I don't even want the bluetooth. I don't want a color screen. I don't wan an organiser. I want a cellphone that's well, just the best possible phone, that's all.
Another one that's simply wrong: it's a phone. It crashes. [...] A phone that periodically requires me to take the battery out and wait that painful minute before I can use it again doesn't deserve an owner.
That matches my experience with the T-mobile Pocket PC. I've never before had a cellphone that crashed.
Unfortunately, I've got another once since. Company phone, they changed service, and instead of the bog-simple Nokia "bar" with minimal features and good battery life (just the way I like it... it's a frigging phone, if it can't get that part right I don't care if it has a camera, MP3 player, or 3d porn projector) I have a really clumsy LG forty-something-hundred that periodically wakes me up in the middle of the night with its "welcome" music because it crashed or got updated or something. I've also had it mysteriously eat its battery when I left it in a locker at the hospital for half an hour... I guess it was panicking because it couldn't get a signal and shorted its brains out.
Christ.
Here's what I want: a phone, a big battery, a little black-and-white screen that doesn't use much power, room for a couple hundred numbers, and a place I can plug in a cable from my PDA or notebook to get a TCP connection WHEN I need one. That's it.
No bluetooth, no camera, no ringtones, no games, no wireless web, no "Get It Now" or other overpriced vendor-provided software, no downloads, uploads, wideloads, or overloads. Just a dumb connector to a dumb network I can plug my own, separate, not-tied-to-any-carrier, I-can-install-my-own-software, I-own-thank-you-very-much smart end-point that I control.
Of course... if Apple were to use one of these tubes in the iMac their costs would be a bit lower than this since they wouldn't need to pay for the shell, controls, connectors, most of the electronics, or the packaging... just the tube and analog circuitry.
Look, for $800 for a computer you are NOT going to get a Trinitron screen. If you are expecting that, they you are living in a reality far, far away from here.
I'm afraid you're living in the past. I'm using a very nice 17" aperture-grill screen that cost $170 new, four years ago. The original Trinitron patent has expired, so some companies are making their own aperture-grill tubes and others are able to license Trinitron technologies from Sony much more reasonably than they once did.
I can buy quite a nice computer for the $630 left over.
Apple was yelled at for not making an under-$1000 computer.
Once upon a time "under $1000" was an entry-level price for computers. By the time they dropped the eMac's price to $800, that wasn't such a good price any more. Computers are getting cheaper, and they're getting cheaper to make. If you don't recognise that fact, you're going to spend a lot of time whining about people whining about Apple.
Now they are being yelled at for not making an under-$600 computer.
That's because "under $600" is an entry-level price for computers, now. In fact, "under $400" is common for off-brands and Dell and HP are testing the waters with "$399 specials". Solar PC announced a $100 "Solar Lite" running Linux out of a flash disk.
Apple's never going to be on the leading edge, but a stripped down non-expandible "slab" for five to six hundred would only be a couple of hundred more than comparable PCs, and they'd still have plenty of room for their traditional profit margins.
Some people will never be satisfied no matter how inexpensive you make them
We'll see. They have to make them inexpensive before I can tell if I'm satisfied.
Office X does come with an installer, but you don't need to use it.
I don't like installing non-system applicatons in/Applications, because that make reinstaling the OS more complex. If you need to do a reinstall, now you need to reinstall some of the stuff in/Applications, but not all of it...
Everyone of my aquaintence runs Firefox.
Good for you. Good for them. But most people just use the browser that comes with their computer: IE on Windows, Safari or IE on the Mac. Ironically, IE on the Mac is a better choice than IE on Windows... because it's not integrated into Finder the way it's joined at the hip with Windows Explorer through the HTML control.
Incidentally, I've been somewhat wary of Webkit, let Apple open up the same holes that Microsoft has in the HTML control. So far they seem to have stayed reasonably sane (though I still don't like what they've done with LaunchServices).
Spyware is after all merely applications written to be hard to remove
Spyware also frequently installs itself using holes in IE, or changes the IE security zone rules to make it easier to install more spyware later. AOL was doing that at one point to make IE trust one of their servers.
Without the desktop integration, these holes wouldn't exist, and the "insecurity zones" wouldn't be there.
In all honesty most major applications have installers, mostly because it is simpler for users in the end.
Even Office X doesn't force the horrors of Installers on us.
