Funny, the controller that came with my Xbox 360 was wireless. Heck, the controller that came with my Wii doesnt even have an option to plug into the system.
On the other hand, he's right. No HDMI or Component cables included? What are they thinking, all Sony talks about is HD this, HD that. The high-end xbox 360 includes the component cables. Sony charges $80 for the official HDMI cable if I remember correctly. Thats pretty bad, they are losing so much on the console they can't even give t he HD experience without charging another hundred bucks.
They are constantly having reliability issues....and their security sucks. The fact that you can insert java script into a message that brings someone to a fishing page is rediculous.
And they also don't even attempt to verify that a person is a person (unlike facebook which uses an EDU email --OR-- a mobile phone text message). Someone this past week setup a fake account (of whom I have no idea who it was), put many a sentances speaking many false and offensive statements about me using my full name, and then invited my whole friends list to become their friend. You can't easily do this on some of the other services; and to make it worse, when asking Myspace to take it down, when its clearly a fake account, they don't do anything.
Quite unbeleivable actually, the poster obviously doesn't understand the technology that well - nor apparently what the sales rep was explaining to him.
Yes, the call scripts are probably dumbed down because the Comcast call center employees have no idea what it means, but lets look at this:
E911 - Comcast isn't selling their service as a VoIP service, they sell it as a full replacement for phone service, and it is covered by FCC regulations. They have full E-911 which is distributed to your local PSAP (public safety answering point), not routed to a VOIP provider's network, and then (hopefully) to a PSAP in your area.
Network quality - while you may not like Comcast, they have vast resources in fiber and coax in the ground. They aren't routing your VoIP call 5,000 miles. Its hoping off the network probably 20 miles away before you even get close to the public internet. So what? I'll tell you why this matters. COMCAST CAN GUARENTEE BANDWIDTH WHILE IT STAYS ON THEIR NETWORK. This is important. Latency and bandwidth are key for a great VoIP call, if you don't have it, don't bother. We once tried a wireless link from an ISP. The bandwidth was there, but our calls would drop when someone else on their network would check their mail. Lesson learned. It isn't violating any rules or regulations, since they aren't passing the data off to the rest of the internet, they aren't restricting other people's traffic. They have no idea how to treat neautral 3rd party packets, QoS isn't maintained by most of the internet's backbone because the Internet wasn't originally designed for it. Even if it pops up here or there in routers, they can't effectively use it because QoS data on packets from other networks gets lost when crossing networks. Remember, the Internet is not a uniform network!
PC Myth - Okay, lets look at this one. You turn off your PC and you lose Vonage. Hmm, well, I can see how you might say that is lying. Last time I checked, I don't need any equipment inside my house to do Comcast Digital Voice, its powered by current applied to the coax line coming from the pedistal, and then the digital voice is split off before it enters the house by their converter. There is nothing in my house that needs to be powered by me, or even have me pay the electric bill to operate. Lets look at this even further, if you IGNORE that portion, Vonage doesn't use your PC? Some people use PC's as routers. Ever here of Internet Connection Sharing? In that case, you better not turn your computer off. Lets take it even a step further. Most end customers don't understand what VoIP is let alone who makes it and what the differences in services are. Maybe the line in the script was generic to cover ALL VoIP providers. Why is this important? Skype. Skype in most situations uses a computer and a USB handset. It is still VoIP, but it requires your computer. And Skype has more customers than Vonage. Comcast employees are more likely to talk to customers who use Skype than customers who use Vonage. So it should be in the script.
Okay, now that we've gotten all that analysis out of the way: Stop your whining. Comcast has a carrier grade network. If you don't want carrier grade voip, stick to vonage or packet8 or iconnecthere or skype.
If you want carrier grade, go with your ISP who can ensure QoS, local handoff to E911, and better VoIP service. E.g. Comcast, Speakeasy business VoIP, etc.
As I recall the way its been told many times; it was tasked of Armstrong to come up with something to say. And if I remember correctly he had nothing by the time they landed that he liked.
I've seen a few specials that have shown NASA had no idea what he'd say and that he pretty much winged it.
