it.
Perhaps I should have been more careful with my words; but when USB3.0 was brand spanking new (as in, a few months after release), the motherboards certainly WERE scarce, and it WAS limited to a select few. USB3.0 specs were released in 2008, and the first mobos came out with it in 2010. Compare that with Thunderbolt-- Intel first demo'd a prototype in 2009, and initial implementations started coming out in just January or February this year. It is very very much bleeding edge right now, whereas USB3.0 is just starting to come into the "main" right now.
Im referring to the fact that booting up a PC has a remarkably long and complex chain of processes that must execute correctly for you to be able to use it at all-- BIOS functioning, hardware initializing properly, working VGA, working controllers, non-screwed up MBR, non-screwed up bootloader, non-screwed up core system libraries.... There are scads of things that can and do go wrong with Windows computers. Roughly 50% of my job is essentially helpdesk stuff, where i get to see all the ways that computers malfunction (and only about 1/4 of the time is it user error). The more complicated you make something, the more ways it can fail; PCs may be more capable than that calculator, but theyre also orders of magnitude less reliable (esp if theyre using rotational media).
How many times have you gone to turn on a TI or HP calculator and had it spit out "Please insert System Disk" or beep several times at you and fail to power on?
If you think theres no compelling difference between the CPU-bound USB 3.0 and what is essentially an external PCIe connector, you need to go back and do some more research. LightPeak/Thunderbolt is just plain better than USB3.0; downsides do include lack of backwards compatibility, and that may prove to be its biggest obstacle, but to argue that "USB3.0 is good enough" is just wrong.
As for price, USB3.0 has been out for about a year now, with Thunderbolt only having rolled off the shelves-- and this, only in Apples computers so far-- a few months ago. Right now, on newegg, im only seeing USB3.0 on highend multi-hundred-dollar motherboards, so it seems to be a wash in that regard.
Its way too early to tell, and anyone saying otherwise is full of it.
I did a deployment on thinclients in a public computer "cafe" for low-income housing folks. They apparently cannot tolerate OpenOffice either, and so we are doing an upgrade. This was 2 years ago, and the "replace openoffice" order came in a few months ago. This is with the most recent LibreOffice.
It is a compaq that someone gave me. Being the resident Geek for a lot of my friends, I get old laptops from families all the time and so havent felt a compelling desire to purchase my own. I just fix them up, give them away, and use whatever's left (all I care about is remote access software and a web browser).
So it does matter to me which OS uses how much memory, because I never know what POS laptop i will be using next.
Relying on Windows | Linux graphical drivers et al to be functional-- along with all the other unnecessary-to-math- cruft that comes along with the OS-- in order to do calculations doesnt seem like its less reliable than an embedded single-purpose OS? Or perhaps that it might be slower and clunkier to shoehorn switching between functions in the math program onto the general purpose OS?
Slashdot Mirror
The RAM I will give you-- looks like even Dell's Adamo does the soldering bit; but if you dont think that the entire goal of this is to force all repairs and upgrades to go through Apple, you are naieve. This isnt some "villain with cape and mustache" scenario, its just Apples modus operendi. They want to be in complete control of everything-- hence the security screws they use on some of their macbook models (as well as the iphone, etc). Youre not going to convince me that THOSE are for reasons of slimness, or price, or actual "security"; theyre to make sure that the average user, even those who might be inclined to google "how to repair x", will be dissuaded, and will take the mac into a repair center.
I understand its not about being evil, Apple wants A) to make sure that as few as possible macs are left in an "unpleasant to use" scenario, and B) to get as much revenue as possible. Using custom firmware, making it hard to do upgrades, making it hard to do self-repairs, etc all accomplish both goals, so they do them. Are you honestly denying that Apple's specialty is in hermetically sealed "magical" gadgets that "just work"?
Not to mention the fact that you are allowed to exceed the speed limit (at least in Va) for passing.
There is a big difference between a system that simply records what speed you were going at what time, and relying on the accident scene cops to assert the location of the crash (and thus what the speed limit was); and having a system that has to figure out what the speed limit is, where you are, whether you are speeding, whether you had close calls, etc. I rather think they will go with the former because it is simple and reliable to do (have something read the speedometer reported data, and write it to flash with a timestamp), and the latter is very complicated (need a lot of sensors, possibly need to replace speed-signs with RFID integrated ones, or reliable integrated GPS circuitry), and prone to error.
Except the lack of any real centralized managability or updates, and the fact that you are paying quite literally double for every piece of hardware in the office, yea, great investment.
