For the same reason that Apple copies what other people are doing: it is profitable to draw some inspiration when your competitors have good ideas. Or are you going to claim that Apple also doesn't use other people's ideas?
For anybody who cares about putting an actual price tag on the stupid Quadro shenanigans that falconwolf tried to pull here, I'd roughly estimate that's at least $400-500 difference just in video card cost. I guess it is now clear to me that he wasn't lying, he actually just was incapable of building like computers.
Again, I was speaking to using OEM tools to "build" online PCs, so PC assembly experience is not strictly relevant, but if this is some sort of pissing contest, I work full time as a consulting systems administrator for small to medium businesses. I do everything from replacing hardware on individual computers through designing and deploying complete hardware replacements for every computer in a building. One of my common job responsibilities specifically relevant to this discussion is making purchase recommendations for customers. So while it is admirable that you do volunteer work for Free Geek, I don't think you have what you need to try to pull rank on me.
I don't mean compared to homebrew, I mean compared to other brands. I'll pick the iMac 21.5" for a random comparison. For $1849, I get:
2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5
8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
2TB Serial ATA Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512MB GDDR5
Apple Magic Mouse
Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) & User's Guide
I'll go to Hp and select a 620 3D series all in one with a 23" screen for $1499:
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium [64-bit]
2nd Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 processor [3.1GHz, 6MB cache]
FREE UPGRADE to 8GB DDR3-1333MHz SODIMM [2 DIMMs] from 6GB
2TB 5400 rpm SATA hard drive
Microsoft(R) Office Starter: reduced-functionality Word & Excel w/ ads. No PowerPoint or Outlook
Norton Internet Security(TM) 2012 - 15 month
1GB AMD Radeon HD 7670A
Slim Slot Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner
Premium Wireless-N LAN card and Bluetooth(R )
6-in-1 card reader, 2 USB 2.0, 2 USB 3.0
TV tuner, ATSC-NTSC with PVR, remote
Integrated sound
HP wireless keyboard and wireless optical mouse
Or how about we pick up a Macbook Pro and compare it against an Alienware laptop, so we know I'm not picking a budget brand. $2749 Macbook Pro 17":
Software & ServicesGenuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit
Intel® Core i7 2760QM 2.4GHz (3.5GHz w/Turbo Boost, 6MB Cache)
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz (4DIMMS)
750GB 7,200RPM HDD
17.3-inch WideFHD 1920 x 1080 60Hz WLED
Killer Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit
Intel® Core i7 2760QM 2.4GHz (3.5GHz w/Turbo Boost, 6MB Cache)
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz (4DIMMS)
750GB 7,200RPM HDD
17.3-inch WideFHD 1920 x 1080 60Hz WLED
Killer Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video
1 Year Basic Plan
2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M
8X Slot-Load Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
Internal High-Definition 5.1 Surround Sound Audio
I mean, what kind of computer gets blown out of the water price-wise by Alienware? And that's only trying to compare like systems, which works out heavily in Apple's favor. For a whole lot of people, buying an Apple means buying hardware for which they have absolutely no need purely because Apple doesn't give you the option not to. For business use, the concept of tricking out every all-in-one that every random secretary is using with a Radeon HD 6770M is downright hilarious. And can I really not buy an actual Apple desktop computer anymore without getting it specced with Xeons?
Now it's time for you to scurry off into your little corner and post claims 3 weeks from now in some other thread that Apple computers are not any more expensive than any other manufacturer.
Abortion is the taking of a human life. You don't think it's a human life? Um, what makes you qualified to determine what is human life and what is not?
More importantly, what makes you qualified to determine what is human life and what is not?
My favorite part of that link is looking down at the tablet section and realizing that the only checks that are Galaxy Tab specific on this worthless piece of trash of a document are the ones for rounded corners. Thanks for making our point for us.
I apologize for being unclear, but I meant building using Dell or HP's online shopping tools. I'd give specific examples, but I've been baited into waisting my time making direct comparisons too many times before. Usually what happens after I've responded with specific citations is the commenter making the initial claim slinks away without replying and then makes the same claim in some later comment thread, letting any contrary evidence roll off like water on a duck.
If people want to buy expensive Apple hardware because of whatever benefits they see in doing so, more power to them, but I get irked when they try to pretend that they aren't paying out the ear for hardware so they can get access for the vendor-locked operating system that comes along with it.