I don't get it...........aren't there better things we should be trying to turn into hyrdogen? I mean.... propane, oil, gasoline, thats great......but half the problem is we are running out. And what happens to all the carbon when its converted to hydrogen? (I admit I didn't read). I would hope its not released as an emission of sorts, that wouldn't help what so ever....other than localizing a problem possibly making containment easier.
Comcast drops their fiber so deep into neighborhoods around here its almost fiber to the home. On top of that, the cable around here is all burried so it avoids storm related outages, and lets not forget the biggest factor: voice is digital all the way to the home, the voice quality of course is going to be clear. There isn't a single run of analog signalling between the user and the cable company, thats why its so clear and such a predictable result.
The games everyone has been waiting for on the Xbox 360 are Gears of War and Halo 3. Those are the big upcoming titles. Gears of war comes out in 2 months, and there are hundreds on reserve at every store in my area, and the gameplay and graphics are just a big WOW when you see them.
Sure, games like Perfect Dark Zero sucked on the 360, but they are finally about to have their 2nd wind of games. Sony has such a convoluded development enviroment I'm sure it will take longer than a year for the really good Sony games to come out.
Also, as a note, last I read Microsoft had sold 6 million xbox 360 consoles in the last year; not bad considering no one had released very good games yet. Now that the platformers are coming, expect it to catch on even more. Microsoft expects to sell another 6 million by the end of the year; thats well before Halo 3 comes into the picture. There are strong rumors that they will add an internal HD-DVD model (for video only) at the highend to compete against sony. Price cuts and die shrinkage are all coming.
Whether or not you like Microsoft, they are in a very good position.
I personally own a 360, and also am planning on grabbing a Wii or two. Both are excellent systems, Sony on the other hand, while I had a PS1, I will never buy a PS3, that thing was engineered by a patent committee looking to force standards on the world; if it was really designed for games it wouldnt have had 2 major delays already (BlueRay standard, and now Blue laser shortages).
I both agree and disagree with this: I agree that Antivirus and security companies need a way to plug holes, it sounds like some companies are raising a large fuss about nothing. There will always be needs for competitors to come out with add-on solutions. Look at IE & FireFox. Just because Microsoft does something, doesn't mean they've done it will.
Excuse me for saying this...but that "packaging" you refer to, buy our cpu, our northbridge, and our south bridge.......heck, even buy our boards......is a GoodThing(tm).
I have had various AMD-based boards over the years, and the reliability of an AMD processor, various chipset and foreign motherboard manufacturers has been half baked to say the least. I've heard its gotten better, HOWEVER......this has convinced myself and many others I know NOT to buy AMD until AMD offers a total, 100% guarenteed and backed solution because when we put a computer into our business we expect it to work, no problems what so ever. We don't want freeze ups, crashes, driver issues, etc. And the worst part is, if you have 4 vendors in the cookie jar, no one ever admits its their problem, they point at Microsoft and say see, Windows is buggy, its their fault.
I'm not going to pass the blame at anyone in particular; HOWEVER I will say that had AMD actually had a AMD-only and fully backed & supported platform, we would once again consider AMD for all our computing needs.
Okay, this is really the stupidest thing I've ever seen grace the front page of Slashdot......not that there aren't alot of others competing for a close second, but seriously.
1) You need to have a reason to run applications. There are VERY FEW COOL applications. Boot Camp was made primarly for the business world and gamers who have programs that aren't ported.
2) If you are a Mac user, why does it even worry you? Have you found your program selection limiting in what you do every day? Once again, most people don't sit and think of cool programs to run, they run a program because they need to get something done.
If you don't have Windows programs, stick with OS X. I've got dual-booting Macs running Windows and OSX, and unless you have a need (and of course, the obvious: a valid windows license), why even bother?
I can definately assure you, being a leading supplier of Digium gear (Digium being the guys who wrote Asterisk) and being the leading wholesaler of VoIP gear, Atacomm hears about problems non-stop with Asterisk. 1.2 has been very buggy; they had a date-related bug last month that killed hundreds if not thousands of PBX systems.