Every time I feel myself thinking along those lines, I go to Mac.com and price out a laptop or desktop, and realize why I dont own one. Theyre overpriced intel machines with an overhyped OS.
But you can upgrade the RAM aftermarket - easily in fact, and it's user serviceable
Not in Macbook Airs; theyve already started down that road. A friend just asked me today if they should upgrade from 2GB to 4GB in their soon-to-be Air (for $100!), and I was going to reply that no, its far cheaper to do aftermarket, but then I remembered-- they have begun soldering the RAM chips directly to the motherboard.
How much space does a laptop ram clip take up? Its what, a 1mm connector and 2 metal clips? Yea, thats TOTALLY not for anti-consumer reasons. Those custom flashes that they do on the drives (described above)? Yea, totally not anti-consumer.
If youre looking for good home-user support from Dell, then yea, youre doing it wrong. Their business support-- particularly tape autoloader, or other such storage unit-- tends to be quite good. Better, in fact, than my experiences with Cisco.
There is no reason they couldn't place a panel somewhere to allow access to the drive.
Of course there isnt a reason, Laptops tend to be smaller than All-In-Ones, and every non-mac laptop Ive ever seen had access panels for the WiFi cards, Drive, and RAM.
Absolutely the reason is that they want you to pay Apple techs, and because theyre being anal about appearances.
Why is temperature data necessary? Why is mobo-based ambient temp not sufficient? Whens the last time you had a hard drive burn out before the processor shut down?
This is all beside the point; they ALREADY HAD a way to poll the temperature. "Making it better" might be their excuse (as it is with Dell's H700 and H800 RAID cards refusing non-dell-flashed drives), but it is simply a cover for their real purpose-- controlling the market and pricing structure. They want to make SURE that geeks like me cant suggest to friends "get the el-cheapo Mac, and upgrade RAM / Drive aftermarket for 1/5th the price".
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220060
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883155126
Yes, those things are hideous. And the price! I cant buy anything thats less than $1000; its too cheap.
Also, all iMac desktops come with bluetooth, wireless cards, HD webcams, etc.
80% of laptops these days have all of those. I dont know about All-In-One desktops (by Dell, et al), but I could install Bluetooth, wireless, and a VERY nice logitech HD camera for under $150. I fail to see where the extra $1300 is justified.
Both are manufactured to spec in China by Foxconn. Check the label.
Foxconn does custom jobs all the time; theres nothing particularly special about Apple's motherboards other than the form factor (possibly a few extra sensors). They use bog standard chips, connectors, sockets, and the most popular chinese mobo manufacturer out there.
Can you please point me to a study, datacenter or otherwise, showing a causative relationship between system temperatures under 120F (ie, 70f vs 90f vs 100f) and system failure?
I mean, yes, Im aware of the nVidia fiasco where some video chipsets were getting hot enough to crack and melt solder, or hot enough to damage defective capacitors (though non-defective caps would not have this issue), and obviously that gets to "destructively hot"; but Im not aware of anyone showing a real comparison between a bog-standard Dell PC (with real caps >_>) and an "airflow optimized" pc, showing the average longevity of each.
I rather imagine the difference is minimal; most electronics dont care whether they are 80F or 100F, and most chips these days have temp sensors anyways and will downclock or halt before real damage occurs. Possibly you could argue "wear on the HD bearings", but a new harddrive is certainly not $1500, so I dont see the value.
Its only "evil" if its Google tracking you.
The average person simply has no need to upgrade the hard drive.
That doesnt make it a feature. Look at the price difference on a Dell server between their 2TB sata drives (like $450+ each) and the exact same model on Newegg (RE4, I believe; theyre like $150).
Taking away the ability of the user to replace their drive just pushes prices up. Can you imagine how expensive oil changes would be if you HAD to get them done at the dealership? Its called anticompetitive, and there is a reason that it is illegal when done on a large enough scale.
Since that hard drive is not a user serviceable part and never has been,
Redefining something as "not user serviceable" doesnt all of a sudden mean that Macs are better; I have yet to see a Mac that could not use a standard SATA drive. It sounds like this is not a case of "preventing damage" (when the hell have you seen harddrive damage due to heat? the processor is likely to overheat if the ambient temp is getting high enough for HD failure), but another attempt to limit user-serviced computers and to ensure that you have to pay for the upsell from Apple.
I seem to remember Dell doing this with their latest PERC H700s-- they refuse to take any non-dell flashed drive, even if its the exact same model. Its not a feature, its a reason not to buy the damn thing; damned if I want to pay a 300% markup on a drive for a custom firmware (as if Apple knows more about harddrives than Seagate...).
