I know what you mean. My wife is going to buy a laptop next month and if she decides to stay on a PC, I will no longer provide her with assistance.
I said this to my girlfriend, and she knew that I wasn't kidding. It is not that I don't love her, but spending time fixing someone elses computer because it is damn near impossible to make it avoid being screwed up, i not preferable.
She went for the iBook 14", and has found a new meaning in computers. Her family still has what has to be te world's slowest Pentium II, it is so slow I can literally make a small dinner while it boots. Support time spent on iBook since purchase: 1 hour (installing wireless printing to an unsupported HP printer, includes the time I had to google the soulution). Support time spent on W2K machine:18+ hours (Fixing spyware, support of firewall settings, updating, running virus checks). And yes, I do keep track of the time, since mine is not free.
This has really made me realise that while nothing is perfect, somethings do free up time for more valuable things in life.
So what sound does it make when you try to play an ogg file?
Hey, Joe Consumer called. He left a message: "I have no idea what you are talking about and futher down the road, I don't care".
Not a flame, just the truth. There is very, very, very little use in adding support for something like 100 000 persons (including me) use on a regular basis.
And iriver sucks ass. I have tested a couple of them. They have bad interface, ugly design and flat sound. Uploads? My iPod does that. In several ways, in fact. Photo album? Sure thing.
No way the Slashdot subscription is the best way to read the article before it gets slashdotted
See the star next to my name? It won't be there for long since I discovered that I have already read 5/6ths of the stories before the ever get on Slashdot, much lesss gett Slashdotted.
Dude, that guy has never even heard of FireWire. He thinks that a $499 Dell comes with a DVD burner, 80 GB harddrive and the r4dest graphics card on the market. He is a loser, much like Dvorak who has megapixel blindness and don't know what a lens is.
With bittorrent you do however DISTRIBUTE the stuff you're downloading. That's one of the points of the system.
Nope. I am an ex-law student. The precendence for this is that small-part distribution is LEGAL as i falls under the quotation part of the copyright law. The unofficial estimate lies around max 10% a work if it is non-commercial.
And to the person saying I sabotage BitTorrent, no, I just keep it legal.
And my view is still not confused. I did something I was allowed to do, and someone just managed to piss off a fan by denying me what I am allowed to do.
You're obviously trolling, but I can't let an incorrect fact be used against me like that. You see, here in Norway it is LEGAL to download music. flims etc. Thelocal MPA(of Norway) had to change their tune in posters plastered around the cinemas to "it is a crime to spread movies" instead of "it is a crime to download movies" which would have been more logical. BTW, how retarded is it to advertise with posters like that towards an audience that are willing to pay 9 dollars to watch a movie and commercials?
So my outlook isn't "confused", it is in fact fully compliant with local law. When I use BitTorrent, i never let the upload go over 10% because I don't want to break the law.
How am I going to watch Enterprise now? No TV channel in Norway sends it, nor do they have any plans to send it. I buy the DVDs. I watch the movies. And then they fuck people over by removing my only way of watching it before it comes to DVD?
Sony, seem to completely lose it when it comes to cell-phones (in Sony's case, they seem to be partnering with Ericson, so perhaps it's the latter's fault).
Well, Sony had fricking awfully designed mobile phones before they teamed up with Ericsson. Sony Ericsson is a really good example of a product merger gone the right way. Ericsson has all that AND a bag of chips when it comes to telecommunications and mobile phones, but theyr design was outdated since they didn't believe that anyone other than business people wanted to buy mobiles, so they got shafted by Nokias youth-inspired phones. Sony knows how to make something stylish and chuck it full of features. The result is, very cool. A phone that has the most features from Sony and takes a hard beating like a real Ericsson phone.
Ok, I have to say that the statement is dead right. As a Linux guy, some of the real downsides with the whole Linux community is thee tendency towards arrogant newvie attitudes. I was a newbie once, and someof the gall I got was pretty hard, almost to the point of giving up. As a result I'd rather google for days than asking a question in a forum.
But the Apple discussion forums really, really shines. Seriously. It is like a tech forum should be: friendly, well organised and easely searchble. I have found a lot of answers there and now I give back. And newbies always get a "welcome to us, [name]" before an answer or pointer to an answer. Actually, it is one of the features from Apple that I like the most.