Enterprise it is not; maybe someday, but its not there yet.
Exactly, they embed 2 low-end PPC cores into the fabric. There are different versions of the Virtex 4, depending on what you need. We are using Virtex 4 SX35s on our projects at ipVolution, which have 192 hardware multiply/accumilator blocks, which are a godsend in doing DSP work. On other Virtex 4 FPGAs, you can get RocketIO & SerDes functionality for multiple Gbps signalling, up to two Ethernet 10/100/1000 MACs, as well as up to two hardcore PPC CPUs.
The Virtex 4 is really marvelous. You may be able to convert parts of the UltraSparc design to use the newer MAC blocks for multiply, add, etc in both floating point and fixed point; as well as use it for parts such as instruction pointer counting, etc since you can use it in accumilate only mode. But they are still really designed for DSP work only. The block memories on the chip are spread around the chip, making large caches nearly impossible to impliment.
There are some things a FPGA is good at; being a general CPU is not one of those things. You'd want to get an ASIC designed; costing several hundred thousand (minimum) to go from Verilog to prototypes.
Yes, there is some hand layout, but not as much as you'd think. Many common functions already have pre-built blocks that companies like IBM substitute, and their tools quite often do all the conversion between Verilog and their pre-designed logic. They are quite good at what they do.
Didn't fail to grasp it at all. For those of us who don't care about the code or the ability to fix bugs ourselves, then code of any open source project is proprietary to that project. Therefore, if two projects, say Fedora Core and Slackware, are based fundamentally on the same core, but aren't fully compatable, I'm going to blame one project or the other, I'm not going to want to spend my time digging in to fix it. This is why I use polished systems from Apple, and grudgingly at times Microsoft.
Its time for you to learn a lesson: Everything in one way or another is proprietary. Proprietary doesn't mean others can't base anything off it; it means its your own. RedHat has proprietary additions that no one else supports, etc. Just because you don't like to admit it means that I can't grasp your narrow definition. I infact can see multiple ways proprietary can be defined. And as someone who runs a business who doesn't want to spend half of my life tracking down why something doesn't work, proprietary definately includes open source projects where ego foregoes sane judgement for compatibility between different projects.
Oh yes, I am well aware of that. I manage 4 xserves and several mac desktops.
However, the point is, to programmers developing MacOS X applications, they barely touch any unix style POSIX interface or unix style filesystem paths because OSX not only hides it; but discourages it for any GUI based application.
Thats why you buy a G5 powermac. A MacMini feature for feature is cheaper than an Athlon64 system (not bare bones mind you); its more stylish, it includes the most usable Unix operating system on the market; and hell, OS X runs applications YOU CAN'T GET on linux, say Photoshop, Final Cut, Microsoft Office. If you are an open source hippie, you will give me all these reasons why running free linux, free open office, free gimp, etc is so much better. But you know what, outside of the slashdot community; most people just want to be productive and have something that works. And the fact that the Mac Mini comes with that; as well as iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, etc, makes you're free linux a horrible solution for a home user wanting to do any one of those things. And remember, those are "free" too with purchase of the MacMini. So lets see:
$499
Low-end computer (with DVI out, show me a lowend Dell or HP with that)
OS X - Most usable UNIX varient
iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand
vs $499
Not sure what you can get for a decent low-end computer. A $399 Dell is much worse; and custom built for most average users doesn't count.
Linux
Hundreds of packaged apps that each have little documentation, support, and are inconsistant in how they operate
I sure know which way I'd point the users that are targets of Mac Mini.....
I'd have to counter your argument. I'd have to say to the average user (myself included) who doesn't tinker with the kernel sources: Any linux distribution is every bit as much proprietary as those proprietary versions of UNIX. We don't want to dive into the source code to fix problems, we don't want to learn changes between one distribution and the next; we just want it to work.
He did breifly; but the fact is Apple hasn't tried to play by the "UNIX Standard" per say; all of their applications run totally on different levels from the normal POSIX apps. Have you looked at how their GUI apps actually work? The application is a folder, filled with all the support files. Their configuration files for applications are stored in a different location than the main UNIX/etc directory; and/etc is hidden from the end user.
