Yet he died after making more of an impact on several massive industries (film, music, computing) than you ever will. He wasn't too bad off in terms of money, either. So what does that make you?
Its a bit of a mix. If you are profit driven and already have good products, you'll be fine until the products are superseded by something else that is more attractive.
This is where apple was between say 1984 and 1997 - gradually sliding downhill with no direction in a race to the bottom - and losing.
However... Eventually, you need to put quarterly earnings calls aside, and figure out how to make something people don't even know they want, rather than race to the bottom against everyone else building an ever cheaper version of X. Thats a race that nobody wins, so don't be in that race.
The whole point is that the apple advantages are generally subjective because thats what the company focuses on. How things feel to use, how they look, etc.
If you're going to get into a pissing contest about how brand X machine has a cpu that is 2ghz faster or a price that is 15% cheaper then you're missing the point. No, apple will never win that comparison, and thats not why or how their machines are built. And in the real world, wanking over 5-10% difference in spec sheet numbers achieves nothing either.
On paper spec has much less influence on how pleasant a machine is to actually use than various other design decisions, such as whether the trackpad actually works properly, whether the line-in/mic ports actually work properly, how good the colour reproduction is, whether the machine feels like it is made of cheese and about to fall apart, etc.
If those things mean nothing to you, go ahead and buy your cheap clone. For some people the difference in cost is worth the difference in subjective feel to use. I would personally happily pay an extra 200 dollars to get an apple trackpad on my PC laptop, for example.
99.9% of people will not be able to tell the difference between a 2.0 and 2.2ghz machine or one with 2 or 8mb of cache. They will certainly notice things like the track pad being a pain in the arse to use or running 1366x768 screen res on a 16 inch display.
If i have to carry a mouse/keyboard around with me to make my laptop usable (as per many cheap shitty PC laptops - the vast majority have a trackpad that is junk) then it's no longer really a usable laptop.
If i get 2 hours of battery life, then its no longer a usable laptop.
If i need to plug into an external display to get a usable screen resolution, its no longer a usable laptop.
Except linux on the desktop does not work. I've been trying it and getting shat off with the effort required since 1996. One day you'll realise the time wasted isn't worth it, also.
Because apple don't innovate anything. Except for all the shit we want to rip off with custom single menu spins of ubuntu, their website design, their app store, etc.
The thread is currently all apple love because (ding ding), linux is not a credible alternative to what he currently has, for the usage patterns/requirements stated.
So you can kill your battery life, for what? OS X is unix enough for me, Linux brings nothing to to table AT ALL on mac hardware, other than making open-source zealots feel warm and fuzzy.
we're a former dell shop here and id have to say steer clear of dell. yes their warranty support is decent, but you need to claim is so fucking often it is ridiculous. we were getting 20% DOA failure rate before we shit-canned them, and at least a 30-35% failure rate in teh first 12-18 months. Dell latitude E series machines make up perhaps half of our current fleet, and we have the local dell support guys out so often we're on a first name basis with a number of their techs.
since switching to hp elitebooks, which the internet would have you believe are not great, our failure rate has gone down to 1-2 machines in the past 150, over 12 months.
I've also yet to see anyone other than apple who can make a trackpad worth shit. I love the trackpad on my MBP so much I bought a magic trackpad for when i have it on my desk, to go with the full size keyboard. I consider the trackpad alone to be worth any price premium over "comparable" notebook hardware.
And this is the problem: vendor blames microsoft. microsoft blames vendor. you're left on hold for hours dealing with the shit. Linux dev blames hardware vendor, hardware vendor doesn't give a fuck. At least with apple gear you have a SINGLE source to hound for broken shit. You still may be unsuccessful in getting a fix, but at least you know who to be hassling.
The app store is an OPTION intended for people who want to be fully sure that the app they are downloading has been vetted, is sandboxed, and is safe. For grandma/peopel who aren't or don't want to be security experts, this is an excellent idea.
the option to compile your own shit and install software from other sources is not going anywhere.
Ditto for a PC trackpad. I've had issues with the trackpad on every dell since 2001, the HP elitebook series, etc. I have no issues using my mac trackpad, because apple knows how to make one that actually fucking works.
Try using a mac trackpad for a week then go back to a PC notebook.
That's worth several hundred dollars alone in my book. If i have to carry a fucking mouse everywhere to get shit done without wanting to stab people, its not a fucking laptop anymore.