I think it has something to do with the number of records (albums + EPs) that U2 has released, "HOWTO Dismantle an atomic bomb" being the 14th. Not sure, but I sure as hell reacted when I first heard the count up.:)
Hehe... Close. I didn't say bummer, it was more like: You [fornicating] piece of dog[feces]. Burn in [Dante's place], [male genitalia]sucking, [deity]-damned [female genitalia, ryhmes with 'bunt'].
I know you were able to pull out some discs and fix the error but nevertheless the update did render your computer unusable.
For twenty minutes. That, my friend is not a shafting of your computer. The most catastrophic failure of an OS, besides erasing the user data, occured and the machine was up and running again in twenty minutes. I think that says a lot about the simplicity of the system. The procedure to restore the system was a simple three-step procedure too boot, easily done via phone. Without destroying the system like in Dell computers. I don't know if they're like that still, but a pal got so tired of it, he bought a separate drive for user data on his Dell.
I'm not going to pull in the friend-factor too much at this time, just some observations on what the consequences are for me. After two of the three persons I deliver unofficial computer support to (i.e. everything from ISP issues to hardisk failures) converted to Mac, there is only one person who still calls me for help. The two others never need any help. More than anything, this is the point that convinced me. They simply get along with the computer. The last 'support' call was about a frozen iPod mini. The issue was resolved and the iPod rebooted.
As you see, I don't argue that Apple and its products are perfect. But they are very easy to use, relatively cheap and quite sturdy. Also, they keep their value a lot better than other computers, and that gives me an edge in the upgrade cycle.
You admit that they might be a good alternative in a lot of situations, but not all. Of course I agree to that, nothing is perfect in everything. But this system is dead-easy to use, very intuitive, has a strong user base, extremely good *nix support for professionals. There aren't a lot of areas this system wouldn't fit in. Lately, I have undertood why so many in the IT business don't like Apple. They are afraid of downsizing. Quick example: at work we do IT. The programmers, designers use Mac OS X, since they pick and maintain their own systems. The rest of us, have to use IS' XP solution. One member of the IS group has even stated that the latest worm attack was caused by a Mac program (An w2k worm), and the boss asked me if that was true because if it was we would have to ban Macs. I told him that it was a blatant lie and showed the proof. He then askedhow many viruses and worms there were for Mac, and got a bit slack-jawed when I said None for Mac OS X.
For me, the fact that other people I know use them gives me more free time and less irritating phonecalls. Now I can pick up the phone and know that it most likely isn't a call for help. I have also discovered the joy of computing again, and that is important to me.
I have to say, it sounds like a stupid requirement. I study social scinences, so an equvalent for me would like; "Come up with a ten point working plan for peace in the middle east"
It is discussed in the Apple forums, here's a fix:
-quote- The 10.3.6 update left a zero byte/etc/ttys on my G5, luckily there is also a ttys.applesaved which contains the line that getty needs to start the Login Window application:
console "/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Cont ents/MacOS/loginwindow" vt100 on secure window=/System/Library/CoreServices/WindowServer onoption="/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"
I was able to login with ssh to copy the file, but you could do this in single user mode as well (startup with CMND-S)
sudo cp/etc/ttys.applesaved/etc/ttys
-quote-
If you give me your mail address, I can mail you a copy of my ttys file, I'm on a PowerBook.
But here's the point: it didn't shaft my computer. Everything was working right after the error was corrected, it was like the error never occurred. I have never claimed that the Mac OS is perfect. It has error and the developers screw up from time to time. But when the error has occurred, it is usually very, very easy to fix and widely discussed by Apple fans raving over 30 minutes downtime on their laptop.
For the record, here's what I believe about Apple: they are a corporation. They have shareholders and need to cater to their shareholders like every other share-based company. However, they seem to put more work into their product than similar companies. Their computers look nice. Their computers are sturdy. Their OS is nice to use. They contribute to the Open Source community. And most important; currently they are an underdog that has to fight to convince people about their products. This makes for better products.
I hated Macs in the mid 90ies. I thought that they were buggy, childish and a pain to use. Then Jobs came along and introduced the iMac. I liked the ideas about all-USB and no disk drive, thinking "it's about time". But the OS still sucked. Big time. Then came OS X, especially in its second incarnation. Holy hell. The power of *nix AND a desktop you can look at without thinking "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood is the current #1 hit? And it plays better with Windows computers than they play among themselves?