While OS X is UNIX, to anyone who uses Apple's programming APIs (Cocoa or Carbon, as well as Quartz) Mac OS X isn't UNIX in anyway to them.
Funny, I haven't had a single Win98 application that refused to run on WinXP properly. Unless you are talking about in the reverse WinXP apps not running on Win98, anything designed for Linux 2.6 specifically will not run on 2.4 or 2.2 either. Learn to see faults in your own following and you can see the light to fix them. Constantly trying to point the finger outside the circle to your enemy does nothing but hurt you.
Agreed. We have switched 80% of our business over to macs (web servers, workstations, etc). All of our in-house software that we use as a CRM/sales system was done in.NET and runs under the latest version of Mono on OS X...the Macs are more stable, easier to use, and more secure....and very easy to manage......whereas this stupid NVidia card I've got I've been spending two weeks trying to figure out how to get dual 20" LCDs to work properly under windows (it wont turn the screen on, but if you swap the DVI cables twice, both screens work full res just fine....ASUS and Nvidia and MS all point their fingers). Things like that just don't happen on the mac... you buy it, it works.
Re:So much easier to knock down than to build up
on
Top 10 Apple Flops
·
· Score: 1
I beg to differ. The iPod is being worked on by a different team, a different division. Its brought Apple their largest profits ever. And it has brought people who thought the platform was dead back into their stores looking at Macs.
I think it was a brilliant accident. Steve jobs wanted to make the best MP3 player. He did not think the competitors would screw up so bad that Apple had 70% of the entire MP3 player market before releasing their own flash based player. Apple will have 95% of the MP3 player market by this time next year, and their computer market share is going to start increasing slowly.
Slashdot Mirror
Sipura doesn't exist anymore. Its now part of Linksys.
Funny, the controller that came with my Xbox 360 was wireless. Heck, the controller that came with my Wii doesnt even have an option to plug into the system.
On the other hand, he's right. No HDMI or Component cables included? What are they thinking, all Sony talks about is HD this, HD that. The high-end xbox 360 includes the component cables. Sony charges $80 for the official HDMI cable if I remember correctly. Thats pretty bad, they are losing so much on the console they can't even give t he HD experience without charging another hundred bucks.
It would be nice to see Myspace put out.
They are constantly having reliability issues....and their security sucks. The fact that you can insert java script into a message that brings someone to a fishing page is rediculous.
And they also don't even attempt to verify that a person is a person (unlike facebook which uses an EDU email --OR-- a mobile phone text message). Someone this past week setup a fake account (of whom I have no idea who it was), put many a sentances speaking many false and offensive statements about me using my full name, and then invited my whole friends list to become their friend. You can't easily do this on some of the other services; and to make it worse, when asking Myspace to take it down, when its clearly a fake account, they don't do anything.
Quite unbeleivable actually, the poster obviously doesn't understand the technology that well - nor apparently what the sales rep was explaining to him.
Yes, the call scripts are probably dumbed down because the Comcast call center employees have no idea what it means, but lets look at this:
E911 - Comcast isn't selling their service as a VoIP service, they sell it as a full replacement for phone service, and it is covered by FCC regulations. They have full E-911 which is distributed to your local PSAP (public safety answering point), not routed to a VOIP provider's network, and then (hopefully) to a PSAP in your area.
Network quality - while you may not like Comcast, they have vast resources in fiber and coax in the ground. They aren't routing your VoIP call 5,000 miles. Its hoping off the network probably 20 miles away before you even get close to the public internet. So what? I'll tell you why this matters. COMCAST CAN GUARENTEE BANDWIDTH WHILE IT STAYS ON THEIR NETWORK. This is important. Latency and bandwidth are key for a great VoIP call, if you don't have it, don't bother. We once tried a wireless link from an ISP. The bandwidth was there, but our calls would drop when someone else on their network would check their mail. Lesson learned. It isn't violating any rules or regulations, since they aren't passing the data off to the rest of the internet, they aren't restricting other people's traffic. They have no idea how to treat neautral 3rd party packets, QoS isn't maintained by most of the internet's backbone because the Internet wasn't originally designed for it. Even if it pops up here or there in routers, they can't effectively use it because QoS data on packets from other networks gets lost when crossing networks. Remember, the Internet is not a uniform network!