What the Mac doesn't have is [...] a consistent visual style (brushed metal is evil)
Windows has better keyboard controls, yes, but visual style? Metal sucks, but it's trivially eliminated for Cocoa apps and there's a Haxie that takes out most Carbon ones as well.... while Microsoft hasn't even managed to get all *their* Apps on Windows XP to follow the new style.
The big thing the Mac is missing is the desktop-browser integration. And that's something we'd all be better off without.... that and the viruses and spyware it brings with it... that by itself is more than enough to justify it for a naive user.
This system is called Quartz, and Longhorn's Avalon will be doing this too.
With a new API that developers are already complaining about even though Longhorn's gotten deferred again (what is it, 1997 now?).
Quartz Extreme isn't implemented quite the way I would personally prefer (it breaks the caching hierarchy), it works for all Quartz applications.
Oh, and system-wide theming really works. Microsoft can't even get all THEIR apps to switch between classic Windows and the new ugly XP theme. Metal may suck, but I've pretty much made it vanish... and Max's "Milk" theme makes the OS feel so *clean*...
Like OSX, you may have no hope of diagnosing or fixing strange problems with the OS.
Or you may. Hold down CMD-S when you boot. Doesn't that look familiar? ALL your Unix/Linux disgnostic tools are there, as well as command-line versions of Apple's special magic kool-aid (nsutil, etc)...
What do I have that I would not have with GNU/Linux with (say) KDE
Actual commercial desktop software.
When I got my first Mac, the first thing that happened was I could quit booting my FreeBSD box to Windows to run the occasional closed-source package that I needed. I just ran the Mac version instead.
Speaking a member of the disgruntled-but-somehow-sticking-with-it Windoze community, that is.
That is, you could quit sticking with it and get yourself nicely gruntled again. Whatever that means for you.:)
I'm using a cheap KVM that's working fine at 1280x1024x85 and would go up to 1600x1200x75 if my monitor could handle it. My son's using a molded all-in-one 2-way KVM+cables... I think it's a Belkin. Their USB version of the same cable, though, had bad shadowing at 1280x1024x75.
Just make sure you can take the KVM back if it doesn't work. It would be better if Apple would put the KVM in themselves (I suggested this last year... called it the "iSwitch":-> ).
I'm seeing conflicting reports about how well PS2->KVM adapters work.
So long as you're not gaming, they're fine. They don't seem to have enough of an N-key rollover to keep you from dropping the occasional command, and if the game uses a "throttle" key it'll lose track of it after a while.
Even with uControl, you still need both Alt/Option and Command/Apple *somehow*.
I recommend the Adesso MCK-84... it's a nice compact mini-keyboard with full-sized keys, and inverted-T arrangement for the cursor keys, and no funky Fn key to remap the useless number pad to the middle of the Alphabet.
The only difference between a Mac USB keyboard and a Windows USB keyboard is the placement of a couple of keys, and the "multimedia" keys.
Your Model M won't make you happy, though. You really do need the Windows keys... they generate the same code as the Mac Command keys, and you do need them.
Even with a G4 the B&W G3 still only has a 100 MHz bus and no AGP slots. As Tiger uses more and more Quartz Extreme features, that double memory bottleneck (100 MHz to 64-bit system memory, 66 MHz to 32-bit PCI) will hurt more and more. I wouldn't plan on Tiger working to its full potential on anything that doesn't have AGP video.
I'm using a similar machine myself, and I can feel it struggling. Buying a used machine now that's less than an AGP G4 is just setting yourself up for disappointment. Oh, I'd rather use this ancient box than a P4 running Windows (in fact I do, I haven't turned my Windows box on in two months), but I'd much rather have something I could plan on using under 10.5... and I suspect that pre-AGP machines are going to go the way of Old World boxes before long.
On the other side, I've got a PC that can boot to Windows (Game OS) or FreeBSD, but I rarely use it any more. I don't think I'd have made the switch easily if I had to deal with two CRTs though.
The mouse is actually a PS/2 + USB Microsoft Optical Mouse. Keyboard is an Adesso MCK-84, the best mini keyboard I've ever found.
Plug the KB, mouse, and monitor into the Mac and use Windows via Remote Desktop client or X11. I did that for over a year adminning a Win2K Server dev box and it worked quite well.
People who make more than $60,000 and have no dependants or other expenses, maybe.