I was convinced and dropped Linux for Mac. I am now a Mac fan, since I have so many good experiences with the Mac, Mac OS and Apple. They are very professional and that is a big issue with me. I hate having to call Dell three or four times to solve an issue that is clearly under warranty. I hate it when a computer is not ready to be used by me, its owner at any time. I hate downtime and issues. With Apple, I have had excellent customer experience, it is a robust system that has proven a catastrophic failure is easy to recover from. So easy in fact that it required three user actions (Insert disc, press command - C during start up, choose 'Archive and install') to recover and have the user settings intact, the computer settings intact, the registration on bought programs intact, everything as it should be. I did computer support for Windows around 2001, and I felt it was something wrong with the system when the callers had to wipe their harddrives to reinstall from OEM discs. This was not the way a computer should work. With the Mac I feel that it is a tool for me to use, like a hammer. Not a veteran car that needs constant attention and tuning just to fulfill its primary obejctive.
But, above all, I do not believe that Apple is perfect in any way. They ar just currently the best alternative by far.
Usually, yes. I have yet to install a driver on my PowerBook. Every printer I have dried to connect to has been automatically found on the network and installed, every weird-ass camera connected has just showed up in iPhoto to import the images. The bluetooth mouse worked on the first try. The Microsoft Bluetooth adapter that refused to work on Norwegian XP SP1 (Since the drivers wouldn't load on the Norwegian edition) worked out of the box on an iBook. I have had two instances where it didn't just work. One was a weird-ass printer in my girlfriend's flat, it required a download of some open source drivers. The other is that there is no support for the Microsoft fingerprint scanner that I got to test from Microsoft.
iTunes doesn't play.ogg files (not without tweaking anyhow)
Itunes does play ogg. It even has a file icon for ogg, and many rumor mongers among the Apple fan base suspect that ogg support will be native in iTunes soon. Not on the iPod, but that's another issue. The ogg support is done via plugin, but if you want, there's a really kick-ass application called Audion that does a lot more than iTunes. One of the best music players, regardless of platform.
Appleworks doesn't cut it for me
Me neither.
I'm not about to pay a kazillion $ to MS to use Office, I'll have to install OpenOffice
I have to say, MS Office for Mac is really slick. Using Office 2000 on Windows when I'm at work now feels like I'm writing on cave walls with deer-blood as paint. Lots of nifty and well though through features that actually are useful. Like a toolbox that fades away so you see only the actual paper you are writing until you need the toolbox, then it fades in. Very non-clutter like.
As for OpenOffice, I used it on Linux before I switched to Mac. I liked it, but it really feels old compared to Office on Mac. Very, very, very old. The experience I had with it on Linux was that it was extremely slow. I think this has been fixed, and there is an very active effort to get the Mac version native. It now runs under the X11 subsystem (Another cool thing with the MacOS X).
I can tell you how I got into Macs. My mother got a budget for buying a new computer, printer and accessories to use when she edited an online magazine. She had a horrible AST Windows 98 computer that constantly locked up (And it costed me a term paper when it was W95 when i accidentally hit the 'sleep' button on the keyboard that actually crashes W95). Having long since moved out, I was looking for something that needed little attention from my side, and I advised her to by an iBook, after strong recommendation from a photographer friend.
The ibook was ordered and set up. Everything worked, right out of the box. There was a program for the Agfa Snapscan I donated and the Logitech wireless two-button mouse worked without any thing other than plugging it in (and syncing it with the base). The number of family support-calls went down from four-five a week to every other week. Now, this is remarkable. The Mac had so few issues, that I just needed to have a look at it every six months doing routine maintenance like repairing permissions, checking that everything works as planned. Updates go ahead automatically every week. I have had one problem with the updates, but that's it.
Then my GF was out to buy a new laptop. I told her that if she got a Windows computer, I would not help her when something went wrong. I'm tired of being the person everyone calls at 22:00 because the term paper went away or the internet connection is down. She got an iBook, and loves it dearly. It seems that persons not familiar with computers see the Mac hardware as a companion, a work mate more than a cold tool that you sometimes have to fight with.
Some friends that run a company said they would take my advice and buy Macs next time they were going to upgrade. Macs pl
Same here. I have a 15" PowerBook, I got 2h 30min running everything on, full speed and full brightness. After the update I get 3h with the same specs? Wow!I wonder what I get after dimming the screen all the way down.