PC Myth - Okay, lets look at this one. You turn off your PC and you lose Vonage. Hmm, well, I can see how you might say that is lying. Last time I checked, I don't need any equipment inside my house to do Comcast Digital Voice, its powered by current applied to the coax line coming from the pedistal, and then the digital voice is split off before it enters the house by their converter. There is nothing in my house that needs to be powered by me, or even have me pay the electric bill to operate. Lets look at this even further, if you IGNORE that portion, Vonage doesn't use your PC? Some people use PC's as routers. Ever here of Internet Connection Sharing? In that case, you better not turn your computer off. Lets take it even a step further. Most end customers don't understand what VoIP is let alone who makes it and what the differences in services are. Maybe the line in the script was generic to cover ALL VoIP providers. Why is this important? Skype. Skype in most situations uses a computer and a USB handset. It is still VoIP, but it requires your computer. And Skype has more customers than Vonage. Comcast employees are more likely to talk to customers who use Skype than customers who use Vonage. So it should be in the script.
Okay, now that we've gotten all that analysis out of the way: Stop your whining. Comcast has a carrier grade network. If you don't want carrier grade voip, stick to vonage or packet8 or iconnecthere or skype.
If you want carrier grade, go with your ISP who can ensure QoS, local handoff to E911, and better VoIP service. E.g. Comcast, Speakeasy business VoIP, etc.
As I recall the way its been told many times; it was tasked of Armstrong to come up with something to say. And if I remember correctly he had nothing by the time they landed that he liked.
I've seen a few specials that have shown NASA had no idea what he'd say and that he pretty much winged it.
Did they also pride themselves on the patients survival rate?
I don't get it..... ......aren't there better things we should be trying to turn into hyrdogen?
I mean.... propane, oil, gasoline, thats great......but half the problem is we are running out. And what happens to all the carbon when its converted to hydrogen? (I admit I didn't read). I would hope its not released as an emission of sorts, that wouldn't help what so ever....other than localizing a problem possibly making containment easier.
Comcast drops their fiber so deep into neighborhoods around here its almost fiber to the home. On top of that, the cable around here is all burried so it avoids storm related outages, and lets not forget the biggest factor: voice is digital all the way to the home, the voice quality of course is going to be clear. There isn't a single run of analog signalling between the user and the cable company, thats why its so clear and such a predictable result.
:) Move along
Nothing to see here
The games everyone has been waiting for on the Xbox 360 are Gears of War and Halo 3. Those are the big upcoming titles. Gears of war comes out in 2 months, and there are hundreds on reserve at every store in my area, and the gameplay and graphics are just a big WOW when you see them.
Sure, games like Perfect Dark Zero sucked on the 360, but they are finally about to have their 2nd wind of games. Sony has such a convoluded development enviroment I'm sure it will take longer than a year for the really good Sony games to come out.
Also, as a note, last I read Microsoft had sold 6 million xbox 360 consoles in the last year; not bad considering no one had released very good games yet. Now that the platformers are coming, expect it to catch on even more. Microsoft expects to sell another 6 million by the end of the year; thats well before Halo 3 comes into the picture. There are strong rumors that they will add an internal HD-DVD model (for video only) at the highend to compete against sony. Price cuts and die shrinkage are all coming.
Whether or not you like Microsoft, they are in a very good position.
I personally own a 360, and also am planning on grabbing a Wii or two. Both are excellent systems, Sony on the other hand, while I had a PS1, I will never buy a PS3, that thing was engineered by a patent committee looking to force standards on the world; if it was really designed for games it wouldnt have had 2 major delays already (BlueRay standard, and now Blue laser shortages).
I both agree and disagree with this: I agree that Antivirus and security companies need a way to plug holes, it sounds like some companies are raising a large fuss about nothing. There will always be needs for competitors to come out with add-on solutions. Look at IE & FireFox. Just because Microsoft does something, doesn't mean they've done it will.