No, but they are more likely to kill somebody else when they hit another vehicle. They also have worse maneuverability, and thus are more likely to get in accidents. When you drive an SUV, you get a little more safety for yourself at the cost of a little safety for everybody on the road near you. Everybody would be more safe if everybody drove small cars than if they all drove SUVs.
Man, that article you linked is just awful. I'm trying to figure out where in there that I decided that the author is an idiot, and I think it is right about the time that he (you?) listed "double-click on the person's name" in the start menu as one of his steps. Which I think is actually cutting him a huge amount of slack, because he's at that point already derided how difficult it is in Windows 7 to shut down a computer over remote desktop (which is great for those of us who don't like getting calls after-hours because a user accidentally shut down their computer and now can't get back into it), made an incoherent claim that it was "quite clearly a programmer" who thought of this, and then moved on to complaining about moving the location for My Documents taking additional steps despite the fact that it's so uncommon a use case that it probably happens on the order of one per fifty computer lifetimes at best (most users won't know or care where the folder actually resides and never change it, and IT departments that do care for some reason will have an automated system because they won't want to do it manually with the process described on the page).
I don't want to say it goes downhill from there, but it certainly doesn't get a lot better. Don't let web designers design your webpage? Well, I can gather I shouldn't let programmers do it, either, but what does that leave? Either the marketing department or some random asshat from management? Those are frequently the people most responsible for webpages filled with stupid widgets and crappy layouts. Web designers didn't all decide on their own accord to start filling pages with Web 2.0 widgets, they did it because your pointy haired boss and your marketing department demanded it of them. Or is the IT Department of every company now filled with usability experts?
Seconded. I constantly lament the fact that $1000+ Ciscos can't do what my $200 Mikrotik solutions can, and Mikrotik has a built in hotspot functionality and RADIUS authentication.
Always good to see that people will jump on a single person being willing to speak profanely and use it to generalize into a negative sentiment about a loosely-defined group that encompasses millions of people.
What brought the US out of the depression was WW2.
I always love hearing this line from people who don't understand that they've just stated that government spending brought the US out of the Great Depression while simultaneously complaining that government spending can't bring an economy out of a depression.
Except, of course, when it is time to blame Obama, at which point his influence actually magically goes back months before he took office. I mean, just look at some of the Republican talking points. They simultaneously talk about how we have more unemployment than when Obama took office and also about how we need to get gas prices back to what they were when Obama took office, nevermind that the way gas prices ended up there was because our economy was collapsing, and they were at record levels under Bush before that.
It's all just a bunch of crap that everybody spews out (in both directions). Every issue is warped so that it is really the other team's fault completely no matter the timeline. I mean, if you really want to figure out when the ball started rolling on the financial crisis of 2008, you could actually just research when most of the subprime mortgages that eventually went on to fail were actually granted. It would be a lot more telling than useless crap like "6-8 years of lag, except of course that makes a lot of the economic gains during Reagan's administration Carter's fault and I hate Carter, and we can't very well give FDR credit for the boom in the 50s so blah blah some other excuse there".
While that's bad, it only provides a means to corrupt politicians once they are in office rather than making corruption a requirement to make it to office. Most of them say yes to that sort of arrangement right now because they are already the type of people that were perfectly willing to sell their votes to get elected in the first place; more of them will say no if there is an avenue to political office besides selling the country out.
There are more causal chains besides the one you have identified between religious values and unprotected sex. One of the biggest is church interference in getting condoms to heavily afflicted countries. In that case, you have people having unprotected sex at least partially because of other people's religious ideology.
"the only way that my credit card info could have been "captured" was by the (sole) IT employee at this company."
Yeah, there's no way it was because somebody installed some new pretty mouse pointers on your machine that you have to have admin access to for "important business related functions".
"I think it would be better to have corporations outsource their IT functions overseas."
You just going to throw out your systems whenever they go out of warranty and have a remotely complicated hardware problem?
"Someone in India isn't going to care that you surf for porn during lunch, or steal your credit card info."
Yeah, because Visa totally doesn't work for people in India. Good luck the next time your card gets compromised and used to buy a bunch of expensive shoes off Amazon and get them shipped to a foreign country.
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For the same reason that Apple copies what other people are doing: it is profitable to draw some inspiration when your competitors have good ideas. Or are you going to claim that Apple also doesn't use other people's ideas?
For anybody who cares about putting an actual price tag on the stupid Quadro shenanigans that falconwolf tried to pull here, I'd roughly estimate that's at least $400-500 difference just in video card cost. I guess it is now clear to me that he wasn't lying, he actually just was incapable of building like computers.