Things can go south with Apple as well. As I mentioned in this topic, I got a/etc/ttys file overwritten after the latest security uodate, and the system just hung on reboot at the "starting logon window" notice.
Now, as the shit had hit the fan, I was without computer as I oly have the Apple Powerbook. I tried everything I knew, but to no avail. If I had access to another computer, I'd known that the file was overwritten by mistake and restorable from the ttys.applesaved file. Also, the system would start up in single user mode to correct this problem. But I didn't know.
Anyhoo, I decided to do a Archive and Install type from the 10.3 DVD that was included with the PB. I was prepared to spend the rest of the evening restoring settings and loading programs, but, I was stumped after the install. Everything was at its right place, spare for the wallpaper. Even the document I saved just before rebooting was on the desktop. Every setting, everything was as I remembered it, but the whole system was brand new 10.3 from 10.3.6. Incredible, but a part of the *nix goodness of keeping settings apart from the system on a user base.
There were two minor SNAFUs with the rollback, I could not start System Preferences from the Apple menu and I had to reinstall Salling Clicker (But it even understood that I had bought and registered the program after install). A quick lookup in the Apple Discussion boards adviced me to chick the old saved system in the thrash and empty it, I did and the System Prefrences menu worked.
This was something quite different from the time when I had to reinstall Windows 2k to restore the system from some b0rkness...
MacOS amazes me, but not as much as peoples resistance to it amazes me.
Slashdot Mirror
Hotmail also went from a subsrciption base of 9 million in 1998 to over 100 million in 2001 while they switched over.
:P
Yeah, and 100 of them are my spam-accounts!
the Apple II and Macintosh put the billions in the bank so Apple could do things like, say, the iPod.
...? But some of it will be shown on jan. 11th.
And now the iPod give Apple the billions to do...
I know what you mean. My wife is going to buy a laptop next month and if she decides to stay on a PC, I will no longer provide her with assistance.
I said this to my girlfriend, and she knew that I wasn't kidding. It is not that I don't love her, but spending time fixing someone elses computer because it is damn near impossible to make it avoid being screwed up, i not preferable.
She went for the iBook 14", and has found a new meaning in computers. Her family still has what has to be te world's slowest Pentium II, it is so slow I can literally make a small dinner while it boots. Support time spent on iBook since purchase: 1 hour (installing wireless printing to an unsupported HP printer, includes the time I had to google the soulution). Support time spent on W2K machine:18+ hours (Fixing spyware, support of firewall settings, updating, running virus checks). And yes, I do keep track of the time, since mine is not free.
This has really made me realise that while nothing is perfect, somethings do free up time for more valuable things in life.
The same article was published with pictures here!
So what sound does it make when you try to play an ogg file?
Hey, Joe Consumer called. He left a message: "I have no idea what you are talking about and futher down the road, I don't care".
Not a flame, just the truth. There is very, very, very little use in adding support for something like 100 000 persons (including me) use on a regular basis.
And iriver sucks ass. I have tested a couple of them. They have bad interface, ugly design and flat sound. Uploads? My iPod does that. In several ways, in fact. Photo album? Sure thing.
No way the Slashdot subscription is the best way to read the article before it gets slashdotted
See the star next to my name? It won't be there for long since I discovered that I have already read 5/6ths of the stories before the ever get on Slashdot, much lesss gett Slashdotted.
My last subscription at Slashdot for sure.
I guess he's never heard of burning CD's.
Dude, that guy has never even heard of FireWire. He thinks that a $499 Dell comes with a DVD burner, 80 GB harddrive and the r4dest graphics card on the market. He is a loser, much like Dvorak who has megapixel blindness and don't know what a lens is.
With bittorrent you do however DISTRIBUTE the stuff you're downloading. That's one of the points of the system.
Nope. I am an ex-law student. The precendence for this is that small-part distribution is LEGAL as i falls under the quotation part of the copyright law. The unofficial estimate lies around max 10% a work if it is non-commercial.
And to the person saying I sabotage BitTorrent, no, I just keep it legal.
And my view is still not confused. I did something I was allowed to do, and someone just managed to piss off a fan by denying me what I am allowed to do.