Wow, did you just post that on macrumors.com too? that looks oh so familiar......its like word for word....
LOL
As well as appearing on the Science Channel and I beleive the Discovery Channel, which I beleive are both backed by the BBC.
It is really sad that they claim this is innovative when it is Carver that had a working design first.
Excuse me for saying this...but that "packaging" you refer to, buy our cpu, our northbridge, and our south bridge.......heck, even buy our boards......is a GoodThing(tm).
I have had various AMD-based boards over the years, and the reliability of an AMD processor, various chipset and foreign motherboard manufacturers has been half baked to say the least. I've heard its gotten better, HOWEVER......this has convinced myself and many others I know NOT to buy AMD until AMD offers a total, 100% guarenteed and backed solution because when we put a computer into our business we expect it to work, no problems what so ever. We don't want freeze ups, crashes, driver issues, etc. And the worst part is, if you have 4 vendors in the cookie jar, no one ever admits its their problem, they point at Microsoft and say see, Windows is buggy, its their fault.
I'm not going to pass the blame at anyone in particular; HOWEVER I will say that had AMD actually had a AMD-only and fully backed & supported platform, we would once again consider AMD for all our computing needs.
Okay, this is really the stupidest thing I've ever seen grace the front page of Slashdot......not that there aren't alot of others competing for a close second, but seriously.
.....
1) You need to have a reason to run applications. There are VERY FEW COOL applications. Boot Camp was made primarly for the business world and gamers who have programs that aren't ported.
2) If you are a Mac user, why does it even worry you? Have you found your program selection limiting in what you do every day? Once again, most people don't sit and think of cool programs to run, they run a program because they need to get something done.
If you don't have Windows programs, stick with OS X. I've got dual-booting Macs running Windows and OSX, and unless you have a need (and of course, the obvious: a valid windows license), why even bother?
Once again.....
1. Stupid Question + Stupid Editors
2.
3. Profit
Slashdot motto
I can definately assure you, being a leading supplier of Digium gear (Digium being the guys who wrote Asterisk) and being the leading wholesaler of VoIP gear, Atacomm hears about problems non-stop with Asterisk. 1.2 has been very buggy; they had a date-related bug last month that killed hundreds if not thousands of PBX systems.
Enterprise it is not; maybe someday, but its not there yet.
"Hot on the heels of the recent news about the death of King Tut"
??? What?
I must have missed it. King Tut died? When!?
Exactly, they embed 2 low-end PPC cores into the fabric. There are different versions of the Virtex 4, depending on what you need. We are using Virtex 4 SX35s on our projects at ipVolution, which have 192 hardware multiply/accumilator blocks, which are a godsend in doing DSP work. On other Virtex 4 FPGAs, you can get RocketIO & SerDes functionality for multiple Gbps signalling, up to two Ethernet 10/100/1000 MACs, as well as up to two hardcore PPC CPUs.
The Virtex 4 is really marvelous. You may be able to convert parts of the UltraSparc design to use the newer MAC blocks for multiply, add, etc in both floating point and fixed point; as well as use it for parts such as instruction pointer counting, etc since you can use it in accumilate only mode. But they are still really designed for DSP work only. The block memories on the chip are spread around the chip, making large caches nearly impossible to impliment.
There are some things a FPGA is good at; being a general CPU is not one of those things. You'd want to get an ASIC designed; costing several hundred thousand (minimum) to go from Verilog to prototypes.
Yes, there is some hand layout, but not as much as you'd think. Many common functions already have pre-built blocks that companies like IBM substitute, and their tools quite often do all the conversion between Verilog and their pre-designed logic. They are quite good at what they do.
Didn't fail to grasp it at all. For those of us who don't care about the code or the ability to fix bugs ourselves, then code of any open source project is proprietary to that project. Therefore, if two projects, say Fedora Core and Slackware, are based fundamentally on the same core, but aren't fully compatable, I'm going to blame one project or the other, I'm not going to want to spend my time digging in to fix it. This is why I use polished systems from Apple, and grudgingly at times Microsoft.