And for $800 you get an eMac. The screen on the eMac is appallingly bad: if I'm going to pay $800 for a computer I expect to get something better than that. It's so bad that I'm sticking with my ancient G3 rather than "upgrade" to something that might be faster but will wreck my eyes trying to use it, when I've got a superb 17" Trinitron that cost me less than $200.
This isn't a complete loss for Microsoft. It says MS has to license technology. It doesn't say on what terms, and it doesn't say open source software that's reimplemented Microsoft's protocols and interfaces are exempted.
Starbucks sells "Frappucino" for around a buck a bottle... for over-flavored iced coffee. They also have "Doubleshots" for $2.00 on up. And this stuff sells!
That's what this is competing with, not fresh-brewed Starbucks in the mall or your local coffee house.
[trying again... as god is my witness I did NOT hit submit]
Remember that the average cup of coffee in America is still made with coffee from companies such as Folgers or Maxwell House.
Again, the abuse! Maxwell House is not Folgers! If you don't let it "sit on the counter kept nice and warm by sunlight for six months", and use a clean cone filter (or at least a clean coffee maker) it's at least as good as Starbucks.
Folgers is a different kind of coffee altogether. It tastes like the ingredients should read something like ground acorns, pig nose bristles, uranium mine tailings, coffee flavoring, styrofoam pellets, coffee, ground AOL CDs, filler.
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I don't even want the bluetooth. I don't want a color screen. I don't wan an organiser. I want a cellphone that's well, just the best possible phone, that's all.
[rant continued in #11257921]
Another one that's simply wrong: it's a phone. It crashes. [...] A phone that periodically requires me to take the battery out and wait that painful minute before I can use it again doesn't deserve an owner.
That matches my experience with the T-mobile Pocket PC. I've never before had a cellphone that crashed.
Unfortunately, I've got another once since. Company phone, they changed service, and instead of the bog-simple Nokia "bar" with minimal features and good battery life (just the way I like it... it's a frigging phone, if it can't get that part right I don't care if it has a camera, MP3 player, or 3d porn projector) I have a really clumsy LG forty-something-hundred that periodically wakes me up in the middle of the night with its "welcome" music because it crashed or got updated or something. I've also had it mysteriously eat its battery when I left it in a locker at the hospital for half an hour... I guess it was panicking because it couldn't get a signal and shorted its brains out.
Christ.
Here's what I want: a phone, a big battery, a little black-and-white screen that doesn't use much power, room for a couple hundred numbers, and a place I can plug in a cable from my PDA or notebook to get a TCP connection WHEN I need one. That's it.
No bluetooth, no camera, no ringtones, no games, no wireless web, no "Get It Now" or other overpriced vendor-provided software, no downloads, uploads, wideloads, or overloads. Just a dumb connector to a dumb network I can plug my own, separate, not-tied-to-any-carrier, I-can-install-my-own-software, I-own-thank-you-very-much smart end-point that I control.
Is that too much to ask?
I'm using a very nice 17" aperture-grill screen that cost $170 new, four years ago.
Might have been a bit more recently than that, but these prices are typical... here's what Froogle told me about today:
Viewsonic G71F - $165, $174
Mitsubishi FE770 - $169
Mitsubishi FE771 - $182
Viewsonic P71F - $195
Of course... if Apple were to use one of these tubes in the iMac their costs would be a bit lower than this since they wouldn't need to pay for the shell, controls, connectors, most of the electronics, or the packaging... just the tube and analog circuitry.
Look, for $800 for a computer you are NOT going to get a Trinitron screen. If you are expecting that, they you are living in a reality far, far away from here.
I'm afraid you're living in the past. I'm using a very nice 17" aperture-grill screen that cost $170 new, four years ago. The original Trinitron patent has expired, so some companies are making their own aperture-grill tubes and others are able to license Trinitron technologies from Sony much more reasonably than they once did.
I can buy quite a nice computer for the $630 left over.
Apple was yelled at for not making an under-$1000 computer.
Once upon a time "under $1000" was an entry-level price for computers. By the time they dropped the eMac's price to $800, that wasn't such a good price any more. Computers are getting cheaper, and they're getting cheaper to make. If you don't recognise that fact, you're going to spend a lot of time whining about people whining about Apple.
Now they are being yelled at for not making an under-$600 computer.