You have no right to download stuff
You're obviously trolling, but I can't let an incorrect fact be used against me like that. You see, here in Norway it is LEGAL to download music. flims etc. Thelocal MPA(of Norway) had to change their tune in posters plastered around the cinemas to "it is a crime to spread movies" instead of "it is a crime to download movies" which would have been more logical. BTW, how retarded is it to advertise with posters like that towards an audience that are willing to pay 9 dollars to watch a movie and commercials?
So my outlook isn't "confused", it is in fact fully compliant with local law. When I use BitTorrent, i never let the upload go over 10% because I don't want to break the law.
How am I going to watch Enterprise now? No TV channel in Norway sends it, nor do they have any plans to send it. I buy the DVDs. I watch the movies. And then they fuck people over by removing my only way of watching it before it comes to DVD?
And, no, I don't have access to Swedish channels.
Sony, seem to completely lose it when it comes to cell-phones (in Sony's case, they seem to be partnering with Ericson, so perhaps it's the latter's fault).
Well, Sony had fricking awfully designed mobile phones before they teamed up with Ericsson. Sony Ericsson is a really good example of a product merger gone the right way. Ericsson has all that AND a bag of chips when it comes to telecommunications and mobile phones, but theyr design was outdated since they didn't believe that anyone other than business people wanted to buy mobiles, so they got shafted by Nokias youth-inspired phones. Sony knows how to make something stylish and chuck it full of features. The result is, very cool. A phone that has the most features from Sony and takes a hard beating like a real Ericsson phone.
Apple should have teamed up with Sony Ericsson.
Ok, I have to say that the statement is dead right. As a Linux guy, some of the real downsides with the whole Linux community is thee tendency towards arrogant newvie attitudes. I was a newbie once, and someof the gall I got was pretty hard, almost to the point of giving up. As a result I'd rather google for days than asking a question in a forum.
But the Apple discussion forums really, really shines. Seriously. It is like a tech forum should be: friendly, well organised and easely searchble. I have found a lot of answers there and now I give back. And newbies always get a "welcome to us, [name]" before an answer or pointer to an answer. Actually, it is one of the features from Apple that I like the most.
I think it has something to do with the number of records (albums + EPs) that U2 has released, "HOWTO Dismantle an atomic bomb" being the 14th. Not sure, but I sure as hell reacted when I first heard the count up. :)
Hehe... Close. I didn't say bummer, it was more like: You [fornicating] piece of dog[feces]. Burn in [Dante's place], [male genitalia]sucking, [deity]-damned [female genitalia, ryhmes with 'bunt'].
I know you were able to pull out some discs and fix the error but nevertheless the update did render your computer unusable.
For twenty minutes. That, my friend is not a shafting of your computer. The most catastrophic failure of an OS, besides erasing the user data, occured and the machine was up and running again in twenty minutes. I think that says a lot about the simplicity of the system. The procedure to restore the system was a simple three-step procedure too boot, easily done via phone. Without destroying the system like in Dell computers. I don't know if they're like that still, but a pal got so tired of it, he bought a separate drive for user data on his Dell.
I'm not going to pull in the friend-factor too much at this time, just some observations on what the consequences are for me. After two of the three persons I deliver unofficial computer support to (i.e. everything from ISP issues to hardisk failures) converted to Mac, there is only one person who still calls me for help. The two others never need any help. More than anything, this is the point that convinced me. They simply get along with the computer. The last 'support' call was about a frozen iPod mini. The issue was resolved and the iPod rebooted.
As you see, I don't argue that Apple and its products are perfect. But they are very easy to use, relatively cheap and quite sturdy. Also, they keep their value a lot better than other computers, and that gives me an edge in the upgrade cycle.
You admit that they might be a good alternative in a lot of situations, but not all. Of course I agree to that, nothing is perfect in everything. But this system is dead-easy to use, very intuitive, has a strong user base, extremely good *nix support for professionals. There aren't a lot of areas this system wouldn't fit in. Lately, I have undertood why so many in the IT business don't like Apple. They are afraid of downsizing. Quick example: at work we do IT. The programmers, designers use Mac OS X, since they pick and maintain their own systems. The rest of us, have to use IS' XP solution. One member of the IS group has even stated that the latest worm attack was caused by a Mac program (An w2k worm), and the boss asked me if that was true because if it was we would have to ban Macs. I told him that it was a blatant lie and showed the proof. He then askedhow many viruses and worms there were for Mac, and got a bit slack-jawed when I said None for Mac OS X.
