You stroke them one way and they crush the hordes of Redmond, you stroke them another and they blow you up for not having a cool enough fashion designer for a SO.
My first Mac was the original 128K Mac, and came with Finder 0.9something, so yes I've seen Systems 5 and 6, as well as Finder versions from before they numbered the Systems as a whole, and the OS was not fundamentally changed even in System 8 and 9. The biggest really major change in the OS was multifinder, and that came in as an option in the System 6-7 timeframe. Everything else, including the Power PC conversion, left the fundamental OS with multitasking snuck in under the covers intact. Good lord, man, right up through 9.2 you still had to resize memory partitions by hand... something that would have been thought quaint and picturesque by someone struggling with IBM JCL in the '60s.
It's very much like the French Chars, which while they replaced the original cast iron turret with bigger and better ones, and made the engines bigger and the tracks better, were all still basically the same FT-1 that had revolutionized mechanized cavalry in WWI. Like a real multitasking desktop with modern memory management that Microsoft introduced in however appalling a form in Windows 95, the German tank warfare and lightning war took the French completely by surprise.
The French invented the modern tank in WWI, based on an original idea by the British. Apple invented the modern WIMP UI in 1981/82, based on an original design by Xerox.
The French didn't really improve their tank after WWI, and were totally taken by surprise by German tank warfare. Apple didn't really improve their OS after the '80s, and were totally taken by surprise by Microsoft Windows 95.
The problem was that it's just not unlikely enough for satire. I mean, really, the "Good Times" virus used to be a joke, back before Microsoft invented ActiveX and made it possible... you have to really push the envelope these days to come up with something that's really obviously impossible. I mean, for all I know, some idiot has invented a standard firmware flash mechanism with a "trust me" bit in uPNP.
If people weren't idiots and cruised questionable or malicious sites, or opened any old attachment they get in an email, then there wouldn't be a problem.
Not quite. I'd say "If people weren't idiots and cruised questionable or malicious sites, or opened any old attachment they get in an email, or used Internet Explorer (or any other programs that used the Microsoft HTML control), and Microsoft, Apple, and Mozilla made certain obvious changes to the way their software worked (and these changes don't involve more user restrictions or 'infect me now' dialogs), then there wouldn't be a problem."
Since 1997 the number of ways that you can be infected through buggy or fundamentally insecure by design software that's almost universally used has grown enormously, and continues to grow.
No amount of virus will ever infect a system as a user account.
Except for the many examples of viruses that spread as scripts and macros, of course.
Antivirus isn't a complete solution, and if you are scrupulous about the software you run and how you use it you don't need it, but it's useful because, well, not everyone is a geek.
Whitelists aren't a complete solution, because among other things you would need to eliminate most of the most commonly used products on the Internet, including just about every media player and both major browsers on Windows. And whitelists have a huge cost in productivity loss.
Who controls the "spur"? If 45% want to not defect, 30% want to defect to Constellation B and 25% want to defect to Constellation C, who gets it?
This is not anarchy. Every spur would have their own governance system, based on "the guy paying the outrageous maintenance fees decides" or other practical democratic themes.
Don't forget: it's all about lowering the barrier of entry to the business of government!
"Government is an industry with a really high barrier to entry," he said. "You basically need to win an election or a revolution to try a new one. That's a ridiculous barrier to entry. And it's got enormous customer lock-in." -- Wired
Long thin nanotubes, of course, are the ones that have the greatest potential for making superstrong construction materials.
Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age had the health hazards of "toner"... the dust and debris of worn out nanotech... as a major theme. Nano-tight plastics and filters, collectively called "nanobar" (which seemed to be a generic term, not a brand name) were all over the place.
Welcome to the Diamond Age, don't forget your respirator.
You said nothing about high end hardware not counting.
This whole thread is about Psystar and what Macs are comparable to it. That's all. Mac Pros aren't even on the table, that's the whole point of my original message.
They said "A similar, Apple-branded computer could cost more than $2,000." They didn't say "To get a better Apple branded computer..." or "At least as good an Apple branded computer". They said "similar". Even a bleeding lawyer would have to admit that there's a clear implication that their system was "similar" to a $2000+ Mac.
Similar, equivalent, comparable, in the same ballpark, competitive, whatever... they all carry the same implication. It's pure Dilbert-class marketing twaddle.
The price for a Mac Pro [...] whereas a Dell Precision T5400 [...]
You're on drugs. I wasn't talking about the cost difference between Dell's high end workstation and a Mac high end workstation, I was talking about the original article comparing a midrange PC with a Mac workstation as if they were "similar".