Its time for you to learn a lesson: Everything in one way or another is proprietary. Proprietary doesn't mean others can't base anything off it; it means its your own. RedHat has proprietary additions that no one else supports, etc. Just because you don't like to admit it means that I can't grasp your narrow definition. I infact can see multiple ways proprietary can be defined. And as someone who runs a business who doesn't want to spend half of my life tracking down why something doesn't work, proprietary definately includes open source projects where ego foregoes sane judgement for compatibility between different projects.
Oh yes, I am well aware of that. I manage 4 xserves and several mac desktops.
However, the point is, to programmers developing MacOS X applications, they barely touch any unix style POSIX interface or unix style filesystem paths because OSX not only hides it; but discourages it for any GUI based application.
Thats why you buy a G5 powermac. A MacMini feature for feature is cheaper than an Athlon64 system (not bare bones mind you); its more stylish, it includes the most usable Unix operating system on the market; and hell, OS X runs applications YOU CAN'T GET on linux, say Photoshop, Final Cut, Microsoft Office. If you are an open source hippie, you will give me all these reasons why running free linux, free open office, free gimp, etc is so much better. But you know what, outside of the slashdot community; most people just want to be productive and have something that works. And the fact that the Mac Mini comes with that; as well as iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, etc, makes you're free linux a horrible solution for a home user wanting to do any one of those things. And remember, those are "free" too with purchase of the MacMini. So lets see:
$499
Low-end computer (with DVI out, show me a lowend Dell or HP with that)
OS X - Most usable UNIX varient
iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand
vs
$499
Not sure what you can get for a decent low-end computer. A $399 Dell is much worse; and custom built for most average users doesn't count.
Linux
Hundreds of packaged apps that each have little documentation, support, and are inconsistant in how they operate
I sure know which way I'd point the users that are targets of Mac Mini.....
I'd have to counter your argument. I'd have to say to the average user (myself included) who doesn't tinker with the kernel sources: Any linux distribution is every bit as much proprietary as those proprietary versions of UNIX. We don't want to dive into the source code to fix problems, we don't want to learn changes between one distribution and the next; we just want it to work.
He did breifly; but the fact is Apple hasn't tried to play by the "UNIX Standard" per say; all of their applications run totally on different levels from the normal POSIX apps. Have you looked at how their GUI apps actually work? The application is a folder, filled with all the support files. Their configuration files for applications are stored in a different location than the main UNIX /etc directory; and /etc is hidden from the end user.
While OS X is UNIX, to anyone who uses Apple's programming APIs (Cocoa or Carbon, as well as Quartz) Mac OS X isn't UNIX in anyway to them.
Funny, I haven't had a single Win98 application that refused to run on WinXP properly. Unless you are talking about in the reverse WinXP apps not running on Win98, anything designed for Linux 2.6 specifically will not run on 2.4 or 2.2 either. Learn to see faults in your own following and you can see the light to fix them. Constantly trying to point the finger outside the circle to your enemy does nothing but hurt you.
Agreed. We have switched 80% of our business over to macs (web servers, workstations, etc). All of our in-house software that we use as a CRM/sales system was done in .NET and runs under the latest version of Mono on OS X...the Macs are more stable, easier to use, and more secure....and very easy to manage... ...whereas this stupid NVidia card I've got I've been spending two weeks trying to figure out how to get dual 20" LCDs to work properly under windows (it wont turn the screen on, but if you swap the DVI cables twice, both screens work full res just fine....ASUS and Nvidia and MS all point their fingers). Things like that just don't happen on the mac... you buy it, it works.
I beg to differ. The iPod is being worked on by a different team, a different division. Its brought Apple their largest profits ever. And it has brought people who thought the platform was dead back into their stores looking at Macs.
I think it was a brilliant accident. Steve jobs wanted to make the best MP3 player. He did not think the competitors would screw up so bad that Apple had 70% of the entire MP3 player market before releasing their own flash based player. Apple will have 95% of the MP3 player market by this time next year, and their computer market share is going to start increasing slowly.