Agreed with the above. I've been using/trialling Linux on and off on laptop hardware since about 2000, and it has never been a complete solution. Power regressions, wifi issues, backup (nothing comes close to time machine for ease of use), no IPSEC/L2TP vpn support out of the box, etc.
Use the correct tool for the job. OS X will give you a unix shell (and associated command line goodies) for stuff that needs it, a C compiler for compiling tools that aren't included, etc. You will get proper hardware and software on said hardware support from apple.
Trying to make Linux work on a laptop is like trying to hammer nails with your mobile phone - much like trying to use OS X as a database server or . It might work, but its not an efficient use of time or resources.
If its purely to try and move to open source, try it - but be prepared to spend a decent amount of time making things work, and dealing with stuff thats not quite seamless.
If you want something that (for lack of a better description) "just works" that is reasonably priced, maybe go for a macbook air? They scream, work well and are not expensive.
And before it starts: yes, most people do not have public IP space available to run their entire lan on IPV4 public IP any more. Hence, your only option is NAT. This is not because NAT is a good idea if IPs are plentiful - IPv6 will fix this problem.
The only reason to use NAT is if you have no public IP space available and you KNOW that you never want to run services exposed to the internet. There is ZERO advantage for security and in fact if you are running IPSEC, NAT breaks things fairly badly, and NAT traversal to try and undo some of the brain damage is LESS SECURE than straight IPSEC without NAT-T. NAT is not a firewall and people need to stop believing it is one.
5ghz doesn't go through solid objects as well. I too noticed better wifi signal when ugpgrading from a netgear AP to an airport EXPRESS running on 2.4ghz only. I put it down to the hardware simply being better - or wireless N (old router didn't support N) being better in general.
Exactly. Lower frequency travels through walls better. 5ghz only advantages are less contention for frequency as it is new, and your microwave doesn't interfere with it (as much if at all).
Slashdot Mirror
Yet he died after making more of an impact on several massive industries (film, music, computing) than you ever will. He wasn't too bad off in terms of money, either. So what does that make you?
Its a bit of a mix. If you are profit driven and already have good products, you'll be fine until the products are superseded by something else that is more attractive.
This is where apple was between say 1984 and 1997 - gradually sliding downhill with no direction in a race to the bottom - and losing.
However... Eventually, you need to put quarterly earnings calls aside, and figure out how to make something people don't even know they want, rather than race to the bottom against everyone else building an ever cheaper version of X. Thats a race that nobody wins, so don't be in that race.
The whole point is that the apple advantages are generally subjective because thats what the company focuses on. How things feel to use, how they look, etc.
If you're going to get into a pissing contest about how brand X machine has a cpu that is 2ghz faster or a price that is 15% cheaper then you're missing the point. No, apple will never win that comparison, and thats not why or how their machines are built. And in the real world, wanking over 5-10% difference in spec sheet numbers achieves nothing either.
On paper spec has much less influence on how pleasant a machine is to actually use than various other design decisions, such as whether the trackpad actually works properly, whether the line-in/mic ports actually work properly, how good the colour reproduction is, whether the machine feels like it is made of cheese and about to fall apart, etc.
If those things mean nothing to you, go ahead and buy your cheap clone. For some people the difference in cost is worth the difference in subjective feel to use. I would personally happily pay an extra 200 dollars to get an apple trackpad on my PC laptop, for example.
99.9% of people will not be able to tell the difference between a 2.0 and 2.2ghz machine or one with 2 or 8mb of cache. They will certainly notice things like the track pad being a pain in the arse to use or running 1366x768 screen res on a 16 inch display.
If i have to carry a mouse/keyboard around with me to make my laptop usable (as per many cheap shitty PC laptops - the vast majority have a trackpad that is junk) then it's no longer really a usable laptop.
If i get 2 hours of battery life, then its no longer a usable laptop.
If i need to plug into an external display to get a usable screen resolution, its no longer a usable laptop.
Kernel source is available.
Except linux on the desktop does not work. I've been trying it and getting shat off with the effort required since 1996. One day you'll realise the time wasted isn't worth it, also.
Because apple don't innovate anything. Except for all the shit we want to rip off with custom single menu spins of ubuntu, their website design, their app store, etc.
Have we forgotten the Sony rootkit fiasco, the geohot fiasco, the psn hack, and the general "fuck you" attitude towards the customer?