Again, I was speaking to using OEM tools to "build" online PCs, so PC assembly experience is not strictly relevant, but if this is some sort of pissing contest, I work full time as a consulting systems administrator for small to medium businesses. I do everything from replacing hardware on individual computers through designing and deploying complete hardware replacements for every computer in a building. One of my common job responsibilities specifically relevant to this discussion is making purchase recommendations for customers. So while it is admirable that you do volunteer work for Free Geek, I don't think you have what you need to try to pull rank on me.
I don't mean compared to homebrew, I mean compared to other brands. I'll pick the iMac 21.5" for a random comparison. For $1849, I get:
2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5
8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
2TB Serial ATA Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512MB GDDR5
Apple Magic Mouse
Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) & User's Guide
I'll go to Hp and select a 620 3D series all in one with a 23" screen for $1499:
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium [64-bit]
2nd Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 processor [3.1GHz, 6MB cache]
FREE UPGRADE to 8GB DDR3-1333MHz SODIMM [2 DIMMs] from 6GB
2TB 5400 rpm SATA hard drive
Microsoft(R) Office Starter: reduced-functionality Word & Excel w/ ads. No PowerPoint or Outlook
Norton Internet Security(TM) 2012 - 15 month
1GB AMD Radeon HD 7670A
Slim Slot Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner
Premium Wireless-N LAN card and Bluetooth(R )
6-in-1 card reader, 2 USB 2.0, 2 USB 3.0
TV tuner, ATSC-NTSC with PVR, remote
Integrated sound
HP wireless keyboard and wireless optical mouse
Or how about we pick up a Macbook Pro and compare it against an Alienware laptop, so we know I'm not picking a budget brand. $2749 Macbook Pro 17":
2.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM — 2x4GB
750GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
MacBook Pro 17-inch Hi-Res Glossy Widescreen Display
Backlit Keyboard (English) & User's Guide
$2199 Alienware M17x:
Software & ServicesGenuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit
Intel® Core i7 2760QM 2.4GHz (3.5GHz w/Turbo Boost, 6MB Cache)
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz (4DIMMS)
750GB 7,200RPM HDD
17.3-inch WideFHD 1920 x 1080 60Hz WLED
Killer Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit
Intel® Core i7 2760QM 2.4GHz (3.5GHz w/Turbo Boost, 6MB Cache)
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz (4DIMMS)
750GB 7,200RPM HDD
17.3-inch WideFHD 1920 x 1080 60Hz WLED
Killer Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video
1 Year Basic Plan
2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M
8X Slot-Load Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
Internal High-Definition 5.1 Surround Sound Audio
I mean, what kind of computer gets blown out of the water price-wise by Alienware? And that's only trying to compare like systems, which works out heavily in Apple's favor. For a whole lot of people, buying an Apple means buying hardware for which they have absolutely no need purely because Apple doesn't give you the option not to. For business use, the concept of tricking out every all-in-one that every random secretary is using with a Radeon HD 6770M is downright hilarious. And can I really not buy an actual Apple desktop computer anymore without getting it specced with Xeons?
Now it's time for you to scurry off into your little corner and post claims 3 weeks from now in some other thread that Apple computers are not any more expensive than any other manufacturer.
Then I'll go ahead and assume that you're okay with morning after pills through abortions up to at least several weeks in?
Abortion is the taking of a human life. You don't think it's a human life? Um, what makes you qualified to determine what is human life and what is not?
More importantly, what makes you qualified to determine what is human life and what is not?
My favorite part of that link is looking down at the tablet section and realizing that the only checks that are Galaxy Tab specific on this worthless piece of trash of a document are the ones for rounded corners. Thanks for making our point for us.
Rovio actually took their game concept wholesale from another game, as well, which makes your choice of example somewhat interesting.
I apologize for being unclear, but I meant building using Dell or HP's online shopping tools. I'd give specific examples, but I've been baited into waisting my time making direct comparisons too many times before. Usually what happens after I've responded with specific citations is the commenter making the initial claim slinks away without replying and then makes the same claim in some later comment thread, letting any contrary evidence roll off like water on a duck.
If people want to buy expensive Apple hardware because of whatever benefits they see in doing so, more power to them, but I get irked when they try to pretend that they aren't paying out the ear for hardware so they can get access for the vendor-locked operating system that comes along with it.
You are either lying or incapable of building computers that actually have similar specs.