For me, the fact that other people I know use them gives me more free time and less irritating phonecalls. Now I can pick up the phone and know that it most likely isn't a call for help.
I have also discovered the joy of computing again, and that is important to me.
That is probably the last place left where I actually use paper.
No more CD buying. I skip a lot of paper an plastic that way.
We're not blaming DJB for our failure
I have to say, it sounds like a stupid requirement. I study social scinences, so an equvalent for me would like; "Come up with a ten point working plan for peace in the middle east"
It is discussed in the Apple forums, here's a fix:
/etc/ttys on my G5, luckily there is also a ttys.applesaved which contains the line that getty needs to start the Login Window application:
t ents/MacOS/loginwindow" vt100 on secure window=/System/Library/CoreServices/WindowServer onoption="/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"
/etc/ttys.applesaved /etc/ttys
-quote-
The 10.3.6 update left a zero byte
console "/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Con
I was able to login with ssh to copy the file, but you could do this in single user mode as well (startup with CMND-S)
sudo cp
-quote-
If you give me your mail address, I can mail you a copy of my ttys file, I'm on a PowerBook.
But here's the point: it didn't shaft my computer. Everything was working right after the error was corrected, it was like the error never occurred. I have never claimed that the Mac OS is perfect. It has error and the developers screw up from time to time. But when the error has occurred, it is usually very, very easy to fix and widely discussed by Apple fans raving over 30 minutes downtime on their laptop.
For the record, here's what I believe about Apple: they are a corporation. They have shareholders and need to cater to their shareholders like every other share-based company. However, they seem to put more work into their product than similar companies. Their computers look nice. Their computers are sturdy. Their OS is nice to use. They contribute to the Open Source community. And most important; currently they are an underdog that has to fight to convince people about their products. This makes for better products.
I hated Macs in the mid 90ies. I thought that they were buggy, childish and a pain to use. Then Jobs came along and introduced the iMac. I liked the ideas about all-USB and no disk drive, thinking "it's about time". But the OS still sucked. Big time. Then came OS X, especially in its second incarnation. Holy hell. The power of *nix AND a desktop you can look at without thinking "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood is the current #1 hit? And it plays better with Windows computers than they play among themselves?
I was convinced and dropped Linux for Mac. I am now a Mac fan, since I have so many good experiences with the Mac, Mac OS and Apple. They are very professional and that is a big issue with me. I hate having to call Dell three or four times to solve an issue that is clearly under warranty. I hate it when a computer is not ready to be used by me, its owner at any time. I hate downtime and issues. With Apple, I have had excellent customer experience, it is a robust system that has proven a catastrophic failure is easy to recover from. So easy in fact that it required three user actions (Insert disc, press command - C during start up, choose 'Archive and install') to recover and have the user settings intact, the computer settings intact, the registration on bought programs intact, everything as it should be. I did computer support for Windows around 2001, and I felt it was something wrong with the system when the callers had to wipe their harddrives to reinstall from OEM discs. This was not the way a computer should work. With the Mac I feel that it is a tool for me to use, like a hammer. Not a veteran car that needs constant attention and tuning just to fulfill its primary obejctive.
But, above all, I do not believe that Apple is perfect in any way. They ar just currently the best alternative by far.
I have given up on paper. I use so little paper, the trees sent me fan e-mail!
Seriously, I have stopped getting bills in the mailbox. They send the bills to my electronic bank and I get a notification over e-mail.
All the papers I have written at the uni has been written, edited and delivered electronically.
I work as an online journalist, all the work is done on the screen.
I don't read paper-papers, only at work when we publish the contents of todays paper-paper online.
I have stopped all advertisments from being delivered.
I buy music in Music Store.
I do live the paperless life.
I'll address every topic in order:
.ogg files (not without tweaking anyhow)
Does it really Just Works(TM)?
Usually, yes. I have yet to install a driver on my PowerBook. Every printer I have dried to connect to has been automatically found on the network and installed, every weird-ass camera connected has just showed up in iPhoto to import the images. The bluetooth mouse worked on the first try. The Microsoft Bluetooth adapter that refused to work on Norwegian XP SP1 (Since the drivers wouldn't load on the Norwegian edition) worked out of the box on an iBook.