If I was ever considering spending a few grand on a kickass workstation, I'd be absolutely over the moon over Apple's prices, but the Psystar is not even in the same bloody city as either of these, let alone the same ballpark.
As opposed to comparing the numbers for CPU speed, RAM and graphics specs and completely ignoring the size, shape, weight and design?
Dude, I'm not complaining about the higher prices of the Mac. I accept it. I'm willing to pay for that profit margin for Apple because that profit margin is what pays for Apple's software development, and that's what I'm paying for. Get that? The 40% profit margin is *wirth it* because the alternative is Windows.
But the size, shape, weight, and design? They have negative value. I would pay *more* for a Mac mini that had exactly the same specs but was in a mini-ITX case and had the power provisioning and port complement of a Mini-ITX PC.
Virtually nobody is *buying* the AOpen mini clone, or the Dell iMac clone, because virtually nobody really *wants* that stuff enough to pay for, when it comes down to the bucks coming out of the wallet. If style was enough to let you charge 40% more for the same hardware (which is why Dell and AOpen and others create Macalikes, because they think that maybe enough people are going to fork out the money for style to pad their bottom line), then you'd see half a dozen Macalikes at Frys or Best Buy, and you don't.
So don't tell me that making a laptop without a screen is value added over making a desktop PC, because it's not. It's dross.
No one in their right mind is going to claim that a dual core system is "similar" to the 8 core Mac Pro.
I didn't realize Apple was fibbing when they said that all Mac Pros were 8 core at the Apple Store. I believed Apple. Shoot me.
But changing that to 4 cores doesn't change the absurdity of "A similar, Apple-branded computer could cost more than $2,000." They're still implying that a 4 core Mac Pro is "similar" to the $800 Psystar.
Do you think anyone in their right mind is going to "claim that a dual core system is "similar" to the 8 core Mac Pro."? If so, permit me to laugh long and loud.
I think most of us really want the mac mini pro, a mac mini in a mini tower with room for a card or 2 and few full size hard drives.
Even just two 3.5" drive bays and one optical bay, one video-capable PCI-Express slot, and uncompromised USB. I can't even charge my iPod Shuffle off my Mini without an external powered hub because they limited the internal power too much to meet the cooling challenge of that tiny case.
Since the Intel switch, Macs have been reasonably competitive provided you compare like-for-like
Only in the laptop line, and even then there's a 15-20% premium.
Or only if you compare "like for like" by absolutely insisting that the Wintel box have every feature of the Mac, and discount everything that the "like" Wintel box has (once you get done with it) as having no value. Otherwise you're looking at a 40-70% premium.
But what I was objecting to was the implication that Apple was charging a 200% premium for comparable hardware.
Apple would have a hard time creating a budget mini-tower
Where did I suggest that? I've always paid a 40% premium for my Macs, and counted that as the cost of getting an OS that doesn't suck with applications that don't suck. So has everyone else who's bought an Apple desktop, however they justified it to themselves. There's no reason that Apple wouldn't be able to sell a $500 desktop for $800, the way they're selling a $350 desktop for $600 with the Mac mini, or a $700 desktop for $1100 with the iMac. They'd even get away with compromising the functionality to make it sexier, they always have before, so they could keep the long product life cycles and high style in a "Mini pro", for people in the market for a conventional desktop who can't afford to pay $2300 for a quad core fire-breathing monster.
Spec wise this looks more like a $1100 iMac, minus the 20" monitor and teh sexy.
I already have a 23" LCD and a 21" CRT and "teh sexy" has negative value to me.
now you can get almost anything that used to be an internal component on USB.
The overhead of USB is significantly more than IDE or SATA, and even firewire reduces the performance advantage of the external drive my Mac mini boots from.
I'm glad to see competition, this isn't the cheap good upgradeable Mac that we've been waiting for though.
No, it's not. The fact that people are seriously interested in buying cheapo generic PCs at something close to Apple's markup to get an OS that doesn't suck in hardware that doesn't lock them in to forklift upgrades should be raising red flags at Apple. In the marketing department, not legal.
Slashdot Mirror
You stroke them one way and they crush the hordes of Redmond, you stroke them another and they blow you up for not having a cool enough fashion designer for a SO.
So it'd be like any other marriage, then?