No, but they are more likely to kill somebody else when they hit another vehicle. They also have worse maneuverability, and thus are more likely to get in accidents. When you drive an SUV, you get a little more safety for yourself at the cost of a little safety for everybody on the road near you. Everybody would be more safe if everybody drove small cars than if they all drove SUVs.
Man, that article you linked is just awful. I'm trying to figure out where in there that I decided that the author is an idiot, and I think it is right about the time that he (you?) listed "double-click on the person's name" in the start menu as one of his steps. Which I think is actually cutting him a huge amount of slack, because he's at that point already derided how difficult it is in Windows 7 to shut down a computer over remote desktop (which is great for those of us who don't like getting calls after-hours because a user accidentally shut down their computer and now can't get back into it), made an incoherent claim that it was "quite clearly a programmer" who thought of this, and then moved on to complaining about moving the location for My Documents taking additional steps despite the fact that it's so uncommon a use case that it probably happens on the order of one per fifty computer lifetimes at best (most users won't know or care where the folder actually resides and never change it, and IT departments that do care for some reason will have an automated system because they won't want to do it manually with the process described on the page).
I don't want to say it goes downhill from there, but it certainly doesn't get a lot better. Don't let web designers design your webpage? Well, I can gather I shouldn't let programmers do it, either, but what does that leave? Either the marketing department or some random asshat from management? Those are frequently the people most responsible for webpages filled with stupid widgets and crappy layouts. Web designers didn't all decide on their own accord to start filling pages with Web 2.0 widgets, they did it because your pointy haired boss and your marketing department demanded it of them. Or is the IT Department of every company now filled with usability experts?
Seconded. I constantly lament the fact that $1000+ Ciscos can't do what my $200 Mikrotik solutions can, and Mikrotik has a built in hotspot functionality and RADIUS authentication.
Always good to see that people will jump on a single person being willing to speak profanely and use it to generalize into a negative sentiment about a loosely-defined group that encompasses millions of people.
What brought the US out of the depression was WW2.
I always love hearing this line from people who don't understand that they've just stated that government spending brought the US out of the Great Depression while simultaneously complaining that government spending can't bring an economy out of a depression.
Except, of course, when it is time to blame Obama, at which point his influence actually magically goes back months before he took office. I mean, just look at some of the Republican talking points. They simultaneously talk about how we have more unemployment than when Obama took office and also about how we need to get gas prices back to what they were when Obama took office, nevermind that the way gas prices ended up there was because our economy was collapsing, and they were at record levels under Bush before that.
It's all just a bunch of crap that everybody spews out (in both directions). Every issue is warped so that it is really the other team's fault completely no matter the timeline. I mean, if you really want to figure out when the ball started rolling on the financial crisis of 2008, you could actually just research when most of the subprime mortgages that eventually went on to fail were actually granted. It would be a lot more telling than useless crap like "6-8 years of lag, except of course that makes a lot of the economic gains during Reagan's administration Carter's fault and I hate Carter, and we can't very well give FDR credit for the boom in the 50s so blah blah some other excuse there".
While that's bad, it only provides a means to corrupt politicians once they are in office rather than making corruption a requirement to make it to office. Most of them say yes to that sort of arrangement right now because they are already the type of people that were perfectly willing to sell their votes to get elected in the first place; more of them will say no if there is an avenue to political office besides selling the country out.
What, you think what we have here in Texas is good?
I get what point you were trying to make, but you couldn't have picked a worse example. Do you have any idea how many new words Shakespeare coined?
There are more causal chains besides the one you have identified between religious values and unprotected sex. One of the biggest is church interference in getting condoms to heavily afflicted countries. In that case, you have people having unprotected sex at least partially because of other people's religious ideology.
You do know who makes the Xperia Play, right?
When I had a tv I always muted ads and looked the other way so as not to see this silly,insulting nonsense.
How, exactly, did you know when to unmute the TV, then?
Man, shut up. Opening cereal boxes is hard.
"the only way that my credit card info could have been "captured" was by the (sole) IT employee at this company."
Yeah, there's no way it was because somebody installed some new pretty mouse pointers on your machine that you have to have admin access to for "important business related functions".
"I think it would be better to have corporations outsource their IT functions overseas."
You just going to throw out your systems whenever they go out of warranty and have a remotely complicated hardware problem?
"Someone in India isn't going to care that you surf for porn during lunch, or steal your credit card info."
Yeah, because Visa totally doesn't work for people in India. Good luck the next time your card gets compromised and used to buy a bunch of expensive shoes off Amazon and get them shipped to a foreign country.
I'd love to see any proof that C code runs twice as fast as C++ code.