I have had two instances where it didn't just work. One was a weird-ass printer in my girlfriend's flat, it required a download of some open source drivers. The other is that there is no support for the Microsoft fingerprint scanner that I got to test from Microsoft.
iTunes doesn't play
Itunes does play ogg. It even has a file icon for ogg, and many rumor mongers among the Apple fan base suspect that ogg support will be native in iTunes soon. Not on the iPod, but that's another issue. The ogg support is done via plugin, but if you want, there's a really kick-ass application called Audion that does a lot more than iTunes. One of the best music players, regardless of platform.
Appleworks doesn't cut it for me
Me neither.
I'm not about to pay a kazillion $ to MS to use Office, I'll have to install OpenOffice
I have to say, MS Office for Mac is really slick. Using Office 2000 on Windows when I'm at work now feels like I'm writing on cave walls with deer-blood as paint. Lots of nifty and well though through features that actually are useful. Like a toolbox that fades away so you see only the actual paper you are writing until you need the toolbox, then it fades in. Very non-clutter like.
As for OpenOffice, I used it on Linux before I switched to Mac. I liked it, but it really feels old compared to Office on Mac. Very, very, very old. The experience I had with it on Linux was that it was extremely slow. I think this has been fixed, and there is an very active effort to get the Mac version native. It now runs under the X11 subsystem (Another cool thing with the MacOS X).
I can tell you how I got into Macs. My mother got a budget for buying a new computer, printer and accessories to use when she edited an online magazine. She had a horrible AST Windows 98 computer that constantly locked up (And it costed me a term paper when it was W95 when i accidentally hit the 'sleep' button on the keyboard that actually crashes W95). Having long since moved out, I was looking for something that needed little attention from my side, and I advised her to by an iBook, after strong recommendation from a photographer friend.
The ibook was ordered and set up. Everything worked, right out of the box. There was a program for the Agfa Snapscan I donated and the Logitech wireless two-button mouse worked without any thing other than plugging it in (and syncing it with the base). The number of family support-calls went down from four-five a week to every other week. Now, this is remarkable. The Mac had so few issues, that I just needed to have a look at it every six months doing routine maintenance like repairing permissions, checking that everything works as planned. Updates go ahead automatically every week. I have had one problem with the updates, but that's it.
Then my GF was out to buy a new laptop. I told her that if she got a Windows computer, I would not help her when something went wrong. I'm tired of being the person everyone calls at 22:00 because the term paper went away or the internet connection is down. She got an iBook, and loves it dearly. It seems that persons not familiar with computers see the Mac hardware as a companion, a work mate more than a cold tool that you sometimes have to fight with.
Some friends that run a company said they would take my advice and buy Macs next time they were going to upgrade. Macs pl
a) Checked before and after update
b) Disk checked the week before, no errors
c) Journaling is on and always has been
I have never experienced an error witht the updates before, but one time has got to be the first. And this was the first for me.
Same here. I have a 15" PowerBook, I got 2h 30min running everything on, full speed and full brightness. After the update I get 3h with the same specs? Wow!I wonder what I get after dimming the screen all the way down.
Things can go south with Apple as well. As I mentioned in this topic, I got a /etc/ttys file overwritten after the latest security uodate, and the system just hung on reboot at the "starting logon window" notice.
Now, as the shit had hit the fan, I was without computer as I oly have the Apple Powerbook. I tried everything I knew, but to no avail. If I had access to another computer, I'd known that the file was overwritten by mistake and restorable from the ttys.applesaved file. Also, the system would start up in single user mode to correct this problem. But I didn't know.
Anyhoo, I decided to do a Archive and Install type from the 10.3 DVD that was included with the PB. I was prepared to spend the rest of the evening restoring settings and loading programs, but, I was stumped after the install. Everything was at its right place, spare for the wallpaper. Even the document I saved just before rebooting was on the desktop. Every setting, everything was as I remembered it, but the whole system was brand new 10.3 from 10.3.6. Incredible, but a part of the *nix goodness of keeping settings apart from the system on a user base.
There were two minor SNAFUs with the rollback, I could not start System Preferences from the Apple menu and I had to reinstall Salling Clicker (But it even understood that I had bought and registered the program after install). A quick lookup in the Apple Discussion boards adviced me to chick the old saved system in the thrash and empty it, I did and the System Prefrences menu worked.
This was something quite different from the time when I had to reinstall Windows 2k to restore the system from some b0rkness...
MacOS amazes me, but not as much as peoples resistance to it amazes me.