My first Mac was the original 128K Mac, and came with Finder 0.9something, so yes I've seen Systems 5 and 6, as well as Finder versions from before they numbered the Systems as a whole, and the OS was not fundamentally changed even in System 8 and 9. The biggest really major change in the OS was multifinder, and that came in as an option in the System 6-7 timeframe. Everything else, including the Power PC conversion, left the fundamental OS with multitasking snuck in under the covers intact. Good lord, man, right up through 9.2 you still had to resize memory partitions by hand... something that would have been thought quaint and picturesque by someone struggling with IBM JCL in the '60s.
It's very much like the French Chars, which while they replaced the original cast iron turret with bigger and better ones, and made the engines bigger and the tracks better, were all still basically the same FT-1 that had revolutionized mechanized cavalry in WWI. Like a real multitasking desktop with modern memory management that Microsoft introduced in however appalling a form in Windows 95, the German tank warfare and lightning war took the French completely by surprise.
When I attempt to go to their FAQ to verify the article, all I get is a series of "Unknown Browser Type" popups.
I find myself unsurprised.
Let's see.
The French invented the modern tank in WWI, based on an original idea by the British.
Apple invented the modern WIMP UI in 1981/82, based on an original design by Xerox.
The French didn't really improve their tank after WWI, and were totally taken by surprise by German tank warfare.
Apple didn't really improve their OS after the '80s, and were totally taken by surprise by Microsoft Windows 95.
Yeh, sounds right.
I don't imagine Apple-manufactured tanks, made of polycarbonate and brushed alumninum rolling into Eastern Europe.
They never do, not until it's too late.
Aww, you mean it's not "Ubuntu Castlevania Goron Temple Remix?" Damn.
Ah.
The problem was that it's just not unlikely enough for satire. I mean, really, the "Good Times" virus used to be a joke, back before Microsoft invented ActiveX and made it possible... you have to really push the envelope these days to come up with something that's really obviously impossible. I mean, for all I know, some idiot has invented a standard firmware flash mechanism with a "trust me" bit in uPNP.
If people weren't idiots and cruised questionable or malicious sites, or opened any old attachment they get in an email, then there wouldn't be a problem.
Not quite. I'd say "If people weren't idiots and cruised questionable or malicious sites, or opened any old attachment they get in an email, or used Internet Explorer (or any other programs that used the Microsoft HTML control), and Microsoft, Apple, and Mozilla made certain obvious changes to the way their software worked (and these changes don't involve more user restrictions or 'infect me now' dialogs), then there wouldn't be a problem."
Since 1997 the number of ways that you can be infected through buggy or fundamentally insecure by design software that's almost universally used has grown enormously, and continues to grow.
No amount of virus will ever infect a system as a user account.
Except for the many examples of viruses that spread as scripts and macros, of course.
Antivirus isn't a complete solution, and if you are scrupulous about the software you run and how you use it you don't need it, but it's useful because, well, not everyone is a geek.
Whitelists aren't a complete solution, because among other things you would need to eliminate most of the most commonly used products on the Internet, including just about every media player and both major browsers on Windows. And whitelists have a huge cost in productivity loss.
You use both, and allow exceptions.
This is not anarchy. Every spur would have their own governance system, based on "the guy paying the outrageous maintenance fees decides" or other practical democratic themes.
Don't forget: it's all about lowering the barrier of entry to the business of government!
I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning.
Long thin nanotubes, of course, are the ones that have the greatest potential for making superstrong construction materials.
... the dust and debris of worn out nanotech ... as a major theme. Nano-tight plastics and filters, collectively called "nanobar" (which seemed to be a generic term, not a brand name) were all over the place.
Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age had the health hazards of "toner"
Welcome to the Diamond Age, don't forget your respirator.
No, really, who wants to read the -STABLE version anyway?
Slashdot Barbie says "research is hard".
I can't decide if that should be a new emo superhero or a BOFH-themed ceiling-cat variant.
"Angry Maintainer is watching you masturbate." "Eww." "Why do you think he's angry?"
Pardon, my error.
You said nothing about high end hardware not counting.
This whole thread is about Psystar and what Macs are comparable to it. That's all. Mac Pros aren't even on the table, that's the whole point of my original message.
But they never made any such implication.
They said "A similar, Apple-branded computer could cost more than $2,000." They didn't say "To get a better Apple branded computer..." or "At least as good an Apple branded computer". They said "similar". Even a bleeding lawyer would have to admit that there's a clear implication that their system was "similar" to a $2000+ Mac.
Similar, equivalent, comparable, in the same ballpark, competitive, whatever... they all carry the same implication. It's pure Dilbert-class marketing twaddle.