The thread is currently all apple love because (ding ding), linux is not a credible alternative to what he currently has, for the usage patterns/requirements stated.
So you can kill your battery life, for what? OS X is unix enough for me, Linux brings nothing to to table AT ALL on mac hardware, other than making open-source zealots feel warm and fuzzy.
You can plug in a full sized apple keyboard, or a PC keyboard to get those keys back. The laptop keyboard is a trade-off.
we're a former dell shop here and id have to say steer clear of dell. yes their warranty support is decent, but you need to claim is so fucking often it is ridiculous. we were getting 20% DOA failure rate before we shit-canned them, and at least a 30-35% failure rate in teh first 12-18 months. Dell latitude E series machines make up perhaps half of our current fleet, and we have the local dell support guys out so often we're on a first name basis with a number of their techs.
since switching to hp elitebooks, which the internet would have you believe are not great, our failure rate has gone down to 1-2 machines in the past 150, over 12 months.
I've also yet to see anyone other than apple who can make a trackpad worth shit. I love the trackpad on my MBP so much I bought a magic trackpad for when i have it on my desk, to go with the full size keyboard. I consider the trackpad alone to be worth any price premium over "comparable" notebook hardware.
And this is the problem: vendor blames microsoft. microsoft blames vendor. you're left on hold for hours dealing with the shit. Linux dev blames hardware vendor, hardware vendor doesn't give a fuck. At least with apple gear you have a SINGLE source to hound for broken shit. You still may be unsuccessful in getting a fix, but at least you know who to be hassling.
The app store is an OPTION intended for people who want to be fully sure that the app they are downloading has been vetted, is sandboxed, and is safe. For grandma/peopel who aren't or don't want to be security experts, this is an excellent idea.
the option to compile your own shit and install software from other sources is not going anywhere.
Examples please? I've yet to find something i can do on Linux that I can't do with my Mac.
You can even recompile the kernel if you so desire.
Ditto for a PC trackpad. I've had issues with the trackpad on every dell since 2001, the HP elitebook series, etc. I have no issues using my mac trackpad, because apple knows how to make one that actually fucking works.
Durability != build quality. Its an aspect of it, but use a mac trackpad and a typical PC notebook trackpad and you'll understand.
Try using a mac trackpad for a week then go back to a PC notebook.
That's worth several hundred dollars alone in my book. If i have to carry a fucking mouse everywhere to get shit done without wanting to stab people, its not a fucking laptop anymore.
L2TP/IPSEC?
Agreed with the above. I've been using/trialling Linux on and off on laptop hardware since about 2000, and it has never been a complete solution. Power regressions, wifi issues, backup (nothing comes close to time machine for ease of use), no IPSEC/L2TP vpn support out of the box, etc.
Use the correct tool for the job. OS X will give you a unix shell (and associated command line goodies) for stuff that needs it, a C compiler for compiling tools that aren't included, etc. You will get proper hardware and software on said hardware support from apple.
Trying to make Linux work on a laptop is like trying to hammer nails with your mobile phone - much like trying to use OS X as a database server or . It might work, but its not an efficient use of time or resources.
If its purely to try and move to open source, try it - but be prepared to spend a decent amount of time making things work, and dealing with stuff thats not quite seamless.
If you want something that (for lack of a better description) "just works" that is reasonably priced, maybe go for a macbook air? They scream, work well and are not expensive.
And before it starts: yes, most people do not have public IP space available to run their entire lan on IPV4 public IP any more. Hence, your only option is NAT. This is not because NAT is a good idea if IPs are plentiful - IPv6 will fix this problem.
The only reason to use NAT is if you have no public IP space available and you KNOW that you never want to run services exposed to the internet. There is ZERO advantage for security and in fact if you are running IPSEC, NAT breaks things fairly badly, and NAT traversal to try and undo some of the brain damage is LESS SECURE than straight IPSEC without NAT-T. NAT is not a firewall and people need to stop believing it is one.
5ghz doesn't go through solid objects as well. I too noticed better wifi signal when ugpgrading from a netgear AP to an airport EXPRESS running on 2.4ghz only. I put it down to the hardware simply being better - or wireless N (old router didn't support N) being better in general.
Exactly. Lower frequency travels through walls better. 5ghz only advantages are less contention for frequency as it is new, and your microwave doesn't interfere with it (as much if at all).