That's because "under $600" is an entry-level price for computers, now. In fact, "under $400" is common for off-brands and Dell and HP are testing the waters with "$399 specials". Solar PC announced a $100 "Solar Lite" running Linux out of a flash disk.
Apple's never going to be on the leading edge, but a stripped down non-expandible "slab" for five to six hundred would only be a couple of hundred more than comparable PCs, and they'd still have plenty of room for their traditional profit margins.
Some people will never be satisfied no matter how inexpensive you make them
We'll see. They have to make them inexpensive before I can tell if I'm satisfied.
Office X does come with an installer, but you don't need to use it.
/Applications, because that make reinstaling the OS more complex. If you need to do a reinstall, now you need to reinstall some of the stuff in /Applications, but not all of it...
I don't like installing non-system applicatons in
Everyone of my aquaintence runs Firefox.
Good for you. Good for them. But most people just use the browser that comes with their computer: IE on Windows, Safari or IE on the Mac. Ironically, IE on the Mac is a better choice than IE on Windows... because it's not integrated into Finder the way it's joined at the hip with Windows Explorer through the HTML control.
Incidentally, I've been somewhat wary of Webkit, let Apple open up the same holes that Microsoft has in the HTML control. So far they seem to have stayed reasonably sane (though I still don't like what they've done with LaunchServices).
Spyware is after all merely applications written to be hard to remove
Spyware also frequently installs itself using holes in IE, or changes the IE security zone rules to make it easier to install more spyware later. AOL was doing that at one point to make IE trust one of their servers.
Without the desktop integration, these holes wouldn't exist, and the "insecurity zones" wouldn't be there.
In all honesty most major applications have installers, mostly because it is simpler for users in the end.
Even Office X doesn't force the horrors of Installers on us.
What the Mac doesn't have is [...] a consistent visual style (brushed metal is evil)
Windows has better keyboard controls, yes, but visual style? Metal sucks, but it's trivially eliminated for Cocoa apps and there's a Haxie that takes out most Carbon ones as well.... while Microsoft hasn't even managed to get all *their* Apps on Windows XP to follow the new style.
The big thing the Mac is missing is the desktop-browser integration. And that's something we'd all be better off without.... that and the viruses and spyware it brings with it... that by itself is more than enough to justify it for a naive user.
This system is called Quartz, and Longhorn's Avalon will be doing this too.
With a new API that developers are already complaining about even though Longhorn's gotten deferred again (what is it, 1997 now?).
Quartz Extreme isn't implemented quite the way I would personally prefer (it breaks the caching hierarchy), it works for all Quartz applications.
Oh, and system-wide theming really works. Microsoft can't even get all THEIR apps to switch between classic Windows and the new ugly XP theme. Metal may suck, but I've pretty much made it vanish... and Max's "Milk" theme makes the OS feel so *clean*...
Like OSX, you may have no hope of diagnosing or fixing strange problems with the OS.
Or you may. Hold down CMD-S when you boot. Doesn't that look familiar? ALL your Unix/Linux disgnostic tools are there, as well as command-line versions of Apple's special magic kool-aid (nsutil, etc)...
What do I have that I would not have with GNU/Linux with (say) KDE
:)
Actual commercial desktop software.
When I got my first Mac, the first thing that happened was I could quit booting my FreeBSD box to Windows to run the occasional closed-source package that I needed. I just ran the Mac version instead.
Speaking a member of the disgruntled-but-somehow-sticking-with-it Windoze community, that is.
That is, you could quit sticking with it and get yourself nicely gruntled again. Whatever that means for you.
I'm using a cheap KVM that's working fine at 1280x1024x85 and would go up to 1600x1200x75 if my monitor could handle it. My son's using a molded all-in-one 2-way KVM+cables... I think it's a Belkin. Their USB version of the same cable, though, had bad shadowing at 1280x1024x75.
:-> ).
Just make sure you can take the KVM back if it doesn't work. It would be better if Apple would put the KVM in themselves (I suggested this last year... called it the "iSwitch"
I'm seeing conflicting reports about how well PS2->KVM adapters work.
So long as you're not gaming, they're fine. They don't seem to have enough of an N-key rollover to keep you from dropping the occasional command, and if the game uses a "throttle" key it'll lose track of it after a while.
Apple systems seem to hold their value too well, I don't think you want to know what that gets you.