The price for a Mac Pro [...]
whereas a Dell Precision T5400 [...]
You're on drugs. I wasn't talking about the cost difference between Dell's high end workstation and a Mac high end workstation, I was talking about the original article comparing a midrange PC with a Mac workstation as if they were "similar".
If I was ever considering spending a few grand on a kickass workstation, I'd be absolutely over the moon over Apple's prices, but the Psystar is not even in the same bloody city as either of these, let alone the same ballpark.
As opposed to comparing the numbers for CPU speed, RAM and graphics specs and completely ignoring the size, shape, weight and design?
Dude, I'm not complaining about the higher prices of the Mac. I accept it. I'm willing to pay for that profit margin for Apple because that profit margin is what pays for Apple's software development, and that's what I'm paying for. Get that? The 40% profit margin is *wirth it* because the alternative is Windows.
But the size, shape, weight, and design? They have negative value. I would pay *more* for a Mac mini that had exactly the same specs but was in a mini-ITX case and had the power provisioning and port complement of a Mini-ITX PC.
Virtually nobody is *buying* the AOpen mini clone, or the Dell iMac clone, because virtually nobody really *wants* that stuff enough to pay for, when it comes down to the bucks coming out of the wallet. If style was enough to let you charge 40% more for the same hardware (which is why Dell and AOpen and others create Macalikes, because they think that maybe enough people are going to fork out the money for style to pad their bottom line), then you'd see half a dozen Macalikes at Frys or Best Buy, and you don't.
So don't tell me that making a laptop without a screen is value added over making a desktop PC, because it's not. It's dross.
No one in their right mind is going to claim that a dual core system is "similar" to the 8 core Mac Pro.
I didn't realize Apple was fibbing when they said that all Mac Pros were 8 core at the Apple Store. I believed Apple. Shoot me.
But changing that to 4 cores doesn't change the absurdity of "A similar, Apple-branded computer could cost more than $2,000." They're still implying that a 4 core Mac Pro is "similar" to the $800 Psystar.
Do you think anyone in their right mind is going to "claim that a dual core system is "similar" to the 8 core Mac Pro."? If so, permit me to laugh long and loud.
I think most of us really want the mac mini pro, a mac mini in a mini tower with room for a card or 2 and few full size hard drives.
Even just two 3.5" drive bays and one optical bay, one video-capable PCI-Express slot, and uncompromised USB. I can't even charge my iPod Shuffle off my Mini without an external powered hub because they limited the internal power too much to meet the cooling challenge of that tiny case.
Since the Intel switch, Macs have been reasonably competitive provided you compare like-for-like
Only in the laptop line, and even then there's a 15-20% premium.
Or only if you compare "like for like" by absolutely insisting that the Wintel box have every feature of the Mac, and discount everything that the "like" Wintel box has (once you get done with it) as having no value. Otherwise you're looking at a 40-70% premium.
But what I was objecting to was the implication that Apple was charging a 200% premium for comparable hardware.
Apple would have a hard time creating a budget mini-tower
Where did I suggest that? I've always paid a 40% premium for my Macs, and counted that as the cost of getting an OS that doesn't suck with applications that don't suck. So has everyone else who's bought an Apple desktop, however they justified it to themselves. There's no reason that Apple wouldn't be able to sell a $500 desktop for $800, the way they're selling a $350 desktop for $600 with the Mac mini, or a $700 desktop for $1100 with the iMac. They'd even get away with compromising the functionality to make it sexier, they always have before, so they could keep the long product life cycles and high style in a "Mini pro", for people in the market for a conventional desktop who can't afford to pay $2300 for a quad core fire-breathing monster.
Since those would not be similar systems, it's a pretty good chance they weren't talking about the Mac Pro.
None of the other possibilities I can think of cost more than $2000.
Spec wise this looks more like a $1100 iMac, minus the 20" monitor and teh sexy.
I already have a 23" LCD and a 21" CRT and "teh sexy" has negative value to me.
now you can get almost anything that used to be an internal component on USB.
The overhead of USB is significantly more than IDE or SATA, and even firewire reduces the performance advantage of the external drive my Mac mini boots from.
I'm glad to see competition, this isn't the cheap good upgradeable Mac that we've been waiting for though.
No, it's not. The fact that people are seriously interested in buying cheapo generic PCs at something close to Apple's markup to get an OS that doesn't suck in hardware that doesn't lock them in to forklift upgrades should be raising red flags at Apple. In the marketing department, not legal.