Im pretty sure temp data et al can be pulled without a custom connector-- thats what SMART reporting is for.
That objection aside, Im sure Dell or HP could do something similar if they chose-- In fact, Dell does use custom hardware, connectors, and firmwares on various parts. But by and large one of the draws of a standard PC is that repairs are cheap; if a hard-drive fails (which, lets be honest, is usually NOT a thermal failure, and occurs once every 4 years or so), it costs a whopping $40 (today's price) for a newer, faster 1TB hard drive. Custom parts make the entire thing more expensive-- with no competition, prices skyrocket.
And regardless, the hardware remains seagate. A custom firmware wont make the platters more stable, or the bearings last longer; the best you can have is a vibrational sensor that docks the head on a jolt, and HP, Lenovo, and several others all have that.
The iMacs were bought because they are aesthetically pleasing,
Sounds like they didnt do much shopping. Dell and HP have several knockoffs, and if you go to Newegg theres an entire section dedicated to "All-in-one" PCs (read, iMac knockoffs).
Ive heard the sentiment "but the hardware is better". I usually explain that there isnt any fairy dust that they sprinkle on the Seagate drives (Dell uses Seagate as well), Foxconn motherboards (again, dell uses foxconn), Hynix RAM, nVidia Graphics, or Intel processor to make it more durable; so if theres any "durable" theyre paying for, its for a really really nice, $1500 case.
If you didnt already begin in a high school class, or at the very least on hobby projects?
People tend to not really look at the surrounding text when talking about this verse and instead take it out of the context of the conversation, a dangerous practice albeit a common one on both sides.
But then, parent was never concerned with understanding what was meant, or by learning whether or not he was mistaken. His goal was to try to make christians look ridiculous at any cost, even if it meant being dishonest about it.
Perhaps I should have been more careful with my words; but when USB3.0 was brand spanking new (as in, a few months after release), the motherboards certainly WERE scarce, and it WAS limited to a select few. USB3.0 specs were released in 2008, and the first mobos came out with it in 2010. Compare that with Thunderbolt-- Intel first demo'd a prototype in 2009, and initial implementations started coming out in just January or February this year. It is very very much bleeding edge right now, whereas USB3.0 is just starting to come into the "main" right now.
Im referring to the fact that booting up a PC has a remarkably long and complex chain of processes that must execute correctly for you to be able to use it at all-- BIOS functioning, hardware initializing properly, working VGA, working controllers, non-screwed up MBR, non-screwed up bootloader, non-screwed up core system libraries....
There are scads of things that can and do go wrong with Windows computers. Roughly 50% of my job is essentially helpdesk stuff, where i get to see all the ways that computers malfunction (and only about 1/4 of the time is it user error). The more complicated you make something, the more ways it can fail; PCs may be more capable than that calculator, but theyre also orders of magnitude less reliable (esp if theyre using rotational media).
How many times have you gone to turn on a TI or HP calculator and had it spit out "Please insert System Disk" or beep several times at you and fail to power on?
If you think theres no compelling difference between the CPU-bound USB 3.0 and what is essentially an external PCIe connector, you need to go back and do some more research. LightPeak /Thunderbolt is just plain better than USB3.0; downsides do include lack of backwards compatibility, and that may prove to be its biggest obstacle, but to argue that "USB3.0 is good enough" is just wrong.
As for price, USB3.0 has been out for about a year now, with Thunderbolt only having rolled off the shelves-- and this, only in Apples computers so far-- a few months ago. Right now, on newegg, im only seeing USB3.0 on highend multi-hundred-dollar motherboards, so it seems to be a wash in that regard.
Its way too early to tell, and anyone saying otherwise is full of it.
I did a deployment on thinclients in a public computer "cafe" for low-income housing folks. They apparently cannot tolerate OpenOffice either, and so we are doing an upgrade. This was 2 years ago, and the "replace openoffice" order came in a few months ago. This is with the most recent LibreOffice.
It is a compaq that someone gave me. Being the resident Geek for a lot of my friends, I get old laptops from families all the time and so havent felt a compelling desire to purchase my own. I just fix them up, give them away, and use whatever's left (all I care about is remote access software and a web browser).
So it does matter to me which OS uses how much memory, because I never know what POS laptop i will be using next.
Relying on Windows | Linux graphical drivers et al to be functional-- along with all the other unnecessary-to-math- cruft that comes along with the OS-- in order to do calculations doesnt seem like its less reliable than an embedded single-purpose OS? Or perhaps that it might be slower and clunkier to shoehorn switching between functions in the math program onto the general purpose OS?