$500 gets you at most a G4/500 on eBay. A pre-AGP G4 anywhere that provides any kind of warranty.
If this came out, it would kick the bottom out of these inflated prices, and that would be a good thing.
Even with uControl, you still need both Alt/Option and Command/Apple *somehow*.
... it's a nice compact mini-keyboard with full-sized keys, and inverted-T arrangement for the cursor keys, and no funky Fn key to remap the useless number pad to the middle of the Alphabet.
I recommend the Adesso MCK-84
The only difference between a Mac USB keyboard and a Windows USB keyboard is the placement of a couple of keys, and the "multimedia" keys.
Your Model M won't make you happy, though. You really do need the Windows keys... they generate the same code as the Mac Command keys, and you do need them.
Even with a G4 the B&W G3 still only has a 100 MHz bus and no AGP slots. As Tiger uses more and more Quartz Extreme features, that double memory bottleneck (100 MHz to 64-bit system memory, 66 MHz to 32-bit PCI) will hurt more and more. I wouldn't plan on Tiger working to its full potential on anything that doesn't have AGP video.
I'm using a similar machine myself, and I can feel it struggling. Buying a used machine now that's less than an AGP G4 is just setting yourself up for disappointment. Oh, I'd rather use this ancient box than a P4 running Windows (in fact I do, I haven't turned my Windows box on in two months), but I'd much rather have something I could plan on using under 10.5... and I suspect that pre-AGP machines are going to go the way of Old World boxes before long.
And a G4/533 goes for $500 on eBay.
I curently have:
G3 -> USB/PS2 adapter -> PS/2 KVM -> PS/2 keyboard and mouse.
On the other side, I've got a PC that can boot to Windows (Game OS) or FreeBSD, but I rarely use it any more. I don't think I'd have made the switch easily if I had to deal with two CRTs though.
The mouse is actually a PS/2 + USB Microsoft Optical Mouse. Keyboard is an Adesso MCK-84, the best mini keyboard I've ever found.
Plug the KB, mouse, and monitor into the Mac and use Windows via Remote Desktop client or X11. I did that for over a year adminning a Win2K Server dev box and it worked quite well.
:)
Oh yes, I can see someone playing HL2 via RDP.
There's a reason Windows is called "Game OS".
People who make more than $60,000 and have no dependants or other expenses, maybe.
And for $800 you get an eMac. The screen on the eMac is appallingly bad: if I'm going to pay $800 for a computer I expect to get something better than that. It's so bad that I'm sticking with my ancient G3 rather than "upgrade" to something that might be faster but will wreck my eyes trying to use it, when I've got a superb 17" Trinitron that cost me less than $200.
This isn't a complete loss for Microsoft. It says MS has to license technology. It doesn't say on what terms, and it doesn't say open source software that's reimplemented Microsoft's protocols and interfaces are exempted.
I wouldn't run WMP 9 or later on a bet. You're worried about spyware? Consider this:
WMP 9 contains components that run in the kernel so you can't bypass the DRM.
WMP 9 uses the Microsoft HTML control to display web content.
Do you really want to run the world's top spyware security hole with kernel access? Do you feel lucky?
Starbucks sells "Frappucino" for around a buck a bottle... for over-flavored iced coffee. They also have "Doubleshots" for $2.00 on up. And this stuff sells!
That's what this is competing with, not fresh-brewed Starbucks in the mall or your local coffee house.
[trying again... as god is my witness I did NOT hit submit]
Starbucks sells "Frappucino" for around a buck a bottle... for over-flavored iced coffee. They also have "Doubleshots"
the people who roast it live nearby
Which means you're likely to get it sooner after roasting, too.
Without high quality, freshly roasted and freshly ground beans, your coffee is crap, no matter what you think.
Of these three components, freshly roasted is 90% of the difference between fresh-brewed evil and drinkable coffee.
Remember that the average cup of coffee in America is still made with coffee from companies such as Folgers or Maxwell House.
Again, the abuse! Maxwell House is not Folgers! If you don't let it "sit on the counter kept nice and warm by sunlight for six months", and use a clean cone filter (or at least a clean coffee maker) it's at least as good as Starbucks.
Folgers is a different kind of coffee altogether. It tastes like the ingredients should read something like ground acorns, pig nose bristles, uranium mine tailings, coffee flavoring, styrofoam pellets, coffee, ground AOL CDs, filler.